Flight of Opposites

Chris Manno | June 16, 2011 at 10:11 am | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pMIKO-1hm

Weightless, a thousand moving metal, plastic and composite parts plus a ton of jet fuel all plunging earthward in perfect formation miles above west Texas. Again.

In that split second of suspense between the vertical and the plunge, in the last breath of a climb atop all the little BBs of thrust; a moment’s daydream and too late; let it fall.

The top of an arc–was this a Cuban Eight or a Clover Leaf I was doing?–and in a heartbeat of wandering thoughts, too late: we ain’t flying any more.

Own it. Afterburner? Salvage the maneuver? Nah–just own it. Fall. Salvage is usually ugly, often bone crushing with pullout G-forces. Relax, ride it. A sky moment, where you let the big blue reveal what happens next.

Been there, done that, without the airplane.

Spinning, inverted–shouldn’t you be looking at the ground? Relax; own it–you’re three thousand feet above the ground, there’s an altimeter on your reserve chute if you want to waste your free fall trying to read it–so just own the moment, be in the sky without questions or answers. You’ll eventually get into a chute-opening posture. Savor the weightlessness illusion of terminal velocity for a second or two more.

Such a relief from the cramped jump plane. Never the first in, which is last out, because kneeling hunched over a reserve chute on the sheet metal floor with straps and crap cutting off blood flow to the extremities any longer than is necessary isn’t optimum. Nor is the last in, at the door, first out: yeah, we’ll drop a test streamer first to see what the wind’s doing, but I’d rather watch the first jumper as a human guinea pig and see what it’s actually doing to the ant hanging from the canopy. Plus I don’t want to be by the door–if you snag a rip cord on something, which isn’t unthinkable in the cramped Cessna, you’re going out the door immediately because an open chute can take the whole plane down.

Out, finally; wind blast, tumble, hold–own it. Be in the sky moment, let it happen, notice it happening. A cushion of air, it feels like, a hundred mile an hour head wind. But not really–it’s you moving against the air, but funny how Copernicus and the whole “Earth revolving around the sun” thing doesn’t seem real as the Earth rushes up to meet you. Same end result though, no matter how you look at it.

And that’s the world of opposites that defines flight.

On the flip side, there’s nothing but concentration, detail, and performance in big jet flight. Every action is undergirded with interlocking layers of care. Details swim before my eyes like the ghostly green numbers projected on the glass in front of my face by the Heads Up Display: speed, altitude, energy, heading, lift, thrust, course, pitch, bank–all in an integrated ballet.

Unspoken but verified is the weight, the center of gravity, the temperature, the wind, the runway length. Everything matters, everything builds upon everything else–you sort it out, see to the details.

How different from falling out the yawning door of a noisy jump plane into the rushing slipstream and the hand of the wind on the downward plunge. Or the top of a delicate arc, inverted, watching the horizon replace the blue, then the dirt below rushing to meet you.

And that’s the opposite of what’s going on in back.

There it seems everyone’s not flying. Rather, it’s all about what they’re not doing: not driving for hours, not yet “there” but tolerably suspended between now and then. It’s all newspapers and iPads and headphones and movies and every animation and distraction except for flying, which back here is more the unraveling of time rather than the revelation of flight.

Which is fine.

For me nonetheless, it’s still the thousand moving parts and burning jet fuel and forward speed till the magic moment when hands and feet connected to tons of aluminum, blood and bone pull back and like a promise kept, the Earth falls away.

Then land or sea, it’s all the same because we’re sailing over it instead of creeping across it. Life shrinks back to arm’s length of miles and miles below and details and blemishes five way to the widest scope and limitless horizon. From where I sit, looking forward, it’s more like floating than moving, but the tapestry below inches by just the same.

And surface challenges vanish with the imperfections below. Towering thunderstorms raking and pummeling the dirt? No problem–seven miles up, we’ll fly over the trouble below.

Trouble out west: a spark flew, a fire caught, half a state on fire below draping the underscape with a finger-like plume.

A thousand acres in flames, but it looks more like a crushed-out cigarette from the sky box. And the ultimate ruggedness of rocky wilderness looks like just so much rough-cut, snow-capped diamond sculpture easing by below.

And of course, we’re not alone. But if we’re both on course, we’re nose to nose, so you won’t see this from the back. But we nod to each other, aware of the closing speed of over 1,000 mph, opposites in course and altitude.

Where you’re headed and where you’re from is all reversed nose to nose. Flying casually, intuitively then and diligently, perfectly now–it’s all about time and life, about how we go more than where and when we get there.

But one thing never changes, then or now, airplane or no: they sky’s a fine place to spend your life.

The Eye And The Sky.

So I’ve got at least two nurses and a hospital orderly pinning me down for a technician holding a gi-normous needle–the likes of which you’d expect a vet to use to put down a quarter horse–so the medical guy can put it straight through my five-year-old eye.

Sure, he says it goes into a vein in my arm and I won’t feel a thing, but I’ve been screaming my head off from the examining room to the lab just in case–because I don’t believe him. And you just know everything’s going to go haywire and oops, sorry about the needle in your eye and it hurts like hell, doesn’t it?

And that’s the look I see in this business-suited guy’s eyes, standing before the gate counter as I drag a ten yard flight plan out of the computer, asking me, “Will the flight be smooth?”

Which is as sensible as me five years before the needle-in-the-eye incident as a newborn asking the O.B. who held me upside down by the ankles, still covered in the packing material, “So, will my life be smooth?”

Now, how to answer that? “Well I’d have to say that around the Ohio Valley/Rust Belt which on the timeline is about your teen years, things could get ugly.” Because we have a coast-to-coast sea of roiling air miles ahead and yes, the teenage years may be bumpy, expect a little declining baldness near the middle-aged Great Plains of your life and God knows you can’t even dream of the desert spread of yawning cracked scorched earth mesas and desolation which lies before the emerald paradise coast, then the endless blue above and below and beyond. You know you really shouldn’t have asked. Newborns can’t, five-year-olds don’t; thirty-somethings shouldn’t but that’s the downside of holding the needle for a living.

