Mexico rescue mission

Last weekend I flew down to Puerto Vallarta on Alaska Airlines, and as much as I was constantly reminded by the flight attendants about how my vacation was underway, alas, I was headed southbound for work.

True, most would argue that it's not a bad day at the office when you need to commute down to Mexico, however with only one short night in town, it's more of a tease than anything.

The reason for the trip was that 3 weeks earlier one of our jets was on final approach to land in Puerto Vallarta when they injested a pelican directly into the left engine. Another 3 birds struck the aircraft in other areas thankfully only causing minimal damage. The engine itself, aside from a momentary surge, managed to remain running until on the ground where it was determined quite quickly - it had been destroyed. Bits of engine and bird would fall out the exhaust area when the fan blades in the front were turned by hand.

So started a 3 week gong show of trying to swap an engine in Mexico. A rental engine was shipped from Long Beach, CA (where Cessna has a maintenance service center) with DHL 2 days after the incident. The engine got held up in customs for some rather "shady" reasons and it took 2 weeks of greasing the wheels before the engine was actually permitted into the country. An engine specialist along with one of our mechanics performed the engine swap on the hot Mexican tarmac in just under a day. This was about the time I was informed that myself, another pilot and our head of maintenance would be airlining down to Mexico in order to pick up the plane and fly it to Long Beach, CA in order to undergo some more inspections.

It was a ridiculously early morning flight to Seattle where we caught our connecting direct flight down to Puerto Vallarta. We got through customs no problem, which wasn't the case with the first mechanic that went down.. he had to "grease" the officials a little to allow him and his toolbox into the country (going grease rate for mechanic and tools, ~200 bucks). We checked on the plane, all looked good, so off to the hotel. We relaxed, had some cervesa's and enjoyed the quick one night Mexican layover we had.

Early to rise the next morning we later found out our mechanics had spent a little more time on the town and were in pretty rough shape, but their job was already done, so they could just relax in the back of the plane while we flew it up to California (via Yuma Arizona for customs). We new it was coming, we just weren't quite sure how much it was going to cost us, but we were denied permission to leave the country with the jet. Simply because the paperwork did not say it was going to be in Mexico for so long and the pilots that brought it down were not the same ones taking it out. In Mexico you need all sorts of stamps and approvals to get out of the country which usually isn't too much of a problem, but for this 'special occasion' we knew we were in for some sort of mess. When we operate in other countries (Mexico, Caribbean) we use the services of specialized "Handlers" who we pay a great deal of money to guide us through all of the paperwork and arrange things from as simple as fuel requests all the way up to and including landing permits. So our handler came to us and explained why the officials wouldn't permit us to depart. Our next question for him was "what will it take?"... to which he replied with a small smile.. "a tip.. in the neighborhood of $400." Well, this was a little better than what we thought it might take, but after pooling all of our company money together we were still short and had to go to the ATM machine at the international terminal building to obtain the rest. I'm not quite sure what the other pilot wrote down on the expense form on that one haha.

So, after handing over nearly $1000 to various Mexican officials over the stay we were finally permitted to depart. So we got the heck out of there. The plane flew fine all the way up to the US. We dropped it off in Long Beach and I was the only one to stay with the plane as everyone else was either needed back in Calgary or was about to go on days off. So I got a 3 day layover in California while they fixed the plane up good and I awaited the other pilot to airline in. I spent a couple days cruising around the beaches and up and down the Coastal Highway in the rental car. Unfortunately I managed to catch a nasty cold and am still fighting it 3 days later.

I'm currently on my days off and hope that I fully recover before going back on call on Tuesday. This weekend finally looks decent after we've had a barrage of snow the past week and a half, some crazy April weather. It's either 20 degrees and sunny, or -10 and blizzarding... ahh good 'ol Calgary.