I'm sitting in Terminal 3 at Toronto Pearson right now, waiting to catch a Westjet flight to Calgary. That's where our new plane is, and I'll be flying her home tomorrow. I'll take lots of pics and videos on the return run so you can see how awesome she is.

In the meantime, here's a video from last night, when I saw my boy Nolan laugh for the first time. He really keeps things in perspective for me - I mean, I like my new plane, but I love my little boy more than life itself. And so will you once you see this clip!

Yeah, it's been a while. Wanna know why? Because I have been stupid busy, that's why. What have I been busy with?

Before I answer that, let's talk airplane history for a second. The Citation II (which I fly)was upgraded and became the Citation Bravo, which was then expanded and turned into the Citation V, which was then upgraded and turned into the Citation Ultra.

How is this relevant? Well, we have sold my beloved C550, but we will continue to operate her for the new owner, and with the proceeds (and a whack of additional cash) we bought a Citation 560 Ultra!

Here's the wiki on the Citation 560 series

Here's a link to the actual plane we bought, serial 496

The Ultra is essentially 2 generations newer than the straight Citation II which I have been flying, and the Ultra we bought is 17 years younger, so it has lots of new features, which I'll be detailing over the next while.

The most noticeable ones are: It's about 90 knots faster, meaning we will true out at 430 knots at 40,000'. The airplane climbs a lot faster as well, and the level of automation is significantly increased. The engines produce a lot more thrust at 3045 lbs each instead of 2500 lbs on the II, and though they burn 200 gallons of gas per hour instead of 150 on the II, the extra speed means we actually have a net savings on fuel burn, especially when we fly into a headwind. The plane is about 2 feet longer, meaning more leg room for the pax in the back, and there are lots of upgrades to the interior (bigger food/beverage system, CD audio system, sat phone for pax, etc) It is quieter, and it can fly further, meaning we can head west for a fair distance without it being a whole ordeal.

Cosmetically, the airplane has an extra passenger window, the washroom has a real door instead of a curtain, the seats are fully rotating and pretty luxurious, the wing has a sweepback for the first few feet, and there is no tail de-ice boot (apparently Cessna noticed that the tail never actually accumulates ice on the 550 models and realized that there's no need for the boot, so they removed it)

Our parent company is expanding, and that means more flights to more locations, some of them a fair distance away. They own a lot of stuff in Arizona and California, and with the Ultra we will be able to save a few hours on each trip, so the time saving is significant.

Oh, the plane has EFIS as well, which means we watch tv screens up front instead of looking at analogue instruments.

Basically, it's a lot more airplane, and I'm really looking forward to learning the ins and outs of Ultra flying.

The process has been a pretty intense one, as our purchase of the Ultra was contingent on the sale of our II. Synchronizing those transactions likely took years off my life, but the cheque for the II cleared yesterday, so I'm confident enough in the process that I'm allowing myself to post this. I'm so excited!

I'm gonna detail most of the process in upcoming posts, because I sure learned a lot and I think that some of it is pretty valuable experience. For now, I'm gonna crack open a beer and relax for the first time in a month. Not to sound too high on myself, I have earned it! :)

I leave the plane out for one single night in New Jersey, and this is what happens. I keed, I keed - she's down for her ten-thousand hour inspection. She will be in pieces for about a month while the mechanics do their thing. This is a huge inspection and they will be doing stuff I haven't seen before. For example, taking the tail off. Lots more pics and vids to come.

This continues from my last two (non-reindeer) posts, so read down to catch up.


I got a whole whack of information in this post from AvCanada, specifically the accident speculation thread. Stuff in quotes is taken verbatim from the discussion thread.

This is the ILS approach chart for Runway 35T into Resolute Bay. Do NOT use this to navigate, it's out-of-date now.



This is what the ILS into Resolute Bay looks like. The ceiling in this approach was 1,300':




On August 20th 2011, First Air flight 6560 was a 737 travelling from Yellowknife to Resolute Bay with 15 people on board, including four crew members. They called about 4 miles final for the runway, and then crashed a few minutes later. The aircraft appears to have been under control, and the surviving passengers reported nothing unusual right up to the point of impact.