Because in the great yawning maw of the sky and life and the dreamy arc of flight–ain’t no smooth rides. But how do you tell someone, convince a person, that the needle isn’t going to stick in his eye? Still, though, life’s going to get downright bumpy enroute but just hang on.

Because I’ve done this flight thing a couple times only poking what I intended; I’ve checked out the weather, the jet, the jet’s performance–relax. And expect a bump or two, but don’t make the fat nurse sit on you.

Twenty-five thousand feet, puffy clouds above and below and the red dirt pancake of West Texas sprawled wide as the eye can see.  Aloft in the “two thousand pound dog whistle” jet trainer, Air Force Flight School, filling my oxygen mask with sweat; my helmet chafing, ejection seat cinching me tight.

“Want to spin to the bottom?”

Means ‘do you want to pull those nose up, chop the power on both jet engines till we stall, then kick the rudder till she falls out of the sky in a flat spin like helicopter rotor blade broken loose and plummeting straight down for five miles?’

Which doesn’t seem like a good idea to do in a jet. But it’s part of the syllabus: you need to learn how to do this, to get out of this before you fat-splat onto Prairie-dise below. Because you’re going to fly solo once you master it–or you’re going to wash out if you can’t.

“Yup,” I lie, “Ready. Let’s do it.”

And all the needles in the world hover over your eye–not your vein–and nurses threaten but you’ve already tightened the web of straps cinching you to the ejection seat like a shrink-wrapped burrito. You didn’t ask the instructor pilot if it was going to be smooth because that’s as big a failure as the newborn seeking assurance for the O.B.. Guts, faith; just live it, dammit.

Because at that point, every bit of life is about flying–whatever the cost. Stick the needle in my eye; rip the wings off, shear the rotor, smack my ass like a newborn; I don’t care: I’d rather be dead than not fly.

Which is in itself a birth into the sky. And from there, the smart fearlessness is the journey of life–don’t ask because you really don’t want to know the answer, really: don’t need answers.

The dreaded spin? I had it all wrong. Slowly at first, then faster, then a blur but the point is this: it felt like I was stable and the jet was firm and stable but the world itself was spinning around me. Not me. Eyes fine. Relief. Confidence. Do it.

Ignore the blur, take the right steps: slam the stick forward; opposite rudder, power on, recover from the dive. And from that moment on, own the sky. No matter what.

Don’t know what Joe Biz did in the back when the rumbling started and the wings shook. I know I was at that time and for the entire transcon flight engaged with the radar and fuel flow and navigation and a thousand performance parameters including not sticking a needle in my own eye: I’m in the pointy end, remember? First on the scene, if you get my drift. I’ll spin us down, me down, every damn time–and recover before we hit the dirt. Trust me. Trust you.

Joe Biz, I feel your pain: as a five year old, I remember when they finally did stick the needle into my arm, it really didn’t hurt. But I had to keep the howling up to save face. A half breath and the dreaded moment’s past–but until it is, the second lingers like your very last heartbeat.

But once you get into the sky, you’re on your way–and everything’s better. It just is.

What’s it gonna be, wing nut?

Step inside my head for a moment.

Both jet engines are cooking slowly, efficiently, and you’re riding a cool blue flame in the thinnest reaches of the atmosphere, surfing the jet stream flinging you across the night sky with an extra hundred knots across the ground.

Love speed, love tailwinds and smooth night skies and clear radars and huge-mongous ground speed and parsimonious fuel flow of high by-pass fanjets breathing easy in the stratosphere. Can’t get enough of that, or keep it long enough.

Which is part of the deal. The weather three hundred miles ahead and eight miles below is crap, and that’s right where you’re headed. Not a surprise, so you started the balance sheet a thousand miles ago, before lighting the fires and launching off: destination forecast = extra fuel and an alternate airfield. But there’s a catch: extra fuel means extra weight. Your late arrival will put you beyond the landing cutoff time for the “long runway,” which itself is only 6,900 feet–short by any jet transport standard.

So you’ll need to plan to stop the jet on the short runway, the only one open. It’s less than a mile long, which ain’t much to stop 70 tons of pig iron literally flying at 234 feet per second on touchdown. Unchecked, that speed would eat up the 5,204 foot slab and put you into the lagoon in 21.367 seconds.

Hobson’s Choice: more fuel makes for more weight makes for a tough stop, but allows more flight time for contingencies. Thinking of the lagoon, stopping wins over loitering.

Bring in just enough fuel to set up a rational, stable approach, missed approach if need be, then rational, stable goat-rope divert to Dulles with the big-ass runways only 20 miles away. No more, no less fuel than that.

More accounting: landing distance chart shows at our weight, we need 5,000 feet of runway in order to stay off of CNN Breaking News. That leaves 200 feet to spare. At our touchdown speed, that’s about 1.5 seconds, but don’t exaggerate: by the time we’ve slowed some, you’ll have at least 3, maybe 5 seconds to contemplate your Facebook profile picture splashed all over the news.

Secret knowledge; runway 33 at Washington Reagan has a special high-friction coating to aid in stopping. Do you care? Hell no. That’s just one of those bad temptations whispering in your ear to “try it, it’ll be fine” when what really catches your attention after 17,000 flight hours is a different voice:

Don’t be an idiot! Trust no one, rely on no forecast or report or tech study; be conservative, be safe, realize there’s something out there you don’t know know that you’ll damn well wish you had later.

That’s my silent partner, that’s air sense, that’s “salt,” as my compadre Randy Sohn, legendary pilot who is one of only a handful of pilots in the nation who holds an open ATP from the FAA: he’s certified to fly any and every aircraft in the world. Hallelujah and amen–I believe!

First Officer has salt too. On descent, he asks, “You don’t mind if I’m on a hair-trigger to say ‘go-around’  if anything doesn’t look good on the approach, do you?”

“Heck no–more than happy to have you do that and if you do, put clearance on request to Dulles right then.”

