FlyJinks: Well that was really stupid.

Mimi has always been one of my favorite flight attendants: self-assured, smart, and a real sharp tongue coupled with a very sarcastic sense of humor. Rewinding to my DC-10 First Officer days, (okay, I’ve been a captain for 20 years now, do the math), I recall Mimi’s dedicated enthusiasm for a practical joke on a new flight engineer, an old tradition back in the days when we had new pilots and flight attendants joining our ranks literally by the thousands.

Although I usually took no part, I always got a laugh anyway. For instance, I can’t recall how many times I watched a captain send a new flight attendant back to the cabin to get some “air samples” in a barf bag. The passengers must have thought they were nuts.

Mimi’s plan involved luring  the engineer into the cabin to deal with a problem in the lav. Yes, the engineer wasn’t called “the plumber” for nothing. He’d put all of the hydraulic pumps to high pressure (hey, I was a DC-10 engineer way back), then all the fuel boost pumps back on, grab his hat and a few tools and head for the cabin.

DC-10 plumber's station. I did a year there . . .

Mimi was an expert in creating certain particularly vulgar sculptures from bran muffins and apple jelly, two items in the breakfast pastry stock in First Class. What she–and other flight attendants–would sculpt looked like the output of a German shepherd after digesting five pounds of raw meat, then squatting on your lawn.

The plan was to lay the sculpture next to the seat or on the seat in the lav, then call the engineer: “Look what someone did . . .” When he shrank away in revulsion, the flight attendant would scold him, then with her bare hands pick up the reshaped bran muffin  and wave it around like it was nothing, freaking out the engineer who was visualizing German shepherd output the whole time.

Funny. So Mimi creates her masterpiece, then slips it gingerly into a side pocket on her uniform dress (fragile! don’t spoil the shape!) and walks up the aisle through First Class toward one of the forward lavs.

She told me later she wasn’t exactly sure what happened, but on the way to the forward lav, a bump of turbulence jolted her sideways and her hip hit the credenza below the TV screen in First Class. The end result was her standing before the first row of First Class, and the oblong sculpture had flopped out of her dress and plopped down between her legs on the carpet. As if she’d just done the nasty deed right there.

Despite the gawking, the horrified passenger looks, other flight attendants told me Mimi just reached down as if it were nothing, snatched up the offending torpedo, and walked forward, eventually ending up in the cockpit.

“The deal’s off,” she told me, a finger to her lips. The Flight Engineer was off the hook–at least on that leg. Pretty sure she got him later.

While we’re on the DC-10–my second favorite jet to fly, behind the 737-800–maybe I could relate the tale that involved a half dozen flight attendants in the lower galley in their nightgowns calling me and one of my favorite pilots (we still see each other and back up the facts to whomever else has trouble believing the true story) from the cockpit one at a time for a “slumber party,” with 275 passengers upstairs clueless except for the fact that so many flight attendants seemed to have vanished.

Well, maybe next time.

Captain Who? Captain YOU.

You’re the captain: try it on like a pair of pants (Waist a little tight? Lay off the brownie sundaes the flight attendants sometimes offer) and walk around. Four big ol’ stripes, hat too with the scrambled eggs elaboration on the hat bill. You’ve arrived.

So, what’s the first thing you do when you get to the airport? Check the weather? The jet? Right?

Hell no. You sign in and get your per diem started, as cash flow is key. So, check the weather? Stupid. If you’re just now “checking the weather” you might as well be one of the passengers with the glazed doughnut look noticing with reasonable consternation that they will arrive into different weather many miles away.

Of course you checked it–departure, enroute and destination–as soon as you got up this morning, then probably an hour ago, so that now you can see the trend. You might have picked up a thing or two about the behavior of air masses after spending 30-some years working aloft, plus you’ve learned the peculiarities of particular destinations, how the topography casts an orographic effect on the winds and the weather. Where’s the weather data from: National Weather Service? NOAA? Nah–from “My Radar” on your iPhone where you get a complete depiction of the radar picture in realtime of the entire route of flight; back it up with the radar picture from FltPlan.com which also shows the full route and destination regional radar.

Okay, now the flight plan. What’s the most important thing there, the route, the altitude, the jet? Again, hell no.

The motion lotion: the fuel, the burn, the reserve, the loiter time. The rest of the junk? What evs–we’ll get airborne and see what’s what. You know from experience at every destination what kind of bingo fuel you’re going to be comfortable with. The route changes with traffic flow and Air traffic Control’s best guess at managing the crowd crisscrossing the national airspace. But unlike the old Air Force days, you can’t just fly up to a tanker, hold position, get plugged and tank a few thousand pounds. You sure miss that, don’t you?

Anyway, add your years of air sense to the weather trending you’ve determined is going on today, add in the time of day for traffic flow (how are the lines at the grocery store right around lunch time? get it?) and you get an idea of what’s the minimum fuel required.

So you make sure you have what you need and if not, a quick call to Flight Dispatch: “Could you add 2,000 pounds to the release, please?” Don’t know about other airlines, but never have had a dispatcher balk at my request. Once we agree, sign the flight plan electronically and print all ten yards worth of dead tree. Shame about the trees–all this information is being electronically uploaded to the flight management system on board via data link anyway.

Origami: fold that up in components–Take-Off Plan (speeds, weights, distances), Flight Plan (points, times, distances, winds, temps, ground speed, true airspeed, Mach, fuel burn) and the Other Ten Yards (temporary airspace notes, changes, aircraft systems notes, procedural changes, temporary restrictions) of stuff you might need to know and that a battery of attorneys after any incident will want to use as ammo to say, “You should have known this.” Now you do.

Next? The jet? Time for the jet? Yes and no.

