On The Air In The Air

The Big Media machine is all abuzz about a Pilot talking in the cockpit with the transmit switch accidentally on.  A slow news day maybe? This happens all the time, for various reasons.

Equipment and the installations are different from one airline to another but the basics are the same. Several years ago cockpit noise was recognized as a problem due to the continued loss of hearing pilots experience.  The solution was to provide the pilots (or let them buy) noise canceling headsets. Problem solved. Then the FAA decided that the pilots couldn’t hear each other as well as they needed to so latching microphone switches were installed allowing the pilots to talk to each other without holding down the button. Problem solved again. Then it was discovered that the latching transmitter switch will sometimes stick in the ON position when transmitting on the radio. Now the problem is that pilots might blather on and on while jamming the ATC frequency with politically incorrect complaints. This is considered an equipment malfunction. In the news it was reported that Southwest Airlines considered  it a pilot malfunction and streamlined his ass.  These are all secondary issues since the media fuss is all about what was said, let’s address a bit of the primary media issue:

The pilot said he couldn’t get laid anymore because the women he meets complain too much. Additionally all of the Flight Attendants are Gays, Grannies, and Grandes. This really upset a lot of people. Everybody knows that a large percentage of flight attendants are gay. It is ok to say “gay” I think..Those that are Gay certainly do not obscure the fact. The Grannies comment refers to the trend in airlines hiring a large percentage of women in the 60 something age group. The Grande comment is insensitive, but still the man was talking about who he preferred to date.

So here is what we really have, a guy talking about difficulty getting laid and thinking it was in private. He seems to express a preference for a mate of his own generation,  height weight proportionate, and the opposite gender. These preferences don’t seem that outrageous to me. I wonder if any of them changed after the “Sensitivity Training” they made him complete.

Birds Do It`

In this age of wonders the latest weather report (hardly ever more than an hour old) is available to your airline pilots in text message form. Most airlines have a little printer that the First Officer fiddles around with constantly producing weather advisory messages and other important stuff.  At some airlines there is no printer and they write it on a cocktail napkin.

None of that is important, what is important is that  every dang message includes a warning “Bird Activity” or “Bird Activity On or Near the Airport” .  They have been doing this since disco was popular.  There is practically Nothing anybody can do, especially at night about bird strikes.

When there is a collision course between a bird and an airplane we rely completely on the bird to avoid the plane.

The little guys do a pretty good job too. If they can see you coming and understand that they need to get out of the way they almost always do.

Part of the problem is that birds don’t seem to understand a high speed airplane in a steep turn. They know we are there, birds can hear airplanes miles away. They can almost always see us, especially in the daylight. They just don’t expect the turn. Usually there is little or no damage to the plane. Other times things don’t work out so well.

So…..What would Luckyjet do differently? I would require all departures to climb straight ahead to about three thousand feet before turning. And we should have a cool horn to blast the same as trains have, this would do no good whatsoever but would be fun.

Happy Landings

Tor na do

Recently our route of flight required finding a way around or through a fairly nasty line of storms extending from somewhere near Canada to central Texas.

One of the highlights of the day was that a large gap in the line of storms would allow us to stay pretty much on course instead of deviating way down south near Waco Texas.

Our radar depicted a clearly defined hook echo with a secondary cell just to the northeast of the primary cell. Just on the southwest corner of the hook echo a perfectly round return appeared.

These little round ball shaped returns on the edge of a severe storm are known for being “debris balls”.  They will come and go on the radar as a tornado touches down for a while then moves up again.

We are seriously considering the installation of a storm shelter at home.  Having all my stuff on radar would be bad enough but I really prefer not to fly on my days off.

New And Improved

This will be our first Holiday Season with all of the new Passenger Bill Of Rights rules in effect. It will be just fine and there is little or nothing to worry about. All that is needed to have a happy peaceful travel day is an inner sense of peace that is not affected by how far you get or when you arrive.

I want to be among the first on the industry side of the passenger rights debate to point out that something needed to be done. It is simply wrong to leave people stranded on an airplane for hours when they clearly should have been stranded inside the airport. Airplanes are for travel, terminals are for waiting.

The potential downside of the new rules could be the unintended result of taking your Captain out of the decision loop. In the past the Captain was allowed to use judgement to determine what combination of  departure factors, weather trends, de-icing requirements, gate availability, traffic delays, and fuel load would be the most limiting.   Some days with heavy traffic and bad winter weather the game required us to get in our place in line so we could leave eventually. Admittedly, this could have added two hours or more to our trip time but it would place us in the strategic position of being ready for aircraft de-icing and departure when the opportunity came up.

Under the new rules these will be cancelled operations. Since same day service may not be an option the happy traveller should bring provisions. Cheese, crackers, nuts, inflatable pillow, music and earphones, a good book to read, extra socks and instant oatmeal are things that may set you apart from your fellow travelers when everybody is given a cot to sleep on and the automatic announcements about security and unattended bags drone on all night long instead of the planes.

Your little survival kit for happiness doesn’t need to take up much room in your  carry on bag and could make a huge difference. What a wonderful adventure.

Happy Landings

Stranger Than Fiction

Air sickness bags have a patent number on them.

Seatbelt extensions are required by the FAA to have a label that includes the word FAATSO.

Runway numbers are based on compass direction, but they often change.

Airlines sell alcohol and occasionally give it away but it is illegal to allow a passenger to board if they “appear to be intoxicated”.

It is illegal to allow a person to board if they “appear to be deranged”,  yet the Americans With Disabilities Act prevents denial of transport for a diagnosed condition.

Airline Transport Pilots are required by regulation to be “of good moral character”.

It is against Federal Law to wear any part of the American flag as an article of clothing. This is a real Federal Law but it has no stated consequence. However,  FAA regulations clearly state that “a person violating any Federal Law while exercising the privileges of a Pilot Certificate will have that Certificate and all associated ratings revoked”. Not suspended.  Revoked.  This was presumably a rule intended to make things difficult for smugglers or people who tear tags off of mattresses while flying. Since about half of  airline pilots wear a “patriotic” tie as part of the uniform they are not legal to fly again. Ever.  This interesting  intersection of a Federal Law and Federal Regulation doesn’t even require prosecution in order to take effect. There is no appeal allowed for intentionally violating a FAA Regulation. In order to be in full compliance with the regulations they  are REQUIRED to surrender their pilot certificate and presumably find their own way home.

Happy Landings

In The News

The media reported today that an airliner diverted to Dulles DIA airport due to a “Cockpit Fire”.  People are asking if this was serious.

Few things are as serious as a cockpit fire. Imagine you are in a space the size of a small dumpster with a bunch of equipment,  a valued coworker, and enough electrical circuits to operate several average homes in there with you.  Add some nice big windows and you have a fair idea of  an airliner cockpit. This is definitely not a place for a fire or heavy smoke.

The sequence of events usually goes a little like this …. What’s that smell?  I dunno. Izzat…..smoke? ….Shit!   Mask and goggles …… I’m ok it’s just a litle smoke ….. Uh… OK …. long pause   Shit! it’s a fire.     Variations on the theme sometimes follow the prescribed checklist very closely, sometimes not.

A good general policy to follow when in any vehicle or building is that if it smells like smoke it probably is a fire. I once had Flight Attendants call up front and tell me there was a fire in the cabin. When I asked where the fire was they told me they weren’t sure, it was really just smoke. When asked what color the smoke was they couldn’t really say and changed the report to a smell. We turned off power to the galleys and other non essential equipment and the smell went away before we could land.

A careful read of the news today indicated that a passenger had only seen pictures from another passenger of the fire. Maybe there was only some overheated equipment, maybe this was an impending disaster. It is too early to say, but if ALL potential smoke / fire events were handled this well the industry would be safer.  Sounds to me like a job well done.

Happy Landings

Half Way Home

This Time You Guys Really Screwed Up.

I’m really too busy to post very often lately but I just can’t let this pass without comment.

The implementation of Federally Mandated passenger service law will be a total DISASTER. You will find that the airlines will no longer have you on the ground during FAA delays for more than about an hour. Then they will go back to the gate, dump your happy ass off and cancel the flight.

Leaving  government out of aviation is not possible or desired. Leaving the government out of  customer service might have been a good idea if you consider the following:

1. The airlines are losing massive amounts of money on almost every flight

2. When they toss you and your stuff out and cancel the flight they will have no fuel cost

3. They already have your money, you don’t yet have the ride

Those of you who understand that sometimes it is not safe to fly, sometimes the FAA won’t let us fly, and sometimes airplanes break are now going to have to understand that the airlines cannot afford the risk of being fined for having you on the plane for too long.

This is a well intentioned but really stupid law. It will, however, give the airlines the latitude to cancel all of the flights that aren’t profitable.

Assuming you ever take off …………. Happy Landings

Multiple Single Point Failure Modality

The trip went far better than could have been expected.  The only exceptions were total random unexplained failure of  an Expensive Ass Nikon M something camera )(   and a dang good  well travelled HP laptop.

The combined effect of these malfunctions was to prevent posting as the trip progressed.  

Archival posting from my notes will be forthcoming notwithstanding and fortwith.

From my house to my Uncle Bills in New Mexico is about 673 miles. An early departure on the 2nd allowed for a full day of  preparation, get ready, and setting things aside to be forgotten.

Things like tightening all of the framework on the trailer, some of which came loose on the far side of Fort Worth. Nothing a short stop by the road couldn’t fix.

This is about where the Nikon started to give up.  It would act like it was taking a picture, and go through all of the picture taking behaviours except the part where it remembers the danged image.

So imagine the photo below of the trailer rig except with a white Suburban attached to the front. The early morning sun back lights the scene of a middle aged man climbing around on steel rails reattaching crossmembers above the trailer. 

He looks great.  That’s me up there, out there.  The Western sky illuminated only by the brushstrokes of  a gentle sunrise of a perfect morning.

With only 3,500 miles to go what could possibly go wrong?

Wests Best Kept Secrets

At the top of  four AM mountain time,  five central, but since the daylight savings thing just changed it was really later. I think.

Anticipation of the adventure ahead pulled me from a light sleep and wrestled me out of bed after only a few hours rest.  The previous day had been filled with trailer and truck preparation after returning from a four day “Airline Adventure”.

A mere 12 solo  hours later arrival at my uncles house in New Mexico marked the end of the first leg of the trip.  After some chile that couldn’t be beat and a good solid nap we were ready to hit the road.

With the Sun still well over the horizon we were on the way. The photo is right before we departed.

The days drive took us across New Mexico Indian Country, Arizona, through Nevada across the Hoover dam and well in to the desert.

We ended up somewhere beyond Area 51,  precisely in the middle of nowhere.  The reason it is so secret is that there is nobody here. Nothing                                                                                 for                   a very                long                       ways.

Good God Y’all

James Brown couldn’t have expressed it better.  As an indirect  result of the tragic loss of a friend in a sport flying accident our family will be re-united with the airplane my brother, dad, uncle, friends, and I built.  The airplane is not only ugly, it is improbable.  It has been in other ownership for almost forty years but now comes home for overhaul, refit and a new look. 

The Breezy comes home now after all this time. Dad has been gone 25 years. Hi gone 27,  Jack  we dont really know  but we didn’t really get along anyway.

you can’t tell much from the photo but much will revealed during the epic recovery of the airframe starting November 1. None of the usual airline nonsense is of real consequence anyway. This will be fun. 

Stay tuned while the execution of a multiple thousand mile recovery and restoration mission unfolds. 

Coming home after all these years. Positively Homeric.

Moron The News

Somebody did it again.  The news reports that a valued passenger arriving in Phoenix got out of the airplane through an emergency exit. 

After arriving safely at the gate.

We should all wonder what a person uses in place of a thought process when they do something this dang weird. 

Imagine trying to explain this to a fifth grader. Why were you gone so long daddy? Oh, I got tired of waiting to get off of the airplane and felt a little anxious so I bolted out onto the wing,  slid down a ten foot drop to the concrete and ran like a rabbit.

I rarely offer unsolicited suggestions to the FAA but the following signage might be an improvement  for the Over-wing exits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Heroic Stuff Indeed

In May of 1988 an Aero TACA Boing 737  full of passengers was on approach to New Orleans in an area of rain showers and thunderstorms.  The Honduran Captain was at the controls when descending through about two thousand feet both engines failed. The pilots attempted to restart the engines but this often takes a while, and it didn’t work. They were going down about a thousand feet per minute and were less than two thousand feet high.

Just as they broke through the clouds the co-pilot pointed out what looked like a road they might be able to crash land on.  The airport was much too far away to consider making it to a runway. A crash was certain.

With no engines running the Captain maneuvered for a safe and uneventful landing on the levee road. The road was barely as wide as the landing gear of the 737 and only a few thousand feet long.

The airplane was not damaged and there were no injuries. These were mostly little brown people from Honduras and the airplane wasn’t destroyed so media coverage was limited.

Boing put some new engines on the lucky jet and flew it out.

 

Another time on departure from Austin Texas I was making the takeoff, the First Officer said BIRDS and pointed straight ahead just after we left the runway. 

I selected the FLT / BOTH position for the engine ignition and increased the rate of climb a little by raising the pitch of the airplane above the standard pitch profile.

Several Geese flashed by and we heard one good thump. Within a minute or so the ignition was  put back to Left / Continuous and a normal climb resumed. No real damage was done and the rest of the day was uneventful.

Stuff  like this happens more than we usually remember. Frankly, I think airline pilots are all heros and should , by Presidential Executive Order, be compensated at an inflation adjusted rate for the job  as it paid in 1960. The difference could easily be made up by the Federal Government and would help the economy.  

Pilots are expert at two things. Managing resources in difficult dynamic situations to ensure the optimal desired outcome to avoid disaster and spending money.

So let’s hear it for a HERO stipend for Airline Pilots. Set our pay back to 1960 inflation adjusted rates and make some pilot friends.

Happy Landings (on and off airport), Ditchings, Whatever

Hudson Smhudson Flight 1549

I usually insist that a really good landing requires that the airplane be available for re-use. It is a little early to make conclusions but I am willing to make a tentative exception in this instance.

We have to leave it up to the birds to get out of our way. They usually do a really good job of doing so but didn’t manage it today. It is amazing to see a bird trying to maneuver to avoid collision with an airplane.  They fold one wing under and extend the other. Flapping and purposely rolling inverted they dive like a bullet.  It looks like it would hurt.

As for hero talk  …. it was a fine execution of competence and professionalism. The hero thing must be spread around to the cabin crew, rescuers, volunteer bystanders, and passengers though. 

The Captain reportedly did everything but complete the paperwork for the flight, and might even have brought the logbook with him from the sound of things.

Nothing in our FAA required training  would prepare pilots adequately for this.  There is a little litany pilots are supposed to remember regarding in flight engine restart and ditching but there are  no regular drills or practiced procedures for this.  

The sort of preparation that results in this sort performance is individual, not standardized.  Airline training programs do NOT provide drills for dual engine failure, wake turbulence, cabin fires, electrical failure, or farting in the cockpit.  All of these are likely occurances.

The vast majority of pilots do not prepare themselves for the big nasty unlikely events either.  The airlines aren’t really required to train us for these. Those of us that want to be prepared for this sort of thing do it on our own.

This is accomplished through  visualization of a series of unfortunate events and  devising a reasonable course of action just in case it should ever happen.

These people were lucky.  There are more than one Luckyjet out there.

Happy Landings, Ditchings, whatever.

The Appearance Of Things

There are a great many things in aviation that have been for  a purpose not readily apparent.

The Flight School where I got my first paying flying job, for example, seemed to be a place for the purpose of teaching primary and instrument flight students how to fly.

In reality it was a place for the instructors (me included) to learn to fly at someone else’s expense.  Having reached  the first rung of the  experience ladder a Flight Instructor  can finally gain flight time without paying for it. Our school was actually founded for the purpose of furthering the career of the instructors.

Now from the top of the aviation career ladder the view is different. It might seem that the purpose of the airline industry is to move passengers and materials around the world safely and efficiently. In reality it exists for the purpose of providing pilots with an awe inspiring view of our planet.

Since 1970 pilot compensation has been falling  like blue ice from an old 747 fuselage. Inflation, pay concessions, robbing of pensions, layoffs, strikes, and longer work periods have worked together to bring pilot pay down TO about 37 percent of what it was less than 40 years ago. This is true.

The view from the cockpit  however, is better than ever. Air pollution brings us nice colorful sunsets, longer higher cruise segments and longer flights give us a better view of storms, and there seem to be more photogenic storms to see.

And all this time you thought that we were flying you around to get you where you wanted to go, not so. You have just been subsidising the view out the front of the airplane.

If the airlines were as smart as I am there would be special seats in the back with cockpit style obversation windows. People should pay a LOT more for a ticket to sit there.

The Empire State Building made more money from the observation deck than it did from rent for the first five years it was open.  Happy Landings.

Not Bad For A Holiday

Someone asked a few weeks ago about the wisdom of connecting flights in Chicago  during the Christmas holiday. I think I advised to take a more southern route if possible.  At least I hope so.

We weren’t just delayed, we got creamed. The combined effects of  freezing rain, ice pellets, snow, an unscheduled airplane swap, late connecting passengers,  a computer crash, fueling mistake, air traffic control traffic backlog, a medical emergency, and a few thousand holiday travellers with all that stuff added up to a delay of almost five hours on our last flight of the night.  Even before the necessary de-icing of the airplane before take-off.

When we finally arrived on scene at the destination the local weather was in aviation technical terms “dogshit”.  The canine fecal designator for weather is a variable concept and largely dependant on the eqiuipment available and the qualifications of the crew. 

We are well qualified and our equipment, although a bit on the rugged side, is quite effective and  reliable.

Airline operations are required to have minimum visibility available before the approach to the airport can be started. The visibility was very near this minimum value. The precision of our approach monitoring equipment allows this with some additional restrictions.

Computers project the touchdown point of the airplane based on the ground speed and winds.  If the flight path model predicted by the computers using wind data gathered during the approach is projected to be out of bounds the system will trigger an Approach Warning and the approach must be abandoned. 

As in ZOOM, you thought we were landing, but now we ain’t. This is one of those things that we don’t do much and as a result causes stress and fatigue.  It also uses about a ton (really) of fuel.

A decision to use a less precise category of approach mode after being warned off of the first approach is counter-intuitive.  Our problem with the first approach was that the system was freaked out by the winds at about 500 feet. This is what caused the Approach Warning. A lesser crew wouldn’t have noticed this.  If we had been much more tired we would have been a lesser crew.

The less precise approach mode would only allow a descent to 100 feet but with less fussy wind parameters. If the second approach had not been successful a diversion to our alternate airport would have been necessary.

Then, we would have been illegal to fly since our duty day was already more than 14 hours and everybody would have ended up in a city that we could all be dang sure they didn’t want to be in since they didn’t buy a ticket to go there.

My contribution to your happy and safe holiday was a fifteen hour workday and several approaches in weather you had no business trying to drive in.  A thank you or merry Christmas might have been nice, but I understand.

Many in the traveling public  have expressed an entitlement to transportation without delay and we all know that the airlines are graded on performance by the DOT. 

What most people don’t know is that the Airline Employees grade passenger groups also.  Here are this years Holiday Traveller Performance numbers. The number is a  probability for encounter during the workday of Christmas Eve.

People wearing a backpack that  seem to not know that it sticks out behind them…..  19

People in a bad mood because a flight is 20 minutes late departing but still in a bad mood when arriving on time …… 155

People overwhelmed by their own stroller operation…….6 per flight (average)

Number of  surly old ladies insisting that someone had stolen her bag, delaying our departure ten minutes ……. 1

Number of  bags of a different color belonging to surly old ladies that were found in the overhead bin at the next city ……. 1

Number of children that wouldn’t leave the cockpit so I could come in, sit down, and do pilot stuff …….. 4

Number of times my airplane was de-iced during a three day trip …… 14

Inches of ice accumulated on the airplane in about five minutes during descent ….2

How much we were bothered by it …… 0

The number of passengers that reported ice on the wings to the flight attendants … 3

Number of minutes I waited before turning on the wing heat,  just for effect … 5

Percentage of people having a better time than circumstances might have otherwise indicated they should …… 77

Number of  hours we waited on passengers that never showed up because they weren’t coming since the flight had diverted …. 2.5

Number of valued co-workers we chose to hold responsible for this ….. 1

Amount said valued co-worker seemed to really care about the delay ….. 0

Pages of reports required by this and other incidents …. 16

Probability that we did the best we could with what was available …… 88 to 98%

Happy Landings … 12

Your Stuff

One of the very best George Carlin routines concerns the management of your stuff and the sub-sets of stuff as you continue on your travels. Since the airlines are acting all weird and charging for everything two or three times maybe this will help a little.

One plan that seems to work well is to send stuff ahead to the destination using Fed Ex or UPS then travel light and easily.

If you don’t need huge amounts of stuff try not to take it all, sometimes it helps to actually rehearse the trip day by day and toss the appropriate clothes in a pile accordingly for each day. A little for contingency and away you go.

Packing is a lost art. Shirts that will wrinkle should be folded with a tee shirt laid on them. The tee prevents creases. Pants fold along the crease lines then fold over folded underwear to prevent horizontal creases.

Emply space in the bag and the top still wont close,  improvement can still be made. Things can be put in shoes to save room. Undies can be a bundle or used to fill up little corners of empty space.

Liquids should be in a zip lock to slow down leaks but should always be at the bottom of the bag in hope that if there were a leak shampoo wouldn’t get on everything.

Always take a power strip for your computer, most hotel plugs are behind the bed.

If you use the tub take Lysol to prevent a bad case of athletes Butt.

Dont walk barefoot on the tile, disenfectant will burn your feet.

Always take all of the old tags off of your suitcases, they can be misrouted because of old tags.

When someone asks what your final distination is they mean :Where do you expect this bag to end up?

If you are late and your bag isn’t you should be able to collect your things from the baggage claim office down there by baggage claim somewhere. This is a tempting opportunity to be extra hatefull but nice seems to work real well.

If you haven’t declared excess value and paid a small imsurance surcharge for your bag the upper limit of compensation for a lost or destroyed item is 25 dollars.

People will steal your stuff off of the merrygoround so make sure that your bag is distinct. Thieves want to be able to say they were confused because bags are similiar but if you have a unique scarf, etc. on it this isn’t likely.

Bring earplugs or a good noise attenuating headset, mp3 player, crackers of choice, water,

Happy Landings

Fuego Fuego Fumar

People often say things like “You must have really fast reflexes if you are a pilot”  or “You have to be really good at math and science if you are a pilot” ……….. not so much really.

The math and science thing might come in handy if  you were designing airplanes and had to get it right without a lot of trial and error, otherwise even then it wouldn’t matter that much.

Fast reflexes aren’t really important either.  It is a cool trick to catch things that get knocked off of a counter, but that doesn’t come up much in aviation.

Over the years I’ve learned that a reasoned response works much better than a reflex. Especially when smoke and fire are involved. They aren’t always the same thing.

Things that need to be gotten right the first time should be done deliberately. At the first hint of smoke in the airplane we don oxygen masks and get the smoke goggles on. I don’t know why they call it don the mask, they just do.