Strapping in, starting descent, seat the cabin crew because the radar looks problematic and–they’re a Dallas-based crew, they’ll get it–you tell them “hang on, she’s gonna buck.” Which means grab a buttload of jumpseat and stay there.

Excellent First Officer has the data link printout of the DCA weather. Which you don’t trust and besides, it’s twenty minutes old already.

Cheat: I tell the First Officer as we turn downwind at 8,000 feet, “I’ll be off the primary radio for a minute.” On one of the others, I call the tower. “What are your winds currently?” I need to know, because we can tolerate ZERO tailwind on the short runway. I have the direct crosswind heading in mind; anything greater means we go off to Dulles. Of course, tower says direct cross.

Store that away. Trust no one.

Back with the F/O. We pre-briefed both approaches to both runways, in the slight chance we could beg our way onto the long one. If not, we’re also set up for the non-precision which is the only option (how dumb is that for a major airport?) on the short runway. F/O suggests we could burn off some fuel and have an easier stop.

I think about that for a moment. No, that would commit us to that runway without a rational divert option, which I believe we need to hold in reserve as I don’t have a warm fuzzy about the short runway: is it dry? Really dry? If we were to blow a tire and lose 25-30% of our braking effectiveness, could we stop anyway, “super friction” or no?

“Can you guys turn in from there?” asks Approach Control, “Or do you want a turn south to descend?”

Hah. “We want a turn south.” Remember, a stable, rational approach, not a screaming descent to the black hole visual.

Turn back inbound low and slow, just the way we need to be. Intermittent clouds–they’re pushing the visual limits, but it’s marginally acceptable. I see the river.

“Want me to call it?” asks the F/O. That means I’m responsible from that point on to descend and land visually. “Yes, call it.”

We’re cleared visual. I aim for the George Washington Bridge, crossing at the specified altitude, then it’s a free for all: plan a wide swing out then line up on the runway.

Goddam black hole. I’ve got the runway–it’s that big black spot. I don’t like aiming at a “big black spot,” especially a short one.

Speed’s right on, sink rate good. Switch to tower frequency, cleared to land. Tower wind report goes bad; doing the math, angle of deviation and rate: that’s a possible 2 to 5 knot tailwind.

Gray area: might it die down? Might it be different at the approach end? Might I be able to sneak under the normal approach path and claim a few hundred extra feet of runway? Might the friction additive make the difference? Black hole growing closer at 221 feet per second. Can you do it? You know you can, you can fly anything.

The question hangs in the air for a heartbeat: what’s it gonna be, wing nut?

Eff the ifs and mights. My air sense says this is not necessarily wrong–but absolutely not right enough for me to do it.

F/O correctly says, “That’s a no go.”

“Tell him we want clearance to Dulles.” Done.

Huge hassle to reconfigure, new altitude, new clearance, coordinate divert, avoid the Washington restricted airspace; reprogram the flight management system, brief the Dulles approach after securing the weather and a clearance and Job One: stay in control.

Twenty two minutes later, we’re on the ground safely at Dulles.

About 20 or thirty of the 160 warm pink bodies deplaning in one piece glare at me, mad about being 20 miles west of the lagoon I wouldn’t risk plunging into. The next day, after landing at Washington Reagan, an airport supervisor is in the cockpit before the engines have stopped spinning to read me the riot act: the divert cost $50,000; 45 kids misconnected to Honolulu; and then the prize, “did you think about asking to land south?”

Right, night VFR, a constant stream of jets inbound, just enough fuel for an approach and a divert if needed and we’ll ask to land against traffic.

The easy part of the job is the flying, Randy would always say. It’s the thinking you’d better get right. We did, enough said.

Nice job keeping everyone dry and the $50 million dollar jet out of the lagoon . . . good headwork on the critical decisions . . . nicely done divert. That’s what I hear in my head; it’s what I’d already told my First Officer.

Because no matter what an angry supervisor or glaring passengers might be “thinking”–I’d do it again, will do it again, exactly the same way: smart, conservative, safe. Yeah, that’s how it’s gonna be–every last time.

Waiting to pull out of the alley in LAX.

San Clemente Island off the southern Cal coast.

Pebble Beach

Edwards Air Force Base and the Space Shuttle runway.

Night Flight: Turning the Darkness Upside Down.

There’s a breathless moment of lightness exactly when the ground falls away, a heartbeat between earth and the sky when you belong to neither yet both at once till that held breath resolves itself into flight.

Free, climbing, darkness: night flight is always magic. Fledgling days, the “Night Tube,” a fifty mile circle around the red dirt pancake that is West Texas at ten thousand feet, solo in a sleek jet. Afloat, footless, nimble–forbidden to fly inverted solo at night, strictly PROHIBITED; a slow roll nonetheless, upside down, no earth, no sky, no gravity, but a kaleidoscope of pinpoint colors above and below. Laugh. Do it again, linger inverted, own the Sin of Intent: if you’ve already done it you’re going to hell anyway, so what’s a couple more slow aileron pirouettes in the face of eternity? Besides, whatever mischief gravity attempts, afterburner will fix.

Blackness deep as all time above and below. Constellated stars corralled ahead like a nose print on glass and you’re reading your own EKG: airspeed, angle of attack, altitude, vertical velocity, heading, flight path vector, energy on the wing; an alphabet soup swimming in ghostly green, the hieroglyphics of gravity banished by entree to the night sky. Lazy me, so lazy it takes an effort to glance at the engine instruments–can’t they be incorporated into the ghostly Heads Up Display, the oracle of flight projected before me?

The glance confirms what I already know from the feel of the throttles and the sound of the engines, through my feet on the rudders and my hands on the yoke: no sour notes in that symphony, although it never hurts to confirm with the symbology stacked neatly on the CRTs. Nothing needs to be said, what matters more is what’s done–a constant angle climb, course intercept, play that magenta line off into the blackness below the blackness.

That’s the ocean below the night sky, invisible black but cold and deep nonetheless. We arc above the sea floor, riding the air piled atop the silent cold depth of black water. Savor the island effect, because that what we are, in the sky, above the earth regardless of water or land. We generate our own heat and light so the 165 peeps in back don’t notice the difference between sky and water and land and night–but I do.

