Business As Usual In Costa Rica

Back in San Jose, Costa Rica again.This time it would be a non-stop flight back to home base in Texas. A 4.5 hour leg.

Our ground personnel at SJO are fantastic. They typically have everyone boarded and bags loaded at least 15 minutes prior to scheduled departure time. I have never seen a delayed departure there. Today was no different.

Our call for ATC clearance to DFW was immediately answered with "cleared as filed". What a contrast from my last post concerning the ATC difficulties in Caracas, Venezuela.Numerous airlines outsource their planes to Costa Rica for maintenance. This is a huge issue for several US airlines and their unions, but I'll save that for another post. Apparently the labor is less expensive there. This MD-80 was having some repairs done there as we taxied by.

A very short delay for a landing Navajo and then we were rolling on runway 07.

The Rolls Royce engines on the 757 deliver so much power that most of our takeoffs are made using less than full power. But SJO rests at an elevation of just over 3000 feet and the terrain around the airport requires some delicate climb procedures so we often use maximum power for takeoff.

The runway slopes uphill so we did indeed use max power for takeoff. Additionally we were fully loaded and carrying extra fuel for some potential destination weather.

The climb procedure from runway 07 requires a very steep climb and a hard right turn not too far off the departure end of the runway. If the turn is not made in time, the surrounding terrain can interfere with your flight path! Bad times...

The First Officer was flying this leg today. He lifted off at 135 knots, called for "gear up", and pitched up into a 25 degree nose up climb attitude. At the appropriate distance from the field he rolled into the right turn while still in the steep climb with flaps still extended. Once headed back away from the mountains he called for flaps up, climb power, and away we went. A perfectly executed takeoff and climb.

The tower switched us over to departure control and my call was quickly answered with "climb to Flight Level 380 and cleared on course". That's great service....unlike some other place that I know of.

Our routing this day initially took us over the countries of Nicaragua and El Salvador.



Approaching the city of Managua, Lake Managua was clearly visible.



Further down the road we could see a small volcano. I believe that it was in El Salvador but I'm not positive. Nevertheless, it was pretty cool!
We then turned to the north up over Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, Mexico, and finally back in US airspace as we made landfall over the city of Galveston, Tx.

A smooth descent and perfect landing followed. Total flight time was 4 hours 27 minutes.
An early arrival to the gate, a run through customs and immigration, and the day was over. 188 seemingly satisfied customers......you'd think.




For a look at some more of my photos, please aviate over to Plane & Simple.

Standby For Clearance

Traveling to different countries always give you a good perspective on the lives of others and how they perform their respective jobs.This was evident on a recent trip I worked to Caracas, Venezuela. Normally we call for our clearance from Air Traffic Control about 10-20 minutes before departure when we are departing a foreign country. But our flight manual has a special page for the city of Caracas. It says that we should call for our clearance up to one hour prior to departure because of anticipated delays with ATC. What does that mean? Who knows?

This day we called about 30 minutes prior and were told to "standby for clearance". OK...No problem, we'll standby.

So there we were at the gate completing our checklists while our passengers were still boarding. Sure enough, departure time came and our gate agent came up to say goodbye and then shut the entry door and there we sat awaiting our clearance.

While we sat there at the gate, we had a good view of the ramp area below the terminal. We could see what was going on, or in this case, what was not going on down below.

Just look at all of these people doing absolutely nothing!



How does any work ever get done?







All this took place over the course of the 58 minutes we waited for our clearance!

So we finally pushed back and made our way to the runway. Not a single other flight was departing or arriving! So what was the delay all about? We never did find out.


I haven't noticed this apparent apathy in any other country. Maybe it's just a Venezuelan thing. But it now makes sense why we need to call for our clearance up to one hour early....because it takes every minute of that hour to get it!

The rest of the day was was an easy one. Two legs back to base...first stop Miami. The Bahamas were looking nice this day as we neared Miami.A run through Customs, a change of planes and then on to DFW. A nice shot of a contrail over Louisiana and then a great sunset at DFW and the trip was over.Another one in the logbook.





For a look at some more of my photos, please aviate over to Plane & Simple.