“Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Pilots.”

I doubt Willie and Waylon couldn’t pass an FAA administered flight crew drug test, and their “mamas” knew that, the song notwithstanding. But what about the rest of us?

Sure, airline pilots realize the challenges and constraints put on them by the profession, including constant flight evaluations, performance monitoring (any other profession data-stream and archive performance for analysis and critique?), invasion of privacy (any other professions require annual disclosure of  physicals, mental health, arrests and convictions?) and recurring random drug and alcohol testing.

Enter Covid-19. which dwarfs the above career threats we’ve all accepted, endured and tolerated up until now.

Rewind just six months in the U.S airline industry and the picture was much different: the mid-1980s hires, pilots who are now nearing mandatory retirement (another unique airline pilot reality) which would create a massive pilot shortage across the airline industry. “If you get hired today,” the siren song went, “You’ll be a captain in five years.” Massive seniority catapult, the retirements were supposed to be.

Pilots at regionals felt they could be picky about which major airline they hire on with: I have a friend who flew for Comair for over ten years, waiting and adamant about only working for Delta Airlines eventually. After three years at Delta–when he could have gone to several other carriers years earlier–he’s now on the street for at least three years.

Another friend at Emirates reports their pandemic-mandated pilot cuts weren’t done strictly by seniority–rather, management took the opportunity to boot dozens of pilots with attendance records and other personnel issues the airline didn’t want to deal with ever again. Not furloughed–terminated.

And many snooty pilots shunned the quiet financial dynamos like Spirit, Frontier and JetBlue, holding out for a marquee carrier like United, Delta and American, only to witness their peers who DID hire on with these powerful Low Cost Carriers upgrade to captain and enjoy a job security despite the pilot cuts (some are still hiring pilots) even as the “snooty pilots” are furloughed by their own carriers, with recall nowhere in sight.

No matter who they are or where they came from–the military, regionals, corporate, cargo or general aviation–all airline pilots have taken a beating, weathered harsh early flying jobs, invested unimaginable sweat equity, personal sacrifice, and expense, just to call an airline cockpit home. Now this.

Me and my USAF pilot buds.

Ex-military pilots who maintained an ANG or AFRES connection may be able to get back onto active military service once again, but even that’s with drastically reduced pay and much more demanding flying in terms of time away from home and family, much less the risk involved in military versus civilian flying. Other may be able to make their “side hustle”–if they have one, into a financial lifeboat for the near term.

Yes, pilots laughed at me when I fought my way through 65 on-campus graduate hours to earn a PhD as they enjoyed their boat/motorcycle/airplane/toys, but I’ve been teaching at a university for the past 17 years and just upped my class schedule, mostly for the additional income.

I know several pilots who struggled through law school while flying fulltime and at least now have gainful employment despite the dried-up aviation opportunities. Others have real estate licenses, teaching credentials and I even know one first officer who’s on track with a management training program at a major box store chain. Not what we expected, but smart because it pays the bills.

But it all comes down to this: if you want to be an airline pilot, beyond the many unreasonable demands of the industry and the government agencies that oversee the licenses required to hold the flight privileges, the fundamentals of personal and financial disaster lurk just below the thin veneer of airline pilot reality: flying is a great career–until the career vanishes.

I’m rooting for the pilots still clinging to their seniority lists despite reduced flight hours and the defacto pay cut that produces. I’m hopeful for the smart pilots who had the foresight to hire on with the Low Cost Carriers who are poised to dominate the airline biz in the post-pandemic years ahead. And I’m empathetic to those pilots who were simply victims of a very capricious airline industry, despite the rosy predictions of only a few months ago.

For everyone else: “Mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be pilots.”

Get the full, insider airline pilot story:

Amazon’s #1 New Release in Commercial Aviation! All the insider, in-cockpit drama of a major airline flying life.

Paperback or Kindle, just CLICK HERE.

 

MD-80 Flashback

I flew the American Airlines’ MD-80s for over 20 years and more than 10,000 pilot hours. She was the mainstay of our fleet for a long time and generally speaking, it was a decent jet to fly.

My first actual flight as copilot is recorded in detail below. This is an excerpt from my true-life story, An Airline Pilot’s Life, which is holding at Amazon’s #1 New Release in commercial aviation. In this book I take you along in the cockpits of American Airlines’ DC-10s, MD-80s, F-100s and Boeing 737s. Every training program, every aircraft shakedown flight, and more, including my years as an instructor/evaluator pilot. How do the jet’s controls feel? What are the maneuvering characteristics? How is the engine response? Get firsthand, first-person answers.