And here’s the beauty of overwater flight: not so many lights below–the occasional lonely ship or spindly oil rig–but a scattering of jewels above. Roll again, a Night Tube of time and light and dark and space, ocean and ground and sky–not supposed to, not allowed to invert the “now” with “then,” but what the hell. Embrace the Sin of Intent–once you start, why not see it through? You’re going to pay for it eventually anyway, so make it worthwhile. And there are constellations in everyone’s own night sky, aren’t there?

Because the night sky is a shaggy black dog, shaking off and flinging droplets of lights across the dome as far as you can see. Who’s to say where they land and like tea leaves, what they show? Mark Orion, constant friend, akimbo over your shoulder, partner in a thousand air miles and those at sea too. Who decided that a thousand years ago, a chant repeated over a millenium to never forget, to make sense of the dark like that? What lines your night sky with light, and you know it does, if you look?

I don’t care if it’s been a thousand years–somebody sees Cassiopeia in the sky vault of jewels, remembered for all time.  What did she do that we should mark her now? And who else?

In the cold black below, in the inverted time and place, there’s Stormin’ Norman: bold, boxy guy, a fighter, a drinker, flying buddy, drinking buddy with a laugh big as the sky; flew into the Philippine Sea that night and broke into a thousand little pieces that fluttered to the sea floor, never to be seen again.

Except in this night, in the thinnest air suspended between then and now, above and below, the deep and aloft. Roll again, what the hell.

Yes, Fone-Tone, brother in  The Years of Fire and Tribulation, stony-tall as Gibralter, deep as the Mariannas, fighter jock to the bone; four-ship low-level, NORDO, rejoin, ground scar in the Arizona desert, forever a ground scar; some scars you don’t want to heal or forget because once the map’s lost, where’s the treasure?

And Lloyd? How could you? How could it be you, a hundred cat-shots, and this? There’s a place, a reason, find it or not but it’s etched in the sky like the fire of a galaxy a light year ago, but still glimmering.

More. There are more, will be more. So much to see, but you don’t want to see too much–the galaxy finds a spot for every spark eventually. Canvas unframed, you can see without looking, and the end is always the same. You know, in your own life, your own sky, damn well what I’m talking about.

Like the Dipper to your back, the ghostly characters before you reveal that. South, lower, slower. Right side up and back inside, to the “now” demanding the reconciliation of your 600 miles per hour across the ground and your miles high above it.

Like an endless sigh, to the earth again, to the light. Huge wheels, concrete, everything slows–for now. Which really isn’t so long, is it?

Hotlanta

NW A-320, a thousand feet above.

Boomer sunset.

Airline Semantics

You’ve heard this over the P.A. on board a jet before, and it’s the airline version of  Tom Sawyer coaxing Huck Finn to whitewash the picket fence: “This is for your comfort and safety–and the safety of those around you.”

Translated? Eat your vegetables. Only like Mom used to do, coax you into thinking you thought of it yourself so you’ll actually do what’s best for you. So when you hear that phrase after any instruction on-board, like “fasten your seatbelt” or “stow your electronic devices,” do it.

Because what will follow is the airline version of Mom’s standard, “This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you.” Which is as untrue as when she said it: you’re going to get arrested, which will actually hurt you more than anyone else. Because you’re talking federal charges, which is neither negligible or inexpensive.

I know, by the time you’ve navigated the security and check-in gauntlets with their byzantine requirements and instructions and finally settled into your seat on board, you’re ready to have your own way at last, right?

Sorry, but you still have to work within constraints and if necessary, read between the lines so we can all stay cordial.

And there are other clearly embedded messages waiting for you at the airport, although I can’t really figure out why they’re dressed up as anything other than plain English. Some of them, I still don’t get–like this:

“The equipment for this flight is out of service.”

Huh? What’s wrong with “aircraft” and “broken,” respectively? Is it like the hotel industry’s 13th floor taboo–no one wants to stay there because of bad luck–that spills over into flying: sure don’t want to say the “a” word (“aircraft” or “airplane”) because flying is scary?

Does anyone ask what “equipment” you drive? And to me, driving is MUCH scarier than flying. But no one asked me about either one, actually.

My favorite "equipment."

Still, it seems like a bit of airline puffery to say “equipment ” to passengers when what you really mean is simply, “aircraft.” Between pilots, sure, we use the term “equipment” to distinguish between aircraft types, as in “is this scheduled for a 767-200 or -300?” Or, “What equipment is Joe Bunda on?” “He moved to the 75.”

Bad enough that we schedule “equipment” rather than aircraft, but the euphemisms don’t end there. Apparently “equipment” doesn’t “fly,” it operates. As in “Flight 22 will now operate out of gate 15.” Can we not even just “depart” rather than “operate,” if “flying” is too scary?

Now hold on before you sling around the jargon you just learned. Even knowing the correct term, don’t ask the dumb question:

See what I mean? It’s a linguistic mine field there at the airport and if you don’t want to seem like a dolt, it’s best to say as little as possible. But here are a couple other subtle distinctions if you want to sound at least like you go to the airport more than twice a year.

First, we “load” bags but we “board” passengers. Right? I mean everyone complains about air travel being a cattle car experience, so why not clean up the perception a little: you will board the aircraft. At your destination, you will “deplane,” not “de-board” as I often hear after a pregnant pause grasping for words.

Do you really need to be "loaded" onto the plane?

Finally, one last bit of terminology. If we meet and I’m out of uniform, I will likely not even mention what I do for a living. That’s not because I’m anti-social, it’s more because I don’t really want to hear a story about how someone’s last flight allegedly “fell thousands of feet straight down” or more typically, had the pilot “abort the landing” and shoot straight up or blah-blah-blah and no, I don’t know what the fare to Cleveland is.

So at best you’ll get a cover story. But if in uniform I accidentally make eye contact and you feel an interrogation is in order, let me say up front that I don’t do any “runs.” Those are for skiers and milkmen. Besides the fact that I usually can’t even remember where I was the night before (some hotel somewhere?) or haven’t even looked at the trip I’m flying next week (think about that the night before), pilots and flight attendants don’t do “runs.” Okay?

