Hope Flies with Opal Eyes

Flying as captain is a marathon: the mileposts come slow and steady, so pacing is key. Especially when you’re tired, and you are.

You once counted, then stop counting after you reached 150, the number of details you must see to and okay before you even send the initial torrent 35 psi air coursing through the starter on the first jet engine. So you divide the tasks to conserve energy, and just like you when you run a marathon–no wasted motion, deliberate pace, tune out the distractions, concentrate. Half of you remains in the scan mode: you know where everything is and how it’s supposed to be, inside the cockpit. Let your eyes do the movement.

And the other half does the evaluating: numbers correct, weights, center of gravity; quantities; oxygen, oil, hydraulic fluid, jet fuel. Systems that need to be armed, armed. Each waypoint, loaded by datalink, but verified out loud between you and the first officer. Page through the jet’s maintenance logbook–how’s it been? What’s been acting up? Comm panel set, your stuff hooked up.

Then almost subliminally, you hear something that pokes. You’re going to need to do something? Something else, pulling both halves of you out of the stride you hold to make the endurance race to the finish line? You can go on up and say hi to the pilots. 

Means neither one of us will curse for the next few minutes. Means we’ll check out the mom–don’t lie, pilots do–and do our duty to a young person who’s on an adventure even as we run our marathon. You break out of the deliberate pace, the assigned role, to put on the TV character. It’s one more lap.

Until you turn around. A little one, maybe 3 or 4? Curly brown hair, a cherubic face sweet and fresh as a scoop of vanilla. And eyes like big opals, clear and white but flashing unlikely color and heat from somewhere. Concentrating. Taking it all in with the aplomb of little ones unknowing but full of hope, and buttressed by faith in mom standing behind.

Tell them your name. Small lips move, but the eyes don’t; wide as saucers, marking and storing this with everything else new, which just about everything is. You can’t hear whatever she said in a tiny voice drowned out by equipment cooling fans, whirring gyros and coursing air conditioning.

“Natalia,” the mom says, her dark mane a large copy of the tousled mini-me still wide-eyed and unblinking. Natalia thrills at what I don’t, what I can’t any more: a Christmas tree, the state fair, a ride at Disney where everything isn’t anywhere in particular, but scattered like pretty shells on the beach or a jewelry case: new, random, unnatural, gleaming.

In the background, the number one flight attendant argues with the agent over some passenger boarding issue; voices raise, which once again means you’ll add another lap to the race, another item on the list of things to resolve, but later. Natalia’s miniature hand thrusts forward a small book without another word. I get it that she’s reading me, man in a uniform, in a place that’s strange, where wonderful things like flying must be possible, likely; take that on faith–mom said so. Out of my zone now, my zoned out stride; I have to smile back at those big perfect eyes, serious set mouth and precious faith she has in her parents, and their having entrusted her to us.

I’ll sign her log book. It’s now a written contract, a piece of her childhood promised for later appraisal and cherished by mom like her Dora the Explorer tickets and her first crayon scrawls, Natalia’s First Flight. A moment bronzed like baby shoes, a snapshot whose corners haven’t tattered yet because we’re living that moment.

Then it’s over.

The marathon run resumes, the litany, both halves checking and confirming facts and figures, waypoints and weights. The flight service supervisor wants to blame the flight attendants for the delay outbound–which is really attributable to the jet being late inbound. I just want to get this flight out on time, the tired supervisor sighs. “It’s too late for that,” I shoot back. “How ’bout we do this without a body count of crew casualties?” She storms off. I’ll hear about it later. Doesn’t matter–you have to take care of your crew.

Finally, the emancipation of pushback and engine start, climbing the stadium steps of checklists and performance confirmation on taxi-out. Mile markers, each ticked off carefully, we join the heavy aluminum conga line to the runway. Strapped in tight, silent save required responses and the crackle of radio transmissions between the tower and the gaggle of jets streaming toward the active runway.

My last items, mental mantra, always: gross weight, verify one more time the correct speeds, correct configuration, correct runway; stabilized thrust at 91.3 N1 on roll; engines-engines-engines only on abort after 80 knots: idle, speedbrakes then reverse, amen. My eyes hide behind sunshades; they know where to look, what to look for, what we’ll see, and what we shouldn’t–then what action to take in case we do. It’s a wrap-around blanket, full confidence and thirty plus years of flight experience, twenty-one in the left seat.