The accident report hasn't come out yet, and the following stuff is entirely speculation - I want to make that clear. But I'm going to speculate.


METAR CYRB 202000Z 18009KT 8SM VCFG SCT003 OVC005 07/07 A2986 RMK
SF2SC5 VIS E-SE 3 FG SLP116=

The weather at the time of the accident was foggy with low (300') scattered and (500') overcast layers. People on the ground couldn't see much at all, but flight visibility can be very different from ground visibility.

We do know some things: The crew was still in control on three mile final, the engines were running, the aircraft is oriented parallel to the runway and level with the horizon, and the wreckage is strewn across a large area. If it had stalled or a mechanical failure had caused it to rapidly descend it would leave a much smaller impact area. That has all the hallmarks of classic CFIT, or 'controlled flight into terrain'.





Here's a Google earth view of the area around the accident. The wreckage trail is represented by the yellow line. The gully leading down from the nose of the aircraft at the end of the wreckage appears to contain the same washed out sort of area in google and the photo. The two red circles outline similar geometric forms. One is the approach end of 35T. The other is a road structure on a slightly sloping flat area elevated above the airport by about 325 feet and one mile to the right of the centerline of the runway. The lake to the southeast of the wreckage trail could appear in certain cloud arrangements to be similar to the shoreline on the approach to 35T.

The aircraft would have been between two layers of clouds with approximately 200 feet between layers, with the bottom scattered layer at 475 ASL and the top broken layer at 675 ASL. Some of what was a scattered layer from the weather observation point may have been broken in the hill above.

Now here's the thing: Even with the local terrain being a bit confusing, there should have been no problem finding the runway and landing with any normal kind of ILS approach, with a 500 foot ceiling. ILS tolerances are pretty tight, and it would be really hard to conceive why the aircraft would have been a mile to the right of its course, and more or less on runway heading without any abnormal indications to the crew.

Let's add some more information: here's another picture of the accident site, this time with the Resolute VOR location plotted. This one chills my bones.



It turns out the ILS was functional on that day, but suppose the crew didn't get a glideslope indication and decided to fly the Localizer only approach. That takes them down to 540' ASL. The ridge they hit was 653' ASL.

The step down approach (localizer) really comes into the equation if the aircraft is mistakenly inbound on the 167T radial from YRB. In that scenario, the crew believes it is tuned to the ILS, can't get glideslope, and switches to a localizer approach with the final drop only 160 feet four miles back. They keep tracking the 167T radial as if it were the localizer. They don't have glideslope because they're tuned to 112.1 instead of 110.3. Their DME is coming off the VOR.

"In the mistuned VOR scenario, they have to have POKAN on the 167 radial at 4 DME, a mile east of proper track. Then do the procedure turn and fly back inbound on the false localizer. Maybe they left the VOR eastbound with 167 already set on the OBS, flew it needle centered to the false POKAN, did the PT and re-intercepted inbound. Get no GS, maybe call it in U/S, and fly the localizer approach instead. That scenario ends exactly where the accident happened.

I can't see a late tuning of the VOR and nobody noticing that the needle moved when the OBS was turned. If they'd been tracking 167 outbound to Pokan, and then set up the inbound course on the CDI, they wouldn't have noticed it so much as they would have been in the PT where they would expect it to be deflected."

An added factor now: Has anyone noticed that there is no missed approach point for the LOC/DME approach on the ILS/DME 35T plate? Not on the DND copies anyway. Take a look.

A second factor: Notice how the VOR isn't even depicted on the ILS chart? Why on earth would the crew have it tuned in? Well, a couple of possibilities exist. There was a temporary military control tower at Resolute that day, coordinating aircraft that were participating in a mock search-and-rescue exercise. The control tower was asking other aircraft for their radial and distance to the airport, and the accident aircraft had reported that information to the control tower fairly late in their approach. In order to report that information they would have had to tune in the VOR. The other possibility is that maybe they were using the VOR to navigate to the airport before commencing the approach.