Hmmmm, I sound a little cranky today. Must be because in an hour, seems I’ll be dragging on the polyester and operating the equipment between Dulles and LAX once they load the passengers.

But in real life, I get to fly a great jet across the country yet again, seeing the best views from the sky and loving every minute of it as I always have, while keeping my 160 peeps and crew of six safe and happy and taking them where they wanted to go today.

Now, which sounds like more fun to you?

Welcome to my world.

I used to post these on Facebook–but I closed my account last week. From now on, they’ll be right here if you care to look at them.

LAX at sunset, waiting for the alley to clear so we can park.

The Colorado River divides California from Arizona.

Beak to beak at LAX.

The city by the bay.

Weekdays flying the Boeing, weekends flying the Stratocaster Blacktop with my band, "NightFlight."

The Trouble With Angels

Always so careful, so step-by-step methodical on the ground. That’s the dues you pay to find the angels–trouble that they are in the end.

At sea level, it’s like you don’t want to get spotted, apprehended as a fraud: you are this airline captain thing?  Aren’t they like steely-eyed cliche marketing stuff? And you–where are your aviator glasses? You’ve never had a pair (they’re annoyingly fish-eyed) or a big pilot watch (Darling Bride gave me a subtle smooth Longines tank that reminds me of the drunken cruise stop in Barabados where we bought it) and you aren’t a Republican?

No matter, there are plenty of pilots who like playing the role, which is a good thing because it means you don’t have to. I just don’t do “pilot theater.”

The airport is a troubled hive, buzzing with creatures waiting to fly off to the four corners of everywhere but here. Make your way through the busy swarm, touch the bases: just need a jet, a decent fuel load–period. I’ll handle the rest: route, departure, cruise altitudes, and The Edge.

The what? The Edge is what I know independent of the charts, stats and observations about the flight: air sense tells me if that fuel load’s sufficient, having dealt with the altitude hold down or mountain wave or speed restrictions or any number of wild cards thrown down to make your fuel load inadequate, your paperwork obsolete and your boilerplate plan garbage fodder. That’s the cumulative instinct born of many thousands of hours in the air watching the corners draw in: how’d you get into this situation, and how the hell are you getting out?

The answer is simple: stay out of trouble in the first place. Duh.

“Hey, this is Chris, the captain to Montreal. How about throwing an extra 1,500 pounds of fuel onto that release?” Which is an order rather than a request–but why not couch it in “nicety?” We’re still on terra firma; different rules apply when gravity is in effect. Plus, I appreciate all the folks who work behind the scenes to abet my escape. They make it all happen–I don’t ever overlook that.

It’s still a great feeling to step on board and turn left, into the cockpit, into the sanctuary: the whirring of cooling fans, a mini-sized Times Square of lights and lettering glowing with a message, all of it related to your launch. And it’s not just that, really, it’s actually more of the fact that you get to shift your attention from the ground to the sky: what’s going on up there? Winds? Departure corridor? Weather? traffic? More in the sky than the ground–let go of that gravity stuff. Say goodbye to the dirt, hello to the sky.

An army of cleaners swarms over the cabin interior. The cabin crew is boarding, stowing their bags then checking their workspace: emergency equipment, catering stuff. The First Officer is dragging his gear into the cockpit, then pulling on a safety vest to go outside and pre-flight, before coming inside to set up the cockpit. They’re all really busy, so why don’t you make yourself scarce? Good idea.

Bing! Time’s up: we should be sufficiently close to launch so you can step on-board, finish the last pre-flight checklists, verify the route (VERY important); then the challenge and response–and the blink check: you sweep your eyes over all of the panels (yaw damper on, pressurization auto . . .) making sure for yourself that everything’s the way you want to know it must be when you’re rolling down the concrete with your eyes on the centerline stripe being gobbled up at a hundred-fifty miles per hour.

Exterior door warning lights wink out one by one as the last bags are thrown into the cargo compartments. Feels like a symphony warm-up, while the ushers urge everyone to their seats before the curtain–don’t want to be late.

The jet’s alive and breathing now, the auxiliary power unit–a small jet engine in the tail section–now pumping out high pressure air and generating our own electricity. I add the hum of hydraulic pumps to the mix and with a thud, 3,000 psi of hydraulic fluid snaps the flight controls to attention. Now my arms are 130 feet long, with sleek wingtips, my feet on the rudders swing the three story tall tail. Places everyone, we’re near curtain time.

Pull that jetbridge and set us free . . .

Life goes slo-mo: take it all in, piece by piece. Last check of the weather and the barometric pressure (rising or falling?) the winds (gusts, shear, direction). Challenge and response checklist like a deacon and a cantor, back and forth, rethinking the world: we’re dividing attention between “to do” and “done.” Simplify, like bees from the hive–all essential focus on flight.

There are numbers in my head, shifting and verifying sums I WILL see before we take off: planned weight, then the actual weight, the combination of which determines pay for angels: how many thousands of feet can we put between us and the dirt? What will the wing support? How much muscle can we get from the two straining horses slung under the wings?

This ain’t just walking around in Vegas and yanking a handle to see what numbers come up–I’m lining them up in my head one by one, verifying them visually. The taxi is a trundle, like walking up steps to a shrine on your knees, and that’s good: buying the angels, which is how we used to refer to altitude in the Air Force, must be a sealed transaction, paid up front–or you will fall from the sky.

“Angels twenty-five,” a radar controller would snap at us over some dark and deep god forsaken ocean, “you have a pair of fighters inbound at your six, angels twenty-five.” Size it up; altitude above you–angels above–absolutely worthless. Angels below are energy.

What a laugh. Now we’re taking a friendly load of tin-packed bees to angels forty-one, and they don’t know or care about the what or why. Which is fine–that’s why I’m here, comfortably invisible behind the bolted and locked (I love that) door.