You want to get there as the last passengers deplane so as to meet the pilots who flew it in for a quick, “Good jet” (you do the same when you pass a jet to another crew) or, an explanation of maintenance issues they may have noted in the logbook.

Fine. Once the other pilots and flight attendants leave, what? Stow your gear? Read the maintenance logbook? Start the preflight?

Not so fast. First, scrounge the outgoing catering for an unopened bottle–maybe two!–of water. Stash that (it’s just getting removed by the caterers anyway) in the cockpit first. Dehydration is a major physical stress of a career at altitude which affects a pilot’s ability to work as efficiently and smartly as possible. Can’t do much about jetlag or hotel sleep interruptions, but this is one issue you can influence directly.

Okay then, switch both inertial reference unit to “align” so that they can engage all three independent GPS systems on board to interrogate a dozen or two satellites and pinpoint our navigation starting point as accurately and as soon as possible. Stow your stuff–take your hat off first, because the Heads Up Display projector over your seat will knock it off your head for the thousandth time if you don’t, then lock the cockpit door behind you when you leave–don’t need any wayward caterers or cabin cleaners or passenger entertainment system techs milling about in the cockpit where they have no business.

Now what? Get lost. You’ve checked out the maintenance status of the jet on the computer, you’ve familiarized yourself with the Take Off Plan and the Flight Plan and are satisfied with both–so stay out of everyone’s hair. They all–cabin cleaners, flight attendants, copilot–have lots of stuff to do and they know what they’re doing, so let them.

Now’s your time to swing through Flight Ops to check your mailbox for any vital info stuffed there, but most of that you’re aware of from various electronic sources anyway. But always best to check.

By now we’re 30 minutes to pushback. Take your seat in the cockpit? Nah–first things first, or maybe better said, last things: coffee. Needs to be too hot to drink now, which means just right for taxi out, take-off and climb. There’s just something righteous about sipping a good cup during the early phases of flight that sets the upbeat tone, and even the upbeat heartbeat during a busy time.

Where do you get such a cup?

Mac D’s, honestly. The best–not the gourmet battery acid of Starbucks or “Whomever’s Best” (though you gotta love “Pike’s Perk” in Denver and “Brioche” in LAX) but good old, down to earth full taste McDonald’s coffee.

You sniff derisively at that? Fine, drink whatever you want in your cockpit on climbout. Okay, now you head for the cockpit. As the Big Cheese? El Hefe? Numero Uno?

Heck no–as invisible as possible. No eye contact, no glad handing. You have enough to do on the flight deck, so get it done. Just leave the marketing and PR for the departments getting paid to look after such things.

You wish.

Slide by the passengers on the jetbridge carefully, quietly. Introduce yourself to the #1 flight attendant–just your first name, they already know you’re the captain. Offer to help them in any way you can throughout the flight.

On the flight deck, thread your way into the fleece-covered left seat. Adjust the lumbar and thigh pads, the seat height, which needs to be just right to get all of the info on the HUD (“Heads Up Display”) projected on the glass before you. Comm cords and headset hooked up.

Set up your comm panel: flight interphone monitor and transmit, speaker on so the ground crew can contact you. All VHF radios off–no distraction between you and the ground crew during pushback.

Test the quickdon oxygen mask–clean it out with a Sani-Comm swab, set 100% oxygen flow, test the communications function. You want that thing working at altitude where your time of useful consciousness in a depressurization is limited to second without it.

Now your air sense check, start right above your head, yaw damper engaged (means it’s getting valid attitude info from the inertial reference units), switches normal on map display and nav functions; over to the pneumatics and pressurization, proper cruise and landing altitudes set;  the window heat on, probe heat off; turn on one electrically driven hydraulic pump to send 3,000 psi of pressure to the flight controls so a wind gust doesn’t yank the elevator column back into your gut. Switch to onboard electric power, assure airflow, decide which fuel boost pumps will go on before engine start based on the correct fuel loading–now’s the time to find a discrepancy there.

The office.

Then the challenge and response litany of preflight. Then the all-important (it damn well is) route check of every waypoint in the navigation system.

Finally, the ticket agent manning the jetbridge will step into the cockpit and say, “All bags stowed, all bins are closed, we’re ready to pull the jetbridge when you give the okay.”

“Is everyone down,” you ask in mock seriousness; the agent knows all passengers must be seated before the jetbridge is pulled away.

“Yes, they’re all down.” He walked right into that one.

“Well try to cheer them up,” you say, because you are such a smart ass. In a moment, you hear the main cabin door whomp shut and the door warning light panel indicates that now your jet’s buttoned up.

Ground power and air are gone. We pressurize hydraulic and pneumatic systems. The number one flight attendant checks in, “we have 16 up front, 144 in back, five working crewmembers, we’re ready,” then seals the cockpit door shut. At last .

Your headset comes to life as the Crew Chief below, seated on the pushback tug, notes the jetbridge clear of the aircraft and calls, “Ground checks complete, cholks removed, steering  bypass pin installed, cleared to release brakes and call for push.”

The F/O is on it, calling ramp. As we ease back, the Crew Chief calls, “Clear to start engines.”

Love it. Hack the clock to time the start sequence, then hit the Engine Start Switch and say, “Turning number two.” High pressure air whooshes through ducting and into the big hi-bypass fanjet and engine instrument depictions on both large CRT’s come to life.

Once both engines are humming along at idle, the ground crew signs off and gives you a salute, meaning they’ve cleared out and you can now roll the 80 ton jet without squishing anyone or anything .

You salute back, then nudge the 54,000 pounds of thrust gathered in your right hand and she begins to inch forward. Another sip of coffee as we taxi out, an inward smile through the litany of pre-takeoff checklist.

This is going to be a blast.

Early dusk, the latter dawn.

“So soon as early Dawn the rosy fingered shone forth at the island, we roamed over the length thereof .”

