Quikie

CRJ200 Taking off RWY34 as we fuel up in YYC


Time: 1903 Local
Altitude: Fl250
Position: 104 miles West of Saskatoon
Ground Speed: 256 knots

We're empty in the back right now as we knife through the smokey skies quickly making our way home after a pop-up charter to Calgary. We were called up at 1515 this afternoon and asked to fly a few clients to Calgary in an hour. After quickly getting dressed and driving the 15 minutes it takes to get to work, we got off the ground only 10 minutes late and were soon settled in for the 1hr10minute flight to YYC.

Now Saskatoon is 10 degrees off our nose, due to a strong 50 knot wind coming from the North, and we're planning our decent and approach. I'm feeling good about the flight, I always enjoy flying into bigger airports. The busy chatter on the radio and ATC instructions are enjoyable to hear and follow. There are many planes coming in from all over the nation, all coming together to form a single line onto the runways. Although today there were three active runways, 34, 10 and 07. We were given 34 to land on this afternoon, which worked well as we easily exited off onto taxiway A3 and had a short taxi to Apron 6 were the Shell FBO(Fixed Base Operations) sat. After dropping our passengers off and grabbing enough fuel to wavier off the ramp fee we turned around and left off RWY07 for the bright blue again.

We're 75 miles back, time to start the decent. A WestJet B737 is behind us now, ATC is barking on the radio to take up a new heading 20 degrees to the left. Looks like the 737 is gonna be passing us by. Soon we see the silvery shine of the plane as it passes about 4 miles to the south of us, we keep it in sight until it lands and we're put on a five mile final. Soon we're the ones squeaking the tires down on RWY09, ending our short 4 hour day.