It comes up once in a while.  I started a fire by dropping a lit cigarette into the fuel selector panel one night. My ill considered response was to discharge a fire extinguisher in the small cockpit, blinding myself with fire supressant stuff. Barely able to breath or see the instruments from all the soda ash I managed to open the little storm vent window, complete the approach and land ok. After I threw the smoldering floor mats out on the runway everything was fine. I should have done that in the first place.

Not long ago in the Boeing we were on the taxi-way between several airliners waiting for takeoff when the Flight Attendants reported smoke in the cabin. I told them to prepare for evacuation, declared an emergency, got a clearance to go down the runway, and had fire trucks at the airplane as we stopped at the gate and asked the passengers to leave in an orderly manner.  A hint of smoke reached the cockpit, but not much. Nobody freaked too much, but we were ready to. Less than two minutes passed from the first notice of smoke to people leaving the plane.

A teensy bit more smoke in the cabin would have resulted in the evacuation of all the people down the scary slides. Piling out all on top of eachother, breaking ankles, stealing the blankets and all. Much more smoke could have been an indication of something that if not dealt with properly could have resulted in nobody surviving. There has to be a balance of considered response, reflexive actions good sense and luck.  Scared shitless just has to wait till later.

Today my brother and I were in my 1979 Ford truck on the way to lunch. The truck was our grandfathers and has been driven only about 800 miles a year but looks pretty rough.  It was  hard to get started, got flooded and smelled of fuel. Finally we  got going after several start attempts and gasoline smell was going away. The day was cold and the air held a faint air smelled of  wood burning.  We pulled in to the parking lot just as smoke started coming out of the vents. Just little wisps at first. then a little more. Brother was reading a Guitar Center catalog, “We should get one of these amplifiers” he said.  “We should do something about this fucking fire”, says me.

We pulled off to the side and stopped, with the doors open dense white smoke was billowing out of the vents. The smell wasn’t electrical,  it smelled like burning leaves. So I selected defrost and put the fan on High. All the burning leaves blew out, the smoke cleared and we went on our way.

We and the truck smell like a forest fire now.

Often it isn’t the problem that gets you in trouble, it is what you do about it that gets you killed. Or what you don’t do when you should.

How do you tell which is which?  Think fast, act slow, fear nothing.

Angry Little Man

Some goober in the news is complaining that he was treated badly after telling airline people that he would be angry on a flight because he didn’t like something about his fare or something.

Shouldn’t it be a fair assumption that by now everybody would know that we are supposed to be nice at the airport?

Is it reasonable? No it isn’t. Most airline customer service is horrible at best. Is it the way it is? Yes.

So accept it. The way things are is that you MUST BE NICE AT THE AIRPORT.  As a worst case you could be shot dead by security forces for being weird or rude. At the very least they will send your baggage on a tour of the planet.

Airline people are as a rule a little pissy about the lack of job security, pay cuts, the tragic events of 9-11, long hours, mergers, and  changes in the employee parking.

So PLEASE be nice, you owe it to yourself. Nice will get you everywhere. Act nice even when you don’t feel nice. 

Try a random act of kindness when you least feel like it. Buy yourself a Hershey bar and eat it slowly but don’t tell anybody. For the sake of transportation be nice on the outside.

The people that work at the ticket counter are trained to ignore you to an extent that is unbelievable. You probably will not affect the outcome of their day much less their career so don’t rage against the machine.  Write a cogent letter if you have been wronged.

Please take my advice and float like a leaf on the river of transport, it’s almost always a great day to fly and hardly ever a great day to get arrested.  Or shot.

A Reformed Smoker

If you still smoke please stop. If you haven’t started and aren’t already about to die from something else you should probably avoid starting. 

I’ve noticed some things of interest during my recent travels other than the sunset.

The “Big Three Auto-Execs” (an auto-exec batch?)  were begging Congress for billions of dollars today and were critisized for jetting into town in private airplanes.

This was probably bad form, but these guys are so far out in orbit who could expect them to know what little people like us would think anyway.

Before I go off on an aviation rantgent,  does anybody other than me remember that Chrysler sold out to Mercedes or somebody a few years ago? Shouldn’t it be the Big Two?  Would anybody other than my daughter buy a Chrysler product anyway?  

The danged airport they flew in to, formerly called Washington was changed to “Reagan (by Bush) so it would be named after a president. It should have been closed years ago but is kept open  because our lawmakers find it convenient.  Bush forgot that Washington was already named after a President, go figure. Our representatives are self serving, dang.

If it is reasonable for us to be offended that a pack of billionaire beggars shows up to beg for money, each in his own company plane costing 20,000,000 (at least) without even riding together, from as far away as Detroit ….. then American public opinon could be headed down a treacherous path of common sense.

If we find it offensive that these particuliar jackasses are too self-important to not have private jets then what about the rest of them out there?

The rest of them?  Wha? ……….. Oh Yea, just as the common sense cat got out of the sack some other jackass like me has to go and rat out an entire industry.

Most people haven’t the slightest notion of the size and scope of Corporate Aviation as an industry. You could do your own in depth internet research but there are a Buncho-BUNCH of little mulit-million dollar jets whizzing around the country on any given day. Taking people that are way too important to ride an airliner to places where they NEED to be from places they ain’t.

If you doubt my observation simply check out the airport in Louisville during the Kentucky Derby.  Or try to reserve a parking spot for your personal jet there (if you don’t have one you could fib). These people are way too  important to be seen in public or to be considered part of it.

Chicago during the weeks after the election was littered with these same corporate barges coming and going. Each one bringing people way too important to be seen, too dang special to stand in lines, and much too important to be ruffled by security checks. And certainly too important to be concerned with the costs of corporate travel.  A fun research paper would track the MDW (Chicago Midway) traffic in the weeks before and after the election and attach the registration numbers (used on the radio) of the airplanes to the FAA.gov records just to see who thinks it is important enough to send the jet(s) to Chicago. 

Walmart has the worlds largest fleet of corporate jets, but not the cleanest.

The cost of a corporate flight department is justified in two ways. First, airplane payments have great tax benefits. Second, the cost when divided by the daily wages of insanely important people seem to be a negative number. The idea here is that so many executive work days are saved by private planes that the expense is worth it. In case you aren’t an arithmetic whiz this is only possible if the wages are astronomically large.

I’m not a communiss, or a socialist, but I am concerned about our progression toward openly elitist capitalism. Things like elitism should be kept under wraps or advertised only for royalty, else the masses get grumpy. We don’t do well with grumpy masses. Never have.

At the very end of the Al Gore movie, after he was through being all presidential and scarry we were left with the unfortunate vision of his departure in a private G-2 smoking off into the wild blue yonder leaving a trail of jet exhaust at least a mile long.  What was the big hurry?

Happy Landings

Good Idea, Bad Idea

Maybe the whole dang thing was a bad idea. If you really stop and think about it for a while the only reason we need airlines in the first place is that we already have them.

When the train was the best way to get from coast to coast nobody threw themselves on the ground and wailed about the trip taking almost three days. If they did nobody really cared. For the most part everybody just left a few days earlier than they would now, learned to write effectively instead of going in person and when they did need to travel just had no choice but to relax and enjoy it. If they hadn’t all been chain smoking the entire way statistics might have shown it to be a more healthy lifestyle than ripping across the country in a jet.

The rapid success of FedEx and the copycat overnight mail services are a perfect case in point. Before FedEx the country worked just fine. Things seemed to show up late once in a while but only when they were sent late. Delivery was always regular and dependable. Overnight delivery marketing just takes advantage of our inherent weakness for putting things off.  It’s as if we gained two days on the calendar in 1979 and just can’t catch up.

The airlines had already lost more money by 2003 than had ever been made by all them put together, ever. Then things started to get rough. Now all the pilot pension funds are pledged to corporate debt, or just gone. 40 wunK funds are about to suck too and fuel is over four dollars a gallon.

At about a thousand gallons per hour this makes a difference, since at about two dollars per gallon carrying people in a jet is not a viable business model anymore.

  The problem with this is that we all moved thousands of miles from where we might need or want to be on occasion.  Other means of travel aren’t really effective anymore, Amtrak has limited service and is as a result slow and pricey in most markets. Our highway system, aside from being an environmental impact disaster, is positively deadly compared with other travel modes. Buses and buss stations are not generally desirable.

What are we to do? If I were king (and it would require a monarchy to do this) there would be transportaion stations in every city. These would be connented by reliable, smooth, low tech trains. Not super expensive, super fast trains. Just trains. Stations would all connect to, or be part of airports and be served by reliable, clean bus service to  places not served by planes or trains. Jet planes would be used mainly for the long distance connections. Sea ports would be required to have reliable public transportation from the train station/airport to the ships.

All cities would have ELECTRIC light rail. If Chicago can do it anybody can. Actually, almost everybody already did. It is just that the public transportaion infrastructure was all destroyed after WW II. Corporate , non-public  fleets of business jets would be taxed out of existence. As long as executives of mega-corps and our law makers don’t have to use the same system it will always suck.

Yes, this would make me the aviation anti-christ but it might just save the industry in the long run. And, Walmart would hate it.

Happy Landings

The Way We Were

There seems to be continued curiosity regarding the behaviour of airline people, past and present. 

Are Pilots and Flight Attendants really a pack of promiscuous bed hopping hedonists?

Probably not much more than any other group of co-workers out of town on a trip. Probably a lot less than some. Definitely less than in the past. 

Certainly not like you might think.

Things were very different In the golden age of bed hopping  between the advent of effective birth control and the onset of STDs that wouldn’t wash off with soap. The time and the morality, or lack thereof, were different everywhere too so this can’t be assigned to just airline behaviour.

Then came the whole 911 thing. Islamic fundamentalism actually resulted in a widespread change in airline employee demographics. This is of course not scientific.  All of this is stated without regard to research and is the product of what I happen to notice and choose to remember.

One of the things thrown overboard after 911 was the last of  the “pilot/hostess” party ethic.

This was once epic in scope and deservedly legendary. Things had already settled down to pretty much PG-13 at even the airlines with the “party animal” reputations by the mid ninetys.  There were still occasional “room” parties (and still are) but anything worthy of media notice is fairly rare. This is also concurrent with the long term result of the airlines abandoning policys of “weight/height” rules for flight attendants. Not an insignificant point.

The Flight Attendants are now fooling around with one another instead of with pilots.  If anybody bothered to do the research it would show a big increase in marriages between Flight Attendants. The Pilot / Flight Attendant relationships seem to be pretty much limited to the occasional single guy meets single girl thing.

The days of the tacky destructive third rate romance and somebody dumping a wife and family seem to have passed. It used to be constant. It used to be the abnormal norm.

Telling someone in your crew what you heard yesterday could be like trying to explain the genealogy of a 1980s hair band. Julie Jones? Well, it was Jones but then she was goofing around with Smith, he left his wife for Suzzy to marry her but Julie got to him first. Then she left him for …. Not a month went by that there wasn’t at least one shocking “who would have thought it” story going around. SCANDALOUS, SHOCKING, common as dirt.

That was when we used to talk. That was when we saw eachother on the airplane other than when passengers are walking by and we’re trying to say something other than buh bye, or Hi.

Only the Flight Attendants now actually work together and talk. Slinging drinks and snacks around and dealing with passenger issues all day seems to develop some sort of bond.

Then there is the gay thing … that was unexpected. At least where pilots were concerned. And the trans-gender thing. WOW, none of us saw that one coming.

They all seem to be clumping up in non-gender specifically oriented pairs.

I think I will just continue to hide and watch from a safe distance.

It is a very different world.        Happy Landings.

Where The Hell Is This guy

I’ve been busy?

My cat went blind in one eye.

The number of grandsons doubled in one swell foop.

My house is a disaster / construction project

I am petrified by the government and barely able to converse much less write

Sometimes airlines and airplanes piss me off

Sometimes people piss me off

Sometimes computers piss me off

Jackass aviation news on AOL always pisses me off

But, I will post again. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.   Happy Landings

Mech-aniacs

Aviation professionals of all sorts are almost without exception human beings.

 As such they are inclined to make the occasional mistake. Something in our nature requires us to judge people more harshly when the consequences of an error are amazing and serious than if an honest mistake results no harm.

The news reported today that a “young lady aircraft cleaner” pushed the wrong button and caused an airplane to zip around the airport wrecking three jets. The news story contains some glaring errors, so even though all I know about the entire thing is what I have read let me set some of the record straight.

• It probably is not worthy of mention that the individual in the story was female. If it was worthy of mention then there is another story to be reported.
• Although some “cleaning” was being done this person is not a “cleaning lady” as reported. She is most likely a certified Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic.
• The procedure for cleaning the compressor section of a jet engine is (obviously) dangerous and requires at lease two mechanics to perform.  Probably three.
• It probably is not worth mentioning that the individual involved is young. Who cares? An old guy can make mistakes equally as dramatic as a young woman.  
• ASA has too many airplanes anyway and is probably glad to have a good reason for writing three of them off.

The compressor section of a jet engine periodically needs to be cleaned of residue from dirty air, dust, bug guts, and gadnoswhatall.  This is done by spinning the engine up and tossing a mixture of water, soap, and ground walnut shells through it.  The results are impressive and kind of fun, but this isn’t performed by the cleaning lady.

Mechanics operate engines on the ground for a wide variety of reasons. An airplane engine of any sort is dangerous to work around and safety precautions are commonly taken.  Sometimes this doesn’t work out very well and then only good training can overcome bad mistakes made at an unfortunate time.

The unexpected and accidental application of High Thrust could only take place for a few reasons, all of which require something else to be “ON” or “ARMED” which shouldn’t have been. In any event, effective training is the only thing that will prevent this sort of accident.

Mechanics are not required  by the FAA to have any simulator training and, as this event demonstrates, probably should be.  Airlines rarely, if ever, spend a minute, or a penny, on anything that is not specifically required. Typically the FAA only acts in response to a body count, or really cool explosion.

As for firing the young lady, I certainly would advise against it.  After writing off a 100,000,000 dollar loss to poor training they should keep her. Besides, she won’t ever do that again. 

As far as I could tell by reading the article no one was injured, I certainly hope this is accurate.

Happy Landings

Advanced People Watching

Recently I had occasion to spend about six hours waiting for an airplane that was about six hours late.  Pilots will generally spend as little time around large groups of inconvenienced passengers as possible. There was no shortage of these so we made the hike down to Ops to hide and hang out.  

 All airlines have at least a small, if not large, Operations (Ops for short) office somewhere under something and always in an obscure location.  It seems that there is some sort of natural burrowing behaviour airlines demonstrate when renting office space.

In the 1950s there would have been lots of guys drinking coffee from paper cups and chain smoking. At least one Teletype machine would be clacking away, producing  reams of continuous yellow paper covered with obscure text and runes describing the weather and operations messages.

Messages would read something like: ALL DWN TX STH .. ..###U.M.C. ##NR## PAX MXCNT. .PLZ PG..ADVZ###.. .. This would mean ” Attention all stations downline from Texas and Southeast: An unaccompanied minor child passenger travelling on a non-revenue pass has missed his connection. Please Page the airport terminal and find this kid, advise if you find him!”

Things have changed a little in the fifty five years I have been around these places. Ops now is a non smoking environment, and the teletype machines are gone. I’d like to have one though, especially if it still worked. Now there are computers everywhere and few people.

Television monitors show the gate areas and most of the terminal in great zoomupable detail.

Some words to the wise.. Do not ever think that you can pick your nose at the airport and not have someone see you do it.

Ladies, If you need a more comfortable bra then get one or something.  Guys, stop adjusting your parts in public. 

There are cameras everywhere. The resolution is amazing. They rotate, zoom, highlight …… and more.

It is easy to read the name on a boarding pass at the ticket counter, or the title of a book someone is reading.

My personal favourite was watching people while they watch people. Guys pretend to look at something else to watch a girl after she walks by, girls pretending to look at something else when a guy walks by.  And various combinations.

There was a mouse (or baby rat) in a corner. It showed up several times on the video.

Ops is an interesting place for pilots for about seven minutes. This is about how long it takes to read all the non-pilot stuff on the bulletin boards and a few Dilbert or Far Side cartoons. The remaining five hours and fifty three minutes wouldn’t have been nearly so much fun without the video camera.

You guys are great.

Happy Landings

Checklistus Interruptus

Checklist is one of those rare self descriptive words that describes itself. How the thing works isn’t as easy to understand. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all.

For some reason which eludes me totally, every airline has vastly different checklists and procedures.  It seems to me that if everybody is doing it differently then somebody must be doing it wrong. Maybe we all are.

When there is a complex set of tasks to be accomplished the very best way we have come up with to get them all done in the correct order is to have a list that is followed. When there are multiple people involved it seems to work best for roles to be clearly defined.  One person reads the checklist, the other responds.  Sounds easy.

Watch Dr. Strangelove for some great examples. We still do it exactly the same way. And, the movie is cat juggling funny, not to mention almost fifty years old.

In practice the whole thing is too often just a way of making it against the rules to make a mistake.  Is it on the checklist? Yes. Did you do the checklist? Of course, I don’t want to make a mistake and get in trouble. Did you miss it? Yea. Then you didn’t do the checklist… Yes we did. No you didn’t … I’m fired now, right? Yes.

Pilots are typically “diciplined” by getting time off without pay for making a mistake. The severity of dicipline is based on the consequenes of the mistake instead of the magnitude of the error itself.

If you slide off a taxiway because you are going too fast there will be punsihment involved. If you are noticed going exactly the same speed in exactly the same place and nothing happens then nobody cares.  Oddly,  we all want more time off anyway.

After a few hundred times of going through the checklist it is impossible not to memorize it. After a few thousand repetetions it’s a mantra. This happens without even trying.

When a crew is tired or distracted it is fairly common for both pilots to look right at a switch, one of them ask if it is on, the other say “ON”.  Later they notice that it is OFF.  Dang.  Usually there is no consequence. Sometimes it doesn’t work out so well.

Things work reasonably well using a checklist because pilots are generally serious about getting things right and try fairly hard to not screw up. It always takes a little concentration though. Sometimes it takes a lot, especially when the crew is tired.

Policy and good sense dictate that if we are bothered more than just a little bit while doing the checklist then the whole thing should be started over.  This is a huge pain in the ass.  All pilots positively loathe anything that is a huge pain in the ass.

It would seem that after just a few years as a valued co-worker  a Flight Attendant would know not to bust into the middle of checklist completion with a question that could wait 30 seconds.

This year I have encountered only one valued co-corker that was polite and aware enough to wait for us to finsih the “Before Start Checklist” before interrupting. She didn’t really count though since her husband is a Captain and has a reputation for being a controlling jagoff.

Airlines have tried everything from a mechanical scroll thing with knobs, little metal slide over tab things, index cards, big laminated cards, little laminated cards, electronic displays, scrolling electronic displays, audio enhanced scrolling electronic displays,  paper, and laminated paper.

The one thing nobody has tried is doing the stuff in the same order every time but having the checklist be a little different each time so that the responses aren’t automatic. 

It could be electronic, laminated, whatever. Just not the same every dang time, and never interrupted. The co-pilot could pick from about five choices of lists, all the same, just ordered differently so it wouldn’t become second nature …..

Then again, never mind, we’re probably all going out of business anyway.

Happy Landings

You’re Outta Here

Lately there is  considerable media attention given to passengers bounced off of an airplane for various reasons.

There was the woman we all heard about that had an outfit that was too revealing … she exposed herself, and became semi-famous.

Then there were the girls that said they were just “too hot” to be passengers when they were really just ignorant and attention seeking.  

Recently a lady travelled with a child that in clinical terms went “BATSHIT” for whatever regrettable and unfortunate reason. The kid and mom were both bounced with minor media mention.

Sometimes hindsight makes it easy to be critical of a crew’s decision making processes. Not all decisions are made with good information processed over an adequate decision making time interval.

Here are some of my favourite passenger bouncing / bumping stories and some important definitions. 

“Bumped” is when your seat is taken away and assigned to a passenger of a higher priority than yours. If you are boarded as a standby (even at a different city) and a regular fare shows up you may be bumped. Try to accept your fate politely.

If you appear to be intoxicated in the gate area, or on the airplane,  and are denied boarding or asked to get off of the airplane you have been bounced.  There will be no compensation for this since by regulation you are not allowed to travel if you appear to be intoxicated or unruly.

Another type of “denied boarding” is what happens when you have a reservation for a flight with 152 seats but you are the 153rd person to try to get a boarding pass. If somebody else doesn’t volunteer to give up their seat you will be denied boarding and are due some compensation. It isn’t much.

The next level of travel intervention is ”pounced” in which the local police handcuff and restrain you for the Homeland Security forces which can pack you off to Guantanamo in about six hours if you continue to be an unruly individual. This is generally reserved for people that are overly rude.

While it is amazing that media coverage is as comprehensive as it is in some of these instances it is equally amazing that others are never reported.

A passenger going to Las Vegas was reported as being unruly in the gate area before departure. There was evidently some discussion about not taking him but when several US Marines in uniform showed up for the flight the decision was made to allow him to travel.  Evidently things were calm enough on the airplane but the unruly man approached the flight crew in the Las Vegas terminal after the flight and started to complain loudly.

One thing no crew wants after a long day is a drunken complaint.  Nobody likes a complaining drunk.  Especially after the day is over and they are walking through the terminal.

Things evidently got out of hand somewhere about the point where the Captain had the guy’s head shoved through a railing overlooking the fifty foot drop to the baggage claim area threatening to toss his ass over the edge. Fortunately the local police intervened and saved the man by taking him to jail. 

Another of my favourites was described in the Dallas Morning News in about 1995.  Sometimes  even after a flight is boarded something will happen that requires a stand-by passenger to be bumped. 

An operations agent came on a flight at DFW to find a stand-by passenger and tell him he had been bumped. This should have been easy since the agent had a copy of the boarding pass with the seat number.  There wasn’t anyone in the seat where Mr. Gay was supposed to be so the agent asked the man in the next seat “Are you Gay?”.  He evidently responded “Well, …yes”. Okay then, says the agent, you’ll need to collect your things and come with me.  Here is where things got out of hand.

Another passenger overheard the exchange and was upset by it. He asked the agent  “I’m gay, do you want me off the flight too?” Sure, if you want to stay here with him just get your stuff and come with me.   This evidently triggered an even greater communications failure the result of which was that about a dozen and a half gay and/or outraged passengers stormed off of the airplane in protest. 

Meanwhile Mr. Gay, not realizing what was going on, continued to his destination.  Un-bumped, un-bounced, non-pounced, and still a standby passenger on an oversold flight.

Once again proving that talking is easy, but communication is a bitch.

Happy Landings

The Sky Is Blue

When I Became King for a Week

Day One: Changed the name of the Gulf Of Mexico to the Gulf Of Texas. Mexico complained a little but I told them they could rename the Gulf of California.

Day Two: Mexico still pissy about the “Gulf” thing, made some nasty remark about California being part of Mexico anyway. Then they sent another message about Texas being part of Mexico too. Told them to fuck off and speak better spanish. National speed limit changed to 50mph

Day Three: Truckers very unhappy. I.P.O. stock for my new railroad system goes way up.

