It all started in early August. I had been working as a CFI for almost 2 months, and I was starting to get an itch for something adventurous and out of the ordinary. I prayed about it, asking if God would send me something that would maybe help me feel a little more job satisfaction. I had no idea what kind of story He would unravel for me.
A Masters student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) named Dan came in to my work looking to get checked out in our 172 RG (retractable gear) so that he could fly some while he was working in Dayton over the summer. So he and I were scheduled, and rather than just doing local work like most checkouts, he asked if we could go down to Cincinnati and do some landings at the hub airport there, which I was more than willing to do. I suggested further that we head a little further south so that we could get the 50 mile requirement for cross-country flights, which he heartily agreed to.
As we flew, I saw that he knew his stuff very well, so I really just had to sit back and enjoy the ride. We chatted quite a bit about what he was doing, why he was flying, etc. and he mentioned that, since he was just trying to build time and experience, he was interested in taking the plane on a longer cross-country, and said he wanted to fly in to Chicago's O'Hare airport, if possible. Because he didn't have a lot of retractable-gear time, he would still need to be flying with an instructor for the flight, so he asked me if I would be willing to go with him. "Why not?" I heartily agreed.
After clearing up schedules and finding a nice day, we finally decided that we would fly in to Chicago on August 21. It worked out nicely for my schedule because my wife was back at Andrews going through orientation for her dietetics internship, so I was going to be home alone for a couple days anyways. Dan had done all the work we needed. He found us a site that would allow us to apply for an arrival slot in to O'Hare (it's one of three airports in the US where you have to have a slot to land, or else you're not allowed in). He found all the preferred ATC routes between Dayton and Chicago. He had all the frequencies, diagrams, etc. all lined up. We were ready to go.
It was a beautiful day. Light winds, unlimited visibility. The sun was shining as if God wanted to encourage us on our venture. En route to Chicago, we got a new routing from ATC that would help them fit us into their approach flow better. Better yet, the route had us fly over the Gipper VOR, a navigation aid that is in between South Bend and Andrews. "I got to fly over my old stomping grounds!" I thought. Then I realized, "Wait, if we're flying from Dayton to Chicago, and we fly all the way up to Michigan, something's not entirely right." We checked it out, and my instinct was right on; they were going to fly us over Lake Michigan. Since we don't have survival equipment for water, we had to ask them again for a new routing. They ended up giving us a direct shot to Chicago from there. As we flew along, we noticed a strange smell, like something lightly burning. But we didn't pay any attention to it, it was pretty normal for the plane.
Then we got our first excitement for the day. ATC asked us to turn 90 degrees left to make room for other traffic. When we turned, we looked for the other traffic, and a Southwest 737 was barreling past us. We then turned back on course. Over Gary, there was the first cloud we had seen all day. It puffed up big like it was trying to block our way, but it was not going to stop us. I had filed IFR, so we were allowed to fly through clouds.
Yay for clouds!
As we flew over Gary, I looked down at the airport and thought to myself, "If we had an engine failure right here, we would be able to circle down and land at Gary's airport without any problems at all." Cruising at 8,000 feet, Chicago told us to expect to land on runway 28, which runs 13,001 feet (2.5 miles) along the south side of the main terminal. (http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1212/00166AD.PDF)We joked that we'd be able to land 3 times on the runway before we ran out of room. As we were flying right through the cloud, we were told by ATC to descent to 7,000 for approach to the airport. We were going in!
When Dan replied back to ATC that we were headed down, his radio started having problems, and he couldn't report the step down, so he looked over at me quizzically. I tried it on my radio too, and had the same problem. Right then, our GPS unit turned off, and turned back on. Something was wrong. We were clearly having an electrical problem. We quickly turned off all our electrical equipment to conserve the battery, put in a code to tell ATC we were having a communications failure, and attempted to recycle the electrical master switch, to no avail. We were in the airspace of the second busiest airport in the world without any electrical power!
Although legally we could have continued on and landed at O'Hare, we decided not to be "those guys", so we turned off south of Chicago and headed towards a small general aviation airport in Lansing, IL (incidentally turning into the approach path for jets coming in to Midway, though no issues came from that). Because our electrical supply had failed, we had to manually pump our landing gear down into position as we approached the airport, and make a no-flaps approach (for the non-aviation savvy, this isn't a HUGE deal, it just means a faster approach and longer required landing distance). Once we were on the ground, I got on the phone immediately to try to get a hold of someone in Chicago to tell them what had happened and that we were going to be down for a while. While I was on hold, one of the airport's employees came out to us and said they got a call saying they knew we were down safely and they considered our flight plan closed, so that was worked out.
On the ground and safe, we figured we could talk to one of the maintenance guys at the airport, to see if they could fix it. He opened up the cowling, looked in, and said, "Oh, here's what may be your problem. The alternator ground wire is out of its crimp." I nodded, pretending that I understood what he meant. He put it back in, then fired it back up for a couple minutes, then shut it down again. "Well, that wasn't the root of your problem." he told us. We needed a new alternator.
