So Where Are You Now?

It’s always the same: long, snakey boarding line, tall, short, fat, thin; tickets in hand, bags slung over shoulders and arms, dragged, carried; shuffle aboard. All going somewhere, and “there” is what matters, to you–I understand that. Why else would you be flying?

For you, here is no more than partway “there,” and I understand that too. I’m up front, plotting your escape, ensuring the hundreds of details so you don’t have to worry about the thousands of pounds of fuel and steel you’re going to ride in the sky like a broad winged condor rather than creep across the surface of the earth like ant. The litany of escape that is the pre-departure checklist: verify those waypoints loaded in the flight guidance system; the fuel burn, the departure sequence, speeds, climb, GPS departure track, enroute fuel burn, winds aloft–everything I need to have settled in my mind and cast in stone before I commit us all to flight.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t remember you–in fact, I do, and I wonder where you are now, after I left you with both feet on the ground whatever thousands of miles forever ago. Sure, there are many I remember, and some I can’t forget.

You were down in Houston. With your mother, for months. The Shriner’s burn ward. You couldn’t have been more than ten years old, a full body wrap, burned over most of your body, but finally well enough to travel, to go home and resume the life of a fourth grade girl somewhere in the midwest. I felt for you because I knew you were in such pain, the body wrap making you hot on top of third degree burns, as the agent told me; maybe not well enough for this trip but needing to go home, and pain medication wearing off.

Then the delays–thunderstorms; sorry, honey, it’s not safe for us to take off yet. I watched the radar, waiting for the storm to march by and I felt for you, way in back–I can see the cabin temp climbing there in the July sun roasting our aluminum tube bogged down on the Houston ramp. I cock the jet sideways so as not to blow any smaller aircraft off the tarmac, then push up the right throttle–we’ll deal with the fuel imbalance later–adding bleed air to force the max cooling out of the cabin air conditioning, never mind ours up front. The First Officer gave me an “are you nuts” look, and I shot one back that said don’t say one word. You needed that air; you get it.

I want to know that now, years later, you’re healed, you’re well, you’re not in pain, you’re flying comfortably to a bright future. Where are you now?

And you were the young man with the panic in his eyes, standing in the forward entry door with his fiance giving him a look that could bend a spoon. The agent was on her cell phone, calling the hotel van driver who’d brought them to the airport. No luck. The groom had left his wedding suit on the van which was now heading to another city.

You don’t have time to get back through security if he brings it to the curb she tells him, in her mind’s eye watching the dream wedding somewhere in Mexico crumbling into chaos. He’s like a deer in headlights, letting her down instead of making her dreams come true.

“I can go get it,” I assure them, “If you can get the van driver to turn around.” Even if I really can’t get back though security by departure time, the jet’s not leaving without me. But no dice: the hotel can’t reach the van driver. No wedding suit.

The agent and I exchange glances, both stifling a smile: they’ll get it, eventually. Golden plans, platinum dreams, bronze reality but forging a future of hearty, burnished metal that will weld them strongly nonetheless. Got to close the door now; it’s time to go.

And you were the elderly man wearing his natty suit, in the wheel chair. Cane in hand, eyes looking miles and miles away. Leaving Florida and most of his life too: his wife was down below, in the cargo hold. He was taking her home, one last time. The agents fussed over him, keeping him close. But there was really nothing to be done besides just plain old caring, seeing in him the path of loss and leaving. He seemed calm; sad, distant, but some peace from somewhere, wherever his distant eyes focused, somehow sustained him. Because he knew.

He knew that like him, we were all headed west to where the sun eventually sets. Some at the start of the inevitable trip, not yet even far enough down the road to be able to look back much less laugh about the wedding suit that had to be bought in Cabo to replace the one that drove itself to Tulsa.

Some healing from the cruelty visited out of nowhere, a branding undeserved, a childhood hell unforeseen–but I needed to know, surmounted. Where are you now, all of you? Maybe east of me, and I’m east of the dignified gentlemen late in his journey; the young couple a distance behind but really, not so much.

Maybe that’s what the widower knew that we’d all learn: we’re all headed west. Sooner, later–but west. What matters most is not the journey, but the caring along the way. For a while, when we flew together, I did just that. And wherever you are, you should know: I still do.

