Why you should NEVER fly into Washington National Airport

There are many, many good reasons why you should NEVER fly into Reagan National Airport in Washington DC. And I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t, and I mean fly–not sit on your butt in the back of the plane. Of course, it goes without saying that if pilots shouldn’t fly there, neither should passengers. And here’s why.

1. The Postage Stamp Effect: like LaGuardia in NYC, the airport was built in the early days of commercial aviation, when the defining factors in aircraft design were slow air speeds, light weights, agile propeller aircraft. Fine.

Maneuvering this thick-winged, lumbering prop job on final was routine at a relative crawl compared to today’s heavier swept wing jets, which need lots of room in the air and on the ground to operate safely. But Washington National is a postage-stamp sized airport from a bygone era, and the serpentine “approach” hasn’t changed:

Look closely at the approach and notice the approach course–145 degrees, right? The runway heading is 194, so do the math: there’s an almost 50 degree heading change on final–and look at where that occurs. It’s at 424 feet above the ground. Which brings up my next point:

2. Extraordinary low-altitude maneuvering: The wingspan of the 737-800 is over 130 feet long, and the jet is normally sinking at a rate of 700 feet per minute on short final. Thirty degrees of bank at 400 feet with seconds to touchdown, with each wingtip dipping up to 50′ in a turn less than 200′ above the ground? And while a 20 degree offset is considered a challenge, the final alignment on such a typical offset approach happens early–but this turn is after the minimum descent altitude, and you get to finalize the crosswind correction at the last second landing on a marginally adequate runway length:

Look at the runway length of the “long” runway: that’s right, 6,800 feet–200′ shorter than LaGuardia’s aircraft carrier deck, and often on final approach, the tower will ask you to sidestep to the 5,200 foot runway instead. So before you even start the approach, you’d better figure and memorize your gross weight and stopping distance corrected for wind and in most cases, you’ll note that the total is within a couple hundred feet of the shorter runway’s length.

Then figure in the winds and the runway condition (wet? look at the numbers: fuggeddabout it) So the answer is usually “unable”–but at least half of the time I hear even full-sized (not just commuter sized) jets accepting the clearance. I accepted the clearance (had a small stopping distance margin and the long runway was closed for repairs) to transition visually to the short runway one night and at 500 feet, that seat-of-the-pants feel that says get the hell out of town took over and I diverted to Dulles instead.

“Do you fell lucky today, punk?”

If that wasn’t hairy enough (get the pun? “hairy,” “Harry?”) from the north, approaching from the south, you’ll also get the hairpin turns induced because they need more spacing to allow a take-off. Either way you get last second close-in maneuvering that would at any other airport induce you to abandon the approach–but that’s just standard at Washington Reagan. And once you’re on the ground, stopping is key because there’s no overrun: you’re in the drink on both ends. Is the runway ever wet when they say it’s dry? Icy when they say “braking action good?”

And with the inherent challenges at the capitol’s flagship airport, you’d expect topnotch navaids, wouldn’t you? Well not only do they not have runway centerline lights or visual approach slope indicators (VASI) from the south, plenty of the equipment that is installed doesn’t work on any given day. Here’s the airport’s automated arrival information for Thursday night:

Just a couple things to add to the experience, right?

So let’s review. If you’re flying into Reagan–and I’ve been doing it all month–to stay out of the headlines and the lagoon, calculate those landing distances conservatively. The airport tries to sell the added advantage of a “porous friction overlay” on the short runway that multiplies the normal coefficient of friction, but accept zero tailwind (and “light and variable” is a tailwind) and if there’s not at least 700 feet to spare–I’m going to Dulles (several deplaning passengers actually cursed at me for diverting) without even considering reentering the Potomac Approach traffic mix for a second try at National.

Think through the last minute alignment maneuver and never mind what the tower says the winds are, go to school on the drift that’s skewing your track over the river and compensate early: better to roll out on final inside the intercept angle (right of course) because from outside (left of course) there’s no safe way to realign because of the excessive offset and low altitude. A rudder kick will drag the nose back to the left inside the offset, but from too far left, you’re screwed.

Once you’ve landed, now you face reason number 3:

3: The northbound departure procedure. Noise abatement in places like Orange County-John Wayne are insanity off of a short runway with steep climb angles and drastic power cuts for noise sensitive areas. But DCA has an even better driving forces: the runway is aimed at the national mall which is strictly prohibited airspace.