Day four: Plan to use trains to carry loads of “debris”  and mud from New Orleans and the gulf of Texas to Arizona and return with loads of rock until flooding will never happen again is ridiculed by the press.

Day Five:”Methane Mountain” plan to use trainloads of poop from New York to make a mountain for gas fuel near the West Texas towns of Midland and Odessa hailed as genius. It turns out that New York poop smells better than Midland did before anyway.

Day Six: Truckers getting pissier by the day. Train stocks and airlines are doing well. Airline industry nationalized just for fun. Pilots really pissed off.

Day seven: Plan to eliminate airport security randomly for just a few minutes a day is hammered by the press. Oil exports stopped. OPEC is stunned, people be freakin. Pilots all go on strike. The airlines couldn’t afford fuel anyway. People riding the poo train for free.

Day Eight: Expected riots for grocerys, none happened. Seems everybody took a shit train to mexico and climbed the fence and headed south.

Maybe now I can rest, King is a hard job

Oh Yea, I almost forgot … Happy Landings.

What Makes It Go

Jet engines of one sort or another have been around since about 1942. The design has evolved considerably since the Luftwaffe was whizzing around amazing everybody but the basics are the same. Actually, only the very basics are the same. I’ll try to explain that part.

Only the core of a  modern jet engine has anything to do with fuel or combustion and all the machinery that makes so much noise and smoke. Most of the power comes from the fan part of the engine that never even gets the air hot.

The fan you see through the front of the engine is a giant propeller, it just has a lot of blades. This is where the name “Fan-Jet” or “Turbo-Fan” comes from. Older jet engines didn’t have the fan part and were just called “Turbo-jets”. On a windy day while the airplane is parked you can see the fan turning in the wind, even backwards if there is a tailwind. It makes a clacking sound, this is from the fan blades flopping around in their mounts and dragging against the outer edges. They are supposed to do that.

The fan is really efficient at moving a huge volume of air at relatively slow speed. This is important at low altitude where there is a lot of dense air to move. The turbo-jet core of a fan jet engine moves a small volume of air at super sonic speed. This is efficient only at high altitude. For this reason modern fan engines are much quieter and fuel efficient than the turbo-jets of 1960, especially at low altitude.

To understand a jet engine visualize a magic “stuff”.  Let’s call it air. Air is is really compressible. Squeezy, like a foam rubber sponge. Since we can’t see it in the first place this isn’t readily noticeable, and a little difficult to imagine.

The front part of a jet engine has a series of rotating discs of blades. Between each set of rotating blades is another set of blades that do not turn.  The rotating blades are mounted on a hollow drive-shaft.

Air coming in the front is compressed into a fluid with a very high oxygen content. Think of the air leaving the back of the compressor section as a volatile, unstable liquid. It would look like water if you could see it.

After the compressor is the burner section. Here fuel is metered through little injectors and mixed with the volatile compressed air liquid stuff. The resulting chemical reaction  is kind of amazing. Rapid expansion of the fuel/air mixture causes exhaust to jet out the back of the burner section like a rocket. Actually, it is a rocket. And a jet too. 

Here is the  pay off part. On the way out of the engine the exhaust gas turns another set of blades called “turbines” which also have stationary blades between them. The turbine blades are attached to … the same dang drive shaft that the compressor blades are driven by. Ain’t that just cooler than sheep dip! One section of the thing drives the other!  Wow.

Remember how I said the drive-shaft is hollow? The big fan on the front is attached to a separate drive-shaft rotating  inside the main one and is driven by a second set of turbines after the first set.

There is no ignition system used once the engine is started. The reaction of the fuel and compressed air is enough to keep the thing going. As a precaution during icing conditions or heavy rain, igniters are turned on that should help relight the engine if it should “un-start”.

The speed of the fan and core are allowed to be different and variable through this arrangement. This is why they often make that rung rung rung rung aaarung aarung  sound during cruise flight. It seems to work out just fine as far as the pilots can tell.

We control the power of the engine by limiting the amount of fuel available to it. On takeoff the CFM-56 engine of about 28,000 pounds of thrust uses more than 400 pounds of fuel per minute. Cruise power requires only about 50 pounds of fuel per minute per engine.

At average weights a flight will burn about 1,000 gallons the first hour, 800 gallons the second hour, and only about 150 gallons from cruise altitude to landing (with no delays).  We normally use pounds for fuel calculations since it is the mass of the fuel that the engines care about. A lighter fuel like ethanol would require many more gallons per hour but about the same number of pounds.

Since the compressor section produces an abundance of compressed air some of can be bled off and used to provide air for the cabin pressurization and wing or engine de-icing. It seems that if you have an abundance of compressed air it is fairly easy to heat or cool about anything.  The bleed air from the compressor is hot just because it has been compressed. 

The method of using hot air ( about 200 degrees F) to create cold air for cabin cooling is worthy of a article of its own. Most pilots don’t really understand it but they really don’t need to know why a system works if they know how to work the system. 

When the engines are used to help slow the plane on the ground the reverse thrust is created by ducting some of the thrust toward the front. This is done with sleeves that slide back and partially close off the exit of air from the engine and direct it forward. The engine doesn’t really start turning backwards, the air just gets blown forward.

Each engine drives fairly massive DC generator through an automatic transmission that runs at  constant speed. These provide enough electrical power for a few houses.

The bigger Boeings have engines as big around as the fuselage (body) of a 737. These are some really big air movers but the design is essentially the same.

The air doesn’t seem to mind too much what compresses it and moves along.

Happy landings

Clean Happy Work Enviornment

How do you picture what’s behind the door while you are enjoying or enduring air travel as the case may be?

People generally seem to imagine the cockpit as a well designed, ergonomic, clean, comfortable, environment.  It ain’t. At least not in America.  Maybe in France or in one of those airbusters, but  not in the Boeing cockpit as it is fairly rustic. This doesn’t vary much from one airline to another.

Sharp corners are everywhere, dust is everywhere, things look clean only at first glance. Knobs and switches that get used a lot are usually really dirty. There is a special kind of crud that is part Mechanic hand grease, pilot booger and passenger lint that gets into every corner. And there are a lot of little corners. All of the knobs are designed for maximum finger traction and have little ridges. These couldn’t be more effective for gathering crud if they were designed for the purpose.

 

Airline Pilots are apparently sloppy people as a rule. Coffee, juice and Coke gets spilled and splashed all over everything. This provides a base layer for more lint and boogers. Pilots think nothing of sneezing all over the instrument panel and leaving snot everywhere. At night it doesn’t really show, but in intense daylight …….. everything shows.    I prefer to fly in the dark.

The sheepskin seat covers are great. Especially if nobody other than you ever sits in the seat. The problem is that on a hot day when someone else has been in the seat all day it gets kind of damp. I don’t find it invigorating to hop in and sit down on a dead sheep damp with somebody  else’s butt sweat.  Maybe I’m overly sensitive about this but it just isn’t my thing.

A good offset for the damp seat is the massive amount of paper they give us for each flight with the flight plan and weather printed on it. This makes a pretty good seat cover for the seat cover.

 The lint that collects in the cockpit changes color from Summer to Winter months. I think this is because passenger clothing is fuzzier during the winter.  Airplane boogers are even a different color in the winter too.

One of the very best things about the job is the view. It can also be one of the most challenging things about the job at sunrise and sunset since the only effective protection against intense sunlight at high altitude is a map or checklist card stuck in the window. 

There has been a subtle battle between aircraft design engineers, pilots, and the FAA (formerly the CAA) for the last eighty years or so in which the engineers try to provide an effective sun shade within government guidelines and the pilots find something else to use that actually works. Pilots are about a zillion thousand times more likely to get a bad case of exploding sunshine eyeball than anybody else. Engineers could just barely get people to the moon and back much less design an effective sun shade that isn’t illegal. The FAA has thier own ideas on how big a sun visor should be, but they all work in an office.

This is all nothing more than idle bitching, what I really wanted to tell you about is the view from my office. 

The windows are huge and I don’t have to lean over to see out. From about eight miles high the horizon is distinctly curved. A full moon is so bright I really do need sun glasses at night, and It’s easy to see five states as long as you aren’t in the middle of Texas.  It is also easy to see that a line of severe storms produces constant lightning.  On a clear night with a heavy undercast and no moon, leaning back in the seat I can see straight up.  Take it from me there are at least a zillion, zillion stars. 

The airlines are missing a huge opportunity to make money by not having an observation bubble in the top of the airplane and charging a dollar a minute to look outside.

Thank you all for your patience, I haven’t posted anything in a few weeks.  Enjoy the pictures.

 Happy landings.

 

Monopoly Money

We learned in school (4th grade I think) that monopolies are bad.  A long time ago companies like Standard Oil were so big that they could “Jack Up” prices and bring unfair pressure to the market by way of high prices and excess profits.

The last fifteen to twenty years have seen corporations grow enormously.  Just make a list of where you spend your money for the things you need and you will no doubt find several mega-multi-national-corps.

The mega-corps have eluded Federal Anti-Trust enforcement because they are so goddam nice that they offer low prices to the poor downbeaten consumer in these trying times.  Now more people can afford more stuff. More people can travel by air. More people can by Chinese imports.

The Anit-Trust laws should have also prevented undue market pressure in order to “Jack Prices Down” just as well as “Up”. Artificially lowering prices places pressure on vendors to provide products at a lower and lower cost. This forces wages down, then forces jobs to be exported.

For a while the cheaper prices seem like a good deal. For the first few turns around the game board things seem alright, then the Mom n Pop specialty stores all go away. Oh well.

Next turn around the board you notice the local landscape has changed. Box stores selling standardized crap from China are everywhere. Local shops are limited to the very specialized, skilled artisan. Clothing alterations, violin repair, hair salons, and whorehouses are about all that remain.

Next roll of the dice there isn’t anywhere to work other than the mega-corp outlet or the foreign factory up the road.  Unless you are a good seamstress, violin repair tech or whatever. Hmmmm.

Then, with our balance of trade all out of wack prices for everything go way up. The problem has become such that everything is imported and we pay for imports with our devalued dollar.

So how did this work out better?

I left out the part about the war, but that is almost the same tirade.

What has this to do with the airlines?  Everything. They run on jet fuel. The jet fuel is made from the same crude oil as gasoline. It is actually the same stuff as home heating oil.

Oil is traded world wide in US dollars. When the dollar is de-valued the price of oil must go up. This part at least is simple.

Why is the dollar de-valued? Largely because our government has been printing money as fast as possible the last few years. Your economic stimulus check, money to pay Haliburton for Iraq, money to pay Haliburton for New Orleans, money to pay for bailing out the poor poor banking “industry”, money to bail out the poor poor financial instrument securities trading firms, money, money, money. The Federal Government has been throwing thousands of billions of dollars around.

This might be our way of wrecking Chinese investment in our treasury bills. The problem with this is that it will wreck most of America in the process, including our Airline industry.

This won’t matter so long as we can blame it on something we can’t quite see or define.  

What happens next? I dunno, but I’m sure we can find somebody else to blame it on.  Maybe Mexico.

Happy Landings

Monster Mash

Delta and Northwest are trying to merge. What does that mean?  I dunno.

How does this affect the valued customer?  I dunno.

Who stands to benefit from this?  I dunno.

What will happen if the maneuver doesn’t work? I dunno.

What could possibly go wrong?  I dunno.

Where does all this lead? I dunno, and niether does anybody else.  So, here are my semi-informed guesses.

A merger can be any number of different arrangements. It really doesn’t seem intuitive that the joining two failing organizations could result in a great improvement.  It never has before.

There might be some “economy of scale” savings to be made but these would probably only be effective at the highest levels of management. This never .. ever .. happens in American corporate culture.

Delta and Northwest have both screwed thier pilots in a big way already. I think that as passengers everyone would want the pilots to be happy, healthy, and worry free.  They aren’t. Neither are the mechanics, flight attendants, or anybody else.

The valued airline customer can probably expect to be served by employees that are far more worried about the future.  And they have plenty to worry about.

The only direct beneficiarys of this “merger” are likely to be the deal makers themselves. Investment bankers, underwriters, consultants, and other specialists that neither bank, invest, underwrite, or consult will make tons of money. These are guys that think Mont Blanc pens are disposable.

With the exception of the wierd one that always seems to make a profit  airlines don’t really own much of anything anymore. General Electric, for example, owns most of the engines on most of the big guy’s airplanes.  When an airline can’t make the payments for equipment the creditors turn around and “loan” it more money.  In return the creditors like G.E. or American Express get special kinds of promises and stock that simple people like us would not understand.

If an airline were to stop operating and park the planes in the desert cash flow would stop. Even if the river of cash is running dry  when it is flowing there is still something to drink from, so the creditors will do anything possible to keep ‘em flying.

If the desert becomes full of parked airliners the big creditors will be holding empty promises and interesting classes of worthless stock. They have known this for a long time.

The “Deal” in and of itself creates considerable economic dustup. Both companies have all manner of diligence to do duly, audits to be approximated, assets have to be misstated

The airlines have already betrayed a fiduciary trust promised to the employees in an attempt to remain viable in these trying times.

These mergers are a means through which the stockholders will get their share of the screw job, it should be really interesting.

One thing that never works during a merger is combining the pilots from two established carriers in to one big pilot group. They can be put together in an amazing number of ways that are never really fair to everybody but nobody has come up with a compromise that has enjoyed full support from all of the pilots involved.

 So what will happen … If the thing is approved the airline will begin to merge. This is a little like the way spiders mate. Maintenance gradually is taken over between the two fleets, and pilot seniority lists must be combined through negotiations,  this will take a while. During the five or six year transition period the attitude of the employees might be great. It might not.

 Happy Landings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspecting Gadgets

By now you are wondering what the HELL is going on with the airlines and all these FAA inspections, grounding of hundreds of airplanes, thousands of cancelled flights, and scary media reports.

There is an old saying in the industry “The FAA is a pack of idiots”.  At times it seems true, but they are always the FAA and that much will never change.

Here is a brief and simplified explanation of the whole inspection thing.

Each critical aircraft component will have an inspection, overhaul, and/or replacement interval. This interval might be a certain number of landings, days, months, engine hours, engine cycles, years, or even something else that I don’t remember at the moment.

The inspection, overhaul, or replacement interval is decided largely by experience. Engineers at the aircraft maker with FAA agreement provide a schedule of maintenance and inspection for each new airplane when it is certificated.

 As a new aircraft type is used by the airlines any problems that come up are managed by changes to the maintenance program. Like about everything else in aviation this varies from one airline to another. Service difficulties with an airplane are reported to the FAA.  In response, depending on the severity and urgency of the problem the FAA will issue a directive to all operators of the same aircraft type.

This might be an informational service bulletin along the lines of “Hey, we just thought you might want to know that some other guys noticed that if you put too many potato peels down the disposal it seems to clog the sink”.

A little more urgent thing would be an Airworthines Directive, or A.D. Note. These are usually no big deal but can be extensive and expensive enough to scrap an entire fleet of airplanes. A typical A.D. Note might require a replacement or inspection of a dingus within a certain number of days, landings, months or so on.

The home version of this might be “Please get a new lock for the front door This Weekend,  while you’re at it get one for the back door too”.

Some A.D. Notes are recurring and some have conditional intervals. This just means that the interval will change depending on what the last inspection revealed. This ads an order of magnitude to the complexity of record keeping.  “Please take out the trash every Tuesday and Friday, unless you change the cat litter box, then take it out right away. But if nobody has been home all week and the trash is still empty you don’t have to take it out, except if there is cat litter in it. If somebody else changes the cat box you still have to take out the trash. Or, you can just look in the bag and see if it is full. Then give it a sniff and if it isn’t nasty don’t worry about it till tomorrow.

Some A.D.s have three or more different compliance intervals depending on any number of things like the results of the last inspection, the method of the inspection, or the method of repairing the problem in the first place.

Something really important and urgent will require compliance right away. These are called Emergency Airworthiness Directives and are always a big deal. “Check to make sure the wings are still bolted on before you try to fly again”. Now.

When this is multiplied by thousands of airplanes you can see that the record keeping task is challenging. You would need a computer or something just to keep track of it all.

Since we can be fairly sure that the airlines all have at least one computer and an I.T. person somebody can understand then why oh why are there so many compliance problems?  And why all at the same time?

This brings us back to why the FAA is often referred to as a pack of idiots when they are for the most part dedicated Federal Employees doing a difficult job fairly well.

The rules are written by and for attourneys. “To all persons using or causing to be used the kitchen sink. Not limited to the sink in the kitchen provided that such sink is used for purposes outlined in Subpart D excepting that said sink is equipped with garbage disposal appliance or accessory. Foreign materials defined under Subpart E category Peels of Potato Origin have been shown to cause clogging as reported by operators of similiar certificated type. Persuant to these subparts and provided herein previous directives regarding not reaching in the appliance while under power remain in effect”.

And then there are P O L I T I C I A N S

It doesn’t take much political Harumph to get a lot of attention when you are simply promoting aviation safety. Who doesn’t like safety? How can more safety be a bad thing?

The diversion of resources to hurredly re-inspect something that would in all likelyhood be just fine forever if it was never repaired seems scary. I think it might be important to ask “What were all those mechanics doing before the FAA Blue Ribbon Team showed up and started kicking tables over?”

In short, like I promised, the airlines do a good job of fixing things before they break. These is no profit incentive in not taking care of your equipment. Huge fines seem a little silly when the industry is going rapidly out of business.

Please expect more of this election year nonsense as the agency examines the remaining airlines. While they last.

Happy Landings.

Just Another Luckyjet Comment

Unexpected software changes require a new look for the page. This is a comment response from yesterday.  It is posted here cause …. it was just easier

The only real problem the aviation industry has is the price of fuel.

I just finished a four day trip with several flights each day. Our only delays were minor and a result of passenger issues. Four drunks were denied boarding, unaccompanied minors showed up at the last minute, battery powered wheelchairs had to be loaded etc.

All but one of our arrivals were on time and that one was a result of air traffic control being overwhelmed by corporate jet traffic.

As far as driving goes, It only takes a single fatal car accident to delay your travel considerably. Car travel kills way more than 50,000 people in America every year. I understand the benefits of driving but it doesn’t always come without delays too.

Every airline that is still in business is ready to fly all the time. We really do want to go, we just don’t want to get killed doing it, penalized by the FAA, or leave passengers behind. So we wait for severe weather, we wait to fix things that break, and we wait for connecting passengers.

It doesn’t make sense to have a 50 or 75 million dollar airplane and a crew sitting around just to not go if we can do so.

Some of the Air Traffic Control delays are possibly the result of a controller perception that the FAA is not bargaining in good faith to reach a fair work agreement. Maybe not, it’s hard to say.

The only reason over booking happens is that people think it is smart to reserve a seat on more than one flight. This is rarely a matter of a last minute travel plan necessity.

Suppose we were to hold a deposit for a reservation like hotels do. Then over booking would not be needed.

As for the twenty dollar penalty, consider that the largest airline in the USA makes a profit of about 40 dollars per flight. Not per passenger. TOTAL.

The rest of the airlines usually don’t make a profit anyway.

Thanks for your comments, Happy Landings

You Ain’t Seen Nothin Yet

This week ATA Airlines, Aloha Airlines, and Skybus Airlines ceased operations. 

If this doesn’t seem like a big deal just wait. The airline industry as we understand it today is melting away faster than the Antarctica ice.

Fares are cheap. Planes are full. Fuel is expensive.

Most airline companies will fail financially and cease operations. Pilots at United, Delta, American, and others have taken HUGE pay cuts, lost thier pensions and are still suffering the stress of lost job security. How can this be a good thing?

Pilots at Southwest were the lowest paid five years ago and never had a pension to start with. They do seem to have job security though.

Historically when times get tough airline management comes to the pilot group for concessions. The idea is that after a while things will get better and we can all share in the rewards. It hasn’t worked yet.

If the pilots had never agreed to pay concessions the industry would have had a total crisis about six years ago, twelve years ago, in the early nineties, mid eighties and several others. This seems to have happened about every six or eight years since 1930, and it has been much worse since de-regulation.

After the big industry “crash” there will be thousands of airliners parked in the desert with foil on the windows. General electric, American Express Credit, Guiness, and a host of others that hold the financial paper on the airframes and engines will suffer.

Maybe they can get a few billion from Congress and make it all better.

We are rapidly headed for a Re-Regulated airline industry, or a Domestic System with only one carrier, maybe two.  You’ll pay for it one way or the other.

Please check your seat belt, this will be a wild ride.

Happy Landings

FAA RAMPAGE

Regulatory agencies have a peculiar character. They are similar in that they are part of the same system of bureaucrazy. They each have a “cultural personality” which is unique. Just like people and corporate entities they tend to do the same things the same way.

Over and over and over.

They will also tend to cope with circumstances and change in the same manner as in the past without regard as to whether the method was effective.

Our FAA is no exception. Generally, everybody wants the seas to be smooth, the tide to be high and the moon to be full. Full moon, high tide and smooth water make for good sailing and good press. Invariably though, about every seven years some jackass will make a wave and the entire agency will convulse.

The convulsions are usually the result of an airline disaster and go like this:

1 Something horrible and predictable happens

2 Everybody says “How could this happen?”

3 Congress says HARUMPH!

4 The FAA requires a new procedure or piece of equipment, or both.

Last time it was the 911 disaster that set it all off.  The FAA should have prevented it. Plain and simple. There was such a Hurrumph over that one that an entire new Department Of Guberment was formed out of thin air and bad suits.

Before that was the tragic Value Jet crash. This resulted in thousands of pointless cockpit “ride along” FAA observation rides. A lot of farting about and the installation of cargo compartment fire detection and suppression technology that had been available since 1959.

The FAA only moves in response to the “normal” stimulus of an airline crash.  Anything that appears to be movement any other time should be classified as farting about.

The latest news media aviation nonsense is all about airline inspections. The numnuts congressman from some cold place said harumph because Southwest had “self disclosed” some documentation errors and might have overlooked some of the thousands of  fatigue crack inspections that are required.

They screwed up. They admitted it. They  parked several airplanes for a few days but they have a bunch more and seem to be doing just fine.

Now the entire industry is having to put up with hundreds of  “inspectors” that usually don’t inspect anything so they might not be very good at it, rooting around bothering our valued co-workers when they should be fixing the very problem the FAA is there to inspect.

American has suffered hundreds of cancellations for this same reason the last few days. The other carriers will have thier turn soon.

Don’t worry much about the whole inspection thing.  All of the airlines do a dang good job of keeping the airplanes airworthy. Whenever there is a problem that is caused by a failure or malfunction it is very rarely something that an inspection of any sort would have revealed anyway.  This is largely a record keeping issue.

The following guideline for FAA oversight may help.

 1. Has there been a disaster?   Yes, No

2. If no, is it an election year?   Yes, No

3. If yes then yell  HARUMHP!

4. Fart around and act busy, have a press conference, you might a better gig in the new administration.

Happy Landings

Light Management Duties

Most of what we do as pilots is just a structured set up for two people working in a confined space for several hours a day to avoid choking one another.