We talk one on one with WWII Pilot Bee Haydu, one of a small number

of women pilots serving in the AAF during wartime.

April 8th–don’t miss it!

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Air Travel and Sundae Prayers.

There are things we expect, things we ask for, and things that drop in our lap. The hard part is knowing the difference and at the same time, appreciating our own good fortune without any further questions. But that’s just not human nature–gratitude and minimal expectations–is it?

Let me start with myself, for the sake of full disclosure–and don’t worry, I’ll get to you as well.

I’ve been flying jets long enough to be Category 3 qualified, which in my jet means I’m certified to hand-fly down to fifty feet above the runway in dense fog or obscured skies, day or night, to land if it looks to me to be prudent.

And yet, having done this for most of my life, that’s not where the extraordinary satisfaction of the workday comes from. Maybe it’s intangible, or more accurately, a tacit reward you get out of the blue (pun intended), and maybe even that itself seems pretty mundane compared to what you’d think would matter about driving eighty tons of pig iron around the sky.  But here it is:

“Sundaes,” I was told by a very wise senior flight attendant when I was a very junior airline pilot, “are like a blowjob: if offered, you take it–but you never ask.” Maybe that’s why it’s special when that offer comes. But throughout the years, I never ask. Which is why this is more the norm:

Don’t get me wrong–I love flying one of the most advanced technology birds in the sky, I thrive on the challenges and the minute demands inherent in every flight. But I’m way beyond anyone’s stereotype of this job, and more like the stereotype of every job.

I have little or no patience for other than the essentials of flight. I’ll say up front that I’ll do anything to help the very young, the very old, those who don’t speak the language and those with special needs. But other than that, I do my best to remain invisible. Because overall, like you, I’m just trying to get through the workday without hassles or repercussions.

Now, shall we move on, and in fact, move back?

These are my colleagues on the far side of that armored and thank God, bolted shut flight deck door. They have to deal with hundreds–you read that right–hundreds of passengers a day. Yes, that’s their job, and they’re damn good at it, better than I’d ever dream of being (see above). But there’s more to it than meets your eye.

He or she has been working nonstop for several days by the time you board, in many cases. That includes the hassles of hotels and transportation, little sleep or food due to schedule constraints, and throw on the added stress of increased hours and decreased pay, the industry standard, and the end result is predictable if you put yourself into the situation. Flashback–here’s me meeting The Missuz after one of her 3-day death marches, particularly when she was on callout reserve:

Probably will be no “sundaes” in the near future in this typical scenario, not that I’d ask. Because she, like most flight attendants in the sky, has just spent several days being deliberately nice to many people who don’t know the meaning of the word. So, you get the point: for all of the good parts about a flexible schedule, travel privileges (a cruel hoax, I say, but that’s another subject) and escape from any kind of office-bound (ugh) or desk-bound (yikes) work day, there is as you have to expect the grind-aspect of any job.

Now, let’s get to “the traveling public,” or as we like to say, “the pax.” I believe that there may be a common preconception among a large portion of “the pax” that may be less than accurate:

And the major contrast between the visualization–actually, the idealization–of air travel like this is not all on the crew side of the daydream. Rather, some of the dreamers show up out of costume for their own daydream:

No sundaes for you, probably ever–not that you’d need one, but you probably would ask. But the point is this: we’re all big on aspirations, but how about the follow-through? We’re certainly all human, but where’s the balance between expectations and obligations? Is there any connection between the way we act and what we get in return?

I’d like to think too that some of the behavior we see in the travel arena is different than what you’d see at the homes of everyone on the plane, but I guess I shouldn’t assume that. Regardless, the point is this: we all have expectations that rely on others, but sometimes it’s hard to remember that others have expectations of us as well. Pilots, flight attendants, passengers–we all tend to forget that.

But if you forget, the results are predictable. Which is why, as the senior flight attendant explained to me, when it comes to sundaes or anything else of a special nature in the air travel realm: if it’s offered, take it; otherwise, just don’t ask.

Airline 101: Anatomy of a “Go-Around.”

The engines were still growling down when the agent popped open the forward cabin door and reached for the P.A. handset to welcome the passengers to John Wayne Orange County Airport just south of Los Angeles. I shot the gap between her and the door and escaped up the jetbridge so as not to encounter what I knew a large percentage of the deplaning passengers were going to say or do on their way  out.

