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.

What’s it like to fly the B-2 Stealth bomber?

We go one-on-one with a man who’s flown it for years.

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Flying the SR-71 Blackbird

Bill Flanagan gives a firsthand description of what it’s like to fly at 90,000 feet and 2,000 mph:

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The gravity of jet flight.

Ever since the first time I flew in formation with another jet, the most stunning realization of flight remains the very un-worldliness of tons of jet-propelled metal suspended in mid air.

It’s never so evident as when you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with another jet, but still you know in the back of your mind as the earth falls away yet again that the miracle of suspended gravity is underway just the same.

I never forget all the moving pieces we depend on or immutable laws we’re bending by leaving the ground behind, and that’s as it should be–that’s what I get paid for. Still, it’s almost a shame that we’ve made that part largely invisible to those who pay us to work the magic.

That’s the part I like best, the planning, the clearance, then the execution of the bazillion orderly steps from sign-in at the airport to the final (at last!) closing of the cabin door and the removal of that jetbridge shadow from my side window. We’re free to fly.

Sure, that magical moment is hard to reach. Yes, getting there is a hassle: I have to navigate between every-nine-months recurring scrutiny of testing, oral, written and simulator evaluations with my license on the line every single time.

That’s in addition to the no-notice evaluations in the cockpit by the FAA and company evaluators and the harsh reality of the old USAF flight training mantra, “You’re always only two rides from the door,” meaning if you fail two checkrides, you’re wings are gone–and that remains true today in the airline biz: at any time, the FAA can invoke their right to evaluate you in the simulator and the aircraft, and your license is on the line. You are always just two rides from the door, and that’s the end of your career, as many have found out, in a matter of an hour or two.

Plus there’s the hassle of random drug and alcohol testing at the end of a trip (going home after a twelve hour day? Not so fast . . .) and the bi-annual FAA flight physical with an EKG data-linked to FAA Headquarters for unmediated scrutiny and a thumbs-up, thumbs-down decision made each time in an office hundreds of miles away.

And for those pilots on the lower end of the seniority list, due to the brutal economics of the airline business, there’s the ever-present (and often witnessed) displacement: you get notified that you’re no longer in your aircraft category or crew position–you’re demoted or worse, now based a thousand miles from your home. See to it that you get to work on time. That just happened to about 350 pilots in San Francisco as that pilot base was eliminated.

Once all that’s behind you, liftoff equals pure freedom–restricted of course by the layers of regulations, details, navigation, instrument approaches and performance variables of fuel, altitude, airspeed and weather.

But I wouldn’t trade this:

For any other work on the surface of the planet, period.

And I realize that there are different hassles in the back, way different from the career-ending obstacles we face up front. Nonetheless, I still see by comparison an element of nuisance rather than real threat, and it’s mated to a dismal outlook unwarranted pessimism (do you not have any views from the cabin?) which is rooted mostly in the Dental Theory: everyone loves a horror story about a dentist’s office visit, and no one wants to hear anything else.

Did you watch that? He’s right: flight is a miracle–but everyone’s pissed off about something nonetheless. You’re sitting in a chair in the sky going 500 miles per hour . . .

Sure, I know: air travel ain’t what it used to be. But air travelers aren’t either:

I’m fortunate that this particular harsh fact of air travel is mostly “in the back,” as up front the unrelenting economic and professional pressures we bear are set aside as they must be in order to concentrate on keeping the miracle of flight going despite the best efforts of gravity and physical laws dictating the impossibility of what we’re all doing at 41,000 feet. I’m not sure why that doesn’t happen in the back of the plane as well, but the cocktail party stories are about the worst, rather than the best experiences in the air.

Nonetheless, there’s still always this:

Utah in the fiery throes of dusk, if you care to look out and down six or seven miles. And even if you don’t, there’s always this:

Which is you stepping off the jet a couple hours and a thousand miles later–and that wasn’t ever going to happen by surface transportation, was it? Not in the time you had to do it, or with hotels and gas, in any less of a cash hit.

