Captains-Eye View: All Things Considered.

You climb into the left seat, sit down; the schedule is set, the route loaded, the jet fueled, crew in place, passengers boarded–ready for pushback. What could be simpler?

If only things were as simple as they look.

Today you’re headed to John Wayne-Orange County Airport. The runway is the shortest in the nation that we operate in and out of. The airspace surrounding the airport is in the heart of Los Angeles Center, some of the busiest airspace in the country.

Certainly, the operation is within normal limits, but make no mistake about it: everything is compressed in terms of time, options and reactions when the landing runway is that short. As a rule, we use as a standard touchdown zone of 1,500-3,000 feet but no more than 30% of the runway length, which gives you plenty of slack at DFW where the runway is 13,000 feet long. But Orange County is 5,700 total–one third gives you 1,700 feet to have the wheels on the deck, or abandon the landing. That’s in deference to stopping ability, which is critical on such a short runway.

From the left seat, there are a few more options that make the task easier.

The Heads Up Display (HUD) gives me aimpoint and airspeed information, plus dynamic considerations such as acceleration, deceleration, flare cue and throttle commands, all without ever taking my eyes off the touchdown target . Then, on touchdown, right below the speed readout the runway remaining distance is displayed, keeping me appraised of our deceleration.

But the HUD is only on the captain’s side and I know of more than one captain who won’t let First Officers land at Orange County for that reason–plus the compressed timeline and limited options there.

Fair enough. But I consider a few more factors.

Everyone I fly with has been an airline pilot for at least twenty years, because we haven’t hired anyone since the 90s. They know what they’re doing and even though it would be easier for me to just do the landing myself, I keep this in mind: if at any point on the approach I feel like it’s not going the way I think it should, I can and will direct a go-around, meaning we will abandon the approach and execute the missed approach procedure. Worst case, I’ll simply say, “I have the aircraft” and take control and fly the maneuver myself.

Okay, I don’t tell First Officers, but I’ll likely have Dispatch add an extra thousand pounds of fuel to our standard upload, just for that purpose: I want the extra pad of minutes in my pocket as we fly the approach, just in case we need to do the go-around.

From there, the approach will be for me a series of gates we must meet: airspeed, configuration, descent rate and path  must stay within strict limits (the HUD tells me everything at a glance) or we abandon the approach. That’s my call and I’m not shy about making it, have been making that call as captain for 21 years now.

For a passenger jet, this is a postage stamp of a runway. Particularly for the 737-800, which has higher than normal approach and touchdown speeds. In the back of my mind on every touchdown is the time compression induced by the short runway: we must touchdown on speed, on point, braking and reverse thrust promptly and fully. There’s really little chance of doing anything (like a rejected landing) after touchdown on a runway that short.

Take-off is no easier. Yesterday, it was the First officer’s turn to do the take-off, and he wasn’t happy with the performance data generated by the bank of computers buried in a bunker in Tulsa. They’d determined that due to the shortness of the runway, combined with the July heat and the heavy fuel load required by weather in west Texas (actually, required by ME but I didn’t tell the First Officer that), we’d need to use a setting of 25 degrees of flaps for take-off.

We normally use 1, or maybe 5 degrees.  My First Officer doesn’t like it, says it’s senseless to have that much drag hanging out there especially on a short runway with a steep climb gradient–if you lose an engine on take-off, that’s a ton of drag with the nose pointed high.

Each CFM-56 engine puts out 27,000 pounds of thrust at full power.

Yet it’s not only legal, it’s recommended by the performance “experts” and being the captain, this is my call, of course.

But not so fast: he has a good point. Yes, it’s always my call–but it’s his take-off and while I’ll always maintain veto power, as I said, these F/Os are very experienced and he has a really good point. It’s the same thing I do whenever we’re handling a systems failure or an emergency: I don’t ask “what do you think of my plan,” but rather, “tell me what I’m overlooking, what I’m not thinking.”

Which is what he did.

So right there in the cockpit, I input “15 degrees” of flaps, plus the temperature and take 2 knots of headwind I know is there and the on-board performance computer data-linked with Tulsa says we will have a two-thousand pound pad if we want to use 15 degrees of flaps instead of 25. Why not?
The difference is in the power setting–but that’s miniscule. The computer performance program looks to minimize engine temperature and thus extend engine life. Somehow, when you’re staring at the end of a 5,700 foot runway with 167 souls on board depending on you, the difference between 101.2% and 101.9% power and the associated hot section temps seem acceptable.