Here’s a sample, letting you sit in the copilot’s seat on my first landing in the MD-80, with 142 passengers on board:

____________________________________________________________________________________

“Localizer capture,” said Charles Clack, a Check Airman, from the left seat. Ahead, the lights of the Los Angeles basin sprawled like diamonds scattered across the blanket of night as we sank lower on our approach to Long Beach Airport.

Technically, I should have made that callout, being the pilot flying, as soon as our flight director system captured the navigational signal leading us to the runway. But that was why there was a Check Airman in the captain’s seat supervising my first landing—with 142 unknowing passengers aboard—in the MD-80.

As is typically the case, I discovered the real aircraft flew better and different from the simulator, which had been my total experience “flying” the MD-80 up to that point. I had the jet trimmed up nicely and the winds were mild so she flew a steady, true course with little correction from me.

But the most important, exciting and rewarding point for me was, I was the pilot flying. That felt good, after almost two years sitting sideways at the DC-10 engineer’s panel. That had been an easy, decent gig, but this is what I was here for.

Fully configured with full flaps, the MD-80 autothrottles kept the EPR (Engine Pressure Ratio, pronounced “EEP-er”) fairly high, which was good: she flew more stable at a higher power setting with more drag. The MD-80 Operating Manual recommended flaps 28 for routine use because it saved fuel due to the reduced drag compared to flaps 40. But I learned from experience that the jet flew a better, tighter approach at the higher power setting and really, how much extra fuel was being burned from the final approach fix to touchdown anyway?

Fully configured with gear and flaps, I simply flew the long silver jet down the guy wire Major Wingo had told me about, from our vector altitude all the way to touchdown on the comparatively short Long Beach runway. The landing was firm but decent, although the nosewheel came down harder than I’d anticipated.

“I should have reminded you about that,” Charles said later in the hotel van. “With flaps forty, the nose is heavy; so you have to ease it down.”

Still, nothing could dampen my elation at having flown my first takeoff and landing in a passenger jet at a major airline. With a full load of passengers on board. That was it—I was really an airline pilot at last. Cross another item off the dream come true list, I said to myself silently.

The first officer upgrade at the Schoolhouse had been a breeze for a couple reasons. First, the McDonnell-Douglas systems logic and flight guidance processes were much the same as those on the DC-10. I already understood “CLMP,” “IAS,” “VS” and all of the flight guidance modes and what they’d do because I’d been monitoring the DC-10 pilots’ processes and procedures for a couple years.

And, I was paired with Brian, a very smart, capable captain-upgrade pilot for the entire ground school and simulator programs. He was a Chicago-based pilot, quiet, serious, and very capable. He offered easygoing help and coaching, just as he’d do with his copilots up at O’Hare and I learned a lot from him. He’d be an excellent captain, I could already tell, and in fact, he became a Check Airman himself eventually.

The MD-80 itself was a study in design contradictions. When Douglas Aircraft stretched the old DC-9 by adding two fuselage extensions, one forward of the wing root and one aft, they didn’t enlarge or beef up the wing at all. By contrast, when Boeing extended the 737 series, they’d enlarged and improved the wing. The MD-80 simply had higher wing loading, which is not an optimal situation from a pilot’s view. The lift was adequate, but certainly not ample, reducing the stall margin. While Boeing’s philosophy was “make new,” Douglas seemed to be simply “make do.”

The ailerons were unpowered, relying on the exact same sluggish flying tabs the old KC-135 tankers had. She was lethargic and clumsy in the roll axis and the actual control wheels in the cockpit were cartoonishly large to give pilots more leverage against the lethargic ailerons. To boost roll response at slower speeds, the wing spoilers were metered to the ailerons, which was a mixed blessing: they didn’t raise the left wing to reinforce a right turn; rather, they dropped the right wing with drag. In an engine failure situation, the last thing you needed was spoiler drag added to engine thrust loss in any maneuver. That was Douglas doing “make do,” as they had done with so many hastily added components on the DC-10.

The instrument panel was chaotic, as if they’d just thrown in all the indicators and instruments they could think of and then slammed the door. That left the pilots to constantly sort out useful information and block out distracting nuisance warnings. Douglas made a stab at lightening the scan load on the pilots with an elaborate array of aural warnings, a voice known as “Bitching Betty” to pilots. They just weren’t sensitive enough to be useful, like yelling “landing gear” in certain situations where landing gear wasn’t needed, which gradually desensitized a pilot to the point where you’d reflexively screen out the distraction, which was good, but also the warning, which was bad.