Yet for me, as I release the brakes and standup the power levers, waiting for the welcome growl of 55,000 pounds of jet thrust biting the air, shoving us back into our seats as we head for the sky, the shiny lightness of it all stems from one thing: Natalia’s going to leave the Earth today, for the first time.

That, like a first Christmas, a single birthday candle, the first star of the first night, just doesn’t happen very often, or really ever again. So for a stolen moment, I fly through, and in, the vision of those perfect opal eyes. Though you might suspect otherwise, somehow things seem a little brighter, the arc a little higher. You know it really is, at least for now.

Night Skies and Other Lies.

Rumbly turbulence, airspeed flinches; the yaw damper reins her head; the nose and tail agree and the jet settles back on course. That bumpiness is the late afternoon frontal sheer losing it’s heat, it’s edge, power; just the teethmarks of the day imprinted on the night.  The sun sinking low leaves behind a down payment on tomorrow in the towering hell marching eastward not caring that the rest of the day has paraded off to the west. We’ll slip by.

Night flight is a watch or a vision, all about what you can’t see in the daytime, what you’d have to look up to see and even then, daytime’s relentless now shines it all down. But it’s mostly a lie anyway.

A millenium ago sailors miles below peered up at the night sky and plotted their course based on the the diamond waypoints they mistakenly believed never moved. And though blinded by a thousand miles of deep blue everywhere they looked in the daytime, nighttime gave them the vision above to plot a course ahead and the faith to steer it all day.

Above the earth our sea is as black above as below, and the irony of time is that now the night sky braces a constellation of man-made satellites not visible from the crow’s nest I sit in, but talking to the jet nonetheless.

A metal swarm below the diamond canopy mimics the geo-synchronicity of the constellations, which is also a lie: everything moves, is moving and though it looks to my eye like we’re suspended above the gossamer web of ground lights only creeping inch by inch below, in reality we flash across the ground like wild dogs with our heads out the window, letting our ears blow through time and space. The satellite tapestry orchestrating the course is no more stationary than the wide-flung constellations, but we transcend the lie by more sleight of hand.

When the earth falls away, we discount the minuteness of our own worldly time and motion compared to the magnitude of the universe and the measure of its flux. We gaze beyond our own micro-minutes in the sky, so fleeting by comparison to the eternity above; we favor the sweep of the second hand collecting years a minute at a time. In the darkest of night we substitute for the lack of vision with a structure of white lies that has bent truth and charted a course, until morning at least and then more.

Cosmic gears move and the fly-wheel spins in darkness or light; the time passes like distance in flight. Nobody cares that what’s fixed really isn’t, nor what’s in motion is really fixed, we claim a bug’s life, a gnat’s age and stretch it across a calendar so small that the universe couldn’t notice it any more that you mark the nine-day life and death of a fruit fly.

Time and distance flat-lines, the truth is all motion and sky. Distance and place and the relativity of each, the minuteness of everything compared to monolith of eternity–that’s the smirk of the universe, but so what?

When it comes to the cosmos, here’s what I see:

And I’m buying: what we lack in duration, we’ll make up in intensity; where we don’t endure, we’ll at least enjoy; where we can’t prevail, we’ll contend like a welterweight against the fatass heavyweight Time. In the absence of grace, we’ll substitute brute force:

Time and space and irrelevant place: vision is overrated anyway. Feel like flying? I do, both feel like it, and do it. “Here to there” is insignificant, because neither waypoint matters as much as the flight in between, or moreover, the fact that you’re flying at all.

And when you think of it that way, it’s kind of like giving the finger to the universe and eternity all at once. Ice Age or a gnat’s days;  light years or more beers; it’s all relative, a matter of comparison but not kind–and none of it lasts anyway.

So we’ll burn it, stoke it to an ice-blue flame, fast as she’ll go, high as we can for as long as it lasts–then into the night. Newborn of no one, headed “there” from nowhere, one more shooting star, another streak of light. A mortal patchwork of lies, sailing the infinite night.

JetHead Live: Flying the 747 for Cathay Pacific Airlines

One pilot’s flight odyssey from Winnipeg, Canada, flying metroliners around Canada, to Hong Kong, flying 747s around the world.

Here’s Jeremy Giguere’s story, in his own words:

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Also available free on iTunes–just click on the iTunes icon below.