And there’s another quirk I’ve developed over a couple of decades as captain: many guys insist on making such critical take-off themselves, but I’m exactly the opposite.

On short runways particularly, like  Santa Ana, DCA or LaGuardia, I prefer the reverse. That is, the First Officer is the “go” guy, executing the take-off unless I say otherwise–which would be, as standard, me taking the aircraft from him and aborting.

That leaves me as the “stop guy,” monitoring everything carefully with an eye towards any anomaly–something not as easy to do if I’m executing the take-off myself.

If I see no reason to stop, my well-seasoned expert in the right seat is going to go. Makes more sense to me: on shorter runways, this simply becomes more compressed, but no different than the thought process on any runway, long or short. I try to use all of the assets available to make the best decision for all.

There’s a lot written in stone, sure, but in the flying biz, there’s just as much art and science. And while the fourth stripe gives you all the authority, it would be foolish to think it also gives you all the answers. All things considered, a cohesive cockpit crew will handle everything as it comes. That’s kind of what being a captain is all about.

Plane Smart: How to Invade Your Airport.

Let’s have a moment of silence for a friend we all fondly remember and will dearly miss: leisure air travel.That’s right, the “leisure” part is dead and gone–but the “air travel” soldiers on, orphaned by the Airline Deregulation Act and held hostage by the price of oil, the largest cost item in the airline business.

So let’s move on, because that’s what life does even as we mourn the dearly departed which, in this case, seems irreplaceable. Nonetheless, we’ll all have a better trip if we leave the old guy dead and buried and consider what we have left to rely on.

So turn over a new leaf and begin with a new vision: travel is no longer a leisurely activity but rather–it’s war. Like any war, you need a strategy, valid reconnaissance of the battlefield, weapons, and the resolve to use all of these assets.

Here’s the turning point for any air traveler: you can be passive and let the air travel system decide for you what happens, or you can declare war on the air travel system and fight your way from point A to point B to your own advantage every step of the way.

Staffing cuts at airports and airlines and even hotels and car rental companies have reduced the level of live assistance available when you travel, and the system of check-in, security, interline connections, customs clearance have only become more complex and arcane. In reality you really have no choice but to proactively manage your own travel.

In short, it’s a war–and you should approach it that way. Here’s how:

Your Battle Plan

1. Intelligence: Know your enemy, find out where the opposing forces are and how many. You must get through their lines to even have a chance at air travel and the opposition forces are intent on keeping you out. Unless you’re driving a fifty-foot semi hauling beverages or merchandise, in which case you’ll be waved through the security perimeter:

Not a beer truck driver or any type of merchandise hauler? Too bad: you’ll have to cross the lines the hard way. But no matter, because this is where “Intelligence”–both literal and figurative–comes into play. You must find the easiest spot to penetrate in order to get to your aircraft. Do the required reconnaissance ahead of time.

Every single major airport has a website now that just begs you to visit–and you should, from the intelligence sense, so you know the unfamiliar territory you’re trying to invade. Look at the wealth of information you need to know ahead of time:

Click on the graphic above to see the actual DFW Airport site.

You’ll find parking information, gate and airline locations, entrances and exits, security checkpoints, rental cars lots and more. Now, you can really use your literal intelligence.

Leaving on American Airlines? Here’s a diagram from the DFW Airport website displaying Terminal D, the largest of the three American Airlines terminals at DFW:

If you were to view all 3 of the American terminals, you’d see how much larger and more spacious this one is. Does it matter whether or not your flight or even your airline leaves from this terminal?

NO! You simply want to make it through security as quickly as possible–and this terminal has the largest security check points of all terminals in the airport. Plus–if you’ve done your recon thoroughly, you’ll note the train connections from this terminal to all of the others in a matter of minutes.

Compare this to terminal C:

You can compare the relative sizes of these terminals better on the DFW website than I can reproduce the diagrams here, but the point is this: for the least amount of waiting, check-in at the largest, less-crammed terminal. If you were to consider auto traffic flow curbside (right to left in both diagrams), you’d observe another useful tidbit: people driving to the airport naturally stop at the first available check-in point for both curbside and counter check-in, so plan to proceed further down the terminal where due to human nature–less passengers accumulate for check-in or security.