The most unbelievable bit of cockpit clumsiness was the HSI, or “Horizontal Situation Indicator,” the primary compass-driven course and heading indicator before each pilot. Mine on the copilot’s side was placed off-center and mostly behind the bulky control yoke. It was actually angled slightly to make it more visible to the captain, because his instrument display was also obstructed by his control yoke, an incredibly clumsy arrangement.

The ultimate design goofiness was the standby compass, which on most aircraft was located right above the glareshield between the pilots. Douglas engineers must have had a field day designing the MD-80 whiskey compass, locating it on the aft cockpit bulkhead above the copilot’s right shoulder. To use it, you had to flip up a folding mirror on the glareshield itself, aim and find the compass behind both pilots’ backs, then try to fly while referencing the compass in the tiny mirror.

The fuselage was long and thin, earning the jet the nickname “the Long Beach sewer pipe” because it had been built in Long Beach at the McDonnell-Douglas plant. Flight attendants called it the “Barbie Dream Jet” because it was almost toy-like compared to the other American Airlines narrow body jet, the 727.

The problem with the increased fuselage length was that Douglas hadn’t enlarged the rudder at all on the stretched MD-80, so the rudder itself was fairly useless for heading changes or turn coordination. All it seemed to do was torque the fuselage and have little effect on the aircraft’s azimuth. Eventually, an MD-80 pilot learned to ignore the rudder pedals in the air, unless it was needed to control yaw during a thrust loss on either engine.

The aspect of having the engines mounted along the aircraft centerline was a good deal compared to wing mounted engines which incur more asymmetrical yaw in an engine failure and I appreciated that. The engines were so far back that you couldn’t hear an engine failure in the cockpit, so there were actually warning lights to alert pilots of a failure.

The JT8D engine response was forceful and the engines themselves were the Pratt and Whitney equivalent of the gutsy General Electric TF-33 fanjets we had on the EC-135 J at Hickam. Minus the roll heaviness and disregarding the cockpit design mess, I wasn’t about to let anything dampen my enthusiasm for line flying as a pilot at a major airline.

I’d waited long enough to bid first officer that I could actually hold a set schedule rather than an “on call” reserve pilot schedule. At my seniority range, the trips weren’t very good, but they were trips just the same.

My first month I held a schedule of early two day Buffalo trips. Still, I was undaunted—I had a schedule! A regular airline pilot trip.

________________________________________________________________________________

Read more: fly the DC-10, the F-100 and more.

Get your copy of An Airline Pilot’s Life in paperback or Kindle format from Amazon Books HERE.  Makes a great Father’s Day gift!

Want a signed copy (US only)? Click Here.

Covid-19 and Air Travel

First, know this: your crew doesn’t want to share the contagion any more than you do. And second, the FAA is doing as little as possible to ensure your safe, contagion-free flight. And finally, much of the solution will require a level of passenger compliance that has largely disappeared from today’s flying public. Let me explain.

Congregating is the essence of air travel: boarding, seating, in flight and deplaning are all mass motions by multiple humans, including passengers, staff, and crew. Aircraft manufacturers have crammed as many seats into passenger aircraft as possible and airline schedules demand minimum turnaround time between flights. Simply put, flying is a time-sensitive crowd activity and your crew is part of the crowd. We want to use the best and most protective protocols and procedures, but that depends on both regulation and enforcement: we as crew want to be protected, and to protect you.

Which brings me to my second point: the FAA is deliberately dodging their responsibility to mandate and enforce best practices pandemic mitigation in air travel. The first very lame dodge from the FAA was that they are “not a medical or health organization.” And yet, the FAA mandates medical exams, analysis and waivers for every commercial pilot flying an airliner. The sidestep when confronted with passenger and crew health in the FAA jurisdiction of air travel is a leadership failure at the highest level of the FAA.

And the final point: passengers. Passenger compliance with air crew directives is at an all-time low in the thirty-four years I’ve been an airline pilot. People simply will not be told what to do regardless of regulations designed to protect everyone aboard. What are the chances that passengers will followed new and rigid spacing requirements during boarding and deplaning? And what would be the point anyway, given that after boarding, passengers will sit literally shoulder to shoulder with other passengers anyway?

And for those passengers already demanding the airlines deliberately limit capacity, flying with empty seats: are you ready to pay the higher fare resulting from limited tickets sold on your flight?

Clearly, the answer is threefold, but only two of the critical actions fall on passengers and crew. The first two items are compliance and patience: passengers and crew must adhere to spacing and protective gear requirements, masks must be worn (and, at some airlines regarding crews, masks and gloves must be permitted for crews) by passengers and crew. Compliance cannot be optional, and crew authority must be the final word. No exceptions, no excuses.