"Another Canadian carrier used to have an unofficial procedure on the 737-200. If you wanted to retain the DME display while doing an ILS, you would tune #1 to the ILS and #2 to the VOR. Then you would transfer the display [overhead switch] to "both on 1" Now, both pilots would have their HSI displaying the info from the #1 radio, and the dme would readout from the vor still tuned on the #2 radio. This practice was banned after a crew mistakenly switched "both on 2" during an approach to Prince George. Thinking they were tracking the LOC, the aircraft descended towards the YXS VOR and very nearly had an accident. [With both radios tuned to the ILS you would not have a DME readout and there is no DME hold switch on the 200] The practice of transferring the display was then banned and to be used only in case of radio failure. Keep in mind that was another air carrier, not First Air."

Here's a pic of the panel from the actual accident aircraft.



Hmm, same switches.

But wouldn't their GPWS (Ground Proximity Warning System) have saved them? The 737 in question was equipped with an older model, which basically gives no warnings once the landing gear is down. GPWS will only give you two calls "500'" and "Sink Rate", whereas the newer Enhanced GPWS will give 1000', 500' 100', 50', 40', 30', 20', and 10' above ground calls. This late in the approach, the gear would have been down.

So here's my speculation: With the knowledge that the military was asking for radials/DME bearings prior to the crash, maybe the VOR was tuned in, thinking they had the ILS frequency up. Now to those of you who fly IFR, how often have you made a late change in the approach? It happens to me once in a while. If you thought you had the ILS tuned in and once on the approach you had a G/S flag, it would be a fast and easy brief to re-brief for the LOC only approach and continue to the higher minumums (especially in an environment such as the Arctic airports)...if that was the case here, the LOC only minimums still would have put them into a hill if they were tracking the VOR.

One final pic:



This was taken on the LOC DME BC approach to rwy 17T (the accident runway, just landing in the opposite direction) in 2009. The distance to the rwy threshold is less than 1.5NM. Can you spot the runway? Imagine looking for that in low cloud and fog, let alone adding being on the wrong approach frequency.

Lots of links in the accident chain on this one, and again the final report hasn't come out yet - but if it went even remotely close to how I think it went, you can see the tragedy that resulted from a bunch of different factors that added up all at once.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from Lisa, myself and the angriest and smelliest reindeer ever :)

I'm referencing my last post, so read down to get caught up.

Those of you who guessed there may have been some confusion with the Teterboro VOR and ILS frequencies, you win a cookie!

The inbound ILS course was set, but when the non-flying pilot read the chart and saw the TEB frequency in the 108 mhz range, he thought "108 is an ILS frequency", and tuned it and identified it. It's not quite that simple,so I'll paraphrase from Wiki:

VORs are assigned radio channels between 108.0 MHz and 117.95 MHz. Turns out the first 4 MHz is shared with the ILS band though. To leave channels for ILS, in the range 108.0 to 111.95 MHz, the 100 kHz digit (the first decimal place) is always even, so 108.00, 108.05, 108.20, and so on are VOR frequencies but 108.10, 108.15, 108.30, and so on, are reserved for ILS.

I didn't know that, but now I do. 108.4 would be a VOR because the .4 is even, where 108.9 would be an ILS because the .9 is not. I learn something new every day, and it's a good way to add a cross-check to the frequency being selected.

As we weren't expecting to see a glideslope indication (the G/S being out of service on this particular day), no warning flares went up right away.

Fortunately for us we were in good weather so we saw the airport a fair ways back, and got aligned with the runway, then discovered our mistake. Also fortunate for us, we were in a radar environment with ATC services, so if we had gone off-course in any major way (or even a minor way, this being among the busiest airspace on the planet), ATC would have let us know.

So how do we prevent this from happening again? Well, with SMS we ask ourselves a bunch of "whys".

Why were we off course? The wrong frequency was entered by the non-flying pilot on the approach.

Why was the wrong frequency entered? The non-flying pilot misread the chart and didn't see the correct frequency.

Why did he misread the chart? From his previous flight experience, he assumed a 108.** frequency would be an ILS (the desired approach), and didn't read further to the right of the chart where the ILS frequency was. It doesn't help that most people read from left to right, and the box on the left was the VOR, while the box on the right was the ILS. A contributing factor was that this was his first trip into the airport.

