Title make you curious? Saltillo (pronounced Sal-tea-oh) is a city in the state of Coahuila de Zaragoza in the country of Mexico. Imagine if we had states with names like that?
Wow.
Anyway, reserve duty actually paid off the other day, Tuesday Feb. 5th, 2008 to be exact. I had to ferry an ASA CRJ down to Saltillo to be repainted in the newest Delta paint scheme, or "livery" as they are called in the industry.
Simply put, I got to fly a jet with nobody on it down to Mexico and got paid to do it. Plus, we are painting them in pairs so there was another plane going down at the same time.
Why do this in Mexico? Our normal paint shop in Louisiana couldn't meet the demand. Delta wants all our planes repainted by the end of 2009. And Delta's in-house paint shop at the Atlanta airport charged too much and apparently doesn't do as good of a job. So then there's farming it outside the country like everyone else. Continental Express (aka Express Jet) actually owns the facility in Saltillo but the workers are, of course, locals.
Either way, it was an absolute blast. It's not very often you get to do something like that.
The 4 of us, 2 pilots per plane, arrived to the ASA maintenance hangar around 5:45 am for an intended 7 am departure. ASA recently acquired their own hangar on the Atlanta airport and it's made a huge difference. Before now, our main maintenance facility was 50 miles to the south in Macon, GA, plus numerous mini-bases elsewhere. Nice improvments like this have been happening ever since Delta sold us to Skywest.
Moving on, there was a little mis-communication that resulted in us leaving about 30 minutes after the other aircraft, finally airborne by 7:45 am. We arrived in Saltillo, just before 10 am central time. After landing, we had to clear customs, leave the airplane at the paint hangar, and grab our 1 hour "limo" ride back to the Monterrey airport so we could deadhead back to Atlanta.
The ride back was exciting as we rode through a valley surrounded by tall jagged mountains on both sides. It reminded me a lot of driving through southern California and Arizona. Using broken Spanish, we opted to take the more scenic route through downtown Monterrey as I was the only one of the 4 pilots who'd been down there before. The 2 First Officers had about a combined 6 months at ASA, and the other Captain had been on the ATR-72 before becoming a CRJ Captain. The ATR pretty much stays in Georgia and the immediate surrounding states.
We made it back to the airport about an hour before the 1 pm departure. We all had seats to ourselves and relaxed all the way back to Atlanta, arriving around 4:15 pm.
I can only hope I'll get more of these trips. Lots of planes to be painted!
Of course, I took pictures. :-) While uploading them, I found a new tool on the Picasa Web Album that makes it easier to see detail. If you look at them using slide show, the size is adequate. However, if you click on a picture in the album and use the arrow button to scroll through, it's hard to see the detail. You can click the magnifying glass on the right hand side, just to the left of where it says "Dave" with the silouette picture.
This allows you to see the pictures at their original resolution in the same window. Click and hold to move the picture around. Pretty cool.
I probably lost some of you with that paragraph but if you open the link below, I think it'll make sense.
See for yourself by clicking here.
