This day was a ‘four sector’ day again, so it would be a long day for me. In the middle of the day the rest of my crew changed. The first two flights were more or less uneventful and we had a nice flight over the Swedish coastline. The ground handling in Germany was pretty efficient but due to the large amount of baggage we still departed with a delay of around 15 minutes. While 15 minutes is not much, it is hard to catch up this delay as the time on the ground between flights is very short. Also it is virtually impossible to catch up and time during flight – on a flight duration of one hour thirty flying at maximum speed will usually reduce the flight time by one or two minutes only. While on the ground in Germany I reviewed the forecasted weather for the last two flights. There was a forecast of occasional thunderstorm activity. I agreed with my next first officer to uplift around 800kg of extra fuel on the phone. When we arrived in Oslo the next crew was already waiting in the jet bridge.
I briefed the first officer about the technical status of the aircraft and about the weather situation. I haven’t flown with that specific first officer yet, but he was highly experienced. He had many more flight hours than I have and could have upgraded to Captain already many years ago, but he prefers the lifestyle of a first officer. Most people want to become Captain as soon as they can, but I can fully understand his motive. In one way it is very nice to have your own command and to be responsible for the operation, but it can also generate a lot of headache as well – whenever something goes wrong everybody will be questioning the Captain. In a way it’s a question of personality and personal preference. We didn’t make up any delay but we were soon on our way to our destination in Poland. As I hadn’t flown to this specific destination before I wanted to be pilot flying for the first flight, which the first officer accepted. When we approached the destination area we saw a lot of thunderstorm activity. We arranged with air traffic control to fly around the storm clouds. When we crossed in the vicinity of the thunderstorms it was very turbulent. As we got closer to our destination we saw that there was a lot of thunderstorm activity quite close to the approach. I even considered to cross the airport and approach from the south to avoid the thunderstorms, but in the end and with the help of my first officer we found a gap between the storms on the northern side of the airfield. It was still raining heavily, so I turned the ignition system for the engines on. Jet engines, different from petrol engines (as used in many cars), don’t need a continuous ignition spark under normal conditions, but in heavy rain a jet engine can experience a condition know as ‘flame out’, which causes the engine to fail. This can usually be avoided by having the ignition system turned on.
We finally broke out of the clouds and got a clear view of the runway. I was relieved that we managed to find a gap in the storms to do an approach. Everything was normal now, so I disconnected the autopilot for landing. We were surprised when the tower controller told us to ‘go around, climb on runway heading’. We did not know why this instruction was issued, but I assumed it probably had something to do with the thunderstorm. Anyway, there was not time to ask any questions, so we immediately complied with this instruction and performed a missed approach. This is trained many times in the simulator and is considered a normal maneuver, but it is rarely done. During my career I had a total of five go arounds, this one was the first one after I became Captain last year. We pushed the thrust lever forward the engines responded and we were pushed back into our seats. I engaged the autopilot again – in situations of high workload like an unexpected go around it removes the workload of manually managing the flight path so we could focus on our navigation and following the procedure correctly. We managed to keep up good teamwork. We established the airplane at a safe altitude clear of the thunderstorms. In the meantime we had been transferred to an other controller and we now asked about the reason for the go around. He didn’t know yet and told us to expect an ‘undetermined delay’. Not good. I was very happy now that I took 800kg of extra fuel. I made a short announcement to calm the passengers. Air Traffic Control asked us to climb by another 2000ft, to 6000ft. The first officer remarked ‘the weather seems to be better down here – you want me to ask him if we can stay at 4000?’. I agreed and the controller approved our request to maintain 4000ft. We negotiated our way through the storms with Air Traffic control and were told that the airport was open again. We started our approach, the tower controller told us that the reason for the previous go around was bird activity on the runway. We finally landed and boarded the airplane. There was a new ramp agent (person in charge of all the ground activities) who was being trained by an experienced colleague. I discussed the loading with them and we could manage the ‘turn around’ very fast. However the thunderstorm had moved over the airport know and it was raining heavily. When we were ready to depart the rain had almost moved through but we were told that there was equipment on the runway to remove the huge amounts of standing water. After waiting an other 20 minutes we were finally cleared to depart, now with a total delay of around one hour thirty.
When we approached Oslo we saw some thunderstorms in the area once again. Cabin crew called us to inform about a passenger who was not feeling well, but it was not a life threatening situation. In consolation with the purser I decided to call for an ambulance after landing with our handling company. We passed an other thunderstorm during our approach and landed in Oslo after a very long day. We met the next crew who were now also late due to our late arrival. When we left a pigeon flew through the jet bridge and into the cockpit. The ramp agent managed to catch the pigeon and to let if fly outside. I was really happy to catch some sleep after this long day.
