Airline Pilot: A Day in the Life

You’re going to fly the big jet today, right? Well, they won’t pay you if you don’t, so better get ready. Let’s start with Task One: closet chaos.

Whatever you pull out of there you’re only going to wear for a couple hours because you have to drag on the polyester uniform and go to work shortly. Worth breaking out a pressed shirt for such a short time? No, but you don’t want to look like a scrounge in the only free part of the day before heading for the airport, right?

Speaking of “pressed,” what about uniform shirts? Gulp–another trip to the cleaners in uniform pants and an undershirt to pick up the uniform shirts you blot out of your mind on days off? Damn, one more thing you should have done yesterday.

That’s the typical “days off” syndrome in the flying career field: once you’re home, you get to ram-dump all work considerations till “Go to Work Day” sneaks up on you again. Bet you’re going to discover on your layover a bunch of junk is missing from your suitcase that you wish you had, and which you meant to replace, but like the dry cleaned uniform polyester hell–out of sight, out of mind.

Anyway, since you have a few hours before flying and a few things you planned to do–okay, sort of said you would but now don’t feel like it but somebody’s expecting you to do it–what’s the plan?

Be diligent? Be productive before the rest of the day is eaten up with flying and work stuff? Nah!

Want to listen? Did this in four tracks. Too much fun.

Screwing off in The Man Cave seems much more important than chipping away at The Drudgery List. Hey, you’re going to be at work for the next 48 hours, right? You deserve a little time with the toys. That income tax return isn’t going anywhere and it’s not even April yet.

You’re going to look and sound great at the next gig this month, right? Anyway, don’t lose track of time:

Your flight leaves at 4:10pm, so you need to be there at 3:10, with medium traffic you need an hour and ten and add another fifteen for construction on 35 and . . .

. . .  YOU’RE LATE!

Too bad you spent so much time screwing around. Oh well. Throw the change of clothes for two days into the suitcase–everything else is still in there and never leaves the smelly bag, along with coffee packets, receipts you don’t want floating around so maids can steal your identity, free stuff you don’t need like “Crest” toothpaste in Spanish from Mexico City and a delivery menu from Ming Wok in Queens–and drag on the polyester uniform. Toss the suitcase and the kitbag into the trunk–look, there’s your hat! It lives in the trunk–and head for the employee lot.

The freeway’s a transition zone, both to and from the airport. Starched shirt too tight going in, your mind on the weather halfway across the country, at the home drome–you don’t really care how bad, just that your inbound jet isn’t late–plans for the weekend, but first you have to get through this trip. You pay attention to the sky on the way in: which direction is the prevailing wind? That’ll determine our take-off direction. Taking off south, but going north means a longer day. You wonder if anyone else pays much attention to the sky when they drive to work, other than noting if it’s blue or cloudy or whatever. The scalloped cloud bottoms look bumpy; you make a note to tell the flight attendants to stay seated after take-off.

Am I the only one running late?

From the employee lot to the terminal wastes a ton of time on the lumbering bus. Time, like the hour before pushback, you don’t get paid for but have to be there. Add that to your 12-hour work day, which will seem endless after midnight body-time when you’re still a couple hours from landing.

Now that’s a welcome sight: tons of aluminum, fueled and ready, waiting for you to kick the tires and light the fires–let’s go fly jets. Pull a bunch of paper out of the computer, including the flight plan, the special notices, technical stuff, aircraft speeds for take-off, a bunch more stuff you really don’t care about but the lawyers want to be able to say “we told you so.”

When the length of the flight plan paper equals the length of the aircraft, you're set to go.

Great. Fold this junk, which is the fine art of Airigami (derived from the word “Origami,” like “Oregano,” which is the Italian art of pizza folding) and stow it out of the way on the flight deck (picture coming up later).

Head for the office:

Meet your happy First Officer–you’re going to be locked into the aerial broom closet together for a few days, so you want everything to go smoothly. Does he look happy?

Well that’s not a bad sign, really. Anyway, let’s get on with the preflight. Stash your suitcase in back, your kitbag in the sidewell next to your seat and sit your fat ass down.

See? Everyone does it.

Time to preflight the aircraft. The First Officer goes outside to check the exterior. You make sure the departure and route of flight is set up in the navigation system. That’s the thing that’ll get you off course and in trouble if the points and route are not correct.

Well, Mr. President, look what your example has done to the youth of America.

Now you’re surrounded by a beehive: passengers boarding, catering trucks arriving and pulling old food carts off, shoving new ones on; the ground crew throwing bags on and readying the plane for pushback, the agent exhorting the passengers to sit down on the P.A., the flight attendants orchestrating the boarding melee, directing bag-stowage and seating and–here’s your job right now as captain:

Just let me know when it's time to start engines.