Why didn't the other pilot catch that in the approach briefing? Because our SOP's dictated that the non-flying pilot is solely responsible for entering the approach frequencies into our radios. A contributing factor was the Glideslope was out of service, so nobody was expecting to see it, the lack of which normally would have been an early indicator of something not-quite-right on the approach.

A-ha! The first part of that last paragraph seems to show a weakness on the part of our procedures - we had just one pilot in charge of confirming the information in the box, and while it had served us for a decade, this incident showed us that it could be improved. I immediately issued a memo stating that from now on, both pilots shall confirm the proper radio frequency is entered into the navigation radios prior to the start of the approach. We have added standard phraseology to our approach briefings "Radio tuned and identified to ***** (whatever the appropriate frequency is), Confirm?" The other pilot will physically point to the approach chart with the desired frequency and then to the nav radio, then both will listen to the proper approach ident, followed by "Confirmed". This will put both pilots more in the loop when it comes to entering this data into the box, which will add an extra layer of protection into our approach procedures.

Tomorrow we will talk about another aircraft that *appears* to have made a chillingly similar error, but with considerably more tragic results. It's pretty fascinating, and from our recent experience I totally get how it could occur. I'm talking about First Air flight 6560, which crashed in August of this year. More tomorrow.

Something happened recently that I want to share with you. We made a mistake, and learned from it. As part of our SMS (Safety Management System), when we make mistakes we try to identify the root cause, and then come up with a way to mitigate the situation so we don't make the same mistake in the future.

We fly to KTEB, Teterboro New Jersey, a lot. It's where most of the corporate jets go when they have passengers who wish to do business in downtown Manhattan. It's about a 30-40 minute drive from the airport to Wall Street, and the airport has less congestion than Newark, JFK or La Guardia.

A little while ago, the plane did a KTEB trip. It was an early-morning departure, and the weather was fine. The approach in use was the ILS (Instrument Landing System) to runway 06. On a full ILS approach, the radio signal lines you up with the runway and also tells you when to descend, and if you are high or low on your descent angle. The ILS approach is the most common instrument approach in most large airports, because most airplanes that use it can fly down to 200' above the ground without looking outside, and on some advanced ILS approaches, some sophisticated airplanes can use the radio signal to fly right down onto the runway without looking outside at all - pretty handy in places like Boston or Vancouver where it can get pretty foggy.

The only unusual variable on this trip was that the ILS for runway 06 had the glideslope radio signal out of service, so the approach only offered lateral guidance, ie it would only line you up with the runway, and you had to use alternate methods to calculate when to descend.

http://www.airnav.com/depart?http://204.108.4.16/d-tpp/1113/00890IL6.PDF

That's a link to the ILS approach onto runway 06, so you can follow along in glorious hi-res if you have a .pdf reader.

This next part is kinda technical, and I can`t figure out how to make it less so for non-pilots, but I`ll have a summary afterwards so bear with me.

The approach is pretty straight-forward - Air Traffic Control will give you radar vectors to intercept the inbound track, which is an angle of 060 degrees to the airport. They usually angle you so that you intercept the approach track at Vings intersection. Now there are a few ways to verify that you are at Vings intersection. One way is to put the waypoint in your GPS receiver, another way is to put the 294 degree radial off the JFK VOR and the 080 degree radial off Solberg VOR and fly over where they cross each other, but another way is to dial in the TEB VOR and when you are on the localizer and at 12.5 DME (taken from the VOR), then you are at Vings. The last way is the way we chose to identify Vings.

In our SOP`s (Standard Operating Procedures), the pilot flying (the guy in the left seat) will brief the approach and the non-flying pilot will tune and identify the radios. This was done, but as the plane approached the airport, it became obvious that the airplane wasn`t quite where it should be. The weather was good, so the pilot flying was able to see the runway about 20 miles back, and lined the airplane up with it nicely.

The thing is, the navigation radios were saying that the airplane was pretty far to the left of the runway, and this caused some confusion in the cockpit. I happened to be sitting in the back on this flight, watching the flight crew, and I was also confused for a few seconds.

Take a long hard look at the approach plate, and see if you can figure out the mistake that was made. Keep in mind that the glideslope was out of service for the ILS, so we weren`t expecting to see any glidepath information, nor did we.


