Air Travel and the “Kick the Dog” Syndrome.

The forward cabin door closed with a kerthunk and its warning light winked out on the overhead panel.

My first officer said, “You know, this is still a pretty good job once the door’s closed.” I nodded and keyed the interphone mike to called the ramp crew chief in the tug below. “Brakes are released, stand by for push clearance.”

He was right, of course: once we close and seal that door we’re on our own, free of “supervision” and the hassles that come with it. Now all decisions rest on the flight deck; each can be handled sensibly, quietly, without abstract criticism and senseless third-party interference.

But when is this not a “pretty good job?” Well, usually any time we’re not on our own–which is when the cabin door is open. Because besides the usual hurdles required to pass through an airport–gates, passengers, baggage, maintenance, cargo, restricted items, law enforcement travelers, fuel, engine service, catering–there’s one major side effect of the financial and managerial failures endemic to the Post-9/11 airline industry:

The “Kick the Dog” syndrome. And unfortunately, everyone gets to be the dog sometime at the airport.

The Urban Dictionary defines “Kick the Dog Syndrome” as “[t]he act of mistreating a peer or someone inferior to you out of frustration because a superior (whom you can’t argue with) has treated you poorly.”

Everyone in the airline and airport biz has been beaten thoroughly and regularly from the top down. Everyone’s reaching the boiling point from drastic pay cuts, stripped retirements, increased work, longer hours and less rewards than ever.

The airport is a combat zone populated with disgruntled airline employees, besieged concession workers and overwrought passengers. As a result, the trickle-down effect of the industry’s harsh austerity causes an inevitable reversal of polarity: surely as a methane gas bubble raced from the ocean floor five miles to the ocean’s surface and blew the hell out of the B.P. oil rig in the Gulf, air travel is right at the flashpoint of anger.

Tremors that indicate something ready to blow, someone on the verge of “kicking the dog?” Here are the classic examples that tell me for someone, I’m the dog:

1. Long day, many legs, bad weather–but it’s finally over. The whole crew’s dead tired, trudging to the hotel pick-up spot.

No hotel van.

We’re on time; same schedule as always. No van. Flight attendants look at me sidelong . . . do something, captain. Too many captains simply don’t, but I’m not one of them. I dial the hotel on my cell phone.

“Hi, the flight crew from 1157 at the airport waiting for pick-up . . .”

Pause. Then whoever answers the phone at the hotel says, “The van should be there.”

Now I’m ready to kick the dog. I know the van should be here–but if it was, would I be calling? Do I really need to know it “should” be here? Are we all just stupid: the van’s really here, we’re just calling the hotel for the hell of it?

Not gonna kick the dog, not gonna kick the dog. “I know that,” you dumbass I say only in my head. “Can you tell me how much longer it’s going to be? We have a short layover and if necessary, we’ll take cabs.”

Pause. “Well, we won’t pay for cabs.”

Note to self: Prozac. Valium. Yoga. Nine Milimeter. Whatever it takes.

2. Quick turn in Las Vegas. Gotta grab some food and get back on board to pre-flight. Hmmm, Burger King is near our gates; I even have exact change. I wait in line.

Finally, my turn. “I’d like a veggie burger with no pickles.”

The guy in the paper hat smirks. “The veggie burger doesn’t have pickles on it.”

So why do you have to say anything, other than “Okay,” then take my money? Don’t kick the dog, don’t kick the dog.

“Well, then put one on it then take it off because I don’t want one.”

Okay, I kind of “nudged” the dog. He deserved it.

3. Checking the destination weather back at the home drome. Chance of thunderstorms both en route at in the terminal area just popped up. Plus, I know from experience that we won’t get our cruise altitude right away due to outbound traffic from another major hub. Better call for more fuel.

A quick cell phone discussion with the airline dispatcher–he agrees and sends the updated release fuel to the station. Then a courtesy call on the radio to the station staff: “We’re going to add another thousand pounds of fuel.” From the station: “Stand by.”

I can feel it coming . . .

Finally, on the station frequency: “The fueler says you don’t need more fuel.”

Sigh. Did I ask the fueler if I need more fuel? Am I confused and can’t read the fuel gages myself and so was checking with him, especially knowing he doesn’t feel like driving back out to add more? No doubt, he’s checked the weather en route and we’ll just go with his judgment on this.

Don’t kick the dog . . . don’t kick the dog . . . “Uh, we’ll need another thousand pounds; he’ll be getting the fuel slip from dispatch any minute. When we get it, we’ll go.”

Just in case the Operations people forgot that we might have requested more fuel, not that I’m unclear on the amount on board. Give them the benefit of the doubt.

Operations: “Well, no one else has asked for more fuel today.”

Who the hell cares what anyone else has done? Who’s responsible for my flight–and who’ll answer for anything that goes wrong in the next thousand miles? Well honestly, I’d tell the FAA inquiry, they said no one else has asked for more fuel so I didn’t.

Before I could kick the dog, my First Officer jumped on the Ops frequency: “Ask the fueler if he’d like to add the thousand here, or drive about five hundred miles down the road and refuel us when we divert.”

Good answer! A kind of “nudge” to the dog.

I could go on, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that once we’re underway, things go more smoothly. But meanwhile, if you’re walking through the terminal, reconsider whether you really need to ask the flightcrew people you pass where the bathroom is (especially when they’re on their cellphones, grabbing a minute between flights to communicate with home), or whether you must ask them the “20-questions” starter, “am I in the right place?”

Just don’t ask or better yet, think before you do. This simple advice might make life smoother for your dog when you get home.