To visit Jeremy’s blog “Pushin’ 4 on the Second Floor”—click here.

Airline Fees: Just The Tip of the Iceberg.

With the summer travel season upon us now, you can hardly watch more than thirty minutes of any newscast without some mention of airline fees which, according to every source pandering to public perception, are skyrocketing and unfair.

I’m all in favor of fairness. So, if this problem of added fees is to be eliminated for the sake of the consumer, it needs to be eliminated across the board. Because airline fees are just the tip of the iceberg.

First, and perhaps most egregiously, we need to eliminate the outrageous gouging the average consumer must bear every time a restaurant feels like charging for “extras.” To do that, everything on the menu should be included in one price. This business of charging a fee for an “appetizer,” a “dessert”–it’s nothing more than a money grab. Coffee, too–all beverages, really–should be included without an extra charge. When you order a meal, just like buying an airline ticket, everything the business has should all be included in the price. In the food service industry, that must include the bar as well: just like the ideal check-in at the airport, you should be able to tell the bartender (and of course, the business owner) “one, please.” Whether that “one” is beer, wine, liquor, a milk shake or iced tea–that must be one un-itemized or variable price, which probably needs to be set by the government to be fair.

Same goes for the auto industry: when you go into any auto dealership, every option available on all models should be included in the price. Basically, like an “airline flight,” there should be the specification “vehicle” designating that any option (or all options, at the consumer’s discretion) must be included in the sale price. This blatant price gouging involved in up-charging for “leather interior” makes as much sense as a restauranteur charging for “dessert” or an airline charging for “baggage” and clearly, the whole trend needs to be stopped.

And musicians have been getting away with this scam for too long. The business of selling songs via iTunes or other piecemeal on-line media is yet another abuse of the consumer: if you buy the Aerosmith song “Walk This Way,” you should be awarded the entire “Toys In The Attic” album, period.

Finally–and this really hits home–there’s the housing industry. When a consumer contracts with a builder, there should simply be one commodity, “a house,” like an “airline trip,” a “restaurant meal,” and a “vehicle,” with one set price including all possible options. The traditional builder “amenities package” which includes various prices for different components, materials, appliances and fixtures runs exactly counter to the basic consumer right (certainly, “passenger rights”) to have a product produced at an all-inclusive, fixed price, announced up front and encompassing every possible choice a builder could offer.

Which brings up another relevant analogy: everyone loves to decry the high price of medical care and often, doctors fees which ultimately is a thinly veiled resentment over how much doctors make.

That consumer right, however, seems to get short shrift in the emergency room or god forbid, on the operating table. There’s no one complaining about price to their anesthesiologist or their surgeon, never mind the hospital providing and charging item-by-item for the services required to provide medical care.

Clearly, the problem of “fees” is a universal plague that extends far beyond simply the airline industry. But kind of like the emergency room mindset, I seldom hear griping in flight about prices or fees when the weather is down to minimums, the winds close to limits, or the jet experiencing some type of mechanical problem.

Regardless, if one industry–in urban myth, the airline industry–is getting out of line with other commercial enterprises, maybe in fairness there should be some pricing regulation. But until the other ninety-nine percent of the for-profit industries join the one-price-fits all fairy tale espoused by those in the media, the government and ultimately, the public–we’ll just have to deal with the reality of product, price and choice that has defined free enterprise since the concept was first introduced in this country centuries ago.

Now, go to your favorite restaurant and tell them how unfair the menu is. Be sure to insist on their finest champagne to toast the deal, and it better be included in the single “meal” price. After all, that’s fair, isn’t it?

“Living the Dream:” Cathay Pacific 747 Pilot Jeremy Giguere, Live from Hong Kong.

Airline Pilots: Quirks, Perks and Jerks.

There’s a unique social strata in the pointy end of the jet, one that most who reside there can neither recognize nor deny. First, lets look at quirks.

I have to go beyond just the technical quirks, but I’ll get to that. First, though, there are various peccadillos that are a combination of profession and personality. Foremost, and maybe quirkiest, is “Last Aircraft Syndrome.” That is, those who carry over some of the procedural considerations from the last fleet they were on, using either reasoning or procedures that really don’t apply. I’m not talking about the Obsessive-Compulsive resetting of systems, although it is annoying:  like the guys who on descent, reset the cabin pressure controller to a lower cruise altitude; turning the radar to standby after switching to a different mode. Not needed, but just a little obsessive.