Sure, we both have to pay some dues to let the earth fall away and revel in the suspense of gravity and the shrinking of earthly life in both distance and perspective, don’t we? But how much of the good and the bad along the way is a matter of focus, yours and mine ?

That’s the difference between magic and mundane, and in the inevitably bumpy mileage above and below the clouds, the view depends on where you look, and if you even notice what there is to see.

What was it like to fly at 80,000 feet and 2,000 miles per hour?

We go one-on-one with SR-71 driver Bill Flanagan.

Be there.

Vietnam: A Fighter Pilot’s View

In Vietnam, the air war was complex, deadly, challenging and forty years later, it’s still not well understood.

Fighter Pilot Ed Rasimus has a unique, 3-point perspective:

100 air combat missions in an F-105 in 1966, then another 150 in F-4s in 1972,

and now, 40 years later, the opportunity to reflect on the experience:

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Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the SR-71’s first flight, with

Bill Flanagan

who flew the Blackbird and helped develop and test its out-of-this-world systems.

Don’t miss it.

Shipwrecked, with smarter friends.

It occurred to me as I drove in to the airport: major league storms forecast for the afternoon, so what are the chances of getting out, or more importantly, getting back into DFW? Still, the facts of life in the airline pilot biz are this–roll with it. Be safe, but stay flexible. Can’t worry about stuff like that.

From the practical standpoint, you have to keep one major factor in mind: fuel. Jet fuel is flexibility, loiter time, options, both on the ground and in the air. Never a problem at American: the Dispatcher has already added a few extra thousand pounds. Now we just need luck, which means timing, essentially. That is, the storms need to stay outside of the danger zone that prohibits ground crews from handling the aircraft. We’re fine inside the jet, but standing next to seventy-five tons of metal and jet fuel, with a tail poking up nearly four stories high, is a danger for the ground crews. Once we push back, fine.

MyFirst Officer was already a castaway, based in Los Angeles, lives in Denver, but sent to fly out of Miami for the month, assigned to this DFW trip. He’s been flying for the last 5 days straight, bounced from one trip to another by Crew Schedule. The cabin crew was the usual suspects–we’d been flying this San Francisco turn all month. They were senior enough to hold the schedule; I was too, but beginning on that day to wish I’d stayed home.

As soon as we cleared the gate and our ground crew was clear, I fired up the radar. An ugly hook of weather from the west was advancing on the airport. On taxi-out, the tower assigned us a runway on the east side of the airport.

“Remind them we’re westbound,” I told the F/O as I pushed up the throttles and swung us out onto the taxiway.

“The west side is shut down due to weather in all departure corridors,” came the tower reply. “Contact Clearance Delivery.”

Which means our route is cancelled. Good thing we have tons of fuel–now we’re launching off the east side, heading north, then west. San Fransisco via Kansas City, adding another 150 miles or so to the route.

And now we get to painstakingly reprogram the navigation system with the new route and runway, then verify every waypoint, something I won’t do while we’re rolling. But I figure we’ll have plenty of time at the end of the runway with a few dozen other jets in line as everyone heads for the east side.

“Not my choice,” I tell Gilligan. “I’d rather go south to Waco, then west to Abilene, then north.” He shrugs. He’s just out of laundry, tired of traveling, and missing home.

I was right: huge line waiting for takeoff, as everyone gets squeezed out of the west side. But I was also wrong. As soon as we reached the end of the runway, the tower called out the take-off sequence–and we were number three. We looked at each other in disbelief, then I looked at the radar. The line was moving so fast that I couldn’t imagine the airport being open more than another fifteen or twenty minutes.

Within ten, we were airborne, arcing off to the east before we could finally turn north. The radar picture to the west was an ugly blob of dark red hooking around from the southwest, marching on DFW like Sherman’s army.

Lucky break, sneaking out before the thunderheads, but a pain to weave our way west. But the 737-800 is my best friend: we climbed right up to 40,000 feet, saving us a trip to Kansas on our way to San Francisco: by the time we reached Tulsa, we could top the weather and headed west.