Nowhere is this more significant than at Denver International Airport which, like Dulles, Pittsburgh, Portland and many others, has one main terminal that accomplishes security screening for all satellite terminals:

Again, auto traffic dropping off passengers approaches from the right, so passengers naturally stop at the first available space–and go to the closest security checkpoint. But there’s an identical security checkpoint on the other end of the terminal which is normally less crowded–use it!

This is an actual picture of the Denver International Airport security checkpoint that’s on the right in the diagram, the one passengers come to first, so it’s normally jammed. But if you look at the airport diagram, you’ll find an identical security checkpoint farther from the initial checkpoint and it’s half empty because most people have rushed to the first available.

Lessons learned: there’s really no practical correlation between where your intended gate is and where you must either park or clear security, because there’s inter-terminal transportation that will get you to your gate faster than it would take for you to wait in a huge line–and with less frustration on your part. Also, the airport information for your departure, connecting and destination airports can be found on-line and can answer just about all of the questions you might have regarding locations, gates, services and facilities. Do your reconnaissance ahead of time and out-think the obstacles to your entry!

2. Battle Plan: This really goes back to intelligence in both senses. That is, you need to have all of your vital information at your fingertips, and here is the worst item for discerning that vital information:

That’s right: your boarding pass is an awful way to keep track of the important data. That’s because formats vary, times may vary despite what’s printed on the boarding pass and depending on how long ago they were printed, flight numbers may have changed as well. Plus, times listed on the boarding pass are normally boarding time, not departure time, making it even more confusing to cross-check the monitors in the terminal. And normally, you’ll have more than one such card and sorting them out with your hands full of carry-on  luggage and whatever else you’re juggling is a losing proposition.

The only information on your boarding pass not subject to change is your name and destination–which you already know, right? Fly smarter–use a smart phone:

I use this system as an airline pilot because it is active: I don’t have to search out the information regarding gates and times because that info is constantly pushed to my phone. This is but one airline’s automatic text notification system and every major airline now has such a service. This will immediately update you on gate location and departure time changes, plus, most (like this one) allows you to customize the information: want a notification an hour prior? And two hours prior? No problem, the latest info will find you and if it’s bad news like a delay or cancellation, you’re the first to know and thus first to rebook–also on your phone. Make sure you have your airline’s smart phone application installed and working on your phone and you can begin the re-booking process without standing in line for hours.

3. Once through the enemy lines: I can’t tell you how many people in the terminal will walk up to the gate counter and ask, “Am I in the right place?”

Sigh. Do we really have to play 20 questions? Where are you going? What is your flight number? What is the departure time?

This is what you can expect if you ask me if “you’re in the right place:” if you are very old or very young or don’t speak English, I will help you in any way possible. But if you’re an average traveler, I’m going to teach you to help yourself: “There are the flight monitors; look for your destination and flight number and you’ll find the departure information you need.”

Why don’t I just look it up? First, because the time and gate can and very well might change–and passengers need to be aware of where that vital information is. And if the flight isn’t listed yet, any planned info I dig up is too likely to change for it to be of any use.

All of the pertinent information related to your flight is at your fingertips if you install the smart phone app for the airline(s) you’re traveling on.

Often times this information that the airline’s application pushes to your phone will be even more current than any information an agent or crewmember can provide because it is updated instantaneously.

Plus, if you’re shrewd enough to bookmark the airport sites for your departure, arrival and connecting airports, you’re ready to find answers quickly and easily without having to search for scarce customer service reps at any point in your travel.

After Action Report

You now know where to find, bookmark and save the vital information pertaining to your travel. Even five years ago, the push technology that today can keep you fully informed didn’t exist or if it did, it was too large to store on a handheld device.

That’s no longer true. Now, you can bookmark airport websites, download and save airport diagrams, and keep all of your itinerary at your fingertips. Once you have this information plus real-time data pushes from the airline to your mobile device, you won’t find yourself chasing the important details any longer. Instead, you’ll have instant access to current information, plus reference charts and service information coming to you, not you chasing bits and pieces of vital information around the airport.

That’s not just smart, but plane smart. Why would you travel any other way?

You, Me, and Air France 447

My guess is that “Air France 447” probably doesn’t ring a bell with most airline passengers–nor should it, really. But it means a lot to me.

But I probably read airline accident reports with a different mindset than those for whom “flying” is actually riding, kind of like the tandem jumpers who pay to fall out of a plane hooked to an “experienced” parachutist–then say they’ve “sky-dived.” That’s because what goes on between the time passengers board my jet to touchdown and deplaning thousands of miles later rests squarely on my shoulders.

