Pilot in command

Funny Story, Sad Story

2011-08-09T13:24:00.001-07:00

Sunrise over the North Atlantic

I started working for ATA-then American Trans Air—in the fall of 1989. Prior to that I had worked for Five Star Airlines, a very small charter company in Boston that had two L-1011s it leased from TWA for the winter months, used mainly to do charters out of Boston to the Caribbean and Mexico. It was my first flying job after five years as an aviation writer. That experiment had gone reasonably well, several books published and a few articles, but eventually I got tired of being at home all the time, talking to myself all day, which is really what writing is, and wanted to get back into aviation. Five Star was a great job, so of course it lasted less than a year. But it led to ATA, which meant three very long months of initial training, again on the 1011, and culminated in several weeks of IOE—Initial Operational Experience—the final stage of training before being declared fully qualified and able to fly the line.

IOE is actual line flying with passengers and crew, but done under the supervision of a Check Airman. It is required anytime you are new to an airplane or new to the position—Captain, for instance, after having flown as a First Officer. (The fact that I had qualified on the 1011 once before at Five Star didn’t matter—I had to do it again.) I had already done several IOE flights but hadn’t done a navigation check yet, which was required to fly the North Atlantic, and I still needed a few more hours and another landing. So I wasn’t surprised when I got a call at home one evening from Training, just after Thanksgiving, telling me that they had a flight set up for me, but it was a little bit different than usual and I didn’t have to do it, but I could really help them out, and maybe get all this over with quickly, if I could get to Detroit (from Western Massachusetts) first thing in the morning. They had it all set up, I would get there just in time for the flight, and the reason for the rush was that there was an ATA pilot, Jeremy Hunter, who was checking out as a Check Airman, and he needed to do a navigation check with an FAA examiner observing to qualify, and both the FAA and Jeremy were already set up and since I needed a nav check…. So I said, “Yah, I can do that, but where does the trip go?” and they said, “Las Vegas.” And I said, “How do you do a North Atlantic nav check from Detroit to Las Vegas?” and they said, “That’s the Check Airman’s problem and the FAA is aware of the situation and is okay with it.” This is going to be weird, I thought. Little did I know.

So I got up early, got down to Hartford/ Springfield airport, got to Detroit, climbed on the airplane, already loaded and ready to go, Jeremy in the left seat, FAA examiner on the jump seat behind him, quickly did the Weight and Balance, normally the last item before the pre start checklist, answered some questions from “The Fed”—the FAA examiner—and then, in the few moments while The Fed was out of the cockpit, Jeremy said to me, “Look, this is all a little crazy, but we’re going to treat this as a North Atlantic crossing, we’ll do all the usual checks and double checks of waypoints, even if they are just VORs and airway intersections, we’ll talk about 10 minute checks, midpoint checks, Equal Time Points, diversions, all the things we would do on an actual crossing, and hope he buys it. I’ll be asking questions and you can ask me questions too, in fact the more we are talking the less chance he’ll have to jump in and cause trouble, so be thinking of questions and any time it gets quiet, ask one. Okay?” What could I say? I’ll do my best. The Fed came back and off we went.

It all went well for the first couple of hours, but then we really started running out of things to say and do. I looked over at one point and saw Jeremy, his hand hidden so The Fed couldn’t see it, gesturing to say something, to ask a question. I gave him a look that said, “I’m stuck—I can’t think of anything to ask!” So he said, ”Well, look, you seem to understand how these Omegas [a long range system ATA used that is no longer in existence]are operated, do you have any questions about how they work?” I said, “Well, I have done a little research on Omega, and while I know the basic theory of operation, exactly what goes on inside those boxes is pretty much magic to me, so, yah, I have lots of questions.” Then he said, “Really? Well, I have a book that I picked up in preparation for becoming a check airman that I think you might be interested in,” and he reached over into his bag and pulled out a book and showed it to me.

I just sat there looking at it. He said, “Do you know this book?” And I said, “Yah, I know that book,” and he said, “Really, how is that?” and I said, “I wrote it.” He said, “You wrote it?” and I said, “Yah, that’s my name on the cover, Donald J. Clausing.” The Fed, meanwhile, was sliding further and further forward in his seat, listening to all this, perhaps suspecting a rat, and said, “You wrote this book?” I nodded and he said, “Let me see that,” grabbed it from Jeremy, sat back and starting flipping through it. And that was essentially the end of the check ride. The Fed read the book, Jeremy and I flew on to Las Vegas, and that would have been that except there was one more twist, and that was I still needed one more landing, one that should have been perfectly routine, a visual approach backed up by the ILS to one of the long east-west runways at Las Vegas. Unfortunately, this was one of the rare days when the wind was so strong out of the north that they had to land to the north, which meant I would have to do a purely visual approach to one of the shorter north-south runways.

A purely visual approach in a turbine powered aircraft is much more difficult than an ILS approach because it is critical that you are on the proper glide path, there is very little margin for error, and your tools for dealing with deviations in airspeed, altitude, descent rate and glide path are limited. A satisfactory landing has to be in the landing zone (“The Stripes”), on speed, you cannot descend greater than 1000 fpm in the last 1000 feet, which means you can’t just push it over and get it on down if you think you are a little high because you are already descending close to 700 fpm, and you can’t just pull the power all the way back and add a bunch of drag—you can pull the power back but fan jets put out some thrust even at idle so the fans don’t create any drag—and if you get too low or slow it takes several seconds for the fans to spool up which may be too late, and without an actual glide slope or at least a PAPI you aren’t going to know for sure if you are too high or two low until close to the ground when it is too late to correct. Your only safe option then is to go around. And while that would be the smart thing to do and show good judgment, it wouldn’t qualify as a satisfactory landing. So I thought, “Well, bad luck, but you got this far, you’re just going to have to make it work.”

I got set up on final okay, 1500 feet or so above the field, fully configured, so far so good, but wasn’t sure about the glide path. I thought I was maybe a little high, but wasn’t sure. Jeremy was starting that squirmy body language stuff that meant something wasn’t right, but I still wasn’t sure, and he said, “So how does it look to you? High? Low? What do you think?” And I said, “Maybe just a little high,” and he said, “Right. Fix it. Fix it now.” So I started aggressively correcting, as much as I could without exceeding the descent or speed limits, and as I got closer I could tell that I had it nailed, but just in time. The landing was good, on speed, in the landing zone, and rolling out I heard Jeremy say, “My airplane”—the airplane can only be taxied from the left seat, and knew I had done it. We parked, completed the checklist, congratulations all around, Jeremy was a fully qualified Check Airman, I was a fully qualified First Officer, and the Fed was off to do a line check on another airplane.

I rode back to Detroit on the jump seat, one very happy and very tired new First Officer, spent the night there and got home the next day. As a new hire in training you have no life and it had been an extraordinarily tough couple of months for everybody, not just me, and the whole family—my wife, Emmy, daughters Nicole and Hilary—were all celebrating with champagne when the phone rang. Emmy answered it, and I could tell immediately that something was very wrong. She turned pale, listened intently, a few short answers, hung up and went over to Nicole, hugged her and told her that her boy friend, Dan, had killed himself.

That was one of the saddest holiday seasons ever. Life, of course, did go on. Jeremy, who was a Boston based Captain, and I flew together many times after that, had great times, and became very good friends. The “I wrote it” story became a part of company legend. A couple of years later I upgraded and he was instrumental in my eventually becoming a Check Airman myself. We became friends with his wife Gail and son Drew and daughter Anjuli, and they with us. Over the years as bases changed and aircraft changed and company politics changed, we went different ways. Drew went to Embry-Riddle and got hired by one of the regional carriers. Anjuli got a Masters in Accounting and was working in Boston as an auditor. Then, five years ago, tragedy again: Anjuli and her boyfriend were killed in a car accident, on their way to Maine to go skiing. Then, unbelievably, a couple of years after that Drew drowned in a white water kayaking accident in Colorado.

There are some losses that are so unfathomable we don’t have words for them; this has to be one of those cases. My wife and I were back East recently and stopped in to see Gail and Jeremy. They are managing as well as anyone can. Gail told us that she said to Jeremy at the time of Anjuli’s death, “The only way we are going to get through this is to try to do good for others.” So she and Jeremy started a foundation called Goodwill Hunters ( www.goodwillhunters.org ). Very clever name, in a couple of ways, but that is also exactly what it is: a group hunting for goodwill. They do fund raisers and use the proceeds for local food banks, cleanup projects, anything of goodwill in their area along the shore south of Boston. Only now their efforts are doubled.

This all started with a phone call from Training in November of 1989. It is now August 2011. This is a good part of my life. I’m sorry it has had to be so bitter sweet.

Quick Reference Handbook

2011-03-27T15:46:00.000-07:00

(Double click on image to enlarge.)

I have written previously about adapting professional lessons in cockpit management to single pilot operations (October 2009, November 2009 and December 2009 posts), and this is a specific application of those techniques: creating a quick reference handbook.

One of the main differences between a three man cockpit (okay, three crewmember cockpit) and a two man cockpit is that with a three man cockpit you can designate one pilot to fly the aircraft, while the other two work on the problem. With two crewmembers to work on the problem, one can do the research—get out the aircraft operating manual, go through the various problem solving trees to identify the specific problem, and then, with the help of the non-flying pilot, run the appropriate checklist and attempt to solve the problem. (I review this process in some detail in the October 2009 post, “Single Pilot Cockpit Techniques, Part I.”)

With only two crewmembers, you just can’t do this. You are either going to have one pilot doing the research and running the checklist by himself, with no one to monitor and assist him, or worse, you’re going to have both pilots working on the problem and no one watching the airplane. But the airlines knew problems will occur with any airplane and that they have to be fixed, so a solution was needed and the result was the creation of something called a Quick Reference Handbook (QRH). So what’s the difference between a QRH and just using common sense, training and aircraft knowledge to solve the problem from memory, and how can a QRH be applied to single pilot operations, where one pilot has to both fly and solve the problem?

A QRH is essentially a problem solving checklist associated with a specific indication. That indication could be an annunciator light, a message on a multi function display (MFD), or a warning light. It could even be something not specifically annunciated, but indicated, such as electrical smoke or fumes. In each case, something specific has happened and the QRH, following a prescribed format, will note the indication (to make sure you have the right checklist), briefly describe what has happened (you would have to get into the operating manual for a detailed description), repeat any memory items to make sure they got done, and then tell you what to do often following an “if, then” format, the “if not” choice leading to the next step.