That’s when the Air Traffic Control frequency began the bad news: “All aircraft inbound to DFW, slow as much as possible; airport currently not accepting arrivals.”

Bad news, but not for us. Then:

“All aircraft for DFW, the airport is closed, the tower has been evacuated due to tornadoes.”

Tractor trailers literally storm-tossed south of DFW Airport.

That’s real bad news. But still, not for us–except something began to pick at the back of my mind. Didn’t I park between the towers?

“DFW is now closed for damage; estimating at least 2 hours.”

That’s something I’d never heard before. I pictured the inbound jets, imagining what they were going through: first, slow down as much as possible, buy time, save fuel and weigh options. The usual close-in alternate airports are probably out, given the size of the nastiness sweeping west to east. Which means a bailout to the far alternates like Oklahoma City or more likely, to the south like Austin or San Antonio. Which would mean huge delays with dozens of other jets waiting for fuel and god-knows-when DFW will reopen anyway. Probably be dead in the water wherever you land.

Which brings me back to us, knowing we too would be dead in the water at San Francisco International, figuring our return flight would be cancelled. Which brought up the big question:

I know there’s at least a pair of jeans in there. But doing turnarounds, I haven’t paid attention to much else. Although Mrs. Howell seemed to have a complete wardrobe aboard for just a three hour tour (Ginger too), my crew was a little short–except for Gilligan, but after five days on the road, his laundry situation couldn’t have been much better.

Regardless, gravity took over–we landed at San Francisco International and of course, our outbound flight back to DFW had been cancelled. And all I had as far as outerwear was, of course jeans. No matter.

One $8.99 souvenir T-shirt later (concession stand guy: “They’re 2 for $15;” me: “I really don’t even want one but I’m shipwrecked”) and I join my entire crew of castaways at Kinkaid’s on the San Francisco Bay to watch the sun go done over a bowl of chowder.

Heck of a storm, we all agree, having seen the CNN coverage of multiple tornadoes charging through our home-drome. “And,” I add, “The down side of seniority.” Like the flight attendants, who are on the top of their seniority heap, I too have the close-in parking at the terminal reserved for the fifty senior pilots at the crew base. But parking on top, with no protection for the car.

“Well,” I wondered out loud. “I wonder what’s left of our cars.” We get the up-close parking, but the airport restricts us to the roofless upper deck for employee cars.

Mrs. Howell, wearing a sweater over her uniform dress because unlike the real Mrs. Howell, she hadn’t planned on being shipwrecked, looked at me quizically.  “I’m sure they’re fine. I’m near the bottom level.”

Some of the more than 40 jets damaged by hail in the storm, awaiting inspection and repair.

“Mine’s on the top deck.” Where it’s supposed to be, right?

She laughed, and her colleagues joined in. “We NEVER park up there. Now you know why.”

I learned eventually–when I got back to DFW. Now the car has a new set of dimples:

Alas, the Minnow sustained about twenty hammer blows in the shipwrecking process.

Well, so much for following directions. And the shipwreck itself wasn’t all bad, what with the sunset on the bay and the lobster bisque soup. The next day brought something I hadn’t seen in a good while: sunrise from the cockpit. But with the time change between home base and the west coast, even that wasn’t a problem.

So I took a lesson from Mrs. Howell, being sure to have a full change of clothes in my suitcase–and parking more judiciously when the sky turns nasty.

Not a bad haul from what was supposed to be a just three hour tour.

.

The Air War in Vietnam: A Fighter Pilot ‘s Perspective

JetHead Live goes one-on-one with fighter pilot and author

Ed Rasimus

Veteran of 250 Combat Missions

and author of When Thunder Rolled and Palace Cobra.

Food Porn: Pie in the Sky.

Two flight conditions in the cockpit combine to produce an interesting result: boredom and hunger. The natural remedy is something to eat, which in turn is also something to do. Kills two birds with one stone.

Boredom, however, can extend to the food as well, as many passengers who fly the same routes often begin to notice. Since pilots fly the same flight segments sometimes for the whole month, the same entree does become a little monotonous.