Why?

I’ll rewind a bit. On approach at about 3 miles from touchdown and at a thousand feet, I told the First Officer, who was flying the approach, “Go around.” He looked at me once to be sure he’d heard me correctly, then he executed the maneuver; he knew if he didn’t, I’d take control of the aircraft and do it myself. That works both ways: if I’m flying and the F/O says “go-around,” I’ll initiate the procedure immediately and ask any questions after landing.

We followed the litany and procedures to transition from a descent to a climb, then around the traffic pattern for another approach and landing. That’s what “go-around” means: “go around the traffic pattern one more time for landing.”

No big deal. Right?

If you don’t agree, don’t bother reading any further. You’re the type who needs to have an embellished horror story to tell your friends; you’re the one I avoid by heading up the jetbridge before you deplane–and I dodge you at social gatherings for the same reason: a go-around really is no big deal, and I hate having to play along with the growing mythology of your near death experience.

But if you’re not the hysterical type, and if you’d like to know what goes on beyond the cockpit door so you can better understand go-arounds and take the maneuver in stride like a seasoned traveler rather than as one who doesn’t fly much–read on.

At a thousand feet, we must be in landing configuration, stable at approach speed with a normal descent rate–or a go-around is required. Besides common sense, that’s our standard procedure–and it’s set in stone.

There are different kinds of go-arounds, and I’ll explain those too. But first, the reasons. Usually, it’s a spacing issue. That is, there’s not enough time for you to land given that another aircraft is still on the runway either for take-off or landing. That can be caused by a number of factors, but the simplest is just spacing: the aircraft on the runway took longer to start its take-off roll, or the landing aircraft took longer than planned to exit the runway. That too can have several “no big deal” causes: the aircraft on take-off roll may have discovered a problem that needed momentary attention; the landing aircraft might not have achieved deceleration as planned for an upfield exit.

Or, in instrument conditions, we might not have satisfied the approach requirements for seeing the runway for landing at the lowest allowable descent altitude, in which case we immediately execute the missed approach procedure.

Finally, as in our case, we were not “in the slot” with the specs I mentioned above–so we go-around. Why weren’t we “in the slot?” Lots of factors can cause that, like a tailwind or a speed or altitude restriction or tight vector by air traffic control; the point is, like at any busy intersection on the ground, spacing requires analysis and conservative thinking–you just don’t plunge ahead regardless.

Now, we didn’t “abort the landing” as the uninformed, yarn-spinning passenger might say. “Aborted landing” is actually the term for when you’ve touched down on the runway, then decide for another set of good reasons, that you must take off again. In twenty-six years of airline piloting, I’ve never encountered this–quite possibly due to the conservative “go-around” parameters I already mentioned.

Now, for the three types of go-arounds.

When we were at 1,000 feet, the maneuver can be done less aggressively than if it occurs at our lowest descent altitude, which for a pilot with my qualifications is 50 feet. You can see why, right? I mean a thousand feet is plenty of margin for safety between us and the ground. If however, I don’t see the runway by fifty feet (the first officer’s eyeballs are locked on the navigation displays inside), we will without hesitation go to the full go-around procedure to maximize ground separation as quickly as possible.

That’s two types, and the third is when we’re somewhere in between those two extremes. For that, we just need a deliberate go-around.

Now, the dynamics of the go-around and why that seems more extreme from the cabin than it is.

First, on approach you are at a relatively slow speed–as a wag, say 160 knots, in my jet–and at a shallow rate of descent, usually about 700 feet per minute. On a go-around, the power is going to come in fast and with force, which means in order to maintain the given approach speed, we’ll need the nose pitched up from 2-3 degrees all the way to 15-20 degrees, depending on aircraft weight. That will give you 3,000 feet per minute or more of climb–quite a radical change from 750 feet per minute of descent, all within a matter of seconds.

That’s by design: holding the minimum airspeed for configuration guarantees the fastest separation between jet and runway. But, at the designated missed approach altitude–3,000 feet at Orange County–we must level off. If I were to add full power, pitch the nose up to 20 degrees from 1,000 feet where we were, we’d need to shove the nose forward and pull the power way back about 15 seconds later–and you definitely wouldn’t like the way that feels in back.