Sweet Tart Time Warp: The Three Hour Sunset

You point the nose west and settle into cruise and it finally hits you: this sunset doesn’t want to end. That’s the moment when the past catches up with the present and lets you in on a little secret about the future. That is, time depends on where you’re going. Long? Short? Brief? Interminable? It’s all a question of direction.

As a kid in fourth grade I had pretty much worked out the science of this revolutionary discovery using my newly acquired mathematical tools like long division and multiplication, scratching calculations on three ring binder paper while downing Sweet Tarts for brain fuel and watching Dick Van Dyke Show reruns. According to my calculations, if I flew west to east at just the right speed, given the turning of the earth below and my jet’s speed, time would stand still because I’d be over the exact same spot. Kind of a grade school version of the geosynchronous orbit.

Fast forward to my adulthood and the opportunity to examine that theory from my present job site at thirty-plus thousand feet and .77 Mach.

One thing I hadn’t accounted for in my grade school theorizing was the fact that as an airline pilot and an adult, I’d be lazy enough (and senior enough) to not fly early in the morning. So I’d be flying mostly east to west, joining the tide of blinking strobes creasing the sky late in the day, sailing to the coast. And in that physical reality, I find that I was halfway right: the sunset goes on forever as we chase the sun west.

But in the most part–damn the math and Sweet Tarts–I was just plain old wrong. No geosynchronous orbit. Not time standing still. But the important lesson: time depends on where you’re going. That’s a matter of proportion and substance, not speed and duration. Here’s why.

This sunset was observed at sea level. Actually, nine decks up from sea level and it should be noted, on a cruise ship with a camera and a vodka tonic in hand rather than Sweet Tarts and a number two pencil. Two other factors are fundamentally different as well.

The ship was cruising at a leisurely twenty knots, rather than my work-related obligatory four hundred plus knot cruise speed. And in the second clause is the most significant distinction: work. At altitude, I’m at work. At sea level–especially at sea–I’m not.

That seaside sunset lasted about two minutes. The week long cruise in retrospect seems now more like a matter of a day or two. But the months leading up to the cruise–and especially the maintenance-delayed flight to the port city–seemed like forever.

By contrast, once the jet’s landing gear is tucked into the gear wells, time slows to a creep. There’s the inverse relationship: at high speed and high altitude, time drags slower than Christmas.

By contrast, sea level–“sea” being a key word, particularly on a beach or a cruise ship–when not at work flies by like a lightning bolt, a brilliant flash disappearing in a squiggly swirl of smoke and landing somewhere far away. The thunder lingers, like the stack of vacation pictures, but predictably fades with time till you can only barely remember the original brilliance.

Same way with parenthood, and families and important events and people. Gone in a flash, yet the times in between seem to drag on. Not that there aren’t dazzling views on the way, incidental in only the fact that they’re unanticipated, but breathtaking nonetheless.

And it would be shortsighted to discount all the friends and family and events waiting ahead in unanticipated places and times of equally rewarding experiences encountered along the way to the next “big event.”

Maybe the real secret is this: the whole journey is the big deal; the events just the waypoints along the way. Maybe it never was about a geosynchronous life, hovering over a here and now. Maybe in the interminable sunset between events–the time warp–there’s also a meaningful now that sets into relief the precious moments of past and present.

So maybe there’s no time warp after all, and fourth grade math and youthful perspective not withstanding, no need for it either. The real deal is in the journey and whether at five hundred miles and hour or ten, sea level or flight level, you’re speeding onward nonetheless.

Hard as it is to admit, the times in between the momentous events are the majority of the journey, rather than the sideshow. Never mind long division–I always suspected it would lead to no good–and I’ll take the Vodka tonic over the Sweet tarts nowadays. But from the time from of fourth grade to forty-plus, one thing is clear: time, distance, place and people go by too quickly when you don’t want them to.

I think I’ll spend a little more time concentrating on the ride. Long or short, there are only so many sunsets to go.

Flightcrew Zoo: Stupid Layover Tricks

When you’re shipwrecked with fellow crewmembers, there forms a special bond. Over the years, I’ve shared a few exceptionally memorable times “shipwrecked” on layovers with pilots and flight attendants who have become lifelong friends. Here are a couple of the most memorable stories.

Mile High-Jinks

Dave was a fairly senior 777 captain when he took early retirement a few years back. Before he did, when we’d pass in the terminal, besides saying “hi,” one of us would grab the other and say to our first officer, if they were nearby, “He can verify that galley story I told you is true.”

And the story was from twenty-plus years ago when Dave was a DC-10 First Officer and I was the Flight Engineer. We flew all month with the same flight attendants, enjoying long layovers in downtown Chicago. The core group of us–me, Dave, Jennifer, Marianne, Lynne and sometimes Lonnie (whom Marianne admonished for “wearing too much make-up for daytime”) went out every night in Chicago to some club or other night place. Everyone became fast friends and hated to see the end of the month come which would mean no more weekly Chicago long layovers.

To make our last trip memorable, the inherently devilish Marianne dreamed up a plan. During our last leg from Detroit to DFW late one night, I got a call on the flight deck. “There’s something wrong with the P-Lift,” Lonnie said. “Can you come back and have a look?” The “P-Lift” was one of the elevators from the mid-cabin galley to the lower deck galley. Typical that there would be a problem and being the engineer, typical that I’d have to go back and see about fixing it.

“They’re having trouble with the P-Lift,” I told Bob, the leisure suit-wearing captain who ditched us in Chicago every layover to go out with his boyfriend, we suspected, and also to let Dave know I’d be gone. “Be right back.” I grabbed my flashlight, turned on all the fuel boost pumps and headed for the main galley.

“Downstairs,” Lonnie deadpanned, pointing to the P-Lift. Okay, I thought the P-Lift was the problem, but let’s go downstairs. I hopped in, closed the door and pressed the down arrow. The lift lowered me into the darkness below. Hmmm, good thing I brought my flashlight.

Every ORD layover included a stop here after midnight.

The door opened to candlelight in the lower lobe galley. Blankets and pillows covered the floor, and Marianne, Jennifer and Lynne were sprawled out in their nightgowns. “Want to join our slumber party?” Marianne asked, the three of them totally ignoring the 250+ passengers upstairs.

About twenty minutes later, I re-entered the darkened cockpit acting as nonchalant as possible. “Uh, Dave,” I said, “I think you’d better go have a look.” Maybe he knew what was up, but he wasted no time unstrapping and heading back. At least twenty minutes later, Dave returned, grinning. As soon as he did, Bob started to unstrap, maybe thinking it was his turn but Dave very pointedly said “No!” All’s well, he said–no need for you to leave the cockpit. The ladies would have killed us if he’d shown up.

Before Dave retired, our First officers would shake their heads in disbelief at the story but with verification, they could only think back on “the good old days”–such a thing would never happen today.

I still see Marianne now and again, Lonnie too. Lynne quit flying in the 1990s, and Jennifer worked on all of her flight ratings and is no longer a flight attendant but rather, a fairly senior First Officer with us now.

Man The Lifeboats!

Back in the 1990s, we used to have long layovers in Long Beach on the Queen Mary, which had been converted into a floating hotel. We used to convene in the forward lounge which was an art-deco masterpiece. The fun trick was to recruit flight attendants who’d never been to The Queen to have a beverage on the forward veranda of the bar, outside overlooking Long Beach harbor.  The trick in that was the magic hour of 7pm, when they blew the ship’s horn which was located just above the veranda.  More than a few spilled drinks and near heart attacks resulted from the uninitiated experiencing that heart-stopping blast.

My First Officer and I had a good laugh at our flight attendants’ expense on one such trip. One in particular, Rhonda (I still see her now and then) vowed to get even, but we figured it was all in good fun and so thought nothing of it.

That particular layover, The Queen was full and so both he and I had been given adjoining suites instead of the regular crew cabins. Of course, the flight attendants didn’t believe us when we told them. “Here,” my First Officer said to Rhonda, handing her his room key, “see for yourself. I’ll get another key at the desk.” They left us to tour the ship–including his suite–while we opted to stay and watch the NBA playoffs in the lounge.

A couple hours later, the game ended and we headed below decks, me to my suite and my F/O to the front desk to get another key. We had fifteen hours before we had to fly again and so I was looking forward to at least ten hours of good sleep.

As soon as I unlocked my door, I heard water running. Not a good sign, especially on a ship, I decided. At the same moment–maybe I was a little slow from a couple cold beverages–I noticed that I was standing in an inch of water that was beginning to slosh. Again, the beverage-effect: WE’RE SINKING! I grabbed the phone and called the front desk . . . to the lifeboats! She’s going down! “Uh,” I stammered, “I need a plumber pretty quick here.”

A few minutes later, I had both a plumber and hotel security in my cabin. The plumber removed the towels stuffed in the sink and tub and had turned off the water. Hotel Security began to grill me. “Why did you flood your room?” Rhonda. “What?” I tried to act indignant. “Why would I douche out my own room?” The F/O’s key, the adjoining room. She’d gotten her revenge.

Eventually, the Security Agent decided that he couldn’t prove that I’d flooded my cabin, but as punishment, I was given a virtual broom closet of a cabin–the ship was booked full and I believe it actually had been a broom closet at one point–and so I slept with one eye open looking for the ghost that legend has it prowls the old ship’s quarters.

Even now when I cross paths with Rhonda in the airport or even on a flight she smiles slyly; I smile, too. Thankfully, she stopped saying “you deserved it” about ten years back, although she never actually admitted to the deed nonetheless.

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High Flight: I’ll Take The Low Life.

The oddly symmetrical reality of flight is this: there’s only so much flying you can do without repeating yourself.

That’s not just because it all starts to look the same. Rather, it’s because if you keep flying, it actually WILL be the same: you’ll eventually circumnavigate the globe and end up over the same spot and on your way again if you don’t land.

But that’s not all. It’s also an inescapable reality that the higher you get the faster you can go, but the high price of altitude is that higher is colder and the air so thin you’d turn blue in a matter of seconds.

Sure, you’re able to skip over most of the weather because you’re above most of the atmosphere.

But then, where’s the bottom, the foundation upon which you can really ground the experience, to say you’ve been to, and not just over,  a significant landmark? Sure, you saw it–I see big stuff every workday as I crisscross the continent–but the difference between “up there” and down-to-earth is like night and day.

I have time to consider the distinction between higher and lower as I wait between flights in that great equalizer, the boarding area. Like the hospital waiting room, there’s only one and it’s filled with people from all socio-economic levels.  True, the “elite” travelers often wait in a separate lounge between flights, some even apparently entitled to the more rarefied air of “special services” whisked to the gate at the last minute on a private cart.

And sometimes, the casual traveler goes casually off the deep end, traveling in attire more suitable to cleaning out the garage than flying.