A fair amount of the Captain’s efforts are related to keeping the interior cockpit lighting just right for the task at hand and managing the exterior lights.  It doesn’t sound like much but the proper illumination level for all the instrument clusters and panels makes it much easier to see outside. Seeing outside is kind of a big deal, especially at low altitude where there could be unreported traffic. It also helps set the proper mood for the dramatic music we always hear in our heads.

The instrument panel lights on the First Officer’s side of the cockpit have several independant brightness controls. These are not directly controlled by the Captain but they are part of the “light show”.

There are hundreds of things first Officers are supposed to know that are not part of the training. This is, for the most part,  stuff your Dad or Uncle should have told you when you were a little kid. That is, of course, if you were raised in a family that has airline running all through it.

Some of the unwritten rules are as follows:

Do not run your main panel lights much brighter than the Captains.

If a single instrument on your side tends to be brighter than the rest then dim all of them. If you need more light ask the Captain,  “Mind if I turn these up a little?” Turn things back down for the approach and landing without being asked. This might make the Captain think you have the good sense to look outside.

If you must use the overhead map light then turn it off when you are finished. It should always  be turned on while dim then eased up to a setting you can use.

Your personal worth as a human being is often directly judged by a combination of how much of your approach chart data you can remember without turning that damn light back on and the suspicion that you have forgotten something.  The Captain already knows you have forgotten something.

You can only hope to be the brightest thing on your side of the cockpit when the lights are managed correctly.  Since you will screw up the temperature at least get the light levels on your side right.

If the Captain has to tell you multiple hundreds of times to turn the goddam map light off you might suck to fly with. That is not good.

Walk through the terminal with the Captain. Not in front of him. He shouldn’t walk ahead of you either unless he is a dick.

Always ask if there is any more trash to be thrown away before you take the cockpit trash bag out. “Hey, you got any more trash to throw away?” 

This stuff ain’t hard. Be considerate of your valued coworkers.

Happy Landings.

Where Does THAT go?

A little boy about five came to the front of the airplane and after a little encouragement from his mom asked “Where does the stuff go?”  What stuff, little man? “The poop, where does the poop go? In the sky? Does the poop go in the sky?” He turned and left in a fit of giggles before either of us could answer him.  Of course he did. Poop is probably one of the funniest things on the planet. Poop falling from the sky is an order of magnitude funnier.

A very long time ago when airliners were not pressurized you could actually see the ground through the “semi-flushing” toilet. There was no tank or anything, the poo n’ stuff just sailed right out there. That was a simpler time and the country was less populated. Most people were too busy barfing to really worry about it much.

Then came the days of giant pressurized airliners. This arrangement started in the  1940′s before jets. The new modern design brought the first “holding tanks”.  There was usually a tank for each toilet that could be emptied from the outside. Flushed with “blue water”, that was recycled from the tank with each flush,  these really didn’t change much for about 50 years or so. The water didn’t stay so blue for very long.

Current “next generation” jets generally have a common tank for multiple toilets. A combination of clean water and compressed air whisk all the poo n’ stuff away with a startling ka-whoosh. For some reason people still pee all over the floor.

Then what? In theory upon arrival our valued co-workers responsible for this sort of thing hook up a “lavatory service cart” to empty the tank.  Others “mop” the lavatory, which is a nice word for spread the pee around so it is thinner. I think it is great that this is about the only example of the word “lavatory” in common usage of American English.  

A little research would probably show that one of the airlines started using the word after WW II and it caught on since it sounds a lot better than shit-house and has fewer letters. 

The “Lav Cart” is then carted away to an approved location where it is connected to a sewer and dumped out in an approved and non-gross manner. They never seem to do anything at all with the mops that have been in airline use since 1937.

What could possibly go wrong?

In the old days an innocent person could have been smacked with an intact turd from a passing plane. This is one of the very few examples of the airline industry taking advantage of an available technology before the worst case scenario played out. If there was ever a documented turd strike it was hushed up since there appears to be no record of such an incident.

There have however been some tragic poo n’ stuff events in spite of the modern improved system since the  ”just let one fly” days. This is why we have the “next generation” system.

Jets (as you know if you are a regular reader) fly at high altitude where the air is thin, smooth and cold.  About fifty degrees below zero. A small leak from the filler connection of a poo n’ stuff holding tank can result in a sizable chunk of poo n’ stuff ice forming on the outside of the plane.  These things can easily weigh thirty or forty pounds.

When the airplane descends to warmer air the giant frozen poo n’ stuff  ball becomes detached and hurtles to the ground usually coming apart or falling harmlessly to earth in an unpopulated area.

There was a family having breakfast one morning as a  jet airliner flew over on approach to a nearby international airport. An enormous frozen blue poo n’ stuff ball crashed through their roof and exploded in the center of the kitchen.

As I recall there were no injuries reported but I’ll bet they got to stay home from school.

Happy Landings. 

I think this is a bug on the window but it could be . . . . . .

How Do You Remember What All That Does?

First of all there is a full set of  flight instruments for each pilot. The really critical flight instruments have at least one additional “back-up” instrument for use in the event all power to the main ones is lost. This makes the front panel look twice as complicated as necessary. Each major system has switches, most we don’t normally use much.

Practically everything else was installed as a result of a nasty accident. The FAA equipment requirements are historically reactionary and the airlines are historically cheap. Instead of shopping for new equipment like a 17 year old at a car stereo shop with a stolen credit card the airlines are mostly interested in reliability and economy. 

We remember how the systems of the airplane work in much the same way you remember how to operate your house.

If all  the switches for your house and all the appliances were located in a hall closet it would look impressive too. People might say things like “How the hell do you know what all the switches do?” It’s easy.

This is the toaster dark-light control, this is the bread ejector lever.  Over here we have the extra rinse cycle next to the garbage disposal on / off switch and the garage door opener.  This is the door bell and this row here is for the DVD-VCR-DVR for CNN, NBC, MTV, CBS, TNN and AC.  Flip this switch to here and you get a big eyed grumpy ex-prosecutor, flip this one and we can cool off the house in the summer.

Once in a while we forget a switch, once in a while you leave the garage open all night or your keys in the door.  People do stuff like that. 

This is why most of the important stuff has a big orange light that comes on when it isn’t working.

Red lights are usually r e a l powerful stuff. Fire warnings, parking brakes, and such. 

Blue lights are for things that are generally not always needed but are on and working fine for now just in case anybody cares. Bright blue lights are for things that you tried to turn on but haven’t quite come all the way on yet and might be stuck if you don’t notice the light is still bright and could result in an orange light later.  Or worse yet, a lot of orange lights.

For the most part we are required to know how to “work” something as opposed to “how it works”. It is more important to know the difference between the blender and the washer than it is to know how fast the RPM of the blender is. 

Just like your home it is important to be able to find important things in the dark. A basic understanding of what to do in an emergency is also kind of a big deal for us.

Did you know you are supposed to stay near the floor and crawl out like crazy in the event of a house fire?

 What should you do in the event of an impending home invasion when you have forgotten to bring your guns to the dinner table?

Safety preparation and training is probably just as important for the home as it is for anywhere. I try to be over-prepared for everything we can think of that could go weird when you fly. Please take a little time and prepare for things that will probably never happen at home.

Happy Landings

Truth about Turbulence

Turbulence comes in several varieties since it is caused by different things.  The  vast majority of the time the severity of turbulence is not reported clearly.

My Dad, C.V. explained it like this: If you are really good at it you can usually drink coffee in light turbulence. Not always, but usually. If the ride isn’t smooth but it is still easy to drink coffee just report it as almost smooth. Unless you go to work for Delta …. then just complain all the time.

It is impossible to drink coffee in moderate turbulence. You can try but you’ll end up wearing some of it.

In severe turbulence you forget that you even had coffee.

Severe, or worse than severe, will hurt people that are even wearing seat belts and can damage the airplane. The coffee doesn’t enter into it. This almost never happens.

There are other descriptions, codes, number systems, etc, but these work pretty well. Different airlines have different methods of warning their pilots about rough air that has been reported or forecast. None of these is perfect since many of the things that cause rough air are invisible, and there isn’t always somebody if front of us to report what is out there.

Low Altitude Bumps: This is caused by uneven heating of the Earth’s surface by the sun’s energy. Thermal currents which are pretty much just wind blowing up or down instead of sideways jostle the airplane up and down as it goes along.  This uncomfortable nonsense usually stops at the altitude where the cloud bases are.

Strong surface winds interacting with the ground also make it rough down low.

These types of rough air are predictable. If it is hot or windy and you are going to land or take off it is going to be rough. This is rarely worse than light to moderate and isn’t dangerous. Prolonged flight when it is rough like this will probably start a barfing contest. These are great fun.

Even experienced fliers often think this is what we are talking about when we ask everyone to stay seated. Not true.

The reason we want you to wear a seat belt is to keep you from breaking your neck if you hit the ceiling at sixty miles an hour. This sort of turbulence almost never happens but when it does bad things happen. The airplane will be just fine, there is no need to worry about it coming apart or anything interesting like that. It is the contents of the airplane we are concerned with.

I know a lot of our valued passengers are anxious about flying in any kind of weather, good  or bad. The majority of the time when the passengers are all having a freak fit the guys in the front still have their feet up looking outside.

When there is information available to the pilots we can usually tell what is coming. Often it is more of an art than a science so buckle up while I explain the weird part.

A very long time ago toward the end of World War II airplanes started to get lost. Very lost. As in “we ended up 800 miles from the destination” lost. The Japanese already knew about it but this is how we discovered the high altitude winds called the Jet Stream.

The Jet Stream is a relatively small “river” of fast moving air that circles the globe at high altitude from West to East in the northern hemisphere. In winter months the Jet Stream can be found relatively low and farther south than in summer. This is why you can always expect a strong tailwind from Los Angeles to New York in the winter.

The jet stream can be as much as 200 knots. Imagine a garden hose of high velocity water. Imagine putting the garden hose in a big fish tank. Imagine you are a fish. This is how the jet stream creates “clear air” turbulence.

We know that the Jet Stream is near the Tropopause. This is the boundary between the unstable low altitude Troposphere where most of the weather resides and the relatively stable Stratosphere where the air is thin, cold, and usually smooth. We can watch the outside air temperature and find the Tropopause. Sometimes it makes sense to stay in it if the tailwind is good enough.

Another type of high altitude turbulence is the “Mountain Wave”. This is caused by a dramatic interaction between strong surface wind and mountains.  It doesn’t seem like mountains would be big enough to make a difference but they do when the wind is really strong. A two mile high mountain can easily create turbulence that causes problems ten miles high. This is common when crossing the Rocky Mountains  or the Sierra Nevada.

Now you know as much as most pilots remember about rough air.

What should you do if you are up and around and the air gets rough?

If possible hook your feet under that railing beneath a seat, and put your hands up to hold against an overhead bin. Try to keep your knees and elbows bent slightly instead of locked stiff.  If you are standing in a galley area (you aren’t welcome there), (even if you are tolerated), try to hang on but beware of the galley doors flying open and creating sharp corners.

Please keep your seat belt loosely fastened while you are seated ……….. this is why.

People Watching 101

Airports have got to be one of the top three best places to watch people.  Here we have a near perfect cross-section of society. It seems to me that they would eventually get where they are going and stay there, but they never do.

Some of the highlights of three hours of crowd observing today while waiting for the airplane to show up:

The enormous guy leaning back against a railing in a chair made for a little kid eating pizza with both hands. Some things are self explanatory.

The two guys, both with that blue communication thing stuck in their head, standing near each other. They were both using that LOUD VOICE that cell phone people use sometimes but there was evidently cross-talk since they kept giving each other a “what-the-fuck” look. I would love to know what they are thinking. Maybe the person on the other end og the conversation is responding to what the other guy said. What could ever go wrong with that?

A mom with her daughter about thirteen. The mom is dressed exactly like a 1981 street hooker, the daughter is dressed like a street hooker from the future.  This is fairly common but the mom seems to be making it a point to give everybody that looks at her daughter a nasty look. I would love to know what she is thinking.

A mom walking by carrying all of the stuff while her eleven year old son bitches, moans, and whines. He is fixated on her, and bitching and moaning, not watching where he is going. I don’t think she did it on purpose but she walked kind of close to a big column in the terminal. The kid smacked in to it. HA. I think I might have psychically willed this to happen.

Two airline employees walk by complaining about a valued co-worker in a loud voice, I’ll bet they do this all the time, every day.

An Indian guy with a turban on his head gets great looks from about everybody. I would love to know what they are thinking.

A cop with an enormous belly in front of his otherwise height / weight proportional self drops his cop radio and says fuck. I’d love to know if he realized he said it.

A girl with a lot of piercings and tatoos and a lot of herself showing checks herself out in a reflection of a window. I’m thinking that she is thinking “yes,this is exactly what I was going for”.  That must feel good.

Did you notice the guy in the pilot uniform sitting around for hours typing on a laptop?  If you wonder what he is thinking he is probably wondering what you are thinking.

One Of Those Landings

People never remember the stuff that impresses pilots. I guess they don’t notice it.

The descent  took more planning than usual due to mountainous terrain, high winds and convective weather in the area.  It didn’t pay extra though.

There was a bit of a “set to” with approach control when I needed a course deviation for weather and the controller said in kind of a pissy voice “I don’t show any weather at your 12 o’clock” My response was something about us having radar AND windows both of which require the turn we are making now. So the turn was approved after the fact but we were moved back in the line-up. It didn’t piss me off at all, not even a little bit, I’m surprised I even remember it.  There isn’t room in the cockpit to throw a fit anyway.

 What would have been four mile right hand traffic pattern turned into an eight mile left handed wifferdill back across the approach course and eventually to the runway. That’s ok. Really. Even though it didn’t pay extra. It does not piss me off. Not a bit.

There was a lot of headwind so I delayed landing gear extension until late in the approach to save fuel. This also makes the approach quiet for not only those on the ground but also our valued passengers. 

Even with the wind changing by about thirty knots from a thousand feet to the surface the visual approach was flown within three or fours knots of target speed all the way down. That’s no big deal, we just do it that way now.  If we don’t the airplane will rat us out to management via satellite datalink before we even land.

Somewhere about four feet above touchdown everything tried to turn to shit. This is an aviation term meaning an unexpected decrease of aircraft threshold energy resulting in a rapidly increasing sink rate,  ie. about to crash.

Small abrupt windshear events cause this sort of thing and other than messing up what would have been an ordinary landing are no big deal. Usually.

Most often when this happens a pilot will raise the nose in order to arrest the sink rate. Since the wheels of a swept wing airplane are way behind the center of gravity this “rotates” the landing gear into the cement with considerable velocity. The sink rate of the airplane might actually decrease but the wheels will Spank the ground. This is generally perceived as a “bad” landing.

So, what makes this memorable for me is that instead of the intuitive yank back on the yoke, or even just a little positive back pressure, or a flinch that would have smacked the wheels down I actually saved it through clever use of the 727 Roll-On.

The roll-on is one of those techniques that is actually a category of maneuvers. All of which are performed below 3 feet of altitude with various results. There is the roll-on, the modified roll-on, the hoy-yah, and others. Landing a large jet is a lot like surfing in this regard. A lot of times you might not know what trick you just did unless somebody else gives it a name.

The 727 roll-on gets it’s name from the Boeing 727 which has all three of it’s engines above the center of gravity and the wheels way behind the C.G. If you can manage to get the 727 about 5 feet high and just goose the thrust a little while pushing the nose down a good landing usually is the result.

The landing that resulted today was truly something to be recorded. There was no perceptible difference between the part where we were flying and the part where we weren’t. Exactly at the touchdown target zone  the wheels began to brush, then carress the runway. Gently the roundness of the tires meshed with the raised  areas between the grains of concrete and friction started to take place. The wheels spun up to the speed of the airplane gradually instead of suddenly and the struts began to accept the weight of the airplane gracefully as it was smoothly offered by the wings in  little increments. I made some smart ass remark like “I think the number three tire is a little out of round” to the First Officer as I turned off of the runway half way down.

This was one of those landings that happens maybe once a year for me and I fly a lot. I also generally make smooth landings but this was different. This was a combination of physics, art, skill, and blind stumbling luck. It was mine though, the best one of the year so far and nobody said a damn word about it. Not a single wow, oh my, or kiss my ass, from anybody on the airplane. That doesn’t piss me off any either. Not even a little.

Pilot Fortunes

Airline employees make a ton of money … right?

Lets start with the Captain.  Each airline has a different  pay-scale and work rules. The “commuter” airline pay is horrible. Pilots leave after five to ten years when they can get hired at a “major” and start over at the bottom of the seniority list. If anybody is hiring.

Pilots with the major airlines have taken up to a 30 percent pay CUT  since 9-11. This is not due to inflation or creative accounting of some sort, it is a real decrease in salary. Pilots have had to accept reduced pay so the airlines can afford to buy fuel, and subsidise low fares. Some carriers  compensate pilots partly through stock options which are now worthless.

For the same period airline “executives” have received hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, severance packages and “incentives”. This seems a little greedy.

So…. you guys made an amazing amount of money to start with and a pay cut should be no big deal, right?

Wrong.  There is a difference between the VALUE of a professional service rendered and the LEAST someone else might do it for.  I want all of the medical professionals, nuke plant engineers, train brakemen, ship Captains, and pilots to be well paid and worry free.

In 1970 an Airline Captain was paid the equivalent of  12 new Corvettes per year.  Today Captains are paid about 4.5 Corvettes a year at most. We could use a different unit for comparison but it works out the same or worse if you use the price of about anything.

Were the pilots of the pre-discount era any better?  They certainly had fewer problems to worry about, more money, more time off, less stress, and a much higher standard of living. I should think that you would want your pilots behind the big door to be stress free. They ain’t. 

So it is still a lot of money.  About 130 to 200 K per year. For being at work 80 to 90 hours a week, away from home 15 to 18 nights per month, working most holidays, getting up at four AM some days, working till two AM other days, and having a large percentage of the worlds population waiting to jump up and down with an AK-47 gleeful that some dipshit blew up another airplane. 

Then there is the physical exam required every 6 months that can end the career or the semi-annual “bet your career” two hour comprehensive orals and four hour simulator check, everything you do and say being recorded, across the board reduction or elimination of pilot pensions and retirement health care, throw in the years of expensive training, required experience gained through low paying entry level jobs or the military, airport security, drug testing, the near impossibility of having a normal family circumstance and the mind numbing boredom of most FAA required training (most of which is useless) and you have a great career opportunity. If your airline fails for whatever reason you will be lucky to start over as a co-pilot at another company at the bottom of the pay-scale and seniority list.

On balance, the view makes it all worth it.

Do You Read?

“Do you read?” is airplane talk for “Can you hear me, and/or are you listening, dumbass?” We have all heard this a time or two.

The big hoo-wah over the guys in Hawaii over flying the airport by 15 miles is disturbing. The overflight is a little disturbing, the hoo-wah is worse. It seems there was  a lapse of situational awareness on the part of the crew. They might have been talking and not paying attention to position, might have misprogrammed something and convinced themselves they weren’t there yet, or might even have drifted off in a snooze.  They were probably really, significantly, profoundly tired.  

The schedules these guys fly are often brutal. Pilot fatigue is a serious on-going problem and will be dealt with effectively only when pilots can make a descent living for a reasonable work day.  You know, like we like to think airlines are. 

It worked out just fine though.

It is fairly common for airplanes to go “off frequency” accidentally for several minutes at a time while enroute at cruising altitude.  There are any number of little mistakes that can cause this.

Once in a while an airplane will miss a turn or altitude assignment while off frequency and the controller might not notice right away. For both to happen at the same time is very uncommon but still rarely causes any real trouble. 
It might be necessary for controllers to instruct other planes to do something different than originally planned if this happens.  There are several means for Air Traffic Control to communicate with most airliners, the radio is just one of them.

For the most part except during a busy departure or arrival there isn’t usually a great deal of urgency for controllers to talk to the pilots. The urgency factor is inversely proportional to altitude, and always dependent on everybody else paying attention.

Controller workload increases dramatically when pilots miss radio calls in a busy enviornment. They don’t like it a bit and are not bashful when it comes to expressing their feelings. And when they give you a phone number so you can call up and have the rest of your butt chewed right off it is never a good thing.

Happy Landings

Brandy Anyone?

Today in the news it was reported as a Big Damn Deal that an airplane flew using biofuel.

A jet engine is a remarkable piece of machinery. Someday soon I’ll  explain how one works if anybody cares. In the meantime please understand that the things have ALWAYS been able to run on about ANY liquid that will flow through a tube  and burn. 

Gasoline, coal oil, alcohol, acetone, even kerosene works fine. And now biofuel.

Actually, kerosene is jet fuel, there are some additives to reduce microbe growth and prevent icing but it is the same stuff. This is why a cold winter always brings higher jet fuel prices. Home heating Oil and Jet fuel are the exact same stuff. 

Maybe as an alternative to  using all of our agricultural resources to grow corn for ethanol and other biofuel nonsense we should just stop using heating oil. A few million Americans would be a little chilly during the winter but the rest of us would be able to afford food. Freeze or starve, let’s pick.

Please don’t get me wrong, I think the oil companies are a pack of thieving multi-national, un-American bandits. Petroleum based products are still inarguably far and away the most sensible liquid fuel for airplanes.

When you see prices go absolutely batshit at the grocery store it will be a direct result of this biofuel bullshit. Corn is feed for cattle. Using corn for fuel = High corn prices = high burger prices = us starving. 

The amount of energy required to produce ethanol makes the entire process absurd. Ethanol is the exact same stuff as White Lightning. Corn Liquor.  The energy to make the ethanol comes from coal. Coal is dirty stuff to burn, so any possible environmental benefit is offset by far.

Do not be fooled into thinking that by wrecking our food supply we will reduce our reliance on foreign oil. Where does all of the Alaskan North Slope oil from the pipeline go now anyway? Apply some logic and look at a globe. It ain’t Texas.

If you are concerned about foreign oil imports stop driving like fuel is free. The airlines have and it has cut fuel consumption by 10 percent or more.

And another worry, a big one. Suppose something causes a sudden public understanding of what nonsense the whole corn ethanol thing is, and the monthly billions the government is dumping into corn subsidies stop.  This could trigger a collapse in the corn market which could trigger the bankruptcy of  agriculture. 

Kind of like a great depression except we would need a new name.

Maybe the Great Dysfunction.

More Than A Feeling

We feel some weird stuff  when we fly. Part of the reason for this is that flying is kind of a weird activity in the first place.

People are very sensitive to acceleration. Our inner ear is a precision instrument for balance perception and our brain is a really fast processor. This makes it easy for us to stand and walk.

Our brains are also very good at finding patterns. Patterns in numbers, pictures, sounds, and sensory input.  Also, our brains will often create a pattern where one doesn’t exist and one of our senses can cause errors of perception in the others. This is a large part of why flying without visual reference to the horizon is a skill acquired only through considerable training. Up doesn’t always feel like up.

The takeoff begins with acceleration. When the brakes are released and the power is pushed up the speed increases and we feel “pushed back” in the seat.  This is because we are being pushed back in the seat.

