IMC Practice

Dispatching can be a challenge. Even on good days. But when weather sets in, it's a whole new dynamic.

On the 15th of Dec, This is what The North Pacific Surface Analysis was looking like. A long Low Pressure System extending from around Midway Island in the Pacific Northwest all the way across the Central Pacific and over into CONUS.

This is what the weather normally looks like around here, but as shown in the SA above, things were about to get wetter!

On Sunday morning the 19th of Dec this is what we came to work to. The beginning of 48 hours of weather to contend with (Our shift in dispatch is 9 hours). I myself actually look forward to days like this, it's because we rarely get them. Heavy rains mainly over Kauai to the west, Oahu and Western Molokai in the east. This shot of Doppler from weatherunderground.com show the cells in the area and intensity of moisture in the clouds. Upper level winds were light, but movement was from the WSW (West Southwest) direction.

On the ramp, rain gear is the uniform of the day as the weather makes the early morning preflights for the crews a fun one. Winds with the associated system was light and variable, so this caused having with visibility and ceilings. The wind wasn't there to keep the moisture moving so everything just "sat" around.

Later in the morning, visibility dropped to as low as 1/4 mile with +SHRA (heavy rain showers)and alot of TS (thunderstorms) in EMBD CB's (Embedded Cumulonimbus Nimbus clouds) here in HNL. We held flights going into MKK due to visibility was nearly zero. And LNY was slowly losing it's battle with the weather. Myself and the other dispatcher kept on updating the weather as quickly as it was being amended by the National Weather Service (NWS) and kept the crew well informed.

Now we know it was bad when HNL goes down below and alternates are required for the flights to return. Fuel loads were all increased for all flight outbound from HNL and inbound. By some luck when our flights were legal to depart, they all made it into their destinations on the first shot. No missed approaches occurred.

Due to the instability of the atmosphere over the Hawaiian Islands, we are looking at more continued wet weather into the Christmas weekend as another front approaches from the west.

In the mean time, it's back to blue skies and sunny weather...

...for now!!!

Morning Departure

Recently, We had a patch of overcast weather covering the State of Hawaii. But on this morning, as the sun came up, I was able to grab a shot of one of our aircraft departing HNL from runway 04L just as the sun peaked out of the clouds. I especially love working our morning shifts!

"Old School" Dispatching

If you're an aircraft dispatcher nowdays, you probably use all the latest in dispatching software and tracking devices to make your job easier. Well, where I work at, since we're a small outfit, we don't need to use all the high speed, high tech gadgets that the bigger airlines use. Sure we have computer's and we've designed our own programs to make our releases and figure weights and burns out, but what I really like about how we do things is we interact with the crews. Every morning, crew arrive in dispatch and we give them a briefing and discuss things person to person. Makes for better dispatch resource management.

So here the dispatcher station. Briefing counter to the right and a great view (when the aircraft is not parked there) of HNL/PHNL and RWY 4R/22L

A little closer look shows the important stuff like ICED COFFFEE!!!

If I didn't have one of these in the morning, I'd be dead in the water!

 Up on the far left screen screen we have weather-

satellite loops and printed weather reports, on the center screen
releases and fuel slips and more weather via Pilot Brief on the far right.

Here's what the release look like. Three copies printed ot per crew. Our releases are are done for the whole trip line and are amended as necessary during the days ops. New release are faxed out to crews (No ACARS system here)

Flights throughout the day are tracked via the GANTT. Alot of airlines use a computer based system to track flights, but since we have a smaller ops this works just as great. Since the islands are within a 30 minute flight time (the exception being the Big Island of Hawaii) we can contact the aircraft via the base radio (air to ground) or if further out, via AIRCELL.

Virgin America Ops Control

A couple of weeks ago, I got a chance to visit Virgin America's corporate offices in Burlingame, CA. Virgin was AWESOME!! The employee's are just simply great. They call themselves the "People Team", and they truly are. While there I got to pop into their operations center and of course, me coming from a small commuter airlines, I was impressed with the set up.

To me, of course, this looks like a mini Mission Control at NASA.

Thanks Sandra, Adam and the rest of the team at Virgin for letting me
get a peek at Operations Control.

Another day in the dispatch office

Here's the wall as you enter the Flight Ops offices at the hanger. Cory from marketing did the work. It came out great. Thanks Cory!

This is the second day of a 5 day work week. An early start at 0315. Here's the view from my dispatcher desk overlooking the airport and our ramp. (HNL/PHNL)

I get the AWESOME sunrises from my office with the early start...

(I can't help it that I work in such beautiful place!!)

The 0315 shift is my favorite to work. I get to start everyone's day.

(Sorry about the grainy pics...I'm using my iPhone camera till I get my digital camera operational again)