Cleared to Land

All the best, folks. I'm not flying today, so I can have all the rum and eggnog I want*. Please enjoy all of whatever it is you enjoy this season and smile graciously when declining whatever it is you don't.

*That would be none. I don't like eggnog, and while it's possible to add enough rum to hide the taste, I don't like straight liquor much either.

Hold Short for Crossing Traffic

There's an intersection in my town that needs a crosswalk. In the spring I tracked down the responsible person and asked how one goes about petitioning for a crosswalk. They asked me a few questions, looked up the intersection and told me that they had done a study a few years ago and determined that there was not enough traffic to warrant it, but that they would do a new study once local road construction that temporarily changes traffic patterns was done.

Their clever strategy has been to have continuous construction since then. They're constructing everything but a crosswalk. It's possible that they are doing this because studies have shown that the other things need constructing, and not just to irritate me, as I'm sure it would be cheaper to just paint a crosswalk on the street than to build all this other stuff. That's all I want, a visual marker that shows drivers that there might be someone trying to cross the road here, and that allows pedestrians to choose a good place to cross. It looks from this video to be a pretty quick process.

With a special purpose trough/brush-type tool:

With a spray gun and a steady hand:

There are some very fancy crosswalks in some cities. Here are curved ones. And there's at least one accidental crosswalk to nowhere.

Then I saw this. If all else fails, put up your own. How closely do you think the city tracks crosswalks? If I showed up with a few friends in reflective vests, some orange traffic cones, and some quick-drying white paint, would anyone ever figure out that this wasn't an official crosswalk? Here's an argument against such things. And you can go to jail for it. And I found all those looking for a video someone told me about where a crew is painting the white stripes on a crosswalk, starting from opposite sides of the street. You can guess what happened to the crosswalk, but I can't find the video.

I just got back from work and stuck my SD card in the computer to see my photos, and as suspected the fix was only temporary. Most of the photographs are completely washed out. It's possible that the camera repair shop fixed one thing and broke another, or that the blackness problem has simply remanifest itself in paler tones. Here's the last photo the camera ever took. I believe it's an exciting mountain airport.

So I'm shopping. The IXUS 115 and the ELPH 100, recommended by readers as the successor to the SD10, look to be almost the same camera as each other, maybe in different markets, but they both have the menu buttons where my thumb goes for one handed shots. I know from experience with the borrowed camera that I press those buttons inadvertently and take scenic out the window shots while in macro mode. I'm starting with those suggestions and looking, though. It maybe that an iPhone is what I need to replace camera (broken), cellphone (no bluetooth or cable connection for handsfree or headset interface) and iPod touch (only four years old, but apparently that's ancient in Mac time, and confuses everyone who sees it that it isn't a cellphone). It probably has greater image resolution than the once impressive 4.0 megapixel camera, and it's not like I'll look more nerdy toting an iPhone than an iPod touch, cellphone and camera. If I want to look like an idiot in public places, I can do that without the help of technology.

Last Post

I wrote this not knowing if it was a last blog entry I would never post, or the first blog entry in a new chapter of my blog. Today someone, two people actually, sent me Google+ invites. I thought "Eh, what could it hurt? I might as well try this out." I clicked through on one of them and started filling out the form. I never give my actual birthdate to fun services online, because that's part of the verification information for real services like banking. I give a fake birthdate that I can easily remember. For this account I decided to give the memorable date of my first flying lesson.

Immediately Google seized on this information and determined me underage. I haven't been flying for eighteen years, and apparently you have to be eighteen years old to author a blog. The screen said Google would delete my blog in twenty-nine days if I did not send them government-issued ID demonstrating that I am over eighteen. Unfortunately Aviatrix Anon does not have government-issued ID, so I knew that unless I had a friend at Google, that would be the end of my blog.

I knew that I probably did have a friend at Google, or at least a friend of a friend, but my blog contact list is on Gmail, and Google locked not only the blog, but the Gmail account. Of course that means they also locked the back-up Cockpit Conversation Redirection blog, my account through which I could access Google Help, and even my ability to comment identifiably on other blogs. I sent a fax to the Google people explaining the situation, then plea-for-help e-mail to a few bloggers with common traffic, whose e-mails I happened to have on my home account, and then I waited.