Nonetheless, I’ve seen the man in a suit that costs more than the car driven by the man seated next to him in the boarding area, elbow to elbow, waiting for the same flight. But that’s where the commonality ends.

For the travel “elite,” it seems like it’s always about time and I’m just guessing, more about where he’s going than where he’s waiting.  There’s an iciness there that you don’t want to bump into.

But for the infrequent traveler, the waiting is charged with the excitement of going, and they’ll actually drag you into the experience if you let them. And why the hell not? I’m glad to hear about what’s waiting after landing and often enough, wishing I was about to do the same thing, whether visiting friends or family or a resort destination. For them, the waiting is the anticipation of the opening act of a first-run play in which they’ll star.

For those simply rushing from point “A” to point “B,” the flight is a dull rerun of a show they’ve seen too many times, and the flying experience probably isn’t going to go well. There will be delays and traffic jams and diversions and cancellations. They won’t be part of the adventure but rather, a pain in the rear: there’s a schedule to keep, calls, texts, deals, dates, times, no flexibility, no slack. No wonder.

The infrequent flyer isn’t experiencing a “travel product,” but rather, is living an adventure. For them there’s still some wonder in the skies and in the process of climbing miles into the air, and they still like doing it.

It’s a moving tapestry that unfolds below them and time, rather than just the logjam between now and the big “then” of arrival is more than simply the endurance akin to a few hours spent in a dentist’s chair.

There’s more to the experience than just the slow passage of minutes and miles–rather, there’s the marvel of passing a mile every 7 seconds. There’s the view that stretches from horizon to horizon, the darker blue of space above and the mottled tan of a mid-continent mountain range in between. There are monstrous cumulonimbi thundering about harmlessly below

and rivers wandering lazily into the sunset.

There are hardly words to describe how the sun gathers in the day and runs off like a thief to the west, chased by a moon sliver and the evening star.

So I guess what you see and how it strikes you depends on how high you are. There’s warmth and red-blooded breathable pleasure the lower you go. If you take a little of that with you as climb higher–and we do to a maximum pressure differential of 8.32 psi at altitude–suddenly the experience is truly more of a wondrous passage than a tedious transport.

Which brings me back to the symmetrical reality of flight: there’s only so much flying you can do without repeating yourself. And in over 17,000 flight hours, I guess I’ve flown enough miles to circle the globe more than a few times and so I keep crossing over the same spots. That being the case, how does one preserve the wonder of flight, and why?

Helps to have a touch of the Earth in you, and a memory of the days when flight was the exception rather than the rule. And the awareness that the everyday in the sky is anything but for everyone other than the few. That’s the low life: the life on the surface, grounded in that realization. Puts flight into perspective.

It’s the eyes of the non-flyers that see such things truly. The renowned Ski Parker, a professor at USC’s School of Flight Safety and Accident Investigation once asked me, “If you and a non-pilot layman were to witness an aircraft crash, who’d be the more reliable witness?”

In my first few thousand hours of pilot time I couldn’t accept his answer, but now I know he was right: those with clear eyes, without thousands of repetitions skewing both expectations and memory have the truest vision of flight.

That’s what grounds the experience, which provides a foundational value for the coolness of flight. If I capture in text the head rush of shoving throttles forward, thundering down the runway like a runaway freight train, then pulling back and lifting off; and share that with those seeing with clear eyes, then I share the vision–which is what originally got me into flying and helped me over the bazillion hurdles enroute–and preserve that clear vision too.

And okay, I’m still a sucker for jet piloting, still get a rush out of it all. But I realize too that the enduring reward comes from sharing that with those un-jaded and unaccustomed to the thrill. Down to earth, where it’s warm and clear, is where that view is. That’s where all the important stuff, like home and family and an appreciation for flight lives.

See you there. Which, actually, is right here.

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Flight Deck: Zoom With A View.

Wanted: the lucky few with vision.

Job title: Zoom With A View.

“Applicant must be willing to sit for long hours looking out window at ever-changing sky. Hours vary, as does the sky, and applicants must have the ability to stay alert regardless of the hour.

Must have the ability to play nicely with others, particularly in crowded airspace . . .

. . . where “bumping into a stranger” is never a good thing.

Job often requires eating on the fly.

Working with fun people in very close quarters.

Must keep an eye on details inside, while appreciating what’s going on outside as well.

Applicants must demonstrate innovative vision in traffic jams . . .

and an ability to capture a moment visually doesn’t hurt.

And on the ground . . .

Old meets new in Louisville

. . . it’s helpful to have an eye for the sublime,

. . . and a tolerance for the absurd.

Workplace security is provided by a specialized force of hand-picked officials

trained and employed by a government agency.

How can you NOT rest easy when they are responsible for your security? Well, never mind that.

Paperwork is kept to a minimum,

. . . and stunning views are at the maximum

. . . if you just look.

Nonetheless, must see that people are what really matter anyway

especially when it’s “us against the world” of delays and weather and maintenance problems . . .

. . .  you realize who your friends are,

sometimes, if you’re lucky, for life.

So vision is key, maintaining perspective crucial. Applicants must be able to perceive magnificence in the minute

in order to realize what really matters, and be able to recognize your own minuteness next to the magnificient

in order to see with humility

and perceive humanity with the the appropriate respect.

Applicants simply need several thousand pilot hours of jet time to apply; approximately one in two hundred will be selected.

Views provided free.

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The Flight of the Invisible Man

It doesn’t matter that you can’t see me–in fact, it helps ease the passage. We go together, silent partners, then we go our separate ways but the main thing is, we go.

