The flight was at 1:56. Last night I checked out the NOAA info.. things looked bad enough that I almost changed my flight to early AM but would have been charged $240 ! (But that's another thread, altogether.)
So I stuck with the 1:56 flight, which was coming in from Houston. I always check flights on FlightAware, which means I know more than ANY of the agents. All they know, and all the boards know, is 'on time,' delayed,' or cancelled.' etc.. I know exactly where the incoming aircraft is and if we should get out on time. That flight from HOU was going to be early. Yipee tie yie yo!
So, as we were boarding, one of the pilots comes on the horn and ask people to, well..move your asses folks 'cause there is a whopper of a cell 40 miles to the west and moving this way fast.
I check the NOAA satellite view and there is lots of green and red just west of INDY. What I know, and what the other passengers probably don't know, is that the wind is from the SW at 22-24 mph, pretty steady, which means that since the 2 runways at IND are both 23-5, we will be heading right smack dab into that cell. Come on folks, move your asses, I am thinking. I have a 40 minute connection in Newark, leaving at 4:45- right when all those triple 7's start rolling for Europe and flights are arriving from Asia and where the weather is 300' and 1.5 miles, and you know what that can mean..holds, delays, missed approaches (rare, but)..
Of course moving quickly on Embraer's cute, efficient little RJ is an oxymoron, since they were built to make money and NOT to accommodate actual people.... especially American sized people.
OK, so a taxing we go with another ERJ in front of us. And we are hauling ass over to RWY 23L like we're in the INDY 500. The other guy rolls onto the runway and doesn't even slow down. He is cleared and gone, man. We taxi into position and hold..all of about 15 seconds. Glad that guy in front of us was an RJ and not something bigger..wake turbulence, and all.
21-22 seconds to rotation-- pretty quick for a fully loaded ERJ-145.
Climb to about, oh less than 1000' and the pilot snapped that puppy over to the left like commercial pilots never do, for fear of upsetting the patients. Lowest cloud layer was pretty low and we were immediately above it and between... And the sight of that -as they say "convective activity" - to the west was...umm.. awe-inspiring, to say the least. Three minutes later and I don't know if we could have made it out.
With the quasi tailwind we would be early to EWR. Except, of course, for the weather there. I expected a hold and it came... twice around the horn at about 6,000'. I figured RWY 22L was the active, with the wind. 22L and 4 R are equipped with CAT 2 and CAT 3 approaches. The ERJ-145 is also equipped for CAT 3 approaches - CAT 3A I am sure which means- 50' decision height and 700 RVR (runway visual range), but I forgot if it was CAT 3 C - which means the aircraft's autopilot can land in zero/zero viz. Anyway, I figured we were ok.
And sure enough..soon we were on final on RWY 22L. We were above the low layer, and looking East, I saw, protruding all alone above the clouds, the top of the new World Trade Center with it's spire..like something out of a science fiction movie in the future. Pretty impressive.
Landing was uneventful.. maybe 200' and 1/2 mile or more.
Then, an hour later, after take off and after dark (and after hanging around one of Terminal A's fully packed pods trying to breathe...Have you ever been in that god-awful place?).. another treat. Off to the East again, sticking up alone above the low layer were the World Trade Center AND, to it's north, the Empire State Building, all decked out in red.
Made it back to Rochester at about 6 PM, and a rather exciting landing on RWY 22 with maybe a 20-25+ MPH crosswind from about, oh 280..a bit wobbly there for a few moments.
= new reply since forum marked as read