The example above comes from the ATA Boeing 757 QRH for failure of one or more fuel pumps. The annunciation in this case is a message on the MFD for the specific pump that has failed. If that isn’t the correct message, you have the wrong checklist. The condition describes what has happened. (It’s obvious in this case, but won’t always be.) Under that is a warning, taken directly from the Boeing operating manual, not to reset any fuel pump circuit breakers: you can manage the loss of a single pump, but you do not want to take a chance that the breaker popped because of a feeder fault—an ignition source. Then it says, “IF either center pump PRESS light illuminated”, turn it off: you look overhead to the pump switches, if either has a PRESS light illuminated, a part of the switch, push it which turns it off. Very simple. If not, neither center pump press light illuminated, go to the next step. (Note that if both center pump switches are illuminated, now you have a bigger problem because you have no way to pump the fuel from the center tank which is essentially an aux tank for the 757.) If that is not the case, then one of the wing pump press lights must be on—something triggered the message—so identify which one, turn it off and proceed. (As a matter of interest, there isn’t a warning for both main pump press lights being on because the engines will suction feed from the wing tanks, so you just turn them both off it that is the case. But if I had written this QRH entry, I would have made a note of that.)

So that’s how a QRH checklist works. It is designed to be as simple and direct as possible so that one crewmember can find it, read it, and then accomplish it without backup, assistance, or verification. And the same thing can be developed for whatever aircraft you fly. Your “pilot flying” will have to be the autopilot, leaving you free to find and accomplish the checklist, but the principle is the same. (I’m assuming you are flying IFR; VFR is a little more tolerant and you should be able to hand fly and consult the QRH at the same time if you don’t have an autopilot.) It will take a little work to create a complete QRH, but it will be worth it, if for no other reason than that it will get you back into your operating manual in some detail.

First you need to identify the annunciations for your aircraft. Do you have an annunciator panel? If you do, each light should have a corresponding QRH checklist. What other warning lights do you have? Low oil pressure, vacuum failure, generator/alternator failure? Finally, what are the non-annunciated failures? Most of these you will get by going through your operating manual, particularly the emergency section, and listing problems that have no annunciation, like the electrical smoke or fumes previously cited, engine failure, gauges out of limits with no other indication, and so on.

Once you have your list, you are ready to make up your QRH responses. Remember to start with the annunciation, indication or condition, to make sure you have the right checklist. State in as simple a sentence as you can what it means: “Engine driven pump failure”; “Vacuum pump failure”; “Gear not confirmed down and locked,” etc. If there are any prohibitions or warnings, they should come next, not at the end when it may be too late: “Gear must remain extended after manual extension. Do not reset any handles, switches or circuit breakers.” Then go through a step by step procedure, using an “if, then” format as necessary, to solve the problem.

Here’s how one might look for a Beech Baron 58P vacuum pump failure:

VACUUM PUMP FAILURE

Indication: A left or right red button in vacuum pressure gauge indicates pump failure.

Condition: Left or right vacuum pump has failed.

IF one button visible:

No action required. Attitude and heading gyros, pressurization, and deice boots will operate normally on remaining system. Vacuum system redundancy lost: Monitor remaining system.

IF both buttons visible:

Attitude and directional gyros lost. Control attitude and heading with turn coordinator, airspeed, altitude and compass.

Pressurization control and safety valve control lost. Descend as soon as possible to 12,500 or less.

Surface deicing boots will not operate.

Land as soon as possible.

The only difference between an annunciated checklist and an un annunciated checklist is that the later won’t have an “Indication” or “Message” heading, because there isn’t one. Here is an example of a QRH checklist for Engine Fire In Flight, memory items in red, again for the Beech Baron 58P:

ENGINE FIRE IN FLIGHT

Condition: Fire in the engine compartment.

Fuel selector—OFF

Mixture—IDLE CUT-OFF

Prop—FEATHER

Cabin Press Air Shutoff Control—PULL

Fuel Boost Pump—OFF

Magneto/Start Switch—OFF

Alternator Switch—OFF

Oxygen—AS REQUIRED

Air Cond/Press Air Cool Switch—OFF

Refer to Single Engine Checklist

Land as Soon as Possible.

One of the most important attributes of a well thought out QRH checklist is that the order in which items are accomplished is based on the priority of the item: most critical items first, least critical last. Working entirely from memory, this won’t always be the case: I’ve had a fire, I shut down the engine, now what? What else should I turn off and in what order? Magnetos off next or fuel pump? Should I turn the alternator off? Will I lose half my electrical system if I do that? The QRH tells you what to do and the order in which to do it. What has to be done from memory has been done, the immediate emergency is over. Now follow up in an orderly, methodical and complete way using the QRH checklist. When you’re safely on the ground you can get back into your manual and figure out why you didn’t lose half your electrical system when you turned the alternator for the damaged engine off or why the manufacturer thought it was better to turn the fuel pump off first and then turn the magnetos off. In the air you just want to do the right thing.

The fun part about all this is you can be as creative as you want: do you want colored borders to separate emergencies from abnormals, for instance; do you want laminated, individual checklists collected in a packet or pocket, or do you want them tabbed ,in a binder; how do you want to organize the information, and how will you use caps, bold print, italics, different font sizes and color to highlight that organization?

There is no denying that developing a QRH for even a non-complex single engine aircraft will take some doing, and for a pressurized twin quite a bit of doing. But here’s a suggestion for making it easier and possibly even a little bit more fun: don’t try to do it all at once. Once you have a pretty good list of emergencies and abnormals, both annunciated and unannunciated (and remember it doesn’t have to be 100% complete, you can always add checklists later as you become aware of the need), then work on how you want it organized and assembled. Then decide which one you want to work on first. I would suggest doing either one of the most critical emergencies first, like engine fire, or one of the most common faults, like vacuum pump failure. (That’s part of the reason I used those as examples.) Take that one to the airplane and then, over time, keep adding to your collection. This gives you an immediate reward for your effort up to that point, and as you fly around, knowing that your QRH is not complete and hoping nothing comes up before it is complete, you will be motivated to keep working on it.

There is one final good reason for having a QRH . One of Lockheed’s most famous test flight engineers for the L-1011 was asked what the most important thing to do was following any emergency or abnormal situation in that aircraft. He said, “Start the clock, then put your hands under your seat for 60 seconds.” The L-1011 was an incredibly well designed airplane, and almost anything that could go critically wrong with its systems had a built-in, automatic initial fix. It was the flight engineer’s job to then get the book out and fix what remained, see what parts could be restored, and deal with what was lost. The way to do that was to go slowly, and the way not to do that was to start pushing switches, closing valves, disconnecting drives, elbows flying, hands and fingers all over the panel. First, just sit on your hands.

The QRH does the same thing for you. There are a few memory items for any pilot flying any aircraft, critical steps that must be taken immediately, from memory, to prevent catastrophic failure or damage. But there aren’t many. And once those items have been taken care of, that’s when you need to sit on your hands. And the first thing you want them to touch after that is a QRH.

Ski School

2011-02-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

Photo courtesy of Ray Hubbe.

I just got back from another ski trip with my buddies, this one to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. (See “Big Sky, Montana,” January, 2008, and “Amazing,” December, 2007, for posts on previous trips.) As always, linking a ski vacation with aviation is a bit of a stretch, but, as always, I have found a way. This time it involved riding up the ski lift.

There are two main lifts at Jackson Hole, the big one a tram that takes a hundred or so skiers all the way to the top of the mountain, some 10,000 plus feet above sea level, with all expert terrain starting down. (The base of the resort is 6300 feet MSL, giving a drop of approximately 4000 feet, one of the highest in North America.) This particular day my buddies were riding that lift, but I had opted for easier terrain for awhile and was skiing by myself, going up the second major lift, a gondola, going up to about 9000 feet and taking about 10 minutes to get to the top. They hold up to eight skiers, but it wasn’t a real busy day so none were full, and on this particular ride I was joined, somewhat to my surprise for a weekday morning, by two young kids, a boy of about 10 and a girl of about 8. They were very polite, well behaved and friendly, and seemed amenable to chit chat, so I asked them how it was that they were so lucky to be skiing instead of in school. The boy said, “Homeschooling.” I said, “So you’re pretty lucky. You get to ski and go to school at the same time,” and the little girl said, “Our dad teaches us on the gondola.” I wasn’t sure how much teaching could be done on a 10 minute gondola ride, but I didn’t say that. I did say, “So where is your dad?” and the girl said, “He’s one or two gondolas back with our older sister.”

So I just looked at these two very outgoing and precocious kids and said, “So we need to have a lesson. Do you want to learn about airplanes?” They both burst into big smiles and said simultaneously, “Yes!” Scrambling quickly, I thought, well, let’s just start with Day One of flight training. I told them that the first thing you were normally taught when you were learning to fly, after you had been taught to preflight the airplane, was straight and level. I explained what straight meant, maintaining a heading, and that level meant to maintain a constant altitude, that you have a compass to tell you your heading and an altimeter to tell you your altitude, and the basic control inputs to correct for each. Then we talked a little bit about learning to fly in general, that you had to be 16 to solo airplanes and 14 to solo gliders, and that it didn’t take too long to reach that point so it didn’t make too much sense to start early, but that when they got close to those ages that was the time to think about it. At that point we were at top, said our goodbyes and got out.

We were all still pretty much together getting our skis on and the little girl said to me, “That’s our dad,” pointing out a very fit looking 30 something guy moving away from the gondola and talking to a 12- or 13-year-old girl. The older girl came over and said, “I love your hat,” and we all skied off in our own directions.

Enough is Enough

2010-11-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

Aviation has lots of folksy sayings, most of which, in my opinion, are more often wrong than right. One of the more familiar is, “The only time you have too much fuel is when you are on fire.” It’s clever and it’s funny, but it isn’t true.

Of course we always want to have plenty of fuel, and figuring out what “plenty” is is the point of this post, but that doesn’t mean more is always better. More is certainly not better after a partial loss of power, for instance, regardless whether that loss was caused by a twin engine aircraft losing one engine or a blown cylinder or burned exhaust valve in a single. Nor is more the answer to trying to out climb trees on takeoff, to carry a load of ice, to try to top severe turbulence, or to fly out of down drafts from mountain waves. Fuel has weight, weight carries a performance penalty, and there are any number of situations where performance is more critical than endurance. So it’s just kind of stupid to say, “The only time you have too much fuel is when you’re on fire,” and, what I really don’t like about it is that it rationalizes careless flight planning.

One of the more familiar discussions pilots of high performance aircraft typically have is, how much fuel do you want to land with? What are your personal minimums for fuel? At what point does fuel get so low that you say, “Enough. I’m landing at the nearest suitable airport”? I remember having this discussion with several other pilots years ago when I was flying Citations and Falcons for a company in New Hampshire. The Chief Pilot, Stu Jones, was there too, but didn’t get involved in the conversation. That didn’t surprise us because he was not a big talker but when he did say something it was often quite clever and usually very funny. Finally someone asked him what his number was, and he said, “I always try to land with some.” That was funny. And, of course, directly to the point. Landing with “some” is what it is all about. One of the sayings in aviation that I do like is, “Takeoffs are optional, landings are mandatory.” Once airborne, sooner or later the aircraft is going to land, with or without the benefit of power. It’s always better to do it with power.

