UK and snow...

Last night was one of the longest nights ever. It all started in the morning when I woke up. Looking through the window, everything is white. Snowing all over the town. I knew it’s going to be a tough night. My initial plan was to be very well rested. We arrived to the airport, first thing we know, the inbound aircraft did not arrive. It’s still holding as the airport is closed due to heavy snow. The removal process of snow was in progress. We got our paper work. The ground staff kept dumping the bad news on us. Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) is not inoperative on this aircraft. Great! We use the APU bleed air to start engines. Now, things are getting more complicated than what I imagined. NO APU, which will lead to an External Pneumatic Power start. Delay inbound aircraft that means extra pressure on us to leave on time, which will not happen. After a while they opened the airport and aircrafts kept constantly landing. When our aircraft made it at the stand. Mr. Engineer came to us with another bad news. The bleed air is not working which means it’s a “NO GO” item. This night is more challenging that I expected. When we got into the aircraft we started going throw our checks. Then decided to test the bleed air. We got no APU so the only choice we had was to start one engine. Passengers are waiting in the boarding area. Looking through the glass wondering what are we doing in the cockpit. Why it’s taking us so long. We are hitting a 1 hour delay. Bleed test showed ok. So we continued with our check. I went for the walk around. The ramp area was so slippery due to snow. Checking on top of the wings. Obviously, we have to De-Ice and Anti-Ice. That means hold over time, which means after applying the application we have to depart otherwise the ice will accumulate again on top of the wings. Eventually, we were ready with almost 2 hours and 20 minutes delay. The engineering took long time to get the De-icing truck. When everything was completed we requested engine start on stand and the cross bleed engine start. Not to forget the slippery taxiway and wet runway plus icing condition, which existed too. Trust me, this is a lot of hard work every single things we have done last night was different from what we normally do. After take off the ECAM warning goes on. The heart rates increase with it too. It was the bloody bleed air again. ECAM action completed and continued flight plan route.


02.12.09 @ 04:04 PM UAE 4 Comments