So for that, we could ease the power forward, stop the descent, then climb smoothly and safely to the go-around altitude. But if we were only a hundred feet above touchdown when a go-around was required, we’d use the full power setting which would pitch the nose way up for 30 to 40 seconds before reaching the go-around altitude.

For that, Boeing has wisely given me two throttle options: one press of the go-around toggle on the throttles sets a medium power, two sets the full power–52,000 pounds of thrust in a matter of seconds, so hold on. But in our case at 1,000 feet, a smooth application of just enough power to arrest the descent and then climb was done manually.

All three come with a catch, particularly the first two: you must retract the aircraft flaps before you exceed the structural design limit speed of the flaps. The limit for the typical landing setting (30 degrees) is 175 knots. Getting the picture here? Understand why the pitch-up is so pronounced? If we were to add the go-around power without pitching up, we’d accelerate from our approach speed, say 155, through 240 knots in about twenty seconds–overspeeding the flaps along the way. And we want separation from the ground as aggressively as possible, another reason to hold the airspeed constant.

Regardless, the go-around procedure from any altitude requires full pilot attention: immediately stop the descent, then retract the gear–and when you do, there goes the drag so you’d better keep the nose tracking upward to control the speed–then immediately get the flaps to 15 degrees, because anything more than that is not only too much drag, it also has too low a max speed. Fifteen degrees allows for 200 knots, giving you at least a few seconds to attend to other things.

Those things are, setting the missed approach altitude and, to outthink the Flight Director engineering and regain control of pitch and speed commands, turn both Flight Directors off then back on again, then reinstate the Autothrottle system with a new speed command–say 210 knots. Then get the flaps retracted on schedule and level off on speed, on altitude.

It’s definitely a busy operation.

Add to that the typical southern California high density air traffic, much of it small, hard to spot light aircraft, plus the radio frequency changes from tower to approach and then the traffic sequencing (“See the 737 turning base at 3 o’clock? He’s you’re sequence, plan you base turn above the Cessna at your twelve o’clock.”) and you’d better have both sets of eyeballs concentrating outside and both heads in the game, period. Nothing else is as important.

Plus, we still accomplish the normal landing checklist, make multiple configuration and speed changes within certain limits, secure landing clearance and fly yet another final approach glide path. Are you really going to ask me why I didn’t make a P.A announcement about the go-around? My priorities are the safe accomplishment of a few dozen critical tasks in the air, not yacking on the P.A. about the obvious.

And now it is obvious for you, having read and digested all this: the whole go-around thing is clearly just a normal, if busy, day on the airways, right? Explain all that that to the guy next to you if he starts pinging or griping–I’ll have already disappeared by then, and now you know why.

.

A good reason to get off the plane quickly in Orange County:

Doug’s Dogs, Santa Ana Airport.

Airline Analyst Holly Hegeman Live

What does the future hold for the airline business?

Join JetHead Live with airline analyst and writer Holly Hegeman:

To download or save, click here.

Visit Holly Hegeman’s website PlaneBuzz.

Next week, on JetHead Live:

Meteorologist and Pilot James Aydelott:

Weather, flying–and more.

Thursday Now, and Chaos Reins.

It’s only Thursday in the sense of a time-segment before days off: could be any named day of the week. But in the flight crew world, the calendar slips days like gears, the only important condition being that the drive train works, turns, moves: flies.

And it’s Thursday in the sense of past-mid work week tired; thousands of miles gone like pages turned, but the final chapter yet to be written, never mind the epilogue: you’re responsible for how the story turns out; lots of folks will be reading over your shoulder, commenting eventually. On time? Bumpy ride?

Nobody reads between the lines anyway–fuel burn, altitude, routing, navigation; pay no attention to the man behind that curtain. Just as well, though, because surgery is easier for the surgeon if the patient is completely out of the conscious realm. Leave the driving to us.

The day, like the trip, has broken in half and the better part of the light and heat slipped over the horizon, fickle as tomorrow, leaving dusk like a sigh that slowly dies, restless, then dark.

Freak! Coward. Regardless, gone is the day and with it, distance and depth, at least ahead and below. Still in hand, though, the reins of chaos: 50,000 pounds of thrust and 3,000 psi of hydraulics moving ailerons and rudders on demand. The sea is dark and the reins tight and make no mistake: we’re cruising the fire in the dark.