I started out in aviation in gliders and my first solo was in a glider. Gliders are great fun and a great way to get into aviation, and they are neither scary nor dangerous just because they don’t have engines. They do have “power", but it isn’t in the form of an engine, it is in the form of excess speed and altitude. From Day One in gliders you learn to enter the pattern with more altitude than needed to simply glide to a landing, and with more speed than needed to simply stay in the air. Both are then gradually dissipated, using spoilers, to maintain the desired glide path. You “add power” by reducing the amount of spoilers, and you “reduce power” by increasing the amount. The rough equivalent of a dead stick landing in a glider is arriving over the airport with minimum airspeed and altitude. In that case, you better get it right the first time, just like any dead stick landing.

The reason I started thinking about this again was because I noticed several ads for fuel monitors included something to the effect of being “GPS ready” or “GPS capable”. What, I wondered, did GPS have to do with fuel flow? So I looked into it a little further, and apparently what GPS does for fuel monitors is provide estimated fuel remaining at destination. I thought that was why we flight planned in the first place—so we would know estimated fuel remaining on arrival, and I thought that was why we kept a flight log enroute, so we could see how that estimate was holding up? If the trend was seriously negative, we could do something about it before we got to dry mouth time. There’s nothing wrong with having a running estimate of fuel remaining at destination, but it told me that if pilots were willing to spend extra money for it, it was because they didn’t have a very good idea otherwise. Any kind of a decent flight plan, one that includes winds aloft forecasts along the route of flight, is going to be better than a simple GPS estimate based on current groundspeed and the assumption that it will stay constant for the remainder of the flight. Now, a flight management computer, or any kind of computerized flight log with position input is the best of both worlds, but I don’t see where having a simple fuel remaining estimate based on current winds tells you a whole lot. It would be pretty disconcerting, for instance, to see that number start out big, and then watch it get smaller and smaller as the headwinds increased, or the tailwinds decreased, along the route of flight. Some information isn’t always a good thing.

I also know that, as a practical matter, most reciprocating aircraft have their tanks topped off after every flight. And I know that topping off the tanks is not always done just to simplify flight planning or to pay homage to the “You never have too much fuel unless you’re on fire” rule. Avgas and water don’t mix, the water settles in the low points and causes all kinds of problems, and full tanks minimize condensation. Also, most general aviation fuel tanks are rubber bladders and fuel keeps them from drying out. So topped off fuel tanks may be a practical fact of life for most general aviation pilots. But that doesn’t eliminate the need for good flight planning and for maintaining an enroute log, and it certainly doesn’t eliminate the question, “How much is enough”?

We know what the regs say (FAR 91.151 and FAR 91.167), but we don’t worry about them too much because, again, the tanks are always full and we don’t try to stretch our range, so we know we will always have enough, if we are VFR, to fly to our destination plus 30 minutes of fuel at normal cruise, 45 at night, and if we filed IFR we need that plus enough to “complete the flight” to the destination—that means descend, approach, and land—and after that fly to an alternate, as required. Assuming you do have only these minimum amounts of reserve fuel, what does that do for you?

VFR, not very much: 30 minutes of fuel is barely enough to see on the gauge, and who knows how much of that is water, gunk, or even usable as you turn from base to final? Forty five minutes at night isn’t much better. I’m not a big fan of VFR at night anyway, it’s hard to see the clouds, and pilotage is a whole lot more difficult at night—better hope that Garmin doesn’t take the night off. So day or night, these reserves are minimal and don’t allow for any contingencies, which is what the reserves are for.

The fuel requirement for IFR is a little better: enough fuel to actually fly to your destination, shoot an approach, do a missed approach, climb back to a safe cruising altitude, proceed to your alternate, land and still have 45 minutes of fuel at normal cruising speed to use, presumably, for your approach and landing there. (You don’t always have to have an alternate, but you’re nuts not to.) That’s quite a bit more fuel, but more to the point, there is a real purpose to it: fly to your destination and land; if unable, fly to your alternate and land there. I don’t really know where the FAA came up with “45 minutes at normal cruising speed”, but these rules go back a long long ways, and they provide the starting point for that question, “How much is enough?”

The NBAA (National Business Aviation Association) has established a minimum fuel profile that is frequently cited in ads and articles on business aircraft: “Range based on NBAA IFR reserves,” is a typical footnote, for instance. The NBAA profile includes fuel for a missed approach, climb to 5000 feet, hold for five minutes, climb at best rate of climb to the optimum altitude to fly 200 nm to an alternate at long range cruise, descend to sea level and land with 45 minutes of fuel. In other words, it flight plans fairly accurately and realistically a typical missed approach at the destination, diversion to the alternate, descent and landing. It is very useful for comparing maximum range of one aircraft to another, and it is useful as a model for realistic flight planning, but it doesn’t really address the issue of how much is enough when you finally do land; it assumes that, ultimately, the FAR 91.167 minimums are adequate. So it’s great for comparing range for one aircraft to another, but not so great at telling you whether you would actually want to fly that aircraft that far.

There are two other interesting lessons implied by this profile, one is that there is no fuel allotted to try the approach again—it assumes you try once and if you miss you go as directly as possible to your alternate and you land there—and it assumes you always will have an alternate. My view on this, discussed in some detail in a previous post, “The Other Part of Flight Planning,” January 2010, is that that is exactly what you should always do: shoot one approach, if unable to land divert to an alternate, one with a precision approach and weather forecast well above minimums, and land there. Too many general aviation accidents occur on the second and third try at the destination; professionals just don’t fly that way and professionals don’t have those kinds of accidents.

So we still haven’t completely answered the question, “Is 45 minutes of fuel based on normal cruise fuel flow adequate or not?” and the only way, I think, that question can be answered is to ask, “What is that reserve fuel for?” The first thing it is for, the most basic, is to make sure there is always “some” fuel remaining at the end. That means, we want there to be enough fuel in the tanks that the needles aren’t resting on the bottom of the gauge—we want a little day light there. Again, who knows what’s in the bottom of those tanks? We want some fuel in the tanks when we finally land, and we want to know for sure that it is fuel and not water, sludge, rubber bits, dirt or anything else that won’t burn. (ATA had an engine flame out on a 1011 just before takeoff. Further investigation revealed that the fuel filter was clogged with bits of cloth and foam padding—a mechanic, working inside the fuel tank, had left his cushion behind. Probably not going to happen to Cessna 152, but strange things do find their way into fuel tanks.)

Let’s look at both 30 and 45 minutes of fuel at “normal cruising speed”, whatever that means. I happen to have five different pilot operating handbooks at home, and the only one that lists a “normal cruising speed” is the Piper Turbo Twin Comanche and that is also its highest power setting (other than max continuous). That’s okay if Piper wants to call it that, but it doesn’t necessarily make it “normal.” (“Old” Piper, that is. New Piper, with the Malibu in any case, another one of the manuals I happen to have on hand, goes back to calling it High Speed Cruise.) So, what is normal? The one your instructor told you to always use? The one that gives you a nice round fuel flow number like 10 gph? The one you happened to flight plan for that day? As far as I’m concerned they are all normal, so take your pick: the higher the power setting, the more fuel will be required. What about the airplane that normally burns 10 gph? Thirty minutes of fuel would be five gallons, typically split into two tanks: two and a half gallons per tank. That might get the needles off the peg, but not by much. Forty five minutes is only a little better, three and three quarters gallons per tank.

If we look at the Piper Turbo Twin Comanche performance charts, Normal Cruise is supposed to be 22.6 gph. Thirty minutes of fuel would be 11.3 gallons, 5 2/3 gallons per tank. Forty five minutes would be almost 17 gallons (16.95) or about 8 ½ gallons per tank. I can probably see that on the gauge, but I wouldn’t like what I saw. And remember these numbers come from using the highest normal power setting; economy or long range power settings would yield even less.

So I think we can safely say that the FAR minimums are not enough. How much more would we like to have, and, again, for what reason? First, we have to agree that the professional way of operating a flight, if we can call it that, is assumed here, or else we’re back to, “You can never have too much fuel.” Let me explain: If we agree that the way to flight plan and operate a flight is to always have a good alternate, and to proceed to that alternate after one try at the destination, then the amount of fuel we would like to have above and beyond that necessary just to fly that profile is a legitimate and serious question. If we don’t agree with that premise, if we want to have the option to try the same approach again, hoping for better weather, or the chance to try to fly the approach better and not have to go around the next time, or to try a different approach, or to hold for awhile hoping the weather improves, or if none of that works, to try the nearest airport to the destination and if we can’t get in there either try another one, then we’re back to taking as much fuel as we can and hoping that will be enough. So if you don’t agree with the basic premise, you can stop reading right now because the rest is irrelevant to you. And good luck.

But let’s assume you have flight planned carefully and you know exactly how much fuel it should take to go to your destination, shoot an approach, do a missed approach, proceed to your alternate, shoot an approach there and land with 45 minutes of fuel remaining. Is that enough, or do you want a margin above that, and for what reason? Well, I think it is obvious that you want more that just enough, if for no other reason that these are flight planned numbers, not real world. In the real world, fuel burns are often higher than book values and airspeeds slower. In the real world you don’t always get the routing you requested or the altitude, the winds aloft are sometimes less favorable than forecast, thunderstorms and icing conditions force detours, and congestion results in vectoring and holding. You don’t often get all of these adverse factors on every flight, but almost all flights will be affected by one or more of these factors, and they all require more fuel. So again, how much?

There are, I think, three ways to look at this. The first is to try to come up with a reasonable and conservative number to account for several, but not all, possible adverse factors. (If you have a really bad day and all of these negatives combine, your enroute log will say to you, “This isn’t going well. You need to land now.”) The second way is to increase the minimum fuel by a given percentage, and the third way is to increase the fuel in terms of additional flying time. All three work, and I’m not sure any one is better or worse than the others; for sure the first one is the most complicated, but it is possibly also the most accurate. Each will be more or less conservative depending on the assumptions made: How many adverse factors do I expect, and what will be their effect?