Engineers call the maneuver when the nose of the airplane is raised up on takeoff “rotation”.  An airliner at average takeoff weight generally rotates at around 3 degrees per second once the proper takeoff speed is reached. This provides for a pitch attitude of about 8 degrees “nose up” as the wheels leave the ground.  Airliners have a limit of allowable pitch during takeoff to prevent the tail from dragging the ground.  A “tail strike” is a bad thing so we don’t exceed this limit.

As the landing gear is retracted our speed is about 30 percent more than the minimum stall speed for the wings and the pitch is at around 10 degrees and increasing to an initial climb value of 18 to 20 degrees. This makes us feel pushed down in the seat a little as the pitch is increased.  If you were sitting on a scale your measured weight would increase about 10 percent. ( a total guess)

It has only been 40 seconds or so since brake release and this is already enough to confound our human balance sensory processing. When you can’t see outside, the inner ear will often interpret acceleration as a turning movement. The combination of this and the conflicting visual input of  the stationary airplane interior which is clearly not turning makes people feel weird.

After getting off the ground our next objective is to get up to a safe altitude in the event of engine failure so the 18 or 20 degrees of pitch persists for another half  a minute or so. A turn might be started during this time, introducing yet another confusing sensory input.

When about one thousand feet high it is time to start accelerating to flap retraction speed and “cleaning up” the airplane.  This doesn’t involve throwing away candy wrappers but is a general description of  retracting the flaps and anything else than hangs out.

The pitch attitude is lowered to about 13 degrees, this might make you feel “lighter” in the seat.  The 5 degree change doesn’t sound like much but it is easily perceptible, especially if it isn’t done smoothly. By the time we reach about three thousand feet our speed is at 250 knots and our “acceleration state” should be pretty much neutral.

There are almost always level offs , speed changes, and turns on the way up to cruise altitude. These aren’t as dramatic as the takeoff but if you are sensitive you might notice a difference in acceleration.

When there are visual cues outside most people feel less uncomfortable. Misleading visual cues like slanted clouds or rows of lights can cause you to feel like the airplane is leaning  to one side or turning when it isn’t.

If you are bothered by motion sickness consider getting a window seat.  Watch outside during the takeoff and climb. Try to look at the horizon as far away as possible.  This might help you stay better oriented. 

 Happy landings

Whazat Noise

The noises that go along with a flight can tell you a lot about what’s going on.

All of this applies to the Boeing. Those weird French airbusters make different noises. If it ain’t a Boeing I ain’t going…. Yea, ‘Merica and all that.

Before pushback you may hear:

A irregular thumping from under the floor. This is the sound of guys cramming suitcases in the cargo bins. This is always done by hand, since we haven’t come up with a machine that can break things and pull the handles off effectively. 

 The “belt-loader” is a small car chassis with an engine driven conveyor mounted on it. These make a squealing noise when the conveyor bearings are bad. Otherwise they just help to move the bags from the wagon to the airplane.

 On a windy day you may hear a regular clackaty clackaty sound, this is the fan blades of the engine flopping around and touching the sies of the fan shroud as the wind makes the engine turn. With a strong tail wind the engines might even turn backwards. The engines turning like this doesn’t hurt anything but some times it makes a hydraulic system sense a fault and creates a simulated leak.

Near the rear of the plane you might hear a small turbine engine. A loud exhaust noise usually obscures the turbine noise. This little engine is the APU, or Auxiliary Power Unit. It is the power plant for our little airplane kingdom that makes us independent from the world for our power and air conditioning needs while the main engines are shut down.

Many airlines are limiting the use of the APU in an  attempt to save money on fuel. The APU normally provides air for starting the main engines so it is started  about five minutes before push back. Or when the cockpit gets uncomfortable.

The majority of announcements you hear before boarding are FAA required. You already know where the exits are, and the oxygen mask thing will just give you something to mess with while the crew figures out what the hell is going on in the event of blah …blah…

The air conditioning is ALWAYS turned OFF during engine start. This isn’t out of  orneryness, the air systems are needed for the engine’s starter. Generally, an attempt to start an engine with the air conditioning running won’t work and could cause several million dollars in engine damage. And a delay while a new engine is installed.

Occasionally the APU won’t be working and you might hear ground service equipment that provides air for starting the engines. This thing sounds like a low pitched siren and  is really loud. When these things are used both engines will be started at the gate before brake release.

If you are seated at mid-cabin over the wings you might hear a “bareeeep ” sound when the brakes are released. This is the parking brake valve opening. Any time the airplane is stopped for a moment the parking brake is usually set so you might hear this faint noise a few times during taxi.

Wing flaps and leading edge flaps and slats change the shape of the wing and increase the size of the wing . This allows the airplane to takeoff and land at much lower speeds than it ever could without them. If you watch a large bird land you will notice that they always spread feathers out and curve their wings to slow down. It doesn’t make much noise when they do this since birds aren’t hydraulic.

As the wing flaps are extended for takeoff these is a raa raa raa raa raa raa rrrrrr rrr noise from under the floor at about mid cabin. The flaps are mostly mechanical and hydraulically driven. This involves quite a bit of machinery. Most airlines extend the flaps before taxi out. Some complete the before takeoff checklist during taxi out.

If you watch closely you will see the ailerons move up then down and back to neutral at the pilot exercises the controls. This is done to ensure freedom of movement. The ailerons are on the trailing edge of the wing toward the tip.

After takeoff there is a whooosh bathump sound. This is the landing gear retracting.

The flaps are usually retracted in stages after takeoff. This makes more of the raa raa noise.

The assorted bells and chimes are different for each airline. Things that signal disaster for the crew at one company mean that every thing is fine at another. The bells, chimes, and codes change all the time anyway so it would be pointless to explain them even if it weren’t a secret.

You may notice on occasion that engine power is actually increased after takeoff. This is a normal part of power management and will take a few hundred words to explain. The short version is that we usually don’t use all of the power.

The sound of the crew saying thank you is authentic gratitude. Our industry is in big trouble.  Happy Landings.

Bendy Things

Why do the wings bend and flex so much in rough air?

So they don’t break. Things than bend are stronger than things that are rigid. Don’t be alarmed by the wings of a jet plane flopping around in rough air, they are made for it.

For the valued customer in the flower print jumpsuit: 

Why did the pilot riding in the back of the airplane give you such a surly look?

Because the seventeenth time you yanked on the back of his seat to haul your self up he was dreaming of choking you. It was only a dream.

Why is there so much “give” in the floor of an airliner that you can feel the floor move when the Flight Attendants tromp back and forth?

Three reasons really. Some F/A s never seem to walk gracefully, they tromp. Maybe it makes them feel more stable. The floor is made to be light, not rigid. We could make the floor feel really strong but then we couldn’t carry passengers or fuel because of the extra weight.

Why do people slam the overhead bin doors so damn hard when all that is required is that they be pushed closed? Nobody really knows.

Why don’t the airlines charge people for breaking things like overhead bin doors when they are cramming stuff in the bin that is obviously to big? They just haven’t thought of it yet but when they do . . . .

Why don’t the airlines charge for reservations like a rental car company or hotel? Then maybe they wouldn’t need to “overbook” in order to sell the seats. Nobody knows.

Why do babies cry on airplanes? Because their ears hurt. Or they are pissed off about a weather delay, it’s hard to tell.

Why can’t we all just be more flexible and compassionate?  Who the hell says we ain’t.

Your Luggage

Luggage used to be what it is called. You had to lug it around because it was big and heavy. When your coach or car brought you to the train station a uniformed porter would port your luggage to a cart and put it with other bags and trunks to be loaded on the same train.

People that had any intention of ever seeing all of their things again would tip the nice man.

Now, here in the future, things haven’t changed all that much.  Except the whole train thing, those are pretty much gone.  At least as far as effective long distance passenger service is concerned. And nobody carries bags anymore, we drag them. Should it should be called rollage? Or maybe dragage?

The bags are still surrendered to a uniformed person that has the success of your entire trip in their personal power. Tipping might still be a good idea.

Generally mistakes are rare when it comes to checking a bag to the correct destination and having it get there. What could possibly go wrong? I read that about 1 percent of baggage is “mis-handled”. It doesn’t sound like much but if there are a hundred bags on a flight on average one of them should probably be somewhere else.

Things That Possibly go Wrong

1. When you are asked by anyone having anything to do with your bags what your destination is always answer with the “AIRPORT” and “CITY”.  Many airlines serve multiple airports near the same city.  For example “Washington, Dulles” or Intercontinental, Bush, Houston” could be good answers.  Some airports have several names which are used interchangeably like Hartford-Bradley-Windsor Locks.  A true road warrior will know the three letter identifier for the destination. IAH, BDL, whatever. Check to see that your bag is tagged to the place you next want to see it.

2. If you have a lay-over in say, Dallas, change planes then continue to Seattle on the same airline your destination is still Seattle. The only exception might be a stroller you need for the baby during a long layover. Some airlines will bring the stroller up for you to use during a layover but it might not be worth the trouble.

3. If you have a lay-over in Dallas and you are continuing on a different airline to Seattle be sure to explain in the following language: “My destination is Seattle on brand X air, I am connecting on Brand A airlines at DFW.”  Will my bags transfer “interline”? Or will I need to claim and re-check to the destination. A brief weird explanation will follow. Ask questions, get answers. Look at the claim check.

4. Picture the top of an SUV. Picture all of your baggage stacked up there. Picture someone tossing it off to the ground. Gleefully. The happy baggage handlers are still hard at work getting your baggage from carts to the airplane and back to the conveyor system where the straps can get caught in the works of the machinery and pulled off.

5. Never ever have nice luggage. Those utility totes that the big home improvement stores sell make great travel bags. They have wheels, are tough and allow for dragging even more stuff along too. Nice luggage gets damaged, fact’ o life. Luggage straps will cause a bag to get mis-routed because it can confound the machinery. A strap may get tangled in a machine and delay the bag until after the flight has left. You might even see it again someday. Click straps are great if they are kept tight.

6. Never ever have tags or stickers on your bag that are from a previous flight. When things get weird and somebody sees only the destination, not last years date, your bag may well end up where you were last year. Or Worse.

7. Baggage that is common should be personalized with a ribbon, sticker or something. People actually do confuse bags sometimes. Make it easy for us to find out who you are and how to contact you right away if this happens. We usually try to find people at the rental car counter. A copy of your itinerary in a easy to find packet is a good idea.

8. Most lost baggage (the kind you never see again) is actually stolen. Never make your baggage look nice. It should be durable but not attractive.  It shouldn’t spend any more time alone than necessary at the baggage claim place.  Thieves will usually take bags that are common in appearance so they can say they thought it was theirs.

9. Locks are not cool, the TSA inspectors will often take them off. If they won’t come off easily the bag will be delayed.

10. NEVER pack anything hazardous. the FAA and TSA have really good web resources for what hazardous means. Some of the less obvious things are matches, mercury, batteries, or any kind of fireworks. Hazardous stuff presented for air transport creates a violation of Federal law and can get you in a huge amount of trouble.

Carry on bags might always have to be checked in the cargo bin at the last minute so keep a little bag inside the carry-on  for medication, cameras, and stuff you can’t part with gleefully. Just say. “Sure I can check it if I must, just let me get my medication and diamonds out”.

Thank you for playing along, Happy Landings

Here for Your Safety . . . .

When I first was exposed to the airline industry nobody would have known what the hell you were talking about if you said “Flight Attendant”. They were called “Stewardess or Hostess” depending on the airline. Generally the terms were interchangeable.

In the very early days the airlines required them to be registered nurses. This seems a bit silly now but when you consider that none of the airplanes were air-conditioned or pressurized and a coast to coast flight took about 18 hours it starts to make sense.

Here some other requirements, some of which are still in effect:

• Female
• 18 to 30 years old
• Pleasing in appearance
• Single
• Never ever “expectant”
• Height Weight proportioned
• Able to lift 50 pounds
• 5’2 up to 5’9
• High School graduate
• Medically documented virgin  (only to start out we presume)

As the industry was overtaken by jet powered equipment and the end of the 1960s things began to change. The first real change was the addition of guys to the hostess ranks. This seemed to require a job title enhancement since “boy hostess”, although often correct, just wasn’t right.

Company by company policies changed gradually. Many changed as a result of lawsuits. Many changed as a result of drift in hiring priorities. Some things changed just as a result of decency and  a desire to do the right thing.

As a result the  “Flight Attendant” demographic has changed from relatively liberated young single ladies with no dependants, under about 120 pounds and cute to about the opposite end of the spectrum.

Some carriers are said to prefer hiring older flight attendants since they will presumably quit before reaching the higher end of the pay scale. All carriers (domestic) have dropped weight guidelines. The increased crew weight costs a fortune in additional fuel. Mass = Gas.

Married is fine now. Pesky Federal Law prevents marital status discrimination.

Sexual orientation although presumably transparent to the hiring policy seems at least to favour having too much style for one gender.

Facial hair is allowed for the guys now. Pilots are not allowed to have beards since there is concern that the oxygen mask might not seal properly.

Pregnant is also just fine. I do have concerns about extended oxygen deprivation though, especially in the third trimester. Airplane pressurization is an area most doctors just don’t understand.

So things have changed. It seems fair.  I do wonder where all the pilots are going to find a cute hostess to marry. Mine happened to live next door and didn’t fly very long since she really wasn’t buying into the Barbie ideal. Seems like almost nobody else was either.

Whazzat #7

When seated where you have a good view of the wing you will see little flapper things that come up from the top of the wing. These are generally called “spoilers”. They are intended to spoil the lift from part of the wing.  They also increase drag and help to slow the airplane down.  In the air only some of them are used and they don’t move all the way up.

When the ailerons are deflected  (a turn is started) the spoiler on the “low” wing will come up a little. This increases the roll rate of the airplane and makes it more sensitive to control input.  Since big airplanes handle a lot like a U-Haul truck  this is a good thing.

When descending you may occasionally notice the spoilers are extended for a period of time. This generally  indicates that the pilot is trying to get down more quickly than originally planned.  Getting down is something pilots always do.

Even a good plan needs to be flexible and sometimes we even forget to start down when we should. An unexpected tailwind can also put the airplane closer to an altitude restriction point than planned. When this happens the spoilers or “speed brakes” help a little to catch up but  Boeing airplanes (especially the 737)  are notorious for  just rumbling a little and not slowing down much.

Just after touchdown all of the spoilers extend fully. This helps to spoil most of the lift and puts weight on the wheels to make the brakes effective. Effective brakes are a good thing on a short wet runway.

Reverse thrust from the engines also helps to slow and stop the airplane but takes a while to become effective, that’s another story.

Happy Landings

Only Engines Should Whine

Oh Good Grief!

Airline delays reach new records….bullshit.

 It’s really important to understand a few things if you want this in perspective. If, on the other hand, you are part of a corporate decision making thinkhead group trying to justify the lease/purchase/timeshare of a multi-million dollar private jet then hide this from your boss.

#1. Nobody keeps track of flights that arrive early. Shouldn’t early arrivals offset some of the late ones?

#2. Most lost or mis-directed luggage is recovered. Usually pretty quickly. The rest of it is probably stolen.  Bust on down to baggage claim before somebody else takes your stuff. Especially in Atlanta.

#3. Bad weather causes delays. Thunder storms and winter wonderland scenarios are dangerous for all airplanes.  Avoiding danger takes time.

#4. Be nice, relax. Sometimes the plane is slow, but the sky is patient. You need to float like a leaf on the river of life.  Then fly at 600 miles per hour to get where you are going with a nasty kid kicking the back of your seat the entire time.

#5. You have the right to a bill of rights, you also stand a good chance of having a nationalized airline industry if the one we have now fails.

# 6. Flight crews do not make a big sack of money for being late, and we want to go home too. So be nice, we are probably gone from home more than you are.

# 7 Employees, government and otherwise,  often do a worse job when they want a raise. Our controllers are government employees.

# 8 It is true that privately operated jets make travel about a hundred times easier, but they are in many cases about a hundred times more costly and statistically an order of magnitude or so more risky than airline travel.

Be Nice and have Happy Landings

Moron This Later

Just in case you still thought pilots were smart check out the intellectual midget posting an article for AOL as captain for a major airline. References to airport security procedures, policies, and enforcement are not protected under “Free Speech”. Some pesky thing about homeland security prohibits this, but only if you know anything about it. Which he probably does.

The fun part now. AOL also had a huge “thing” on how to park a 757 using an automated parking system with Left and Right light signals. There should always be a person outside guiding the airplane, mainly to act as a safety observer in case someone wanders into the danger zone while you are parking. They call it the safety zone but I don’t understand why, being the most dangerous place on the airport.

 All the captain really needs to do is line up the head of the windshield wiper attach bolt with the extended centerline of the parking line and pull forward until the edge of the jetbridge is in the appropriate place on the side window for the type airplane.

It takes a little practice to know when your tail and thus your ass are behind you.

When the airplane is approaching the gate it really is a good idea for passengers to remain seated. Even though we aren’t going very fast in the event of an emergency stop it will feel like hitting a dumpster with a trike. If you happen to be standing up you will be thrown to the floor . Roughly. 

Happy Landings.

Happy Landings

Offering an unsolicited landing critique on every flight is an American pastime. Maybe the critical process should be modified a little so everyone can be more realistic and seem smarter to the pilots.

An old adage says  “Any landing you can walk away from is a good one”.  Intuitively there is some truth to this since we occasionally hear about one in the news that is much uglier. Actually, any landing where you can use the airplane again is pretty good, use it again today even better, and take off again within the hour …great.

How should we judge a landing then? From the back of the airplane you can judge the landing fairly well once you know what to watch for.

First of all smooth landings on a wet runway do not count. There is little friction when touching down on a wet runway so even a moderate “thumper” seems nice.

The touch down point is the first important judgement criteria. Too short of a landing is bad. Really bad. As in “Dang, we nearly wrecked bad”.  Big airplanes have a nasty habit of being slow to respond in the event of a “sinking spell”.  This is why the touchdown aim point is about a thousand feet down the runway.  We  shouldn’t touch down “on the numbers”. This counts points big off even if the landing is really smooth.

Too long of a landing is always bad for obvious reasons. Way too long of a landing isn’t a landing at all since the airplane probably won’t be used again.

The brakes are the main thing that stop the airplane, when the wheels are in the air the brakes aren’t doing anything. Watch for the big white rectangle on the runway. When the wheels touch down at this point it COULD be a good landing if it is at the correct speed.  Side loads should be at a minimum and the transition to braking from thrust reverse should be smooth.

If the touch down is smooth too it was  really good.

Another criteria we judge is alignment.  If the airplane is all off to one side or the other points should be taken off.

If the runway is short and wet, or contaminated with snow the best landing might be a smack em whack em. This is my term for intentionally smacking the airplane on the ground, yanking the speedbrakes out while applying max braking and reverse thrust. Not a smooth landing at all but a very “good” one.

Some points should be counted off if a rough transition is made from thrust reverser use to braking. A steady firm deceleration id what we shoot for.

Please keep in mind that the landing is only a small (if important) part of the flight and a smooth touch down is not the most important part of the landing.

Smooth can even be bad. May all of yours be happy.

A Sign Of Progress

An old aviation bumper sticker, truism, whatever:  A good pilot relies on his  judgement to avoid having to rely on his pilot skills to get him out of something bad judgement got him into.

 (style note: the masculine imparts the feminine and singular imparts the plural excepting when the forgoing  would change the meaning or implication of the statement. Notwithstanding the aforesaid, girls can be pilots too.)

In recent past my four year old grandson went with us on his first airline flight. His exponential cuteness and tiny airline uniform may have had a lot to do with the warm welcome he received. The crew had been reassigned to a different schedule and were pressed for time since this was about to result in an unscheduled airplane change.

The Captain took a full ten minutes out of a busy day to give him the full cockpit tour. He asked about forty questions a minute, flipped a lot of switches, and got to say “ladies and gentlemen” on the public address system. A fairly typical first time in the pilot seat experience for a little kid.

The coolest part was that by the next day he hadn’t mentioned that the Captain was a lady.  It just didn’t seem to be a noticeable part of the event for him. This, I think, marks a turning point for the industry.

Strange Doings At The Circle K

Airline pilots have a little more time available to look around outside than most people do.  And we work in the sky. As a result we’re more likely to see unusual things  than most people are.  Thus, a lot of what we see isn’t really that unusual. There just aren’t many observers there to see it, except us.

Also we’re  in a position that requires us to at least not usually appear to be completely nuts. So a lot of what could be considered a UFO goes unreported.  At least for a while.

Don’t get me all wrong here, I think it would be hilarious if  there happened to be “creatures from another world”  whizzing around in violation of physical laws and FAA regulations.  It just ain’t likely.

Some things that are pretty neat are mirages, usually from temperature inversions. These are the same thing that causes a highway to shimmer like a lake in the summer time. A similiar rapid change in temperature and air density between two stable layers of air can bend light and cause a lensing effect.  

When the sun is at a low angle (near sunrise or sunset) things from over the visual horizon can sometimes be seen.  Stuff like this usually can’t be identified but it usually isn’t a flying object in the first place.

Another common source of UFO sightings is sunlight projecting a reflection from inside the cockpit onto the inside of the windscreen (pilot talk for windshield). This will usually look like little shiny formations of space ships that zip around at about a million miles an hour when you lean forward to get a better look.

It’s especially fun if your own tie-tack is the source of the reflection and the other pilot sees it too. Especially if you can keep him from saying anything stupid about it on the radio.

What about all the times people report something and the Air Force scrambles jets to intercept and chase something? First of all except for a brief period after 9-11 the Air Force would pretty much need to call somebody at home and ask them to come out to the airport and give chase.

And those guys really like to chase stuff, always have. Its what they would rather do than sit around on government furniture waiting for the Russians. So when they do get to go chase something it’s a lot like throwing a stick for a Labrador. Even if there is no stick.  

The recent UFO sightings in Texas are a hoot. If these are beings from another planet looking for examples of intelligent life it might a few more visits.

Happy Landings

Conjecture Is Never Cool

Any time there is an accident in the airline world the news media always has some exceptionally stupid comments, conjecture, moron experts, and eyewitness.

As a group airline pilots will never offer conjecture as to what happened or why. . . . not among others anyway.

The discussion process goes like this in the crew room:

Did you hear about British Airways? No, what happened?

They were on short approach to Heathrow and both motors quit. They smacked into the approach lights pretty hard and messed the airplane up but nobody was killed.

What happened? Birds?

Dunno, the Captain was on TV saying what a great job the F.O. did of not killing everybody. He has great hair, and a cool accent. Seems like if they took enough birds to tank both engines they would have known it. Even in a triple seven.

Maybe they ran it out of gas, or they ran the main tanks dry and the pumps unported.

Maybe it was just an auto-throttle wrestling match and they got so far behind the power curve they couldn’t recover … Hum, seems unlikely.

After a few days of this there might be something reported in the media that pretty well convinces just about every pilot in the industry what the cause was. The media hardly ever realizes this. After a few weeks a preliminary report is usually issued, after about a year the results of a thorough investigation will be released.

Anything else is strictly conjecture.

As professional pilots we need to believe two things: First, that we would never, ever, do anything through our actions, or inaction, so damn stupid as to allow or cause damage to an airplane or harm to our crew and passengers. Second, that we are all perfectly capable of  making mistakes with fatal consequence for ourselves and hundreds of others, both on our airplane and on the ground. 

