Wow Joe that's amazing.. One thing that may help pilots to turn to the alley (well two things) are differential breaking and differential power application. I am not sure if CRJ systems allows differential breaking or not but in some aircraft that the nose wheel doesn't steer at all (Grumman Tiger comes to mind) that's exactly how you turn the aircraft on the ground. BAHA Fan of flying -----Original Message----- From: The Airline List [mailto:AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of JoeThree@xxxxxxx Sent: Saturday, October 16, 2004 6:04 AM To: AIRLINE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Trip report - I rode a ferry flight on the NW CRJ that crashed On Saturday, August 9, 2003, I flew from Lansing to Minneapolis aboard N8396A, the Pinnacle Canadair RJ that crashed Thursday night in Missouri. Like the ill fated flight on Thursday night, my flight was a maintenance ferry flight; the only people aboard were the pilots, a flight attendant, and myself. The trip was taken only to add Lansing to my logbook. Here is my unedited trip report from that day: Joe Wolf At LAN, the aircraft that was to be used for my LAN-MSP flight parked nose-first toward the terminal; we boarded using the airstairs. When we were ready to leave, the pilot moved the airplane forward, then tried to turn right - only to discover that the nose gear steering was broken! After trying to fix the steering for an hour, the decision was made to cancel the flight. Apparently, one of the pins in the nose gear assembly was sheared off, and neither Pinnacle nor any of the other airlines at LAN had a spare. The passengers were to be reaccomodated on a 7:30 AM flight on August 10 from LAN to MSP. Not relishing the prospect of an overnight stay in LAN, I asked if there were plans to ferry the aircraft to MSP. The manager at LAN said he wasn't sure; he told me to hang around in case they did ferry it. Around 9:30 PM, 1 1/2 hours after the flight was due to leave, he told me that they would be ferrying the aircraft, and I was welcome to come along. Although there was still a long line of passengers at the NW ticket counter being reticketed, the crew felt the flight was risky enough that they didn't want to have responsibility for revenue passengers. I was told the flight was "at my own risk". The TSA had already closed up shop for the night, but one TSA inspector had stood around just in case our flight wound up leaving that night. The X-Ray machines had already been turned off, but instead of powering them back up, I suggested that he just hand search my bag, which he did. We were pushed back from our position at LAN, then after the engines were started, we were towed all the way from the terminal to the "piano bars" on Runway 26. After the tow truck had exited the runway, we took off. Because I was the only passenger, all the lights in the cabin were turned off, which meant I was able to get a spectacular view. The highlight of the trip was a night view of the west shore of Lake Michigan. We crossed the west shore north of Milwaukee, but we could see all the way to Gary at the lake's southern end. There was a fireworks display along the lakeshore in the Racine / Kenosha area; I was able to easily see the fireworks going off. We finally arrived at MSP at 10:42, 2 1/2 hours late. We were able to make it from Runway 12L to the alley between the A and B concourses under under our own power, before we were towed into the gate; although the turns were a little on the wide side, I don't know how the pilot was able to make the turns from the runway to the alley. I'm just grateful I was allowed to fly on the ferry flight, instead of having to spend the night at LAN. The LAN airport was a classic example of the "build it and hopefully they will come" school of airport design. The terminal is linear and narrow, like the new terminal at SNA, and is more than 1/4 mile long. It has four jetways on the second level of the terminal; each jetway's waiting room had more than 150 seats. There are also ten gates on the lower level for turboprops and RJs (strangely, numbered 1A-1F, and 2-5) without seating, that can be accessed via an air side escalator from the second level of the terminal. The terminal was as lively as a mausoleum - in my 3 hours waiting to board my LAN-MSP flight, I was the only passenger who even set foot in waiting rooms 8 and 9. On the land side, only half of the ticket counter positions were in use. Although Allegiant serves LAN 4x week, the only evidence of their service was an Allegiant sign below the NW sign at gate 9, and a hanging Allegiant sign at one of the Comair ticket counter positions. I didn't see any Allegiant collateral materials anywhere at the airport. It's obvious that LAN built a big terminal expansion in hopes of luring Southwest or another low fare airline. Until that happens, though, LAN has a terminal that is about 3 times bigger than what's needed.