The plane in the shop.
Since we were there, and we had pretty much the whole day on our hands, we figured we could try to rent a plane at the flight school there at the airport in Lansing, and fly to O'Hare that same day. An instructor would be in that evening to check us out. We waited around the airport for him to come. When he finally got there, Dan flew with him for about half an hour, came back and parked, then all the staff headed out to go home. Dan mentioned the plane was kind of sketchy, but it should work okay for the 32 mile trip to O'Hare. We got some paperwork taken care of, applied for a new slot into O'Hare, then jumped in the plane ready to go. We turned the key...and it didn't start. Turns out the starter had gone bad sometime between when Dan flew with the other instructor and now. So we did indeed have to wait till the next day.
Our "replacement plane" that didn't work.
Thankfully, Dan's mom was willing to put us up in a hotel, otherwise we would have been sleeping at the airport. The next morning, I got a call from our maintenance friend, "Hey David, I just got a shipment from UPS, but there was no alternator. Give me a call so we can figure out what to do." I freaked. Another day in Chicago, doing nothing. Another day of cancelling my other students. I prayed, though, and that gave me peace. Shortly afterward, I got another call saying the alternator came in on a different shipment, and they were starting work on putting it in. By the time we got to the airport, it was in and ready to go.
It was another beautiful day. No clouds in the sky at all. As we got airborne, we called up Chicago Approach. "Approach, Cessna 9873B 30 miles south, inbound for landing." "Landing at O'Hare!?" they asked incredulously. "Affirmative." "Alright, 73B, follow the lake shore outside of Class B airspace for now, and we'll try to get you in." YES!!! God has blessed. Flying along the lake shore, we see all these big jets coming out from the airport, including a 777-300ER from Japan Airways. I was way excited. We also got to fly along downtown, and see all the fancy sights on the lake.
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| O'Hare in the background |
We finally got cleared to enter the airspace and come in for a landing. Once again, we got vectored to the side to get out of a jet's way, then we landed on runway 22R, on the northeast corner of the airport. They asked us if we could possibly get off the runway by taxiway U, but we were able to get off way sooner at KK, then took V to the General Aviation Ramp. We parked next to a big line of corporate jets. The line guy came out, and when we asked how often he saw planes like ours, he said it was a lot more often than you'd expect. That bummed us out a little, we wished we were one of the few to brave the airspace in a 172.
http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1212/00166AD.PDF (Diagram of O'Hare. Our directions are in reference to the diagram.)
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| At least 4 other jets, and us. |
After we sat on the ground for a little while, it was time to get back out. Thanks to some advice from my former flight instructor Matt Kent (who used to work for American Eagle), we made it out to the taxiway without a problem. They took us out to WT, holding short of runway 14L, and we had to wait a while as the other planes in line got to take off first. There were several American Eagle and United Express planes that took off, and a United 757, and the big one, a 747 with Kalitta Air, rotating not 50 feet from us! As we waited, we were asked at least 3 times if the 3,500 feet of runway remaining would be enough for us to take off. We assured them it'd be okay (we can take off with about 1,000 feet total).
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| American Eagle RJ taking off |
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| Kalitta climbing out |
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| United 757 |
Finally, it was our turn. We took off on the remaining runway, and promptly turned South to get out of the way of another plane taking off behind us. That took us over the international arrivals terminal, so we saw all sorts of Heavies on the stand. On climbout, we then were told to turn back North to get clear so a United 747 could take off on runway 10. It was pretty exciting.
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| Top to bottom: Air France A330 (to Paris), Air India 777-300ER (to Delhi), Cathay Pacific 777-300ER (to Hong Kong), Lufthansa 747-400 (to Frankfurt), Virgin Atlantic A340-600 (to London), SAS A330 (to Copenhagen) |
On the way back, we flew past downtown again, then I got the idea, "Hey, we're here anyways, why don't we stop by Midway and do a touch and go?" I ran it by Dan, and he liked the idea, so we asked for permission to come in and land. He let me do the landing, which was pretty cool of him, since he was paying for the time. Then we cleared the airspace, flew to Andrews to say a quick hi, and we ended up picking up my amazing wife Sarah, who had just finished her internship orientation and was going to leave to drive back to Dayton with a friend. So her friend drove back down, Sarah jumped in the back, and we flew back to Dayton.
In all, it was a really fun trip, and even though I had to cancel several students because I was gone a lot longer than I had initially planned, it was still an answer to prayer from God. He heard my yearnings for adventure, and graciously gave me a trip that would satisfy that desire, just because it would make me happy (and it did). After spending almost 3 hours working on this post, I still have a lot more that I would have liked to add, little details here and there, but in the interest of time I'm going to leave them unsaid. If you want to see the video of me landing at Midway, let me know, and I'll see what I can work out. It's too complicated for me to understand how to put it up on here.
More to come about what God's been doing in my life (with a little more current stories) are hopefully soon to come. God has really been playing a big role in my life, and I'm giving up all sorts of worthless stuff so that I can focus on Him more and more.
I pray that God bless you too.
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