It is this balance of  my firm belief that I am quite possibly the best living pilot on planet Earth, maybe ever, and a clear understanding of my potential for being a complete and total incompetent  that makes me an effective Captain and possibly the best pilot ever.

Oh, and hardly anybody that wrecks and lives is a hero. The heroes are the ones that don’t wreck, the ones that avert disaster, and the sort that risk personal injury to save others. A hero is a guy that stays with a F86 with a failed engine and crashes in a field instead of ejecting over a populated area.  A lucky hero is a guy that is so slick that a major malfunction results in a logbook entry, a delayed flight and no media coverage.

All that should be said so far is that they got the biggest piece of the airplane as close to the correct gate as possible, there were some unfortunate injuries and the airplane looks to be very badly damaged. Anything more would be conjecture.

More than 100 Americans were killed in traffic accidents today if it was an average day. 

Through The Looking Glass

At least 40 percent of pilot compensation is visual. We see some weird and cool stuff on a fairly regular basis.  Most of it we understand, a lot of it we don’t.

The photo is taken from an angle that we don’t see from since I just held the camera up at the top of the winddow and blasted away in the general direction I thought the shadow would be. 

The little bracket looking things on the nose of the airplane are “vortex generators”. They  slow down airflow in certain spots in order to reduce wind noise, drag, or prevent sonic shock wave formation.

The image of an airplane coming the other direction is our own shadow projected on a cloud by the sun behind and above us.

What I don’t really understand is that these things always have a round bright spot with a full spectrum rainbow at the front of the shadow.  Maybe these are related to how a pin hole camera works.

If you are an expert wise in the ways of light and shadow please explain.

We call them Sun Dogs, as for why ….. I don’t know that either. 

Happy Landings

A Gathering Storm?

Did I mention that the FAA, Airline Management, and the TSA are a pack of liars, cheats and thieves, every one? If this doesn’t sound familiar you should watch the movie Airplane!

The Fall and Summer of 1981 were typically hot but dryer than usual throughout Texas. Fewer rainy days with better flying weather should have made our job of flying cancelled checks around the Lone Star Republic much easier.

You may not have heard much about the guys that transport cancelled checks but their business is terribly time sensitive and they take it very, very seriously. 

All I had to do four days a week was fly from Houston to Austin to San Antonio back to Austin back to Houston, wait a while then fly to Victoria, Corpus Christi, and home to Houston before eleven thirty PM. Easy in good weather. The trip could be a booger when the weather was bad but we usually ran it right on time. About 8 hours flight time and a 12 hour duty day.

I was one of the first to notice that Austin had become difficult to fly in and out of. Even in good weather flights were being handled as though the visibility was low. There were delays. New “procedures”, new applications of old rules started being announced.  A new rudeness on the radio  made dealing with our valued industry co-workers at the Air Traffic Control facility more and more difficult.

Just dealing with these guys on a daily basis became a huge pain in the ass.  All over the country controllers were working under “unreasonable stress”. This became evident since they were more and more surly as time went by.  They wanted a raise, more time off, and better retirement.

Then the delay vectors started. Big turns would be assigned for no apparent reason. The only three airplanes in the area might be vectored so the slowest would be in front with the other two flying “S” turns behind him. Separation standards were applied so conservatively that every airplane could have been an Eighth Air Force flight of B-17s and there still wouldn’t have been a traffic conflict. The pilots generally just smoked more and shouted obscenities after each radio call.

When the controllers went out on strike we expected a nightmare. The company wasn’t even sure if we could keep flying since our work was so time critical. It was seen as the beginning of the end for us “little guys”.

The first day of the strike brought good weather to Texas. I took off for Austin with no hassle. On arrival there were no stupid turns, no rudeness, no attitude. Over to San Antonio and back was easier than it had been in more than a year. The entire day was like that. Efficient handling, a professional cheerful attitude, and a comitment to get the job done made our job easier to do than it had been in months.

The controllers were all fired by Ronald Reagan a few days later while he was playing the part of President of The United States of America.

After the big firing things were thrown together pretty well. There were delays, many small facilitys were closed, some had reduced hours of operation. Old procedures from the 1950s were still effective for places with no operating control tower. Overall safety worked out just fine. It would have been easier to be safe if all that hadn’t happened, but with some extra effort on the part of the pilots and remaining controllers it worked out just fine.

I am still impressed with how much easier it was to fly the day the strike started. The controllers had made our jobs dang near impossible. There is something about human nature that always causes people to do a worse job while negotiating to get more money. Seems backwards to me. There aren’t enough Air Traffic Controllers now for a lot of reasons. One of these is that there are so many administrative positions that don’t actually have anything to do with moving airplanes. 

I’m sure the controllers have some good points.  So long as they don’t make my life miserable I should support their efforts to get more of what they want for less than they want to give up. 

A few tough months at work because they are pissy might change my mind on that though. We’ll see how it goes this time.

Happy Landings.

We’re The Fugawi

A Joe Walsh lyric from the early 70′s says “You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t where you are”.  No longer true.

Modern airliners use a Flight Management Computer (FMC) to program a Flight Management System (FMS) which gets position information from Global Positioning System (GPS) and backs it up with a redundant Inertial Navigation System. This is a gross over-simplification but most of this is transparent to even the pilots so it doesn’t matter anyway.

We get a paper flight plan that is set up like a spread sheet. It shows all of the points along the way. We call them waypoints for some reason. Nobody knows.

So long as the paper flight plan agrees with the route stored in the FMC and the clearance that the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) reads to us over the radio or sends to us by Instant Message over the ACARS system (I can’t remember what ACARS stands for) then we execute the plan. This all happens while we are parked at the gate. It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds but it is really easy to screw up.

Position is updated again near the end of the runway just before takeoff in case a few feet of error was induced during the taxi out.

After takeoff we can navigate several different ways. The FMS system can be engaged with the autopilot and will fly to each programmed waypoint.

Pilots generally keep track of about where they are. There should always be an inverse relationship between altitude and positional “assuredness”. Meaning, the lower you are the more it matters where you are. Above ten thousand feet there just isn’t much terrain in the Continental United States to worry about. Navigation still matters but it usually isn’t critical in the precision sense, but getting lost will make your ass sure red. (This is probably something Bob said, I got it from somewhere)

On really long flights with several pages of waypoints and several turns along the way Air Traffic Control will often approve shortcuts that straighten out the route and shave off a few minutes of flying time.  This will take us several miles off of the planned route. Additional deviations to avoid severe weather can easily add up to more than a hundred miles from the original flight plan.

All this sums up to: Even if we do know what lake or even what State we are over chances are we don’t really care.  Just so long as our destination is at the end of the Magenta Line on the big moving map display and the fuel numbers add up right everything will be just fine. Unless of course, the Russians decide to shoot us down. But that is a different story.

Happy Landings.

Rats On A Plane

Did you ever notice that when ships are at the pier they have funnel looking things on the ropes. These are supposed to keep the rats from walking up the ropes and getting on the ship. It’s a shame they didn’t think of that before rats were everywhere.

Did you ever notice that when airplanes are parked at the “Gate”, “Jetway”, “Jetbridge”, whatever, there is usually a gap between the bridge and the airplane. This is to prevent unwanted entry by bad guys, evil doers, and … rats. Rats can’t fly a plane, as far as we know, so the rodent evil doer aspect isn’t really a problem. They can chew up wiring but for the most part anything they could get to easily wouldn’t really hurt much of anything.  That’s what they tell us anyway.

The real problem with rodents on a plane is the people.  When people see a rodent in a confined space some of them lose touch with civilized behaviour in a dramatic way.  We had a Flight Attendant come up front ( in complete compliance with FAA, DOT, TSA, HSA, and decency guidelines) and during said visit it was mentioned that we thought a mouse or something had chewed some snacks that were left in the cockpit.  I showed her the tiny teeth marks on a pretzel bag.

I thought it was strange that after a few minutes she hadn’t left but rather was perched up on the little jump seat with her feet all up under her not saying anything.  Maybe she was resting….. but it was a short flight. This doesn’t happen much these days, for a lot of reasons, so I asked if she was going to hang out or not since we were about to start down.

No response, just a head shake. So which is it, no you aren’t going to hang out, or no you aren’t going to go?  By now our other valued co-workers were questioning if she was coming out or not.  When she finally did talk all she could say was “I’m not putting my feet on that fucking floor till you find that fucking rat!” I know that’s all she could say since she repeated it several times.

A few minutes later I turned some light on and told her that it was really time to go and we hadn’t actually seen a rat, just teeth marks. There was just a blur as she bolted out of the door and slammed it behind her without saying goodbye or anything.  What an eccentric performance. Yea, I guess she doesn’t like rats much. We turned all the lights back down to normal and continued for an otherwise normal approach and landing.

What we didn’t know was that when she left the flight deck she had pretty much run through the cabin hysterically blabbering about RATS ON THE PLANE. After coming to the “full and complete” stop at the gate with the seatbelt sign turned off only a few of the nearly 150 people on the plane got up.

Evidently about everybody doesn’t like rats much.

Baby, why’s it so cold in here?

If you haven’t heard Eddie Murphy’s routine about his granny complaining about the room being  drafty you should find it and buy it or download it or something. It is really funny.

Meanwhile if you fly in an airliner you will notice that it is just about always either drafty or too hot.  You might think that the airplane manufacturers and airlines could manage to get it a comfortable temperature. Once again pesky physics and command hierarchy gets involved to complicate things.

As for being too stuffy or just hot on the ground during the summer months this is usually a result of airlines cutting operational costs by using the ground based air conditioning systems . This allows them to delay starting the little APU turbine engine for your ground air conditioning needs and it saves a little fuel. It is a great idea for saving some jet fuel, it just doesn’t work very well. So, when the airplane is on the ground and it isn’t comfortable complain, complain and complain some more.

The flight attendants have NO control over the temperature on most airliners, and only a little on others. So the flight attendant, already multi-tasking by being either fabulous or glamorous and checking your seat belt at the same time, has to talk to the pilots. The pilots, already multi-tasking  by standing around and looking smart, have to tell the ground crew. “Hey guys, it’s a little hot up here … could you cool it off for us?” Sure, right away sir!

The thing is that this is a guy working on the ramp under the airplane where it might be twenty or thirty degrees hotter than it is in the shade, loading baggage, servicing lavatories, and trying not to get run over by a valued co-worker. He really is busy, and the equipment sucks.

In the air, especially on a long flight, ole man Kepler and his danged laws of thermodynamics start to really become evident. It is really cold at high altitude. About forty below zero on a good day. Interestingly, Fahrenheit and Centipede are the same at minus forty one.

After about an hour at cruise all of the aircraft structure becomes “cold soaked”.  A term meaning it is about as cold as it can get and ready to suck up heat from anything around it. Even you and your babies. There is a little insulation in the airplane walls but not much.

Anything not heated or insulated from the aircraft structure will freeze pretty quickly. Ice quickly forms on the inside of the airplane in places where moisture from all the people breathing contacts uninsulated aluminum. 

It is terribly ineffective to heat up people and metal stuff by blowing warm air in the general direction. Thing is, warm air is all we really have to offer. Actually, really HOT air is available but people cook easily so the air can only be delivered at about 110 degrees maximum without it feeling stuffy while you freeze your body parts off .

To be comfortable on a long flight Bring Your Own Blanket. Do not put an airline blanket on you if you can help it. They are nasty things. If you have a window seat use the blanket between you and the airplane wall, it should be pretty comfy.

If it is too hot in the air tell the flight attendants so they can tell the pilots. The pilots are already comfy since they have the controls. It’s a lot like banging on the pipes to tell the building super in the basement to turn on the heat for you. But you would have to live in some place like New York to know about that sort of thing so you would already know about complaining. Sometimes we freeze a group of passengers just because we don’t like them.  Sometimes we do it so the Flight Attendants will call us and while they are on the phone we can ask for coffee and snacks.  Great fun!

Happy Landings

Timing Is Everything

Aviation and the Airline Industry in particular is not like most businesses. There is, and probably always will be, an excessive public fascination with air travel. The very act of flying is in itself pretty much clearly something that we don’t do naturally.  And yet hardly anybody really knows much about it.

A few didja knows . . .

Until today airline pilots were required by Federal law to retire at age 60. That’s it pal, out of the pool. No towel, no social security. Probably a fraction of your pension. Just scram.  Today the Senate seems to have passed a bill that will allow pilots to work up to age 65. Assuming little Bush signs the bill into law it is a done deal. What about the guys that were made to retire last week? Last month? Last year? Four years ago?

All of the preference horsepower a pilot at any Airline has is based on seniority. Preference for the type of airplane he will fly (big ones pay more), what schedule he will get, and where he will be based is all awarded based on longevity with the company. As pilots quit (hardly ever), lose medical certification (happens sometimes), die, or retire, everybody moves up a number on the seniority list.

Now the advancement music will stop for about five years. Unless the airline is growing rapidly and adding more airplanes thus hiring more pilots everybody that is a First Officer (co-pilot) will still be one for about another five years.

Timing is everything. Lawsuits are inevitable. There is probably not a hoot in Hell chance that anybody already retired will be hired back by any of the airlines.

Back in the old days when pilots made a lot of money nobody wanted to fly past age 60. Now that pilot compensation is in real terms less than half of what it was 30 years ago and most of the pension fund money has been raided to buy fuel the majority of us need to keep working.

Maybe you should start tipping your Captain. Slip him a fiver on the way out. Maybe a ten if the landing was nice. If everybody did it the crews unions could relax about pay raises and the old pilots would be able to get by just fine without eating cat food.

Route, Root, Rout

People often ask “Do you fly the same route all the time?” Hardly ever. Just about all airlines do the schedule pretty much the same way but all are just different enough to make it difficult for pilots to tell who has the best deal.

All of the hundreds of possible monthly schedules for each crew base are published on a certain day of the month. Each pilot submits a preference order of all the different “lines”. Usually in seniority order, each schedule is awarded. The ones left over at the end are made up according to some or another terribly complex set of rules and assigned to some poor devil that for whatever reason is last on the seniority list.

The very best and very worst schedules are “Reserve”.  These are the guys that are on call to replace anyone that is ill, missing, ”illegal”, or “fatigued”.  The best of it would be if you were never called and still got paid. The worst would be if the valued co-workers in your scheduling department jerked you around all over the country with about as much organization and planning as a group of junior high school girls trying to arrange a trip to the mall. Actually, that’s an insult to junior high school girls.

Up until a few years ago the regulations for being on call were very loose. The FAA stance on the issue had always been to allow the airlines to pretty much self regulate regarding fatigue. Since we are dealing with “trained professionals” the idea was that if somebody is too tired to go fly they will tell you they are fatigued. No matter that people either get up early or late, in the past the rules allowed airlines to call a pilot out pretty much 24 hours a day. That has changed somewhat. Now pilots on reserve call out must be either AM or PM with guidelines and limits. The guidelines and limits are fairly complex by regulation, and each airline has a separate set of union work rules that add another level of complexity.

The bottom line is that typically pilots aren’t allowed more than 8 hours in the seat with the airplane moving per 24 hours. That is unless they exceed 8 hours, then they can’t block more than 9. Unless they block more than 9, then they really aren’t supposed to exceed 10. But all those limits are directly related to duty time. Generally a 12 hour work day is the maximum unless it is more than 12 then it is limited to 14.

So, you could  legally have a crew that has been on duty more than thirteen hours and at the controls more than 8 hours shooting an instrument approach down to about 50 feet to an icy runway.  It couldn’t be legally planned that way in advance but it occasionally works out that way.

The regional carriers kick the living shit out of their crews on a regular basis.  Just ask a pilot how his schedule is the next time you fly on a RJ.  They often have 8 hours rest between the time the airplane is parked and the morning start up. This doesn’t allow for time to get to the hotel and back since local transportation time can be part of the rest period by regulation. Eight hours sleep is one thing these guys will not get. 

Not all airlines use their pilots to the same level of “productivity”. As fuel costs go up like crazy there will be increased pressure on all airlines to get more work out of fewer pilots. 

If I were the ” Supreme Czar of Aviation” (as I well should be) pilots would be paid in real terms about what they were in 1965. Duty days would be limited to 8 hours and your ticket prices would be about $10 per flight hour higher. I don’t know how good you feel about your work after eleven hours or so but I’ll bet you are better at it earlier in the day. Then again, I appreciate well rested relaxed awareness more than most people do.

Happy Landings.

Whad He Say?

Task Saturation. It is an impressive phrase meant to describe being too busy to take on a new task and manage it effectively.

About every time an airplane lands the tower controller will issue taxi instructions to the pilots during the most physically demanding part of the landing. We hardly ever comprehend what is said. It would have just fine to get the instructions before landing but they dont want to bother us till we are trying to turn a hundred ton tricycle with wings  back into a ground vehicle. The transformation can be tricky.

We hear all the time about people smashing thier car while talking on a cell phone.  This happens for more than one reason.

The first is that there is an obvious juggling act required to hold a phone with one hand and drive with the other. Since just about everybody uses thier dominant hand to hold a telephone,  they are driving with the non-dominant hand. This can add up to a simple physical challenge if  an unexpected opportunity to demonstrate some driving skill should arise.  Not usually overwhelming but it is enough to take away what otherwise might have been a slim margin of performance.

The second and more profound challenge talking while driving presents is mental. This will occur with a “hands free”  phone as much as any other. Driving, like most activities that require skill, is not an evenly distributed challenge. For the most part it really doesn’t require much in the way of thinking. When a challenge arises it often comes up quickly. It seems that we are not nearly as able to shift gears if we are having a conversation already.

Really complex physical skills like playing the violin, landing an airplane with gusty winds, or steering clear of a crazy woman in  a Suburban will completely dump the part of your short term memory responsible for speech. It stands to reason that if  a complex task will override speech skills then talking might impair the ability to perform tasks.

Ask anybody who is playing the violin a simple question. Any answer you might get is likely to be short or weird. A few seconds later the violinist will make a mistake. This is an example of task saturation.

Be careful out there, a large percentage of drivers are on the phone. Many of them are distracted by kids in the car. Many of them are kids. Many are drunk. Way too many are drunk kids, distracted by kids in the car, and on the phone.

The Best And Finest

For  years any time I’ve been the least bit pressed to have something to say in the presence of my valued co-workers out pops my favorite astronaut quote from The Right Stuff. 

“I am just proud to be part of an organization that brings out the best and finest in every individual”.  You can either mean it or not mean it, either way it is just about the perfect thing to say. Ten people in a room can each come away with the impression of their choice.

For a very long time there was a sticker on my flight bag that read ” People are terrific, Business is great, Life is wonderful”.  Those that knew me very well would often laugh out loud when they saw it.

Don’t get me wrong, I find more wonder in life than about ten of most people put together. American small business is a great thing. And, (at least some) people are terrific. It was a red white and blue sticker, I think it might have looked French or something.

This week I carried almost two thousand passengers from place to place. The flights were all “fullish” but not all crammed totally full. The weather wasn’t great but it didn’t suck, there weren’t any mechanical problems worthy of mention.  The air was fairly rough across the country off and on all week. Cabin service was suspended several times. Nobody complained, except the crew.

People were good. Something is different this year. It was quiet. This is unusual. Nobody was drunk or rude. There was even a full moon! It almost seemed like many people knew a secret of travel they didn’t know last holiday season.

It really is the moon, promise.

With the exception of a valued Flight Attendant co-worker that felt compelled to get all preachy with a “Customer Of  Size” travelling with his wife and son just to “make sure that he knows that next time he will need to buy an extra ticket”, I didn’t hear a cross word the entire time.  Except maybe for the part where I reminded the valued co-worker that we were in a crew base and accordingly he could be replaced with someone more pleasant without incurring a delay.

I don’t know if people are just tired but maybe, just maybe, they really are taking my advice and trying to float like a leaf on the river of air travel and find a quiet center of happiness that will whisk them to the destination.  Some of the families with little kids and babies even seemed pretty well organized. Blog readers?

But that would mean that thousands of you are secretly reading this nonsense and benefiting greatly from it without comment. It’s ok, so long as it works.

Atlanta might even get rain

A rare view of the Organ mountains from over the White Sands missle range. The airspace is usually restricted but Lyndon Johnson (really) suggested that on holidays the airlines could benefit from using it.

What the instrument panel would look like if you were a camera, or a bobblehead, and the air was a little bumpy. The “people view” is usually not all shook up since we bounce at pretty much the same rate as the airplane. (If we wear the seatbelt)

 This is about twenty miles away, but nasty

So Far Away

This is going fairly well, considering. Our airplane is running about an hour late. With five flights ahead of us to get home it’s possible we might even be on time. Not likely, but possible.

From Florida to Louisiana then to south America and back, nothin to it. Except get all of these people and all this stuff crammed on the airplane and go. Five times.

The crew is all-right, the airplane isn’t my favourite but it’s ok, the weather isn’t great but it’s ok… we just need to get started.

The same line of storms across the South last night are still there, what could possibly go wrong.

“I’m going home” , one of the most beautiful three word sequences.

For The Valued Holiday Traveller

I know you have seen a lot of hype in the media about how crazy busy the airlines are for T.G.D. and Xms holidays. As airline employees we generally work on those days so the celebration is either moved to another day, modified, or ignored altogether.

Please understand that the flights are full pretty much all of the time. We don’t run late on holidays because the flights are full. We run late because the flights are full of valued customers that don’t fly much with the wife and kids. All that stuff you have to bring, and the dang coats, sweaters, and Christmas presents, strollers, car seats, cameras, snacks, games and . . . .we understand.

Most of us had travelling children too. We were just better travellers due to practice.

 For the little ones be sure they know what to expect at the security checkpoint. My  two year old grandson positively flipped out because the government took his shoes. He got his shoes back in five minutes but was still agitated over the incident a week later. He’d go “Ruby Ridge” over the thing if he just knew how.

For the big ones (grown up types) be sure they know what to expect at the security checkpoint. All of the airlines have great web materials for TSA preparation. This involves zip lock bags for some reason. If you check bags don’t let them lay around at baggage claim without you being there to get them. Holiday season is when the most bags are stolen. People take stuff right off of the merry go round and leave with it.

Run a few simple at home drills with all of the stuff.  Who is to carry what, how many bags are there total. Have a rough game plan for each segment. Getting out of the car. Getting into the parking van. Getting out of the parking van. Going through security. Who should pick up what. How to storm through the airport effectively. Who holds who’s hand. When do we get to eat. Who has the damn camera?

Above all, try to make these good memories. Travelling, especially with kids, is a pain in the ass but if you just float on the river of travel like a leaf in a pond and resolve yourself to what is going on it is much more fun. If the kids are old enough to write get them a little pocket memo book for trip notes. What was the flight number? What were the crew names? What color was the parking lot van? Making a game and adventure out of the entire disaster makes it easier to cope with.

Have a happy, safe holiday season, and Happy Landings. 

Lightnin’

Everybody seems to know that airplanes and storms are a bad mix. At least for the airplane anyway, the storm will be just fine either way.