We’re on the downside of a northern arc when the eastbound fireflies cross our nose; below, mostly, having just left the west coast headed east. We’re lighter, waypoints beyond and a few thousand feet above their path, surfing the jetstream east. The burst of wingtip strobes, pinpoints, then the permanent geometry of running lights–green passes nearest on the starboard wingtip slicing along eastbound; the captain’s side, the red tip, harder to spot but like ships running through the fog, you know which way they’re headed by the configuration of lights.

And in their cockpit, a temple of dark silence like yours, someone’s manning the fires, someone’s got the reins, both beat back the chaos only inches away of a -50 degrees freeze-dry you in seconds outside air temp too cold to even form ice; the 500 mile per hour gale that would shred the conglomeration of bodies and bones and stuff and wires and metal over three states if the reins slip loose; the air half again as thin as the top of Everest, turning you blue before you could lose consciousness a heartbeat later.

Steady, a steady hand, a steady head watching the geometry of time, distance and altitude shrink–hold the reins, adjust accordingly. It’s a step-down of epic proportions, energy paid out, energy dissipated on a gradual, bone-saving scale. Got to serve the numbers to keep the geometry safe, flat and eventually, at a complete stop. And it’s only Thursday, pace yourself: another attempt at hotel sleep, food; watering like any draft horse needs because there’s another flight day tomorrow.

Cheat sheet: you know the ballet, but it doesn’t hurt have a thumbnail sketch. The orchestra strikes a chord an octave lower each measure, carefully slower, hold it, to the final note. Rest.

Taxi in, Thursday nearly done. Folks are now where they’d planned to be, never mind the reins, the chaos, the fireflies, the jetstream. That’s your world. That’s the flight crew world, where tomorrow at last the clock strikes Friday–and home.

This week, on Jethead Live:

We go one-on-one with airline analyst

Holly Hegeman

concerning the future of air travel . . .

Wednesday!

Don’t miss

Airline Workers Burned.

Burned–not just figuratively: literally.

And while the feeling might be among those not close to the fire, “who cares,” the answer is simple, once you too start feeling the flames. And you will: the way of American business today is to break up the furniture and burn it to heat the house.

Still you might say, “not in my business” to which I’d reply, “maybe not for now.” But you will notice the wildfire consuming the airline business the next time you decide to go somewhere by air. And eventually, if those in big business who control yours decide it’s financially expedient in the short term to cash you out, your very own comfy chair, desk, pension and future will provide the heat to warm the place long after you’re out in the cold.

The Dallas Morning News reports that the combined post-bankruptcy Delta-Northwest combination, over 30,000 airline jobs went up in smoke; the post-bankruptcy Continental-United merger torched an equal number; USAir through bankruptcy burned up another 20,000, and American Airlines just forced into bankruptcy will of necessity claim thousands more faces ghostly to those who don’t  know them, even more ghostly to those who do.

But not you, not now, right? No, now it’s this guy, and whether you know it or not, he is you–not that you’d recognize it or admit it, for now:

He’s the Citizen Kane who has been handling your bags for all of the years you’ve been flying. He’s the muscle behind the launch of your jet to wherever you’re going, then he goes home to a family like yours. He’s been doing this for twenty-some years–but not any more: he’s been cashed out, broken up and thrown on the fire to heat the house. There are hordes waiting to smash your bags for minimum wage–so who needs him?

Airlines have no choice but to invest billions in new aircraft, then try to make ends meet with a cost structure skewed by oil prices, the wild card held hostage by both oil speculators and petroleum producing nations, many of whom despise the American way of life–including the cheap airfares connecting the length and breadth of our far-flung nation, a promise made to you by your congress as if it were a sacred entitlement no matter whose job or pension it costs to deliver the savings to you. Who do you think will pay that price for you?

I know who. She’s the one who would save your butt over her own when the real fires start burning:

Many started with me back in the 80s, flying now to support families and to pay mortgages and to have life on the earth like everyone else. Thousands of those dreams and lives went up in smoke through bankruptcy court to heat the chilling business that hangs and dies on the price of a barrel of oil. And month after month, that fluctuation extinguishes not only the hopes and dreams of folks like her–but also the bottom line of the airline that you love to vilify for charging a fraction of what it costs to buy an NFL or NBA playoff ticket. Getting you there, however, must be bargain basement pricing, right? I mean, it’s your right, right?