The Odyssey, Book XII

It sneaks up on you: one moment it’s full afternoon daylight on the west coast; climb to 41,000 feet and blast into the eastern sky at 500 knots across the ground–then here she comes. The sky tires, breathes out, dismisses the brilliance and in it’s place a striation like a sideways rainbow drapes the earth.

You know from the basics of atmospherics and sunlight that the thickest layer of atmosphere hugging the earth carries the ball for the entire sky: thick, dense air, roiled up with moisture and heat and particulate pollutants and ash and the crud of the day sit fat atop the earth and reflect the sunset behind you in the layered band ahead and below.

The day doesn’t necessarily go down without a fight. From above, the glowering of the day’s heat on broad expanses of badlands lifts whatever moisture there is in the swirl of adiabatic and orographic torture of the air and turns it violent, raking the earth–a sideshow from way up top where we sit. Here the air is at -50C and whatever moisture exists is such wispy-thin lenticular gauze that we don’t even use the engine anti-ice: the ice crystals are too fine to accumulate.

And even the towering violence below yields to the encroaching dusk, losing the heat of the retreating sun and collapsing like colossal waterfall over the tired landscape below.

Seems there’s always that notch in the middle of the sky, the sinking vee as if we were a boat cutting a wake, backlit by the sinking sun. Almost pointing the way ahead: here’s where you go, here’s where you sink into the darkness. Remember it; you don’t stay aloft forever any more than that towering storm that fell apart and returned to earth in a torrent. And you’ll do it in the dark–so remember the colors.

Behind, it’s an angry passage, a red lip drawn thin and tight, black above indigo, descending on the horizon as the sun races off to the west dragging the day with it.

Nothing easy in this leave taking, in fact it’s a raging morality play: go big, go horizon to horizon with a broad brush and a flaming palette but in the end, as always, darkness wins.

And here’s where the cockpit lights come up and the warm instrument glow emerges from the shadow of the the sun’s brilliance spilling into the windowed gazebo, the light fleeing west with the rest of the day. The widowed earth makes do, light reduced to a scattered carpet of jeweled arteries, the highways, the traffic so far below you can’t see it in the day, but long beaded strands at night connect the towns like spindly glowing veins creeping along, relentless.

Fair enough: can’t see the ground, nor can anyone seven miles below see us chalking the sky with a miles-long contrail of white vapor spun out like cotton candy in one long strand, pointing to where we’re going, showing where we came from. Guess we’ll do our thing separately, earth and sky, because the light’s gone but the spirit’s still flying. We’ll find our way back, find our way back  to the earth, all soon enough–that much is written in stone.

But for now, darkness or dawn, we sail on.

The Annual Pilot Beating: A Love-Hate Thing.

On take-off roll, a few knots past (of course!) maximum stopping speed, the left engine started to surge and compressor stall. I knew it as much from feel as from the engine instrument stack, although I glanced at it anyway. Trip the autothrottles off–don’t want them screwing with the power setting, chasing the N1– “Continue” I say to the First Officer who is making the take-off.

Without a word, he continues the climbout profile, even as I tell him, based on the gages, “Left engine failure.” We wait; no rushing, although I did call the tower, “Flight 914 declaring an emergency, we’re going straight ahead and will need a downwind at 4,000 feet.”

“Climb and maintain 8,000 feet if you can,” comes the answer. Shrug. Why eight? I think I know.

Sure enough, just prior to the base turn, lights flicker out, then emergency power shows a Christmas tree of warnings. Double engine failure. Flight 914 is now a 139,000 pound metal glider.

I’d started the Auxiliary Power Unit right after the first failure–kind of a reflex–having it ready to cover the lost generator once we reached a safe altitude. Good fortune; I connected both electrical distribution buses to the spun-up APU, then executed the rote memory items for double engine failure.

But what’s not a memory item is hard to forget: a windmill start is not likely at pattern speed. Descending at best glide angle means a slow speed and shallow descent, windmilling start requires more smash and a steep descent–not really comfortable at eight thousand–but necessary to get at least one engine running. Do it.

Sure, the APU is running, but what are the chances of pulling off that bleed configuration switcheroo correctly while attempting the double restart (hack the clock each time, remember?) and watching the ground come up to meet us?

My F/O is a Marine–you can always count on them, solid in every situation, and he’s no different–and it’s clear he doesn’t like trading the altitude for restart speed. I don’t either, but I’m doing the three dimensional geometry just as I know he is: about three times the altitude is the glide range. We’re good for way more than we need and in fact, gauging the distance and altitude I bet we’ll need some drag to get down to the runway. But trading off the altitude for restart leaves you no options. The Boeing is an energy miser–flies all day with that big wingleted wing and only grudgingly slows or descends.

“Give me at least 250,” I say, going through the restart procedure on both engines. Sure, the left one failed and might have internal damage, but it’s better than nothing. F/O lowers the nose a little more. Rotation on the dead engines picks up.

Over my left shoulder I’ve got the runway in sight. I want to say screw the restart, I’ll take it and deadstick it in. I have great faith in this excellent Boeing wing, with or without engines.

“I’m getting some N2 on two,” I say. Grudgingly, it’s coming back to life. Anything’s better than nothing.

Minutes later, we touch down and I brake us to a stop. “Excellent,” says the evaluator, one of two on board in the full motion simulator.

Yes, I know it’s a sim; but I also want to know how the jet flies under all conditions and what the timing, control feel and workload is like. Nobody’s willing–me included–to try this in the $60-million dollar jet, so we practice in the $5-million dollar simulator.