A common concern is that the airplane might be “hit by lightning”.  This kind of makes sense because the airplane is flying and the lightning is flying all around. It just seems like the two could run into each other with terribly negative result. It just doesn’t happen that way at all.

There is a phenomenon we call a “lightning strike”  for lack of a better aviation terminology. 

An airplane can build up an incredible electrical charge when flying through dry snow, dust or near a thunderstorm. This is similar to walking across carpet on a dry day. The same if the carpet was at thirty nine thousand feet and you were walking at about five hundred miles per hour.

You may have noticed little pointy things hanging off of the back of the wings and tail of  an airplane. These are  “Static Discharge Wicks”, and are intended to dissipate the static potential in a controlled and non-impressive manner.  

Sometimes when the static potential is excessive an electrical field becomes evident by the discharge of  electrons. These little guys get kicked around and knock some photons loose.  This causes Saint Elmo’s fire, which at night looks like the blue sparky animation R2-D2 had all around him when the sand people zapped him. 

  Below is an unretouched picture I took of Saint Elmo in action. This is looking out the front window, you can see part of the wiper on the left.

  

 St. Elmo’s fire will dance around on the windshield and engine intakes. The stuff doesn’t really hurt anything but it does make radio communications difficult. Sometimes passengers can see it stream off of various parts of the wings, tail, and antennae.  Saint Elmo is the Patron Saint of sailors, the “fire” was first noticed at sea and must have scared the absolute beegeezez out of the guys in masted ships on stormy nights. That, of course, assumes they could be scared any worse that they already were in a storm at sea in a wooden boat.

If the static potential is kicked up a notch in intensity things start to get a bit interesting. Not dangerous, but weird. This is about the point where pilots stop playing with the windshield wipers to make Saint Elmo dance around, and turn the instrument lighting all the way up.  A cone shaped aura will project forward, ahead of the airplane.  

Usually the cone thing will go away quietly but once in a while you might notice a tiny little “stringer” of static discharge going off in one direction. This is a great time to squint your eyes since just about instantly a flash as bright as an arc welder is accompanied by a really loud clap of thunder. Hearing thunder in a jet going about 80 percent of the speed of sound is impressive.  Most passengers whoop or scream.

So, to me at least, it has always seemed that the airplane is providing the potential for a static discharge, creating an ionized path through the air. The “lightning” follows this ionized path right back to …. the airplane. 

Good news for us, “the occupants” is that an airplane provides a nice protective bubble in the dynamic of the electrical field. Airframe components are grounded together, sensitive equipment is shielded, and the aluminum skin provides very good conductivity and helps route the massive electrical discharge safely.

Airliner damage during one of these events is generally limited to little holes burned through the skin here and there, radio damage, and some odd system behaviours. A “lightning strike” event requires a maintenance inspection so a delay should be expected if you aren’t finished for the day.

A Change In Cabin Pressure

A boring explanation of how it works.

Cabin Pressurization is one of those things that everybody knows about but hardly anybody really knows much about. The thing we generally call “pressurization” is really two systems working together. The Air Conditioning system provides the air that is pumped into the airplane, usually from the engines. The pressurization system controls how much of it is let out.

To breathe we need more than just air. We need air under pressure. At low altitude the air pressure is provided by the weight of the atmosphere pushing down on us. This is the same as when you dive to the bottom of a pool and feel the weight of the water.

Above 5,000 feet most people will notice a difference in the way they feel due to a decrease in blood oxygen level. This affects everyone differently, and not everyone the same way each time.

Jets typically cruise between thirty five and forty five thousand feet high. Due to the nearly complete lack of atmospheric pressure at these altitudes this is practically outer space as far as our bodies are concerned . Like David Bowie said “it’s cold in outer space”. The temperature is about 40 below zero at high altitude.

We could all wear a pressure suit and space helmet but that would make it difficult to eat the peanuts and pretzels. A more practical alternative is to pump the entire airplane up with excess air. Pumping the cabin to about 9 PSI simulates the atmosphere at a lower altitude, allowing us all to breathe without supplemental oxygen or the space suit.

Airliner cabins DO NOT keep the equivalent of sea level pressure though. Since there is a limit to how much pressure can be safely applied to the airplane cabin sea level atmosphere can only be maintained up to about twenty five thousand feet of airplane altitude. At normal cruise altitudes the 9 PSI of cabin pressure will result in a cabin altitude of about 8000 feet.

Most light airplanes aren’t pressurized at all. Since they generally fly well below ten thousand feet this isn’t much of a problem. Doctors will often tell expectant mothers that it is fine to fly during pregnancy so long as the airplane is pressurized. This is ignorant. An unpressurized airplane will almost always cruise below 6,000 feet but a pressurized airliner will almost always have a “cabin altitude” above 8,000 feet. For a long flight expectant moms and anyone with compromised respiratory function might consider bringing along an oxygen concentrator or supplemental oxygen. Airlines have differing rules as to what is allowable.

We’ve all heard the FAA mandated announcement Flight Attendants make while doing Tai Che with a margarine cup in one hand. What really happens in the event of a cabin pressure failure depends on several things.

If the cabin pressure fails after takeoff during the initial climb you may not even know what the problem is before the crew explains. This sort of failure is generally due to a cargo door seal that is leaky or some other unexpected hole in the airplane that the air conditioning supply cannot overcome. A return for landing may cause you to be late but there is no real cause for concern. The masks probably won’t even drop.

Up at high altitude if the cabin pressure fails as a result of an air conditioning supply problem the decrease in cabin pressure will be fairly gentle. The pilots will already be working to restore proper airflow to the cabin as the masks drop from the overhead panels. Cockpit warnings start at 10,000 feet cabin altitude, the masks drop at about 14,000 feet.

Generally, you can expect a fairly rapid descent if you were already at high altitude, so get in a seat and fasten your seat belt. Passenger oxygen is not delivered under pressure but it will help give you something to do to pass the time. The oxygen supply is either provided from a tank or may be generated chemically by a canister in the overhead compartment.

The oxygen generators get pretty hot so the cabin may smell like there is an electrical fire. This is just a smell so don’t freak over it. If the masks have dropped and the airplane is headed down before you expected it, everything is going to be just fine. Paper work will be generated by the crew and your flight will be late, but everything should be just fine.

A rapid depressurization is very, very rare. This is a rapid decrease of cabin pressure that is caused at high altitude by the failure of a compartment door, window or something that results in the equivalent of a large hole in the airplane. When the air conditioning system cannot keep up with the leak the cabin pressure will be lost rapidly. An emergency descent will be made. Most people will pass out. At high altitude a rapid loss of pressure will allow only a few seconds of consciousness. If you get on the oxygen right away you may not pass out. You may see Flight Attendants walking around carrying emergency walk around bottles checking on the passengers. When a safe altitude is reached everybody should be fine. The flight will probably divert to the nearest suitable airport.

During any cabin pressure failure event the pilots will be wearing pressure masks that do a pretty good job of keeping them functioning.  This assumes they were functioning before.

Fear Of Flying 101

A few Strange But True items:

     (1) Most fatal aviation accidents are a result of pilots flying a perfectly good airplane into the dirt.

     (2) More twin engine airplanes are involved in fatal accidents than are single engine airplanes when engine failure occurs. ( Airplanes with more than one engine are difficult to control when an engine quits.)

     (3) Modern systems that warn of approaching terrain are often ignored by pilots. Often with tragic results.

    (4) Pilots rely on airport maps as small as 4 square inches with tiny writing and obscure little notes in order to follow directions on the ground.  Only a few airplanes have any kind of electronic map that works on the ground.  There are no stop signs.

But ………

    (5) If  an airliner  crashed every single day the number of people killed in cars would be about the same.  Another way to put it would be that if as many people were killed in airplanes as in cars then all of the airplanes in the world would be gone in about six months. The airplane factories could not build airplanes fast enough to kill as many people as cars do.

   (6) If the average level of anxiety applied to flying were applied in proportion to the actual risk of  riding in a car most people would be crouching behind trees, afraid to cross the street. Much less actually ride in a car.

Then again, most people drive like shit. Even below average pilots usually try pretty hard to not wreck.

                                      

Things That Really Scare a Pilot ( me anyway )

There’s a big difference between startled and being in serious “doubt of the successful outcome of the maneuver”.  An FAA speak way of thinking you are about to crash.

Flying, like any other dynamic activity (surgery, nuke plant operation, bleaching your hair, etc.) requires the imposition of a sucessful outcome in order to prevent physics from choosing an undesirable outcome.

Sudden noises like bird strikes on the nose of the plane, lightning discharges, or a nose tire exploding in the gear well will startle the hell out of a crew. These things can all have a small potential for a bad outcome but usually are in the “pain in the ass requiring paper work and/or a delay” to continue category.

 Things like a sudden critical systems failure or engine failure generally trigger a trained response from the crew and aren’t really scary. Stressful, but if managed correctly usually not so scary at the time.

 A lot of pilot training actually is intended to slow down pilot reactions in the interest of the “reasoned response”. My philosophy is that it is always better to do the right thing a few seconds late than it is to do the wrong thing instantly.

Since most preventable accidents are a result of the crew flying a good airplane right into the dirt with “Whoop Whoop Pull Up” warnings sounding, the concept of fear doesn’t seem to be correctly placed.

The things that should really scare us:

(1) Smoke in the airplane. Smoke means fire, fire is bad. Doing stupid stuff is even worse so a quick decisive response is needed for this one. An airplane on fire is actually two dynamics operating simutaneously so it is important to get them both stopped right away. That is, the airplane landed and the fire out.

(2) Collision potentail, especially on the ground, is a scary thing. There is little to prevent what we call “runway incursion”. It is a big safety improvement effort area for the FAA and an important one. Why oh why isn’t every airplane at the “really big” airports equipped with a moving map GPS of the airport? Because you, the public, do not demand it and your representatives in the government will not act before a nasty accident happens.

(3) Negligence. When it comes right down to it the scariest thing is that one’s own neglect could cause something nasty to happen. Pilots make mistakes just about constantly. The trick is to be good enough at backing up yourself and your valued co-workers such that little errors don’t compound into big ones and the big ones get caught early.

(4) Trains scare me because I have concern that one will come off of the tracks and squash me if I were to wait by the track long enough. My daughter feels that this is irrational. She lives pretty much ON a busy freight rail line in a awesome old house.

In the Cockpit, On the TarMac ?

Where the hell is the Tarmac anyway?

I’ve been flying since 1952 (really). Even though I know what the stuff is I don’t know why it is refered to as a “place”. My understanding is that a guy ( in England I think) named Mc Adam developed the Mc Adam substitute for concrete for airfield use during WW II and made a million zillion dollars. Or pounds.

Tar/Mac would be an even cheaper substitute for the authentic substitute. The stuff won’t bear much weight but would have been allright for the wheel weight of most airplanes at the time. This explains the “what” of it; but WHY do the media and public use as it a nonspecific place other than at the gate or in the air?  Really, why?

Is it the Flight Deck or the Cockpit?

The use of the term Flight Deck started about twenty five years ago at one of the more snootypants airlines and seems to have spread throughout the industry.  Somebody in management probably thought that saying “cockpit”  on the PA might get somebody excited.  Good excited, or bad excited. Either way could be bad. There was probably a letter from a passenger.

The best explanation I have heard for the origin of the word is nautical.  A lot of aviation stuff is nautical in origin. Cockpit  comes from a very long time ago when guys in wooden ships were busy blasting away at one another.  The wounded guys would be put below the waterline in the back of the ship in the little compartment where the manual tiller was located.  The tiller would be the only way to steer the ship if the steering gear above deck were damaged.  Since all the blewt-up guys were bleeding all over the place, and cock-fighting was an even bigger sport at the time than blowing eachother up, the little compartment where the manual controls were located came to be called the “cockpit”.  Rooster fighting, I suppose, results in substantial blood loss.

It is important to understand that nautical people are compelled, probably by boredom, to have an obscure name for everything. Anything that is said or done on a boat or ship more than once becomes a time honored tradition.

So the “steer the boat” room name of cockpit got passed on to sailing yachts in the 19th century. The next leap of calling part of an airplane the same name just about had to be British since it isn’t a French word and Americans didn’t name any airplane parts I can think of.  Except the Kollsman Window which isn’t really a window at all. It was just the best name Kollsman could come up with.

Danger Danger

Modern airliners are equipped with a wide variety of warning systems. All of the ones I can think of at the moment were installed in response to a tragic event some time in the past.

The photo above was taken over the desert on approach to Phoenix. At the time there was no mention of adverse weather in the area. The small storm had pretty much rained itself out and was dissipating rapidly about ten miles from the airport. That’s not good.

Notice how the rain shaft on the left hits the ground then rolls up in a rotating tube. That’s not good either.

We were still several minutes from landing and included a “Windshear Escape” review in our approach briefing. This means that based generally on what we could see out the window, the spread between the temperature and dew point, the way the rain was curling up against the desert floor, and our landing weight it was a good idea to be prepared.

Our aircraft based equipment for windshear prediction is excellent and the ground based Doppler system from the control tower is pretty good but there is no replacement for looking out the window and understanding what you see.

The dissipating storm tearing up the desert was still a few miles from the airport, only minor airspeed fluctuation from windshear should be expected. But if much more was encountered we would execute the escape maneuver and bolt for an alternate airport with minimum fuel.

All of this sounds like a lead up for a great windshear story, but it isn’t.

What I should have been concerned about was the Sun. By the time we were landing the sun was setting and was shining through a curtain of rain. We had to stare through this during the approach and landing.

The runway was visible but the glare level was immense. The runway with no electronic guidance was still a good choice, it was longer, farther from the rain shower, and closer to our gate than the others.

I set up a calculated glide path for reference and relied on the runway VASI lights for primary guidance. The First Officer did a fine job of flying the approach and only forgot a few of his altitude callouts and flopped the landing. By the time we turned off the runway we were both practically blind from staring into the combination of rain, sun and sun reflected off of the ground and more rain. This was one of the most unusual visual combinations I have seen.

Maybe next time I will remember to include the Sun Angle as a briefing item, especially with rain in the area. It seems that it’s always something in addition to what you expect that should be expected.

Fear Of Flying?

                                         

It’s important to know that the things that always scare passengers hardly even bother pilots a bit. Not even a little.

                                        

 Oddly, the things that   r e a l l y scare pilots are usually over by the time anybody realizes they started,  and passengers hardly ever notice.

You really don’t need to bother with which is which. So why worry?

Bayou Pilot

Life has segments and eras. Some of mine are New Mexico and early flying days, living in Point Barrow, then Houston, the big house, the Bayou, marriage, parenthood , tool making, flying, bidness of flying, more parenthood, more bidness, unemployment, more toolmaking, airline flying, violin work and grandparenthood along with more airline flying.

The bayou era remains special. The place is gone forever. The people remain though. We’re different but still the same as we were 40 years ago. If the three of us were back on our raft I think we would be exactly the same as we were then within about five minutes. Maybe not  as flexible as we were and a little wiser, but the same in important ways.

Jeff the corporate controller CFO kind of guy has Bananas and Pine Apples in production in his backyard. He tends to be decisive if not impulsive in the face of excessive deliberations. Chuck is an Architect now, he was always a careful designer. Looking to build on previous successes, avoid previous mistakes. I could always look smart by having Jeff execute Chuck’s ideas.

All of us have our kids in at least a low orbit if not fully launched. It’s not out of the question that the three of us could actually ply the seas again. Stranger things have been arranged.

Our poor bayou it turns out was the cause of the major flooding in Harris county and had to be straightened out by the Corps of engineers. 

It’s a lucky thing they didn’t try to do that while we were still teenagers. The corps would have probably gotten combat  pay but could have never completed the project with us in opposition. And there would have been opposition.

For all of those that thought the Bayou boys needed straightening out, we did just fine.

Airline Travel 101

The following are some things most people might need to know about air travel that airlines probably won’t mention.

Seat Reclining Protocol:

If there is someone behind you consider if it is really necessary to recline your seat at all. If the flight is short and the person behind you isn’t short the polite thing to do is endure a little good posture for a while. If you must recline then do it with a little grace and consideration. Slowly. This will give the person behind you time to move their computer and get their knees out of the way. It might also prevent you from being strangled from behind.

Inside Voice Please:

Please understand that air travel might make you more chatty than usual, a little stress, lower oxygen levels, whatever. It is usually just fine to talk to someone on the airplane but there is no need to shout. If the person you are talking to doesn’t occasionally say “what” you are probably talking too loudly. The other people around you could not give a rat’s ass about what you have to say and are trying to sleep. Or they might be lawyers for the other side and quite interested. Either way, shush a little.

Baggage Manners:

When you carry all that stuff down the aisle be careful to not hit people with it. Airline crews openly make fun of people that carry stuff like a hang-up bag over one arm banging everybody in the face. This occasionally starts a riot so if you don’t want to get your butt kicked by a fellow traveler please carry your stuff down low behind or in front of you.

Backpack Jagoff:

This is a manners malfunction that is so bad that it has actually earned a name for those that do it. If you wear a backpack be aware that you have stuff sticking out BEHIND you. When you turn around your pack hits people. They might hit back, so please be considerate.

Comments:

Aircrew people always welcome a kind word but any and all attempts at being cute are at best merely tolerated. We generally mean it when we say “Hi” or “Welcome Aboard” or “Come See us again soon”.  It’s nice when you respond. 

Any comments about the crew drinking, sleeping, screwing, etc. during the flight or any other time really aren’t that much fun and we have probably heard it before. Would you say that shit to your doctor?

Face it, we get your money and you get your ride. We say thank you for the money and behaving yourself. You say thank you for not killing us all by accident. That’s as far as it needs to go.  We generally do not like to be touched. 

Turbulence:

Always wear the seatbelt. Even the vast majority of airline crews have NEVER experienced severe turbulence. Be assured that there is some truly scary and dangerous stuff out there that we cannot always see coming. It is rare. It is very rare but it can also hurt you and the crew if seatbelts are not fastened.

That thing we always say about keeping your seatbelt loosely fastened when the seatbelt sign is off aint just for grins. Severe turbulence will give everybody on the airplane bruises from the seatbelts, or throw them against the ceiling hard enough to damage the interior of the airplane. We aren’t kidding about this one.

Gettin Buzzed:

Don’t get drunk at the airport or on the plane. The combined effect of altitude and alcohol is profound. Two drinks in the hour before a flight and one more on a one hour flight will put you way past the legal limit to drive. If you appear to be intoxicated your flight crew is required to have you removed from the airplane. So at least don’t give the appearance.

If you take mood altering medication altitude may affect you. Ask your doctor about it before you fly.

Delays:

Airline crews are usually away from home for days at a time so we really do understand how miserable it can be to have a delay. It’s not like we get paid extra to screw up your day, and it is usually the weather or a mechanical problem that causes it in the first place.

Labor Problems:

It is true that the airline industry has from time to time been the subject of job actions by employees during labor disputes. This doesn’t seem to happen as much anymore since just about everybody went bankrupt, spent the pension funds on fuel or management bonuses and cut salaries in about half. Anyway, be informed.

Mechanical Delays:

The mechanical delays come in two general varieties. The first is stuff that is just obvious, bad and/or illegal to fly with. The second is stuff that would have been fine if we didn’t notice it. A lot of times it would have fixed itself if nobody had messed with it but now that we noticed it we are stuck.

Either way please trust our judgment on this. We don’t want to get killed or suspended without pay any more than you want to be late.

Beyond Our Control:

Frankly since the jet airliner was introduced in 1959 not much could be improved other than navigation safety and modern electronics has taken care of that pretty well.

Please bear with us while our valued, management inspired co-workers fidget, fuss, organize, repaint, redefine and otherwise try desperately to add quality to the same old point A to B jet powered travel product.

These people all have degrees in managing and marketing and stuff so please pardon any inconvenience as they try to manage and market in an attempt to keep the industry from falling into foreign ownership or government takeover. This could all get a lot worse.

This goes for every airline.

Cruse and the Descent of man

I am pretty sure that Tom Cruse represents most of what is wrong with modern civilization. He can’t even act like himself.

If you watch late night or daytime TV you may have seen another Tom Cruse hustling the Hover-round scooter for the infirm. He looks much taller and older in the commercials than the one in those awful movies but I think we should give him a chance. 

Did you ever notice that the old tom is always the “best something” in every one of his movies. Even in the one that was a sorry remake  of Mars Attacks he was the best crane operator on the docks. Why can’t the little guy just relax and be comfortable with himself, or at least act like it. I forgot, he can’t act.

Tom Cruse doesn’t have problems of any sort since he is “best” .  Truth be known John Travolta is probably a better pilot. 

If my real name had to be  Maplethrerer I’d probably rather be me anyway.

Last Week’s 4 day

Seven Thousand nine Hundred and Ninety five nautical miles, four days, eighty two hours away from base, an average of about a hundred and fourteen miles and hour. That would be while sleeping, drinking, eating and waiting.. and flying. Just not at the same time for the most part.

Things people ask: Do you fly the same route all the time?

 No, it changes weekly.

Do you fly with the same crew all the time? Usually the same pilots for the trip will fly together for the week. We might have three flight attendant crews each day or keep them for the whole trip.

Were you in the military?  No, draft dodger.

Is it going to be smooth today?  Of course, but I’d wear a seat belt unless you feel really lucky.

Can you get the BlaBlaBla score on the way? We always answer “Sure”. In reality it is a true pain in the ass to get sports scores out of an Air Traffic control facility. It’s kind of like calling the water company to ask for a stock quote. 

I have always been tempted to just make up some scores. And news. “This is your Captain speaking, I just thought you would like to know that Dallas beat Chicago 56 to 9 and fans rioted burning the windy city to the ground a second time. I hope your’e happy.”

Happy Birthday Graham

Grandson 2.0 is two today ….

Grandson 2.0 is two today……

It’s Always an Ugly Day Somewhere

Sometimes we will fly a route that crosses back across the same place two or three times. On nights when there is a storm sitting in one place you have to wonder what that guy that lives right there did, and who to?

After all this time I finally figured out some things about photographing lightning. You guys all probably knew it already, so I won’t bother with a how-to unless the comment volume is massive.

This was a smallish storm east of Atlanta last week with tops of about 250. The picture was taken about forty miles from the storm. The picture is un-retouched. Dang Scary.

Physicist Hopping Doctor PHD

Recurring dreams, there’s a real bitch of a concept.  Maybe we just don’t get the point the first time so our brain’s executive producer just contracts a slight rewrite and plays the same thing over again.

A recent addition to my “entertainment while sleeping” has been a large chain smoking rabbit with a Brooklyn accent. He lectures on physics.  This is especially great since my dreams usually suck and this is entertaining.

The physics part is understandable, the accent is obviously Feynman’s but the chain smoking part bugged me. So did one of the lectures.  A lecture from a rabbit I couldn’t understand.

Why a chain smoking rabbit? Is this some kind of sub-conscious need to smoke? Are old cravings coming back? No, as it turns out Feynman is smoking like crazy during his lectures, you can hear it clearly on the recordings.  It never occurred to me that just about all of his pictures show him holding a cigarette.

Why a rabbit in the first place?  The Rocky and Bullwinkle show occasionally featured a wise assed hare with a Brooklyn accent. On review the voice could be Richard himself.