But the really senseless make-work stuff some have to do: reset a step-down altitude on enroute descent even though the Flight Management System (FMS) is perfectly happy with the original path no matter where you initiate descent. That shows someone who either doesn’t understand FMS, or just has to obey Quirky Reset Syndrome (QRS; yes, I made that up) no matter how distracting and pointless it might be.

Which is, I guess, my main quirk: I hate to see unnecessary clutter in procedures: don’t add stuff that doesn’t really apply. Just to the most streamlined procedures possible. “Last aircraft syndrome” reaches beyond the 727-vintage pressurization considerations or the MD-80 fuel boost pump to the APU (Boeing says it’s fine without) to the really annoying ancestor worship passengers will notice right after takeoff, when the cabin heats up.

That’s because the venerable MD-80 had a primitive air-conditioning system that put out tons of cold air at high power setting like on take-off. So on climb out, F/Os would start adding warm air to the mix with the temp controls. By contrast, the 737-800 has a great system that adds warm air automatically–no need to mess with the manual controls. But former MD-80 F/Os can’t resist doing what they did for 15 or 20 years on the Juraissic Jet . Which brings up another of my quirks: I usually grab a coffee in the terminal about 10 minutes prior to pushback. It’s usually cooled to drinkable temp right after liftoff, and that’s my routine: on climbout, I fly with one hand, drink my coffee with the other. Which doesn’t leave me a free hand undo the F/O’s addition of heat to the cockpit mix. And hot coffee and a hot cockpit don’t mix. Soon enough, though, the flight attendants will be calling from the back to complain about the heat, if I don’t get to the controls myself first.

And now having said all that, I realize this: I sure do have a lot of quirks. Now let’s look to the dark side: the jerks.

I have to admit, we do have the “jerks” in our ranks. I don’t just mean the fashion failures still wearing their outdated layover clothes from the 1980s, or the bad 1970s porno mustaches, graying hair parted in the middle (bad combovers abound, too). Those of us who married flight attendants usually have enough in-house supervision to avoid those pitfalls. But the real jerks are the ones who have clearly rejected most of the better influences.

In that group there are the lotharios, both successful and pitifully hopeless. In the former group, there are the aging party boys, 40-ish and even 50-something, still hanging out in bars, playing the bad “what’s your sign” crap. They tend to troll for women 10-15 years or so younger, and one I know–who is very successful in that arena–dates one woman for only a few months, then sends her an extensive email explaining why they can no longer date, plus a half dozen tips on what she can improve on for her next boyfriend.

If you ever see this pathetic sticker on a pilot bag: he’s “that guy.”

The latter group includes many with PPD (Pilot Personality Disorder) that sends potential dates running. I recall one puzzled F/O who couldn’t understand why a flight attendant put call blocker on him after their first date. After flying with him for a few days, I could.

The real jerks, however, make everyone on the crew cringe. The classic case is the mid-life guy, beautiful wife–often a flight attendant–and he has a flight attendant girlfriend as well. Then everyone on the crew has to pretend for his sake that we don’t know, that we don’t think he’s a damaged-goods jackass for two-timing the wife who we also like and fly with. And when she’s on the crew we have to pretend we don’t know as well, trying to make it easier for her, wishing better for her.

Those cases abound in any group of 8,000 pilots and 19,000 flight attendants.

Finally, the upside: the perks.

From my standpoint as captain, the main perk I see for me personally is that I get to fly with so many extremely high-time copilots who are completely experienced in the biz. That wasn’t always the case back when the airline was expanding in the last century and guys like me were filling the seats with just a fraction of the flight time we as a pilot group now have. That boosts the performance level in the cockpit and for the captain, who is accountable for everything that goes on in the flight, reduces the stress level.  Kind of feel sorry for the old heads who had to show me the ropes back in the 1980s. Fortunately, they’re now all retired or dead so they can’t complain about my F/O quirkiness in those days.

My best F/O memories . . .

And my payback for all of that, and atoning for my own F/O years is this one quirk of my own. On an end-of-the day flight, when the aircraft is staying overnight, when the crew is going home, I make sure I’m the last one off the jet. There are some items of switchology that can’t be done till all passengers have deplaned. As a courtesy, after our pilot checklist duties are complete, I send the F/O off with a “take-off, I’ll finish up after the pax deplane.” That frees the F/O to skeedaddle to the employee lot and get home as soon as possible.