The airlines, under FAR 121, are required to increase their enroute fuel by 10% when operating internationally. That can be a bunch of fuel for a long flight. (The airlines have found a way around this in the form of a re-release flight plan, which is way too complicated to get into here, but it shows the limitation of the simple percentage method: too much extra fuel on long flights, not enough on short ones.) For the Piper Turbo Twin Comanche, a long flight might require 80 gallons of fuel from takeoff to destination. Ten per cent would mean adding another eight gallons, or about 30 minutes, plus or minus a few minutes depending on the power setting. That seems pretty reasonable to me: 30 minutes of deviating, of groundspeeds slower than flight planned, of getting vectored around, of having to fly lower or higher than desired to stay out of ice, or some combination of all of the above, sounds pretty reasonable to me. (Remember, this is fuel above the 45 minutes required by regulation.) If you want more, or experience shows that that still leaves too many sweaty palm situations, increase it. But have a number, keep track of it enroute, keep records and review them to see how your number is working out, and amend that number as real world experience dictates.

Why do we do this, if, as is usually the case, the aircraft is already full of fuel? What’s the point? You get the fuel you get, some days just a little more than what you need and some days a lot more, but what’s the point of figuring a specific fuel load for that flight that day if the tanks are already full? I think there are several good reasons, but perhaps the best is that you may find out that, even with full tanks, you don’t have enough fuel. That is, what looks alright based on rules of thumb and past experience isn’t enough when you take a more accurate and complete look at it: takeoff and climb, enroute, descent, approach, miss, climb, cruise to alternate, descend again, shoot another approach, land, add 45 minutes of fuel to that (FAR 91.167) and then your own personal number on top of that. And if full tanks won’t let do all of that, then a safe outcome is no longer guaranteed. It may seem like a lot of fuel, and most of the time, when everything goes pretty much as expected and you make a routine arrival and landing at your destination, it probably is, but sooner or later it’s not going to be.

So that’s good reason number one. Good reason number two is that it forces you to have a plan, one that you have assured yourself you have enough fuel for, and one that virtually guarantees a safe outcome. Any fuel above and beyond that required for the plan carries a weight penalty, but at least you know what that weight is. Good reason number three is that it might get you to thinking about ways to not top off the aircraft after every flight without encountering condensation problems or bladder drying. That’s a subject for another time, but suffice it to say that a regularly flown airplane, stored in a heated hangar, is a good candidate for fueling as required prior to flight.

My chief pilot was right: you always want to land with some fuel in the tanks. But topping the tanks off and relying on rules of thumb won’t guarantee that; the only way to guarantee that is to have a plan and stick to it. And fires have nothing to do with it.

Oshkosh, Looking Back

2010-08-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

“Oshkosh”—AirVenture 2010—was a little different this year, and so will my coverage be. (Can you end a sentence with a verb? I mean, if you’re not German?) I didn’t do a day-by-day report this year because there was an unfortunate sameness to the days. That sameness was largely the result of two weeks of torrential rains prior to AirVenture that made most of the camping and parking grounds, both for aircraft and for cars, unusable. Admission to the airport was prioritized, vintage, warbirds, show and display aircraft first, everyone else as available, camping was limited and scattered, and the heavier RVs were parked in mall parking lots. I can’t imagine what the financial hit was for the EAA. I can tell you that it left for a quieter, easier but somewhat downbeat week.

A big part of AirVenture are the Forums, presentations done by individuals in some twenty or so different shed type structures, one every hour and half, running all day long, all week long. I did one again this year, breaking from my usual pattern of talking about navigation and talked about aviation blogs. I thought it went well, and I think all seven or eight people who attended enjoyed it—kind of a micro experience within the general diminished returns typical of AirVenture this year. I also went to several presentations myself, and by far my favorite were those given by Mike Busch on aircraft maintenance. Mike gave a talk each day on various subjects, from on-condition maintenance to myths about EGT and CHT readings. His talks were intelligent, extremely well informed, controversial at times, but convincing. Mike also writes a monthly column in “Sport Aviation,” which every EAA member receives automatically, and he can be connected with on-line at www.savvymx.com. (He also runs an aircraft maintenance advisory service for aircraft owners, and doesn’t hesitate to plug it, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of his considerable knowledge anyway. I suspect it is a pretty good service but I’ll let him plug his own business.)

The most memorable experience for me at Oshkosh this year barely involved aviation, but I’ll tell you about it anyway because it does highlight a part of AirVenture that is very important but often overlooked. The permanent part of EAA, the museum, offices, a grass strip with vintage hangars and permanent displays inside, is on the northwest corner of the airport, quite a bit away from the flight line and the rest of the AirVenture displays, forums, exhibition halls, the core areas for the week. But it’s worth a trip up there if for no other reason than just to see the museum and hangars, and also because it is the main area for kid activities, of which there are many. Kids can do hands-on stuff like fly simulators, learn about dead reckoning navigation from instructors, learn about aircraft types, history, all kinds of stuff, all just for kids. EAA is very committed to getting kids hooked on aviation, a smart move: Who among us who fly can’t recall with some certainty the moment when, as a kid, we knew we wanted to be pilots?

My wife and I walked up there and spent a couple of hours walking around the grounds, got pretty tired, and decided to take the shuttle bus—a big school bus—back to the main grounds. We were sitting together on a bench seat on the right hand side, and on the left hand side was a young boy, sitting by himself, with his older brother and at least one parent in the row behind him. (Having been an older brother, I’m afraid to admit that I’m pretty sure the older brother told him to go sit by himself.) The bus continued to fill up, people filing by looking for places to sit in the back, and the little boy starting trying to ask people as they went by if they wanted to sit with him. They were all focused on seats further back, and he was probably a little hesitant and didn’t really speak up, and after he asked three or four people going by, “Do you want to sit with me” and was ignored, started shortening it to, “Do you want..?”, then “Do...?), and finally just tried to make eye contact. After a couple more painful failures to connect, I said, “Do you want me to sit with you?” He didn’t say anything but just smiled and slid over. So we sat and I asked him if he went to kindergarten and a long conversation ensued about how he was in The Threes last year and he would be four in the fall—“I think the first day of fall”--but that next year he would be going to The Fives. I asked what happened to The Fours, and I got one of those long sighs of exasperation, followed by the explanation, necessary only for slow adults, that The Fours and The Fives were together, the just called it The Fives. “Oh,” I said. Then he said, “My teacher wanted me to stay in The Threes but my mommy wants me to go in The Fives. “Yah,” I said, “That’s tough one.” A short while later our ride was over and we said our goodbyes and he rejoined his family, including his older brother, who had begun to get a little jealous toward the end that The Brat was getting all the attention. (Standing in line at a fast food restaurant years ago, I heard a mother say to the older of her two boys, “I wish you wouldn’t call him Bugger. His name is James. Call him James.” How do we all survive childhood?)

There is an old joke, often told by wives and flight attendants, about a mother who asks her little boy if he knows what he wants to be when he grows up. The little boy says, “I think I want to be a pilot when I grow up.” The mother says, “Well, you’ll have to decide which it will be, you can’t do both.” I don’t know what this little almost four year old boy will be when he grows up, but I’m pretty sure it will be something good.

AirVenture 2010

2010-07-13T11:45:00.000-07:00

AirVenture 2010—“Oshkosh”—is less than two weeks away. I will be there from Opening Day (Monday, 25 July), through the week, leaving Sunday (1 August). I’m leaving on Sunday because I learned the last time I was there for a full week that Sunday is really “get away day”, with not much going on and, if you do stay for it, a bit of a let down after a full week of aviation activities.) I will be doing Authors’ Corner, which is a chance to meet people and do book signings, on Monday from 1030 to 1130 and on Saturday from 1130 to 1230. I will also be giving a presentation on Thursday at 4 pm, just after the air show, in the Dake Pavilion, on the subject of aviation blogs. If you’re going to Oshkosh on any of those days, I hope you’ll stop by and introduce yourself as a blog follower. (The full title of my presentation is “Aviation Blogs: Another Way to Stay Connected.” Which it is. But the best way to stay connected is to just walk up and say “Hi”.)

World Cup

2010-06-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why exactly, and it doesn’t really matter, but for the first time, it seems to me, there is a lot of interest in the US in the World Cup soccer competition. My own interest in it goes back to 1990 when it was held in Italy and ATA, then American Trans Air, had several contracts with European travel companies to take fans to and from Italy for the tournament. As a very junior L-1011 copilot, I ended up doing a lot of those trips, mostly to and from Ireland and England, because the more senior pilots generally preferred shorter, domestic trips and as the new guy, I got what was left. But it was fine with me—I loved the international flying and I loved being in Europe. You couldn’t help but get caught up in the enthusiasm and excitement, with every pub in England and Ireland full of fans watching on TV who couldn’t go, and every village square in northern Europe full of fans drinking hefeweisen, the traditional summer beer there, and watching the matches on big outdoor screens. Italy itself was decorated from boot top to toe with banners and billboards, the entire country decked out for the event. It was one of the best summers of flying for me at ATA, and one with many great memories.

One memory in particular stands out. I was flying with Dan Drummond, check airman and captain, and at this point in my career, something of a god (see “Step On It", April 2010). We were in Dublin, having dropped off a load of Irish fans in Palermo, and had set off, along with two flight attendants, on foot from our hotel to the nearest pub to watch Ireland play England, a rivalry that makes the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry look gentlemanly. We were anxious to get there, so we talked the two flight attendants into cutting across a pasture. They were dressed in I don’t really know what, but whatever it was left their feet and ankles exposed. We had long pants and socks on. (There is a reason I’m describing these details.) We got to the pub and managed to get a table with a view of the screen, got our beers, and before we had taken even a couple of sips, the flight attendants starting scratching and complaining about how much their feet and ankles itched and stung. And they wouldn’t stop, just more and more complaining, and they pretty quickly figured out that there had to have been something in that field we cut across, something not good, at which point most of the bitching and moaning became aimed at us. We asked locals what it might be and they said, “Oh, nettles, you know. Stinging nettles. Absolutely full of the stuff, up to the kneecaps.” It lasted for hours and I think the only reason they let us live is because we were their ride home.

There is another, happier memory of that match as well. Ireland scored the first goal, and as you can imagine, the place went crazy. The Irish take their kids to the pubs with them, at least they do on the weekends and for big events, it’s a very social, community place, and pretty much just let the kids run around having their own kind of fun. In the midst of this craziness, I saw a little kid, 3 or 4 years old, running to his dad to join in the celebration. Someone else, an uncle maybe, caught him as he ran by, picked him up, and flung him, some 10 or 12 feet, to his dad. The story does have a happy ending, the dad catching the kid and the kid screaming with delight.