I’ve been a fan of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show since before it was a rerun.  Yes, there was TV that long ago. If you haven’t seen it you have missed out on some fundamentally important American literature.

 If you don’t have recurring dreams of a pooka pacing around drawing Feynman diagrams and debating the existence of neutrino mass with himself I recommend that you start right away.

I’m pretty sure that if I can understand what the rabbit is trying to explain the “Theory of Everything” will be within my grasp.

I just wish he would quit smoking before it kills him. 

Seeking Balance

Knowing where the center of the Earth is. It is a requirement for modern navigation systems. Without about seven minutes of “alignment” each morning the seemingly magic systems that provide position and attitude guidance to airplanes can’t even function.

After each flight a “quick alignment” is necessary to cancell out any accumulated errors. This takes about 30 seconds.

It is terribly important that we, as people, know where the center of the Earth is. Without quiet introspection it is difficult if not impossible for us to really tell what is screwed up and what isn’t. 

About seven minutes is all it takes. And during the day a few thirty second “quick alignments” really seem to make it easier to maintain focus.

You know, not choke the living shit out of somebody that really needs it.

What Could Possible Go Wrung

The way home is now clear after four days of ping-pong around the contiguous 48. Tampa-Louisville-Orlando-St Louis-Dallas is scheduled for eight hours block time. I haven’t bothered to measure but it is probably about three thousand miles or so. Maybe more. This being day 4 of 4 it seems like we’ve been gone forever again. 

It isn’t healthy to travel and not go anywhere but this trip doesn’t really allow time or opportunity to get out once one gets in. With eleven PM arrivals and before Noon departures  the whole thing becomes a blur of hotels.

The beauty of having fair weather and a good crew is that it all just blends in. Usually only huge mistakes, horrible weather, or things that come apart unexpectedly really stand out.

Wrath Visited On Those Down Under

The guys on the ramp (pilots do not say tarmac) are the unsung and often unseen hard working types that load all of the luggage by hand into the cargo bins. They also guide the airplane in for parking, drive the push-back tug, and take care of hooking up and disconnecting the “Ground Power and Ground Air”.

A little explanation is in order. The airplane is capable of being self sufficient as to electrical power and air-conditioning. This power and air is provided by a little jet engine mounted in the tail called an Auxiliary Power Unit ( APU ). The little APU is very capable but it burns a fairly large amount of fuel. Since the airlines get electricity for free for some reason it makes more economic sense to provide power and air-conditioning to the airplane from the building, than it does to use the APU. This program should save about three thousand hundred trillion dollars a day or something.

Since many of our electrical components and computers are a little fussy about power surges and interruptions it is important that the change over from ground power to ships power be coordinated to some degree. This is accomplished through a combination of Plains Indian sign language and banging on the side of the airplane.

So here we all were  ready to get started with the third leg of the day, somebody in every seat, two cockpit observers along with us in the cockpit, and the agent was just handing us the final load sheet so we could enter the takeoff data in the computer.

CLICK. …the  airplane went dark, multiple warnings, click and chirp, no power, navigation system warnings, emergency exit lighting activated.

The first response is to initiate the start sequence for the APU, this takes about two minutes.

My second response (and one nobody expected) was to yank the cockpit window open lean out over the side of the plane and yell HeeeYaaaEeee. I asked the cockpit observers if they had any fruit I could throw at the guys down there. What? Yea, an orange or something just to get their attention. Nobody admitted to having any good ammo for a food fight so I yelled again, “TURN ON THE POWER” . Finally one of the guys appeared from under the airplane holding the airplane end of the umbilical cord in his hand. WHAT are You DOING?  Were ANY of your Mothers Children born with Brains?     

       wha?  (nobody looks smart looking up from 20 feet down)

I’ve got a hundred and forty two people sitting up here in the dark because you are an idiot. Why did you do that? Is that part of your training? Is that in your manual?

By now the rest of the cockpit system warnings were beeping and complaining telling us that e v e r y t h i n g would have to be reprogrammed for departure. “She said you were ready to go”, which would have meant that we were all boarded up, what she (the operations agent in the jetway) meant to indicate to him was that it was time to stop playing frisbee and talk to the pilots.

I wasn’t very nice but I didn’t scream anything obscene or especially demeaning since the airplane is really quiet with no fans or equipment running. All of the passengers could hear clearly and were listening since they didn’t have anything else to do.

 Any more time with the emergency lighting system activated and we would been delayed up to an hour while it recharged.

“You get that power hooked back up right now or I’m coming out of this window after you.” So they hooked it up. We got everything re-programmed, re-set and re-entered, It took about ten minutes. When we were finally ready to go they went and got a different crew to push the airplane back so they wouldn’t have to talk to the wild man hanging out of the window anymore.

Idiots, and cowards too. But still valued, hardworking, recognized co-workers.  I’ll see them again next week.

Departure Storm

Airline families will all understand. There is a gathering storm. Some pilots have a padded room in the back of their house where the suitcases and uniforms are kept so they can get ready in peace. So the family isn’t exposed.

I check in late today so it is important to wait ’till the last minute then tear through the house on the underwear, epaulette, sock hunt. An early start on any of this would give the appearance of overpreparation.

Where’s my fucking hat? It’s hanging on the guestroom door, and don’t say the EFF word in front of the children. They all grew up and moved away, where’s my fucking epauletts?  Did you check your ass for them? I’ll but they flew up your Captain ass, honey.

OK, so the routine has changed a little over the years but today the “haired one” is around and as a result I have to wear clothes while I run around looking for clothes. An additional three minutes will be required.

I love my job, especially the view outside. I think I love being home more.

Buffing, Smooting, Damien and Things Done

I actually managed to get to the shop early, about eleven. That may not seem very early but considering that my list of things to do yesterday included watching Life Aquatic and I didn’t get started with that till after 1 AM it’s not so bad really.

The devil violin required an entire new clear coat of lacquer. This is a new instrument and being sold as new so it should look new. This will require a few more hours of buffing tomorrow.

We are a factory authorized repair center and as such are an extension of the factory. The problem is that the factory has never really given the appearance of being responsibility based and I just can’t let something ugly go out to one of our customers. Maybe we should just buy the factory and stop the problem at the source. Either that or stop doing business with intellectual midgets. Thing is, they make such a bloody good electric violin.

It was a “Smoot” day at the shop, meaning that it was a time for lining things up and detailing what is wrong with them. The Smooter was a music teacher known for, among other things, lining all of the instruments up on the floor and calling us over to see what they needed. Usually nothing.

My vertically capable brother climbed up in the rafters to discover several violin outfits needing only minor fix up to be ready to rent. One was new with the parts robbed from it, must have been a good idea at the time.

The Planned Parenthood 2001 poster boy was in the shop today. It was about the fastest full up sizing, demonstration, explanation, contract and payment receipt ever. This kid is a true force of nature. We pity the mom.

I’m a strong believer in adding things to your to do list that you have already done and crossing them off at the same time. Sort of makes the day complete.

Pictures to follow soon, promise.

Shop Hoppin

This is always a busy time of year at our shop. It is really difficult to nail down exactly when this will happen each year since every school has a different program for orchestra and they wind it all up at different rates of speed.

Then there are the weird trends in size. Violins come in several sizes as do kids. It is odd how one certain size will be in huge demand one year and totally in surplus the next.

That’s all going on with a growing backlog of vintage repairs and one of our less reliable vendors sent a lacquer finished instrument wrapped in expanded foam. When the foam gets hot it “out-gasses” chlorine or something and does something chemical and evil to the finish. We are qualified and equipped to repair this for the factory but not delighted to take the time to do so.

A little minor work at the casa, speaker hanging, trash chucking and guitar playing. The day is complete.

On The Beach

Homer (the one that’s not Jethro’s partner) sang of coming home, or trying to anyway. It was kind of a main theme for the guy. At the time, a few thousand years ago, coming home would have been just about IT since nobody lived long enough to really go very far more than about twice. Twice would have been pushing it. About all the hell I ever do is come home or get ready to leave. I don’t have to contest with suitors every time I come home but Odysseus never had to go in and out of Midway, even in good weather. Or try to keep cat hair off of navy blue slacks.

And he never had to go Dallas-St Louis-Chicago-St Louis-Oklahoma City-Las Vegas-Hartford-Orlando-Ft Lauderdale-Baltimore-Las Vegas-Providence-Chicago-Kansas City-Dallas and points in between over a four day period and still know where he was the entire time.

As for sirens, try having a minor air leak around a cockpit window all day long. It can be a noise that leaves a mark on ones brain. Of course the same day my really expensive TSO German Sienheiser noise canceling headset decided to malfunction like a U-Boat screen door . . . leaving me with only a squirt bottle of sunglasses cleaner to stop the wind noise. The how to stop a window squeal with sunglasses cleaner trick only works at high altitude.

I find it really interesting how various people interact so very differently in a controlled setting like an airline cockpit. Some people are chatty, some are conversational and some are as entertaining as a stump. An open request to all of the chatty types: Please shush, To the stumps: Please learn some standard questions, watch Letterman and copy him. Do not give a one word answer to anything, read a book.

This week 27:46

A Fish Out of Air

Pilots as a general rule aren’t known for finely honed ground navigation skills. Actually we do pretty well when on an airport since the signs , although a little skimpy and badly placed, do match the map well. Pilot ground navigation mistakes have only caused a thousand or so fatalities.

I rented a car for the overnight here in Providince so I could go check out some machines I might be interested in. Having farted around with the rental of the auto far too long I missed dinner at the hotel . The logical response to this of course was ROAD TRIP. Who wants to pile up in the car and lets blow out to get some food. No takers, so I bolted solo to get my own dang dinner.

Rhode Island is great country for getting piss lost and being able to recover and find ones bearings within about two hours. There was road construction on the freeway down to one lane, this was a mess so I got off to cut through a neighborhood. NOT recommended. The only reason someone doesn’t go door to door choking the obnoxious yankee sons a bitches is that you would have to apply for a permit. And the place where the permits are is near  Downtown Providence. Providence! Got off the freeway for the privlidge of wandering about looking for the gaddam freeway going the right direction. This took almost two hours. They don’t want to clutter things up with too many signs to the airport and since there is virtually no air traffic the airport is almost impossible to find from the ground. 

I was able to finally find the airport, the airport hotel, my room and the machines I went to see the next day. Not a total waste of time because it was nice to get out and around a little instead of sit in a hotel and wonder what hijinks OJ or Paris might pull next. 

I actually did get to hear a Rhoade Island Cop say “can’t get therea froma herea”. Part of the reason I  stayed lost was how funny everybody’s stupid  directions were. I had never heard a person say a word like “Woonsocket” before and on the inside I was laughing my ass off while on the outside I was saying thank you and enjoy those donuts you fat bastard, wondering already if it was left or right toward Woonsocket.

Three vs Four

Hostage negotiations become critical as a situation reaches the end of the third day. This is for a good reason since people start to loose perception of the amount of time something has gone on after three days.

A three day trip is really not so long. I’m home part of the first day, even though I’m leaving. I’m gone a day. Then the third day I come home.

A four day trip is actually twice as long since there are two middle days instead of just one.

That’s my perception anyway, I’ve been taken up in this thing and am now part of it. The trip could go on forever and home would always be no farther away. And no closer, forever.

Then day four is over and all you have to do is be reoriented back into society again.

Shop Work, Homework

There are five violins in restoration process each at a different level of completion. Two of these were  a real bugger to get back together since the forward block that holds the neck in place had been damaged on both of these and someone had attempted a home repair using mystery glue. This really complicates the repair. The worse of the two needed significant grafting of wood to the upper ribs so there would acutally be something to glue to the block. They are all coming along nicely.

The house has the quiet calm that differs from the quiet calm it had before my brother left only in that he is not likely to bust down stairs to watch westerns or discuss history, two of my top ten things to do. If you’ve never sat around and brandished a firearm at the television while trying to figure out what the Germans and Russians were up to before WW II you should try it.

The painting frenzy is beginning to abate. The white floor is about complete, only a little more molding  work, paint on the east wall of the entry hall will be done this week end.

The Luscomb wings are back up on the ceiling a little cleaner but not shined up much yet. When you polish aluminum remarkable quantities of aluminum oxide are produced. It is the opposite of a white floor so this will continue outside someday. 

Off to bed with  27 hours of flying planned through Monday, what could possibly go wrong.

Zen and the Broken Bow

If you can just learn to “go with” a thing you will seem a master of it. The Zen folks will go on about the “water course way” of a thing to the point that it will take you years to figure out what the hell they were talking about. To sum it up water finds the water course without knowing what lies ahead. It simply flows. Flows in, flows around, or flows through to make a path for itself. The “way” of the water does not change if you are aware of it.

The perception of you as master of the water changes if you are aware of the water course. The corps of engineers is still working on this one.

If something made of wood is broken and splintered, a violin bow for example that a drunken pilot sat on while laid on a hotel bed ( the bow laid, the pilot drunk) it is not ruined if you can inagine the way the wood is made and how it is broken.

When again sober and with good lighting the splintered fibers of the break should be coaxed out straight with a needle such that they will mesh when stuck together with no glue. Some fibers will be too badly damaged to work with and should be sacrificed. It is most important that the fibers remaining will align perfectly.

When a good trial fit is achieved the very best high strength epoxy should be mixed. The epoxy is gently applied to the fibers of each broken half using a toothpick. When all of the mating surfaces have epoxy applied the final fit is made. Holding a moderate pressure to press the two ends together. Use high strength nylon thread to wrap the break going repeatedly from outward to inward with the wrap to force excess epoxy deeper and deeper into the break. 

Final wrapping can be made with ordinary string around and around about a hundred times per inch wound tightly. this generates considerably pressure on the broken area. After 24 hours cut the string and thread away with a utility knife blade to find a bow made whole again.

A little scraping to remove excess epoxy and the repair is complete if you were thoughtful enough to protect the frog and hair set in a zip lock bag taped to the tip end of the bow.

09 – 11 For The Crewmembers

The Tragic Events affected all of us as Americans. Some more directly and profoundly than others.

On the morning of 9-11 it was impossible for me to correctly place my feelings. There was the expected shock and dismay, the sympathy, anger and remorse. Fear, and something else I really could not identify. 

This went on for days. The following Friday after having flown over Manhattan and seen the still smoldering dust cloud from the ruins of the twin towers it became clear.

 When I was about eight years old there was a little girl in our neighborhood from two blocks over who had immigrated from Germany. The details of the lead up are a little fuzzy but I called her something that had the word Nazi in it and she kicked my ass profoundly.

She kicked my ass. A girl kicked my ass by surprise, beat me all up and held me on the ground and slapped me.  I ran home crying.

That was exactly how I felt that morning.  Pride never entered into it. Still hasn’t.

Please take a moment to remember the Aviation Professionals that died at work that day and their families.

Places Everyone

The travelers have returned.

Day three of my trip went better than could have been expected considering the weather and traffic delays.  Nobody asked.  

The haired one has returned from the desert experience of extreme self-reliance, I’m back, Brother and Esposa Gringa are back.

Modern air travel is remarkable.

Anticipation of the events unfolding in this new chapter runs high.

Day Three

Midland – Dallas – Tulsa – Dallas – Austin – Dallas and done for a few days. We started out a few minutes late since the airplane came in behind schedule from Vegas and were never able to quite catch up.

It was one of those days when the Texas weather just blustered and bullied but never really got it together to have a well organized line of storms. A large temperature inversion and upper level trough set off all of the turbulence plot warnings for everywhere we went after Dallas. 

The first cabin crew rode in with us from the hotel.  They were aloof. Valued co-workers I’m sure but aloof and forgettable.  A new trainee FA, actually a person hired as a FA supervisor trainee was on the extra jumpseat all day. The crew just about made us nuts with calls to the cockpit about the cabin being too warm, connection information, and if it would stay bumpy after the ride had smoothed out nicely. That’s how the day started and pretty much how it finished.

A pretty much full airplane all day, two big guys on the jumpseats on the first leg, the rides not too bad, distant lightning all evening, crooked flying airplane with mismatched engines, four fair landings and a surly co-pilot.  Not bad overall.

Boring boeing going … gone

Yesterday’s post sounds really dull now that I read it. Sorry.

Aviation at its very best is really a dull activity. Relaxed awaredness is what we try for. Nobody wants to spend the day in a space the size of a Boeing cockpit with a hyperactive spider monkey. And falling sound asleep is really frowned upon although not unheard of. Something in between is best.

Raleigh – Las Vegas – El Paso – Midland. Arriving almost thirty minutes early in Vegas there was another plane parked at our gate. They would have been gone but the crew asked for lavatory service at the last minute. The ramp area (pilots don’t say tarmac) doesn’t allow a comfortable turn around area so we squeezed between two parked airplanes and waited. And waited. For about twenty eight minutes, then the surly kid on the radio at operations gave us the good news that we could park at the next gate over. The parking brake was set exactly at the scheduled arrival time. Lots of fuel and time wasted.

Lunch, plane change, new cabin crew, people pushing and acting stupid in the terminal for an hour and we were off to El Paso.

Today was “stupid day” for ATC. Nobody really knows why it happens but there will be days when a given airline crew will get all of the stupidity that is usually evenly distributed across the industry. Missed radio calls, misunderstood radio calls, mixed up radio call signs (the thing we call ourselves) etc. We asked for a ten degree course deviation for weather and the man answered with a question “Did you need that now or can you wait a while?” Effective radio communication is usually fairly standardized but occasionally it just has to be conversational to make any sense. Well, we could wait about eighty miles but then it would be a ninety degree turn, whatever you need is fine. He approved the ten degree deviation and left me and the First Officer girl wondering out loud what the hell was that all about. I picture the controller sitting in the bat cave outside of Memphis asking the guy sitting next to him “What the hell was that all about?” at the same time.

In three legs we had two cancelled takeoff clearances. These are rare, maybe one a year or even fewer would be expected.

Our approach into El Paso got weird because the controller lady decided that just after we were all configured with landing gear and all the flaps out for a visual slam dunk over the mountains that a MD80 on a fifteen mile final should be in front of us. We complained, actually F O girl complained, and controller lady changed her mind again back to the original plan. Not a huge deal but a little weird.

The ground controller gave every indication of being a moron. With only two airplanes on the entire airport moving he managed to create a traffic conflict. My four year old grandson would have been more effective. At least he would sound cute on the radio.

And why oh why do air traffic controllers everywhere want to say things to the pilots while we are in the middle of trying to stop the fucking airplane? I would gleefully discuss subatomic particle physics or debate the finer points of Roman contributions to civilization over the radio before landing. Usually our workload is fairly light before touchdown. The transition from a 150 mile per hour tri-cycle to a docile lumbering Winnebago at taxi speed can be a total bitch. This is not a time for chit chat or silly instructions that could wait a little while. Much like a violinist you might try to talk to while playing a difficult piece we usually don’t remember what was said anyway.

Home tomorrow night, yipee!

Flight Time Today:  7:19

         Month Total: 12:58

As Planned

Dallas – SanAntonio – Orlando – Raleigh 242 people carted around with the greatest of ease. A short delay starting out due to a passenger with an anxiety issue could have turned to an hour but it didn’t. Only the first leg was full so we managed to stay pretty much on – time.

Weather over the Gulf  put us off course about a hundred miles but the rides were smooth for the most part.

We had the same cabin crew all day, two plain girls and a guy with way too much style for one gender.  They never really talked to us and never offered anything from the galley.

 The FO for the three day is a girl that will upgrade to Captain soon.

Time Today 5:39

Month Total 5:39

Fly Manana

Tomorrow is another “day one”,  massive preparations are in order and being ignored. The uniform is scattered all over the house. I’m not really sure why.

The “white room” picture post has raised a few questions but everybody is for the most part too lazy to comment or afraid to ask.

 The answers are as follows:

1.) Yes, that is a giant picture of John and Yoko.

2.) Yes, those are real airplane wings on the ceiling.

3.) Yes, we do have furniture. It’s just that we found most of it by the road or got it from people that died a very long time ago so my lovely wife is plotting to replace it with something a store will deliver.

Today was one of those days when one starts out late and just never quite catches up.

A lot of large airplane electrical system designs use a concept called load shedding. The idea is that if one of the generators fails the system is designed to shed nonessential electrical loads to keep all of the important stuff going. 

My brain seems to work  with a similiar intent but is often unable to automatically determine the difference between  the coffee maker and the navigation radios.  I think that may be why I threw my keys in the refrigerator and found my gun in the piano bench.

Crown molding for the Poor

If you think molding where the walls meet the ceiling is cool but way too expensive, or if you are terrified of trying to get the corners to match correctly this might be for you.

About twenty years ago I decided to paint a room to look like the sky. It really bugged me that the ceiling corners made a right angle and destroyed the whole “skyness” of the painting.

My temporary solution was to snap a line parallel to the ceiling and staple art board to the wall and ceiling with a little Elmer’s glue behind the edges where it touched. The art board made a nice curve about 12 inches from the ceiling which really smoothed the transition. Imagine smooth 12″ crown molding.

 For a tighter curve you can use poster board which bends more readily than art board.

The pieces of  art or poster board can either overlap or not at the sides. It really doesn’t matter. Gaps or uneven little steps will be hidden later. Once the stapling is done for all the easy parts you may encounter an inside corner. Just go ahead and take the molding of one wall to the corner. Hold your piece of art or poster board for the other wall up there and trim it a little at a time using scissors or tin snips till the corners don’t interfere. A little gap is ok.

Using drywall tape and joint compound “tape and bed” the joints at all the edges. Drywall mesh tape is wonderful stuff. Apply the mesh tape to the corner joint to bridge any gap. Wait a day or so and sand very lightly with really coarse drywall sanding mesh to remove any bumps. Another application of drywall tape or even paper with joint compound over it may be needed to finish off any gaps that still show.

Wait till it is all dry, a day or so then paint. A little piece of trim can be added along the wall to make it look fancy if you are going for the crown molding look.

Or … nevermind the joint tape and use fancy ass textured wall paper to cover your installed paper product molding

This and a /or little stencil work can make twenty bucks worth of poster board look like about ten dollar per foot molding.

As for durability, mine is over twenty years old and still looks just fine. The curved paper product with the mud on it is rigid enough to hold its shape well and flexible enough bend if the house shifts.

Few tools are required, good scissors or snips, a utility knife, ruler, string or laser, and a fair stapler. Even an office type stapler will work but the kind you get for 14 dollars is much better.

What could go wrong … You could get it all crooked and have to tear it down. Probably ten or twenty dollars in materials wasted. You could get dust or mud in your eyes or hair. The sanding dust from joint compound isn’t good for you to breathe and will make your hair nasty. Keep a damp towel with you to catch dust and wear a shower cap and cheap mask. You could get a really sore neck from looking up too much. Galileo syndrome, at least the church probably won’t arrest you.

You could get sore fingers or fall and bust your ass, otherwise this is a fairly easy project with dramatic results.

Important skills learned from this include the ability to describe a line parallel to a ceiling and smoothing a joint using drywall mesh tape and drywall compound (mud). The total cost for materials without using a molding strip to fancy things up is less than 50 cents a foot. That is so cheap you can afford to experiment a little.