Jethead Goes to School

Canada’s future is certainly bright, judging by the students in Miss Giulia’s sixth grade class at St. Monica Catholic School in Ottawa. What an articulate and considerate group they are, and they were gracious enough to share with me some questions about airline flying after studying the basics of flight earlier in the school year.

What do kids wonder about when it comes to flight? What did they discover in Miss Giulia’s classroom that sparked further questions about flight?

I asked–and they answered. Here’s a selection of their questions and my answers, with my heartfelt thanks to Miss Giulia and the entire class for generously sharing their time and ideas. In fact, they asked so many good questions that in order to answer them all, I’ll make “JetHead Goes to School” a series reappearing now and again with new questions and their answers.

1. Frank: “What’s it like flying near thunderstorms?”

That’s a good question. If you stay upwind of the storms, usually there’s no effect, although lightning has been known to reach ten miles from a cell to another cloud—or an aircraft. Hail, too, can blow out of the top and travel for miles. So it’s best to keep a healthy distance.

Sometimes you have to pick your way through the storms, finding gaps. Usually we do that with radar to be sure we stay clear. Here’s what a radar picture of storms looks like:

Green areas are rain, yellow indicates heavy rain, red means dangerously dense rain, and purple means turbulence. The pink line is our projected flight path, which I would alter to the right based on the radar picture. Here’s where the radar is located on an airplane–it’s always in the nose cone, facing forward:

The rules are, we need to stay at least ten miles from any thunderstorm. Radar helps us do that, especially at night when the storms are difficult to see. Here’s a picture I took as we flew by a storm pretty close:

It was actually taken late at night, but the lightning lit the sky as if it was daytime. Here’s a video of some storms in flight I made into a promo for my band (that’s my lead guitar, actually):

Definitely a good idea to steer clear of thunderstorms, don’t you think?

2. Anna R.: “Why is it so important to take ice and snow off the wings?”

The airfoil has to be clean and smooth to produce lift. Ice or snow or even frost disrupts the airflow on the wing and reduces the lift produced by the wing.

Here you can see snow and ice that’s accumulated on a wing root (the place where the wing joins the fuselage). All of that is considered contamination and must be removed to allow smooth airflow.

Any contaminant ruins the smooth flow over the wing. In flight, the leading edge of the wing—that’s the forward edge—is heated internally with air ducted from the engines that is at about 500 degrees. No snow or ice can accumulate there. You probably never noticed, but we also have to check the jet engine intakes for snow and ice. Chunks of ice can break off and get sucked into the engine, damaging the components that are spinning at 30,000 RPM or more.

On the ground before a flight, trucks with de-icing fluid and crews in booms blast the ice and snow off the aircraft and apply a coat of “anti-icing fluid,” a chemical mix that inhibits ice formation on the wings. Here’s a picture out one of my side windows of the de-ice crew in Montreal getting ready to spray de-ice fluid on my jet this morning in Montreal.

We usually de-ice near the take-off runway because the de-icing fluid loses its effectiveness over time. We have charts that are based on the type of precipitation falling at the time that shows us how long the de-ice fluid will protect the wings, so we make a good effort to be ready for take-off right away after de-icing.

Want to see more cool pictures of the effects of a snowstorm on aircraft? I’ve added a short video montage to the bottom of this page, after the last question and answer. Enjoy!

3. Brayden: “Have you ever had a flat tire and had to fix it? How long does it take to change a tire?”

Never a flat tire on an airplane, but we have had to have tires changed. Aircraft tires on a big jet are much thicker and heavier than those on your car. Car tires are usually inflated to 30-35 pounds of pressure per square inch, but our aircraft tires are inflated to 200 pounds of pressure.

We check the landing gear and tires before every flight and if there’s a worn out spot or maybe a nick from the hard use our tires get (remember, the jet weighs 60 to 80 tons and touches down at 150 miles per hour or so), the ground crew changes the tire. They jack up the plane smoothly and only a little bit so you wouldn’t even notice from the passenger cabin, then they swap tires for a new one. Then we’re on our way!

4.  Alberto: How many female pilots are there in American Airlines?

Not sure, but I’d guess around 200 out of a total of 8,000 American Airlines pilots are female. My experience flying with them has been very positive. My guess is that since airline flying is a male dominated field by sheer number alone, they’ve really had to prove themselves all along the way. So I’d say they are as a group actually better than most male pilots who never had to “prove themselves” in the same way. Many, too, are like me, former military pilots, so we have the exact same experience and background. Here’s a picture of my friend and colleague Cindy who is an excellent pilot.

As with any major endeavor, the pilot career field is difficult to get into and stay successful in year after year. There are constant checks and exams we have to pass, not to mention twice a year physical exams. But also like any major endeavor, anyone, male or female, can succeed if they set their mind to it and do the work required.

5. Nicolas: “How did your experience with the Air Force help you as an airline pilot?”

My Air Force training was an immense help to me for many reasons. First, it’s the best training in the world, and the cost is something no one could afford on their own—estimated at $1.7 million per pilot. I got to fly the best equipment, newest technology and from the very start, flew worldwide throughout Europe, Asia and the Pacific. That kind of experience you can only get through the military.

Since most (although not all) airline pilots are ex-military pilots, we share a common denominator in our flying training, as well as the culture of safety, training and flying. Now when I step onto the flight deck and meet a First Officer for the first time, if he’s ex-military, I immediately know we’re of the same background and philosophy. That makes flying as a crewmember much easier. So, the experience and training that comes with being an Air Force pilot is a major asset as an airline pilot. Nonetheless, I have to add that some of the best pilots I know, pilots who are my favorite to fly with, are pilots who have a purely civilian flying background.

That’s all the space we have for this week, but check back regularly for more Q&A that will become an ongoing series, “JetHead Goes to School.” Again my sincere thanks to the children of St. Monica’s school and their most conscientious and caring teacher, Miss Giulia.

And here’s the video of the great blizzard of 2011 that certainly slowed down flight operations at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Enjoy!

Mach Speed Tumbleweed

A battle rages in silence. You don’t want to get involved–but you are, you realize slowly.

Exactly where is it 5am?

You don’t want to know.

No, I do. The sinking feeling. It’s not home, is it?

Told you you didn’t want to know.

Damn. Reno?

No, that was last night.

Montreal?

The night before.

Palm Beach. Not home. Home got away–again.

How many miles from here to home? Not distance–I get that–flown, I mean? How many more? Flight hours like matchsticks: light ’em off one by one, watch them burn down, then out. Slowly, in the glow, you get it: midway through a four day. Just what you didn’t want to wake to. But do.

So, that was last night: late, always, bone tired too from hotel sleep somewhere else.

That’s here, middle of the night here, before you messed it up. Spartan. Antiseptic. Do not disturb. A trail of clothes from the door to the bed–worry about everything else tomorrow.

Sleep, and it’s that dream again: you can find the gate, find the plane, but there’s no door from the gate to the plane. Which is the way home, of course. No way home–just the waiting place, halls of marked time and any old place.

Gertrude Stein nailed it: “there’s no there there,” in that space between places, the waiting–the island between going and getting there. Or getting home. There’s the irony: for those who make their living going, and carrying others who are on the way too, the idyll would be staying, not going, being home. No door.

So wake up then. Going to need goggles and a snorkel to wade through this one. Not the stuff you’ll think about later–the weather, the jet, the fuel. Rather, another day not home.