Actually, you’re ready. You’ve done the checklist and all of your preflight items. Passengers?

It’s the herd mentality, at least as far as the gate agent goes. “Get along, lil’ doggies . . . we gotta slam the door to show the D.O.T. that we’re an efficient airline–whether you’re on board or not.”

So, how's your trip going so far?

But you’re strapped in up front, let’s shoot the juice to the moose and turn it loose. Pushback, taxi, join the line waiting for take-off.

Heading north. Looks like an hour and a half enroute; smooth so far, turn off the seatbelt sign. Watch the sun arc low in the western sky.

Thunderstorms out west, chopping up the sunset.

Land, taxi in and the gate chaos recurs: passengers deplaning, catering, ground crew cleaning the airplane, passengers boarding; your task?

Gut bomb!

It’s the Sonic Chili Cheese Dog! The indigestion alone will keep you awake going to the west coast. That’s not all bad.

That ought to keep you going for a while. And this.

Now back to work. The jet’s just about boarded and ready. More paperwork.

Okay, let’s get this beast back into the air and head for DFW. Still have to make it to the west coast tonight. Another preflight checklist litany; pushback, taxi out, takeoff.

That’s a long sunset, isn’t it? Anyway, racing south to do the turn-around dance again with 140 more passengers waiting to go to the west coast. Same deal for you: the copilot’s outside walking around the jet, making sure all the pieces are still there. You’re in the terminal, checking the weather on the coast, your planned arrival fuel, the route of flight, the weather enroute and the actual flight plan route. Looks good? Sign it electronically, get back to your cubicle:

And the last bank of flights is now pushing back. Join join the aluminum conga line to the west side of the airport, waiting your turn to launch. A steady stream of wingtip strobe lights arc off to the west like fireflies. You start your clock, add full power, barrel down the runway then lift off and join the stream of winking lights headed west.

Leveled off at your initial cruise altitude, at this hour with less air traffic, Fort Worth Center is giving big-ass shortcuts: you’re cleared all the way to northern Utah, direct.  Fuel’s flowing correctly, engines motoring, cabin pressure holding, both electrical generators keeping our little island in the sky warm and lighted and on course.

Now the challenge? Stay alert. When Darling Bride used to fly with you, she’d come up front and marvel at what a warm, cozy little cocoon the cockpit is: the red glow of instrumentation, the purr of instrument cooling air and the view out front–looking straight ahead, it’s as if you aren’t even moving, but rather just afloat 7 miles up over the pin lights of cities below.

You can’t help wondering what’s going on down there, in the homes; the trail of headlights on the freeway, the arteries that spider to all points of the compass. The time goes slowly.

There’s the clock you started when you added take-off power. The bottom number is the elapsed time; another hour and a half to go.

This is not easy: you have to be alert and sharp for the descent and landing–18 hours after you’ve awakened, 9 hours since reporting for duty. Never mind “tired”–you’re moving across the ground at nearly 500 miles per hour. Get out the arrival procedure and get the waypoints and crossing restrictions set in your mind:

Actually, as arrivals go, this one isn’t too complicated, fortunately. Brief up the approach and get ready for runway roulette with Seattle Approach: they won’t tell you which of the five approaches you’re flying until about two minutes before you’re expected to do it. And never mind the radar monitor in Approach Control or Seattle Tower ready to nail you (big, festive fine and/or license action) for any deviation from course, altitude, speed or heading, or the 140 critics waking up in back–you are your biggest challnege: YOU want it done perfectly. Every single time in the past 17,000 flying hours, and those ahead.

Nothing to see outside anyway, because the ceiling is only about a hundred feet off of the runway. Gives you a good two to five seconds at about 160 miles per hour to make sure you’re lined up properly for landing . No problem.

There’s what matters: folks getting off the plane. Safely. Happy. They have no idea–nor should they. You do your work, fly right; it’s what you do.

“That’s a wrap,” you say, as the last passengers trail up the jetbridge and the crew gathers for the trek to the hotel. You’re the last one off the jet, by design. You lock the flight deck door, call the layover hotel for crew pick-up.

The clock’s started: in twelve hours, it all begins again; this time, to the other coast: New York City. Safely, and as smoothly as it is possible for you to make it. No problem–that’s just what you do.

Stay tuned: coming soon–Day 2.

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My Investigative Report: Omaha’s silent tragedy.

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Airline pilots are overpaid–or maybe not.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

None of my passengers yesterday had any idea that on landing, they were speeding down the flooded runway with no brakes, which is fine with me.

I mean the part about “nobody had any idea.” I’m a big fan of braking, especially when it comes to a sixty-ton jet on a rain-slicked runway.

They all deplaned a few moments later, none the wiser, which is also fine with me. I wanted to make a phone call and grab a bite between flights and I only had a few minutes to do it.