Again, no problem in a lumbering prop job–but serious maneuvering is required in a 160,000 pound jet crossing the departure end at nearly 200 mph: the prohibited airspace starts 1.9 miles from the end of the runway. We’re usually configured at a high degree of flaps (5-15 versus the normal 1) so you’re climbing steeply as it is–in order to prevent violating the prohibited airspace, you must maintain the minimum maneuvering speed which means the nose is pitched abnormally high–then you must use maximum bank to turn left 45 degrees at only 400 feet above the ground.

What do you think will happen with the nose high and the left wing low if you take a bird or two in that engine? Are there any waterfowl in the bird sanctuary surrounding the airport? Would the situation be any different with a normal climb angle with wings straight and level?

So what’s the payoff for this complicated, difficult operation?

It’s a nice terminal. Congressmen like their free parking at National. And they’re way too busy to ride the Metro to Dulles, despite the bazillion dollars appropriated to extend the metro line from the Capitol to Dulles, adding another twenty minutes to the airport travel time is too much for our very sensitive congressmen to endure.

I think that’s about it as far as pluses and minuses. Fair trade, considering all the factors?

That’s for you to decide for yourself, but hang on–we’re going anyway. Just don’t chew my ass when I land the jet at Dulles instead of Washington Reagan National. Because for all of the above reasons, you probably shouldn’t have been going there anyway.

More insider info? Step into the cockpit:

These 25 short essays in the best tradition of JetHead put YOU in the cockpit and at the controls of the jet.

Some you’ve read here, many have yet to appear and the last essay, unpublished and several years in the writing,  I consider to be my best writing effort yet.

Own a piece of JetHead, from Amazon Books and also on Kindle.

God’s Eye View of The Wild West: Dust Devils and Flaming Canyons.

Sometimes at 40,000 you get the God’s-eye view of the mayhem below. Here’s that view of the dust storms that raked the western United States yesterday–more forecast for today.

Southern Nevada

Amazing sight: wind driving sand in miles-long billows north to south as we approach the Sierras westbound.

It’s an ugly ride below 24,000 feet as the wind drives south at 80-100 knots. But we have everyone seated and we’re delaying our descent into the chop for as long as possible.

Having crossed the Sierras, here’s the San Joaquin Valley looking south from Modesto.

Beautiful, lush farm land just swallowed up in a gale force dust cloud moving north to south through the valley. Let’s zoom in.

It’s a nasty ride from the twenties through ten thousand. But on the coast?  A pristine day with steady but not outrageous winds.

The coast southwest of San Francisco.

Steady seas, white breakers on shore but from the sea wall you can see just steady waves. Finally, destination in sight: the city on the Bay.

Then San Francisco International.

Time for a quick bite at Tyler Florence’s restaurant in Napa Farms Market, one of my faves, in the American Airlines concourse. The three sides special ($10)–Tyler’s amazing macaroni and cheese, roasted asparagus with shaved Parmesan, and potato salad.

And of course, a cream soda–then a Peet’s to go:

Won’t be eating the salmon salad meal served on board on the return leg. And that leg, too, has a great unfolding tapestry, particularly through Utah as the sun sinks lower, etching the canyons in dark relief.

Somehow the beauty of Bryce Canyon looks different with each crossing–the sun angle, the undercast, the winds; always a new canvas spread below.

The show doesn’t end till the sun goes down.

Which of course, it always does. That’s okay, especially having the nose pointed towards home. And besides, the show starts again tomorrow and once again–you have a front row seat. Time for some crew rest; another 320 passengers have tickets tomorrow as well.

“Jetiquette:” Manners for the Refined Flyer.

A few years back, I was flying a charter from Acapulco to DFW. On board were 130-some passengers who had just disembarked from a cruise ship there in the Acapulco harbor. On climb out, I had the passenger address system audio feed in my headset mix just low enough to hear it, but high enough to understand what was going on in back. And I was so shocked I had to take a look for myself.

“I want all of the hitting, pushing and name calling stopped right now,” a flight attendant said firmly, as if talking to a kindergarten class on a field trip. But I saw it with my own eyes: 130 senior citizens, cranky and bickering about god-knows-what. Which proves my main point.

That is, the main hassle for air travelers is other air travelers. Seriously.

And the most important thing for you to remember about your own air travel is that for other air travelers–you are the other air traveler.

Still with me? That was a roundabout way to say that if everyone on board worried about their own behavior, everyone on board would have a better travel experience.  What I’m talking about is “Jetiquette,” or proper manners on a jet. This it would seem is a lost art, but we can resurrect the basics and thereby rescue air travel from the cattle car experience it has devolved into.

Let’s start simple. Here is your on-board world.

Now looking at the spatial dimensions of this area designed for three butts, if you have one of these

don’t even ask, “Do you mind if I put the armrest up?” The answer is “Yes, I mind–I do not want your buttocks flowing over me like hail-damaged Naugahyde for the entire flight.”

Now, continuing with basic Jetiquette, how do you politely get out of your seat? Please tell me you use one or both of those armrests you see there. Because if you’re using the seatback in front of you to hoist your carcass out of your seat, you’re that rude guy on the plane.

The seat in front of you is not your handhold–somebody’s sitting in it and you disturb them rudely if you mess with their seat. Get it? Push yourself up using any part of your seat, don’t pull yourself up using someone else’s. It’s really not that hard–you just have to think about someone else for a change.

Seriously?

Face it, there isn’t much space but what little there is doesn’t all belong to you. So here’s a thought that seemingly doesn’t occur to many folks on-board the jet:

YOU’RE NOT AT HOME.

So basically, keep all of your clothing on–including your shoes. Nothing gets the galley mafia pissed off faster than seeing some slob with his or her feet up against the bulkhead. You will be “that guy,” the one they view with silent but distinct disgust, the one who will only get attention as a revolting example of poor public manners. And while we’re on the subject of bare or stocking feet:

Why do you suppose this guy is wearing layers of protective clothing? It’s because he’s servicing the lavatory where for some unknown reason, supposedly rational people are walking around without shoes. Now, we don’t mind you mopping up the lav floor for us, but it gags everyone on the crew to know you’re doing it.

Would you walk around barefoot here?

That’s pretty much what you’re doing in an airline lav in flight. So don’t.

Finally, let’s talk about personal space. Well, there isn’t any in coach. So Jetiquette demands that you at least keep your bodily smells–especially your breath–either inside at all times, or at least wash before you board and not incidentally, brush your teeth. Those seated next to you will appreciate your basic hygiene–or especially, the lack thereof.

Okay, that’s the basics of Jetiquette and if you’re planning to be aboard for any flight, you need to consider at least this much of the fundamentals.  If we all remember our manners, we can bring back the good old days of air travel that never really were–but the fable gives us all something to gripe about now.

And when all else fails:

Mile High Club: Death and Romance in the Outhouse.

Of all the useless 1960s air travel nostalgia hangovers, this is the worst. No, not the idea of food in coach–although that’s definitely nostalgic, unless you have a major credit card ready for the on-board data reader to deduct the cash before you even break the plastic wrap. Want to eat but don’t want to pay? You should have brought your own lunch, pal.

Okay, I buy the turkey sandwich pictured here even when there's a First Class meal catered for the flight crew--it's excellent.

No, not food–what I’m talking about is the bogus urban legend surrounding–inexplicably, at least to one who actually knows what we’re talking about–the aircraft lavatory. There it is: the on-board toilet and the closet where it’s secreted away.

Which leads me to ask: what the hell don’t I understand about this? What is the fascination with the filthiest, foulest, most disgusting six square feet on board an airliner? Namely, this:

Sure, there are some flimsy walls partitioning off this mess–and your mess–from the general public. And believe me, they ARE flimsy walls too–weight is fuel burn which is cost in flight. But shrewd aircraft designers rely on the ambient background noise of flight (you know: jet engines, 300 mile and an hour wind noise) to cover up your bodily noises on the can, much like the lame exhaust fan in a tiny apartment is intended as background noise so you can crank away without disgusting a cohabitant. Lesson for the wise: don’t do anything in an aircraft lav on the ground that you don’t want others to hear. Because they will, especially as they troop past on boarding, and they’ll give you that look when you step out.

Do you get it yet? We’re basically talking about this:

Being confused with this:

Which is apparently another legendary site involving the inexplicably pajama-clad Crypt Keeper (above) and teenagers or other foolish yet financially astute bimbos. So here’s my point: the lav, like Hef’s geriatric boudoir, is actually the last place anyone with an awareness of reality would have anything approaching conjugal relations.

Sure, people say they’ve “done it” in an airliner lav.

But again, it’s as outdated as the prop job in the drawing above, never mind the natty dress and Pepsodent grins. Because besides the issue of today’s cramped lav (space is $, remember), there’s the detail of sanitation: it’s as clean as your average outhouse, and often smells like one. Because either you have the swirling tank of port-o-john water below, or on more modern jets, no water at all–just a non-stick coating with fragrant skid marks anyway:

So anyone who says they have joined “The Mile High Club” is either A) Lying, B) Disgusting, or  C) Has lost the will to live. And here’s the dirt on option “C:” there is no supplemental oxygen in the lav.