Good dog–you’re ready to swim in the deep blue.  People will ask you questions, like “What’s it like to be a trained dog working in the blue every day?” Or maybe they’ll have something equally inane more for each other than for you, like “we’ll let him on” or “we need him” as you try to slip by them going to the office. Funny stuff, right? More likely, though, they have to go to the bathroom; they want to share that with you, assuming you have a constant awareness of toilets and locations, like you do with bailout airfields and low fuel contingencies in flight, right? Funny stuff.

Just put all the pieces back together; everything back into the suitcase like the crammed heap that sprang out twelve hours ago. Kind of like behind the scenes Disney: Mickey puts on his fiberglass head with the permanent smile–then out he goes. Down to the lobby, out to the curb: vantastic! Off to whatever aeropuerto in whatever city.

Just get me to the gig. Snake through the masses herding across the wide-open plains, grazing, mooing; hoofbeats at a shuffle.

The ants go marching out again, hurrah. Step around, mind the Mickey head. Wind your way through; heft the bags, schlep the bags, onward to the gate. Show your ID: yeah, it’s Mickey. Let him on board.

Nothing purtier than precious metal, all eighty tons of her:

She’s your big ol’ dance partner, every song, every leg, and just like you: all about the getting there–but not staying. Folks trundle off, more trundle on; makes no difference. We do our same dance steps, carefully and deliberately without art. Over and over–same old song. You know the words:

We say Mass for the Earth, the litany of escape–then we leave, but everyone still in their pews, seatbelts on and tray tables stowed. Then the aluminum conga line–every-buddy-CON-ga– to the runway. This:

In this:

Into the blue, the higher the better: the sky is denim, comfy as jeans. Good for hanging out, soft, simple, warm, comfortable. The good feel when you put them on.

Unpressed and rumpled–doesn’t matter; a little faded, all the better. That’s cruising, ain’t it? It’s like Saturday against your skin. That’s the jailbreak from the suitcase–off with the polyester, and Mickey’s head; jeans, amen.

Soft and comfy as the sky and nearly as distant: nobody knows you without the Mickey head on, and that’s the best. You’re a ghost, anywhere, everywhere–somewhere where no one knows you, and in the middle of the night you won’t remember where anyway.

You just know what it’s not–home; and where it’s not–HOME. And just close your eyes because soon enough, once again: another passage. Sleep.

“. . . life is a watch or a vision

Between a sleep and a sleep.”

–Algernon Swinburne

Silver Wings Then other Things: Part 4.

This is the final installment of a 4 part series putting you in the captain’s seat of an airliner.

Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

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It’s the top of descent. You just kind of get the feel, just know we’re getting to that point, if you’ve been engaged in the flight, where the natural rhythm of things is to start descent.

Used to have different cues that signaled the top of descent point before we had the precision of dual Inertial and multiple GPS systems tied to multiple flight guidance computers figuring descent rates and distances down to a gnat’s ass. One that was nearly infallible:

No, they didn’t call up front and suggest descent. They went into the First Class lav near the cockpit and unleashed a cloud of hairspray and fu-fu to get ready to look great in the terminal between flights. They always somehow just knew it was about time to touch up the war paint and big hair–which was our clue up front that “hey, must be time to start down.”

 

"Uh, Center, we're ready for descent."

The descent is fairly standard, an exercise in Euclidian geometry (want more details? click here) that takes into account altitude, distance, speed and fuel flow. But the approach and landing planning started before take-off.

Driving in to the airport, I have in mind the basics of the destination airport (or airports, on most days). At this point in my flying career, there are few airports in our domestic route system that I haven’t already landed a jet on, so I go back over what I know: airport altitude, terrain, runway length, runway surface approach types, traffic conflicts and a few other details.

I like to use Mexico City as an extreme example, because it shows that there’s really no “one size fits all” with those factors above: MEX has a 12,000 runway, but the airport elevation is 7,300 feet. So despite the long runway length,  aircraft performance and maneuverability are reduced by the high pressure altitude–not a good thing when flying slow and dirty as you must to land–the higher true airspeeds at altitude have you touching down with a hell of a ground speed, making this long runway a challenge for stopping nonetheless.

And that’s on a runway that is neither crowned nor grooved, which means any rain will likely pool and stand, screwing your brake effectiveness, and the mix of moisture and reverted rubber, which you know from experience seldom gets cleaned off south of the border, will make stopping a real challenge.

Meanwhile, Santa Ana “Orange County” Airport is at sea level, with a crowned and grooved runway–but it’s only 5,700 feet long. As a comparison, the take-off runway at DFW is 13,000 feet long. Stopping the jet at Orange County is as dicey as it is at Mexico City.

Most airports fall somewhere in between, but runway length and airport pressure altitude aren’t the only factors to consider. The wild cards are always the weather and the runway surface condition: all 13,000 feet at DFW are about as useful as the 5,700 at SNA if the runway is slick from rain, sleet, snow, or ice. There’s no free ride on landing.

Plus, add this, would-be Captain: you don’t know what you don’t know.

There are those who think because a runway is long, clean and dry that stopping can or should be a leisurely affair: some copilots have actually pre-briefed “I’m going to use minimum braking or reverse and let it roll.”

The hell you say.

No matter what runway you land on, there is a certain landing distance required due to the kinetic energy the brakes must absorb to stop the tons of metal, fuel, bones and blood still thundering forward at flying speed. Whether that distance is 3,000 feet or 8,000 feet, it makes the most sense to take care of the kinetic energy right away.  Once it’s absorbed and the jet decelerated, you can do whatever you want with the runway remaining.

Remember the basic lesson of flight, and the number one item listed as useless to a pilot:

“Runway behind you!” It’s useless, wasted, history, toast. If you’re still rolling without braking properly, you’re toast if anything goes wrong after touchdown.

And there ain’t no ‘splaining it to the FAA after you don’t stop on the runway.

Same goes for the knuckleheads who float a thousand feet or so down the runway fishing for a smooth landing: heretics!

Here is what God has told us about landings:

No floating, easing it down. On speed–neither too fast (more kinetic energy) nor too slow (high nose angle, possible tail strike) and within the zone Moses above is stressing–even though aircraft were for him still a couple thousand years down the road.

Look, can we speak frankly as pilots here? Who the heck cares what the passengers say as they deplane? They have no idea what a good landing is and even if they did, from where they’re sitting, they really have no way to tell if you’re on speed and at the right point. I’ve seen them get off saying, “Good landing” when I know the actual landing was too far down the runway and not on speed.

Forget about them and their ignorance–you have a job to do: on speed, at the correct touchdown point and sometimes, firmly: if the runway is wet, we don’t flirt with hydroplaning. I don’t give a damn if to the passengers it feels like everyone in China just jumped off a chair–we plant it, stop it and taxi to the gate.

Okay, time out: are you easily bored? If so, skip down to below the math (I really hate math too). If not, read on.

Engineering data shows that hydroplaning is most likely at the speed that is 9 times the square root of the tire pressure. Our main tires are at around 205 PSI. So, 9 x 14.32 = 128.88 knots as the primary hydroplane zone.

So the smart money gets the plane slowed below that speed as soon as practicable, because whatever runway there is behind you is no help to you, and whatever runway there is ahead may have an added hydroplaning factor you could have avoided: a puddle, a slick of reverted rubber; whatever: stop now, play smooth pilot later.