This paragraph was going to contain either gratitude to the person or persons who helped me out, or a fond farewell to all the people who have read and commented on the blog, and even met me in person, over the years. If the blog was deleted, I wasn't going to start a new one. It's too much to lose and try to start over.

While waiting for someone at Google to get back to me one way or another, I decided to try the other offered means of age verification, the credit card. I don't have a credit card with the name Aviatrix Anon on it, either, but maybe they wouldn't check. Seeing as you can get a credit card for your cat or dog and buy preloaded credit cards at the grocery store checkout, I thought it was only scammer porn sites that professed to use credit cards for ID verification, but I decided my blog was worth thirty United States cents, and Google probably wasn't running a credit card scam. I gave Google my credit card information and instantly my Blogger account was restored. Thirty cents is a cheaper bribe than I thought I'd need. Most of you probably never noticed the interruption.

So kids, if you want a blog, lie about your age. Grownups, lie about your age if you will, but make sure you don't take too much off. Either way, any credit card will do to fix your error.

I can't really recommend Google Plus, but if you use other Google services with the identity you use to connect to Google Plus, please make sure you tell it you are over eighteen.

Home Safe

I'm back from Cambodia, with about a thousand photographs and a suitcase full of souvenirs, the latter of which has been left outside so the winter temperatures can kill anything laid by tropical insects before I bring it into my home. I suppose I have to weigh that strategy against the possibility of hardy Canadian insects or perhaps silk-loving moose attacking it, but I have to cope with them anyway.

You'll have pre-trip posts for a few more days before I get up to speed to blog about my experiences in Cambodia. I've come so far around the world today that I'm not sure it wouldn't have been quicker to go the other way. Here's a sneak peek to tide you over.

I'm Okay

I was not on the bridge in Phnom Penh last night.

Sooah-sdey, Kñom moak bpee Kanadah

So this is it. My bags are all packed, including work gloves and pliers (for holding nails, to avoid banged thumbs), and I'm getting ready to leave for the airport. I've read the guidebooks, had my vaccinations, paid my share of the group expenses, and even got ahead on my blogging. You've got a post almost every day I'm away, not quite.

So many thank-yous go out from me to everyone who contributed to this effort. I am inspired and awed by your generosity, and will do my level best to build the best possible homes with the greatest of respect for this community. The project is not so much about bringing Canadians with marginal building skills to a country with lots of unskilled labourers as it is about inspiring Canadians with access to money to bond with the country and fund the project, and to demonstrate to a devastated country that they matter. First, they'll see us there, having travelled from across the sea because of them, and then they'll see that foreign and exotic as we are, we're a bunch of clumsy human beings, not as good at nailing things together as the people from their village who have worked on such projects before. Is not, "The world cares about you, and you're as good as anyone in the world," one of the best messages of hope you could give to anyone? Especially when they get a house out of the deal. Oh and because the group leader used the fantastic response from Cockpit Conversation readers to goad the rest of our group to fundraising efforts, we raised enough to fund a new school as well.

For the next couple of weeks you'll have regular aviation blog entries to read. I'm afraid there's rather an overemphasis on boobs and junk food. I was six weeks in the same location and didn't realize how strange my notes were until I tried to blog them. I'll let you know when I'm back, but will probably take a break through most of December before posting details of my Cambodian adventures.

The post title means "Hello, I am from Canada." I'm afraid my Khmer isn't up to much more.

No Work Wednesday

My coworker flew a mission today and then took the bird south for maintenance, leaving me with no duties in a town too small to even have a Tim Horton's. So you're expecting a tale of adventure and cultural exploration. Please. This town has basically one street, a kilometre long, and I've been here for a month already. There are woods, but nowhere destination-like within them. Plus I'm alone and unarmed and it's the season when bears are our foraging to fatten up before hibernation. Adventure does not call.

The Aviatrix catalogue of markers of depraved indolence includes such pursuits as eating nutella out of the jar with a spoon, watching shows like Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek on the Space channel for ten hours straight, remaining naked all day, getting drunk at nine in the morning, rocking out to the Cake Song on my iPod, and surfing internet porn.

