Boom, like that.

Morning all,

Today I'm writing to you from the hotel lobby of our nightstop hotel in Amsterdam. It's the Marriott Courtyard and it's actually in Hoofddorp, near the airport. It's a nice hotel, situated on the edge of a nature reserve, and were the weather more amenable, I'd be out on a bike having an explore about now. Alas, it's chucking it down so I'm sat on the free wifi in the lobby and blogging for great glory.

Yesterday was... interesting.

The order for the day was a simple City->Amsterdam->City->Amsterdam. However, in this industry things don't always go quite as planned.

Firstly, before we even thought about committing Aviation we had a 'Crew Forum' - we had a sit down with a few crew and upper management - in this case the MD himself - and given opportunity to ask questions and voice concerns. Most of what was discussed it isn't prudent to go into on here, but the airline isn't doing too badly at all and we've got purchase rights and options on yet more aircraft. So generally, that was good news. Oh, also, they're looking at improving the quality of the crew food. I approve of this.

So, management sit-down complete we got onto the real business of the day - the flying. Or, we didn't, because we'd picked up a delay and our 1425z flight wasn't due to depart until 1555z. Our aircraft hadn't even left Amsterdam yet. So it was over to the terminal to grab some sandwiches and a cuppa and chill out for an hour.

Next, we get a phonecall from Ops. The aircraft we're waiting for (G-LCYI) had had a lightning strike coming in from Amsterdam and we'd be further delayed whilst the engineers cleared it for service. Now this was interesting, so we all trooped across to airside and met the aircraft as it taxied in. There was no obvious external damage on first glance, but after it stopped one could observe burn marks above all of the windows on the port side and the engineers pointed out a burn/crack where the lightning had struck the nose of the plane - this was on a critical joint in the airframe so they estimated that it would be at least two hours before the aircraft was either released for service or declared 'tech' and sent to Stansted to be fixed. Not to worry, we'll just change aircraft.

So, we trooped over to G-LCYD, just in from a training flight at Cambridge, and got to work. The usual set-up, walk around, fueling, passengers, briefings, clearance and checks all ensued and we were away by 1645z (I'll have to double-check this time).

Now, Amsterdam flights are busy - by the time you've got airborne, switched frequency three times, got the flaps away and completed the after take-off checks you're already steaming towards the coast. Then you stop the climb low (around FL210), and you've got about 5 minutes before top of descent to brief, set speeds, minima, approach aids, and program the aircraft for landing. Oh, did I mention that the other aircraft got struck by lightning? There were storms about. Lots of storms. We got airborne and immediately we were asking for headings to avoid storm cells. The whole flight was spent heading generally eastward whilst dodging around rather nasty looking storm cells, and completing all of the tasks previously mentioned. Oh, also, they changed runways on us at Amsterdam, leading to more consternation and re-briefing during the descent.

So anyway, we weaved our way through the weather, and managed to get onto the approach for runway 18R. The weather was terrible, and we're fighting at 18-19kt crosswind (which happens to be my current limit). The landing therefore, was fun. A little racy, but I'm pleased to say that I managed to get it down roughly on centerline, straight, and not -too- firmly. It was close though, the left wing dropped quite dramatically during the flare and this nearly threw us off the runway entirely. This is why we train like we do, and why we have crosswind limits. So a long taxi onto stand and shutdown just as a storm passes overhead.

Storms at Amsterdam cause all kinds of issues - the land is very flat and the airport boasts many tall towers and masts for lighting and other such things. Lightning is a serious concern - especially this lightning. All around us, and near-constant. The airport halts -all- ground operations because of safety concerns, so now we have no crew to help us get ready for the next sector, and we're watching as aircraft stack up, waiting to get onto stands that are either occupied with flights that can't leave, or have no crews to greet the aircraft. In short, Chaos. For 30 minutes. We take the time to eat our dinners and grab a few minutes rest.

Then the horn sounds and the anthill once again kicks up into life. Literally thousands of crew spring back out of their little cubby holes and aircraft start to move again. We get passengers, and clearances and become just about ready to depart. The weather looks reasonable on the way out, most of the storms are to the north and east now, so off we taxi and we have a fairly uneventful, if rather bumpy flight back into City.

The turnaround in City goes pretty much as standard - though we're now getting rather late at night and the airport is keen to see the back of us. Set-up, walk-around, passengers, loadsheet, checks, clearances, start, taxi and we're airborne again.

The weather is back.

We're looking at a near-sold wall of storms between us and Amsterdam. The weather radar shows two little 'corridors' of clearer air, maybe 5-10 miles wide. We start asking for headings to take us towards one of these, whilst avoiding the few storms still dotted about on this side of the north sea. It's getting dark. We can see lightning nearly constantly, on all sides of us and we're flying through what looks to be a narrowing slit of clear-air between two giant cliffs of storm-cells. We feel like Jason and the Argonauts as the walls get closer.

Lightning arcs from one storm to the other. In front of the aircraft.

Luckily, most of the electrical activity seems to be at altitude, and the controller decides this is a good time to give us a continuous-descent to 2000ft in preparation for the approach. We brief, set up the aircraft and I hand over control to the Captain, I make a quick PA to the passengers explaining that we're starting our descent, giving them the time we're expecting to arrive and explaining about the storms all around us and that we've avoided the absolute worst of it, but they can still expect a spectacular light show as we fly the approach. Then it's all hands into the flightdeck as we slow down, position and set up for the approach. This goes fairly smoothly. Only one issue - the missed approach track (where we fly if, for whatever reason, we can't land) is nothing but storm. All of it is covered by one massive area of red on the weather radar. We resolve that, in the event of a go around we're turning the wrong way and explaining ourselves to ATC after the fact. No way are we going anywhere near that.

Easier landing this time - wind is gusty but only slightly off straight down the runway. Taxi in, shut down disembark, and start the walk towards the taxi. Into the hotel for just about midnight.

Three busy sectors on a very bad weather day, I don't think I've ever had quite so much fun :)

Until next time...