That formula works for your car, too: 9 x 6 = 54 mph as your primary liability to hydroplaning–and like in a jet, don’t give up: once you get through that speed zone via smooth deceleration, you will get control back. Too many people on the highway and on the runway think that once hydroplaning starts–that’s it. Stay with it, you will slow and regain control. And that is today’s

Okay, we’re back. So God gave Moses this to help him:

Autobrakes: the greatest advancement in commercial aircraft since flight attendants gave up on big hair (breathe easy on top-of-descent). The “RTO” setting is for “Rejected Take Off,” or abort. We’ve talked about that recently. You don’t subscribe? That’s a shame.

Then the 1,2 and 3 settings provide graduated brake application depending on stopping distance. Then there’s “MAX,” which is an acronym for “Holy Shit.” I use “Holy Shit” on the ultra short runway, or the ultra-long like Toronto in a blizzard when the  tower says, “Cleared to land, you’re the first, it’s mostly plowed, let us know how the braking is.” Remember, there’s no “one size fits all.”

At any point, you can take over braking manually simply by pressing on the rudder pedals. But especially if you’re using differential rudder, it’s best to leave them on as they’re not prone to apply asymmetric braking as would be likely if you were pushing one rudder pedal more than the other for crosswind crab control. I usually override the autobrakes slowing through 100 knots as we near runway high-speed turn-off speed (80 knots). And if you use  the “Holy Shit” setting, you’ll need to add power to taxi off the runway. That’s a good thing.

Now, you’re fifteen miles out, maybe 5,000 feet high (okay, more math: a three degree glide slope allows a civilized descent rate of 700 to 1,000 feet per minute depending on the ground speed, so three times the altitude is a good distance to begin descent). Slow to below 200 so you can “throw all the shit out,” as one of my SWA pilot buddies says, referring to the gear and flaps. The flaps have a bunch of limiting speeds, and 190 is below most of ’em. Makes it simple.

If you’re the lucky guy in the left seat of a 737-800, you don’t even need to look inside from this point on, except to verify gear and flap positions before landing.

Now it’s a matter of guiding the jet down the glide path, touching down in the correct touchdown zone, then braking smartly and efficiently. Got it?

Enough blabber–want to watch it all come together?

This video was passed to me by a friend of mine a few years ago. He was killed last Spring in an ATV accident, but his memory lives on with those who knew him in the Air Force and afterward. The video was not shot from the aircraft type that I fly, but it’s an airport I’m very familiar with, and it has many of the complications we just talked about. A tip on the video: if an ad pops up, just click on the “x” in the right corner to get rid of it. And if you click on the triangle above and just right of the “360p,” you can choose a higher video quality.

Now, take all of the factors we’ve just gone over into consideration, then turn the approach and landing into a symphony. Please remain seated till the aircraft comes to a complete stop, and thanks for flying with us today.

Coming Soon:

What do the sixth graders of Miss Giulia’s class in Ottawa want to know about flying?

Cool stuff! Stay tuned . . .

Silver Wings Then Other Things: Part 3

This is Part 3 of the series putting you in the captain’s seat.

Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

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I love the smell of jet fuel in the morning.

Okay, maybe right before noon–I don’t bid early flights and since I’ve been here over 25 years, I don’t have to do the buttcrack of dawn flights anymore. But it all leads to the same place: ready for take-off.

And whether that’s your first solo or your most recent take-off line-up, it’s the best part of the world ever: nose pointed down the line, strapped in tight, slight bend at the knees so as to have easy rudder throw in either direction, holding brake pressure on top of the rudder pedals, waiting for release.

Calm. All the engine instruments are flat-lined like a comatose patient, breathing; heartbeat but not much else. Idle RPM on both the giant fan and the turbine.

These new jet engines are mechanical and technological marvels, gi-normous Swiss watch-like machines: tolerances to the thousandth of an inch, spinning at 30-50,000 RPM for hours, tirelessly, core temps averaging blast furnace heat all the while. Each engine weighs over two tons, but puts out 27,000 pounds of thrust, so with both at full power, you have 26 tons of thrust at your fingertips for take-off or whenever you need it.

The pair of CFM-56 engines will gulp down nearly a thousand gallons of jet fuel between take-off and level off, but the marvel is, even heavy-weight we’ll climb to 38,000 feet in about fifteen minutes.  That’s also attributable to the Boeing wing: they were wise enough to increase the size of the wing as they stretched the airframe. Not so with Douglas jets like the DC-9–they just added length to the fuselage and kept the original wing.

I like the feel of the fat, swept and cambered-up Boeing wing, which as a result of the lengthening has a lighter wing-loading than the stretched Douglas.

It just feels more stable and reliable both in the low-speed regime and almost more importantly, at altitude. So on take-off, there’s just a confidence you can bank on with the Boeing: it has power and lift to spare.

“Cleared for take-off” are the words you’re waiting for. Once you gang-bar the exterior lights, the First officer will call, “Before take-off checklist complete.”

You stand the throttles up and immediately, the CRT displaying engine instruments springs to life. The computers below the flight deck measure the throttle position and project where the RPM of both the giant fan and the subsequent rotors will be in a matter of seconds. They stabilize at 40%, then the actual rotor speed catches up as the engines snarl to life. Satisfied at 40%, I punch the take-off power button on the throttles and they move to the position that the engine computers say matches the temperature and the other parameters we programmed and will produce the thrust we’re expecting. I double check that they are within 2% of what I expect, then turn my eyes to the runway stretched out ahead.

It’s best to cast your eyes way down the runway so as to have a good peripheral awareness: engine failures will be most obvious from the initial yaw, plus, directional control at over a hundred miles per hour is best judged with a long view.

Now I’m steering with the rudder pedals, trying to just nudge the nosewheel–stay off the centerline lights with their annoying thumping–until between forty and seventy knots when the forty-foot tall rudder takes a good enough bite of the air to become effective at aerodynamic control.

“Eighty knots,” is the first callout, and it comes fast at take-off power. That’s the abort dividing line: up till eighty, I can consider aborting for various systems problems. After eighty, the abort response is different and because of the kinetic energy built up in our 70-ton freight train, stopping is much more critical a maneuver with serious consequences in terms of brake energy.

Plus, it’s not wise to try to arbitrate at over a hundred miles per hour whether a system indication stems from a failure that would affect our ability to stop: brakes, anti-skid, hydraulics, electrics.

That’s why I’m relieved when the aircraft announces “V1.” That means we’re beyond abort speed–and I’m thinking only of flying, even on just one engine if need be.

Almost immediately, the First Officer calls,”Rotate” and I ease the yoke back gently. Have to let the 737 fly off  and get some tail clearance from the pavement before smoothly rotating the nose up to take-off pitch, which is shown in my heads-up display (HUD). Off we go.

When I see vertical velocity climbing in the HUD, plus increasing radio altitude numbers, I simultaneously give the hand signal  (flat open right palm moving up) and say, “Positive rate–gear up.” The hand signal is in case my voice is blocked by radio chatter or other extraneous noise.

The HUD’s also showing me the energy building on the wing, plus the speed trend. Call for the flaps up before the limit speed, engage vertical navigation (“V-Nav”) at 2500 feet. Track the departure outbound, centering up the radial. I sneak peaks down from the HUD to the Nav display so as to anticipate the turns ahead. Roll into the turns easy–the 737 flies really tight and responsive–and carve out a smooth arc.

First milestone: ten thousand feet. Roll in some nose-down trim so as to accelerate beyond the 10,000′ limit of 250 knots. A quick check to be sure that the cabin is climbing and that fuel is flowing properly: above 10,000′ we can burn center tank fuel if we didn’t on take-off or if there was less than 5,000 pounds at take-off; less than 3,000 pounds now and you reach up and open the fuel crossfeed manifold and turn off the aft fuel boost pump.