But regardless of this very real pandemic threat, the final piece of the puzzle, regulation and enforcement, is presently lost in the bureaucratic and leadership failure of the FAA. So, when it comes to pandemic safety, there’ll be neither FAA regulation nor enforcement, so rest easy.

But when it comes to the spread of the pandemic through air travel, while the FAA remains asleep at the wheel, buyer beware.

_________________________________________________________________________

Get an insider-view of the pilot world

–order yours HERE

and get into a jet cockpit firsthand.

 

 

 

Sneak Preview: “An Airline Pilot’s Life.”

Here’s an excerpt from the true story, An Airline Pilot’s Life, scheduled for release in March from Dark Horse Books. This story puts you in the captain’s seat in the cockpit of the world’s largest airline.

In this excerpt, you’ll fly what turned out to be a hair-raising approach into a lifelong lesson you–and every pilot–will never forget. The book will be available on Amazon.com next month. Now, strap in and let’s fly.

 

Chapter __

“Maintain two thousand till established, cleared back course localizer runway three-two, contact tower,” the approach controller said in a bored monotone.

Ahead, the McAllen Airport crept onto my map display. My FO read back the instructions, then checked in with the tower.

“American 1410, you’re cleared to land runway three-two,” the tower controller said. “Previous arrival reported patchy fog over the south end of the field.”

That was the problem with McAllen Airport: they only had a non-precision approach—the back course localizer—for landing north. The descent minimums were much higher than on a precision approach, which meant if we didn’t see the runway at a higher altitude, we couldn’t land.

A precision approach like a Cat 2 would let us descend to a hundred feet, at which point we’d likely see the runway. We’d just flown a Cat 2 approach on a Charlotte turn before the McAllen flight due to fog in Charlotte. We were ready to do the same at McAllen, but the precision approach was only from the north end, and that approach would have a tailwind that was beyond our American Airlines limitations.

I’d called the dispatcher before we left DFW to discuss the runway conundrum: the only sure bet was a precision approach. But, as was typical of McAllen weather, the fog usually blew by in waves. If we were lucky, we’d reach the runway in a gap in the clouds. If not, we’d just go missed-approach and divert to our alternate. We’d planned to carry plenty of fuel for that.

After I talked with the dispatcher, I spoke with another captain, a former AirCal pilot I knew from my merger work a few years earlier.

“Yeah,” Steve said, shaking his head, “Fog in the Rio Grande Valley. We’re headed to Harlingen and the same low viz.”

“Well,” I said, “What’s your alternate? We’ll see you there.”

We both laughed, then filed out of Flight Operations for our departure gates.

After the approach clearance, I pressed the arming buttons for the Cat 2 approach, then glanced at the FMS (Flight Management System) “Progress Fuel Prediction” readout. I always did that when cleared for the approach to decide what our options were if we couldn’t land and went missed-approach. Options were all about fuel, which determined flying time available.

We were way ahead on fuel, meaning, we had much more than we needed to complete the approach, fly the missed approach and divert to our alternate and still land with extra fuel.

Knowing that the visibility at McAllen would improve and degrade in cycles, I believed we’d have enough fuel for a second approach, if we wanted to do that. Or, we could simply divert after the first unsuccessful. I wondered what Steve was doing on his approach into Harlingen, where the weather always seemed to match McAllen. That was why we chose San Antonio for an alternate rather than Harlingen, and so did Steve.

“Looking at the fuel,” I said cross cockpit and I pointed at the FMS fuel prediction, “We have enough fuel for a second approach, with clearance on request to San Antonio on the missed approach. Are you comfortable with that?”

“Comfortable” was the key word: not “okay,” which to me meant I can stand it but I don’t like it. “Comfortable” meant my FO felt there was no worries in the idea. And he agreed.

“In the event of a missed approach,” my FO told the tower, “We’d like vectors to a second approach, with clearance on request to San Antonio afterward.”

“I’ll relay that to approach,” the tower controller said.

As we neared our descent minimums, there was no telltale lightness or gaps in the fog—just depthless gray. I executed the published missed approach and as we climbed past the departure end, the fog vanished. We’d been a minute too early for the fog bank to blow by, but that was encouraging nonetheless because we’d possibly catch the gap on the next approach.

I glanced down at the fuel prediction once again before committing to the approach and also checked with my FO.

“Are you okay with another approach?” I asked. “We could just bail out to San Antonio now. It’s no big deal.”

But he agreed: we had enough fuel to fly this second approach, go missed-approach and fly to San Antonio and still land with extra fuel.