Soccer is now a very big sport in the US, of course, with “soccer moms” almost as common a phrase as “golf widow.” But that is a fairly recent phenomenon. My generation, the Baby Boomer generation, generally didn’t know anything about soccer, didn’t even know what season it was played in, but it didn’t matter because we already had a year’s worth of sports, baseball, football, and basketball. As an army brat living in Germany in the late ‘50s’ though, we were introduced to soccer at school. I’m sure it was part of the Army’s continuing effort to improve German-American relations, an uphill struggle, and not just because this was only 10 years after the war, but also because we lived almost completely separate lives, with American living quarters built just for military families, US schools, US sports, US snack bars and movies and bowling alleys and so on. And it is still pretty much that way. If you are US military and you want to get to know the locals and their culture, you have to make an effort. You can spend three years in Germany and never leave America if you want to. So the soccer program was part of the effort to get us kids familiar with the national sport of Germany.

We were taught the basics of soccer, positions, rules, simple plays, and played some, not well of course, but it was all great fun because we were 10 years old and we were outdoors. But it didn’t really catch on with us. When the weather was warm we would always play either baseball or football, not soccer. Didn’t even think about it. And when my brothers and I got back to the States, no one had even heard of soccer. And I’m still not a big fan. Which doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a legitimately exciting sport, it just means it’s a sport I don’t follow and don’t relate to much.

So why is it now so popular? I suspect it has to do with a generation of kids growing up not with soccer as a side sport, or an afterthought, but as a primary sport, the sport they play when the weather is warm. And that’s fine. For me, though, the part of soccer I miss is sitting outdoors with a hefeweisen watching it with a bunch of other fans on the big screen, and most of all, I miss being the guy who flew the airplane that got them there.

Well Done

2010-06-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

1LT D (soon to be CPT D), arriving stateside, Pope Air Base, Ft. Bragg, NC.(For more on Lt. D, refer back to the post titled “Lt. D”, February 2010.)

I’ve flown in and out of Pope many times. It’s great to see it from another point of view.

To Lt. D and all the members of his platoon, well done and welcome home.

Step On It

2010-04-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

A recent accident here in the San Francisco Bay Area has me thinking about engine failures for multiengine aircraft. The accident occurred on February 17th (2010) on takeoff from Palo Alto airport. All three occupants were killed, all senior executives of the high performance electric powered Tesla sports car company, enroute to a company facility in southern California. The aircraft was a normally aspirated Cessna 310R, and the pilot was a very experienced general aviation pilot with a reputation for good judgment and proficiency.

The aircraft took off on runway 31 in conditions of very limited visibility—heavy fog—reached about 50 feet in altitude and, instead of continuing to climb straight ahead to 400 feet followed by a turn to 060, the standard instrument departure for this runway which puts the aircraft out over the South Bay, it drifted to the left, clipping a high voltage electrical tower with one wing, crashing, presumably completely out of control, into a nearby neighborhood. Fortunately, no one on the ground was hurt.

No one likes to second guess pilots following tragic accidents, and I won’t. I didn’t help, I’m sure, that the Palo Alto airport is only 2440 feet long; it didn’t help at all, I know, that the visibility was so restricted. Nonetheless, not just this pilot, but many pilots have operated safely out of this airport, in conditions like this, for a long time. But something went wrong this time.

The NTSB is still studying this accident and it will probably be several more months before anything official is released. But everything points to an engine failure at takeoff, followed by a failure to maintain directional control. If the pilot had been able to continue straight ahead, even if he couldn’t gain altitude, the area directly ahead was free of obstacles for several miles, versus the one mile or so to the tower and neighborhood. The problem is, maintaining directional control directly after takeoff at a very slow airspeed, with no outside visual references, is an extraordinarily hard thing to do. This wasn’t a bad pilot; this was a pilot who got caught by a worst case scenario of events.

So the accident got me thinking about engine failures in general, both in general aviation aircraft (I used to do quite a bit of multiengine instruction) and, of course, in corporate and airline equipment, V1 cut after V1 cut. Practice, and being ready—on every single takeoff—for an engine failure are key. But something that I didn’t learned until I got into jet training, that may or may not be common in general aviation training—I know I didn’t teach it in my multiengine instruction—may be helpful here.

The most common phrase you hear in multiengine training is, “Dead foot, dead engine,” and that is certainly a good rule to help in identifying the failed engine. But it assumes you already have things pretty much under control. A lot of things have to happen, and happen right, before you can get to “Dead foot, dead engine”; specifically, it doesn’t tell you which rudder pedal to push on.

I remember giving a pilot new to international operations training in MNPS—Minimum Navigational Performance Standards, the document that covers North Atlantic track operations between North America and Europe. I was, in turn, being observed by another captain and check airmen, Dan Drummond, a very experienced and capable pilot who did some of my own MNPS training when I started at ATA. Dan and I became good friends over the years, and were very respectful of each other’s ability, but Dan took his job seriously, and didn’t hesitate to critique my performance if he felt it necessary. On this particular occasion, he felt I was perhaps wasting some valuable instruction time enroute after I had decided the poor guy needed a little break from all the questions and “what ifs.” So Dan said, “Look, let’s talk about what we would do if we had an engine failure right here, right now.” So the copilot starting thinking, and wasn’t quite sure where the question was going, was it about identifying and shutting down an engine enroute, or notifying ATC on HF, or other aircraft in the vicinity on VHF air-to-air, or is this about drift down altitudes and diversions off the tracks, he just didn’t know where to start, and understandably: if that were to happen, it is a little hard to know what to do first, which is why Dan was posing the question. After several tries, a little mixed up, Dan asked me, and I don’t remember exactly what I said, but something like, “Well, the first priority is aircraft control, then a turn off track and a declaration of emergency to other aircraft on the track, then the engine failure checklist.” Dan said, “Right, but what does aircraft control mean? It’s on the autopilot. It’s under control isn’t it?” I said, “Of sorts, but the autopilot has no rudder control at cruise, so it’s going to try to do it all with aileron.” And Dan said, “Exactly. So the first thing we’re going to do, the very first thing, is we are going to put some rudder in.”

And that is the case in every engine failure involving multiengine aircraft (except for centerline thrust aircraft like the Cessna Skymaster), regardless of phase of flight or flight conditions. The problem is, when an engine fails, the aircraft doesn't just yaw, it also rolls. The natural reaction, ingrained from day one of flight training, straight and level flight, is to correct the roll with aileron, just like the autopilot would. And that reaction is going to happen every single time, there is just no way to avoid it. Then the second reaction is going to be, “No, not aileron, I need rudder.” But which one? I sure don’t want to make the situation worse and push on wrong rudder. Again, how do we get to “Dead foot, dead engine”?

The long way to figure it out is to think it through: I have lost an engine, I don’t know which one yet, but the aircraft wants to roll to the right and I am countering that by rolling left; what I really want is not a roll to the left but a yaw to the left: left rudder. What’s the short way to know which rudder to step? Remember a very simple rule: “Step on the low side.” (The low side of the control yoke, that is.) The aircraft wants to roll right. You counter by rolling left. That puts the control yoke down to the left. “Step on the low side” tells you to use left rudder instead.

What happens when you do that? The first thing that happens is that the rudder is much more powerful in controlling the yaw caused by the operating engine than the aileron is. In fact, even at a very slow airspeed and at full power on one side and wind milling on the other, the rudder is powerful enough to control the yaw completely, resulting in straight flight (as slow as VMC, minimum control speed). Which means the aileron is no longer needed and the aircraft will now roll into the operating engine. Instinctively you take the aileron input out to return to level flight, and when the control yoke is back to level, there will no longer be a low side, and you will know that you have the correct amount of rudder for those conditions—for that airspeed and that amount of asymmetrical power. Not enough rudder, one side will still be low, step on it a little more to get the yoke level. Too much, and the other side will be low, meaning, step on that side. (Actually, it means letting up a little on the rudder you are pushing, but since the two are connected that is the same as pushing on the low side.) The secret is to keep the yoke level, and the trick to doing that is to apply rudder to the side that is low. (Actually, up to five degrees of bank into the operating engine is allowed on check rides, and a little bit of bank is beneficial. But only a little bit—anything beyond five degrees adds drag.)

The only tricky part here is equating releasing pressure on the high side as being the same as adding pressure—stepping on it—on the low side. Going through a typical engine out scenario may help explain and clarify that. Any engine out scenario will do, the procedure is always the same, but let’s take the typical training scenario, an engine failure after takeoff. You have done everything right so far, acting instinctively to counter the roll, you saw which side of the control yoke was low, you “stepped on that side,” on that rudder, taking the aileron input out as you did, until the yoke was level. You are now flying straight but are probably barely climbing, because you still have the gear extended and haven’t secured the dead engine and feathered it’s prop, so you raise the gear and (this is where “Dead foot, dead engine” comes into play), you slowly retard the throttle on the inoperative engine, the dead engine, you pull the prop control back to feather, and you pull the mixture back to cut off for that engine. As you slowly start to climb again, your focus is 100% on wings level flight and rate of climb—gaining altitude. If you had airspeed above best single engine rate of climb speed (Vyse), it has been traded off for climb. If you are below Vyse, you need to accelerate to that speed but only if you can do so without descending. In every case you are nursing the aircraft along on one engine at full power, full or nearly full rudder against the yaw and, once cleaned up and established at Vyse, you are adjusting pitch ever so slightly to maintain that speed and climb at the maximum rate achievable. And let’s say you do all that, and finally you get to a safe level off altitude where you can start to accelerate to a single engine cruise speed, perhaps even reduce the power a little from full throttle, try to sort things out and consider your return. As you slowly pitch over and accelerate, the aircraft wants to roll again: the increased airspeed makes the rudder more effective, the extra rudder effectiveness causes the aircraft to yaw which causes it to roll and you have again, instinctively, countered that with opposite aileron. The result is that as you accelerate, one side of the yoke starts to drop again. Again, step on the low side. But you aren’t actually stepping on the low side, you’re already stepping, or holding rudder, on the other side, but you are now holding too much. You need to release some of that pressure; still, if both feet are on the pedals, the foot on the low side will be the one going forward, and the one on the high side will be coming back.

The same thing happens when you reduce power. With less asymmetric power, less rudder is needed and pressure should be released. Anytime there is a change in power or airspeed, the amount of rudder required will change. But the rule is always the same: If the control yoke is not level, the foot on the low side should be going forward—“stepping on it”—and the foot on the high side should be coming back.

There is a useful corollary to this rule, and that is the “Step on the bug” rule. This rule assumes you have a heading bug on your directional gyro, and that it has been set to the desired heading, which would be runway heading on takeoff. If you think about it, what happens to the heading bug if you drift to one side or the other of that desired heading? It swings in the opposite direction. For example, if you are taking off on runway 31, and you slowly turn to the left, the compass rose will turn clockwise as you turn through 300, 290, 280, etc, taking the heading bug with it. If you are turning left and want to correct right, you want to turn to the right. Easy enough to think through right here, sitting at your desk in front of your computer, but what about right after takeoff into IMC? Look at the heading bug, then step on it: put enough rudder pressure on the side the bug is on to cause the bug to turn back to the center. When it is back in the center, on the desired heading, release enough pressure to keep it there.