Don’t act surprised. That’s the corporeality of life and time and especially jet flight: nobody goes backwards. Spindly hands sweep the clock face, blue-green waves crash on the beach then hiss away, aluminum egg crates ride the fire off into the blue until they’re just a dot and then gone.

The ever-forward urgency of flight masks the destination with the passage itself like the blindfold on a condemned man: best not to peek past the ledger of doing and done and yet to come. There’s sanctuary–at least for now–in the bustle that is the embarkation, the itinerary and finally the living-out of the route, waypoints like days on the calendar torn off and gone.

Who cares? The calendar still seems pretty weighty. So is the relentless tide of here-and-now washing up on the beach of there and gone, actually, but what the heck: we’re on our way. Meanwhile, there’s strength in numbers, which is good because the passage is a trial, isn’t it, starting with the mass inquisition.

Like the troll at the bridge: who shall pass?  And not just where to go, but how to get there. Myriad choices of routing and travel modes, never mind destinations and events and people and places that matter scattered to all points of the compass like mercury to the touch.

You can’t really see me there either, but I am, just masked from your perception by the elaborate costumes and the authentic set that allows those there to ease the passage to blend discretely into the scenery like a motionless owl treed in the dark, watching intently nonetheless. Gotta get you on board and on your way, right? We’ve got an airline to run and a schedule to keep: there are tons more passengers crowding in behind you, and there’s hardly room for everyone. And they’re all going somewhere in the world, or at least somewhere else.

So where in the wide, wide world of sports are you headed? Decide. At least for now–you can always change course later–but let’s aim you like a rifle, get your boarding pass and fire you off on your way. Can you even imagine who and what’s waiting for you “there?” Hope it’s everything you dreamed it would be but regardless, we’re going you and me.

Every moment en route is a crossroads of people more than places, because people are what move: young, old, single, families, alone, together you name it. Places have no life, only lives lived there, a stage acted upon and waiting for the next troupe of players. So many places to go, stages to act upon yet so little time and funding but mostly, the pesky pyramid-like quality of time: gets kind of tight at the top, you know?

Near the apex there seems to be less elbow room but at least you can finally see the point, if you you look. But one step at a time for now. The clockwork and moving parts mesh only slowly when you’re waiting, don’t they, as if they weren’t moving at all?

But pass they do like the scenery of which I’m a part, invisible as the nameless and faceless characters, extras they seem, on the set as you make your way through your travel scenes. We do all we can to smooth your passage because it’s our job, but also because we’re on the way, too. The last thing we do is count souls on board and we keep one total with no distinction between those in uniform or without, once you cross that little jet bridge and file aboard.

I keep that thought and that number in my head because I’m responsible for each, especially when we leave the planet. Which happens pretty quickly once we commit thrust to weight and lift overcomes drag and off we fly.

Unseen still, the Invisible Man, but no matter–in flight, everyone’s about the destination anyway. Pay no attention to the pilots behind that armored door, but do at least say “please” and “thank-you” to the cabin crew making you comfortable and most importantly, seeing to your safe passage. Once we’re cruising, seems like it goes without saying but somebody should, even at the risk of irritating the biz guy studiously avoiding recognition of the wonder unfolding below his window: look down.

He’s too travel savvy, but I’m not. The sun’s about to set, gathering the day and slinking away west. On your right is the “Big Ditch.” Here’s Bryce Canyon. Look, there’s most of Arizona trying to blow itself into New Mexico and beyond.

And there’s where centuries ago the Mississippi froze, then jumped its banks and cut a new path five miles wide another ten miles west. Check out cobalt blue Lake Tahoe looking looking like a puddle from five miles up.

And there are the northern lights and on the other side the constellation Orion our tireless friend and on and on are you listening at all? Anyway, you get the picture–if you look–without me saying a word. So much flying by so check it out, see everything and anything but your watch which will go neither slower nor faster for being looked at, but will go nonetheless. And that’s what makes all this tick.

What you don’t see is missed–gone one way or the other. And since you’re going anyway, might as well notice the passage.

But me you don’t need to notice, really. I’m on my way back before you do anyway, ready to ferry another shipload of precious souls on their way to wherever. Because air miles are my workday I’m invisible in this voyage. But this is your life–so you’re not.

Once we get “there,” we’ll go our separate ways, you on with your life, me back in the air. Silent partners no longer, but I’m glad nonetheless to have shared a calendar page and a passage in the sky with you. Safe travels, wherever you’re headed.

Senator Schumer and the Myth of Cheap Air Travel.

Senator Chuck Schumer is confused once again. This time, it seems he’s confusing “consumer rights” with “consumer products.”

Last month, Schumer heralded a questionable attachment to the FAA Re-Authorization Bill as the answer to the underlying causes of pilot fatigue and regional pilot levels of experience. He was wrong, but his press releases on the subject made for decent publicity for the senator.

Now Schumer weighs in on carry-on baggage and airlines, stating that the former is a passenger “right” that must be provided for free by the latter.

Hogwash.

The consumer “right” when it comes to airlines is to choose one over the other, which has everything to do with free enterprise and the marketplace which governs the “right,” or more accurately, the product.

Spirit Airlines as a private company has both the right and the obligation to price every component of their product. And consumers have every right to choose another airline without the baggage fee, if the fee is a deal-breaker for the passenger.

That’s free enterprise. And whether Schumer admits it or not, the fee proposed by Spirit Airlines is a direct result of the Airline Deregulation Act. The marketplace, according to congress, is supposed to determine airline ticket prices. That’s why congress disbanded the Civil Aeronautics Board which up until 1978 regulated airline ticket prices and routes.

