Night Skies and Other Lies.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.”

Don’t be crazy–subscribe, you don’t want to miss this.

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

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.

Subscribe now!

Podcast: What’s it like to be a Boeing-777 Captain?

Ever wonder what it would be like to be a Boeing 777 captain for a major airline?

Want to know how the 777 stacks up against the DC-10 and MD-11 from a guy who’s flown all three?

Here it is:

 To use your own player: click here to listen (or right click and “save” to download).

Don’t have an audio player?  Click here to listen on Pod-o-Matic!

(running time approximately 28 minutes)

Wednesday:

From flying low-level fighters in the Royal Dutch Air Force to the captain’s seat at KLM,

Captain Martin Leeuwis shares his flying stories on JetHead Live!

Also Coming Soon:

What’s it like to fly the space shuttle: my interview with 3 time shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane. Subscribe now!

Airline Flying 101: Anatomy of a Take-off.

Take-off? That’s easy, right? You fasten your safety belt, move your seat fully upright and stow your tray table. Ready. Right?

Not even.

But if that’s the full extent you prefer to be aware of, fine. Otherwise, read on as we take apart this very complex, important maneuver.

The planning starts long before you strap yourself into your seat in the back of the plane, and here’s why.

Take-offs come in all sizes and shapes because of several variables–so there’s no “one size fits all” logic or protocol. What are the variables? Well, aircraft weight, runway length, winds, runway surface condition and temperature are the basics, and each has an effect on performance.

You might think runway length is the great reliever, right? Miles of runway, like at DFW or Denver mean simple, low-risk performance, right?

And you might think a short runway or nasty weather are the “problem children” of take-off performance. But let me give you the pilot answers: no, no, and furthermore, no.

Throw out what you’ve been thinking about take-offs as a passenger, and strap in tight (is that tray table up? is Alec Baldwin playing “Words” in the lav while we all wait for His Highness to finish?) because you’re about to test drive some “pilot think:”

I don’t worry about taking off–I worry about stopping.

Why? This sounds so simple that when you think about it, you’ll have to agree: aircraft are made to fly–not drag race.

Huh?

Look, accelerating 85 tons to nearly 200 miles per hour builds tremendous kinetic energy. Not a problem for the landing gear if you take off because it’s simply rolling. But if you must stop, the brakes and wing-located speed brakes have to dissipate that energy within the length of the asphalt ahead.  The runway length is finite, the aircraft weight is unchangeable once you’re rolling. So where is the point of no return, the point after which there’s not enough runway to stop?

Brakes are key--and checked visually before EVERY take-off.

As a pilot–particularly as the captain who makes every go-no go decision no matter which pilot is actually flying–you must know when that instant occurs. That magic point is not a distance down the runway but rather, a maximum speed: “Refusal Speed.” In other words, the maximum speed to which we can accelerate and still stop within the confines of the runway if we choose to abort the take-off.

But there’s a catch, of course.

Refusal Speed is only half of the go-no go decision. Part Two is just as critical: what is the minimum speed I must have in order to take-off if one engine fails, continuing on the other. I can hear this already: why the hell would you want to continue the take-off on one engine?

To which I’d answer back, what if the failure happens above Refusal Speed? In other words, there’s not enough runway ahead to stop your high-speed tricycle.

Okay, that minimum speed–the speed you must have in order to continue the take-off in the remaining runway on one engine–is called “Critical Engine Failure Speed.”

All of the performance numbers for each unique take-off are computed, with corrections for the many variables to be made by the pilots.

Now you have the two controllers of the go-no go decision; one a minimum speed (you must have Critical Engine failure Speed achieved to continue safely into the air) and one a maximum (if you attempt to abort in excess of Refusal Speed–you ain’t stopping on the runway).

So which is the deciding factor? Well, in modern day jets under average circumstances, the “max” speed is normally way in excess of the “min” speed. In other words, you normally achieve the min required for single-engine continued take-off before you reach the max allowed for stopping. So, in ordinary circumstances, Decision Speed–which we call V1–is Refusal Speed.

In other words, we know we’ll secure adequate flying speed for a single-engine take-off before we hit the max abort speed. So we use the max abort speed–Refusal Speed–for V1.

Pilot-think lesson one: it’s easier to deal with a single-engine aircraft in the air than it is to stop a freight train on the runway. Which goes back to my earlier point: airliners fly great but make only adequate drag racers, stopping on the drag strip remaining being the challenge.

Add to that the wild card: the captain must decide in a split second as you’re rolling toward V1 if any malfunction that occurs will affect the ability to stop the jet: did an electrical system failure kill the anti-skid system required for max braking? Did a hydraulic failure eliminate the wing spoilers figured into the stopping distance?

Some jets require very little system support to fly–but a lot of factors to stop: the MD80 will fly all day without hydraulics, electrics or pneumatics–but it ain’t stopping on a “balanced field” without electrics and hydraulics.

Get my pilot-prespective regarding my preference to take a wounded jet into the air rather than wrestle it to a stop on a runway?

