Roehris Aviation Pages - Gallery on the job

A classic work day (Duesseldorf-Tenerife South-Duesseldorf, 06.05.2004)
	The day before my flight, I pack my suitcase with all the necessary thing I need for five days of flying and two days of travelling (to and from Germany).
	My suitcase is packed, and my pilot bag prepared with all the neccessary things: Jeppesen Charts, kneeboard, sunglasses, pens, a small packable umbrella (for outside checks in bad weather), and last but not least some chocolate snacks as "breakfast substitute" (normally you don't get any breakfast in the hotel before 0530h, and as we sometimes leave the hotel between 2330h and 0500h for early morning flights, I am prepared not to start "dry").
	I sometimes go to work by airplane (e.g. if I have to work at my homebase in Frankfurt, I proceed with a SWISS flight and a standby ticket), but this time I chose the train because no standby seats were available. Wthis takes a whopping 7 hours of train ride from Winterthur in Switzerland to Duesseldorf in Germany. But at least the weather is fine and I get to see known places like the "Loreley" river bend (picture). Today I eat dinner in the train's restaurant, so I can immediately go to bed when I reach my hotel at Duesseldorf.
	After a good night's rest, I get up not too early and enjoy the breakfast buffet at the Sheraton Arabella hotel, my crewhotel in Duesseldorf. 90 minutes prior takeoff, I check out at the hotel, and take the short walk to the Hapag-Lloyd crewroom. Today I arrive as the first one of the crew, and pull weather charts and company flight plans from the intranet, so I can already prepare all documents for the captain. One after the other, our captain, cabin attendants ant the chef de cabine enter the crewroom. I have already looked through the weather information and notams (so I could warn the captain if an aerodrome is closed, or the weather is very adverse), prepared the flight log (a sheet where all flight times, load and cargo, fuel figures and personal data of the crewmembers is written in), written the trip info sheets (a sheet of paper we hand out to the handling agents at each airport, which contains essential data for him to prepare the loadsheet), and made myself some thoughts about how much fuel we need for each flight. The cabin members go to their briefing table and brief themselves about catering and safety issues. The captain meets me at the pilot's briefing desk, and checks all the "paper stuff" as well, so we are both informed about the essential things. We then discuss the fuel figures, and decide how much we will take along for the first flight, taking into account weather and traffic load at the destination, economy (sometimes you take along fuel fopr the trip back, if it's much cheaper at the airport of origin), and limitations (the airplane must not be too heavy). I give the operations manager a call, and ask at which gate the airplane sits, tell him the fuel figures, and order a crewbus to take us to the plane. Meanwhile, the captain has briefed the cabin members about weather and service related things. As soon as all is completed, we head out to the crewbus. At the aircraft, we bring our suitcases to the forward belly hold, I prepare the cockpit (as I will be pilot flying on the first flight), the captain does the walkaround and checks the fuelling, and the cabin members prepare the cabin for the flight. An less than one hour after check-in time at the briefing room, we are pushed back, start our engines, and soon lift off into a blue sky.
	Enroute over western France, we already see the first towering cumulus clouds and even some well developped thunderstorms beneath us.
	Nice view from my office, don't you think? :-)
	My office, seen from behind the center pedestal.
	The overhead panel - a bit more "old fashioned" than the main panel (see above). It has not largely been changed since the times of the older B737 models or even the B727 and the other "grandparents" of our today's B737 New Generation.
	My corner in the plane. And yep, I like it!
	THere we go - no comment. Don't take this so serios, flying is fun!
	We arrived at Tenerife South in not too good weather, therefore we chose to fly an ILS approach.
	The closer we get to the terminal...
	...the better we see that there is a Swiss guest there: A Belair B757-200 is ready to taxy.
	And there we go, waiting for the "Swiss guys" to taxy by.
	It is "Hapag day" at Tenerife...
	...four other B737 are there while we turn around.
	Out turnaround has worked very well, and 50 minutes after setting the brakes at the gate, we are already taxying out to the runway again.
	Flaps are set, flightcontrols checked, the takeoff briefing received (it's the captain who flies us back to DUS) - we are just waiting for the CDC (chef de cabin) to give us the "cabin clear", and then we are "ready for departure".
	200 nautical miles to the west of the coast of Morocco, we are enroute towards Portugal. Another aircraft flies on the same track, opposite, 1000feet (ca. 300m) below us (see the "-10" tag). In just a few seconds we will see him zipping beneath us, at a relative speed of around 1700km/h.
	We have reached europe again, overflown Portugal and Spain, and are right now overhead the Bay of Biscayne, heading towards the city of Nantes in western France.
	The sun sets to the west of our aircraft, and creates an incredible atmosphere.
	The last rays of light this day.
	Back in Dusseldorf, we park the aircraft at the gate, fill in all the paperwork, and shut the "birdie" down. Noone has to go to the crewroom, so we ask the crewbus driver to drop us at one of the passenger's arrival gates, and take the "quick way out". Two minutes later, I am already in the Sheraton hotel, sitting directly at the airport, and have unpacked my things. The laptop doodles dome music (as I am fond of always looking MTV or VIVA on TV just to get some music), and I change clothes to quickly get something to eat at the airport in a "civilized clothing".
	That's it. The day's work is done, I head off to bed.