The litany of preflight sanctifies the same binary on taxi-out: done, to do; done–numbers aswarm not only in my head, but before my eyes.

I see through the jet and it sees through me, numbers spun out by dozens of computers talking to satellites and data linked, but mostly through the complex on-board analytic comparators. We’re a team: I sort it out, toss in The Edge, send back signals and control inputs.

And all the talk ends with the exchange of clearances, lastly “cleared for take-off.”

Then it’s all power and noise–two things that attracted me to jets in the first place–and the brute force hurtling the tons of bone and blood and steel down the concrete with the energy of a freight train. That’s the price to claim the angels–kinetic energy that will need to be dealt with, but later.

I can feel the wing ready to fly, know it will fly, but just keep the nose tracking the runway centerline till the automated voice calls out “V-1.” Good–too fast to stop, committed to flight. Good or bad, that’s where I’d rather be anyway. The earth drops away.

The jet’s more graceful now, smoother too with the wheels off the deck. And now I have the arc of the wing, a dip and a turn, plus the climbing of the nose to keep ahead of the howling duet under the wings.

The background music in my head is the melody of time and fuel and speed and altitude–the mix never ends, the harmony must prevail–no off notes, not a beat missed; we climb, then stretch out and slice an arc across the sky, trailing a white tail that points away, shows where we’ve been, promises where we’re going.

We own the angels, for now. Climbing up means stepping down, eventually. But for now we just fly, the rest is just details, and for later. Now is the sky and we can worry about the dirt only when and as much as we have to, when the time comes.

The early days of aviation.

Earlier this week, I was privileged to join the Airplane Geeks crew interviewing Igor Sikorsky III, grandson of the famous Russian aircraft designer. He gives new insight into this famous man and the early days of aviation. That, plus aviation news from around the world.

Download or listen live–click here!

Just Fly The Pieces.

Windshear ain’t all bad. Why?

Well, if  “windshear advisories” are being broadcast for the take-off runway, you get to use the full mojo on both engines.

No de-rate allowed, so you get The Full Monty on both engines which is like super kick-in-the-pants giddyup on take-off, especially if you’re light.

So normally I’m rolling down the runway chanting to myself, “Engines, engines, engines . . .” as a way to keep my focus not only on the centerline, but after 80 knots, to screen out any of the dozens of aural and visual warnings and annunciations that could try to induce me to abort–which we ain’t doing above 80 knots. Why?

Because I’m a pilot: I’d rather fly with a sick airplane–even on one engine–rather than try to stay on the 80-ton bronco, stopping it with whatever’s left after something malfunctioned. So I screen out electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, navigation, flight guidance annunciations and look for engines engines engines; if they’re turning and burning, we’re flying and we’ll worry about the other stuff in the air.

And in a highspeed abort, especially if there’s a ground evacuation afterward–somebody’s going to get hurt.

“Just fly the goddam pieces,” crusty old Major Jerry McClennan used to bark, instead of the typically laborious over-fried briefing done before an Air Force gaggle of jets and rendezvouses and painstaking square-filling beforehand.

Jerry, engine fire?

A wave of his bony hand, always holding a cigarette which is why he usually smelled like a smoldering dump fire, even unlit. “Bah! Just let it burn off,” he’d growl. “Who the hell cares?”

That’s the original “fly the pieces” mentality, which I first heard from ol’ Jer so many years ago. And he’s right.

Because life is that way: you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit, as my fifth grader reminds me now and again when I’m cursing the laptop for being balky at a task which she can and will easily smooth out with a few deft clicks.

So it is with jets, flights, and flight crews.

And as any pilot who endured an emergency simulator with the legendary American Airlines instructor Dutch Schultz (long retired and passed away) will recall as he threw multiple and complex aircraft emergencies at you relentlessly, how he’d smile and say softly, “Well, it’s an imperfect world, isn’t it?

That it is. And I can’t even muster much disappointment when things go wrong, as they often will, not only expecting the worst, but also figuring the bigger pieces on fire will just burn off anyway. Look out below–we actually had a 727 years ago where one of the engines literally fell off.

Among the other bells and lights distracting the cockpit crew was the cabin interphone call chime.

Flight Attendant: we just lost an engine.

Pilot: yeah, we know. Thanks for distracting me from the obvious with the obvious.

Flight Attendant: no, I mean it’s gone.

This is where Jerry would say, “Well who the hell cares–we’ve got more, don’t we?” And don’t call up here any more–we’re busy.

I was in awe of him as a lieutenant: the guy’s a wildman! He flies around with his hair on fire, doesn’t give a damn.

That’s where, I find out 15,000 pilot hours later, I was dead wrong.

Jerry gave a damn–and he was passing along the secret in the pilot world that also translates into life as well. That is, the question in a critical situation isn’t “what’s going to happen?” Well, you can ask that, but the real question you need to know that will determine what you do is “what’s the worst that can happen?”

Then just back it off a notch and fly right. It gets easier from there, once you decide where the edge of the world is, and you’ll find in any emergency there’s at least some room between you and that fall-off-the-edge point.

I tried, really I did, to muster something other than strict adherence to standard responses the day Mexico City approach vectored us into a mountain at night in a thunderstorm. Really I did–but nothing, no panic, no fear; nada.

The Flight Data Recorder printout (I still have it) shows within two second of the alert, I had the wings level and the power to the firewall, two seconds after that the nose was at 20 degrees and climbing, the radio altimeter unwinding like the Dow. We were losing, the mountain was winning. Couldn’t see a thing because of the thunderstorm enveloping us anyway–which was a good thing: turbulence had exceeded the autopilot’s limits and it had quit earlier.

The extra seconds to disconnect the autopilot might have eaten the few feet we had to spare–you could clearly hear the automated radio altimeter warning “500 feet” even though we were above 9,000 feet in altitude–when we cleared the mountain. Like windshear on take-off, no worries, deal with it and there is an upside to everything anyway.

Throughout, all I could muster was intense concentration–is there one more ounce of lift or thrust I’m overlooking?–the whole time. Well that, plus a smidge of resentment at having been vectored into the mountain, but it’s an imperfect world, isn’t it?