And remember, those speeds are “perfect world” scenarios. But on your flight–like every flight–despite the engineering numbers from which the stopping distance is computed, there are the real life factors which screw them up: wet or icy runway, tailwind, old tires, old brakes, rubber on the runway because of aircraft touchdown on landings.

Not a problem on an average day, but corrections to the numbers and your pilot-think must be made if any of those variables are present.

Now, have you deduced the worst-case scenario with the two controlling speeds, Critical Engine failure Speed and Refusal Speed? That is, you will exceed the max speed for stopping before you attain the minimum speed for single-engine flight?

That’s simple: you can’t take-off. In practice, we adjust the flap setting or even reduce the gross weight: back to the gate–some cargo and/or passengers must come off. Hardly ever happens that we return to the gate because we plan ahead–and that’s why you hear of a flight being “weight restricted,” meaning some seats will be empty by requirement before you even board. Now you know why.

But really, that’s not even the worst case scenario from a pilot’s perspective (sorry about your trip, if you’re one of the passengers left behind on a weight restricted flight–but you probably got some compensation for it). Rather, it’s when the two numbers are the same.

That is, the minimum speed required for flight is equal to the max speed for stopping.

That’s called a “Balanced Field:” the runway distance required to accelerate to minimum single-engine take-off speed is also the maximum velocity from which you can safely abort and stop on the runway.

That’s a “short runway” problem, like in LaGuardia, Burbank, Washington National or Orange County, right?

Wrong–it’s everywhere, like Denver’s 14,000 feet of runway (compared to LaGuardia’s 7,000) on a hot summer day; ditto DFW; also Mexico City even on a cool day because it’s at 7,500 feet elevation. And it can occur anywhere due to rain, ice or snow.

So here’s your plan, and as pilot-in-command, you’d better have this tattooed into your brain on every take-off: once you enter the high-speed abort regime (by definition, above 90 knots), know what you will abort for–or continue the take-off. Be ready for both–without hesitation.

LaGuardia: 7,000' between you and Flushing Bay.

It’s easier to decide what you will abort for than won’t–because the “must stops” outnumber the “can stops” and remember your pilot think: it’s often safer to continue than stop. And here are my Big Four Must Stops: engine fire, engine failure, windshear or structural failure.

So rolling past 90, I’m thinking over and over, “engines, engines, engines,” zeroing in on any malfunction in order to assess if it’s an engine problem–if not, it’s likely not a “must stop” situation; I’m aware of windshear but don’t even start the take-off roll with any of the conditions present; structural damage we’ll deal with as necessary. Otherwise, we’re flying, folks.

Got all that? Good deal: now you understand the important interrelationship between Critical Engine Failure Speed, Refusal Speed and the all important concept of V1.

And now that you understand the complex, split-second conditions surrounding the go-no go decision on your next take-off, you can relax and just put all of those crucial factors out of your mind.

Because rest assured, they’re at the forefront of mine, or that of whatever crew into whose hands you’ve entrusted your life.

Special Note:

Coming in 2012–The JetHead Podcast! Interviews with real pilots, hands-on first-person  descriptions of airline piloting and aircraft flying from the folks on the front lines of commercial aviation!

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Pilot Report: Boeing 737 vs. McDonnell-Douglas MD-80

Now that I have nearly a thousand hours in the left seat of the Boeing 737-800, and having as well over 15,000 in the MD-80, I feel qualified to make some judgments about how the two stack up against each other.

For me, there’s one hands-down winner. I’ll get to that.

But first, looking at it from a hands-on pilot perspective, let me say what I think are the crucial factors in both jets, then compare them. And I’ll do it in order of importance from my line-swine pilot view:

1. Power: never mind the technology difference between the General Electric JT8D turbo fans on the Maddog and the CFM-56 high-bypass fans on the 737. It’s the thrust difference I want in my right hand when I’m trying to lift 170,000 pounds off a runway. And technology aside (I’ll get to that), the three full power options (22,000, 24,000, and 26,000 pounds of thrust) plus the bonus kick up to 27,000 pounds per engine on the 737 for special use beats the snot out of the 19,000 flat rated and standard de-rated engines on the MD-80. Yes, the -80 weighs less than the 737 (max of 150,000 vs. 174,000 pounds), and no, I don’t have each plane makers’ specs, but the thrust-to-weight performance from the left seat feels substantially more secure and significant from the 737.

You notice that right away when you do a static takeoff with the 737 at all weights: you’ve got buttloads of giddyup (I think engineers call it “acceleration,” but then they don’t actually feel it on paper versus in the cockpit blasting forward–that’s “a buttload of giddyup”) shortening  those critical moments of vulnerability between brake release and V1.

I have no idea what engineers think of when they look at thrust and take-off advantages, but any pilot with experience knows that those seconds before reaching flying speed are the most vulnerable, particularly close to max abort speed, because I’d rather take any problems into the air than have to wrestle them to a stop on a runway. The MD-80 has good smash at mid to light weights, but in crucial situations (Mexico City, for example, or on a short runway on a hot day) the 737’s CFM56’s rule. I need the shortest possible period of on-runway vulnerability; I know engine hot-section limits and longterm life are important too, but the CFM56 achieves better on-wing engine endurance in operation than the JT8Ds, year over year.