Eyes back on the road. Trim. Smoothness. Coffee.

Before you know it, the chronometer says around 18 minutes elapsed time and the altimeter reads 40,000 feet. Trim it up, level and smooth, trim out any yaw, engage the number 1 autopilot. Check the fuel burn, the fuel flow and the quantity. Cabin pressure stable at the correct differential value. Nav tracking properly. Cool: we’re cruising.

So now, here’s you:

No, not just punching the time clock–counting fuel flow, measuring miles remaining against fuel and miles per minute. Print the uplink of the destination weather. Was your forecast correct? No, you didn’t do the weather forecast–you predicted what fuel you’d need on arrival for the approach in use. Kind of glad to have a little extra in the hip pocket, right? Conservative fuel planning.

Note the climb point and more importantly, the gross weight where that can occur. Pay attention; note when it arrives early and use it: tailwinds or headwinds shift the point, but track the weight.

Now it’s time for the P.A. Nobody cares or pays attention–especially the flight attendants who will ask “what’s our ETA” even though you just announced it. Whatever. It’s always partly cloudy, make up a temperature, read off the latest ETA, “glad to have you flying with us today; for now, sit back, relax” blah-blah blah, get ready for the approach.

Uplinked destination weather.

You know the arrival winds. You got the uplinked current weather and terminal information. Set up the approach in the course windows and frequency selectors. Yes, it can change while you’re enroute, but now is the time to set up the approach and get it straight in your head.

There’s the art in what you do: translate this schematic into three dimensional movement in pitch, bank and roll. Each approach has its own peculiarities–so start thinking it through now.

Meanwhile, however, just a constant flow of navigation, fuel flow and performance considerations. Keeping a fuel and navigation log, constant contact with Air Traffic Control:

That and maybe some of the catering from First Class provisioned as “Crew meals.”

The best catering of breads and desserts is out of Mexico and Canada, I think. But at any rate, it’s probably good to stay “calorized”  as a survival tool: time changes, sleep disruptions, long hours, extremes of climate and especially the prolonged hours in a low-humidity cabin–it all takes a toll, physically. And flight crews work in that realm week after week. At least you can buttress your health with the caloric energy you need. It’s not always available between flights.

Manage the fuel. Weather radar and traffic watch. Ride and wind reports, both from other aircraft and uplinked from our Ops center. navigation–course modifications, shortcuts, direct clearances, higher altitudes when we’ve burned off enough fuel.

So it goes for hours on end.

The nav systems are plotting a descent already. They have drawn an imaginary line from altitude to our destination and I can see constantly the angle and the rate of descent changing as we draw nearer. I’m going to induce the descent–with ATC clearance, of course–a little early, maybe fifteen miles or so depending on winds, to make the descent a little flatter and more comfortable in the cabin. Besides, the automation doesn’t account for ATC restrictions added to those already published. Let’s get ahead of the game.

HEFOE Check: Hydraulics, electrics, fuel, oxygen, engines; periodic checks, the mantra from the Air Force days–nostalgic, but appropriate still in an airliner at the top of descent. Which, I’ve decided in my mental picture of the descent angles, distances, speeds and times, is now.

“Tell them we’d like lower,” I say to the First Officer. He nods, instinctively aware that it’s about time to start our descent. This is where passengers in the cabin notice the slight decrease in engine noise and a bit of a nose-down tilt.

The shoulder harness come back on in the cockpit; headsets replace overhead speakers and boom mikes take over from the hand mikes. Approach plates are reviewed on more time; crossing altitudes and speeds, intercepts and radials. This is the fun part: translate the myriad of plotted out instructions into a graceful series of maneuvers culminating with a safe touchdown, then dissipating the kinetic energy of sixty tons thundering down the runway at about one hundred and sixty miles an hour, bringing the whole remarkable aircraft to walking speed, then to a gentle stop at the gate. Piece of cake.

Next week, Part 4: the approach and landing.

Silver Wings, Then Other Things: Part 2.

This is part 2 of a multi-part series putting you in the captain’s seat. Want to start with Part 1? Click here.

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Flight plan? Got it. Fuel load? Fine. Take-off data? Got that too. The ten-yard-long printout of notices and info and weather affecting our flight and route? Folded accordian style. Cup of McDonald’s coffee, black? In the cupholder by your right knee.

Something about that: a simple pleasure, that black coffee, plus an opportunity to make a donation to the Ronald McDonald House at the counter every time. I like the idea of doing something good for kids every time I pass by McD’s in the airport.

But also, in “the bubble,” it’s a cool luxury: taxiing out, steering with feet on the rudder pedals, minimal and exact responses to the required challenge-and-response checklist read by the First Officer–and sipping my coffee. The jet feels loaded up; weighty. You can feel the 112 feet of wing out there, the 40 foot tall rudder buffeted by gusts. Definitely an airship lumbering on the ground. Radios and official responses; taxi clearances and I say “okay” as soon as they’re given so my F/O knows I heard and understand.

Other than that and the radio chatter, silence. Because I don’t want anything on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) except for official, flight-related verbiage. There’s too much that could get screwed up, too much that needs to be checked before take-off to allow a layer of distraction. Plus, it’s the official policy: “sterile cockpit” below 10,000 feet. That is, no non-flight related talk, period. Saves the bubble, the concentration, for important stuff.

Sterile Cockpit.

Because here’s the problem with advanced flight automation: an input error, left undetected, can have disastrous consequences. A keystroke error can lead to faulty flight guidance commands, from the basics of pitch and bank to the routing errors. The only hedge against the hazard is diligent checking of all input. We did the route check at the gate, remember? Now we verify that the data-linked upload and our own inputs are valid: gross weight, center of gravity, fuel weight, take-off and abort speeds, climb speeds, every number associated with performance. That’s as we’re rolling, and as I’m ensuring we don’t violate anyone’s taxiway or runway space, steering with my feet–sipping my coffee, of course.

Ready for your eye test? "Give way to an RJ on Charlie, then taxi east on Bravo, short of Charlie 3."

Several numbers you must see, every time, before take-off–it’s not enough to have the First Officer read them aloud (“We planned 155,000 pounds, we’re actually 156,500 pounds . . .”). I will physically view the data-linked final weight numbers, I’ve already written the planned weight on my side panel clipboard as a reference, and I HAVE to see the correct number on the Control Display Unit screen. And at the same time, not taxi into the dirt or worse, any other jet. Not so easy at night.

But no worries–if it gets too hectic, timeout: “Let’s hold on the checklist here till we’re stopped.” Ever wonder why there’s a delay before take-off? While other jets are coming and going? Often, this is why. After leaving the gate, I’m completely detached from schedule constraints–we’ll get airborne as soon as all checks are thoroughly and correctly performed. As I tell F/Os when the tendency to rush starts to rear its ugly head, “We don’t get paid to rush. And if anything goes wrong as a result of rushing, no one’s going to be there to bail your ass out.”

Here’s where I like the silence, the bubble: no extraneous concerns beyond this flight. A departure path clear of weather and traffic. Verified speeds and weights in the flight guidance system, so the pitch and bank commands will be valid. But if they’re not, a mental review of what I know are the limits: greater than nine degrees of pitch up will drag the tail on the runway. Doesn’t matter what the flight guidance commands, my hands will not exceed a limit.