My personal opinion? As with fare hikes, this may be a trial balloon on Spirit’s part: if no other airline joins Spirit and institutes their own charge for carry-on luggage, I’d expect that the fee will go the way of most fare hikes–that is, into the garbage. Nonetheless, air travel is not nor ever has been cheap to produce and airlines continue to lose money despite any fees or fares enacted.

That would be the marketplace doing what congress directed when they enacted the law, and Schumer knows that. But he can’t resist an opportunity to grandstand, no matter how insincere it is.

Fees are irritating and costly, but airline seats simply are costly, too, and have to be paid for. This is a lesson not lost on Europeans who have a fiercely competitive airline market–and a plethora of passenger fees that clearly go hand-in-hand with low fares. Check below for the schedule of “nickel-dime” fees, to use Schumer’s term, of one of the leading European discount carriers.

Meanwhile, when the basic market forces of production cost meet Schumer’s myth of cheap air travel, guess which one will win–or we will all lose the “right” of air travel to the cost of producing the luxury.

From the Ryanair website:

Ryan Air Table of Fees

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(UK Pounds/Euro or local currency equivalent)	Booked on www.ryanair.com		Booked via a Call Centre* or Airport
	UK Pounds	Euro	UK Pounds	Euro
Online Check-In (not charged on some promotional fares)	£5	€5	£10	€10
Mastercard Prepaid Debit Card As a special offer to the above card holders, Ryanair, for a limited period only, will not apply an administration fee	Free	Free	Free	Free
Administration Fee – Per passenger/ Per One Way Flight This fee relates to costs associated with Ryanair’s booking system and processing payments.	£5	€5	£5	€5
Priority Boarding Fee* – Per passenger/ Per One Way Flight	£4	€4	£5	€5
Airport Boarding Card Re-issue –	n/a	n/a	£40	€40
Infant Fee – Per Infant/Per One Way flight (must be under 2 years for both outbound and return flight)	£20	€20	£20	€20
Checked Baggage Fees* – (Each passenger is permitted to check-in up to 2 bags with a maximum weight of 15kg per bag)Different rates fees apply depending on the date of travel (peak rates apply for travel in July and August)1st Bag – 15kg allowance – per bag/ per One Way Flight	£15	€15	£35	€35
1st Bag – Peak Rate July/August	£20	€20	£40	€40
2nd Bag – 15kg allowance – per bag/ per One Way Flight	£35	€35	£70	€70
2nd Bag – Peak Rate July/August	£40	€40	£80	€80
Excess Baggage Fee – Per Kilo Fee can only be purchased at the airport ticket desk	Not Available Online	Not Available Online	£20	€20
Infant Equipment* (car/booster/travel cot) Fee charged per Item/ Per One Way Flight (1 pushchair carried free of charge). A maximum weight of 20kg per item	£10	€10	£20	€20
Sports Equipment* Fee charged per Item/ Per One Way Flight A maximum weight of 20kg per item	£40	€40	£50	€50
Musical Instrument* Fee charged per Item/ Per One Way Flight A maximum weight of 20kg per item	£40	€40	£50	€50
Flight Change Fees* – Per Passenger/ Per One Way Flight	£25	€25	£55	€55
Name Change Fee* – Per Passenger	£100	€100	£150	€150

*Up to 4 hours prior to your scheduled flight departure you can purchase online – checked bags, priority boarding, sports/infant equipment and musical instruments even if you have already checked in online for your flight.

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Flightcrew Zoo: Sky God & Switch Bitch

(First in an occasional series profiling classic flight crew members)

Those were the days.

The captain was a “sky god” in every sense of the term. Well liked-by crewmembers on both sides of the flight deck door, he’d advanced through the pilot ranks over twenty-some years to the top of the heap: senior captain on the widebody.

I was the “switch bitch,” or “plumber,” or any of the other unflattering sobriquets that designated the new-hire flight engineer. I loved it regardless, having landed on the DC-10 flight engineer’s panel fresh-faced and new after seven years as an Air Force pilot. Sure, I was “sitting sideways,” doing my apprenticeship on the flight engineer’s panel rather than at the pilot controls up front.

But that would come soon enough–a copilot’s seat on a narrow body jet was mine for the asking within months. I had chosen instead to do my probationary year at the DC-10 panel because there was less chance of anything happening that could lead to termination, which was always a possibility for a probationary pilot. Seemed like a good way to breeze through probation, sitting at the mostly automated DC-10 engineer’s panel. What could be easier?

It was a sub-zero day at O’Hare. I’d finished my walk-around inspection on the frozen ramp and then shed sweater, overcoat, scarf, hat and gloves and sat back down at the engineer’s panel, waiting for pushback after all 250 passengers had boarded.

Captain Skygod sat in the left seat, feet propped up on the instrument panel, idly thumbing through a golf magazine. The First Officer sat like a zombie, having done nothing, which was the beauty of that job as I later enjoyed myself  for a year or so.

One of our nine flight attendants interrupted our reverie.

“We have a bag problem in back,” she sighed. “Could use some help.”

Skygod didn’t even look up. “Why don’t you go back and see what you can do, son.”

The First Officer smirked at me over his shoulder, telegraphing he means you, which of course I already knew.

“Yessir.” I unstrapped, grabbed my hat and headed for the main cabin.