I don’t know if these memory aids would have helped this pilot or not. I don’t even know for sure what went wrong. But I do hope they help you.

Lt. D

2010-02-22T13:33:00.001-08:00

We received the picture you see here shortly after Christmas from old friends (no, they’re not old, they’re younger than I am, you know what I mean), in Massachusetts. The reason it arrived after Christmas is because they were busy buying, packing, and mailing Christmas packages to their son in Afghanistan and to each member of his platoon, most of whom are shown here, part of the 82nd Airborne Division.

There are a lot of parts to this story, which makes it a little difficult to organize, but it starts with, having flown many troops on their way to both Iraq and Afghanistan (my last flight for ATA started troops from McCord AB on their way to Afghanistan), this was the first soldier that I personally know who has been there. I flew lots of troops, and took great satisfaction in trying to give them the best experience going over possible, and, as with so many things in the military, there is a certain reassuring sameness to it all—the variety of people the Army attracts, the calm and courtesy they always showed, the ritual and traditions of the chain of command—and having grown up and been in the military myself, it was all very familiar, so I felt like I knew them, but I never actually knew any of those troops personally.

But I have known Lt D. (I will tell you later why I call him that) since he was “that high,” and while he didn’t ask my advice nor did he need it when he announced that he was going to apply to OCS and wanted to be an infantry platoon leader, he knew I completely supported that decision. And coming from the bluest of blue states, and from an academic area on top of that, that wasn’t something that he got a lot of then, where “Bush lied and people died” was taken as an undeniable truth. Lt. D not only got accepted into OCS, but got his commission (the two are not automatic—I don’t know what the attrition rate is, but the training is as tough as the Army can make it), and then went on to Ranger and Airborne training, elite training programs and the mark of a committed soldier. Having initially been assigned a staff position in Afghanistan, he pushed to have his own platoon, a much more demanding and, yes, probably also more dangerous assignment, and why did he do that? Because he wants to be a company commander, and you can’t command a company until you can prove that you can lead a platoon. He’s done well, and I am proud of what he has done, and I am also proud because I know there are many more Lt. D’s and many more platoons like this out there, and they represent all that is good about this country.

So why do I call him “Lt. D?” Partly because my guess is that is what he is often called, just as Forrest Gump called his platoon leader “Lt. Dan.” But I don’t know that. What I do know is that security is a big issue for our troops there, and their families here. I could give you his full name, and I could tell you exactly where he grew up in Massachusetts, and enemies could search the web, discover that, and threaten his family now, and him when he returns. A stretch maybe, not very likely, but why risk it? I actually had an awkward moment learning this on my last flight. I had taken my camera along with me because I wanted to take pictures on that last flight, and I took some inside the hangar at McCord where the troops were congregated prior to boarding. I knew you weren’t supposed to take any pictures anywhere on any base at any time, but I thought a couple of very discreet pictures would be okay. I took one of some special forces troops horsing around, and a few minutes later their company commander came over and very nicely asked me not to take any more pictures, “…due to the sensitive nature of our mission.” I was very embarrassed and said, “Sorry, yes of course, no more pictures.”

I just thought this was a great picture of Lt. D and his platoon, and I left it out where I saw it every time I walked by, and then it hit me, why not send a care package yourself? So the other day I called his mother to see what sort of things they wanted and where to send them, and she said they liked having basically any kind of snack or energy food that could be stuffed in pockets for long patrols, and extra socks. (It looks like cigars are a big hit, too.) So I enlisted one of my daughters, who has a Costco card, and we went to Costco and loaded up a basket with big boxes (the only kind they have there) of candy, beef jerky, energy bars, and athletic socks. (They don’t actually sell anything called “Combat Socks,” “Athletic” is as close as they come.) That package is on its way, and I have a tracking number and will let you know its progress. So far all the USPS will tell me is that it has been “Accepted.” I should hope so.

The Other Part of Flight Planning

2010-01-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

There is probably no aspect of aviation that has been talked and written about more, and practiced less, than flight planning. I wrote a book on flight planning myself; it was the slowest selling book I ever wrote.

Most general aviation pilots flight plan by filling up the tanks, estimating airspeed and fuel flow with basic “rules of thumb”—“I figure I cruise at 130 knots and burn 10 gallons an hour”—and select an altitude based on how high they have to go to get smooth air. Departure airport is a given, destination whichever airport is closest to the final destination—what’s the point of having an airplane if you end up having to drive further than you want to?—and alternates are something they don’t think about too much because they seldom need them and if they do there are usually a bunch to choose from, all within comfortable range since they started with full tanks and don’t usually fly all that far on any one leg anyway. If the weather looks like they have to file IFR, they pick a route that they would like to get—you never know, you might get it and you sure won’t if you don’t ask, and anyway, if maybe enough people keep filing for a route that makes sense instead of the stupid routes ATC usually gives you, maybe they might someday get the message. And for most pilots most of the time, this so called “flight planning” works. Most of the time.

The problem isn’t that it isn’t really flight planning—it is flight planning of a very rough and inefficient sort. The problem is that it doesn’t tell you anything about how the flight is actually going—it just assumes that it is going well. The only back up is a bunch of fuel, but without a clear cut plan of action, that bunch of fuel can not only disappear quickly, it can lead you to all kinds of trouble, flailing about trying to figure out what to do when Plan A didn’t work.

I’m not just picking on non-professional pilots here either when I say general aviation pilots: when I flew corporate Citations and Falcons we did exactly the same thing: filled the tanks, filed for a standard airspeed and altitude, estimated range based on rules of thumb for airspeed and fuel burns, and launched. We didn’t always fill the tanks when away from base, where it cost more, but we still put plenty on: you know, the old,”… except when you’re on fire” cliché. But the airlines do it differently, and I think there is a lot to be learned from the differences, and I think it is a big factor in explaining their much lower incident and accident rate compared to general aviation.

There are really two parts to flight planning: one, flight planning, and two, planning the flight. Sounds like the same thing, but the first part pertains to the flight from takeoff to touchdown, and the second part answers the question, “What sort of flight are you planning?” Every pilot who has ever passed a private pilot written test or done a dual cross country flight knows what flight planning is: plot a true course, convert it to magnetic, adjust for winds and compass deviation, estimate true airspeed and fuel flow, establish check points, make up a flight log, etc. But they seldom think about the second part because it seems like a given: I’m going to fly from here to there; what’s there to plan?

In terms of the departure airport, there isn’t much to plan: short of taking the wings off and trucking the aircraft to another airport, the departure point is determined by the aircraft location. (But if you rent, presumably you do have some choices there, and the most suitable departure airport then becomes a factor.) But whether you file IFR or VFR, your choice of destination airport, and your alternate airport selections, are big factors in safe and reliable flight planning—the “planning the flight” part.

Let’s look at the IFR versus VFR choice first. Obviously, if you’re not instrument rated or current, you have no choice here, but let’s assume you are (and if you’re not, start working on it right now). Most instrument rated pilots only have the rating to “keep themselves out of trouble,” meaning, so they can fly in the clouds legally if they have to. It isn’t something they want to use or like to use, it’s there just in case they need it, but the fun part is flying VFR.

The problem with that is that the only way to stay proficient in instrument techniques is to file an IFR flight plan and fly IFR all the time, regardless of conditions. If you always fly on an IFR flight plan, it will become second nature to sometimes fly in the clouds and sometimes not, to sometimes shoot a full instrument approach and other times do a visual approach. But if you only have the rating for the times you have to use it, how comfortable are you going to be in those clouds or on instruments on approach when it isn’t something you normally do? The simple truth is, if you aren’t comfortable filing IFR on VFR days, how comfortable are you going to be filing IFR on IFR days?

I know all the arguments for not filing IFR and none of them hold any water—they’re just excuses, really. But I’m not going to try to argue you out of not filing IFR all the time, because if you don’t want to hear it you won’t hear it. Just remember what I said and think about it.

So let’s assume you have decided to file IFR. The next question is, from where to where? Departure is normally a given, but the destination is not—there are almost always a variety of destination airports to chose from in the vicinity of your final destination. Some will be closer, some will have cheaper gas, some will have full service FBOs, some will have multiple runways, some may have long runways, some will have only non-precision approaches and some may have precision approaches, either ILS or LPV (localizer performance with vertical guidance, which requires approved GPS or DME/DME equipment), and a few may even have precision approach guidance to multiple runways. So how do you chose? Easy, chose the best one. If you’re talking about making your flights simple, easy, reliable, uneventful and routine, you go to the airport that has the most of everything: the longest runways, at least one precision approach to standard minimums (200 & 1/2), a full service FBO, operating control tower during the expected time of arrival, approach and departure control, the full works. I know the folks at the local grass roots airports can be very friendly and helpful and need the business, I know I don’t have to have a long runway, I know that most of the time the weather will let me get in with a non-precision approach or maybe even a contact approach, and I know I would really prefer to be as close to my final destination as I can get, but what I also know is that, when I take off, I want to have everything going in my favor to complete the flight safely and routinely.

Why not file to the close-in airport, the one without long runways and precision approaches, take a look, and if it doesn’t look good, then go to the big one? Sounds reasonable, but it isn’t just about whether the weather cooperates and lets you sneak in, it’s also about all the other little “surprises” the less than fully capable airports have in store: obstructions, narrow runways with soft shoulders, non-standard patterns, minimal lighting, poor taxiways. (As a young Part 135 pilot I once took a Cherokee 6 down a road I thought was a taxiway, tried to get back to the taxiway by cutting across the grass and dinged the prop when the nose wheel went into a ditch. The boss let me drive the prop to the prop shop for repair, on my time, as part of my “education”.) Even if you’re very familiar with the airport and don’t expect to be taken by surprise, why take any unnecessary risks when you have another nearby airport with a nice big long wide runway with a full approach light system and an ILS that will take you right down to within ½ mile of that runway, 200 feet over the approach lights, virtually guaranteeing a safe arrival?

There’s another reason not to follow this strategy, this “take a look” approach, and that is that it is human nature to want to make it work out once you’re there, to do more than just “take a look” because you don’t want to have admit that you would have been better off to just go to the big airport in the first place, so you fudge a little bit on the MDA, or maybe you do a little bit of scud running, diving through a hole because you know once you get underneath it will be “right there”, or you go back and try the approach again because you caught a couple of glimpses of the runway as you went around and you know you have a good chance of making it the next time, or you try a different approach because, “It looked like the weather was breaking up at the other end,” and so on. Those are just not safe, routine arrivals.