You think I'm that depraved? ah you know I'm not. I didn't do all that. I don't drink when I'm in the field, and, if you'll recall, the Internet here doesn't work.

Also I totally think Doctor Who should do a gag where they go to England in the 1950s and there are police call boxes every couple of blocks, and they forget which one is theirs. Not the whole plot, just a one-off gag.

I'm really not under the influence of anything chemical today as I write this up, either, but the fact that I posted this is probably a good indication that a really bad head cold is incapacitating for reasons other than pressure change tolerance. My misery is tempered only by my fascination by the millennia-prolonged evolutionary arms race between the things that make us sick and our own immune systems. I like the organisms that live in me without making me sick, better.

San Jose Mine Rescue

I'm watching near live footage of the Chilean miners being pulled from the collapsed mine from the link on this page. It's an extraordinary ordeal these men have been through, and I'm impressed by the planning and details of the rescue operation. It looks as thought it will take a couple of days to get everyone out, even if nothing goes wrong.

As I watch I see parallels with aviation. After fifteen rescuees it's getting a little routine, perhaps, and it is still urgent to rescue everyone, but I'm silently urging the rescuers, "don't get sloppy; don't try to go too fast; inspect it every time; don't get fatigued: sub out with less tired people."

Cover Me

Air Canada has an HR management company called Taleo looking after job applications these days. The site only accepts updated resumes for positions they are hiring for, and as everyone in Canadian aviation probably knows, they have just opened the Pilot job for applications. I was on the road for a few days, but today have opportunity to re-apply. I put it number one on the to-do list and bailed out of bed. How hard can this be? I have to re-total my logbook, combine the various columns in the way that Air Canada asks about, and click though a few webpages. Should be done in time for breakfast, eh?

The adding up and entering in isn't too bad. It's the uploading. I hate my résumé. It's a depressing catalogue of jobs that I accepted or left at the wrong time or for the wrong reasons. It represents people and places I miss, opportunities lost, and a sad lack of overall career progress. Is this why I hate filling out job applications? I update the numbers on my resume, make sure no one has edited it to change my job duties to dirty words, save and upload it. Now the cover letter.

The first part is okay. Name. Address. Date. I got that far without messing up, I think. And just to demonstrate that I have a basic grasp of business etiquette, I know that I should not commemorate Talk Like A Pirate Day in a job application letter. I must write terrible cover letters. I've never got a job through a formal job application. Every job I get is through referrals or personal visits. I can bang off five blog entries in an undisturbed afternoon, but I can't lay out my skills and aptitudes in a simple letter. Let me try again.

Dear Nice Air Canada People:

I am a good pilot. I always check to make sure there is enough gas in my aeroplane before I take off, can fly in really straight lines, follow all the rules, and never ever get into fist fights with my coworkers or customers. I have a nice haircut (or at least I will when I go to work) and know how to make my shoes shiny.

Please hire me to help fly your aeroplanes. I will do a good job and even stop blogging about aviation if you wanted me to.

Love and kisses,

Aviatrix

Nailed, it, eh?

I honestly don't know why this is so hard for me. I put my heart into applying for jobs, because I don't like to do anything halfway, and I hate being rejected without even being seen. Is it so hard to write because I am trying to psych myself up that this time will be different? I don't find other impossible goals so hard to start. I'm still running and although I don't think I'll make my long term speed targets, I enjoy running and second by second I'm inching closer to those distant goals. Of course it's impossible for me to see the difference between being in the pile of instant rejects and the pile that almost got called for an interview.

While I'm agonizing over what to write procrastinating by doing other things, I read an e-mail from someone who hopes one day to be a pilot, describing a co-worker who used to be an airline pilot. The ex-pilot said that the airliners are all under the company's control, and all the time asking:

 Why are you 2 knots slower?
 Why are you 2 degrees of course?
 What happened on this landing?
 Why did you take the wrong exit?