And don’t forget this guy; well, then again I guess you’d better:

He’s the knuckle-buster I depend on to tell me the jet’s ready, fixed, 100%. And when he says it, I know it’s true. Because he’s the same mechanic who migrated with me from tough, lean years in the military, or the civilian A&P ranks, who like me has put in the thousands of hours of sweat equity taming these giant beasts of metal and fuel and fire and a thousand high-tech components wiring it into a flyable tonnage the size of a freight train at shotgun speed–with your ass strapped aboard. But, his craft can be duplicated–though his lineage certainly cannot be–somewhere a thousand miles off shore for a third of the price. So he goes up in smoke too.

And finally, come on up to the pointy end.

Who’s going to fly your jet? Me, I’m here for the duration: USAF experience worldwide, 26+ years at my airline, 21+ as captain, but here’s the catch: who in the next generation of pilots who witness my nearly 27 years of pension go up in smoke like a “strike-anywhere” match as it just did is going to dedicate his life to your cheap air travel? Who will spend the $80,000+ on flight ratings, or the years of military indentured servitude to aspire to the dead end, $20,000 a year entry level that the job boils down to, just to linger in slow-death overtime as no one can afford to leave once their pension is erased?

Airline analyst Michael Boyd predicted that if this trend continues, airline pilots of the future will be the five year, “I was a ski bum/bartender in Aspen then got a real job” type turnovers, despite the weather, the terrain, the technology, and the challenges of piloting your airline flight.

Because who else with a lick of sense would perform a life and death drama daily for peanuts and an unsure future, branded by the vision of 100,000 airline pilots before them stripped of a future, cut loose with a retirement reduced to nothing?

I don’t know who, but that’s who’ll fly your jets. And I don’t know who in their right minds would choose the monumental and unrecoverable price tag that fuels the “burn ’em up and keep it cheap” model endorsed by your blind eye congress and ultimately by, well, you.

And that’s what you’ll get. Breaking up the furniture to heat the house, regardless of what’s left, never mind habitability or who would have thought, survivability, down the road?

Meanwhile, no worries for now, bon voyage and just warm yourself at the bonfire . . . for as long as it lasts.

Crosswind Landing Video and Critique

Join 2 veteran airline captains critiquing crosswind landings on this remarkable video.

First, start the audio below and it will tell you when to start the video:

(iMac/iPhone users might need to download the audio separately.

Suggestion: let the YouTube video buffer for a minute or two before you start it so it won’t stop on you in the middle.

Next week:

JetHead Live talks with a pair of Air Traffic Controllers about all things pertaining to airspace use.

Tending the Fire in the Sky

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself. –Mark Twain

F_N =( \dot{m}_{air} + \dot{m}_f) V_{j} – \dot{m}_{air} V

That’s the violence hanging in the air, waiting for you to torch it off. Starts simple, starts at a cold standstill. Tons of metal locked inert, waiting. Fill ‘er up.

Then:

\dot{m}_{air}     is the rate of flow of air through the engine
\dot{m}_f     is the rate of flow of fuel entering the engine
V_j\;     is the speed of the jet (the exhaust plume) and is assumed to be less than sonic velocity
V\;     is the true airspeed of the aircraft
(\dot{m}_{air} + \dot{m}_f) V_j     represents the nozzle gross thrust
\dot{m}_{air} V     represents the ram drag of the intake

Say what? All I know is the magic incantation of “Starting Engines Checklist,” the ragged rush of high pressure air channeled by a flick of my wrist into the right engine starter. The brute force of hot air at 45 PSI drives the rotor blades like Niagra Falls spins the turbines that light half of the east coast.

Fuel lever up, wing spar and engine shut-off valves snap open and dual high-pressure pumps ram jet fuel through lines metered by a bank of computers in the lower deck below your feet: spray nozzles, burner cans and a whomping thud as the pressure builds and the dragon breathes a ring of blue fire, a scorching gale at 700 degrees and a hundred miles an hour that would knock a dumptruck sideways. Seen it myself.

Now we’re cooking, smoothly whirling a blowtorch driven series of rotors, compressors and turbines idling at 30,000 rpm and 400 degrees centigrade. You’re saddled up, strapped on–never felt better than to have a fistful of thrust to move you and the metal at mach speed, whenever you say so.

