Yes Charley we were on 135.42 and routed right over my house at 5 past midnight before heading over Sussex. Quite often out of LGW you don’t always get your desired level straight away because the southbound aircraft from ooop north have alreay claimed the level! There is no normal pattern to my work which makes life very difficult. I cannot guarantee any commitment unless it is short notice. Long haul was much more stable and less tiring, despite the time zone chznges. Low cost has an advantage in that they work 6 on 3 off so you can work out whether you’ll be off on any day in the future. However the price they pay is that they are probably the hardest worked pilots in the industry.

Let me solve the door problem for you. The R4 door is a service door (like the R1) which is used by a catering vehicle to restock the rear galley. Therefore it is usually opened on every turnaround. The door is obviously closed for every departure and the slide is armed. The process of arming the slide causes a metal rod (called a girt bar) to engage into a track in the galley floor under the door. This is the attachment of the slide to the exit. Sometimes the passage of trolleys and people through the doorway causes crud and rubbish to collect in the track and the door arming lever will not travel to the ‘automatic’ position because of the blockage. The only solution is to reselect the arming lever to ‘manual’, open the door and clear the floor area which is what the girls are doing in the picture. I did like the suggestion that one was ‘blowing chunks’!

Also the reason for the change in noise from the APU – during boarding the APU is running (it lives in the tail cone) and it supplies electrical power and pneumatics to the aircraft. The pneumatic (air) supply is used to drive the 2 air conditioning packs. When we need to start the engine we need to use the pneumatic supply from the APU to power the air driven starter motors. However there is not enough pressure to drive the starters as well as the air con. Therefore shortly before starting the engines (in fact when we are doing the before start checklist) we turn the air con packs off. This reduces the load on the APU which makes it’s noise level change. Then, a few seconds later we’ll start the right engine which places a load on the APU making the noise change again. At 47-50% N3 the starter motor will cut out changing the load on the APU again and then once again we do the same thing for the left engine. As you can see there are plenty of reasons why the APU sound changes.

regards
wys

Hi everyone, got home at 3pm today (Monday afternoon). I really enjoyed meeting up with you all and my wife is delighted I disposed of what she considers to be ‘my old junk’!

Ren – thanks very much for all your organisational efforts. I’d like to forward the pictures of ‘LJ pushing back to James (the FO in the pictures) as he will really appreciate them. His previous job had him flying a Cessna Caravan turboprop single aroung the world supporting a round the world flight by a microlight and a helicopter. You may have seen the documentary series about it on Discovery Wings! His more normal daily routine was ferrying large tanks of eels around Europe which is why the aircraft was registered G-EELS.

Selsport – The first person I met. I was quite nervous about walking up to a rugby style stranger and saying ‘hi, are you Kevin/Selsport!’. A pleasure to meet you.

Bmused – Glad you joined! I’m biased but I think this is the best forum around.

Matthew – Have you taken the hat off yet, Captain? As soon as I’ve had a rest I’ll get onto copying the data you need.

After we went our separate ways I grabbed a bite to eat before heading back to my hotel. I tried to get a few hours sleep but the maid kept banging on the door to clean my room, despite the ‘do not disturb’ sign. I got about an hours kip before reporting for duty at 2155. We pushed back at about 2310 and were cleared to Zakinthos (aka Zante) via a New Galloway 1H departure, then down through the UK via Honiley to the boundary with France at BAMES. We routed Moulins-MELEE through France before crossing the Alps with a direct clearance to Saronno then Pescara in Italy. Coming off the heal of Italy we were transferred to Athens Control and cleared to Zakinthos VOR via Kefalinia. We arrived overhead at 0245 but the airport doesn’t open until 0255 so we joined our 757 out of NCL and our A320 out of EMA in the hold for 10 minutes before flying a procedural VOR approach onto Runway 16 into a 20 knot headwind.
We had a reasonable (1 hour) turnaround in Zakinthos before heading back up towards Kefalinia for our inbound leg. From KFL VOR we routed through Albania, Bosnia, over Zagreb in Croatia and Graz in Austria before crossing the Alps into Germany. From there it was up through Belgium and Holland before crossing the North Sea towards Ottringham and Newcastle before landing on R23 at GLA at about 0810 this morning.
I then had a mad dash to catch my BA flight to LHR (I got off my aircraft before the passengers!) and had to endure the awful conversation of 2 old American ladies who wouldn’t leave me alone to sleep! At Heathrow there was a chauffeur driven Mercedes to run me down to Gatwick where I had to pick up my motorbike and ironically ride back to my home near Heathrow!
So to answer Matthews question about why pilots complain about the job – it’s a great job that’s marred by phenomenal tiredness. I have had 3 hours sleep in the last 36 (one 1 hour sleep before the flight and a 2 hour sleep when I got in because if I didn’t wake up I wouldn’t get to spend any time with my 2 year old boy), I shall try to get 8 hours tonight if my body will allow me to sleep bearing in mind I am completely out of a sleeping rhythm, but then tomorrow I can be called out with 75 minutes notice to do it all again. Bearing in mind I had been doing more of the same for another 3 days before this period you can probably see why it’s not all a bed of roses.
But would I change… would I heck!