This is the second half of my every nine month beating. The first half is an evaluation: a line flight with various problems (mechanical, weather, legality, performance) thrown in. Prior to the two hour sim is a two hour “briefing,” which is one part information and two parts oral exam for you–and don’t stumble on any of the three full pages of memory items, never mind the hundreds of operating limitations numbers. Do it all  correctly and the two hours the flight examination portion is complete–then on to the second half, advanced flight maneuvers. In total, it’s a very slow-creeping six hour oral and flight exam.

The Inquisition: the oral exam before the simulator checkride.

And if you screw it up–which is to say, below standard in any area of standard procedure, emergency procedure or regulation; botch any maneuver, and your license is suspended.

We progress on to the final two hours of vital practice with windshear escape, mountainous terrain escape, inflight upset (pitch up, invert, recover without ripping any parts off the jet) and various fires and failures.

Every nine months, an airline pilot’s license and virtually, his career, is on the line. Every six months, the flight physical adds more jeopardy: beyond just the physical exam itself there’s the EKG that is data-linked directly to FAA Headquarters for analysis–they’ll make a determination as to whether you retain your medical certificate or not for another year.

Can’t worry about that stuff. Can’t do anything but dread the every nine month simulator beating and exam–but also, you have to welcome the opportunity: I want to practice the emergency procedures in real time, sharpen my reactions, test my judgment under pressure, my ability to problem-solve with complex and multiple problems. It’s a confidence builder, a necessary beating in order to lift an eighty-ton jet off the runway with 167 souls on board with complete confidence in my ability to get the jet and the folks back on the ground safely come whatever challenge.

That’s the price and the privilege of being an airline pilot. The smart pilots know you can’t have the latter without the former and though it never makes the ordeal easier, it does make the privilege all the better in every way.

September 11th: One Pilot’s Remembrance.

Say March may take September,
    And time divorce regret;
But not that you remember,
    And not that I forget.
    –AC Swinburne, 1864

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There’s a strength born of remembrance hot-forged in the fire of regret, a bitter pill scarcely outweighed by the power of redemption in the act itself. In the case of September 11^th the scale barely tips, but it’s upon us again nonetheless.

With it comes not only the resurrection of a grievous wound but also the poking and prodding at the scar by so many interested less in creating remembrance and more in selling the effect. That’s why now as I did immediately after the contemptible acts, I avoid the sensationally maudlin media coverage of old footage and new outrage, of pained loss and revisited dread.

Because it’s an unworthy intrusion for my colleagues who share the view from above 30,000 feet in more than just the passing from one point to another, flown today with a reverence made all the more poignant by the losses of that day. We know the reality of flight shared by all who fly for a living, including those we lost: no one is worthy of the priceless privilege. In fact, no one is even equal to the honor and the blessing of piloting a jet—and so, we reason, it might just as well be us.

And that plus the long and relentlessly demanding road that leads to the secure side of the cockpit door, a grueling process of weeding out and exclusion so unyielding that as many quit as are eventually eliminated, never mind those who are killed along the way, leaving the lucky few who are left with a worshipful respect for the words “head for the jet.”

That’s the moment when a lifetime of both personal and professional endeavor pays off in the solemn ritual of preflight, then the ultimate privilege of lifting a miraculously complex and capable jet into the air with hundreds of trusting souls on board.

The most insightful among us are keenly aware of the collective rather than individual triumph in the power to launch thousands of tons of metal and bone miles above the earth at shotgun speed, precisely, deftly, safely.

For in that moment flies a hundred years of American ingenuity, of engineering and manufacturing genius, of industrial diligence and commerce and financing to support not only the multimillion dollar jets, but also the mobile society shrinking the vast borders of the great nation, granting—actually, mandating—free access and choice and opportunity, coast to coast. That’s the best and brightest story of civilization this world has ever known.

The tragic irony is that the bond of trust we as pilots share with the public, the very essence of the free access to travel and leisure and commerce became the loophole through which those who oppose what we as a nation stand for breached the boundaries of civilized humanity to commit a despicable act.

But while they succeeded in one act, they failed pitifully in their unworthy cause. With courage and great resolve, the men and women who fly the jets returned them to the sky within days. The American spirit rebuilt, redesigned and secured air travel and the nation returned to the air resolute, undaunted and in greater numbers than ever before.

We returned to the cockpit, to flight, because that’s who we are as pilots. But Americans returned to air travel because freedom, opportunity, choice, prosperity and ultimately, worldwide access defines us as a free and open nation—and I am one pilot forever grateful to the flying public for that indomitable spirit that did not and will not yield to fear in general or a contemptible act in particular.

A decade later we fly yet another generation of even more technologically advanced aircraft with greater capacity and even longer range, bringing ever more distant shores within American reach. That fact stands as a testimony to the ultimate fortitude of freedom and decency that undergirds humanity despite the occasional hateful attempt to the contrary. And every flight since that day serves to honor those who lived and flew that American dream to their very last breath.

So I choose to remember that—and them—at the appropriate time, place and altitude, with equal measures of humility, gratitude and renewed hope. In the days approaching the infamous anniversary, the wayward news media—lost in the wasteland between entertainment and reporting—will twist and wring the painful memory for the sake of a buck.

Regardless, quietly and at altitude, flying the jet nonetheless is all the remembrance I need.

Captain C.L. Manno
American Airlines

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But rose-leaves of December
    The frosts of June shall fret,
The day that you remember,
    The day that I forget.

–AC Swinburne, 1864

Run higher, fly stronger–beat the heat.

Gonna spend some time out in the blue? Well here’s the reality of the extremes you’ll endure and exactly how you’ll handle them: you either let the sun run you or vice versa. There’s a schedule, there are miles between here and there and the only question remain is how to deal with the temperature that impacts performance sure as the heat shimmers in waves above the pavement. Make it happen, challenge the distance–carefully.

Doesn’t really cool off much as the day goes on, so deal with it. Thread pacing into the fabric, know the performance factors affecting your forward progress, and “git ‘er done:” road miles first, then air miles. Seems to help make sitting strapped into a jet easier to endure if you’ve put in a good five or six road miles before the flight.

Yeah, it’s hot, but who’s getting up early to run, especially when you have to fly late? Mock the sun: endure. A raggedy south wind like a feeble blow dryer sighs among the baked scrub brush and and straw-ish grass–so you’d best set out north, saving the light breeze for the last half.  Now a cloud in the sky so you can’t determine the winds aloft but at the surface it looks like the airport will be on a south flow; visualize the steps ahead: performance data, know the optimum flap configurations, power settings–they’re different on a day like this.

Try not to think about the aches of the last miles, look ahead. Give it at least ten minutes to smooth out, for everything to loosen up–sun-baked steadiness, that’s the key. Patience.

A stretch of flat miles, but don’t look too far down the road. Let the cadence of each step blend into the next, riding rather than pushing it–there are many miles to go. Lots of others out here too–can’t avoid the heat, everyone has to move sensibly, aware of the changes forged of the heat, wary of signs of stress.

Sitting in a gazebo-like cockpit  instantly kicks in the reflex to conserve movement as much as possible, because everything contributes to the rise in core temperature that only makes the trip more difficult. No wasted motion, breathing steady, the minutes pass like cadenced footfalls over flat miles. Sun shades, sun screen but still you feel the deep rays like a heavy blanket.

It’s all about the stride, stay in it. Breathing, like the rhythm section: become a finely tuned machine and butt out: just stride and stride again. Manage the core temp, always in touch because there’s a redline you have to stay south of if you’re going to endure.

Something about flying, like running, that becomes so much about handling the heat. How many years in fire-resistant flight suits, Nomex gloves even in the hottest cockpit, thinking about how it would be smart to endure the discomfort of the gloves and rolled down sleeves considering the fact that you’re sitting atop tons of jet fuel? Flight surgeon once said, “Be showered before your flight–makes any burn treatment you might need less prone to infection.” And we were all footprinted: they figured to I.D. you that way if needed because your boots might be all that survives burning jet fuel. Nice

Own the path ahead, heat or no heat. You know the limits, stay within. Climbout is always energy-critical, especially in summer. Need to see the positive trend in energy.

Feels like everything’s on fire–because it is. The sun has baked the ground far and wide and made kindling of the face of the earth. Smoke curls away and drapes a swath hundreds of miles behind it across the western sky. The plume and pall becomes so large that it actually creates its own weird weather with wraithish tendrils of smoke like a sorcerer’s spell exchanging heat with the sky.

Heat’s gotta go somewhere, refuses to be dismissed and even at 40,000 feet, the turbulence of the confused air bumped up by the hellish, unnatural convection makes for a choppy road. You keep your concentration, finding smoother, softer spots for the jet and its footfalls westbound.

Even if it wasn’t bumpy, it makes you want to run a few miles out of the way to avoid the spectral gouly-ness you wish was a mirage. But that’s the nature of the sun and earth and and the march of seasons: it’s baked and cracked year-round and you have to use your head to make your passage, one footfall at a time on the dirt or miles-per-minute in the sky. Either way, the heat, the relentless sun and time mean business.

There’s water, but there’s also miles of pancaked earth to cross one step at a time to find it, so you’d better pace yourself for the long run. And sometimes it’s so deep that you just have to take on faith that it’s there–the scar says so, but you’d have to look close to find a drop.

Time is the friend of distance as much as it’s the ally of the earth: patience, pacing, you get there. Change comes, heat gives way to a slower cool, one that is as much from the slower heart rate, the darkening turn of the day, and the inevitable exchange of elements between air, water and dry land. Count on it, pace yourself, endure: there will be more miles tomorrow.

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Note: Thinking about heat and the sky–running a 15K on Labor Day, flying and training in the blazing Texas heat because I’m too lazy to get up early for either.

The Perpetual Mysteries of Flight.

Summer is nearly over, bringing to a close yet another great season of clueless migration. Every year, before the seasonal influx of the befuddled, I think to myself surely the basics of airline flight in 2011 cannot have escaped the travelling public in the age of wireless texting, HD satellite television and multi-media interaction. How can anyone not know the basics of airline flight from A to B?

But apparently, I’m wrong. So, in the interest of next summer and for the purpose of de-mystifying the basics of travelling by air, here are my top three “secrets” that seem to confuse certain passengers, a fact they divulge at the airport, usually when I’m talking on the phone or otherwise trying to accomplish requirements of my job.

Disclaimer: If you are very young, very old, or do not speak English–you are exempt. That is, I will do anything to help you in your travel because you need and deserve that. It’s the guy in the wife beater shirt or the Peg Bundy wannabe migrating to or from some vacation I probably don’t want to know about that are the truly yet unnecessarily clueless.

Mystery #1: Is this my gate? Let’s examine this puzzling question. First, I’d have to know where you’re going, wouldn’t I? If it’s early in my work day I probably have the patience to play twenty questions, beginning with “what is your destination,” and then the curveball you hate, “what’s your flight number?”

Sure, a big pain in the ass (you roll your eyes pointedly so I know) to dig into your bag and find your crumpled ticket–probably the wrong one, I’ve come to expect–to find your flight number. But here’s The Big Revelation (I hate when reality shows call it a “reveal,” which is a verb, not a noun):

1. There’s often more than one flight to your destination in a day. So if you get the wrong flight number, besides not being allowed to board, you’ll miss your booked flight.

2. I know this pisses you off, but if you’re more than two hours before your flight, it probably won’t be listed yet because the gate could change prior to departure time. And the chances of you updating your info are pretty slim–even though my airline will send the gate info and updates to your cellphone (I use it myself as a crewmember). Which will leave you waiting at the wrong gate endlessly like Hachi the Faithful Dog except nobody’s making a cutesy movie about your lost vacation.