But, at the minimum altitude, we were still in thick gray fog. Again I executed the missed approach and my FO told tower, “We’re ready for clearance to San Antonio.”

The tower controller acknowledged the request and told us that departure controller was ready with that clearance.

We switched frequencies and as we climbed to our enroute divert altitude, the FO made contact with departure control.

“Climb and maintain ten thousand feet,” the departure controller said.

That would have to change. We’d planned a much higher cruise altitude to ensure a minimal fuel burn. With the ten thousand foot cruise altitude set in the FMS, the fuel prediction showed us to land with less than planned fuel.

Then the same laconic voice on departure control frequency stabbed me in the heart.

“Be advised that San Antonio is calling their ceiling and visibility zero,” he droned. “They’re not accepting arrivals. State your intentions.”

Just like that, we were instantly screwed and I knew it. The fog had rolled up the Rio Grande valley much faster than our weather shop and dispatch had predicted. I desperately needed that two thousand pounds of fuel we’d burned on the second McAllen approach, but it was long gone. And if we’d left those fifteen minutes earlier, we might have made it into San Antonio. There was no one to blame but myself, because I’d made the decision to fly that second approach.

“How’s the Austin ceiling and viz?” I asked the controller. Less than fifty miles more flying beyond San Antonio. If we could get a higher altitude, we might conserve enough fuel to land in Austin with an uncomfortably low fuel total, but what were the options?

“Their ceiling and viz are dropping rapidly,” the controller said. “You’d better plan minimum time enroute.”

We coordinated a higher altitude but the fuel prediction still showed a frightfully low fuel total at Austin—if we beat the fog rolling up from the south.

I’d failed Cecil’s second dictum, “Know when to get the hell out of Dodge.” If we couldn’t land in Austin, the next option was Waco almost a hundred miles north. That arrival fuel total would be horrifying, if we even made it that far at all. I’d relied too heavily on the FMS technology and not enough on my instinct, which usually was, there’s nothing you’re going to see on a second approach that you didn’t see on the first. Just get the hell out of town. The MD-80 didn’t even have a fuel prediction function.

There was no panic in the cockpit, though we both knew instantly what we were up against. There was just intense concentration, with an ample side order of tension.

We climbed into the twenties, then I had another critical decision to make. Do I pull the power back to an endurance speed that burned minimal fuel? That would add time to our transit, which could mean the difference between landing before the relentless fog bank swallowed up the field and having to race further north.

The longer we waited, the cooler the evening air would become, and that was the insidious culprit: the fog wasn’t really “moving north” so much as the temperature-dew point spread was diminishing as the sun set. When it reached zero, there’d be fog, from the surface to at least a thousand feet.

It was an all-in bet, keeping the engine power high to minimize enroute time, albeit at the expense of arrival fuel. The new landing fuel prediction was about half of what I’d normally accept, but the minimal time gave us at least a fighting chance to fly the approach and find the runway at descent minimums.

We entered a long, shallow descent toward the Austin airport. I held the speed at two-hundred-fifty until just about twenty miles out, then we “threw out all the shit,” as Coker would say, dropping the gear, the boards and the speedbrakes to slow to approach speed. We broke out of the overcast well above minimums, which was a huge relief, then I flew her to a normal touchdown.

I don’t recall ever being so glad to slow a jet to taxi speed as I was that night. It had been a hell of a day, a long one at that, including three Cat 2 approaches, two go-arounds and a divert at emergency fuel levels.

The passengers never knew the ugly details, other than what should have been just over an hour of flying time turning into nearly three, plus ending up in Austin instead of McAllen. Nor did the flight attendants, really. There was no point telling either of them, as far as I could see.

I told the agent we’d need crew hotel rooms for the night, because we were done. We’d been on duty for twelve hours and besides that strain, the uncertainty of the Austin divert left both of us in the cockpit fried.

The agent invited me inside to operations where the dispatcher was on the line.

“Captain,” said a female voice I didn’t recognize. She must have taken over the shift from the original dispatcher. “We’re going to refuel you, then you’ll fly the passengers back to DFW.”

“No,” I said. “That’s a bad idea. We’re both done for the night.”

“We need you to fly these passengers back to DFW.”

“That’s not a good idea, so, no.”

“Are you refusing a direct order from dispatch?”

She must be new, I thought to myself.

“Call it whatever you want,” I said. “We are done and we’re going to the hotel. Don’t call me back—I’ll be in crew rest. We’ll be ready tomorrow after we’ve had a decent night’s sleep.”

