Well, my first exciting "moment" which ended in a non occurrence, happened last night on the last trip of a 4 leg day. I finished with a total of 8.14 hours after the fact. So, here's the story.

Yesterday was the 5th day after being extended like crazy with 3 naps, a regular overnight (about 7 hours rest total finally after I got to sleep) then followed by another overnight then a full day to finish it up. I was originally "scheduled" to be off on Tuesday, then it got moved to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and I have to have Saturday off tomorrow because of the Federal Regulations. I was lucky that I packed extra expecting that I was going to be extended. All the other roommates were getting extended like crazy, so I just prepared for the worse and that's what I got. I'm enjoying all the flying though really.

We had a jumpseater for the last leg to Des Moines, Iowa which was my 2nd of the day. That was pretty cool, and it was my leg to take. I had a great take off and cruising was normal. Moving ahead into the approach segment, we were cleared to join the localizer, and as I began to slow down and descend, I called for "Flaps 8." To my surprised, we got a Yellow Caution Message saying "Flaps Fail." I kind of paused a little bit and just proceeded by asking for the QRH or Flaps Fail. I asked the Captain what he wanted to do, and we got vectors around the Des Moine city at 4000 feet. I continued to fly the plane until the checklists were done and we contacted all the necessary people. Finally, the Captain took over the aircraft in preparation for a No Flap landing. This increases our approach speed by about 30 knots to 178! Definitely a lot faster. To top that off, the usuable runway for 31 was about 7898 ft. We needed 7000 so that means that it was all good. We declared an emergency just in case if we were to run off the runway and / or have the breaks overheat. We got all setup and I asked to get vectored back and that we were ready. The jump seater was definitely a little surprised too.

Anyways, coming in at that speed (178 knots = 204.838742 mph) definitely made the ground move like I've never seen before. The trucks were out on the runway with their lights all flashing, the flight attendant notified and we were set. The captain was really calm and I was too, surprisingly. "100 feet.......50 feet.....40....30..20.10" The Captain executed the landing with finese and awesomeness! It was smooth and had barely any float. I have to say that it was just freaking tremendous. He even kept the nose wheel off the ground for a little bit and then followed with some heavy braking and full reverse. We still had about 3000 feet of runway left! The jump seater was all excited and we both congratulated the captain on an excellent execution. All in all, it was not that bad. I definitely had a little of an adrenaline rush and couldn't sleep for a while, but I finally laid my head down and got some rest knowing that today was going to be another long day. Oh yeah, I didn't eat all day long except for a granola bar and some stuff that I had for breakfast at the previous hotel stay. I can't wait for this last leg today. I get to go home and sleep on my air mattress!