Alpha Hole Shot at St Maarten (TNCM)

[Ramjett 27]

I have been flying the Aerosoft Twin Otter Extended quite a bit lately as a part on my membership at FS Economy. I've had the aircraft quite a while now and feel very comfortable with it, but documentation about settings during takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, and landing are, shall we say...sparse.

FS Economy requires you to fly at a speed that gets you an average fuel consumption of 120 gallons per hour and I can trim her and set the prop speed and throttles to get that and still average 140 KIAS in cruise at 10,000 feet. So I'm comfortable with the way I am flying her, but also curious if that is reasonably close to the way she is flown for real.

To that end I have been watching some actual cockpit videos of the DHC-6 in action, mostly Winair but some Himalayan flights as well. While watching one of the Winair videos, a flight from St Maarten to Antigua, the pilots were going through their start checklists and so forth and one of them mentioned their "Alpha Hole Shot" was approved. All of a sudden things in the cockpit started happening at a much faster pace and not as "relaxed" as things seemed to be earlier. They taxied quicker than I had been seeing and mentioned "Hole Shot" several times, especially as they approached the runway.

I tried searching for Alpha Hole Shot on the web, but as expected got everything except an aviation procedure explanation, especially at St Maarten. I assumed, since I couldn't find anything about it, that it was a "hurry up" departure between landing aircraft, but I never saw any other aircraft land and since you could hear ATC in the video I tried to hear landing clearances for those inbound but did not hear any during their "fast" taxi. There were no other aircraft actively taxiing that I saw in the video. Anybody know what was so special about "Alpha Hole Shot" at St Maarten?

Randy

[DaviiB 104]

Are you sure you weren't hearing an instruction to taxi ALPHA and HOLD SHORT of rw10? (or a readback of that instruction if you heard it from a pilot?).

After receiving that instruction, the aircraft would begin to taxi and the crew would perform their taxi and pre-takeoff checks. Taxi times are also pretty short at SXM, so there would be incentive to get them done fairly quickly.

 

DB

[Ramjett 27]

You know what, the pilots were speaking with a very heavy dutch accent on their english.  I'll bet you are absolutely correct.

Thak you so much for your reply.

Randy

[DaviiB 104]

No worries.

Also, it's a Caribbean accent, not Dutch!

 

[Ramjett 27]

Well, that may be, but the aircrew were speaking a different language (sounded European) during their cockpit banter and checklists and reverted to English for their interaction with ATC, who also used English of course.  The pilot was a female Caucasian with blonde hair and her accent was "heavy", that's why I assumed Dutch.  After all, it was the Netherlands Antilles.

No matter, I am still sure you are correct and she was saying APLHA Hold Short, so my mystery is solved.

Randy

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

44 minutes ago, Ramjett said:

No matter, I am still sure you are correct and she was saying APLHA Hold Short, so my mystery is solved.

Randy

This kind of reminds me of when I first heard the call outs in an Airbus. I swear the thing was saying 50,40,30, Recon, Recon. Turns out it’s saying Retard, Retard, as in retard the throttle, lol. Still sounds like Recon to me though.

[DaviiB 104]

Can't seem to find the video your're referencing with the female captain....but the only one I can find on Youtube for the SXM-ANU route is this one:

 

Is this the one you were referring to with the language?

 

DB

[Captain Kevin 586]

On 12/15/2017 at 9:49 PM, Ramjett said:

Anybody know what was so special about "Alpha Hole Shot" at St Maarten?

Just means some golfer shot a hole in one on Alpha, of course. Doesn't EVERYONE know that?