You're Who? You're Here For What?

I'm currently on a 4 day trip. The first day was Cincinnati-Savannah-Cincinnati-Toronto. Yesterday we flew from Toronto to Atlanta and then Allentown, PA where I'm currently spending my second night. Yeah, two nights in Allentown...in January. The crew and I made the best of it by seeing a movie at the cineplex next to the hotel (I Am Legend...C-).

Tomorrow morning, it's off first thing for a flight to CVG, then an out and back to Rochester to end the day by noon. If all goes well, I'll be on a flight back to Phoenix and home by 8 p.m. YES!

The trip got off to a rocky start. As the captain and I were doing pre-flight paperwork, a check airman stepped in to the cockpit. He said, "Good afternoon gentlemen, I need to see each of your credentials in full. I will be performing a randomly selected line check on this leg." With the airline's recent switch to Advanced Qualification Program (AQP), line checks are performed on every route in the system and are random. Technically, you could have multiple line checks in one month vs. one every 18 months.

A line check is basically where the flight deck crew is judged on their performance from start to finish. It is a jeopardy event and not to be taken lightly. Performing to standards is critical.

Well, being on line for only a few months, this made me very nervous. Of course all of the weight and balance had to be worst case scenario, meaning Cg and weight issues. We had to move passengers and add ballast to put the aircraft center of gravity withing tolerances. It's not really difficult, just time consuming and easy to make mistakes...especially with a check airman in the jump seat looking over your shoulder. I ended up doing the W&B twice just to make sure it was 100% accurate and legible. Normally I do it right the first time. This had to be the time for a Cg issue.

W&B issues solved, we headed out. Thankfully, the flight wasn't too eventful other than some thunderstorm dodging. The most difficult part was hearing ATC calls while listening to the check airman "critiquing" our flying. In the end, after a few small comments and suggestions, we passed and breathed a sigh of relief. I only wish it was guaranteed to be another 18 months before another line check.

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Yesterday on the flight from Toronto to Atlanta, there was a nice old woman from Hungary on our flight. She spoke just a few words of English and I helped her figure out how to go about getting to Los Angeles from Atlanta. At the end of the flight, I was outside the aircraft at the bottom of the stairs when she came down. She turned to me, grabbed me with both arms , gave me a big bear hug and a kiss on the check and in broken English said, "Thank you". That made my day.