Read the fine print: some restrictions apply.

That means that no matter what purpose there is in your lav visit, in case of a rapid depressurization, you’ll need to immediately get out of the lav and grab one of the hangy-down masks before you lose consciousness. As my keenly observant son (he took the above picture aboard a foreign carrier) mused, you have to decide if you want to take the time to pull your pants up and stumble nearly hypoxic into the aisle, or bolt out with your pants down, business unfinished and hope someone would help you anyway to don a mask as if you weren’t naked from the waist down.

In all probability, you’re meeting your maker like Elvis’s last public appearance: face down, pants down, toilet unflushed. Now that’s the stuff of legends, right?

So my point is this: never mind the folklore and urban legends–avoid the lav at all costs. Hold it, go before you board, whatever and if you do have to go into the lav make it quick and then get back to your seat.

To me, that’s just common sense. But if in any way this is news to you, I recommend this icon of travel nostalgia:

At least you’ll be able to breathe no matter what demonstration of disgustingly poor judgment you’re finding necessary to pursue in the can.

Bon voyage, and don’t forget to wash your hands.

Flying into the Nor’easter October 29th, 2011: juggle a thousand moving parts.

Ah, the point of universal equality: all of the alternates you’ve loaded into the Flight Management Computer doing a thousand calculations of time, distance, airspeed and fuel flow have reached the same number: 9.5. Which is 9,500 pounds of fuel on the deck at each–if we leave the holding pattern we’re in over the Shenandoah mountains of Virginia.

Yes, that’s a blanket of snow down there, and uncommon October dumping of thick, wet flakes wreaking havoc on the surface: fall foliage still on the trees gathers the fat flakes in a blanket that snaps branches and snags power lines.

The alternates now line up for a second with the same arrival fuel and they’ll tick down that way as we hold, geographically in the middle point between Baltimore, Syracuse, Boston and our destination, LaGuardia.

You tell the First Officer, “When the fuel prediction reaches 7,000 fuel on deck–we divert.” Because 7 eventually shrinks to 5 due to the air traffic glut all competing to get to either a destination or alternate. The fuel prediction should come with a little caveat, “results may vary.” We ain’t stupid–done this a few times before.

Our flight 9409 from Miami checks in on frequency, entering a holding pattern. “We have the Miami Dolphins on board,” the pilot says, pleading with New York Center, “Anything you can do to get us into any of the New York airports would be appreciated.” Must be coming up to play either the Giants or the Jets.

We laugh in our cockpit. “We have the Omaha Women’s Bowling and Quilt Team on board,” I say cross-cockpit, “anything you could do . . .” But New York Center has no options: “Diverts allowed south only,” comes the answer. “Or maybe we can get you Boston or Hartford.”

Crap–looks like Syracuse is out for us. Didn’t want to go there anyway–too small, slow turnaround–but it takes away from my perfect geographical display of options. I like options. Okay, add Richmond. The First Officer is busy reading out loud the terminal forecast for our various divert options, but I tune him out–I don’t give a damn about the forecast an hour ago for an hour from now. But it gives him something to do.

We’re cleared down track, exiting the holding pattern–but don’t get your hopes up: that just means someone in the holding stack 70 miles ahead finally said “uncle,” reaching their fuel bingo, and diverted. A dozen jets are heading for your stack and the controller is shooing you off to the next sector.

Now that’s funny: starting to see holding? We’re in a holding pattern. But there’s the bad news: JFK is landing south which conflicts with the LaGarbage traffic pattern landing north. Crap.

Why does JFK get priority? Because it has a couple dozen westbound transatlantic widebodies inbound and they’ve been in the air for 5 or more hours already. LaGuardia with it’s postage stamp sized runway (7,000 feet versus 13,000 at Kennedy) cannot  land with tailwinds due to stopping distance. So if Kennedy is landing south, LaGuardia arrivals are shut down.

“I can get you Boston or LaGuardia, eventually,” says the air traffic controller to our Dolphins team charter. “Standby,” comes the tense answer, and I know why.

