Post by dazaxiii on Nov 28, 2012 19:57:12 GMT -5
“Welcome aboard this BAE146 for today’s flight from Tokyo’s Narita airport in Japan to Gimpo airport in Seoul, Korea. We’ll be flying at 25,000 feet and god knows what the journey will be like as I’ve simply typed the destination into the Fcom from the cockpit rather than use the administrator and plan the flight properly. Meh, I’ve done that many times before and it usually works out fine so for now I’ll leave you all in the capable hands of Heidi and please enjoy your flight with us today.”
After a taxi to the runway there was just a small wait for one landing Thai Airways flight and then it was our turn for takeoff. Straight away we climbed into minor turbulence which stayed with us for the majority of the trip but it was nothing to worry about. At the top of climb we then settled into the cruise as Heidi did her stuff out the back and I noticed that according to the Fcom estimates we were already running just a little late, the reason for that being a huge great headwind that was pretty much straight on. The estimate was only late by a few minutes and I did have a bit of speed to play with so I increased the thrust a little and slowly the ETE recalculated for me that I’d be on time after all. Job done, on time and everyone happy. With the auto pilot now flying the plane it was time for me to leave the computer in peace and head back to the real world to get my dinner on.
Some time later with a full belly and about 160 miles to run I checked back into the cockpit and immediately had an “Oh ####” moment. My increase in thrust may have sorted the time out and I had about ten minutes to spare now but the other side of that coin was that we were going to run out of fuel short of the airfield.
After the initial panic I reminded myself that the Fcom made it’s calculations of fuel use based on current configurations so obviously when I started my descent I’d be using a lot less fuel. I wasn’t that short in range and in my head it seemed like we should be ok so I decided to go for it rather than make a splash and dash on route.
The first job was to ease the throttles back to a speed which had me just barely making it in on time but this still left me a few miles short while using cruise power. Next was to cancel my IFR flight plan which would save me quite a few miles being vectored by air traffic control and make a visual approach instead. A nice GA style hand flown approach of downwind, base, finals would be the way to go. On my descent the fuel estimate numbers just about came back in my favour again as I’d guessed / hoped they would and I contacted the tower to be given my joining instructions.
With the runway out of the left hand side I listened in to an Asiana flight being given clearance to land and had to extend my downwind leg slightly to accommodate him. Not ideal with the current fuel state but there was nothing much I could do about it. I turned onto the base leg once I had the aircraft in sight and then followed it down the last few miles of the ILS. My approach speed was slow enough compared to his where he should be off the runway in time but even if I was told to go around I was committed now. Fortunately he did clear the runway for me though and with a sigh of relief I crossed the threshold and put the aircraft onto the tarmac softly enough for Travis to compliment me and for the blissfully ignorant passengers behind me to think we’d just made a perfectly normal arrival into Seoul rather than knowing exactly how close we’d come to spreading aircraft parts across a large area of the suburbs. And very close it was too as the picture below will testify.
We left the runway, followed the taxiway and then turned into the gate where I finally did run out of fuel and had the engines die on me about two hundred feet short of getting to my parking spot.
“Err, tower, could you send the tow truck to gate 24 please.”
So with this and the 0.06 touchdown that’s two in a month that were a bit more exciting than they should have been. Here hoping for an exceedingly dull and uneventful December.
After a taxi to the runway there was just a small wait for one landing Thai Airways flight and then it was our turn for takeoff. Straight away we climbed into minor turbulence which stayed with us for the majority of the trip but it was nothing to worry about. At the top of climb we then settled into the cruise as Heidi did her stuff out the back and I noticed that according to the Fcom estimates we were already running just a little late, the reason for that being a huge great headwind that was pretty much straight on. The estimate was only late by a few minutes and I did have a bit of speed to play with so I increased the thrust a little and slowly the ETE recalculated for me that I’d be on time after all. Job done, on time and everyone happy. With the auto pilot now flying the plane it was time for me to leave the computer in peace and head back to the real world to get my dinner on.
Some time later with a full belly and about 160 miles to run I checked back into the cockpit and immediately had an “Oh ####” moment. My increase in thrust may have sorted the time out and I had about ten minutes to spare now but the other side of that coin was that we were going to run out of fuel short of the airfield.
After the initial panic I reminded myself that the Fcom made it’s calculations of fuel use based on current configurations so obviously when I started my descent I’d be using a lot less fuel. I wasn’t that short in range and in my head it seemed like we should be ok so I decided to go for it rather than make a splash and dash on route.
The first job was to ease the throttles back to a speed which had me just barely making it in on time but this still left me a few miles short while using cruise power. Next was to cancel my IFR flight plan which would save me quite a few miles being vectored by air traffic control and make a visual approach instead. A nice GA style hand flown approach of downwind, base, finals would be the way to go. On my descent the fuel estimate numbers just about came back in my favour again as I’d guessed / hoped they would and I contacted the tower to be given my joining instructions.
With the runway out of the left hand side I listened in to an Asiana flight being given clearance to land and had to extend my downwind leg slightly to accommodate him. Not ideal with the current fuel state but there was nothing much I could do about it. I turned onto the base leg once I had the aircraft in sight and then followed it down the last few miles of the ILS. My approach speed was slow enough compared to his where he should be off the runway in time but even if I was told to go around I was committed now. Fortunately he did clear the runway for me though and with a sigh of relief I crossed the threshold and put the aircraft onto the tarmac softly enough for Travis to compliment me and for the blissfully ignorant passengers behind me to think we’d just made a perfectly normal arrival into Seoul rather than knowing exactly how close we’d come to spreading aircraft parts across a large area of the suburbs. And very close it was too as the picture below will testify.
We left the runway, followed the taxiway and then turned into the gate where I finally did run out of fuel and had the engines die on me about two hundred feet short of getting to my parking spot.
“Err, tower, could you send the tow truck to gate 24 please.”
So with this and the 0.06 touchdown that’s two in a month that were a bit more exciting than they should have been. Here hoping for an exceedingly dull and uneventful December.