“Tastes just like chicken,” like rattlesnake and alligator, because it is chicken. Not that it’s all bad, because sometimes there are items that you can’t refuse even though you probably should. But again, there’s the aspect of “something to do” that overrides that aspect of caloric discipline. I mean, there flight might be four hours, maybe five. What are we going to do?

I’ll tell you what: you’re going to stuff this into your pie-hole (where else would it go?) and not think twice afterwards. Pie in the sky is not to be questioned but, it is never a given. It kind of shows up here and there, but normally, the longer the flight the better the chance of running across some version.

Now, a side note to all of my flight attendant friends who groan and say, “Ewww, you eat that stuff?” Let me just say, don’t “ewww” me: we see you in the galley stuffing all of it, especially sundaes, into your faces, standing up, of course, and wiping your hands on the galley curtains. If there’s any “eww” factor–you get credit for an equal dose.

Meanwhile, speaking of stuffing face, here’s the rare and exotic flying lemon cream with crumb topping, normally seen on transcons, but it has been spotted enroute to Seattle lately:

There are circumstances, however, when you might want to pass on the full tray and just go for the bookends, appetizer and dessert:

That would be on the occasion where you knew that there was decent food at your next stop, like my all-time favorite in the San Francisco International Terminal: Tyler Florence’s Carry-Out inside Napa Grocery. The best deal going (literally, carry-out) is his side-special:

My three favorite sides are his famous macaroni-and-cheese (you’ve probably seen him make it on Food TV), grilled asparagus, and potato salad. That’s going to get you through a couple thousand air miles with no chance of hunger pangs.

For the quick-turn, there’s nothing better than a quick “Big Dawg” in Santa Ana’s John Wayne Orange County airport:

And speaking of dogs, I never pass up “Good Dog-Bad Dog” in the Portland Airport–no matter what hour of the day. Here’s a breed of dog you might not have ever considered, but it’s perfect, and perfectly portable: the breakfast dog, topped with scrambled eggs and sauteed onions:

Going for a little lighter fare? One of my all-time favorites is Matasuki in the Washington-Reagan Airport in DC, where the shrimp dumplings and miso soup will take the chill off of a day at altitude:

And speaking of noodles, the best on the planet are in Seattle at The Noodle Shop, a small Vietnamese kitchen with huge flavor:

Takes the damp chill off of a Pacific Northwest day in nothing flat.,

And finally, for those big jobs, like from New York to Seattle, there is the Weapon of Mass Destruction, the Hot Pastrami and Provolone Hero from the LaGarbage Employee Deli:

Afterward, you will not be hungry until somewhere over the Dakotas, at the earliest, and that slight hunger pang can be dispatched quickly with something small, like the cherry cheesecake:

Then once you’re safely on the ground in Seattle and finally at the hotel, there’s bound to be room for a bowl of clam chowder across the street at Roasters:

Go ahead, enjoy–you have at least twelve hours off after that long inbound flight. As I said, this is not only about hunger, it’s something to do as well. Never mind nutrition–that’s for a life at sea level. If you’re going to fly, you’re going to have to eat–it’s kind of the tradition in the airline pilot ranks.

Spicy tofu carry-out at O'Hare will set your hair on fire.

Well, there you have it: flying and food, a natural combination. Actually, there’s so much more food strategically located at airports around the country and whether you’re in the cockpit or the cabin, your mission ought to be to stay calorized in flight. Judging by the food offerings at airports coast-to-coast, I can tell you that if you find yourself hungry at 35,000 feet–it’s really your own fault.

Bon Apetit, and may god have mercy on whoever has to sit next to you, cockpit, cabin–or anywhere else.

JetHead Live! with Fighter Pilot & Author Ed Rasimus

Ed Rasimus, author and a fighter pilot

with 250 combat missions over North Vietnam

discusses his role as co-author of “Fighter Pilot.”