And there are those who live with the aggregation of interlocking numbers, the formulas and structures of chemical reactions that gather in your right hand and though everyone riding the cliche in back thinks you’re that guy–you sure ain’t.

It’s never been about the fifty-headed abacus of numerical relationships that while you have to acknowledge put the beast together, forged of alloys and bonded of thousand degree welds and strung with heartstrings of titanium and vessels coursing with combustibles of unspeakable explosive energy, channeled just feet from where you sit in a controlled explosion that will continue for hours–you aren’t even thinking about ground stuff, things that don’t move–because when it’s all in play, we move like lightning.

That’s the real stuff–don’t give a damn about the paperwork or the tons of pulp and blather to make everyone riding the fire not notice that they are.

But they are.

And every flinch of an engine indication, the jet’s EKG synthesized on a bank of CRTs before you, and every nuance of the fuel burn and the hand-in-hand air nautical miles per pound of fuel, every bit of that is the pulse you feel and notice with the slightest shift, tending the fires.

Everything in the sky once you’re there is paid in the currency of fuel. Every air mile is a consumable and there’s only so much on board. Don’t know so much distance and altitude as I do minutes of fuel.  Don’t really care.

It’s that glass blue flame, the thousands of degrees and the 450 miles per hour cooling and feeding the twin blazes that gulp the air then blast it out the other end with fifteen times as much force. It’s out tons of steel and fuel and bone and flesh arched overhead and flung across the sky, dragging the twin white vapor wakes that testify to the tremendous engineering wonder holding us up like it was easy. And it won’t stop till I say so.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. –Robert Frost

I have my own idea.

Airline Flying 101: Anatomy of a Landing.

So, where does the planning for landing actually begin? In cruise? Near the top of descent?

Nope.

It’s first thing in the morning, as soon as the alarm goes off–you’re thinking about the weather at your destination. That’s the deal: you know the jet, you know your own skills, you can count on your First Officer’s skill level–that’s a given at American Airlines–so what’s the wild card? The weather.

Having said that, let’s clarify this: we really don’t care about the weather–we care about the change. That is, the trend: what is progressing, and how fast?

The weather report is a snapshot, too soon to be history. And the forecast is a guess, really no better than your own–if you can detect the trend and the rate of change. Now, it’s true that pre-flight planning is based on both the snapshot and the prediction–but as a pilot, the only thing that really matters is how the weather is changing. Because real life in flight–unlike plans–is all about change, and so is weather: it’s never static.

So we’re pulling up the destination weather at regular intervals, but not to decide what we’re going to do when we get there. Rather, it’s to compare how the weather changes during the enroute time in order to understand what the weather is doing–how it’s changing, therefore how the air mass we’ll need to navigate is actually behaving.

Because it’s not like “the good old days:”

Halfway across the Pacific Ocean, fill ‘er up again against the possibility of bad weather in Korea. Weather data was harder to come by and so there was little or no way to get a string of accurate weather data comparisons in order to plot the changes and the trends.

When hours and thousands of miles later we did get close enough to Japan to pick up weather data for Korea, decision time: bad weather? Glad we have the extra gas. Good weather? Dump the extra USAF issued gas in the Sea of Japan and land in Seoul lightweight.

Those days are long gone.

And in the airline world, we have other things to tend to enroute anyway.

Well yeah, there’s that: dinner, maybe a sundae to deal with too. But more importantly, it’s time to line up the static facts for landing so as to have them firm in your mind in order to play them against the weather change when you’re finally on approach.

First, aircraft weight. You can predict the enroute burn pretty well, add that to the zero fuel weight and you’ve got the basis for your approach speed. Now, determine the worst case landing distance by taking the weight to the correct chart to determine the best case landing distance.

Then, determine the corrections for degrading factors: runway surface (wet, icy) and winds (tailwind and crosswind). Take the runway headings of the likeliest approaches and determine the wind angles and the tailwind penalties for for each. Now, get those azimuth ranges (deviation from centerline) set in your head and the landing distance incremental additive for each (for example, runway 4, the tailwind starts over 130 degrees  or 310 degrees) so two things you need in your head: what’s the distance per knot, and based on the landing distance (worst and best case) what’s the max number of tailwind knots you can take. Ditto the crosswind.