That’s not going to end well. So, know your flight number and the correct departure time in the current time zone (I know, seems obvious, but . . .), find a monitor, get the current info and check it again within an hour of your boarding time.

Mystery #2: Why is there no food on this flight? Okay, that’s easy: because you said you didn’t want any. Well, that’s not exactly what you said . . . you said you didn’t want to pay for it. Right? You demanded the low-cost carrier fare (and they NEVER did have food) but the full-service carrier catering. Wonder how that would work at your local supermarket: “I want the food–but I don’t want to pay for it.”

Try that out and report back. Meanwhile, your “I don’t want to pay” message was received loud and clear: now you don’t have to pay the airlines for that food you eat on the plane. Instead, you have to buy it at McDonald’s before you board. Hey, I do that too: their salads are great, portable and easy to enjoy at your seat on the plane.

Anyway, you saved $10 on your fare–but you had to give most of that to the airport concessions to get a carry-out and a bottle of water to take on board. Still confused? It’s what you said you wanted. And if I may add a personal recommendation, at least on my airline: the “buy on board” turkey sandwich is excellent. I’ve actually passed up First Class fare for it. It’s not really any more than you’d pay for it in the terminal either. Bon apetit.

Mystery #3: All right, this is really hard to believe–but a friend of mine, a practicing attorney in a large law firm, actually hit me with this. “Why,” he asked, “don’t I return to the same gate I left from?”

Huh?

“You know–I flew to San Francisco from gate C-31 at DFW. I don’t understand why the return flight didn’t arrive at C-31. I think it always should return to where you start out”

I had to think about that for a while. He actually saw the world from such a self-centered viewpoint that he didn’t even notice the fact that many if not most of the people on his outbound flight weren’t from DFW. They’d actually connected from other cities and really didn’t care where the jet parked. In fact, many of them were likely from San Francisco, having started their trip there. They didn’t care about the DFW gate any more than he cared about the gate in San Francisco–and it never occurred to him that they might.

Clearly, the act of flying miles above the earth at near the speed of sound for thousands of miles is an easy concept to grasp–but thinking about gates, food, or flight numbers is beyond the full range of humanity from the clueless traveller to the counselor at law.

All of this makes me realize that the above mysteries are not at all mysterious and in fact, stem from a much simpler cause.

That being the case, I guess next summer will be a lot like this past season. Sigh.

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Flying Home.

No matter who you are and which way you’re pointed, somehow, you’re going home. Maybe not now, but eventually and the place defines where you’re bound. Because what’s ahead is most clearly determined by what’s behind; where you’re going by where you’re from. Really, there’s no “to” without a “from,” and the ultimate “to,” the eventual “at last,” is always home.

A lot of home, then, is in the leaving and sometimes you can see it clearly; sometimes you can’t. But you can appreciate the separation when it happens before your eyes, though you try not to look. There’s a bit of loss ahead, if only for a moment but it’s there, reinforcing the value of home carried aboard in every parting.

Other times, home just about comes along for the trip.

Little ones travel like rock stars, trailed by adult roadies hauling enough of home to make it so for the kids. Now that’s okay to look at, refreshing, almost, in the world of to and from: home is parents caring for kids, being a family. That’s almost enough to make up for the home more often left behind with family too; distance being more than just a measurement.

In that case–maybe even more so than in the families dragging “home” through an airport–you can see what’s left behind and it’s even more powerful often than what’s immediately ahead. Because home throughout the miles is always ahead, eventually.

But there’s not always unlimited miles to go, you have to realize.

Yes, home is home but there aren’t always more miles ahead than behind on the journey. That’s not always easy to acknowledge, but it’s true. We’re all along for the ride, however many miles that entails and whichever way you want to cross them.

But some of us are just tagging along for all the miles. And when you realize the journey for what it is, day after day, mile after mile, you come to see the reality, the duality of the crossing: there’s doing it–then there’s living it.

Here’s the plain old doing: plans and performance, weight and balance, thrust, speed, lift, ceiling, cruise winds, fuel flow, amen.

Everyone’s underway, doing whatever they do, going wherever they will, being whoever they are, and living the miles how ever they do. Probably it’s not easy if the ride is all you’re along for, enduring the here to there, mindful (or not) of miles to go and the distance to or from home nonetheless.

Still I’d like to think that there’s more I can do in the actual flying to make the journey more than just a death march en route. Besides the safe passage at shotgun speed and above and beyond the course and track.

If nothing else–at least after sufficient java–I can live it out, rather than just do the job. Someone on board should do more than just endure. Someone should transcend the details and grasp the height and speed of the journey, the distance between here and there and the island of now between where and when.

Yeah, we’re miles above the thunderheads–doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the swelling curves of colossal power and beauty back lit by the retreating sun. With the lightest touch–so you won’t notice in back–I steer between the valleys trenching the boiling stacks and darting lightning exchanged between angry towers.

So much to go around; so much we go over but no matter what, we’re on the way as fast as we can practically get “there,” aren’t we? Might was well do more than just endure: let’s inhabit the ride.

We can do some wide-angle musing over the monolithic man made  greatness which, from the god’s-eye view, seems delicately intricate and much less significant on the grand scale of creation. That passes quickly, inevitably.

There’s always the seductive magnificence of disaster playing out on a epic scale below, a detailed tapestry scrolling below.

I mean, why not? It’s all between here and “home” anyway, between you and whenever, wherever you finally find home. Sure, your compass whether you realize it or not always points to and from–that’s how you know where you are, based on a straight line from where you’ve been.