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Confessions of an Airline Pilot

How I have sinned, over and again, yet with neither guilt nor remorse just the same. And in the soulless black of a moonless night, at 500 knots across the ground tipping earthward from seven miles up, this without penance or remorse I must confess:

First, I distrust all flight planning. Every damn bit of it over a lifetime spent in the air has sooner or later come back to bite me in the ass, for one reason: it’s just a plan. And it’s not based on what is, or even what matters, but rather on what matters to certain people. Mainly, those paying the bills who are normally and not incidentally, not on board when the plan yields to actuality.

That’s the gospel of movement: when you live it out at .8 Mach with 165 souls in tow, flight looks a lot different than it does on a spreadsheet of fixed and variable costs.

Because absent a priority labelled “Your Pink Ass,” which never seems to show up on a spread sheet, I think bean counting is a wicked temptress meddling in flight planning.

So I go for the miracle of seat-of-the-pants judgment day, feeling in my bones when the departure and arrival or weather or traffic will eat away at my fuel reserve–and I get more juice even though it’s way outside the wisdom of the ages as sayeth the Book of Normal, I reroute my own flightpath though it may not be in the way of the righteous. Sorry, I’m just that way.

Don’t get me wrong–I’m as parsimonious with a pound of fuel or an air mile as any miserly bean counter shaving operating costs, only for the right reason: not to minimize operating costs, but rather to maximize real-time flight options when we get to wherever the hell we’re going. Forgive me.

Second, I question everything I was ever taught about flying. That’s because it, too, like flight planning, has always led me into temptation: this is what it’s supposed to do, or how it should act, or what it’s predicted to do–which leaves you wandering thirsty in the desert when it doesn’t. And never mind the fact that I’ve been flying jets long enough to see The Book rewritten from Procedure A (“Thou shallt use full reverse thrust”) to Procedure D (“Thou Shallt not ever use more than 1.3 EPR in reverse because it blanketh the rudder and thou shallt then inherit the dirt”), or read the prophecy “should clear the obstacle by 50′ even with one engine failed” or “can stop in the remaining distance” only to find that reality doesn’t conform to the wicked theory on a drawing board or in a treacherous policy, revelations visited upon a desk jockey somewhere miles below, at rest.

What I know best is what the jet has taught me, has shown me, has burned my ass and gotten my attention with in the air where demons fly like so many stars in the night sky. Forgive me, but I disbelieve just about everything you tell me anymore–and I think that’s healthy.

Third, I never forgive or forget. Whether I’ve been wronged in the middle of the night over the South China Sea or at the buttcrack of dawn over the north Atlantic, I refuse to let go of the offense, saving it, putting it away and nursing it like a grudge so whatever pestilence came forth shall not be revisited–at least not on me and the tonnage I’m pushing through the sky. It’s a morality play I’ve seen too often; the temptation, the fall, and the mounds of paper and chapters of gospel testifying to the sin, etched in charts and policies, revisions and retractions, all the devil’s work of this last bunch I ain’t forgiving or forgetting: the ground pilots.

Those are the heathen who wear the wings but evade the jets, preferring both feet on the ground and sanctified by the fatter paycheck of supervisory duty. No, they’re not by any means all that way–in fact, the Chief Pilot at my airline, and my crew base, for that matter, are both better pilots than I’ll ever be. But there are many others–and they know who they are–just like in the Air Force, who hide from flying. They are the ones who have held hands with the moneychangers, horse thieves, ambulance chasers, inspectors and regulators to produce “The Manual,” canon most carefully, devilishly crafted to at once say “do it,” and at the same time, “we told you not to.” Eagerly they’ll abet The Inquisition, then warm themselves by the fire.

And so truth be told, it is with clear guilt and a deliberately unrepentant heart that I do confess my sins, yet propose unrelenting flight into perdition nonetheless, claiming my own salvation in the trip to hell; and, every damn time, righteously back safely with my daily flock of hundreds of souls and the shiny, fifty million dollar jet.

And for all those who fly with those of us who actually do the flying, it would be wise to get down on your knees and pray for the right pagan like me in your time of need to see you safely to touchdown–because if not, there’s gonna be hell to pay; amen.

We talk live with Ed Rasimus, fighter pilot and co-author of “Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds.”

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