Waiting. Quick mental review of high-speed abort items: fire, failure, fear or shear. That is, after 80 knots, only an engine fire or failure, or my split-second judgment that I “fear” the aircraft is structurally not airworthy, or a detected windshear will cause me to abort the take-off before max abort speed, and after that–we’re flying with whatever we have.

I have options a hundred miles down the road, but also for liftoff: best single-engine climb angle, if we need it; left downwind to land south if we do. McChord 20 miles south with lots of runway. Fire and failure litanies. Mt. Ranier, all 14,410 feet of her, and where she is at all times.

Got it? 165 others are assuming that you do–so you’d better.

“American 116, line up and wait.” The tower’s direction. Real quiet now. Last minute runway checklist items. Ease in the power–there may be smaller jets behind us. Swing wide, line up on the center stripe; hold the brakes. Fire, failure, fear or shear. Minimum safe altitude. Engine failure profile. Initial level off altitude. No other thoughts. And no worries–this is gonna be fun.

Departure path is clear. “American 1116, cleared for take-off, runway one-six, wind one-five-zero at ten.”

“Rolling on one-six, American 1116.” All exterior lights on.  Another swig of java–we’ll get back to it on climb out–stand the throttles up; gages spring forward, then toggle take-off power on the autothrottles, hack the elapsed time button on the chronometer.

Both engines growl to take-off power–love that feel as they bite the air, compress it, mix in jet fuel and burn it, shoving us forward. Fifteen hundred miles to DFW–let’s get airborne.

Next Post: Part 3, enroute, and the landing.

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Holiday Travel Weirdness: The Jethead Chronicles.

What is it about holiday season travel that brings out such weirdness? I’m not just talking about the vagrant standing out in front of our favorite Seattle crew hangout with the helpful sign:

He also offered to be my “bodyguard” for $5, but I was with Ben The Dependable Copilot, and Ben’s about 6′ 2″ and weighs in about 220, so I passed. But still.

And even Pike’s Market Place was a little off the game today as well:

So just getting away from the airport doesn’t seem to limit the weirdness this time of year.

Now, at the airport, odd stuff is a given. That’s because odd people still have very little time and so must go by air, I suppose, to share their weirdness with family and friends.

Some folks just don’t get out much, but this being the holiday season, they’re of necessity heading to “somewhere else” and you know what the fastest way is from point “A” to point “B,” right?

Maybe there’s too much of a good thing on either end–eating, drinking, whatever. Problem is, airline crews are kind of stuck in the middle: between wherever “here” and “there” is for the traveling public, our workplace is the waiting room.

I guess folks just make themselves at home, or forget they’re not at home. Either way, our “workplace” is more bizarre than ever during the holidays as a result. The trick is to not only act like you don’t notice (step around the seemingly dead body for whom apparently stretching out on the floor is fine), but to try to act nonchalant when you do–which sometimes is difficult.

The on-board weirdness is predictable, with holiday travelers who are often infrequent flyers. Go ahead, mop the lavatory floor with your socks, Mr. Seldom Travels By Air. I don’t want to even think about it, but I am grateful that at least somebody’s cleaning that outhouse floor, even if the flight attendants are gagging when you do.

Or, go ahead and ask if there’s food on this flight. Has a nice, nostalgic ring to it, especially since there hasn’t been a meal served in coach this century.

I don’t mind for two reasons. One is because no matter how many times airlines, air travel organizations or even travel agents tell you that you need to bring your own food (and water if you want real convenience), you’d rather be surprised.

And second, the cockpit door is locked from the inside, so you can’t see what I’m eating anyway

Whoo-hoo: hot fudge brownies for the crew!

and really, you wouldn’t want to know anyway.  It’s pretty scary up front. Right?

No, honestly, what it is is peaceful. Darling Bride used to come up to the cockpit when we were flying at night and say how it was a cozy cocoon. It is, and I appreciate that–especially compared to what goes on in the back of the plane.

Phoenix glides by 7 miles below.

Gives you time and silence to put things into perspective. When you do, you realize that holiday travel is the best: it’s more than just business or even vacations. It’s families; it’s reunions and gatherings and children. It’s not just air travel, it’s yearlong anticipation of children and adults alike.

Our Chief Pilot–a true leader who voluntarily flies  on every holiday–uses this example to explain: The CEO of Revlon once said, “We don’t sell cosmetics–we sell hope.” Truly, what we do in these holiday travel weeks is just as magic: it’s hope for many, joy for the kids and for the adults who love them.

Come to think of it, weirdness and all, this is a great time of year to be an airline pilot, to fly families and friends to reunions and holiday gatherings.

I’ll be in the air this week–next week too, looking to make somebody’s travel as quick and easy as possible so they to can be with family and friends for the holiday. Really, it’s the least I can do considering they’ll mop up the lav floor without even knowing it.

Songs In The Key of Flight

It’s definitely the Giddy-Up Chorus howling out there on the wings as soon as you press that Takeoff Power button on the throttles. Last eastbound flight out of Las Vegas, so we’re pretty light–everyone’s either already beat it out of town or is still in a casino somewhere trying to break even. Although they don’t realize it, in Vegas that’s winning.

Funny thing to pop in and out of that world so briefly. For me, it’s all about getting in between the other air traffic and the mountains, then getting out as quickly as practical, around those mountains, then climb as high as possible to ride that jetstream tailwind home.

During preflight, the cockpit sounds like an orchestra pit before the show, with hydraulic pumps whining like a string section warming up, the kettle drum thud of cargo loading, then huge doors locking shut. The forward galley door whomps open with a blast of fresh air and the clatter of catering carts trundling on and off the plane. Two flight attendants try to squeeze into the cockpit and huddle against the swirl of cold night air, mixing their chatter with the drone of air traffic control on two radios on speakers overhead.

We’re all in matching polyester costumes, waiting for the curtain as the audience troops in: the edge of night travelers, worn out from whatever they did in Las Vegas, resigned to arrive on the east coast at dawn–I’ll take them halfway there, then hope to dodge the wrong way drunk drivers on Airport Freeway to get home myself after midnight. It’s an easy crowd leaving Las Vegas–out of money, out of vacation, often hung over. The exact opposite of the inbound crowd.

Had lunch myself hours ago and a thousand miles away. My fortune read “you will travel with the person of your dreams.” Is that what they’re doing in the back? It’s hard to remember when you’re work is travel that in back, it’s a passage to somewhere or from somewhere and some one. And the person of my dreams is two time zones away, getting ready for sleep, but never too far from my mind.

Huh? My First Officer? Guess I won't use the lotto numbers.

We’re going through our lines carefully, checking that everything’s in order, all systems performing as they’ll need to for the next thousand miles. He reads, I check, I answer, he confirms. It’s all too complex to just have at it. We’re careful now so as not to have to be “resourceful” later.

The agent announces curtain time: “Everyone’s on board–okay to close up, Captain?”

I thanks the agent for the good job boarding the flight–whether it’s good or not, I just know they’re hassled and need a pat on the back. Then it’s show time: places, everyone, places! Lap belts, shoulder harnesses, crank the rudder pedals forward to get full throw. Don the headset, adjust the boom mike and wait for the cue from the ground crew. “Chocks are pulled, everything’s buttoned up, we’re ready for brake release when you are, Captain.”

Glance to the right at the warning lights on the overhead panel–trust but verify–to ensure all the cargo doors are closed. “Brakes are released, stand by.”

Glance to the right again. “He says they’re ready downstairs.” That’s the First Officer’s cue to call ground control for pushback clearance.