So you filed IFR to the best airport in the area, you shot an ILS approach to minimums, a good approach, but the “runway or runway environment” just wasn’t there, or there were thunderstorms in the vicinity, or freezing rain, or snow flurries, or a truck hit a regional jet and closed the main runway, or for whatever reason you weren’t able to land at your preferred destination. Now what?

You aren’t always required to have an alternate; if weather reports and forecasts indicate that, “For at least 1 hour before and for 1 hour after the estimated time of arrival, the ceiling will be at least 2,000 feet above the airport elevation and the visibility will be at least 3 statute miles” [FAR 91.167], an alternate is not required. What’s the significance of this? Fuel. An alternate airport requirement means you have to have enough fuel to fly from your destination to the alternate airport, so more fuel is required. This is almost never a problem for general aviation aircraft because they usually have a lot more fuel capacity than is ever really needed. And anyway, who would want to take off on an IFR flight plan with only 45 minutes more fuel than needed just because the destination was forecast to be just a little bit better than basic VFR minimums (3 miles and 2000 feet)? So the question isn’t, “Do you need an alternate airport?” but, “How do you select one?”

Under Part 121, the part under which the airlines operate, a flight cannot be release unless both the Pilot in command and a certified dispatcher have agreed on the flight plan. Discussion and negotiation are allowed, but eventually you have to agree on a plan. I used to have more disagreements with dispatchers over alternate airports than any other part of the dispatch release, because fuel planning (i.e. fuel conservation) is a big part of the dispatcher’s job, and the selection of an alternate airport determined the amount of extra fuel required, a nearby alternate requiring less extra fuel, a faraway alternate more. So dispatchers, who aren’t bad people, mind you, but they have their job and I had mine, almost always look for the closest alternate, in order to save fuel. (You sometimes wouldn’t know it, but airlines are in business to make money.) But I was the one who had to actually go there if I couldn’t get in to my original destination, and I sure didn’t want to have a problem getting into the alternate as well. If it came to diverting, I wanted to be sure it was going to be a big non event, and not more of the same only now with that much less fuel.

For example, on flights from DTW to LAS, the dispatchers would almost always select LSV, Nellis Airbase, just a few miles from LAS on the north side of town, for an alternate. If the weather went down at LAS, thunderstorms for instance, then Nellis would probably also be affected. So it really wasn’t a very good alternate, but it was close, and if thunderstorms weren’t forecast it would be legal and the dispatcher didn’t have to allow for very much extra fuel. So I would call and say I wanted a more distant alternate, LAX, for instance, and they would usually agree and give me a revised release with a little more fuel, or if they gave me a hard time I’d just put the extra fuel on, knowing I could get to LAX if I had to. Another time I was going somewhere in the Caribbean, St. Martin I think, and the dispatcher gave me some little island airport I had never heard of for an alternate, it had one runway, a non-precision approach, and was listed as a Special Airport, meaning there was something unusual enough about it to require an airport briefing or prior experience, but it was nearby. I called and got quite of bit of resistance, the dispatcher telling me that it was all legal and the weather was good in St. Martin anyway and what was the problem? I said the problem is, this is the Caribbean, where anything can go wrong, single airport runways get closed because of damaged aircraft, thunderstorms roll in unexpectedly, radars go down, power fails, five aircraft arrive at once and four have to hold, all kinds of things that lead to diversions, and when that happens I don’t want to have to go to another airport with only one runway, a non-precision approach, no radar, and special approach restrictions. So I got a better alternate, probably San Juan, and no, I didn’t need it, but I sure was glad to have it and to not have to worry all the way to St. Martin about it.

Under Part 91 you don’t have to have a dispatcher sign off on your flight plans, so you can pick any alternate you want, even none at all if the destination weather is good enough. And because of that it often doesn’t get much thought, just a quick check to make sure there are some other airports with decent weather forecast nearby, the assumption being you probably won’t need it anyway and if you do you’ll deal with the weather that actually exists at that time, real reports, not forecasts, so you’re good to go. And that is absolutely not the way to do it, for all kinds of reasons, but the main one is if you are shut out at your destination for any reason—weather, runway closures, security threats, lost pilots in the vicinity—you don’t want to have to figure out what to do at that point, you want to already know what you’re going to do and then just do it. Before you left you should have said, “I’m going to fly from this airport to that airport, and if that doesn’t work out I’m going to fly to this other airport, an airport that has several runways, several approaches including an ILS, approach radar, excellent weather forecast, and I’m going to land there, and that is that. Not that it can’t be changed if needed: if you get to your destination, and can’t land, and you advise ATC that you want to go to your alternate, and they tell you it isn’t available for some reason, or it is but the ILS is out of service and the weather is marginal, or you head that way and check the weather, and the same weather that shut you out at your destination is headed that way also, of course you can ask ATC to check the conditions for you at other airports nearby and change your alternate. But changing your alternate is a lot different than not really having one in the first place, or having to pick one quickly after having just done a missed approach because a snow flurry hit the field and visibility dropped to zero.

So let me summarize how I think you should plan a flight: Choose a destination airport that is the best you can find within a practical distance from your final destination; select an even better airport for your alternate, one with excellent approach and landing facilities and good weather, one that virtually assures a safe arrival; fly to your destination; if that doesn’t work out, go to your alternate and land. That’s the easy way to plan a flight, and the best way I know to make sure your flight ends up with everyone walking away happy.

Single Pilot Cockpit Techniques, Part III

2009-12-17T12:00:00.000-08:00

Use your autopilot.

I give you the conclusion first, and if that’s all you need, fine, but autopilots are much misunderstood and therefore misused, and are worth some further thought.

The Basics. Autopilots are classified by axis, one, two, and three, corresponding to the three axis about which the aircraft rotates: roll, pitch and yaw. A simple, one axis autopilot, often called a wing leveler, controls the roll axis. A two axis autopilot controls roll and pitch, and in its simplest form is therefore both a wing leveler and pitch hold, with altitude hold, altitude preselect, heading hold and nav tracking being useful complements to the basic roll and pitch commands. A three axis autopilot (often erroneously used to describe a “full” autopilot with altitude hold and preselect and all nav and approach functions), is normally only found on turbine powered multiengine aircraft, and provides for engine out control by the autopilot: the third axis, yaw, provides the rudder power to maintain directional control with an engine out and varying degrees of power from the remaining engine or engines. Even with the third axis of control, it normally is only coupled when in the approach and go around modes: climb, cruise, and descent are normally uncoupled from the yaw axis and still require manual rudder input or rudder trim on the part of the pilot. (The reasons for this are very complex and have to do with autopilot certification standards, balancing autopilot functionality with negative consequences of autopilot failures, a very technical topic beyond the basics of autopilots.)

Some aircraft have yaw dampers (or dampeners), which is not an autopilot per se but does use the rudder to counter unwanted yawing, usually caused by unwanted rolling motions. Sweep winged aircraft are particularly susceptible to this uncomfortable rolling, yawing motion—the dreaded Dutch Roll—which on earlier swept wing aircraft could reach uncontrollability if left unchecked: one of the required maneuvers on the Boeing 727 type rating check ride was to regain control after the yaw dampener had been turned off and a big yaw intentionally induced. As I remember, the yaw damper was a no-go item. But a yaw damper is not part of the autopilot system and is not powerful enough to negate the adverse yaw resulting from an engine out.

Any autopilot is better than no autopilot, but the minimum for single pilot VFR flight is a single axis, or wing leveler, type autopilot (and with a heading hold or heading bug could be quite useful), while the minimum for IFR flight would be a two axis with at least heading hold and altitude hold. Each allows you to let go of the aircraft in order to do all the other things a single pilot has to do: read charts, set power, lean mixtures, write down frequencies, keep a flight log, pick up the pencil that dropped on the floor, change fuel tanks and so on and on. The reason I believe you need both heading hold and altitude hold for IFR is because altitude control is so much more critical on an instrument clearance than it is on a VFR flight. If the altitude nudges upward or downward a hundred feet or so VFR while looking away, you haven’t violated your assigned altitude clearance, the aircraft is still firmly under control, and a little pressure or pull on the control column will easily get it back on altitude again. But the same thing IFR is a serious enough deviation from your assigned altitude to either cause problems with ATC if left uncorrected, or take so much attention that whatever it was that you needed to do besides fly the aircraft doesn’t get done.

Pilots often feel that using the autopilot is a sign of weakness—a crutch—and if the best pilot in the airplane is the autopilot, there is some truth to that. An autopilot is no substitute for basic flying skills which, in the case of an instrument rated pilot means more than just being able to hold altitude and heading, but also being able to shoot accurate approaches to minimums. And there is no substitute for hand flying to keep those skills tuned. But assuming your basic flying skills are acceptable, and you could hand fly the airplane throughout its full profile from climb out through the approach if necessary, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using the autopilot so that you can concentrate on the rest of the job—managing the flight—without the distraction of having to constantly keep scanning and correcting. That’s what it’s there for.

A couple of examples from the world of turbine aircraft may help illustrate this. The Cessna Citation SP is certified for single pilot operation, but only if the autopilot is functional. Makes sense. And let me tell you a little secret: It is an incredibly easy airplane to fly, much simpler than a typical reciprocating general aviation twin. The straight wing is as forgiving as a Cessna Skylane, and the power couldn’t be easier to manage: one power control, push forward for more, pull back for less. The fuel is either on, off, or crossfeed. The rest of the aircraft systems can be covered in a day of ground school. And the FAA still requires a fully functioning autopilot to be flown single pilot.

MNPS (Minimum Navigational Performance Specification), the document that describes equipment and procedures necessary to fly from FL 290 to FL 410 over the North Atlantic, one of the most heavily trafficked, non-radar controlled airspaces in the world, specifies that an autopilot be used at all times when in that airspace. Aircraft separation along these tracks is predicated on accurate tracking of course and very accurate maintenance of altitude, and it simply won’t allow for a pilot’s momentary lack of concentration. Anytime you’re in congested airspace, you would be wise to do the same.

At ATA Airlines, while we trained to hand fly approaches to below standard minimums, and were required to demonstrate on our check rides the ability to hand fly an engine out approach to minimums and then do a go around, in line flying it was ATA’s policy to do all approaches to minimums on the autopilot, and to do all Cat II (below standard minimums) and Cat III approaches (no minimums) using not just one but all autopilots, which in the case of the Boeing 757 meant all three autopilots (two for the Lockheed 1011). The reason for that was mostly redundancy—if one failed at normal minimums the approach could be continued to an autoland on the remaining autopilot or autopilots—but also accuracy: each autopilot monitored the other both for deviations from standard and for increased accuracy. If airline pilots have to use three autopilots in certain circumstances, I wouldn’t feel too bad using one. Again, that’s what it’s there for.