//edit - to add a little information, the plane was showing off-track by only a few degrees, but our localizer indicator was showing nearly full deflection even though we were lined up with the runway. As mentioned earlier, the weather was fine so the briefing was for the visual approach backed up by the Localizer (the localizer is the ILS system without the glidepath system). The pilot flying had flown this approach probably a hundred times in the past few years, but this was the first time the non-flying pilot had been into Teterboro.//

I`ll talk about what happened next tomorrow.

See how many contributing factors you can identify in this particular gear-up accident. Full-screen and 1080p for maximum detail.

I'm not gonna judge - I have been in situations where I was distracted enough that the gear warning horn was what saved me from a similarly embarrassing landing.

The portable XM iPad weather works great on the ground and in my car, but we don't fly til Sunday so I won't have an airborne assessment for another couple of days.

Let's watch an airplane get hit by lightning while we wait. The difference here is that the airplane is parked on the ramp. Watch it in 480p and fullscreen so you don't miss the tiny details.



From a post on AvCanada by ktcanuk called "Why your bags are delayed in a thunderstorm" :

"An AeroRepublica Embraer 190 hit by lightning in Medellin, Colombia at the gate. You'll need to watch it several times to see all of the action; It’s only about 10 seconds duration. Three key things/areas to watch. First watch the tail of the aircraft as the lightning bolt hits the vertical stabilizer, do not blink, it happens that fast. Next, watch the nose of the aircraft where ground crew walk up to and under the nose of the airplane, then quickly retreat. Then, look just to your left of the nose gear. That brown square on the ground is a metal plate imbedded in the concrete, with an access cover in it. The lightning strike exits the airplane onto the metal plate, which sends the access cover flying through the air toward the tug on the far left."

The iPad has truly revolutionized aviation. I can use it as a moving map, look up airport data, file flight plans and do all sorts of useful and relevant activities.

'real' iPad post coming up next week when our airborne XM weather hardware arrives- I just ordered the Mobile Link package from Baron Systems - it will apparently stream XM weather from the receiver via wifi to my iPad. Gonna use the Foreflight Mobile HD app, which has geo-referenced US approach charts, Canadian charts, and will display the weather right on the charts. At least, that's my hope. We have on-board XM weather already, but it's through a 6-year-old tablet PC that's cranky at the best of times, so I'm hoping for something a little more stable. Next week will tell!

This is why people fly private.

I'm in Orlando at the moment, after dropping the plane off here for a few days, and I'm trying to fly home on Air Canada. As you can see from the pic, the flight is delayed. No big deal there, I understand that planes go mechanical and that sometimes weather can be a factor.

Here's what angers me though: The display is essentially useless: there is no revised ETA. Oh, and no actual human being to talk to either. I took this pic AFTER our scheduled departure time, and we still haven't seen a gate agent or AC rep. If I displayed a similar lack of concern for my clients I'd be out of a job pretty freakin' fast, I can tell you that.

Oh well, at least I can more fully consider my options next time I book a commercial airline ticket. Yeah, I sound bitchy - I'm away from Lisa and Nolan for the first time since he was born, and I don't know when I'm getting home. C'mon Air Canada, get your act together!

I'm fairly proactive when it comes to stuff like this, so I sent a copy of my pic to the Air Canada customer feedback website. This is the reply I got:

------------------------------

Thank you for contacting us.

This is to confirm that we have received your correspondence and there is no requirement to re-submit your information. Our processing time is currently 20 business days for general customer concerns, 30 business days for baggage related issues and up to 4 weeks for baggage tracing. We will make every effort to respond sooner.

We appreciate your patience and understanding as you await our response.

---------------------------

Oh Em Eff Gee. Why even have a customer feedback website if you are going to have delays like that? It only enrages me further...


//continues to grumble about the sorry state of airline travel under his breath...

First of all, here's a pic of Nolan being philosophical while wearing a monkey hat. I'm absolutely in love, even though he's currently living life on Australian time :)


Now this is kind of a total bait n' switch on my part because this next Youtube video is one of the most tense and disturbing things I have ever listened to. *SPOILER* The guys live. I'm saying this ahead of time because otherwise it would be pretty unbearable listening. I found this video posted on AvCanada.