I squeezed past the boarding throng to the mid-cabin where an irate woman argued loudly with three flight attendants–a fight she seemed to not realize she could never win. It seems that the garment bag storage was full and so the flight attendants were insisting the woman’s overstuffed garment bag be checked in the cargo hold below. That was not acceptable to the red-faced, irate woman.

“Look,” I said, gently but  firmly pulling the garment bag out of her hands, “I’ll personally take this downstairs and place it in the cargo hold then bring you the claim check.”  The flight attendants nodded, hustling me off before the glaring woman could protest.  “Thanks,” one flight attendant whispered, clearing a path for me to the entry door.

In shirt sleeves still, I carried the bag out the jet bridge door and into the sub-zero freezing cold, down the steep stairs to the arctic ramp. I carefully placed the bag in a cargo container set to be loaded aboard, then return half-frozen with the baggage claim check to the mid cabin. I found the woman at her seat, still fuming.

“Here you are, ma’am,” I said, handing her the baggage claim check.

She snatched it from my hand, giving me a look that could bend a spoon and snapped, “You f*cking asshole.”

Fine.

Back to the jet bridge, out into the freezing cold; down the icy stairs to the frozen ramp. Find the baggage pallet–there’s the bag. Rip the baggage tag off of it; drag it to the gate next door–a Super-80 heading who-knows-where. Toss it into the cargo compartment. Race back upstairs half frozen.

I slipped back into my seat, shivering. Skygod was still flipping through his magazine. After a moment, he spoke.

“Did you get that baggage thing worked out?”

I turned the cockpit heat up a notch. “Uh, yessir. All worked out.”

He nodded, never looking up. “You do good work, son.” Nice guy that he was, I knew he’d give me a glowing recommendation on the probation report he’d fill out on me later.

I survived my probationary year and moved up to the copilot’s seat on a narrow body jet. The flying was more fun with a set of controls, but I missed the DC-10 days of motoring around the system without any real responsibilities–save the occasional “baggage situation.”

I flew many miles with Captain Skygod until we parted ways: he moved up from the domestic flying to the coveted trans-oceanic trips; I upgraded to the copilot position on the MD-80.

Then the only time I’d see him was in the airline employee lot as I was arriving at the buttcrack of dawn to fly a cruddy junior-guy trip and he was just returned from his Honolulu flight.

He’d stationed his RV which the crews nicknamed “The Whale” in the lot so he and most of his pilots and flight attendants could enjoy “happy hour” after flying all night. As the sun was rising, you could hear the whirring of his blender, laughter and tinkling glass from “The Whale” as the rest of the world began their work day.

Ever the gentleman, after the mai-tais had been free flowing for an hour or so he let the muu-muu clad flight attendants have first dibs on the lav. Eventually, he was busted for using a light pole to relieve himself and the airport police invited him to remove The Whale and never bring it back as a quid pro quo for not arresting him.

Captain Skygod retired from our airline at what used to be the mandatory age of 60, but went on to fly 747’s somewhere overseas. I lost track of him over the years and having been a captain myself for 19 years now, I doubt he’s still flying. But when I think of him and those days, I have to smile, and only wish we could get away with half the things we used to do back then.

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Altitude and the Neverlasting “Now.”

The sneaky seduction of altitude is this: the higher you fly, the faster you can go but the more difficult it is to perceive the speed.

At cruise altitude, the arch of the earth or the depths of the ocean are mere backdrop for passage. From a contemplative perch made of the lightest material possible in a thin-skinned cocoon inches from sub-freezing, anemically thin air, the perspective and distance makes the otherworldly, near-Mach speed seem like a lazy float in a cloud swing.

The monumental seems miniscule because the miles-high magic of perspective paints the infinite details with a brush broadened by altitude rendering the monolithic perceptible in a glance–an impossibility from the ground.

Once the Earth falls away, the crags and mottled rocks and bare washes recede into a more perfect rugged beauty most apparent in the wide angle vantage point of altitude, a newborn epic revelation.

And the lazy cloud swing breezes through effortless miles over a rolling tapestry of preternatural vistas from here to there, a “now” with a spectacular view,

a footless, rootless, colossal impossible God’s-eye-view of the fastest way to there, wherever that is today.

That’s difficult to imagine from the surface, particularly when the struggle to get into the air seems as insurmountable as the miles to go. Even once under way but still shackled with the twin albatrosses of gravity and crowding, “now” masquerades as forever.

Waiting–Keats’ “foster child of silence and slow time”– renders the present a shuffling laggard, and speed a distant mirage like tomorrow or yesterday. “There” and “then,” the double-play of anticipation, never seem more impossibly far away and “now” a more wearisome isolation from where we’re headed and who we’re going to see.

And yet that’s the closest we ever really are to each other, wandering life, vagabonds bound by the commonality of where we aren’t yet, but are headed for–which is always some particular there. The tedious details of the strangled moment are forgettable snapshots as they present themselves, but in truth they’re truly the imprint of the best, most fleeting treasures of our lives:

This is how we were then. Look how small the kids were! And how young we were. Like the magical clarity borne of altitude, the distance of time paints a whole new picture. And the pictures side by side reveal the awful truth: time is a thief.

Let’s face it: compared to the breathtaking perspective of the sky view, the grounded here and now seems like a sideshow–even when it really is the other way around. Maybe it’s the tedium of now, the obligations, the faults and close up detail of “now” that falls away when you leave the Earth relegates the “here and now” to the status of ugly stepchild to “there” and “then” of destination.

Like the ruddy details of a landscape vanishing into the miles-high montage below a jet flight, the ticking seconds hide in the tearing off of calendar pages. But like the imperfections of wilderness, they are nonetheless the essence of our lives, the reality that makes life what it is rather than the illusion of how it appears from a distance of time or place.

