A Bad Week For MD-80 Drivers

At AA, we pilots spend the entire month trying to keep our trips intact as much as possible and to end up the month with as many hours flown as possible. That's because we only get paid for the hours we fly. We have no trip guarantee like most other airlines. The general public often seems to be under the impression that airline pilots only work about 40 hours a month! Not so. At AA we work about 80 hours a month. But those are hours actually spent at the controls. So when you see an AA pilot walking through the terminal, at the gate, checking weather online, or even in the bathroom, he or she is not getting paid. We only get paid when the airplane is moving. There is no pay for any of our time spent before a trip, during a layover, or after a trip is over. There is no pay for time spent at hotels, riding airport shuttles, clearing customs and immigrations, flight planning, gate changes, or anything else you can think of. There's no extra pay for flying on holidays or weekends either.
Now I'm not complaining...It would just be nice if people would realize that the airline pilots life is not as most people perceive. It's not all that glamourous. Now it's still a pretty good job most of the time but this last week was a difficult one for the MD-80 line pilots at AA. I'll explain later.

After last weeks thunderstorms in Dallas destroyed my work schedule for the week, I had hoped that the remainder of my month's flying would go smoothly. But then came last Wednesday and the MD-80 groundings.

The week started with a turnaround to Columbus, Ohio and back. That was an easy day with great weather and a good view of Columbus from the downwind to 28L. In the upper left corner you can make out the Ohio State campus.

For years now this old Sud Aviation Caravelle jet has been parked at CMH. It used to be painted in Airborne Express colors and looked pretty good, but it now looks like it will die a slow death on the ramp.







The following day was another easy one. DFW to El Paso and back. No issues that day either.


The next day brought a three day trip. The first day was only one leg from DFW to Detroit. We launched behind this Lufthansa A-340 bound for Frankfurt.

On the morning of day two when we arrived at our gate, we saw that our flight to Chicago and then on to Tulsa had been canceled. What was up?

Our crew tracking folks advised us that we had grounded a bunch of MD-80's for hydraulic pump wiring harness inspections. This sounded bad....and it was. The MD-80 is the backbone of American's fleet. We operate 300 of them. A grounding of any portion of the fleet would be a scheduling nightmare.

We ended up dead-heading back to DFW and spent the night there with the understanding that we would complete the third day as originally planned. But late that night I received word from our scheduling folks that our flights on day three had also been canceled. So my three day trip ended up consisting of only one leg of actual flying and one dead-head leg. So we lost our planned pay for all those legs that were canceled.

Now multiply what happened to us many times over for the hundreds of other MD-80 pilots that had the exact same thing or even worse happen to them this week! We had crews stranded all over the country for several days. Some even got stuck in Mexico and Canada. (However, I don't feel too bad for the crews that got stuck in Los Cabos or Puerto Vallarta).

Typically we can make up for the loss of pay during a given month by volunteering for trips that come available through sick calls, mis-connects, cancellations, weather, or whatever other reason. But in this case, our month is almost over and most of us won't be able to make up the time and will end up with a much smaller paycheck.

And the company will not kick in and pay us for all the time we lost. Unfortunately that's just the nature of our union's and company's relationship these days. It's not a very good relationship but hopefully we can improve on that the next time our union negotiates a contract. Time will tell.


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

DFW Is Closed For Business??

So we were on day two of a three day trip. Last night was only one leg from DFW to Newark. Easy enough. Still no cookies though.....we had to stay at the Newark Airport Hotel again.

When we left Texas the previous night, all the weather forecasts were calling for a couple of severe thunderstorm days in Dallas for the following two days. As luck would have it, our day would have us returning from Newark to DFW and then on to Nashville. But after looking at the north Texas radar returns, we both had serious doubts as to whether we would make it to DFW this day. Typically our company does a lot of preemptive canceling of flights whenever severe weather is forecast for a hub. They didn't do that today. Bad decision!

We departed on time with 140 passengers and waited in the usual lineup for takeoff. Number 20 or so.

Looking across the field we spotted the New Jersey Devils Boeing 727 parked near a hangar.


About an hour and a half after takeoff we received an urgent message on our onboard printer from our dispatcher in Ft Worth. "We need you to land NOW in Nashville....DFW is closed due to severe thunderstorms."

So I called him on the radio to advise that we were 5000 lbs overweight for a landing in Nashville and that I'd prefer to go to Memphis. He agreed. So we called the cabin crew to let them know and then I made a PA to the passengers to give them the bad news. I thought I heard some groaning from the cabin!

Diversions don't usually go very well and today was no exception. Our agents in Memphis didn't want to let anyone off the plane. They already had another MD-80 on another gate and two more diverts were inbound. But I wasn't about to make 140 people sit on the plane for who knew how long. That kind of stuff makes for bad headlines. So I had to go over their heads and called the higher ups and soon our passengers were in the terminal enjoying the Memphis airport instead of the back of the MD-80.

Over the next four hours I had numerous phone calls with our dispatcher. The storms at DFW just kept coming in waves. It seems that one of the control towers at DFW had to be evacuated when they spotted a funnel cloud headed their way. Fortunately it never touched down but the delays were growing and growing. American Airlines ended up canceling over 1100 flights this day. What a mess!

We finally got a release from ATC after about five hours in Memphis. We got caught up in a long line of FedEx departures but that was OK. More photos for me!

We didn't lose too many passengers...most all of them got back on board. The hour long flight to DFW ended up taking almost two hours with all the deviations and speed reductions. It was choppy too....we ran out of barfbags!

The airport terminal was a giant mess. It looked like a huge campground. There were cots everywhere. Most all of the airport hotels were full and hundreds of passengers were forced to spend the night in the airport.

We returned the next morning to complete our trip. It was only a turnaround from DFW to Dayton and back. DFW's weather had improved greatly but now Dayton was getting it. We flew an ILS down to minimums in heavy rain. It all worked out nicely and before long I was enjoying a couple of cookies on the way back home.


The arrival back to DFW gave us a nice view of downtown Dallas with Love Field in view.




The Trinity River is normally just a trickle but today you can see it was way over it's banks. Almost 5 inches of rain in one day will do that every time.


It's springtime in Texas.




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