Certainly, I mourn the loss of the 228 souls on board the Airbus 330 aircraft, but I have to think beyond that. My job is to ask, when it comes to the mechanical failure the pilots of AF 447 encountered, what are my blind spots, my vulnerabilities? How can I successfully handle this challenge when it happens on my flight?

If you’re the kind that prefers to just “hook up to some guy and jump,” more power to you. That’s part of my profession, allowing you that confidence by doing the post-mortem, reading the report and figuring out for myself what I need to learn for myself–and you–when faced with a similar situation.

Want to come along and see how that’s done? Fine, here we go. Not interested? That’s fine too. See you next week.

The Accident Report

Here’s a summary of the accident from a source that is usually reliable, and here is the actual report itself if you care to read the whole thing.

Fingerpointing

Here’s the knee-jerk reaction that’s hard to avoid when you’re a pilot: there they go again, making the flight crew the scapegoats. And that’s a legitimate complaint and bias from pilots, because clearly, the aircraft experienced a major mechanical failure. The trail of accident factors in a car wreck doesn’t end with the driver: why did the brakes fail? Why did the tire blow out? Were there design issues that created the problem? Manufacturing flaws? Supervisory lapses that allowed damage to occur or go undetected? Regulatory and oversight failures that allowed the threat to exist undetected–or allowed to continue on a slower than immediate abatement schedule?

This last point is a major headache for pilots and risk factor for everyone who flies. That is, in our country, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) has responsibility for conducting accident investigation, then reporting on causes and issuing recommendations to prevent recurrence. But the NTSB has no authority to enforce these recommendations. That authority rests with the FAA, who negotiates with the airlines to implement some of the NTSB recommendations on a gradual basis so as not to unduly affect flight operations and incur huge costs and monetary losses.

Meaning, as in the case of AF 447, that a known problem with the pitot-static system that induced the loss of control sequence of events, occurred in flight before the recommended system modifications could be made. It should be made clear that Air France is not subject to the NTSB or FAA, unless operating in the US and this accident occurred in South America. But it should also be said that this exact same pitot-static failure had become a well-known vulnerability in this model of aircraft, and that modifications to the system were being accomplished fleet-wide on a gradual basis, and that the Air France pilots’ union had long been recommending that the aircraft not be flown until the modifications were complete.

The Flightcrew

I have nothing to say about the AF 447 flightcrew other than god rest their souls. I wasn’t on the flight deck on that dark, stormy night over the Atlantic, I don’t know what they saw or felt or how the four minutes from cruise altitude to the ocean’s surface transpired or how the plane handled throughout.

The crew I care about is my own. Are we prepared for this malfunction, for complete loss of pitot-static instruments? Are we astute and engaged enough to detect the root cause of the problem and to work around the lack of airspeed and vertical velocity data?

Because it’s not that simple, although the sequence of events is very simple: the autoflight modes trip off. Meaning, the autopilot and autothrottles disengage, leaving the crew to handle power, pitch and roll inputs.

Fine. But the reason the automation quit was because it no longer had the normal performance data of airspeed and altitude upon which to base its flight control and throttle commands–so the pilots taking over manually were denied that critical information as well.

But here’s where the forest and the trees take over: as a pilot, I could waste a lot of time trying to figure out why both automated modes failed. But that’s not as important as flying the aircraft.

The tendency with advanced flight automation, and we certainly have exactly that in the Boeing 737-800 I fly, plus the Airbus fleet is the poster child for autoflight, is that it’s easy to get wrapped up in the automation function. And that is often at the expense of direct aircraft control.

At American Airlines, our boss the Chief Pilot started a campaign last year aimed at exactly this vulnerability. It’s called “Aggressively Safe,” meaning intervene in the automation cycle at the first sign of a problem with any system: disconnect the automation and hand-fly the aircraft until the validity of all automated systems can be verified and restored–or simply left disengaged.

That’s smart, considering the present vector of automation, which Boeing explicitly warns thus: “The new generation automated flight systems of the 787 level aircraft now outpaces the human capacity to do backup calculations.” In other words, a pilot can’t do the calculations associated with a flight maneuver fast enough to verify the accuracy and correctness of the automation performing the flight maneuver. Hence my boss’s wise counsel to intervene now, fly the aircraft safely, verify as soon as you can.