I ask myself questions like that all the time. I want to be super efficient and accurate. But like someone who stands there and tells you what to do just as you're about to do it, someone who asks why you do everything just as you're thinking about it yourself, doesn't sound fun. I want to believe that I hate applying for jobs because mine is so good that I don't want another job, but I suspect that it's more a case that I hate doing things badly, and I know that I'm bad at this game.

So here's me taking advantage of the resources at my disposal. If you can write a better cover letter than the one above, and can handle a bit of negativity and whining, I wouldn't mind some help.

Uncontained Failure

A Qantas Airlines Boeing 747 jet climbing out of San Francisco on Monday experienced an uncontained failure of the number four engine. That means that the outside right-side engine failed so spectacularly that pieces of it penetrated the cowling, the case around the engine. The linked article has photos, and even though they were taken in the dark you can still see some of the turbine fan blades through the hole.

The pilots of course couldn't see the hole in the engine, only feel the vibrations through the airframe and see whatever indications the engine instruments reported. They certainly wouldn't have been normal. They shut the engine down, dumped fuel to get down to landing weight (you can see a couple of orbits on the Flight Aware track in the Flightglobal piece linked above), and returned for landing at San Francisco to investigate. Passengers saw flames and sparks coming from the engine; one of them took a video of the sparks streaking by, even after the engine was secured.

It's always interesting to see how pilots handle PAs in situations like this. (You can hear a little bit of the captain's announcement in the above video). Some companies give you a script, but the nature of emergencies is that they don't always suit the script. This captain emphasized that the crew train for this, and then I think he tried to throw in a bit of humour by saying, "in the simulator." He sounds calm, and I hope that calmed people down. Passengers tend to think they're all going to die whenever anything happens. The problem with reassuring people is that they always think you're lying to them, or at least that there's a reasonable chance of whatever you are saying won't happen, happening. My approach is to be honest, but a little bit vague about the problem and then distract them from worrying about imminent death by reassuring them that we will find them another airplane, and make sure they get to their destination. They can then worry about missed connections and lost baggage, which is not life threatening and returns them to the comfort of the habitual concerns of the air traveller.

This could have been worse if the containment failure had been on the left side of the cowling, (or the right side of an engine on the left of the airplane) because debris could have damaged the other engine or penetrated the cabin. Components leaving a turbine engine have a lot of energy. Those things rotate at over 10000 rpm.

LiveATC recording of the event from the perspective of the radio communications is available buried in this file. The Qantas pilots report their difficulties 18:20 into the recording. Eric M. has edited it down to the eighteen minutes directly concerned with the incident flight but you can only hear that version if you register (for free) at LiveATC.net. There's some confusion on the part of ATC, as Australia and the US seem to have different standards for the information an aircraft with an emergency must convey. Although the Qantas crew do deny they have an emergency. That means they don't believe they need any kind of priority to ensure safety.

An interesting detail about of the B747 is that it is equipped with a hardpoint for carrying a spare engine. Not connected up to fuel and power, just sitting there ready to be installed, like a spare tire on the back of your SUV. They don't carry one around all the time because they add a lot of drag and are very rarely needed. It's just a provision for transporting them. Another Qantas B747 will bring a spare in today for the one on the ground at SFO.

That's today's blog entry early, although I'll edit it to make it look like it appeared at 00Z as usual. Tomorrow's will be at the usual time.

PANC?

Just landed in Anchorage, Alaska. I may have time to meet up with people here in the next few days. Please e-mail me if you're interested.

Hiring Time

I interviewed a couple of years ago at an airline I want to work for, and before I even got back from the airport there was a rejection email sitting in my spam folder. That hurt a little, but the company does that, and the interview itself was respectful and gave me no pause to worry about the company standards. They're hiring again, if you know who they are you know who they are, so I'm applying again. I find this process painfully difficult.

I can hammer out five epic blog entries in an afternoon off, but ask me to write half a page on a cover letter explaining why an employer should hire me and I'm almost paralyzed. Sometimes I start with the stupidest most simplistic letter possible and then pretend someone else wrote it and I'm helping them fix it.