Then I hung up the phone. The next morning, I got a call from Doug Anderson, the DFW Chief who’d recommended I try the F-100. He listened carefully, then said he agreed with my decision, even ending the day in Austin, and supported me one hundred percent. That was typical: whether it was Doug, or Zane lemon after him, I never had anything but full support from the DFW Flight Office.

When I mentioned to Doug the shockingly low fuel we had left after landing, he simply said, “I’ve landed with less.”

I rounded up the crew and we ferried the jet back to DFW empty. On the very quiet, short and routine flight home, I added an addendum to Cecil’s “get out of town advice.” There’d be no multiple approaches, at least not without holding for a significant time to allow conditions to improve. Back-to-back Cat 2 or 3s? Right then and from then on, I’d just get the hell out of Dodge.

Look for An Airline Pilot’s Life in paperback and Kindle format on Amazon next month!

 

An Airline Pilot’s Life

Want to live the airline pilot life from an insider’s view? Here’s your chance: for the past two years, I’ve been writing an insider, no-holds-barred true story from day one in my forty-plus years of airline and Air Force flying.

It’s over four hundred pages of details and the real-life, true adventures of flying jets for a lifetime, both USAF and at American Airlines for nearly thirty-five years, twenty-nine as captain.

Watch this space for upcoming excerpts, and the official release date in both paperback and Kindle from Dark Horse Books. Now, the manuscript is in its final rewrite stage:

Soon, very soon, you can have your own copy, and live the life yourself. If you enjoy the stories and adventures that are the JetHead blog, you won’t want to miss this true story.

Stay tuned.

Airline Crew Confidential: The Underground Cartoon Book

There’s an underground cartoon book quietly making the rounds of the airline crew world. Most of what crews see daily appears in this collection which has become sort of a therapy outlet for flight attendants and pilots–which may be why the book registers so well with insiders in the airline crew world.

If you’re an airline passenger, you probably won’t see the collection, because it sells under the radar at Amazon Books: the title is designed to sidestep non-crewmembers, while airline pilots and flight attendants seem to find the collection a readily-available, quick escape from crewlife reality through a good laugh.

The pilot who drew all the cartoons and produced the underground collection purposely priced it below the cost of a basic Starbucks coffee ($3.99) on Kindle so that his fellow crewmembers could enjoy the cartoons instantly at the lowest price Amazon allows for the Kindle version. The paperback strains to stay under $10 (but it still does!) for over 150 pages of iconoclastic insider humor.

Cartoons are one way airline crews enjoy a little private de-stressing over the typical pressures of crew life outsiders just wouldn’t understand.

Often, the joke’s on crews themselves in the subtle satire of typical flight crew situations those in the know will understand only too well:

Often, crew life challenges extend from the air to the ground in ways only a flight attendant could make sense of–but they sure do:

In the most demanding aspects of crew life, there’s little slack: hours are long, rest scarce, delays and reassignments the rule rather than the exception. Crews handle all that, never letting passengers know of either the stresses they experience, nor the sardonic view of airline life that at least takes a little of the edge off of the relentless demands:

Since the collection was created and is drawn by an airline pilot who flies at least 90 hours a month, additional cartoons get added regularly as new situations play out from the airline crew perspective:

So, if you are a crewmember, you know where to find this little underground crewlife collection. It’s drawn by an airline crewmember for airline crewmembers and every newhire flight attendant who flies on my crew gets a copy gratis as a welcome to the crewlife world. If you’re considering crewlife as either an airline pilot or flight attendant, maybe you want to check this out for the insider view BEFORE you commit yourself to life as flight crew.

And if you’re the average airline passenger, maybe you want to see what your crew seems to be laughing about among themselves.  Meanwhile, this little underground crewlife chronicle quietly finds its way into the right hands on flight decks and airline galleys worldwide.

 

 

 

The BEST Airline Cartoon Collection: $2.99!

The entire, revised airline cartoon collection at a special introductory Kindle price of just $2.99 for a limited time only!

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Here’s a sneak preview:

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Get your copy today!

Fantastic Airline Cartoon Collection–Special Deal!

Fantastic deal on an epic international aviation cartoon book–free shipping worldwide!!! Includes several pages of my own cartoons!

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Air Travel in the “Me” Millennium

Sure, flying today has diverged from the mythological “golden era of air travel”  so many passengers hold as a yardstick to their own recent airline experience. That can’t help being a disappointment, but there’s more to the story: it ain’t all one-sided.

Passengers, too, in the contemporary age of the selfie, have also diverged from the model of decorum and self-restraint that went hand-in-hand with the Utopian but long past air travel legend. That new, self-focused, unrestrained millennial attitude dictates much of what happens in today’s air travel. Let me explain.