It’s a bit of respect I can show to my crew after a long flight day, and maybe even a little gratitude for my good fortune to be in the left seat in the first place.

I guess we all have our quirks, and they’re not necessarily all that bad.

Summer Air Travel Disaster: “We” Collides with “Me”

Getting onto the jet about twenty minutes prior to pushback, I encounter an all-to-familiar scene: standing in the doorway to the cockpit is a man with a bag and a hopeful look on his face, flanked by two flight attendants giving me we tried to tell him looks.

“In this bag,” he tells me, pointing to his roll-aboard that’s about half again as large as the normal size limit, “I have $30,000 worth of fragile instruments. The suitcase is too large to fit in the overhead bin,” he continues, “so why can’t I just put it into the forward coat closet here?”

This is where his “me” collides with our “we:” I sure empathize with him regarding whatever he had in his bag. He’s thinking, in his mind, out of “me:” I have this stuff, I know what it is, I know it’s beyond the permitted size . . . me, me, and me.

That runs headlong into “we:” we are not permitted by the FAA to put anything other than crew bags in that closet ($5,000 fine for the forward flight attendant), we have a full flight, including five flight attendants whose bags already take up the allotted space for them in that closet. We already explained to you the carry-on size limits, and we have already heard what you’re going to ask next.

“Well,” he continues, after I politely point out that the closet is full of crew bags for the working crew plus a jumpseater, “Many times before they’ve let me put this behind the pilot’s seat up in the cockpit.”

I almost get nostalgic thinking back to the air travel days prior to 9-11, compared today’s world of underpants bombers, Air Marshals, pilots armed with 9mm handguns and bad people in far away countries relentlessly plotting to exploit our air travel system as a weapon of terror. That’s what we have to deal with, and we have had to change our way of thinking: there won’t be anything someone brings aboard that we’ll stow in the cockpit.

Because we as flying crewmembers have been mandated–and willingly adopt–a “group-think” that looks for threats in everything. Because we fly between 140 and 200 days a year and because we’ve been charged with stewardship of our air travel system and its security, never mind our own determination to see our families after our trip. And when you’re on board, you too are part of the “we” with everything at stake.

I take the easy way out. “We have a jumpseater in the cockpit today,” I tell him, “Sorry, but there’s no room for extra baggage.” For god’s sake, we’re not even allowed to carry critical parcels like organs for transplant any more in the cockpit–because you really don’t know what’s inside unless you open it–which we ain’t, and the flight deck is no place for surprises, period. I hate that, because I think of the organ transplant people involved at both ends of such a flight–but I never forget those on board nonetheless.

This goes beyond the obvious hassle for the other 159 passengers on board, many of whom are stuck on the jet bridge as boarding halts to deal with him. This goes beyond his disregard for those folks, their downline connections that depend on our prompt departures, and even beyond his claim to special storage space which, if a flight attendant bag was placed in the overhead bin, would deny another passenger space for his bag.

There’s more going on than that–which ought to be enough for any considerate passenger to avoid. Sure, Mr. “Critical Instruments” is only thinking out of his own world of “me,” putting us in the position of being in his “me-world,” the bad guys. But what he really needs to do is join the group-think that encircles his “me-world:” realize that the constraints apply to all, and that they are an inflexible necessity in this post-9/11 world. Join the “we” and make the trip smoother: we don’t expect to slip outside of the rules, we don’t expect to bend them, we don’t expect to be exempt.

I have to prove myself, despite my identification as the captain in command of the flight, by going through security screening like everyone else. You bet it’s a pain in my ass–god forbid if I were to actually access the cockpit–but I also embrace it: that’s the “we” that transcends the “me” for the betterment of all. Flight crew know this, so we do our part.

Yet honestly, sometimes we fail. I had an agent walk a passenger down the jetbridge before boarding in one of our smaller stations. The agent carried a briefcase-sized bag that was wrapped once or twice in cargo tape. “This man is a professional chef,” the agent informed me. “He requires this full set of chef’s knives to perform his duties, so I’ve sealed this case and he’s agreed to leave it in the overhead bin for the entire flight.”