And now it’s time to strike up the band. “Turning number Two,” I say, hacking a clock to time the start sequence.

Gonna take a big bite out of the night sky, aren't we?

Valves respond to the switch I just twisted, channeling high-pressure air into the huge turbine section. It begins to moan, vibrate, whirl; one of my favorite sounds in the whole world: a jet engine starting. Never ever tire of that sound.

The left engine joins the symphony. Numbers tell me they’re both in tune: 20% N1, 40% N2, 600 degrees Centigrade at idle, 800 pounds of fuel per hour. Oil pressure. Hydraulic pressure. Electrical power from the generators. Amen.

They’re a perfectly tuned duet, and they’ll spin at 30,000 rpm for as long as we have jet fuel and oil, the latter as much for cooling as for lubrication. From behind, a virtual blast furnace: I’ve seen it, taxiing behind another 737; a devilish smelter glow–you can actually see the ring of fire if you’re close enough.

We join the parade of floats with winking lights rolling toward the runway. More numbers along the way in a litany of challenge and response: planned weight, actual weight, power settings, speeds, distances, maximums, engine failure routes and safe altitudes, minimum climb gradients, hold downs, departure speeds, obstacle clearance altitudes, initial level off. Crosschecked, crammed into my head.

The cockpit’s dark save the instrument glow. I transition to ghost vision, as I call it: the Heads Up Display–or HUD. Everything on my primary flight display is projected on the glass in front of my face so I never have to look down in flight.

But instead of the multiple colors that help separate function, everything’s a ghostly glowing greenish aqua. And it swims: the airspeed tape runs upward like the dollar signs on the gas pump. Then when we lift off the right side begins to jump with altitude and vertical velocity.

Can’t get lost in it, mesmerized–there’s a jet to be flown. Take it in subconsciously, they tell you, just fly and hold that in your peripheral vision.

It’s all in your head as you roll down the runway chanting to yourself fire, failure, fear or shear. After 80 knots, that’s all you’re stopping for, so it’s all you’re looking for: engine fire, engine failure, a “fear” in my judgment that some structural failure has left the jet unflyable (good luck determining that at 150 mph) or windshear.

Luke, I'm your FATHER . . .

I’d rather handle everything else in the air. Since we’re lightweight tonight, when I shove the throttles up and hit the “TOGA” (Takeoff-Go-Around”) power button, we leap forward. The wing slices the air and rises. A half dozen computers sing to themselves and each other, figuring fuel flow, engine temperature and pressure, wind speed and direction, ground speed–the engines snarl and buck.

We lift off.

Ghost vision tells me the lift vector, the flight path, the course, the wind, our speed, our climb performance, compass heading, on-course tracking and deviation and a hundred bits of changing information. Hands and feet on ailerons and rudder, I trace a line in the sky invisible to everyone except for me, and anyone on the ground watching the arc we inscribe in the sky, strobes flashing, running lights and exterior spots like an arc weld in the sky.

I can see it; I live and breathe it, day after day after day. And if you listen, you can hear it too: riding the righteous fire, we sail off in a buzzing roar of high by-pass fanjets hurling us up to the forty-thousand foot level, the final act you can see from the ground: a tiny speck of light that arcs up and away, taking the show far and away at five hundred miles per hour.  A contrail in the moonlight, the song plays on, the chorus that carries us home.

Who IS the airline Captain anyway?

Depends on who you ask. But though it seems obvious to me from the inside, it’s a legitimate question I ask from the outside of other exclusive professions.

Well, I can give you a look behind the curtain in the airline pilot world if you’re interested. And also the perspective of captain, which is even more unique: I can remember flying in the First Officer position on the DC-10 one dark and stormy night going into Chicago. Options were running out; The Boss had to make a decision–and fast–whether to divert or to commit to the approach.

He looked to me for advice, which I gave him. “Not sure what the best thing would be,” he said, as if fishing for more.  I smiled slyly and looked back across the cockpit, saying, “Yeah, I bet that’s a tough decision.”

Because he had all of the authority, not me, and in fact I had the luxury of sitting back and watching him sweat it out. It’s good to be captain, right? It’s also tough to be captain as well.

Well, I’ve had the experience now from the captain’s perspective nonstop since 1991. That’s when I got where I am, but not how. Let’s go way back.

Okay, we don’t have to go back that far, do we? Seems kind of boring, to me. But, that is where I came from and it has bearing, whether I’d like to admit it or not, on where I am now.

Seventh grade, control line planes and they really flew. Built ’em, eventually designing my own balsa wood constructions; slap on that infallible .049 engines and drive all the neighbors crazy with the noise, flying and eventually crashing my planes (learning a loop was easier in a jet than one of these control line planes) then fixing them to fly again. Did that all the way through high school. Radio controlled planes? Too expensive.

And along those lines, in college “too expensive” won out over “too stupid:” flying lessons were way out of my budget (I paid my own way through college) but skydiving was relatively cheap. You had to pay for a lift, which wasn’t all that much, and you were in flight just like that. Of course then you had make your own way back to the terra firma, but that was even cooler: flying without the plane! But still in the sky.

Bought my own parachute, budgeted a morning and afternoon jump on weekends. Thought I was immortal, which is really stupid, especially since over those years I saw a lot of folks get hurt jumping and took a few knocks myself and actually split a helmet when the wind dragged me across the asphalt and into a parked car (black eye; onlookers clapped because they thought it was planned). Dumb, dumb idea, but I learned a thing or two about life and death and fear in the process. Those lessons served me well later, as I’ll explain.

The Air Force helped me break that skydiving habit my senior year by paying for flying lessons. And one of my buddies who’d borrowed my skydiving rig made it final by shredding my chute when he landed in a tree.

Actually, it was “flight screening” the Air Force paid for: who had two left feet? Who should the Air Force not invest a million dollars in for jet flight school because they’d end up washed out or dead?

Of the fifty-some guys in my college graduating class who were qualified and competing for a pilot slot, I somehow ended up in the four who were actually selected for flight school. One washed out, one was killed flying low-level formation and the other guy now flies for Delta. But that’s another story.

Bigger and better flying followed. The Air Force decided to ship me off to Okinawa first, then Hawaii, for a total of seven years in the Pacific and worldwide. Good flying, around the clock and around the world.

And a few more pilot compadres got killed doing it, I should note to be honest. But we figured the risk was worth the reward, if not always the duty.

Couple buddies flying back in the states let me know “the airlines are hiring.” Yeah maybe, I thought. I have orders to fly the above White Rocket stateside now. Do I want to screw that up by getting out and starting over?

For the hell of it, I did a couple interviews. That’s all it took.

State-of-the-art jets and a wide open future: you could fly till sixty if you wanted! The Air Force would have you tied to a desk by your late thirties. You’d be done in the cockpit.

Sat side-saddle for a year as DC-10 engineer. On that jet, I flew with legends and gods, in my mind anyway: these were pilots who’d flown a hundred combat sorties in Vietnam. Some had spent time as POWS. They’d flown the classics of the jet age, from Thuds to the Deuce to the Sabre jet; you name it.

Some had flown with my father, a thirty-year USAF flyer. They were gentlemen, they had been baptized with fire in the air flying exotic stuff and even the first jetliners back when I was still in diapers. They were captains the likes of which, honestly, no longer exist.

I was humbled. I shut up and watched and learned: here’s how you lead a crew, here’s how you calmly handle the whirlwind when it erupts and you’re responsible for 250 plus lives.