Hand-in-hand with the genteel, bygone airline images was a foundation of passenger behavioral restraint and courtesy that has also vanished like the sixties. And like it or not, here are some major changes wrought by the millennial evolution away from the self-restraint and personal responsibility that characterized the era they claim to miss.

1. People today simply will not be told what to do. That runs the gamut from emergency instructions that could save their own lives to procedural norms that make boarding actually better for the group–but only if the individual cooperates. Today’s air traveler knows the rules, hears the requests, and the directives as applicable to the group, but optional for themselves.

2. Self-restraint: the “self” now overshadows the restraint in two major ways. First, the “self” aspect of the traveling public fuels a sense of entitlement rather than restraint. That’s even in the subtlest nuance of boarding which creates a massive, obstructive knot of bag-dragging humanity ignoring the simple instruction to “please board only when your group is called,” to the life-threatening free-for-all luggage grab in an emergency evacuation. In the “self” era, there is no rule that must be followed, no directive that can’t be ignored, because that’s the way people are wired today.

Second, the notion of self trumps the concept of fairness: a cell phone video with zero context and outrageous, often aggressive passenger behavior is not only tolerated–it’s embraced and celebrated on social media. Nothing is too outrageous for a passenger to say or do and whatever that atrocity is, someone else must provide compensation.

3. Personal responsibility: everything is someone else’s fault, so everyone is a victim, and every victim needs “compensation.” Whether it’s a mechanical delay to correct a glitch in a complex, $100 million dollar machine or a weather delay, today’s self goes from zero to outrage without passing through rational thought (weather is outside of a business’s control; complex machines break) and goes right to the worst aspect of self: one must proclaim their insult and outrage on the thoughtless, unmediated scrum that is social media.

Anything goes in the self-centered rush to scream your bombastic victimization into cyberspace. Thanks, @HeimBBQ–did you recall that in your local marketplace about 50,000 employees you just maligned also make restaurant choices?

3. Helplessness has displaced personal responsibility: if anything, air travel has gotten even simpler in the digital era. The ubiquitous smart phone that conducts audio, video and photo outrage across the internet spectrum also has the capability–if used–to supply instant, accurate answers. But, the personal responsibility aspect (what’s your flight number?) falls by the wayside of many people who can remember a date, time and address–except at the airport. Google has the instantaneous and accurate answer–but only if you know how to ask the question.

4. The marketplace: it’s easy, perhaps convenient, to overlook the driving force in the air travel industry, and that is price. But the fact is, when the Civil Aeronautics Board relinquished control of airfare and routes, the deliberate government “hands off” approach left the marketplace in the hands of consumers: you asked for dirt cheap airfares–you got it. Don’t say that your $600 transcon airfare is “too expensive” as you book your flight on your $1,000 smart phone so you can attend an hours-long entertainment (sports, music, whatever) event for another thousand dollars. The whining makes for effective social media click bait–but it just doesn’t fly, logically or literally.

So there you have it: the air travel reality is a narrative of change, of evolution, of price and self–and the results might be dismal, but the responsibility is shared equally between consumers and the marketplace they drive.

In the final analysis, no, it’s really not “about you,” but in fact it is mostly because of you, despite how negative a connotation the idea of personal responsibility is in today’s world of “me.” Air travel is still the dumb beast slaved to your buying choices, and the airfare “steal” you foghorn on your social media feed fuels the very enroute outrage you tweet later. In a very real sense, you are both the cause and the effect.

So fasten your safety belt–it’s going to get bumpy, and the whining only louder and less justified.

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A Pilot’s Diversion Strategy

“Everyone’s got a plan until they get punched in the face.”

–Iron Mike Tyson

The factors that shape a diversion strategy are both quantifiable and variable. Variables include weather, traffic density, airport crowding, holding pattern location, and what I call wild cards, which I’ll discuss later.

Quantifiable factors include altitude, speed, distance, time and fuel. Though there are many foundational points upon which to anchor a diversion strategy, I center mine on the one controlling factor common to every other facet of the decision: fuel.

That’s one very simple and unifying parameter that is reliably quantifiable and easily revised accurately. So, let’s start at the beginning with known fuel numbers. First, what is your required (you, the pilot, determine this) minimum on-deck fuel? Set that number in stone. For example, in a 737-800, I want 6.0 as a minimum in a divert situation. 5.0 is adequate, but in a divert situation, you really need to pad everything.

Next, the added fuel for holding. Dispatch adds holding fuel to a release when you and they agree on how much you’ll likely need based on destination variables like weather, construction, traffic density and more.