But in the case of total pitot-static failure, it’s not really a matter of disconnecting the automation, because it’s disconnected itself. In which case, there are two roads to go down, and one of them is a dead end.

As a pilot, I hope to god the road I choose is this: fly the jet, period. Worry about what happened later. The dead end road is to search for the cause of the failure or even worse, the cause of the automation disconnect–unless and until one pilot is decisively and exclusively flying the aircraft. Then the other pilot can concentrate on exactly that–which again, is standard American Airlines operating procedure.

But there again, the “why” of the malfunction isn’t as important as “how” of the work-around: you still have to control the jet and establish straight and level flight before anyone diverts attention to diagnostics and system restoration.

We’re fortunate on the Boeing -800 fleet to have displayed at all times an angle of attack gage, telling us at a glance the performance of the airfoil. And we also have–I assume Airbus has as well, but I don’t know–a valid groundspeed readout regardless of the pitot-static systems. Can I control the aircraft with just those two information streams? The answer is a resounding “yes,” and we practice exactly that at least once a year in the simulator.

But what you can’t easily ensure is the thought process that prioritizes aircraft control over system diagnosis and remediation. As I said, there’s a fork in the road: you either get your head in the flight game (groundspeed, engine power settings, angle of attack), or you go into the what-ifs of automation that has so many layers and so much complexity that you’re soon way deep into the forest and out of the stick and rudder flying realm. I’ve been doing this a long time–long enough to know I ain’t smart enough to travel both roads at once. And in the case of pitot-static failure, we need both of us traveling down the aircraft control road before anyone even attempts a side trip in automation land.

Going Forward

In my experience, automation failure is usually attributable to three factors: power failure, data-input error, or data/program corruption. So when the automation trips off–and it does, often enough, on an average flight–I have those three things in the back of my mind. In the front of my mind is the flight path and aircraft attitude. Stick and rudder always works. And as one wise old fighter pilot who taught crew management to captains at my airline used to say, no matter what emergency is going on in flight, there’s always time to take a deep breath and say to yourself, “Can you believe this sonofabitch is still flying?”

And that’s the key: flying. Not troubleshooting, diagnosing, or otherwise attending to systems. Unless and until the “flying” part is assured, which is easier said than done. That’s because most pilots are technicians, experienced in working with complex flight management and navigation systems. Many have engineering backgrounds and are naturally inclined to solve technical problems.

Fine–except once you go down that rabbit hole, the other guy is solo and worse, if both pilots succumb to the lure of technical “what’s it doing” or what’s wrong with this system?” tail chase–then whose undivided attention is manning the stick and rudder?

So rewind. What do I take away from this accident report? First, when the autoflight systems fail, it’s time for old fashioned stick and rudder application–period. Troubleshooting? Systems analysis? Later–and only after one pilot is firmly established and solely concentrated on aircraft control.

Second, in a pitot static failure, GPS groundspeed and angle of attack will let you extrapolate straight and level flight. On our jets, the Heads Up Display–HUD–will also display energy potential. Also, the FMS will display the required engine power setting for level flight–set it, leave it, watch it. Divide and conquer: since the HUD is only on my side, I’m flying, copilot is running through the systems checklists.

Conclusion

Like every other flight and flightcrew, I realize my own vulnerability when it comes to systems failures and autoflight malfunctions: the distracting technical rabbit hole luring pilots away from the stick and rudder application and into the layered, complex technical realm of autoflight to detect and “fix” a problem. That’s the real problem.

The designers who built the jet designed it to fly despite the systems failures, if we as pilots attend to the flying as top priority. And my old fighter pilot friend filled in the blank to the final question: just take a deep breath and keep the jet flying.

It’s just that simple, and just that complex. The irony is, if I’m successful, you’ll never know the difference, and that’s pretty much my goal, and that’s also my plan. The rest is going to be, on your part, a leap of faith.

JetHead Live: Aerial Reconnaissance, Past, Present & Future.

This interview is for the hard-core military aviation enthusiast:

what’s the strategic and tactical application of  aerial reconnaissance, past, present and future?

One-on-one discussion with aviator and historian Bill Flanagan.

To download and save, click here.

Hawkeye, Frankenpants, and Fate.

It’s almost a pagan thought that somehow fate will always poke you back, especially when you poke it in the eye. The hawk eye.

Pagan and Catholic are like oil and water, at least on the surface, and toss in a backwash of fate and there go your pants, and at the worst time. Am I getting ahead of myself? Slow down–breathe: fate takes it’s own damn time.

