An afternoon in Florida

With the cold temperatures here in the east (a low of -20C tonight) heading to Florida was a good idea today, even if it was only for a virtual afternoon.

Leg One: SWA2322

 It's 9:30AM here in Buffalo and the pre flight and NG I am flying is ready to go. With strong south westerly winds forecast for the ride down south I added an extra 2'500lbs of fuel for the trip for a total of 19'400lbs.

 I decided to follow what a Southwest Airlines crew did, doing two legs today. The first leg is KBUF (Buffalo) to KTPA (Tampa), then a short hop KTPA (Tampa) to KFLL (Fort Lauderdale).

Ready to taxi

Weather at KBUF was typical of winter in the north east during January. Wind 340/13kts with clouds 2'200 few and 3'600 broken, temperature was a cold -9C. Using runway 05 for take off and the BUF.2 departure (vectors to your first fix).

Heading for runway 05 KBUF

Traffic seems pretty sparse this Sunday morning around KBUF with only a few planes on the ramp. Their was no waiting and I was off a little early. I would need it due to the strong head winds.

I got a little distracted during this flight as I finally set up MSN on my laptop to chat with fellow simmer Onur and much to our delight it has video streaming through the laptop web cam. 

So for the first time ever a fellow simmer was in the cockpit with me. This also showed me how important a sterile cockpit is.....
I set the FMC up (as I always do) with what the forecast said. But the wind was different than forecast so I had to do a last minute runway change from 32L to 18L in the FMC as I was mid way through the descent phase. Equally I had to adjust the rest of the way points on my arrival. With the added distraction of someone else in the cockpit chit chatting I got way behind the airplane and way too high on my approach (Using the DADES1 arrival).

ATIS for KTPA was reporting weather as winds 203/03kts clouds few at 4'000 and 7'000 broken and a balmy 18C. Just the type of warm weather I was hoping for and an insuing discussion of who got to go out side to do the walk around.

 My terrible short final at KTPA runway 18L

After missing many things on the checklist I did manage to get set up nicely for the landing on 18L and at the 1'000ft call shut off the auto pilot and hand flew until touch down. It was not a pretty landing as I was way off the slope and floated it in 1/3 of the way down the runway, making for a long taxi ride back to my gate (C34). I also forgot to shoot lots of images during the landing.....been a while since I was in the NG too!

Gate C34 KTPA

It was great having a fellow simmer in the cockpit and well worth the distraction! And my hats off to the real world crews that have those million things going on and still can focus on the job at hand.

Ready for the next leg












Check Onurs blog as he did a flight Chicago O'hare to San Antonio today that should be posted later in the week.

For leg two of this series, KTPA-KFLL click HERE.