Not.
I do have to say though that I must commend the station staff for putting up with me, my captain, and the two mechanics we brought in to fix a busted plane. They were patient, and were great team players - staying much later than they would have regularly, 3 hours past "getting off time."
Nevertheless, the plane that was broken in Lawton had a bleed air duct system issue, which is essentially a no-go item as it significantly limits our aircraft's capability to fly in icing conditions. Icing is bad. And it's very bad when your anti-ice systems are not able to work. Otherwise, when operational, it is, for the most part a non-event so long as the accumulation is not to such an extent that limits our anti-icing systems to remove the ice.
So, with the bleed air issue, we also had a deferred APU (Auxiliary Power Unit) - which usually isn't an issue if the station has ground power and air. You see, we use the APU to provide electrical power to the airplane so that we don't run out the battery and we also use it to provide air flow to the engines so we can start them.
But, the station's ground power unit (GPU) was inop, and they made an attempt to start the plane off of the battery with a bottle of air that ended up not working. Now that the bottle was empty and they had no other source of air (remember the APU was dead), the plane is essentially stuck there.
Now that you have the back story. . .
We get into Lawton late in the morning. Took an empty plane out there so that the crew that had brought the busted plane in could take the passengers from Lawton to Atlanta on Thanksgiving. As soon as we get there the mechanics hop out and get to work. Unfortunately everything they tried didn't work. No way they were going to be able to get the APU to work, even after another plane came in and they made a quick exchange of parts from the known operational plane to our known broken plane. Nothing.
When push came to shove, about 5 hours had passed. Finally we came to the conclusion that if they wanted the plane to fly back to Atlanta today (Thanksgiving) that we would need perform what we call a "jump-start" of the busted plane's engines.
We have a procedure that allows us to start the airplane off of external air and the airplanes battery. The tricky part is that we are only limited to being on battery power for 5 minutes.
Anyway - we get a hose and hooked it up to the other plane, and hook it up to our plane. One of the mechanics starts the other plane up and generates some air flow. This air flow then moves through the hose, into our plane. This air flow then allows us to inject fuel into our engines to get them started. And - surprisingly, it worked. ;)
Here's a photo of our umbilical cord to the other plane. The busted plane is the one on the right.
Anyway - we get the plane started and finally get out of town.
I must say that he absolute worst part of this job is having to do these maintenance flights. I mean, I don't really mind doing them. But it's a laughing matter how the company makes an effort to schedule the plane that is busted for a revenue flight without it even being fixed. Just funny.