That masks the real culprit–relentless time–and lets him go about his silent ruination of everything precious now under the guise of everything yet to come.

You pay me to hide that from you, and I do my best.

Though time and distance seems non-existent in the speed and altitude of flight, that’s because I’m handling those culprits, sweating them for us all. Time is fuel. Speed is distance. And neither is flexible or endless, because time is not our friend.

We have an appointment with gravity and energy that is ticking our way, hiding behind broadest view of time and distance and the breathless, breathtaking journey between them.

There’s a big plan for our little journey,

and in bringing it to a successful close, it’s easy to forget that what’s for me a workday process is for all of us a passage nonetheless. I try to keep in mind that the seduction of altitude is but ample cover for the thief of time tiptoeing silently by in the seconds barely evident in the calendar’s march. At least I won’t let him steal away unnoticed.

The sneaky seduction of altitude and its supernatural view is also its greatest secret, if you pause long enough to take it apart like an old watch:

The outer face tells an elegant story, but means nothing without the myriad interlocking details that make it tick. A sleek jet at shotgun speed is a beautiful sight rocketing overhead.

But nonetheless, it’s our mundane day-to-day litany of close-up imperfection and routine but precious interlocking lives that is the miracle. A fleeting miracle, despite the stunning trickery of high altitude sightseeing that hides the all-important ticking details in favor of something down the road beyond the reality of now.

And it’s not a fair trade-off, because as Bella Abzug promised, maybe we weren’t at the Last Supper, but we’re certainly going to be at the next one.

On the way, I plan to drag my feet as long as possible in each fleeting but precious mile-high and down-to-earth heartbeat of the neverlasting now.

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Midair Collision? You bet your life.

The near mid-air collision between a jumbo jet and a light aircraft near San Francisco International Airport last week should be a wake-up call for the FAA and passengers alike. Sadly, it wasn’t for either–and so the imminent risk of a midair collision remains.

Sweep aside the usual hot-button issues of “free access to the skies” and other light aircraft lobby specialties. Here’s the bottom line: slow, light aircraft with hobbyists at the controls mixing with high-speed, heavy jet traffic promises disaster.

144 people died in the worst air disaster in California history When PSA flight 182 collided with a Cessna 172 and crashed into North Park.

A major risk is the overly simplistic rules of separation between aircraft: see and avoid.  That’s it.

When a jetliner is in the airport traffic pattern either taking off or landing, often controllers are able to use “visual separation” rules. That is, if the visibility is deemed minimally adequate, an air traffic controller can issue a traffic warning that holds a pilot responsible for avoiding another aircraft if the pilot can confirm that they have visual contact with the aircraft being pointed out.

There’s the roots of a disaster that will happen: when there are multiple aircraft in question, it’s very difficult to be sure as a pilot that you are looking at the one the controller is trying to point out.

Radar snapshot of the Atlanta Airport Terminal Area.

If you are looking at the wrong aircraft–and there are many at all points of the compass and at various altitudes–you cannot assure the clearance you just promised to maintain.

According to a recent study produced by the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, air traffic at major hubs has increased exponentially in the past ten years. And even after 30+ years and over 17,000 flight hours, I find myself more often than ever when given a “see and avoid” clearance, telling air traffic controllers, unable to accept that clearance– I do not have visual contact with that aircraft.

Why?

Because with the multiple targets (i.e., other aircraft large and small) in the terminal area, I won’t gamble your safety on the bet that I’m seeing the correct aircraft.

And what about that other aircraft? The fact is, that aircraft may not even be flown by a licensed pilot.

Students with minimal hours are allowed to fly solo in the same airspace as your jetliner. And when the air traffic controller points out your jetliner to this student pilot–or weekend hobbyist pilot–what are the chances that he’ll do better than I would? Because my point is, I often refuse the visual separation clearance.

The result?

The air traffic controller must maintain positive radar separation between our jetliner and the other aircraft. This may mean slightly longer vectors, maybe a minute or two of extra flying in order to sequence our aircraft safely into the mix of flights in the terminal area. I personally can find no downside in that for you and me at a mile or two up flying at a couple hundred miles per hour.

Where do the air traffic controllers stand in this squeeze play of airspace users and managers? Tireless advocates for airline safety through appropriate air traffic control manning and airspace management, controllers have long warned of shortages of radar monitoring and manpower in critical terminal areas.

But the FAA and private plane owners may often prioritize workload and operating costs respectively above my (and your) priorities in the same situation and unfortunately, the same airspace. Both have resisted attempt by safety groups to exclude student pilots or even low-time private pilots from crowded airways and airports.

With increased pressure on the FAA to move air traffic in and out of airports as quickly as possible (see again the Wharton report), “see-and-avoid” clearances allow Air Traffic Control to increase the flow rates of an ever-increasing traffic load.

Light aircraft owners have a powerful lobby group that opposes all efforts to limit their airspace access.

This powerful lobby group is supported by an even more powerful and financially vulnerable group, the manufacturers of light aircraft whose sales depend upon users’ access to airspace.

Add up those factors, throw in ever-increasing air traffic congestion, airspace demands and private pilot owners’ “rights” to free flight and you have the a volatile mix that sooner or later will erupt in disaster–again.

Because when it comes to “see and avoid” in today’s complex mix of air traffic and inexperienced pilots at every major airport, I can sum up the risk of a midair collision in four words:

“You bet your life.”

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