Sigh. No, there will not be a full set of butcher knives and meat cleavers in the cabin–even wrapped in a few swipes of duct tape. When I put it that way, the agent returned to his senses, and rather sheepishly offered the normal procedure: “We can ship it as cargo, but not in the cabin.”

The fact that in 2012 we still have to have these conversations is troubling. Are we already forgetting the basic, albeit annoying sacrifices we must individually make in order to thwart those relentless dark forces looking for new ways to terrorize our nation through spectacular feats of evil?

Are we just going through the motions, but reserving exceptions in our own minds for ourselves, forgetting about the broad-based group-think that really only works if we forgo me for the best interest of all?

I sure hope not. But if we’ve already forgotten the hard lessons for which we’ve paid dearly in the recent past, if we’ve already through laziness or selfishness let down our guard, besides the fact that the bad guys win by default, one thing I can promise you is this: it’s going to be a long, hot, painful summer.

What I wouldn’t give to be proven wrong.

Flying the B-2 Stealth Bomber

Listen to Bill Flanagan’s firsthand experience

flying this exotic aircraft:

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Questions to ask BEFORE you get on a light twin-engine aircraft.

When I lived in Hawaii, occasionally I’d lease and fly a Grumman Cougar (above), a light twin-engined propeller aircraft. The cold, hard fact with that aircraft was that if we took off with two passengers and their bags and lost an engine we were going down, period.

This I knew as a pilot–so I never flew the Cougar with any baggage, ever. But I think that many passengers might assume all is well either way–but it certainly is not.

This haunting memory always recurs every time I read of a light twin engine aircraft crashing on take-off, and sadly, that’s an all-too-common occurrence.

Cessna 401 crash after an engine failed on take-off, killing pop singer Aaliyah.

Some simple but vital questions could save your life if you’re thinking of chartering or accepting a ride on a light twin engine aircraft. But first, why do you have to ask?

The answer is simple: when you step onto my 175,000 pound twin engine jet–I have these answers specifically worked out for every flight, because the answers are crucial to all of us. You may assume that whoever is flying your light twin aircraft has answered them with specific numbers, but if you don’t ask, you’re casting your own safety to the wind. If your pilot has the answers–and provides them specifically (I’ll get to that later), step on board and have a good flight.

If your pilot says “Huh?” or even “It’ll be okay” or anything other than “here are the specific answers,” walk away immediately. Here are the Big Five:

1. What is the single engine climb gradient on this take-off, based on our projected weight and the current weather (temperature, pressure altitude and winds) conditions? Yes, I can answer that for every take-off with an exact number in two vital parameters: single engine (meaning assuming one engine quits on take-off) climb feet per nautical mile available and required.

“Required” means based on the terrain ahead, what is the minimum single engine climb gradient required for our aircraft to clear all obstacles by a minimum of 35 feet? “Available” means given our weight in fuel, passengers and bags, what is our aircraft capable of achieving on only one engine? Yes, there is a specific number to be derived from performance charts–and your pilot better have computed both. So your pilot should have a ready answer, don’t you think?

Four people were killed this week and one remains hospitalized after this Cessna twin crashed in a field in Kansas after leaving Tulsa. The cause is under investigation.

2. How much flight time does your pilot have in twin engine aircraft? Seriously, “total flight time” is not the important point here for a couple of crucial reasons. First, twin engine aircraft behave completely different from single engine planes because of the asymmetric yaw an engine failure produces. If one engine fails, the other continues to produces power and in many cases, must be pushed to an even higher power setting. Immediate rudder correction for adverse yaw–which doesn’t exist on single-engine aircraft–is a delicate operation: too much and the drag induced by the rudder kills lift; too little and the aircraft can depart controlled flight. Put in the wrong rudder, and you’ll be inverted in seconds.

If you’re paying someone to fly you somewhere, he’d better have at least 500 hours in that specific twin-engine plane–or you’d better walk away. In the above crash, the father of one of the survivors said the pilot had “flown the aircraft several times” and was “well-versed in it.” I stand by my 500 hour rule, at least when my life’s at stake. And “flight time” alone ain’t enough: proficiency, meaning hours flown within the past six months, is just as important. A few here and there? Not much recently? bad news.

Cessna -400 series interior.