Rocks everywhere!

Fly the pieces, is what I told the pilot sent down to Mexico City to babysit the double engine change required after the firewall escape maneuver we’d done quietly, intently and successfully.

Seen the edge a few times since, and in a career aloft that includes skydiving and acro flying, many times before: shrug. Because Jerry was right–what choice do you really have? Concentration, thinking above feeling and in the end, just fly the pieces. You’ll know soon enough how it all turns out, right?

Bad News: Cat Ranchers in the Sky.

The “cat rancher.” If you’re a flight crew member, you know who I’m talking about–because you’ve been on a crew with one or more of them before.

They have a different mindset than normal folks. Somehow, they’ve confused their pet with an actual meaningful sentient relationship and worse, they’ve confused their cat with a pet. It’s not like the cat or worse, cats, really give a damn, and yeah, they may look “cute” not giving a damn.

But somehow, maybe through the lack of actual interpersonal connections, maybe they’ve moved beyond a parenthood or a spouse-hood–or possibly both of those things moved on from them. Could be a bad experience with a scoutmaster or weird uncle–I don’t know.

Thus the cat rancher: keeper of one or more “babies,” gushing over them whenever a conversation drifts to children or family. They don’t notice that others in the conversation are internally going, “my god: a cat rancher.”

That’s actually just a symptom, too, cat rancherhood, of a “damaged goods” brand that then explains the spillover of such arrested development into other areas. In the flying biz, we tend to be a little out of the mainstream. Our work interactions occur on the road with an ever-changing combination of crewmembers in varying locations around the country and the world.

We tend not to have much direct or face-to-face accountability to a boss or an organizational hierarchy. Rather, we’re on our own  all over the globe, making chit-chat (that’s where they drop “the cat bomb” and seem to not notice the mainstream doesn’t normally include the feline-philia). They have a different set of valuations when it comes to both attitudes and behaviors related to both two and four-legged creatures.

In fact, they do better with the latter, sadly, than the former.

Let me give you an example. Mr. Boeing didn’t give us too much extra room in the cockpit. After a recent flight, as passengers were deplaning, I attempted to heft my suitcase out of the cockpit in a break in the passenger line. The First Officer and I had another flight to fly and we were late.

The cockpit door, when it’s open, covers the forward lav door. You can’t open one while the other is open. Unbeknownst to me–how would I know, actually?–one of our senior citizen flight attendants had chosen that moment to use the lav. And she fought to open the lav door just as I pushed my bag through the cockpit doorway, pinning my bag to the bulkhead.

“Can you let me out? Can you let me out?” She said it at least three times, very irritated, almost as if I’d let the air out of her cat. “Not until you close that door a little because–”

“Let me out! Let me out!” She squeezed her portly self out through the narrow opening, haranguing me the whole time, adding, “You can tell the lav is occupied by the red sign there.” Duh. But if it’s behind the door, how the hell could I see that?

My F/O, laughing, said it first with a knowing glance: “Cat rancher.” Which I suppose is a more pleasant term than the equally accurate characterization, “social retard.”

“I hope you don’t talk to your cats that way,” I said as we both skeedadled to our next gate and jet. And actually, I can only imagine what a tale she must have told her cats in her 1980s vintage condo over a shared can of tuna and Tivo’d “Golden Girls” reruns–or what they may have said in return.

Fig. 1 Cats vs. hotness: tolerance has it’s limits. Courtesy of fellow pilot Marlo C.

So, the profile of the cat rancher is over forty, usually fifty, sometimes sixty, cranky, weird from living alone and having no direct supervision at work. And a flight attendant. Right?

Not so fast.

Sadly, they’re on both sides of the cockpit door.

Flew with First Officer “X” (not his real name–and I know you already know “X” is not his “real name,” but I always wanted to try that goofy “not his real name” device and it really does feel as inane as it is). Anyway, he immediately tipped me off to his cat-rancher potential within minutes of meeting him on the flight deck.

“Hi, I’m Chris,” I said as usual, extending my hand before putting my flight gear into place at the captain’s position.

A brief hello was within minutes followed by, on his part, some pictures from Mars that he’d downloaded and printed.

Strike one.

More pictures followed of his Sheltie, who he said he had to rock  to sleep, then tuck in. Strike two and three.

He tried to show any flight attendant who made the mistake of coming to the cockpit his Mars pictures. And he explained to me how after his most recent first date with a flight attendant, he waited a respectable day before calling her again–and she’d already put call blocker on him.

Really? Guess she didn’t have any interest in Mars. Or pets elevated to human stature, at least in certain peoples’ minds.

Sigh.

They’re everywhere, even–no, especially in the sky. It’s an artificial world of transient connections, no supervision, no real accountability for propriety and reality because anything goes: you’ll never see the cat rancher again, so what point is there in telling someone, “you really need professional help–you’re losing it over your pets.”

So when it comes up–and it will, eventually, on a crew–how someone’s pet has become a defacto “person” in someone’s world: be patient, relish the fact that it does seem weird to you, which is confirmation that you haven’t lost your marbles as they clearly have.

Just nod, say “Mmm-hhmmm” as necessary, a pray for a short flight. That, and call blocker are your only only real hope.

Fly The Ragged Edge.

“If you are out of trouble, watch for danger.” –Sophocles

Which is why in flying, I like trouble in my face–because it means it’s not sneaking up to bite me in the ass.

Thought about that as wind noise coupled with the tautness of flight at the Mach limit made the whole westbound lunge seem like a strain. We’d didn’t really fly low and fast–low being mid-twenties and fast being .81 Mach–without a damn good reason. It’s expensive, and hard on the jet. But it’s the best way to cover ground fast.

I’d gotten my marching orders from Flight Dispatch and the Chief Pilot on Duty before take-off: the hurricane bearing down on Cabo was predicted to make landfall there in just over four hours. That gave me about three plus change to get in there, board a full load trying to escape the looming storm, and get out.