When I started in this industry, I used to mail resumes and cover letters in an envelope with a stamp on it. Or sometimes I faxed them. Then came sending the resumes as an attachment to e-mail. Then airlines started having application forms on their websites. That didn't work out so well, especially for the airline that has the worst IT in the country. There were security problems and database crashes. Now airline websites link to third party recruiting engines, like Workopolis or Taleo. And they switch between them every so often so you have to resubmit everything.

So here goes for this one. I'm stumped on the first question. It's "How did you hear about this job?" I heard about it because a friend e-mailed me to let me know about it, and another one called me. But there's no "employee referral" option in the dropdown. There's not even a choice for "word of mouth" or "employee referral." My options are:

• company website
• job board/website
• magazines and trade publications
• newspapers
• organizations
• talent exchange
• university/college

There isn't even an other. I pick "organizations" as representing "the loose organization of people who are friends with Aviatrix." Shoot, now it demands I specify the organization, and my choices are limited to aboriginal youth and Métis organizations. I recheck the job title. Maybe I'm being racist: I know there are a few aboriginal/Métis pilots in Canada who are qualified for this position, I'm even aquainted with at least one, but it's not a demographic you see heavily represented in this field. Those who have the qualifications almost certainly also have the connections such that the "Calgary Urban society for Aboriginal Youth" would not be their primary source of pilot job tips.

I know you're rolling your eyes and saying, "just pick something, Aviatrix!" They don't really care how I found out, and now is not the time to be stunned about how marketers collect statistics that overinflate their effectiveness. I almost go with the Urban Society for Aboriginal Youth. But it's a job application. I don't round my time up to the nearest thousand hours when I'm one hour under. Lying on a job application is a serious matter. I DON'T DO IT. But it is impossible for me to answer this question without lying. And yes, it's starred as a mandatory question so I can't skip past it. Is this an anti-nerd screening device? Finally I claim to have heard about the job on the company website, because hey, the job is listed here, and I got here from the company website, so technically I did hear about the job here. If it had asked I first heard about the job, I'd be trapped there still.

In the address, at first there's no place for me to put the name of my province. Oh there it is, after country (which has a drop-down with every country on the planet). Then there's another drop-down for the region of the province, in case the person processing the application can't figure out where the candidate's town is, I guess. It's not a list of destinations served by the airline. Most of the "region" names are towns or cities, not all with airports, and a couple really are names of regions.

There's a checkbox to select if I'm an internal candidate. I leave the box unchecked, but the form has been coded so it complains that I haven't entered my employee number if I don't fill in "NA." And I would totally work in Uruguay, but I didn't check that option, because I don't think my Spanish is good enough to be considered for a position there.

Then I uploaded an updated resume, answered all the other questions, and hit submit. We'll see if anything comes of it. If this doesn't work out, maybe there is a job open somewhere for a user interface critic.

Pretty much every job I've ever been hired for, I got by going to see someone in person. They weren't always the person who made the hiring decision, but they were someone I had a connection to. If you're looking for a job in aviation, making and keeping contacts is probably even more important than keeping your ratings current. If you're in the industry in Canada, then you probably know the company I'm talking about, and if you can provide any contacts or guiding information, I'd appreciate it. It would be poor resource management for me not to take advantage of any help that is available.

Yellowknife

I'm in Yellowknife right now probably until Tuesday, so drop me an e-mail if you'd like to meet up.

Shortest Night

I spent a while arranging these and captioning them last night, but when I pulled up the blog entry to add something to it, I found that between lousy hotel Internet and Blogger misbehaving, the PHOTOS were gone from the entry. So I've re-added them quickly. Times are in the filenames.

I took a series of photographs for you, of the 'night' sky on the evening of the June 21st. That day at noon the sun was directly overhead the Tropic of Cancer, and we're 36 degrees north of there. That means its zenith was 54 degrees above the horizon, and from our perspective today the sun described a big loop, arcing diagonally across the sky, westward and downward to the southwest horizon, setting at 22:25 local time, and then sneaking back along, just below the southern horizon, towards the east, reaching a nadir of seven degrees below the horizon and then rising again from the southeast at 3:58 local. Officially night began at 23:50 and ended at 02:34 If that's symmetrical, then the darkest point of the night should be about 01:15.

Curiously, the Sunrise/Sunset times link on the Nav Canada site was broken when I tried it, so I had to call a briefer instead. I admitted that it was for my blog. No shame.

There are no tricks with the camera: no long exposures or filters. It's just an ordinary camera. I tried to keep the automatic light meter from fixating on the lights along the highway, so it would expose the sky correctly. The camera started thinking that it was dark around 11:30, but the sky was still quite light. And this is a cloudy night. You can see how light it is where the clouds aren't.

Flip that around to December and the sun struggles seven degrees into the sky at high noon, only to set two hours later. And after it sets there it is very very dark.

On Time So Far

Indications are that I will be landing in YYC as scheduled.

Also, if you copy Buns of Steel IV off an ancient VHS tape onto a DVD, and then you leave that DVD in your computer and hibernate it, the computer will not come out of hibernation until you use a bobby pin to open the DVD drawer and remove the DVD.

Yeah, a bobby pin. Like a 1950s detective novel, eh?

Calgary Picnic Meet

I'm meeting a reader just north of the YYC passenger terminal on Saturday, about 11:30 a.m. Calgary time. He knows of some picnic tables near the meeting spot shown, and is bringing me non-airport food. (I just had to brag about that).

View I suggest this meeting place. in a larger map

If you're in the area, feel free to join us. BYOP. Don't come far, because this does involve airplanes, and as such is susceptible to circumstance. I'll try to post an Saturday morning update confirming that I'm on schedule.

Anyone at DFW?

It looks like I'm going to in the vicinity of the Dallas Fort Worth airport for half a day around the 1st of March. Do I have any readers around who would like to meet for dinner? Send me contact information and then I can coordinate with you when I find out the exact date and timing.

I have no comment or inside information on the recent Turkish Airlines 737-800 crash on approach into Amsterdam, but I think this is an excellent picture. You have the airplane, the engine, the residential street, and the varied actions of the responders. I like the expressiveness of one emergency worker with her arm up, pointing. There are more pictures here and presumably the story, too, if you read Dutch. There has really been some remarkable photojournalism of recent air accidents, and I don't think it's ghoulish for journalists to get in there and get the images and information for us, as long as they don't interfere with rescue efforts.

Update: Here's an English language link to currently know accident details.

Did You Find Colgan?

I was online late at night when all my little mail and message icons started blinking. Nothing in aviation travels as fast as bad news. A Dash-8 operating under the call sign Colgan 3407 for Continental Airlines ceased communications with the Buffalo, NY approach controller and was subsequently found to have crashed into homes on the ground about five miles short of the runway. News stations are currently reporting 49 fatalities: all 45 passengers and four crew members, plus one person on the ground.

There is no way of knowing what happened at this point and I'm not going to speculate. You can see why it's not a good idea to speculate if you watch what came out on the news and talk websites as people who didn't know what as going on rushed to get news out. The reports ranged from the airplane being a Saab 340 to a "large jetliner," and the persons on board from "a crew of three" up to "two hundred passengers." I've heard that the pilots reported mechanical problems and that the pilots reported icing, but none of that shows up in the conversation between the accident aircraft and the approach controllers.

See, Buffalo approach is available on live streaming ATC, so audio is available now for the radio traffic before and after the accident. In Canada it is illegal to report what is heard on the radio, but I'm using an American blog service to report American ATC transmissions, so I think I'm in the clear. Here's what I hear between the Approach controller and the Pilot. There is a Delta pilot in the conversation, too. (I've left everyone else out).

P: buffalo approach colgan thirty four zero seven twelve for eleven thousand with romeo

A: colgan forty four zero seven buffalo approach good evening buffalo altimeter's two niner eight zero plan an ils approach runway two three

P: two niner eight zero and ils two three colgan thirty four zero seven

A: colgan thirty four zero seven, proceed direct TRAVA

P: ???

A: colgan thirty four zero seven descend and maintain six thousand

P: zero seven

A: colgan thirty four zero seven descend and maintain five thousand

P: five thousand thirty four zero seven

A: colgan thirty four zero seven descend and maintain four thousand

P: ?

A: colgan thirty four seven descend and maintain two thousand three hundred

P: ?zero seven

A: colgan thirty four zero seven turn left heading three three zero

P: left heading three three zero colgan thirty four zero seven

A: colgan thirty four zero seven turn left heading three one zero

P: left heading three one zero colgan thirty four zero seven

A: colgan thirty four zero seven three miles from KLUMP turn left heading two six zero maintain two thousand three hundred until established localizer cleared ils approach runway two three

P: left two sixty two thousand three hundred until established and cleared ils two three colgan thirty four zero seven

A: colgan thirty four zero seven contact tower one two zero point five have a good night

P: thirty four zero seven

A: colgan thirty four seven approach

A: delta nineteen ninety eight just going to take you through the localizer for sequencing

D: delta nineteen ninety eight thanks

A: colgan thirty four zero seven, buffalo

A: colgan thirty four seven, approach

A: Delta nineteen ninety eight look off your right side about five miles for a dash eight should be twenty three hundred do you see anything there

D: negative delta nineteen ninety eight we're just in the bottoms and nothing on the TCAS

A: colgan thirty four zero seven, buffalo

This transcription stuff is harder than it looks. I don't know why I can't hear the pilot's responses in each case. Perhaps some are blocked, or it's an artifact of receiver position, or of the recording technology.

I'm pretty sure the controller does call the flight by the wrong callsign initially. That's so normal. Almost every callsign gets bungled by someone every flight. The controller gets it right on subsequent calls so either it was just a slip of the tongue or he matched it up with the strip right afterward. Communications are perfectly normal until ATC tells the pilot to switch to tower. she acknowledges the call, but presumably never calls tower, as approach calls back, looking for her.

I suspect the Delta 1998 told to fly through the localizer would have been following her, and was broken off while they figured out what happened. They ask him if he can see the Dash-8 and he can't. Later the controller asks "Do you have VFR conditions there?" but the pilot is then inside clouds.

Another ATC voice comes on calling the missing flight again, with the words "How do you hear?" the words you usually hear right before someone gets chewed out for not paying attention.

ATC sends the Delta to a hold, that is to wait, and makes a broadcast "Ok for all aircraft this frequency we did have a Dash-8 over the marker that, that didn't make the airport. It appears to be about five miles away from the airport. For Delta 1998 I'm going to bring you in sir on the approach. If you could just give me a PIREP when you get to twenty three hundred and if you have any problem with the localizer or anything let me know however we're showing it all in the green here."

They don't know what went wrong, so they're being careful in case there is some problem with the localizer, the part of the instrument landing system that provides lateral guidance. Another pilot intended to do a practice autoland and was told to not do that. The controller wants the pilot not the automation landing the plane.

Another pilot asks ATC if they know about the situation on the ground. Probably he has seen the fire. It is normal to report sights like to ATC. I've reported an upside-down boat, and a forest fire, for example. ATC asks other aircraft in the area for icing reports and some is reported. One departing pilot asks for an unrestricted climb to get through the ice.

After a while a pilot asks "Did you find Colgan?"

The controller responds "Unfortunately he went down over the marker."

It's pretty normal for an airplane to be referred to as "he" even though the voice coming from it is female. Some people are assuming that the woman on the radio was the first officer, but I've seen women as young as she sounds with four stripes on their shoulders at regional hubs, so that may or may not be a valid assumption. It has dawned on the reporter that the lack of stress in the pilot's voice does not mean that the pilots have no concerns, because he's heard how calm Captain Sullenberger sounded on that tape. But crew are required to report abnormalities with the airplane to ATC, and these folks don't.

And I only noticed today's date after publishing. It is the zulu date of the crash.

Update: The names of the crew have been released: Capt. Marvin Renslow and first officer Rebecca Shaw, so it was the F/O on the radio. Plus there was a jumpseater on board, bringing the death toll to an even fifty.

Who is in Montréal?

Aviatrix is in Brossard, just across Pont Champlain from l'Île de Montréal. I think I will be free tonight and on Saturday to meet anyone that's around.