Been in DC since Monday night, and we were supposed to fly to Fort Lauderdale tonight to return to work on the house to sell it. The flight was delayed an hour from DCA, and the place was a madhouse with weather-delayed and canceled flights all over the northeast. They finally switched us to a different gate, in a different concourse, involving a bus ride, and we finally got underway.
As we approached the beginning of the runway, the pilot announced that FAA had rescinded clearance for our route just as we were about to take off, and would update us in half an hour. We’re now sitting out here with engines shut down (presumably powered by APUs, so at least we have air and power.
Sigh.
[Update half an hour later]
The update half an hour later was that there would be another update in half an hour. #YayAmericanAir
[Late evening update]
In case anyone was worried, we did finally get clearance. Just landed in FLL, almost three hours later than scheduled.
I guess it is the storm in the general area, but it doesn’t look that bad on radar. Best of luck.
It was a pretty massive front, and we got pounded out in Manassas. But the weather patterns are hard to predict because this region is on a cusp between two major weather systems.
I hope you made it out, and had a good flight, my friend.
Yep, I heard the windbag left the stage, and I figured you would be able to escape DC then.
I look out the window at the airport, and I saw an A320 jet that had “American” in big bold letters.
American? That jet is Anglo-French!
You ever wonder what that “rump, rump, rump-rump-rump!” sound on an A320 is coming from, especially during engine start and often times during taxi?
It’s a hydraulic APU. There is a hydraulic system powered by each of the main engines, and they are isolated from each other in case one springs a leak. When only one engine is turning, they pressurize the other hydraulic system with a pump that is powered by the hydraulic system powered by the operating engine — this maintains the isolation against losing fluid from a leak.
Every time this hydraulic pump/APU cuts in to freshen the pressure charge on the otherwise unpowered circuit, you get that “rump!”
The first time I heard that, I thought there was a pack of barking dogs in the cargo hold.
That noise always sounded mechanical to me, and it seems to occur during engine start. I always thought it had to do with the baggage crew operating some hydraulically actuated door latch to “button up” the aircraft shortly before pushing back, and that the sound repeating had the not-reassuring aspect of the latch requiring several tries.
After I heard the sound on engine re-start after being parked for 30 minutes on a run up pad waiting for destination storms to clear, I did some searching and digging on this.
It is still a mystery to me why an Airbus and a Boeing shouldn’t make the same noises as the same physics is involved — it would be like a Vulcan starship making an entirely different kind of warp-drive moaning sound than the Enterprise. It is also a mystery why Airbus Industries think a product like this sounding like a barking dog is OK — this does not scare passengers, or we meekly accept whatever sounds we hear as “normal?”
Another mystery of the Airbus is the single-slotted trailing flap in the high-lift configuration of the wing. The Boeing 727 famously had a triple-slotted flap, and part of the fun of riding in back was watching all of those flap sections crank out. How does the Airbus get short-field performance with that small wing with that single-slotted flap?
Aviation Week offered that the A320 wing is a British Aerospace product that is the object of considerable national pride. Britain once had multiple competing aviation companies building airliners and now they are down to one company supplying just the wing, but according to Michael Crichton’s narration in “Air Frame”, the wing is a very important component of a civil airliners.
Just think of it. All of that glorious history of the Sopwith Camel, the Supermarine Spitfire and the Hawker Hurricane, the Merlin engine, Whittle’s jet engine, those alien-invasion looking Vulcan, Valiant, and Victor strategic bombers, and yes, the piston-powered wide bodied Bristol Brabazon.
No, it goes farther back in history than that. The term “loft” used in solid-modeling software packages was once a physical loft, where they would outline sections on the shop floor and then “loft” them vertically to construct a 3D shape. This was used to construct prototype airplanes such as the enormous Brabazon and many smaller planes, but this must have some antecedent in British shipbuilding?
So this British planet-exploring and planet dominating history, of Drake, and Nelson, and Cook, and John Harrison’s chronometer has been reduced to the wing on the A320 jet achieving short-field landings with a simplified flap?
Nice bit of writing there. Kudos.