There's got to be a morning after...

Updated: Added pictures.

We scoped things out this morning, and it is just so sad to see 388 helpless on its back.



The wings are a little rumpled, the empennage is not quite straight or solid, ...




Kevin, the mechanic, was out this morning and he figures the insurance adjustor will total it, saying the wings will have to be wholly replaced and that fixing the empennage is a labor-intensive (read: expensive) job. Who knows about water and other damage to the avionics or interior in general. And we just did the annual a week ago! It's a 1968 172 with a current estimated value of $30-34k, so it probably won't take a whole lot of estimated repairs to get to that amount.



John, an instructor who lives to fly and just a super guy, had his tail-dragger parked down a few spaces. His was upside-down also. Kevin explained to us that it didn't flip tail-over-head like ours did, but flipped wing-over-wing, over a neighboring plane, taking out one plane's tail and damaging another to come to its resting point. After snapping the tie-downs. Rumpled wings, shattered windscreen, twisted empennage, ...




(John's plane is the white and blue one on the far right. It had been parked on the other side of the orange 172. The orange plane and the gray-and-yellow one facing the hangars had their tails clipped by it. The plane on the left has some holes in its skin. The plane in the foreground is in much the same condition as ours; this guy restored the interior himself a few years ago, replacing seats, doing the leather upholstery and interior panel coverings himself. So sad.)

Charlie, one of the linemen, said that non-owners were being turned away from the airport today, and that at one point there were ~75 cars stacked up of people coming to gawk. Kevin said there was one resident plane out on the ramp not damaged (out of probably 20); it just so happens to be the one plane that has never, ever moved the entire time we've been associated with the airport. Perhaps it's fused to the pavement.

All of the flight school's single-engine planes were damaged; luckily their twin so far appears to be ok. The handful of planes in the transient parking on the other side of the terminal also seem to have survived.

No words

There's just nothing to be said.



We'd had some storms tonight, and we got a call a little before 10 pm saying our plane had taken some damage. Yeah, I'll say. We'll go back in the morning to see what's to be seen or done. What we could tell in the dark is that the we have a destroyed tail tip, bent propeller, bent wing strut, damaged leading edge of one wing, fuel leaking (around fuel cap, so probably just coming out the vent), various antennae damaged or broken off, left-side door hinge ripped off... Oh, and the interior is soaking wet with 1/2 inch of water pooling at the "top" of the windscreen. And also the tie-downs were still connected to the plane.

As we drove off, the rain began to fall harder, thicker, and with hail.

AWOS appears to have stopped reporting a few hours ago. I guess it took some damage, too. They say four planes are upside-down (we saw two others near us, all high-wings), and several came loose and collided with neighboring planes.

A sad day at JGG.

New solo pilot

If you have a sec today, stop on by flyaway's training blog to congratulate him on his first solo flight early this morning! He's back on track after having lost his instructor to the airlines, and he's training in the ADIZ, which to a country flier like me sounds like a nightmare! :)

Good job!

Gut feelings and random thoughts

My feelings on flying are changing as my gut changes, I'm sorry to say...

I'm ~3/4 of the way through the pregnancy, and certain activities are becoming uncomfortable. Like bending to pick something up from the floor. Like sleeping. Like sitting.

Like spending hours upon hours in airport seats or airline seats.

Our 9-day trip to the Canadian Rockies was really a good trip. We hit Calgary, Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper, Edmonton, and points in-between. I'd have to say that Banff was my favorite; a gorgeous little mountain town in a valley on a river surrounded by lush green mountains capped with snow, a town that's big enough to have interesting eating options but small enough to not be overrun with tourist-y shops. (It does have its share...) I'd really like to go back there when I get my body back so's to take advantage of the vast scope of outdoor opportunities -- hiking, rafting, biking, horseback riding, etc.

But spending 8+ hours in planes plus another 3+ hours in airports (thank you, weather delays) -- one way -- had my back screaming for mercy, and resulted in this policy: no travel longer than ~2 hours after the second trimester!

Beyond that, however, are the physiology management concerns, and this applied also to our flight in the 172 down to Asheville a few weekends ago. Amniotic fluid is pretty important for the developing baby (understatement), and it's cumulative; the recommendation is to drink at least 8 glasses of water per day (in addition to whatever other fluids like coffee or juice might be part of the daily regimen), plus another glass for each 15 minutes of exercise, plus 4 additional glasses on hot days with outdoor activity. That's a lot of intake, and it creates a lot of output, and with a shrinking bladder capacity, frequent breaks are necessary.

I'm not typically a germophobe, but airliner bathrooms really gross me out, as they do most everyone I know. The 6-year-old boy in 15b surely doesn't have the best aim to begin with, so throw in a little turbulence and you've got a situation that's less than ideal for any subsequent passenger. Ick and shudder.

And in a 172, that's an expensive potty break.

So you see where I'm going here. Just bitching about the growing discomforts of flying whilst preggers. I'd guess that it's just as bad for driving nowadays, too, but haven't tested it. Discomforts of traveling.

On another note, United gets mixed reviews from this trip. Our layover was at Chicago O'Hare, and the landings there both on the trip out and coming back were really soft and smooth, so pats on the back for those pilots. On the ORD-YYC leg, they announced that ATC would be tuned in on channel 9 in the armrest audio. That was fun, listening to the busy stuff going on at ORD and the calls in transit. (Note to self: what is "metering?" Some kind of departure load-balancing service?) Sometime at cruise altitude, the captain came on and advised us that he'd be "giving a dissertation" if anyone wanted to listen in on channel 9. He was amusing and talked for probably 20 minutes or so about the FO's experience, his experience, the history of the Boeing 737 (such as we were on), fuel ferrying and consumption/performance trade-offs in a time of high prices, etc. He was pretty cool and sounded very friendly.

Other United issues, though, were unusual and unpolished to me. For instance, during the pre-taxi safety instructions, it appears to be United policy to turn the cabin speakers down way low and to select the crew member with the worst diction and recitation skills to do the announcement. The phrasing of the announcements was bad, too; they seem to have accepted the first draft. The one that seemed very odd to me was the prepare-for-landing announcement: stow carry-ons, tray tables and seat backs in their full upright and locked position, seat belts fastened, and "in the case of an emergency after landing, leave all carry-ons behind"... They had already emphasized that in the case of any emergency all carry-ons should be left behind, so why repeat it for landings? Do they have a history of landing problems? Are they just trying to give the aviophobes a little nudge in the last-minute freak-out direction?

Ok, enough blathering for now, back to work! I'll post a few pics from the trip soon, and promise to be more positive! End communication.

Word!

Indeed!