The reserve fuel added for holding presumes you can hold for a specified time, fly an approach to a missed approach, then proceed to a landing at your alternate with your agreed upon (6.0, in my example) fuel.

But in the fuel planning phase, no one knows exactly where you’ll hold nor at what altitude. So, you have to work backwards from your approach to your holding fix: how much fuel will you need from holding to missed approach? Flight planning systems figure an estimate, because again, you can’t know for sure where you’ll be sent to hold.

And here’s where we encounter a few wild cards: we’re not sure where or at what altitude we’ll hold, so we really can’t confirm a fuel flow or total enroute burn. Also, we can’t rule out spacing and delay vectors enroute to the initial approach fix, nor non-optimum speed and altitude assignments along the way. Same thing with the missed approach: there could be multiple vectors, speed restrictions and worst of all, a much lower altitude for the cruise leg to your designated alternate.

Throw in another factor: priority. If you’re planned to land at the same time as international flights that have been airborne for eight or more hours, you may find—contrary to what ATC might say—that you are vectored around or behind these flights. All of these factors can radically affect your fuel burn for the worse.

Step one: as you enter holding, you can and must determine the probable fuel burn from holding to your destination. Add that to your on-deck minimum. In my example:

Holding at an intermediate STAR fix:

6.0 + 2.5 = 8.5

Now we need to add the planned enroute burn from missed approach to your designated alternate. From DFW to TUL, a typical alternate, that would be an unadjusted 4.5. But we need to adjust that, adding a significant pad for the wild cards I cited above. I’ll add another 2.0. We have:

8.5 + 6.5 = 15.0

So, 15.0 is your bingo fuel: at 15.0 we’ve lost the ability to go missed approach and divert. What’s the next step? Figure the minimum fuel from your holding position to your alternate. Add a pad for the wild cards, and you have your bingo from holding.

If it takes me 2.5 to get from holding to TUL, I add a pad (1.0) and add that to my on-deck minimum:

3.0 + 6.5 = 9.5.

So, 9.5 is my bingo from holding direct to my alternate.

Why the difference? Simple: if you’re holding for a variable that may clear (weather, closed runway, traffic sequence, runway change, and more) you may have an option besides divert. As long as my enroute burn from holding to destination is equal to or less than the burn to my alternate, once the holding cause is eliminated (“DFW is now VFR”) we can proceed safely to our destination and land with 6.5 or more.

And here’s another wild card you can play: ask for a different holding fix. Chances are, in major airport areas (ATL, JFK, MIA, ORD, LAX) the answer will be no. But in many other places, ATC may grant your request. You can even fudge it by adding “for weather” to your request, which sounds the same as what it really is: “For whether or not we can hold longer.”

A different fix offers one more good option: if you’re not in a stack, you won’t have your fuel burn incrementally increased as you’re assigned a lower altitude. Add to this asset an EFC synergy. Some pilots like to “Go Ugly Early” and divert if their EFC exceeds their planned holding time. But, if you’re sitting high at a comparable fix away from the descending stack, you can safely loiter till your EFC just to see if the EFC shortens, as it often does.

For example, if you’re given a 50 minute EFC and have planned for 35 minutes of holding, chances are decent that if you’re still holding at 20 minutes, that EFC might be cancelled or revised to within your holding fuel.

A second wild card is to find a different suitable alternate, possibly close-in. For example, instead of OKC or AUS for DFW, if the weather movement allows, AFW, DAL and even SPS (daytime only) maximize your loiter fuel and when you’re refueled and outbound, you’ll be cleared from tower to approach, rather than tower to departure then center, which may get you slapped with a traffic flow wheels-up delay.

Other good reasons for choosing a different alternate include crowding (you don’t want to be the last jet in line for fuel or a gate) and even time of day for staffing requirements. Finally, if you’re going illegal as a crew as soon as you divert, do you really want to spend the night in Abilene, or would Austin be more “sensible?”

Regardless, the bottom line is this: your minimum on-deck fuel. Add generously padded buffers for the wild cards, plus figure both from missed approach and direct divert. Monitor both figures. The 737-FMS will display both direct and missed approach fuel predictions—monitor both. We also often put in three or four different potential divert airports and monitor both figures for all of them.

As captain, I ask two things of the first officer. First, “What am I missing?” Not, what do you think of my plan—I really want to know what I’m not thinking of and what would be better. And second, I have the FO pick a divert alternate, and monitor both numbers. That keeps us both in the loop, keeps both sets of eyes on all the fuel numbers and finally, two heads are better than one. They both need to be fully in the game.

And that, fellow aviators, is one pilot’s strategy. Good luck and fly safe.