I can explain. Hawkeye was a nun from the order of St. Francis sent to earth to torment my junior high school. They were The Sisters of Perpetual Violence because the smack hand could come out of nowhere and at any time, since the hawkeye missed nothing.

Between academics and vigilance against the all-seeing, punitive Hawkeye, life in the school was like the daily challenge of the nine-banded armadillo: see the road, see the traffic–but you gotta go, smashed shell or no. You just have to, and what a headrush when you live through it.

And granted this was the era of “you’ll put your eye out” and other mom-isms it was important to refute, as well as to disprove the dire prediction that we couldn’t be the heathens we were and ever expect to amount to anything, much less what we wanted to be, as adults.

Which, in the case of my small band of heretics, was to be Air Force pilots first–then airline pilots afterward. We lived and breathed it: the talk, the model planes, the gas powered planes–all of it. It’s all we could do then, but certainly not all we’d do eventually. Shiny faced like a new penny, what are you going to do? Run across that highway: time the traffic, get a little closer each time, but cross. What a rush, on the other side.

But nuns don’t care for games of chicken. You’ll be in jail by the time you’re 18, Hawkeye promised me, and in the electric chair by 21. And yet the pagan gods of defiance held me in good stead: seldom caught in the act, never busted outright. Those tires came close to my rubbery shell, but the worst of it was little more than a promise from Hawkeye: you boldbrazenimpudentdisgrace–it was all one word when she said it–having your fun at other’s expense. But some day, it will be at yours.

A lot of shells got crushed on the highway of time. Bob G. forgot about the pilot dreams and enlisted in the Navy. Terry became a mailman and a pothead; Kenny a priest, Larry sold life insurance and Mike “Pick-a-Butt” took over his dad’s heating and air business. I’m the only one who didn’t turn away from the master plan. God knows why.

The years stretched mile after mile smooth out and the rolling hills flatten as you go. Next thing you know, you’re living the dream as an everyday day-to-day.

It’s different on the inside of the dream–better, actually–and eventually the worldly difference becomes the norm. You make it up as you go. Too smart for your own good, can’t follow rules still rings true if hollow: what’s the point of the uniform, the inside track, if we need some kind of stinking badges?

No lines: duck under the rope and go . . . rip.

Felt it more than heard it, but there was no mistaking reality: a thousand miles from home, pants split open on the ass wide as the Grand Canyon and just as drafty. Hawkeye. Somewhere, she was nodding: I warned you. Rules are made for everyone, including you, Mister Duck Under The Ropes Like You Own The Place. Like my grandmother, Hawkeye labelled you with whatever transgression she’d discovered.

Think. Back up slowly, slowly, toward the agents, away from the boarding crowd. The agents are too busy to notice you driving around in reverse, but they see the hand right away.

Don’t ask, my look says. Just don’t ask. They go back to the furious clacking on keyboards that is required for even the simplest transaction. Move away, backing up like a tall truck backing into a giant garage, drafty as a cabriolet with the top down, ease in reverse toward the Men’s room . . . safe. Now what?

Frankenpants: grab the loose ends, crumple a seam, then suture with about two dozen staples. Then another dozen for good measure. They look like hell–and feel even worse: all the metal is on the inside; from the outside, my butt looks like two horse’s lips chewing my pants right up like hay.

My ass is a monster. Worse: no way to get through security. “Uh, yes, there’s metal . . . I have a bunch of staples holding the seat of my pants together. Hawkeye warned me this would happen.” True, I’m on the secure side of the airport, which is where I’ll stay for the rest of the day.

Sitting on the pants version of a Hair Shirt, the Bed of Nails, medieval devices of atonement: the staples bite, but what are you going to say? Can’t fly this approach, I’m sitting on pointy metal.  Make it three approaches, and three legs. I warned you, but you never listen.

Of course, the last leg was the worst.

No better way to ensure a smooth touchdown; so maybe we should always fly in Frankenpants. And probably we should keep that hawkeye in mind. Truly, she never meant anything but good for all of us, hoped for the best, feared the worst, and prayed for us constantly in between. Because look at you, Mister My Ass Is Stapled to the Hilt and These Pants are Going into the Dumpster in the Employee Lot and You’re Driving Home in Jeans From Your Suitcase, In The Lot In Your Underwear Changing, past is prologue.

And the hawkeye misses nothing, so you’ just better watch your step.

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:

To download and save this podcast, click here.

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.