Then I graduated to a copilot’s seat. Moving forward in the cockpit, now working one-on-one with that old breed of captain. I watched and learned. I fought the weather, the mechanical stuff, the air traffic problems, the schedule plus my own fatigue.

And loved it.

Earned my own set of captain’s wings six years almost to the day after I was hired. That’s unheard of today, where most First Officers have been here at least ten, some as many as twenty years. So I’m nothing special–rather, just damn lucky.

Now I live with what I call the captain’s pyramid, which probably isn’t what you think.

Sure, you’re at the top of the heap, blah-blah-blah. But for me, it’s now about being the guy to whom everyone else says, “Yeah, I bet that’s a tough decision” as I did to that DC-10 captain for whom I was the First Officer so many years ago.

The captain’s view is from inside that pyramid, and as you go up, as the flight becomes challenging due to weather or emergencies or a million other problems, you’re shoved upward, like it or not, ready or not, and lives are in the balance.

And it gets narrower. And there’s less room, but you have to make it work. You have to find the safe way out for you and your crew and all the souls on board.

That’s where who I am, the boring part I was describing before, takes over. It’s the lessons of calmness when hurtling downward at terminal velocity, a snarled parachute overhead and the realization that you have one shot at manually deploying your reserve chute–so make it a good one.

It’s the stormy nights over the most distant South Pacific nowhere land, a thousand miles from any shore and the knowledge that you must get on that tanker boom, vertigo or not from the moonlight through cloud breaks plus the turbulence and constant turning to avoid weather scrambling your equilibrium, you must and will hang on for your fuel–or your life is going to become “interesting. ”

It gives one the quiet calm at the eye of the storm, nose pointed up, climbing for all she’s worth but losing to the mountain you’ve been errantly vectored into in the thunderstorms of peak-ringed Mexico City.

There’s neither panic nor fear, in fact there’s a deathly calm as you do the math and search for any inch of advantage you can get, the only emotion being a distant backroom anger at finding yourself here again. What’s scary is you’re not scared–you’re on task, concentrating.

When that engine quits or worse, explodes; when the weather screws you and the windshear grabs for you, when the terrain (thanks, Mexico City Approach) smacks you in the face: you do what you gotta do. Calmly.

Because that’s where I came from. Like most captains, this ain’t my first rodeo.

And I’ve shared that look, words unspoken, with other captains on the crew bus. We’ve been in the same storm, faced the same narrowing of the pyramid. We’ve been steeled enough through years of the relentless fire to the point where we claim that deliberation, that scary calm, and do what we have to do. Nobody says a word, but the look traded says, goddam, we did that again and did it well, didn’t we? Nobody likes or goes after the top of the pyramid, but we all know it comes after us and we will stand our ground.

That’s kind of it. That’s who we are, which now you know, is because of where we come from.

Not everyone has a military background. Some of my favorite First Officers, the most capable pilots I know and the ones I absolutely need as the top of the pyramid closes in on us, are of all civilian background. And the ex-military folks, well, we’re all pretty much diecut and stamped.

I wear the four stripes which yeah, cuts a path down the jetbridge during boarding. But that’s all eyewash to me, just things passengers need to see to feel confident at shotgun speed seven miles up, comfortably unaware of the pyramid closing in on us. It really doesn’t mean squat there.

So I really don’t give a damn about the cosmetics of it all. Flying is what matters and what decides success or failure, not the outward trappings of the position. Which is why although now you do know, you needn’t even be concerned about who’s responsible for getting your feet safely back on the ground, predatory but invisible (to you) pyramid or no. My gig is flying, living up to the legacy of the giants who came before me and who taught me, employing the hard lessons I learned along the way.

That’s who your captain is, no matter what airline you’re on or who’s in the left seat of your jet. And from my perspective as an airline captain three decades after I first soloed, that’s really what it’s all about.

Who is the airline captain? Now you know.

From Sea Level to 737 Captain: Judgment Day.

NOTE: This is part of a series that examines firsthand what it’s like for an airline pilot

to transition to a new airliner. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.

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Judgment Day: this is what it all leads up to: the FAA rating ride. That is, another aircraft “type” rating–that means that the FAA grants you the privilege of flying a specific aircraft type.

It’s mainly a captain thing. First Officers usually don’t get the Type Rating, although on our 737 fleet they do. Our airline decided that since the 737 fleet flies internationally –including south America and the Caribbean–they’d type all the F/Os to have complete versatility manning both the International and Domestic divisions.

And a rating ride is usually done by a designated airline examiner, meaning an airline pilot Check Airman (you were one yourself on the MD-80 fleet) is designated as the FAA certifying official. But for you? Sorry, it’s not your lucky day.

The Check Airman giving you your “polish work”–endless landings with ever increasing crosswinds, engine failures at lift off–casually mentioned, “By the way, the FAA Principal Operations Inspector will be observing you on your  rating ride.

Say what?!!

Like a rating ride isn’t enough: let’s add the feds, the guy who can revoke your pilot certificate with the stroke of a pen based solely on what he observes in your check.

“But don’t worry,” he added quickly, “he’s a really nice guy.” Yeah, with small fingers, right? And a set of beady little eyes watching everything you do for four hours, judging you. Judgment day.

Your luck is really lousy, isn’t it? You are so screwed.

But you’re getting ahead of yourself. Let’s revisit the last week. Here’s the plan:

Simulator Day 1 through Day 5 are with a simulator instructor: procedures, basic maneuvers, procedural flows. The sim instructor spends about two hours before each sim period going over the complex computer work we’ll doing with the Flight Management Computers (FMCs) in order to effect the performance and navigation we need to accomplish.

And it’s truly Byzantine in the complexity and layering of systems interaction that must be managed while flying the jet at the same time. The FMCs manage both vertical and lateral navigation, but there’s a catch: you have to program it properly and command the correct mode. Not so easy.

The hands-on is better, being something you can understand. And the neighborhood is becoming more familiar, too. You can find the switches and knobs and grouped systems you need to operate the jet.

But it’s one thing to DO the programming, and quite another to call for it while you’re hand flying. Kind of like patting your head and rubbing your stomach. The process is, programming the FMC, commanding change through one of six modes, monitoring the implementation of  the change on the Mode Control Panel lights, verify that with the proper annunciation on the primary flight display then the performance instruments, and then ultimately, the seat of the pants: is that enough power? Pitch? Roll?

Now see how that plays out on the Nav display: are we intercepting the lateral course? Will the wind shift the lead point past a mandatory fly-over  point? And vertically, will we make the assigned crossing restriction at the correct speed?

For you, the answers must be squared away with your cyborg-vision: the trick of the HUD, besides deciphering all of the data, is looking THROUGH it. Meaning, seeing the target through the HUD while gathering the data peripherally, not fixating on the ghostly green  glowing data stream itself.

When you’re rocketing down the runway, near take-off speed you’re traveling at over 200 feet PER SECOND. You cover a football field in the blink of an eye in the nosecone of a seventy ton missile of metal, fuel, bone and blood. You have a nanosecond to decide from the data before you–aural, visual and tactile–not only should we stop, but can we?

So we practice constantly in the simulator. Blasting down a wet runway, you keep the diamond shaped speed bug at 80 knots in your awareness. Any abort after that is only for the big four: fire, failure, fear or shear.

Two of these bad boys slung under the wings put out a combined 54,000 pounds of thrust.

