Oh man, RUT... I did my time there. I only lasted 5 months. The paycheck isn't worth it! :D I'm not even sure why I'm smiling...I scared the crap outta myself in Rutland. I remember landing once, going inside, and almost heaving into the trash can in ops. Good times, good times.

I guess I already outed him (sorry Mr. Way2Broke :D), but I'm at Omni now. I'm #2 out of 5 9Kers to make the jump recently (or shortly for a couple of them). Way2Broke needs to hurry the hell up.

EAS trouble
 

I know this was brought up before. But....

If the EAS funding starts getting pulled, how do you think this is going to affect the company?

From what I have been able to scrape up, these are the following airports that 9k services through the EAS program...

Marion, IL
Quincy, IL
Hagerstown, MD
Rockland, ME
Cape Girardeau, MO
Lebanon, NH
Massena, NY
Ogdensburg, NY
Plattsburgh, NY
Saranac Lake/Lake Placid, NY
Lancaster, PA
Rutland, VT

Am I missing any? Thanks for your input.

You can take Plattsburgh off that list, we lost it to Colgan.

Here are the rest:

Augusta, ME
Ft. Leonard Wood, MO
Kirksville, MO
Watertown, NY
Mayaguez, PR
Ponce, PR

Ponce is a goner too. The government decided they only needed one EAS route out of there and decided it should go to JetBlue (to FLL) instead of an airline that just flies across the island (SJU).

I'm in favor of EAS sticking around since I'd probably be furloughed if it went away, but for many of the routes it makes ZERO sense financially. Why does the government pay a couple million bucks each for us to fly these Midwest routes? They are all less than a 2.5 hour drive, which is well known by us in the region because we do it often to commute out of this hellhole.

Personally, I'd like to see Cape Air expand with something a little more solid as the foundation for nearly half of its routes...but hey, who knows if we will even be around once the 402s become unflyable. Speaking of which, looks like new power settings have started to take their toll on cylinders. We replaced three jugs on two aircraft this week in STL. More to come in the name of fuel savings??

Is there a running list of the current bases at Cape Air or does it change often? How many are there?

Check Cape Air at profiles at the top of this page. Cape Air is currently "aligning its pilot requirements", which means they have ample 4x2 pilots from SJU to go to the Cape for Summer flying.

Personally, I'd like to see Cape Air expand with something a little more solid as the foundation for nearly half of its routes...but hey, who knows if we will even be around once the 402s become unflyable. Speaking of which, looks like new power settings have started to take their toll on cylinders. We replaced three jugs on two aircraft this week in STL. More to come in the name of fuel savings??

Iirc, we typically cruised 26/23, has this changed? Who else runs an IO-520 to 3000 hours without a couple of jugs? Continental was kind enough to lower the spec to 60/80 compression.

What leads you to believe the new jugs were the result of power settings?

We still do the 26/23, but at 85pph. Have electronic FF now and precision tuned injectors (whatever those are). Supposed to be more accurate.

If you ask me, 9 cylinders in 2 weeks is a lot. We had to replace 4 on the most recent one. Also, got a nice photo of some serious heat damage on an exhaust valve.

Not saying that when you double TBO things aren't bound to break; they are. But with a double time engine, I'm not a fan of running it harder than we already do. IMHO, new power settings=fried cylinders. Time will tell.


But I'm just a pilot and all I do is fly the plane until it breaks and swap it for another one right?

Those would be Gami injectors, designed to run smoother and more efficiently. If the exhaust valves are getting burned, then I would go back to 90pph fuel flow as before.