But that doesn’t mean you have to stop “being” along the way, especially since often you get there sooner than you think due to factors like an unseen tailwind virtually undetected from 7 miles above the dirt, but pushing you along nonetheless. Then “there” comes abruptly, arriving in ways you might not have considered, bringing you home one last time.

Home, eventually, in the business of to and from has a certain finality; the journey a finite continuity. The flight is more than just science, although it’s every bit of that. The enduring legacy is the journey lived, the hours on the wing, and the appreciation of reality of flight, over and over, higher, faster and wide-eyed throughout.

For those who fly–that truly is home.

Airport Smackdown: Jethead vs. LaGarbage

What better to beat the blistering heat of a Jethroplex summer than a float in your own ce-ment pond? You bid the later-in-the-day flights and you’re senior enough to hold them. That means the morning run–helps you sit still for the 6 or 7 hours you’ll be in the air–and an early afternoon swim. Then, reality check waiting on the iPhone:

You knew that. LaGarbage today, tomorrow too–then LAX the next day. That’s your work week. Get ready.

That’s the current radar picture in the New York metro area. The stuff just north of Tom’s River will be a problem if it doesn’t move out to sea. You can tell there’s a front line between Jersey and NYC somewhere–just look at the temperature difference. Cold air slipping under warm air produces big boomers, and it doesn’t take much of that to disrupt the inbound flow to Kennedy, Newark and of course, LaGuardia. Shrug. Deal with it when you get there–but prepare for it before you take-off: more fuel.

Of course, that’s a double-edged sword too: LaGuardia is a short runway with virtually no overrun on either end–just Flushing Bay. No, it’s not as extremely short as Burbank, John Wayne-Orange County or The Dreaded 33 in Washington (5,000′). But it’s short enough–especially if it’s wet–to make landing weight important. DFW: 13,000 feet of concrete, overruns and clear zones beyond. LaGarbage? A friction overlay on the end of 22 and 13, (wanna test that out?) murky water everywhere else.

Preserve your options: arrive with enough fuel for holding and a go-around. The 737 is a good stopping jet–as is the MD80–and the 737 is very stable on approach. No big worries about airspeed control or pitch.

Confer with Flight Dispatch: they have you flight planned in the mid-thirty thousands because of previously reported chop. Fine, but we’ll check ahead en route and decide if we can’t cruise higher and save more fuel. Plus, our route will arc north, then east, picking up more tailwind as we go. Should put us over upstate New York fat on fuel.

Board 160 passengers. Preflight. Taxi out. Climb.

Life settles down to cruise: fuel flow, ETAs, routing. As expected, the ride is reported smooth in the low 40s by aircraft there now, so we climb and save more fuel, plus put ourselves above most of the weather trying to build itself into the stratosphere from the sun’s climbing radiance.

Radar watch is beginning to turn up signs of the frontal clash converging on the northeast. Super radar–good picture out beyond 300 miles, has it’s own GPS so it knows where all topographical features are and screens them out of the radar image. Good to be sure that what we’re seeing is nothing but weather.

Lunch? Dinner? Whatever–it’s the last food you’ll see today. Everything at LaGarbage will either be closed or out beyond security, which you don’t have time for: they’ll be clamoring to board 160 passengers outbound as soon as you get there. Speaking of which, within an hour of landing, we can get the current weather at LaGuardia and print it out:

Fine. Planning on 22; landing south and into the wind, no real storm threats or complications. Set up nav aids, discuss the approach with the F/O. Verify the runway in the Flight Management System (FMS) and the Heads Up Display (HUD). Validate all of the altitude and airspeed restrictions on the arrival.

The FMS begins its backward countdown of miles to go and upward count of vertical velocity required to satisfy the arrival restrictions. Cool?

Not so fast. Just checking onto a new frequency and you hear holding instructions being given to some unlucky aircraft. Now, that either means someone south of you (Atlanta? Philly?) or someone north (Boston?) has an inbound backup. Or–it’s New York Center airspace that’s enjoying a traffic jam at altitude. You bring up the holding page on the FMS display. Here it comes.

“American 738, hold west as published at MIGET. Expect further clearance at  0115.” Figures. Well, okay–holding endurance? Like you haven’t thought of that already. At altitude, we’re at an incredibly low fuel burn.

We can loiter for the better part of an hour. One thing about EFCs (Expect Further Clearance) you can count on is–you can’t count on them. So plan accordingly. On your side is your altitude, fuel flow and fuel reserve. The jets cruising lower enter holding there and burn more fuel as a result. Set up the entry and the hold:

EFCs are a best guess by Air Traffic Control, but they can be very pessimistic. Even if you can’t hold as long as they predict, you can hold till your endurance runs out and you need to bingo (divert to your alternate). Some pilots I know like to “Go Ugly Early:” if you think there’s a good chance you’ll have to divert, beat the rush for fuel and a turnaround at the divert station.

I’d rather stay high and slow and see what shapes up. We all still divert when you reach Bingo fuel, it’s just a difference in strategy.

New York Center is offering “Rockdale,” a navigation point north of  LaGarbage and in Boston Center’s airspace. Get released from holding immediately and approach from the north is the deal they’re offering, and some jets are taking it. I don’t think so; we have a good, high altitude perch here with a low fuel burn. Rockdale requires a lower cruise, inevitably, with higher burn–and no guarantees when you get there. Sure, maybe Boston Center has less aircraft but you still have to eventually get sequenced into new York Center’s flow.

It’s like switching lines at the grocery store: pick the short line and someone will need a price check or will have a zillion coupons to verify. Meanwhile, some jets below are starting to Go Ugly early–Philly’s going to be a mess. And the winds are shifting at LaGarbage–they’re switching landing runways:

Refiguring the approach is not a big deal. But it’s a bad sign: runway changes take time and lead to a huge backup on the ground at LaGuardia. Plus shifting winds mean unpredictable weather due to frontal passage. Alright, plan “B” is the runway 4 approach. Reprogram the FMSs, the courses and the nav radios.