That is, engine fire, engine failure, “fear” or your split second judgment that something has made the jet un-air worthy, or “shear,” which is wind shear. And that’s always the captain’s decision, and he’d better get it right because on the line, no “do overs.” It’s for keeps.

So rolling down the runway, near max abort speed, yellow caution light comes on; “continue” you announce correctly. Another time, at 120 knots, a fire bell. “Abort!” and you grab the controls, yank both engines into full reverse then through the most accurate gage–the seat of your pants–determine if the Autobrake system is handling the deceleration properly. If not–you must.

Actually, face it: every day, every flight, is judgment day. And you’d better be right.

Which is why everything’s accompanied by a specific and often tedious litany, but that’s what it takes to get the complex job done exactly every time. If it was easy, anyone could do it, right? And oh by the way, the FAA will decide if you’re doing it right.

. . . and do all this--perfectly--at over a hundred miles an hour in thick fog.

Anyway, you move on to the final simulator phase, and the Check Airman takes over. You did that job yourself for years on the MD-80 so you know the drill: now we marry up the instruction with real-world scenarios and applications.

Finally getting good, solid line-oriented advice fro a guy with a couple thousand hours in the jet: hold the power in till thirty feet, don’t float, a little opposite rudder and wing low. Ah, flying stuff–now THAT makes sense.

The hours are wearying: two hour brief, four hour sim; sometimes coming out of the box at midnight; sometimes going in at 5:30 am. Still, that’s just like the airline pilot job: some nights a tough approach in Seattle after midnight body time, often it’s a buttcrack of dawn take-off on the east coast.

Now, though, as we near the end of the syllabus, like the runway end rushing up at us, you have to make a judgment: are you ready? Are we as a crew ready? Like every decision you must correctly make in flight, there’s no easy answer.

But like in flight, you make the call. “You guys ready for your check?” he asks on the last training day.

That’s every bit as much a judgment call as you’ll ever make on the end of a runway or at decision height on an approach. No easy answer. Some things still feel rough. Most is okay, with a herculean effort. The First Officer? Solid as a rock, excellent pilot. But we’re both in the “new jet” phase with this beast. And the FAA will be in the front row, on board, second guessing you every step of the way. With the authority to ground you if you fail.

“Yes,” I assure the Check Airman. “Bring it on.”

Judgment Day? Yeah, every single one of ’em is that.  But if it was easy, everyone would do it, right?

Coming up next, the final hurdle: the maneuvers validation check (MV) and the line check (LOE). An eight hour four axis, full-visual simulator examination of everything from single engine approaches to minimum ceiling and visibility to complex navigation.

And the payoff for all of the work . . . the first flight in the real aircraft.

From Sea Level to 737 Captain: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

[Note: this is part of a continuing series describing what it’s like to become an airline captain on a brand new jet. Want to start at the beginning? Click here.]

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Midway through the simulator phase and there’s plenty good, some bad and a lot of ugly.

But the latter stuff, that’s just your perspective as a pilot. What the hell do you know?

Overall, it’s good to be handling hardware rather than clicking a mouse and watching animation. But there are rough patches. You can’t find anything. Reflex guides your hands to the wrong place: need a wider Nav display range? That’s not where it is. Looking for a map light? Uh-uh, it’s over there, not here, and it can’t exactly reach anyway.

And the HUD: a thousand bits of information before your eyes. But it’s all displayed in lime green, largely negating the symbol sorting aide provided by colors (red, warning, yellow, caution, green okay, blue, advisory) on all other displays. Plus, what doesn’t fit on the display is converted into a number: the all important radio altimeter hides in among a cash crop of abstract digits rather than as a moving display. But half of what you need to call for is based on its countdown–or up.

Here’s you on the controls: take it easy . . . what is this with the power steering? You’re flying with hamfists and pork brains, or at least that’s how it will feel in the back of the plane.

From the movie Airplane:

Gunderson: “He’s all over the place! Nine hundred feet up to 1300 feet. What an asshole!”

Ever fly a plane before? Well, yeah–the last 19 years on the MD-80 which handles like a pig in both pitch–especially pitch, being a long tube, and with un-powered ailerons. The 737 is a Maseratti by comparison. So you feel like a klutz, wing-rocking down final because it’s so sensitive–and you’re not. Which brings out your inner teacher:

Maddog jocks, you know the drill: put some smash on the jet, aim it at the runway. Cross the  threshold at fifty feet with a plus-five knots (I always did; admit it, you do too) over V-Ref  speed then snatch off all the power. But not in the Boeing.

And you’re your own worst critic. The real teacher? The Simulator Instructor? She’s great; real laid back, very calming demeanor in the briefing and in The Box (which is what we call the simulator). You learn better that way, the way she is: confident, knowledgeable yet very easy-going.

Cleared for the approach, read the fine print.

Still, need a conversion course for MD-80 “steam jet” pilots. But you’re figuring it out: LNAV VNAV is smart box stuff–FMC driven.  Where’s the IAS and vertical speed? Ah, there’s the magic.

But practically speaking, the hours in The Box are beginning to add up. Here’s what week one of the sims reveals:

1. You’ve become lazy as a pilot because there was no challenge to the same old Flintstone (do I really need to spell this out? PREHISTORIC Douglas jet) flight deck for too many years. Time to update and rethink the concepts such as Category III approaches hand-flown to a 50′ decision height (YGTBSM), 600 RVR, vertical navigation, and how twenty-first century technology has changed flying.

Simulator instructor's station. Right behind us; pay no attention to the woman behind the curtain.

2. Boeing has made a stable hand-flying jet. That’s a good wing, a dependable airfoil. Feels substantial both in the flare and on rotation. Not so much lion taming with a whip and a chair like the MD-80. Plus power to spare, on the wing.

3. With the state-of-the art technology comes the challenge of lawyers and liability. Now procedures are driven by what just happened in court regarding some type of aircraft accident.

Anyone can fly like a pilot, but now you need to fly like an attorney. So many new restrictions and procedures that you can tell stem mostly from legal considerations and absolutely not from good flight practices. But that’s just the twenty-first century, right?

Still, so much to absorb, especially in the left seat: you’re going to sign for this jet and everyone on board in about ten days. You have to get this right, not just to pass a check, but for what you know is coming: that dark and stormy night when things start going to “the top of the pyramid:” options narrow, no way out, it’s up to you to out think and outdo whatever nasty situation that will–not might, will–test you in the air sooner or later.

Funny thing: flashback.

Pilot survival, from so many years ago. Back then, a “double-bang:” fly two sorties, back-to-back; formation, aerobatics–you name it. In between, a Coke and a bag of peanuts for you. The Coke had both caffeine and sugar to pep you up. Same deal now, at midpoint in every simulator session, in the Iron Kitchen now, in the Squadron Snack Bar back then, face still showing the outline of an oxygen mask, hair matted from a helmet.

Now, the Iron Kitchen is just an alleyway between simulator building, filled with vending machines and a few tables. It’s the crossroads of airline pilots all somewhere in sim world, whether on the break between sim periods on a check or like you, between training sim sessions. It’s the company of pilots at once lost in their own reverie about their sim check or like you, the right steps into a new jet, shooting the breeze, hangar flying, griping, laughing but regardless, it’s the folks who fly.

Just like back in the Air Force, the peanuts good and salty to put something on your stomach quick, then back to the struggle with an unruly jet that wants to get the better of you.

It didn’t then, and won’t now either. That I promise; I promise me, promise you. Believe it.

Coming next–and in the next installment of this blog: final preparation, the the FAA rating checkride. Stay tuned . . .