If you prefer to have “no idea” what goes on in the cockpit, click here.  If you you want to pay attention to the man behind the curtain, here we go.

Twenty-some miles out of Raleigh-Durham Airport at 5,000 feet and about 200mph. The wind is a direct tailwind at 69 knots. The ceiling at the airport is between 300 and 500 feet. That means we won’t break out of the clouds until we get below 300 feet. But the minimum we can descend to without a determination that the landing is safe is 200 feet. That means we’ll have about 5 seconds from when we see the runway to decide if we can land–and make the necessary control inputs to position the jet for a safe landing and oh by the way, the approach lights aren’t working today. With me so far?

The tower reports the surface wind to be a direct crosswind. So we know the wind will shift 90 degrees somewhere between 5,000 and touchdown, plus decrease in velocity by nearly half. Also, the temperature at our altitude is about 50 degrees, but it’s 33 on the ground with freezing drizzle. Besides the fact that the jet, like a galloping horse, wants to point it’s own head and go where it’s pointed–into the crosswind, which isn’t unfortunately the way the runway’s pointed–the shifting airmass we’re riding in is bumpy as a logging trail. I call back and warn the cabin  crew,

“Hang on–she’s gonna buck.” They’re Dallas-based as well. They get it. Lightens the mood–okay my mood–a little to joke around.

My F/O is one of the best. She’s an Air Force Academy grad, and like me, a former Air Force pilot. “Takes 4,000 pounds of fuel to get to Norfolk,” she offers, thinking of our alternate. We have 12,000 pounds at the moment.”If we don’t land, you put clearance on request to Norfolk and we’ll be there in twenty minutes. The winds are lighter there.”

This ain’t my first rodeo, I know how this goes: I’ll have a couple seconds tops between when we break out of the clouds and she calls “minimums,” which means if we’re not in the slot–on airspeed, fully configured, power stable–we’re going to Norfolk. Also, I know that when the jet’s done bucking around, her nose better be pointing down the runway (that’s what rudder’s for, but there’s not always enough throw) and I’ll need to delicately put the upwind wingtip lower, touching down right main gear first, then left, then the nose. Then stop the beast on what I know is a slick runway.

We break out of the clouds but into heavy rain at 300 feet. I take a “one-Mississippi” breath to size up the picture, kick in the correct rudder, lower the wing, and see if my correction will hold. It does–we can land, if nothing else changes.

This is actually my watch. No nerdy-pilot clunker here.

“Minimums,” Nora calls. “Landing,” I announce. I keep a hair-trigger on the go-around throttle toggles, ready till the last few feet to rocket us back into the air if the bronco starts to get the better of me in this wild ride. One deliberate bump from the heel of my throttle hand and the fuel controls 140 feet behind me will dump a torrent of jet fuel into both burner cans, then we’ll stand it on it’s tail riding 50,000 pounds of thrust, getting the hell out of Dodge.

I wrestle the controls; I win. We touch down softer than I meant to, but with the blustery winds, my main goal is to make it a controlled gear-by-gear touchdown without dragging a wingtip.It’s a smart jet. On touchdown, when a computer senses that the main wheels are turning, the spoilers on top of the wing automatically pop up to kill the wing’s lift and thereby put more weight on the wheels and make our braking more effective.

The spoilers didn’t deploy. That’s because the wheels weren’t spinning: we were hydroplaning at about 145 miles per hour.

As I said, this ain’t my first rodeo. I know that hydroplaning occurs most readily at nine times the square root of the tire pressure. Our main tires are at over 200 psi, so the square root is around 15; multiplied by 9 equals 135 or so. After which, we’ll get traction and braking. Lesson of the day: if your car’s tires are at 36 psi, your hydroplane vulnerability is around 50 mph. Don’t panic! Stay with it, decelerate carefully and you WILL regain traction.

My excellent First Officer called out, “No spoilers” and manually deployed them. I kept the nose straight with aerodynamic controls until the brakes became effective, slowing our sixty-ton sled to taxi speed, skidding nonetheless four or five times more over pooled water from the heavy rain.

We warned the Southwest jet on final ten miles behind us. Then taxiied to the gate.

The jet emptied, the passengers went safely on their way, and I stopped at my favorite barbeque place before turning the jet around and launching back into the rainy gloom.

Just another day at the office. I couldn’t do anything without the teamwork of the fantastic first officers we have.  And you couldn’t get where you’re going in one piece without all of us on both sides of the cockpit door.

Nonetheless, we still hear all too often that airline pilots are overpaid. Click on the video below, and think that over.

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Meet your congress!

Well, at least one famous member. Here’s the “Larry Craig Toilet” in the Minneapolis Airport: