FL250

Now what you can't tell from this picture is that something is wrong. We were suppose to be doing this return flight during daylight hours and this is pretty damn dark to be daylight. Well in the freak snow dumping before we left for Michigan apparently some of the snow decided to melt on the brakes and upon landing the right main tire was locked. It didn't make a difference till about 60 knots when I was slowing down with about a 15-20 knot crosswind and I had to kick the rudder to the stops to keep it on the runway. I then thought crap frozen brake and kicked the right break. Instantly it released and then it felt like we were riding on a square tire. I have thought about what I could have done differently but I think no matter what I was screwed from the get go. I was landing on a 10,600 foot runway and my exit was 8000 feet down it. So I didn't use breaks right away which might have saved some rubber if I would have gotten on them right away. I think from now on any take off from a contaminated runway the first landing will be a solid one to force the tire to spin and then tap the breaks immediately.
Things worked out as good as they could have. We had a 6 hour wait for the return flight so in the mean time our wicked maintenance guys threw a tire on a plane which arrived about 4 hours later. They took our passengers when they arrived and 2 hours later our tire was fixed and we were on our way. A bit expensive yes but things could have been way worse. I'd like to say a lesson was learned but I did nothing different from the usual so next time I will just try new techniques.



Again we are following the moon home. By home I mean Toronto in this case. Anywhere that there is a bed with my name on I call home for the day :) After this day of hoping for the best and planning for the worst I was glad to get some sleep. I hate costing the company money but I really couldn't have not done anything different.