Ditto for a go-around or windshear options: the MD-80 is famous for it’s slow acceleration–I’ve been there MANY times–and when you’re escaping from windshear or terrain, I can promise you the pucker factor of the “one, Mississippi, two Mississippi” on up to six to eight seconds will have your butt chewing up the seat cushion like horse’s lips. Not sure if that’s due to the neanderthal 1970’s vintage hydro-mechanical fuel control (reliably simple–but painstakingly slow to spool) or the natural limitation of so many rotor stages. But the 737’s solid state EICAS computers reading seventy-teen parameters and trimming the CFMs accordingly seem to give the performance a clear edge. And a fistful of 737-800 throttles beats the same deal on the Maddog, period. Advantage, Boeing.

2. Wing: let me go back in time. I also flew the F-100 for a couple years as captain. That was a great jet, with a simple wing: no leading edge devices. Coming from jets with slats the feel was clearly different on take-off, where there was a distinct (if you’re a seat-of-the-pants guy, and that’s all I’ve ever been) translational period between rotate and lift-off due to the hard wing. Ditto in the flare and in some reversals in flight like on a go-around. Not a bad thing, just something you had to anticipate, but not a warm-fuzzy in the seat of your aerodynamic pants.

Stretched jet, stretched wing.

That’s a good analogy between the Boeing versus the Douglas wing: you feel the generous lift margin in the 737. That’s because when Boeing stretched the jet to the -800 length, they expanded the wing as well. That wing was already loaded much lighter than the DC-9 wing which Douglas didn’t enlarge when they added to two fuselage plugs plus about 15,000 pounds to the MD-80. Longer and with better cambered  (look at the DC-10, and no dihedral) airfoil is the Boeing design and I’m grateful for their foresight and superior engineering–especially at the top end of the performance envelope: you need anti-ice? No problem–turn it on. The Maddog? Better be 2,000 feet below optimum, or prepare for stall recovery–and anyone on the -80 fleet knows I’m not exagerating. Wing performance? No contest: Boeing.

3. Handling: again let me go back in time. Flew the T-37 like every new Air Force pilot up until recently–then moved on to the T-38. Using standard Tweet inputs on The Rocket would bang your helmet off the canopy because of the boosted flight controls, giving you 720 degrees of roll in a second at full deflection.

That’s the 737 compared to the MD-80: no aileron boost on the -80, and little help from the powered rudder–because of the long fuselage length and relatively short moment arm between the vertical fin and the MAC (Mean Aerodynamic Chord), the rudder seems to only impart a twisting moment that’s pretty useless. So it’s a wrestling match for roll control, in and out of turns with the -80.

I still tend to over control the 737 in acute roll situations (e.g., the 30 degree offset final at 300′ AGL required in and out of DCA) due to previous brain damage caused by years of arm wrestling the MD-80 around tight corners. But with the 737, the seat-of-the-pants security of that generous wing is apparent at all speed and altitudes and the hydraulic aileron boost gives you the muscle to command a smooth and prompt response. Handling? It’s all 737 for me, including on the ground: new MD-80 captains will need Ibuprofen to counter the wrist strain of the nosewheel steering, two-handed in tight spots. I don’t miss that at all.

4. Cockpit layout: okay, give the -80 its due–that was one comfortable nest once you got settled. But that’s as far as it goes for me. Yes, I know the 737 kitbag position is inaccessible. But American Airlines is the first airline certified by the FAA for iPad use from the ground to altitude. Kitbag, what’s a kitbag?

MD-80 left seat–HSI? Where is it?

Trade-off? The MD-80 HSI is obscured by the control yoke. Are you kidding me? Like you might need lateral situational awareness for trivia like, navigating? Flying an approach? I spent 20+ years working around that human factors engineering failure–I’m grateful for the Boeing engineers who gave me seven 9″ CRT flat plate displays with every parameter I could want displayed digitally and God bless them all–a Heads Up Display! Lord have mercy, even a simpleton has a crosscheck in that jet thanks to the God of HUD.

The 737 doesn’t have the elbow room you might like and everyone who I fly with who has come off the big Boeings (757, 767, 777) gripes about that. Fine. I’m all about performance and the flight displays, computers, communications and advanced Flight Management Systems in the 737 avionics suite beat the pants off of the 75 and 76–and the HUD tops the 777 as well. Nuff said: gimme the Guppy cockpit over the Maddog. Boeing put everything I need at my fingertips, and it’s all state-of-the-art, whereas Douglas engineers threw everything they could everywhere in the cockpit and slammed the door.

My 737 home.

So there you have it: power, wing, handling and even by a narrow margin, the cockpit too. I’m a Boeing guy, back from wayward days flying Douglas metal from the DC-10 to the MD-80. In my experience as a pilot, in my hours in both Boeing and Douglas jets, I’m grateful to be flying the best jets in the sky. Now you know which are which.