3. What is our planned climb performance today? Meaning, given our gross weight in fuel, passengers and bags, at the current temperature and pressure altitude, what climb rate can we expect on a single engine? Again, this is a specific number derived from performance charts after all of the above variables are computed–and if your pilot doesn’t have the specific answer–walk away.

4. What is the engine history on this aircraft? Seriously? Yes, dead seriously: before I accept any aircraft for the day, I scan the engine history of repairs, malfunctions, oil consumption, vibration and temperature limits going back at least six months. Ditto your light twin: the pilot should be able to answer that question in detail–if the pilot checked.

5. How many pilot hours does your pilot have in this model and type of multi-engine aircraft? And when was the pilot’s last proficiency check? For example, I consider myself to be a low-time 737 pilot, having just over 1,500 hours in the aircraft–even though I have over 17,000 hours in multi-engine jets. In those 1,500 Boeing-737 pilot hours, I’ve had two complete refresher courses with FAA evaluations, plus three inflight evaluations–and I welcome that: I want to know my procedures and skills are at their peak. And I fly at least 80 hours a month, maintaining proficiency. When was your pilot’s last flight? Again, how many flight hours in the past six months?

Recurrent training and evaluation every nine months.

Not withstanding “well-versed” and having “flown it several times” as quoted above, your pilot needs to have hundreds of hours in the model and type to be flown, and preferably hundreds of hours in multi-engine aircraft. Remember the engine-out scenario on take-off I sketched out above, where the wrong rudder input can flip you inverted on take-off if an engine failure? Ditto on landing, with another set of problems, in the event of a single-engine go-around with a lighter aircraft.

Know the answers to these questions, and have your radar tuned for the following circumstances: how far are you going (short hop versus a longer point to point), and how many are on board, plus what cargo (baggage or equipment). Why? These are your cues that gross weight is going to be a critical factor in aircraft performance, making the five questions I just raised even more critical for you to ask.

Look, there are plenty of safe aircraft and pilots available to fly you around if that’s what you had in mind. Those pilots are the ones who have good answers to the above questions ready for you as soon as you ask. Be sure that you do ask, and when the answers are satisfactory–and only when they are: bon voyage.

Flying the B-2 Stealth Bomber: an audio interview with Bill Flanagan.

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Airline Pilot Recurrent Training: Your Annual Beating.

It’s a love-hate thing. You know you need to get back into the classroom for the latest technical information on a complex jet, plus the thorough review of systems, aircraft performance, navigation; all the myriad details, plus technical and procedural changes since your last beating nine months ago. And you want to know the standard is high fleet-wide, that everyone you fly with has also been challenged, evaluated and made the grade.

But it’s also known in the official FAA description of the process as a “jeopardy event:” your license is on the line as part of the process. Because the final “event” is the actual six hour beating on the final day: a two hour “stump the dummy” (YOU) session with an evaluator, covering the memory items, of plus all aircraft limitations (max altitude for bleed and electrical on the APU?), the operating limitations (crosswind limit on a wet runway with visibility less than 3/4 mile?), and systems knowledge (power source for emergency DC?).

Complete that satisfactorily, then begin the four hour “pinball simulator” (you know, lights, bells and buzzers coming on constantly) which is also pass-fail. That is, here come the malfunctions, fires, failures, technical problems, wind shear, instrument approaches, single engine landings–and if you don’t handle everything perfectly, your license qualification is suspended and you’re grounded.

Never has happened to me, and keeping things that way is the headache of recurrent training. And last time doesn’t matter–it’s the one ahead that determines your career.

So of course you start studying in flight as the dreaded training approaches. Above is the “Memory Item” card, a menu-like roster of the 14 memory procedures, each with multiple steps, that you must be able to accomplish and recite from memory. In the training “good, bad and ugly,” this is definitely the latter: some of the critical action litanies are clearly written for and by attorneys for their use–likely against you–after an incident requiring the procedure.

For example, the first step in “Emergency Descent” checklist: “The pilot will notify the flight attendants on the PA of the impending rapid descent; the first officer will notify ATC and get the local altimeter setting.”

Seems fine? Actually, it’s not written in any way useful to a pilot, like some of the other critical action items. For example,  “Engine Fire, Failure or Severe damage:” “Autothrottles, disconnect; Throttle, failed engine (confirm), closed . . .” Those are action items with first person narrative step-by-step follow-through, very helpful in an emergency.

My prep the day before: a 10K in the morning . . .