“If for any reason you judge that you won’t be able to get out before the storm hits–don’t land. Turn around and fly back home.” We had enough gas to get there, u-turn, then climb to a higher altitude for a slow cruise back without ever having landed. Was I game, they asked? Pilot-in-command has all of the authority, as well as the responsibility if anything goes wrong. But of course I’m game–I’m always ready to take it in the air.

What could go wrong? Maybe better, who?  The weather forecasters could be wrong about the speed of the storm, or the storm could speed up, change course–who knows?  Don’t care–I have radar. Within 300 miles I’ll get the picture, we’ll be able to calculate how fast it’s moving.

What if you get on the ground and something malfunctions, breaks or somehow prevents taking off again?

That would be like old times in the South China Sea: typhoons circling the little coral rock that is Okinawa, wind noise preventing sleep, humidity making everything clammy damp and little to do but read books and drink lukewarm refreshments by candlelight because the power goes out early on and stays out. Been there, done that. Guess we’d try to park the $25-million dollar jet with the nose into the wind and hope for the best.

What if what if what if?

Actually: who cares? You deal with it as it comes, because anything else is all fakery anyway: crossing bridges before you come to them, especially in flight, is a bad way to plan. Here’s why.

Flashback to my early years as captain . . . thirty miles south of the airport, marginal ceiling due to fog rolling up the valley. The best approach available due to winds has a 100 foot minimum. The fifty foot minimum–which we will need, my experience tells me, despite the reported airport weather–comes with a ten knot tailwind, something I’m unwilling to negotiate at fifty feet.

And the Flight Management Computer “magic box” suggests we’ll have enough fuel to shoot two approaches, then proceed a hundred miles north to our alternate, fly an approach and land. Flight Dispatch says “You should be fine–the fog’s rolling up the valley, you’ll outrun it.” So–remember, it’s my early days as captain–that’s the plan, based on “what you know.”

The first approach uses exactly as much fuel as we’d planned, but with predictable results: the ceiling is ragged; I catch glimpses of the approach lights but not sufficient to set up for a safe landing. And I won’t go below minimums, period.

Second approach, still no good; clearance to our alternate pre-coordinated on the missed approach. Then, the one-two punch I wasn’t expecting:

Now the magic box “Progress–Fuel Predict” readout is a thousand pounds lower than before we’d started the approaches, even though we’d used exactly the amount we’d expected. But somewhere between our primary and alternate, we’d lost about twenty minutes of loiter time. Not devastating–we’d land at our alternate–right?

Then the First Officer handed me the latest printout of weather at our alternate field, which did have a fifty-foot decision height–but it wouldn’t matter because our alternate had gone below minimums as well. The fog didn’t flow up the valley–it formed south to north as the temperature-dewpoint spread shrank with the setting sun. Suddenly, the snapping jaws of trouble are biting me in the ass: low fuel, and we need to overfly the alternate to the first suitable field another sixty miles north, and that one approach will be it–so it better be good.

What about the weather forecast, the last reported viz, Dispatch’s prediction and recommendation, plus the great “plan” that made sense ten minutes ago?

You can sum all that up in the great words of the modern day Sophocles: you fucked up–you trusted us. Never, never, never trust “what you know”–because that’s all a look backward. It may have been fine then, but we live and fly now, moving forward at hundreds of feet per second.

Los Cabos is currently reporting steady winds out of the south and a high ceiling. I can picture it, having raced out ahead of typhoons and hurricanes in the Pacific: a blank sky, curiously devoid of features, almost lulling you into going out to sea. It’s the high pressure dragging in the ultimate low pressure that is the hurricane. And when it nears, the high cirrus blowing off to the path of the storm–fair warning, if you pay attention, announces the march of the whirlwind heading your way.

HEFOE check: Hydraulics, Electrics, Fuel, Oxygen, Engines–the ship’s just fine, all consumables at good levels, no systems problems. The radar picture shows the contour of the first approaching bands of squall lines, still twenty to thirty miles off shore. Winds are shifting between twenty and thirty knots, so we have enough slack to sneak in and out.

This is a good steady-state “now,” in my mind: still a margin for the winds to pick up and since they’re down the runway, no problems getting airborne again. The Cabo station staff are good folks–they’d turn the aircraft around fast. I’m game. The F/O? I ask, “what am I not thinking of?”

To me that’s a better question than, “What do you think of this plan?” I want to know what he’s thinking, and what he might know that I don’t want to overlook. He shakes his head slowly–“I can’t think of anything else.”

Deep breath. Thoughts of “what if” yield to “what is.” Commit: we’re going. “Call for descent,” I say, going for the shoulder straps. Already seated the flight attendants and the handful of passengers, probably Cabo residents heading home to batten down the hatches.

The Cabo ramp is a ghost town. You can feel something electric in the air–the steady wind off the ocean, strong, relentless, the breath of a giant storming ashore, the promise of a powerful lashing to come. The sky is a jaundiced yellow now, the sun shrinking and closing it’s eye into the western Pacific, not wanting to witness what night would drag ashore.

Not the usual look on the passengers faces in the terminal. Round eyes and drawn faces, quiet, the exact opposite of the usual sunburned, wilted, worn, bored, tired, hungover, annoyed-the-vacation’s-over look. Now they look pointedly for escape. We’re the last rocket out of town.

An orderly line, clutching hats and leaning into the wind, straggles to the stairs of the jet. The wind has picked up just since we landed, more insistent now, like, “You were warned.” Something powerful, monstrous is headed this way, you can feel it. I walk around the jet one last time as passengers make their way aboard. I linger under the right wing, one wary eye toward the sea, taking in the feel of the storm. We’re good. Engine failure options on take-off now will be either a quick downwind tucked inside the mountains, or depending on when where and what (fire makes everything different), maybe further north or east.

I’m the last one up the stairs to the aircraft. The station folks have a wary, distant look–they know what they’re in for. “Take care, amigo,” I say, hating to leave the agent there. “Via con Dios,” he says back, then looks away.

We part ways, done with “what if,” both turning to face what our own trip to the edge means. It’s better that way, finding and facing it. At least that way you know where it is.