This is a Mitsubishi MU-2 in severe icing, over the mountains, trying to make it to Kelowna BC. Kelowna is in a valley, with high mountains all around.



The MU-2 has gotten a pretty bad reputation in icing, in fact it was subject to a full icing recertification review after some high-profile accidents. The review found that the MU-2 was properly certified for flight into icing, and that it's perfectly safe to fly in light-to-moderate icing as long as you follow the proper procedures. If you disrespect the airplane in icing, you will hear the angels singing sooner rather than later. I'm absolutely NOT saying that's what happened in this situation, it sounds to me like they were doing everything right but got caught in severe icing, which by definition will even overwhelm icing equipment that's working properly.

If you check the first part of this video, you'll hear the the guys picked up a lot of icing, and it caused a propellor imbalance. That can cause some serious vibration, to the point of the prop departing the aircraft. The only solution is to reduce power (and descend), or keep the power up and hope the plane doesn't shake apart. A hell of a choice.

I flew the MU-2 for just over a thousand hours, and my older blog entries are full of stories about it. A beautiful machine, but particularly unforgiving.

Welcome Nolan! Weighing in at 7 lbs 5 ounces and scoring a perfect 9/9 on his APGAR test, he entered the world at 830 this morning with a mighty roar. Happy birthday to our champion son! Man, I have never felt an adrenaline rush like that before in my life. I have also never cried like that before in my life. Such a primal rush! Both baby and mom are doing great - they are napping and I'm riding an endorphin high that's taking me into low-earth orbit.

Now back to staring at him while he sleeps...

*Update* From yesterday's post. We got back from the Doc's office just now and baby Balthor* is scheduled to make his debut blog post on Monday at 8am. My last sleep-in weekend! Ever :)

We are totally set for a home birth, so that's cool. We completed all the checklists, bought all the accessories (sheets, towels, tarps for our bedroom, beer-for-daddy, etc) and are totally set to have our son in 3 weeks! Except for one thing...

We spent a whole whack of time at the hospital yesterday and today, and after taking most of Lisa's blood and most of my sanity, the doc told us a word.

Choleostasis. Ko-leo-stasis.

Big word, right? It translates to "itchy hands and feet at the end of pregnancy, with possible side-effect". Sometimes when a woman is near the end of her pregnancy, her hormones make her liver angry. The angry liver beats up on her gallbladder, which screws up the ratio of gall-bladder salts that it produces.

Fun fact: when your gallbladder salt ratio gets screwed up, it makes your extremities itch like a mofo. It's absolutely unbearable for her, and it gets even worse at night. In fact, we have a big Tupperware container that I fill with water and ice packs, and we get up a couple of times in the middle of the night to soak her feet and hands so she can sleep again for an hour or two.

Unfortunately there is a possible side-effect for our son, and even more unfortunately, the side-effect is 'possible late-term stillbirth', especially if Lisa carries past 38 weeks. The odds are still low, but they are above zero so we are going to err on the side of caution. Lisa is currently at 37 weeks and 2 days, so we are meeting with the obstetrician tomorrow to discuss when she's gonna induce Lisa, which will be before next Tuesday.

Inducing is carried out at the hospital. Oh, as an added bonus they tell us that baby Balthor* will likely enter the world via Cesarean due to (whatever the hell it was the doc said this morning when I was zoned out and not paying attention - I think it had something to do with itchy hands and feet though).

Heck of a thing to go from anticipating an uneventful home-birth to getting ready for a Cesarean in the hospital. At least the end result is a healthy baby, and that's really the point of all of this, isn't it.

Last but not least, we got to see a whole bunch of awesome ultrasound footage of him in the past 24 hours, and he's pretty damn cute. Watch out, ladies who will be graduating in 2029!

Anyway, that's my story. Now to try to get some rest for what is guaranteed to be a loooong day tomorrow, followed by a loooong 18+ years or so :) My God I'm looking forward to it!

*As per agreement between Lisa and myself, Balthor is now a placeholder name (we have a more normal one picked out) unless he enters the world and obviously is a Balthor.