By contrast, re-read the “Emergency Descent” memory step one: it’s third person narrative–very distracting in a first person, real-life emergency, to be recited not to help a pilot accomplish critical steps in a difficult situation, but rather, to be recited in court, to be browbeaten there by attorneys suing the pilots and the airline for whatever might have happened in an emergency. What were you instructed to do?

The dividing line seems to be vulnerability to passenger lawsuits, because the engine failure procedures are written in actionable, useful form (passengers aren’t likely to sue over engine malfunctions) as are other purely technical procedures like asymmetric flaps, electrical failures, hydraulic leaks, or any of the gazillion things that can go wrong with a hi-tech jet. The “lawyer creep” has permeated not only the memory items, but also the inch thick Quick Response Handbook.

. . . then a set with my band late in the day.

And that’s the “ugly” that’s now woven into the fabric of pilot recurrent training: you must fly like a pilot, but think like an attorney.

Now, the “bad.” Unfortunately, many of the recurrent training required items are almost irrelevant from the cockpit, but if the FAA mandates that flight crews get 1.5 hours of “HAZMAT” (hazardous materials) training, by God there will be a training block on the schedule. Why irrelevant? Because pilots neither handle the hazardous material or package, stow, and record the contents. The upside of such training blocks are this: study hall. Everyone’s studying the actually important stuff, like the Stump The Dummy barrage above that you know is coming.

Practice putting on that life vest . . .

Ditto the “Flight Manual Briefing,” which features a non-pilot ground school instructor droning on about approach minimums, legalities, operating restrictions–basically everything we already deal with successfully every flight. More study hall.

Finally, on to “the good” stuff. The best part, and by far the longest, is what we call “The Pump Up,” or Systems Review. This is four hours of schematics, discussion, review and instruction pertaining to the jet, its systems and their operation, conducted by a ground school specialist. This is the pay dirt of recurrent, particularly for someone like me with barely 1,500 hours on the jet.

And last but not least, before the simulator phase, we have Human Factors, which is an interesting, important look at the human factors behind errors or problems in flight. Any pilot with half a brain sitting in on this three hour session listens carefully with a “How Do I Not Screw Up Like They Did” focus. My usual take-away is that flying airplanes is simply too dangerous. And, better get comfortable flying like an attorney.

Grab an extinguisher, head for the fire pit for practice.

The first 6 hour simulator period is a dress rehearsal for the next day’s 6 hour evaluation. This period is vital, and it’s conducted by a non-pilot simulator instructor. These folks know everything there is to know about instrument and aircraft procedures and in fact, when I was a pilot evaluator myself, I always asked them to do the instructional briefings: they’re the best. This is the time to get your questions answered, gray areas cleared up, and essentially, get your head screwed on straight for the checkride.

Then four hours in “The Box:”

Full motion, 180 degree digitalized visual displaying the detail of Google Earth. You can do all the things you’d like to experience in the aircraft, but which can only be safely and very realistically done in the simulator: fires, failures, structural damage, windshear, midair avoidance. It’s a busy four hours, with a break in the middle.

This is, from the pilot viewpoint, the heart of the Flight Academy: the Iron Kitchen. In the hallway connecting the north and south simulator buildings, this non-descript hallway is where pilots all gather between sim sessions, try to unwind, try to pysch up for the second half, and for the evaluation.

The next day is for real, with an evaluator, your pilot qualification at stake. The “oral” Stump-The-Dummy session mixes information about the fleet from the pilot evaluator with questions regarding Memory Items, limitations, procedures, and policies.

Then, if you pass, it’s into The Box where the visual is so detailed and realistic that it almost gives you vertigo. Then it’s a series of emergencies, correct analysis (you hope) and proper corrective action (you’d better). Low visibility approaches, single engine approaches, systems malfunctions and diagnoses, over and over. Do it safely, do it right. Seems like it’ll never end.

But eventually, it does. “Good for another ten thousand miles,” I tell my copilot as we leave the Flight Academy. A love-hate thing: you hate the pressure, the high stakes, but you’re glad it’s there. You want to know everyone else you fly with has made the cut as well, because they’re all you have in the air to make a team that can successfully handle whatever challenge–including the wayward lawyers–that awaits you in the real jet every work day.

And the best part is, at least nine months ahead before you have to do it all over to prove yourself yet again.

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