And what’s your plan if any limit gets even close? Got that all in your hip pocket? Good. Tell the other guy.

I hate the word “brief,” which every aviator uses when they really mean “verbal walk through.” But that’s what you do a hundred miles out, a verbal walk through. By then, the field conditions are about what you can expect for landing because you’re about 30 minutes out.

So your verbal walk-through includes the approach procedure, plus the numbers (weights, stopping distances, penalties and runway options) and what you plan to do. Also, it’s good common sense to ask the other guy to do all the calculations separately and compare.

Now you both have the plan in your hip pocket, you both are following the plan rather than making it up as you go, and both confusion and ambiguity are reduced on approach.

Now, just get the small details firmed up in your head: wet runway? Windy? Firm touchdown? Speed additives for various contingencies? Brake settings? Know what you’re going to do–and tell the other guy.

So there you have it. Plot the weather trends in your head from wake-up to final approach. Know the static factors such as gross weight, stopping distance, wind angles and tailwind values plus the incremental corrections, flap settings and approach speeds, then play them against the dynamic factors such as winds, temperature, precipitations, runway length (prepare for a last second runway change!) and surface conditions.

The landing plan is one big, complex balloon animal: you squeeze one part, another part will balloon out. We know the static parts, the limits and just how far we can squeeze in all cases–if we do our work ahead of time. And we always do.

So there you have it. You’re ready for the fun part, landing the jet. Enjoy.

Coming on Wednesday:

What’s it like to ride 4 million pounds of explosives into space?

My one on one interview with astronaut Mike Mullane.

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A Wing and a Prayer, and the Everlasting Moon.

Only poets and saints have ever flown like this, riding a wing and a prayer. Darkness like sadness, spread to the end of the world, save the glow of cathode ray tubes painting the hearbeat of the seventy ton schooner, riding the howling eastbound jet stream.

That’s always a rush, surfing that gale, especially this time of year. But that’s what it takes, that’s what the 160 folks in back expect; never mind the details of turbulence and winds and fuel flow–those are yours to deal with alone. Just the way you like it.

You catch a glimpse back there now and again, but the view’s better ahead; quieter, a vortex of unseen electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic function, the lifeblood of the jet, blooming through the animated tapestry sprawled from bulkhead to bulkhead and overhead and nowadays you don’t know where the jet ends and you begin. Not that it matters: you’re comfortable in your second skin, aluminum and titanium, blood and bone–it’s one and the same for now.

And in the reassuring light of the cabin, what they don’t know won’t hurt them: through the night, an alabaster glow fires up the undercast ahead, swelling and spreading like a false dawn. The spectral blister swells to bursting and time reels backward for you–the western Pacific; the South China Sea, a world of time and distance ago.

Dark as deep space, a cloud deck below, the endless nothing above. Jets everywhere, formations in and out, stacked and you busy with courses and altitudes, your jet’s performance–then that ghostly glow below; angry rising–before you think you say it, as soon as you do you’d beg the words back on your life: “What the hell is that?”

Ivory-bone light melts up through a swirling veil of striated cirrus laid like a blanket on the Korean countryside frozen cold in the dead of winter.

“The moon,” comes the deadpan reply from another aviator. And you just let that smolder and die in the darkness; betrayed by the indifferent moon climbing it’s sky arc just like you did yours. What the hell–we’re pals–we’re going to be, through thousands of air miles over years and skies around the globe.

And it’s the aviation childhood still: less than a thousand hours of flight time; everything’s a wonder, an answered prayer or a silent wish playing out across a thousand miles at Mach speed. Like today: major league tailwind drives the groundspeed up to nearly 700mph.

Unseen from above, the miles past so fast sometimes. And that glow below, now a thousand years later and as many miles hence, you just know. Time to start down–just as your old friend climbs up. We’ll trade spots in the sky, share one more curtain call.

And surely we’ll cross paths again, however many more times we can. No surprise now–but just as stunningly bright as ever. It’s all too familiar, but in a good way: a wing and a prayer and the everlasting moon; the the essence of flight that never loses its brightness.

From flying fighter jets in the Netherlands to the captain’s seat on a KLM jetliner, Captain Martin Leeuwis has done a lifetime of amazing flying.

We go one-on-one with him on our audio podcast next week.

And later this month: 3-time space shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane joins us on JetHead Live.

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