Holding is eating up fuel, which is actually easing the stopping distance–but check it anyway. And use the chart for a wet runway while you’re at it. Figure on the worst case and the most Autobrakes, say 3 or maybe even max.

More jets at the bottom of the stack are heading for Philly; we’re still sound fuel-wise. Patience.

Finally! Released from holding, cleared downline. Do the numbers: what fuel will you arrive with but more importantly, assuming a go-around at LGA, what will you land with at JFK (that’s the plan) after? Numbers show actually about a 1-2 thousand pound surplus. Perfect.

Now we’re committed–not going to climb back into the enroute sector (too much fuel burn). And now the glass shows what the radar has been painting.

The ugly blotches here are actually the towering cumulus we’re sinking into here:

Already have the crew strapped in, all passengers down. Actually, the bad weather is a relief in a way: everything slows down as radar separation is increased. Plus, the approach is a straight-in, precision approach rather than the hairpin visual approach that is officially called the “Expressway Visual:”

Lots more fun from a pilot standpoint, but definitely more hectic. Finally, the wide swing to finally. Configure. In the slot: altitude, airspeed, configuration, glide slope, localizer.

Minimums: see the runway, land carefully; immediate reverse.

Now, the elephant walk to the gate. Park.

No time for relaxing–it all starts again in 50 minutes, outbound with another 160 passengers impatiently waiting to board. The inbound holding and the LaGarbage ground congestion has already set us behind schedule, and passengers have connections to make at DFW.

That’s the workday–only another 1300 air miles to go. Let’s get to work.

Summer air travelers, beware: he’s out there!

Summer air travelers, beware: he’s out there.

I mean that guy. The one who will make your travel a little less pleasant, probably unknowingly, but still.

For example, cruising at 40,000 feet northwest bound, the cabin interphone chimes. The First Officer and I exchange glances that ask hot, cold, or stupid? It’s too soon for crew meals—that’s where we’re stupid for eating them, but it’s something to do—and only minutes ago someone called to say it’s too hot in back.

Traditionally, within minutes, one of the other four Flight Attendants who don’t seem to be able to talk to each other will call and say it’s too cold.

But I answer the phone and this time, it’s stupid: “We just found a passport in seatback 30-A.” No, it’s not the flight attendant that’s stupid—it’s the passenger who on some previous flight for some odd reason decided to stash his passport in the seatback pocket.

Before our flight, the jet had come in from JFK. Maybe an international arrival, and now someone is enroute somewhere without a passport.

That’s where you come in: you’re in line at Mexican Customs in Los Cabos, and you’re sweating like a fat lady in a vinyl chair, waiting, waiting, waiting—because the guy ahead of you in line talking to the taciturn Customs agent is suddenly aware that he doesn’t have a passport. Your vacation is on hold just a little longer because like me in the super market, you got in the wrong line (“Price check on lane seven!”) while passengers to your right and left are breezing through and claiming their luggage (and maybe yours), heading for the beach.

Sure, it’s going to be worse for him—without a passport he’s not getting back into the United States without a major hassle and, you hope as payback for your delay, a strip search. But the lingering question is, why would anyone put anything of value in a seatback pocket on a plane?

But you’d be amazed at what you’d find back there after a flight. Well, what someone else would find back there: I’d sooner stick my hands into a trash can in a crack den than risk the snot rags and barf bags or kids’ diapers or half eaten ham sandwich that will be stuffed in there.

 

Still, people for some odd reason nonetheless sit down, empty their pockets, stash wallet, iPod, keys, camera, travel documents, passport—you name it, into the seatback pocket as if it were their glove compartment on their family car (okay, there may be a ham sandwich in mine, I admit).

Never mind the hassles going forward to recover a lost item, a headache made all the more difficult because the jet will crisscross several thousand of miles before the discovery of a missing item is made (call the lost and found in Seattle, Chicago and New York). The important thing is that the Stupid One is delaying your vacation.

And unbeknownst to you—he may already have delayed you. Remember sitting at the gate well past departure time? I can’t tell you how many times five or ten minutes from pushback to a resort destination in Mexico or the Caribbean when the agent steps into the cockpit and says “we have a problem.”

Let me guess: someone confirmed on the flight is in a bar somewhere starting on the umbrella drinks and about to miss their flight to the actual resort. Why? Because they can’t read a ticket? Don’t know their own itinerary? Can’t do the math on a time zone change? Are intellectually low functioning and were finished off by the TGI Friday’s Bloody Marys in the airport bar?

Doesn’t really matter. The point is, if they’re not on board we get to sit at the gate while the ground crew sorts through the cargo compartments crammed with the luggage of 160 passengers to pull their bags off. That takes a while. You get to wait, I get to wait, both of our days becomes a little longer.

Yes, it’s the lowest common denominator that dictates when we leave and when you arrive in paradise.

But there is justice in the situation, as I witnessed once at a departure gate as I waited for my inbound jet. Airport police officers had pulled a couple off to the side as passengers boarded a jet for Cancun.

Apparently the man and woman had been to the airport bar, and the man had clearly had a few too many. Federal law prohibits the boarding of any passenger who even appears to be intoxicated, and the airline agents had done the right thing: when in doubt, call law enforcement to sort out the situation in accordance with the law.

Sorry ma’am,” I heard an officer say as the man was being detained, “he’s going to be placed under arrest for public intoxication.”

I couldn’t hear the exact back and forth between the steamed woman and the officers, but in the end, it seemed the officers weren’t the cause of her anger: she grabbed her boarding pass, shot a pointed glance back at her handcuffed partner—then boarded the flight.

Just as well: he’d probably realize in the Customs line in Mexico that his passport was missing anyway.