OH MY GOD what an adventure! Sweaty palms, heart racing… I just need to tell you guys about it.
So… my first leg is from CYUL (Montreal) to KBFI (Boeing Field). I picked KSEA as my alternate. It’s an almost 2000 miles trip.
I planned my fuel load at 35000 lbs… at least, that’s what “onlineflightplanner” tells me. My ride of choice for this leg is a magnificent A320 with a superb Air Canada skin. However, I decided to do the challenge “live”, which means real weather and real time. This meant starting at 22:00 local time, at night. Keep in mind that I never flew at night before in this aircraft and I never planned such a long route. This can only go well, right?
I spawn at Pierre-Elliott Trudeau airport. I run into some troubles entering my flight plan (surprisingly, I didn’t know what “DTC” stood for or why I needed to delete a manual waypoint in order to get rid of discontinuities), but after some tinkering I get something that looks ok. I taxi to the runway and fly into the night.
Au revoir, Montreal!
I climb up to FL250 and engage the autopilot. It’s gonna be a looong night. I skim through my own A320 guide, hoping to find something useful. Eventually, I decide to climb to a cruising altitude of 30,000 ft. The plane tries, but loaded with gifts and 35000 lbs of fuel, it straight up struggles to climb a few hundred foot more. Bah, we’ll stick at 25,000 for now.
I barely see anything outside. Just a dark, gloomy sky with medium cloud cover. As I cross Manitoba and Saskatchewan, I encounter wind drafts and minor turbulence. By then, the aircraft feels much lighter; I’ve almost gone through half my fuel. I start climbing to FL300 without much problem.
Eventually, as I reach the J7 airway (no idea if it still exists today, but at least it did in AIRAC 1609… and being a cheap ■■■■■■■ I don’t feel like buying for a Navigraph update), a powerful wind throws my aircraft left and right. The turbulence is so sudden and so strong that my autopilot disconnects. I freak out and catch back the controls, following the flight director while toying with the throttle to fix my autothrottle that went haywire. I start a 20-minute long struggle to keep my aircraft on course while being thrown left and right by the wind.
Things eventually calm down. Whew! That was cool. Now, how am I doing on fuel?
3000 lbs. What?!? Where did it all go? Oh, that’s right… the CRUISE page says that I’ve chugged 32000 lbs of fuel already. Oh boy. That’s not good, eh? Curse you, FuelPlanner.com!!! I’m never trusting you again!
I reach my top of descent… but I’m so low on fuel! Ack! What am I doing? As I reach the vicinity of Seattle, the tower hails me and gives me a priority to land. The fuel goes dangerously low. I start my approach…
And as I’m just about to engage the Autoland, the aircraft just bypasses the ILS localizer as if it wasn’t even there. Uh oh… I must’ve missed something! Now I’m really mad. I’ve been sitting for hours in that chair, in pitch dark… screw that. I’m landing this thing manually. I’m 2000 ft high with 400 lbs of fuel. I’ve got one shot at this.
I gently bank left and do a full 360 to catch the runway. I hear the SPEED voice telling me I’m dangerously close to stall speed. I know that, but if I throttle up too much, then I burn my fuel and get an engine flameout before I touch the ground. I’m feeling tense. REALLY tense. I can’t mess this up. Not after such a long flight.
SPEED! SPEED!
SPEED!
I don’t even want to look at the fuel indication. My hand is squeezing my joystick like my life is on the line.
My wheels touch the ground surprisingly gently given the fact that I rarely practice manual landings in the Bus. As the autobrake engages, my left engine flames out, and I start getting assymetric thrust. I kick the rudder and maintain control of the aircraft… and it rapidly slows down to a stop.
I can now start breathing again. Just when I’m done vacating the runway, the other engine flames out. No more fuel. WOW. That was a bit too close for comfort, eh?
So there I am, in Boeing Field with my Airbus. First leg to Christmas Island complete.