We already did the math: we’ll weigh 132,000 pounds on landing; the runway is wet, so we need 5,660 feet to stop. Gives me 1, 400 as a safety margin–which will require all other perfection–screw the charts–in my mind: not only no tailwind, have to have  some headwind and no bad braking reports or we go to Kennedy (sorry Lufthansa). But the 757 landing distance number will be different, stopping the jet may be a problem. He’s looking closely at his Boeing chart, no doubt.

Which is another piece of the puzzle we both did as captains before launching off into the Nor’easter: take more fuel for increased loiter time, but then know you’ll deal with a heavier landing weight on a crappy surface due to the freak snow storm. Clearly, fuel wins, but he’s dealing with the stopping distance problem. And Newark is flying a complex RNAV approach that I don’t believe the 757 can do. Plus, its minimums are so high and the ceiling so low–it probably won’t work out anyway. That just sends you off on a gas-guzzling low altitude divert.

There’s a screaming headline in the weather-related alphabet soup: 1/4 mile visibility in snow and fog at LaGarbage. And previous American jets reported the ceiling really at 300 feet. Left quartering crosswind  at 14 knots; you get about ten seconds to see the runway, line up and find the touchdown spot.

Jill calls from the cabin: “We have an elderly woman who stepped out of  the lav feeling dizzy; she passed out and we’re giving her oxygen.” First officer stops reciting the weather forecasts and adds, “I sometimes pass out after a huge dump too;” I laugh, Jill doesn’t.

“Keep us posted,” I say, adding one more moving part to the dozens in play: medical attention for the woman, quick landing if she gets worse.

My magic fuel numbers have shifted dramatically: the closer south alternates show less arrival fuel than the more distant and verboten northern divert options. Why? The 125 tailwind we’re riding. That forces a Hobson’s choice: divert earlier to a southern divert base arriving with less fuel into worse weather; or hope to sneak in after the last international Kennedy arrival. If you can wait. Do you feel lucky today, punk?

“I may be able to get one more jet into LaGuardia,” the controller tells the Miami boys. Sure: football takes priority over all things, at least in the northeast. But with the powerlines down, they can’t watch anyway, right?

Jill calls from the back again: “Our lady on oxygen just passed out again. The number four flight attendant is also a nurse, says she’s probably having some blood sugar problems.”

“She’s a nurse?” the F/O asks; “Could she look at this rash on my butt when she gets done there?”

I laugh but Jill doesn’t. “We’ll get her on the gate as soon as possible,” I promise. Still laughing, I tell the F/O cross cockpit. “Let’s grab that one spot he’s talking about–declare a medical emergency and tell them we need LaGarbage.”

We set up the approach; one shot, zero tailwind, some headwind, reliable braking action report or we go right to Kennedy either on the approach or on the missed approach (again, sorry, Lufthansa; this will only take a minute and we’ll be out of your way).

Sit the cabin crew down; the radar is showing angry purple in the frontal clash ahead and below. All checklists done early; anti-ice on. Hang on–she’s gonna buck.

Crappy ride through tangled air: a hundred knot wind out of the south clashes with the nor’easter roaring in with icy air; we’re in the atmospheric rapids, blinded by driven snow which has also not incidentally given me vertigo: looking through the geometric structure of the Heads Up Display on the glass before me, the horizontal snow has my senses screaming that we’re in a left bank of 20 to 30 degrees. And I’m hand flying because the speed changes have the nose pitching more than I’m willing to tolerate at a low altitude as the autopilot struggles to correct.

Patience, concentration; do the job. A glance at the ground speed shows 95 knots; airspeed is 135 knots; Mr. Math says it a 45 knot Nor’easter is winning near the surface. And the 95 knots is making this take a lot longer than I’d like.

The radio altimeter is calling out altitude until go-around; we’re down to a hundred feet above and still in the muck.

“Ground contact,” my F/O says; I pick it up peripherally but not ahead. There–the glow of lead in lights. “I have the runway;” I announce.

“Minimums,” the audible radio altimeter declares. Barely time to check the sink rate–god I love me some Heads Up Display–kick in the rudder to track the nose straight ahead; right main gear, then the left; the nose wants to slam down as max autobrakes grabs with 3,000 psi of hydraulics, but I hold the yoke in my lap, steering  with my feet. We stop.

“Tell ’em the braking action is good,” I tell the F/O as we start running the after landing checklist. That’ll help the next guys in for planning purposes. Now all we have to do is park, turn around, and fight our way back into the air through de-ice and crappy runway problems.

But that headache is an hour away. A cup of coffee is waiting in the terminal–we’ll worry about the rest later.

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.

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.

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

.

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

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.