So train by hand flying and practice by hand flying when conditions allow, but the rest of the time, use your autopilot. It’s one of the best ways to make your job easier, your results better and, all things considered, be a better pilot.

Single Pilot Techniques, Part II

2009-11-19T17:38:00.000-08:00

A previous post, “Single Pilot Techniques, Part I,” attempted to set the stage for this second part by comparing the differences between adding cockpit crewmembers and subtracting them. The conclusion was that it is a relatively simple matter to add crewmembers, adding a copilot to a single pilot operation or a flight engineer to a two pilot operation, but it is much more difficult to reduce crewmembers. I won’t attempt to summarize the full argument here, but the most important point is that the lessons learned in reducing from three man crews back to two man crews (and, of course, that means women as well), can be applied to the single pilot cockpit as well.

The main problem in reducing crewmembers is not, as you might think, increased workload, but reduced redundancy: as aircraft systems were simplified, the two man crew was able to take on systems management, just as the three man cockpit of an earlier era was able to take on what was formerly the navigator’s functions as long range navigation systems were simplified and improved. What was lost was the extra set of eyes and ears. Procedures and policies had to be created to compensate for this diminished back up capability. Those same policies and procedures, plus an additional safeguard that I will suggest toward the end of this post, can be used to compensate for the complete lack of another set of eyes and ears in the single pilot cockpit.

By way of introduction to those policies and procedures, let me relate a little story as background. Two years ago one of my very best friends, Claudio Guerra, chef/restaurateur and aircraft owner/pilot, and I were planning on flying his Cessna 310 from 7B2, Northampton Airport (Massachusetts) to Oshkosh, and then on to Half Moon Bay on the west coast where his wife and daughter were visiting friends, also not far from our apartment in San Francisco. As part of our preparations we went out flying together to help me get familiar with his airplane. If Claudio was nervous flying with a retired airline pilot and former flight instructor he didn’t show it, but he did get a little apologetic doing the before takeoff checklist: he went through a little drill, one he had memorized and that moved from one part of the cockpit to another, taking care of all the essential pre takeoff items, without a checklist. Then he took the checklist out and said, “I have all the checklists memorized, so I don’t really need this, but whenever I’m flying with passengers I take it out and go through it again just so they don’t worry.”

Actually, while I think he should do it that way every time, passengers or not, what he was doing was exactly what a careful single pilot should do. He had developed a cockpit flow for each phase of flight, and backed it up with a checklist. (There is a reason checklists are called “check lists”: they check that things have been done: they are not “to do” lists, although there are times when we use them that way; the Before Start checklist, for example, is often in reality a “to do” list, and that’s okay because nothing else is going on at that point.) Flow patterns with back up check lists are two of the key elements developed by the airlines for two man cockpits to compensate for the lack of a third crewmember.

Let me give you an example of how flow patterns and checklists work, one taken from the ATA Boeing 757 manual. Checklists normally follow the flight profile: before engine start, engine start, taxi, before takeoff, and so on. At each of those points there is a flow pattern established for each crewmember with a check made to insure that everything is set for that phase. This example is the check at top of descent, or just as you are getting ready to start down. The flows are divided between the pilot flying and the pilot not flying (or pilot monitoring, as it was later called: management and training types love to play with words, as if getting exactly the right word will make everything alright. We argued for years, for instance, whether the parking brake would be “set” or “parked.”) For the pilot flying the flow is:

Ensure shoulder harness is ON.

Push the EICAS [Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System] Recall switch to display existing Alert Messages.

Arm the Autobrake Selector as required.

At 18,000 feet the Captain will place the Wing Landing Lights ON and at the Captain’s discretion any other lights ON.

Passing FL 180 call “DESCENT CHECK.”

For the pilot not flying the flow is:

Place seat belt selector to ON or flash if already ON

Check the performance of the pressurization system and verify that destination airport elevation is set.

Return the lower EICAS to secondary engine display.

Ensure shoulder harness is ON.

Read the DESCENT checklist.

So at this point the cabin is being prepared for approach and landing, the pilots are legal (shoulder harnesses required for approach and landing), the pressurization has been set to start a gradual cabin descent to destination altitude, the overall aircraft systems status has been verified okay (or dealt with previously), the autobrakes system has been set up and the lights are on leaving positive control airspace. And all of this was done from memory, using a basic flow pattern which is top to bottom in this case—seat belt sign and pressurization controls are on the overhead panel, the EICAS is in the center middle panel, the autobrakes lower left panel, then, at FL 180, back up for the landing lights—with the checklist called for after the flows are complete.

So what does the actual DESCENT checklist look like?

Guess what the first item is? Challenge: SEAT BELT SIGN Response: ON

The next item? Challenge: PRESSURIZATION Response: SET

Followed by: Challenge: RECALL Response: CHECKED

Challenge: SPEED AND ALTITUDE BUGS Response: SET & CROSSCHECKED

Challenge: ALTIMETERS TRANSITION LEVEL Response: [local altimeter setting] CROSSCHECKED

Challenge: APPROACH BRIEF Response: COMPLETED.

The first three items confirm that the flow pattern was accomplished successfully; the last three cannot be done from memory, as part of a flow, since they will be different each time: speed and bugs depend on landing weight, altitude bugs on the approach expected, the local altimeter setting is given as part of the descent clearance to an altitude below the transition level (FL 180 in the US), and, of course, the approach briefing depends on the approach; the checklist makes sure these keys items have all been done.

So what does this have to do with single pilot operations? Most single pilot aircraft don’t have seat belt signs, certainly don’t have flight attendants, seldom have pressurization systems or system status monitors or autobrakes and are seldom operated in positive control airspace. But they still need to be prepared for approach and landing; this is the beginning of another phase of flight, from cruise to descent, so this is still a good place for some checks. Fuel management is the first that comes to mind: do fuel pumps need to be on for the descent, is fuel on the fullest tank or on the mains if required for anything other than level flight? What about pitot heat or carb heat? Will the descent descend into visible moisture at or near the freezing level? Will windshield defrost be needed? Is the current altimeter setting set, have you checked the destination weather and/or ATIS, is there an arrival procedure if IFR or nonstandard pattern if VFR, and so on. Each aircraft will have different areas of concern, but all will need to be prepared for approach and landing, and top of descent is a good place to start.

Here is a possible flow for the Piper Twin Comanche C, a relatively representative general aviation single pilot aircraft, beginning at the top left and working left to right, top to bottom:

Altimeter set
Power for descent set
Engine instruments checked
Fuel quantity checked
Vacuum checked
Ammeter checked
Autopilot set as required
Windshield heat as required
Landing lights as required
Pitot heat as required
Cowl flaps closed
Fuel Mains selected

This may sound like a lot to do and to remember, but it’s not with an organized flow. This flow starts with the altimeter, right in front of the pilot (and certainly doesn’t preclude checking all the primary flight instruments including resetting the heading gyro to the magnetic compass, if not slaved, but that check can and should be done on a regular basis anyway). It then moves across the panel to the throttles for descent, a quick check of engine temps and levels right under the MP and RPM gauges, down to the fuel quantity gauge, then down a level and back to the left to start over again, checking vacuum and ammeter gauges, the autopilot in the center (on or off? trimmed? altitude preselect set?), over to the far right again to check windshield heat, then down again, to the lower level of the panel, left to right, checking lights, pitot heat, and cowl flaps. Finally, down to the floor, where the fuel selectors are on the Comanche, to select or verify fuel on the mains, which are required for takeoff, climb, descent and landing.

You would then want to back up your descent flow with a written checklist. This would probably not need to repeat every item on the flow, but would want to hit the important points and add any items that should be done here that do not fit into a flow, items like checking weather and airport information. One possibility might be:

Altimeter SET
Autopilot AS REQ
Windshield heat AS REQ
Pitot heat AS REQ
Cowl flaps CLOSED
Fuel ON MAINS
Weather CHECKED
Airport/approach CHECKED

Flows and corresponding checklists should be established for each of the key phases of flight:

Before start
Before taxi
Before takeoff
Climb
Cruise
Descent
Before landing
After landing
Shut down

These flows and checks are key to safe two man cockpit operations, and will also work well with single pilot operations. But I said at the beginning that there was something else I would talk about toward the end to supplement these flows and checks for the single pilot operator. First I want to review what we normally take completely for granted, but what is worth thinking about for a moment anyway, and that is, why do we have checklists? The obvious reason is to make sure we have done everything we’re supposed to do to prepare the aircraft for safe flight. That’s true, of course, but there is a simpler and more fundamental reason: we do it to keep from killing ourselves.

Way back when I first starting flying professionally and was transitioning from recips to jets, one of my captains said something that made a big impression on me at the time. He said, “There are four things that, if not set properly, will kill you on takeoff in a jet: speed brakes, trim, flaps and slats, and the parking brake.” He went on to elaborate: "If the speed brakes are out on takeoff, it won’t fly; If the trim is miss set, it either won’t rotate when you want it to, or will when you don’t; If the flaps and slats aren’t set for takeoff, it won’t fly, and if the parking brake is set it may move but it won’t accelerate normally. They can all kill you. So every time, just before I push up the power, I do a quick scan: speed brakes stowed, trim set, flaps and slats for takeoff, parking brake released. Haven’t killed myself yet.”

Takeoff for a reciprocating engined straight wing aircraft is different, so when your primary flight instructor emphasized the importance of correctly setting the trim and flaps for takeoff, it wasn’t because your Cessna 152 or Cherokee 140 wouldn’t fly if they weren’t set properly, it was because he or she was trying to instill good habits. But there are two key points here that are relevant to checklists and flows for all pilots. The first is that all of these critical items should have been taken care of well in advance of taxiing onto the runway and bringing the power up as part of the normal Taxi/Before Takeoff flows, and if they weren’t they should have been caught when the checklist was read. The second is that even if they weren’t done and weren’t caught, this last double check will catch the really big ones, the ones that left undone will kill you.

A final double check is what pilots flying by themselves can do to, in effect, back themselves up: after all the flows have been done, and after all the checklists have been completed, at each of the key phases of flight they can make a quick scan to make sure the really big things, the things that left undone will kill you, have been done. And it needs to become a habit that is done every time to be effective.

I’m not going to attempt to cover what those items should be for a bunch of different types of aircraft, but I can give you an example that I am hopeful will be a model for you to develop final checks for whatever type of aircraft you do fly. Again the example will be based on the Piper Twin Comanche, for no better reason than that I happen to have a manual handy.

First, what are the critical phases of flight? Obviously takeoff and landing are, but are there others? There certainly are other times enroute when the opportunity to do something catastrophic presents itself: descending too soon or too low on an instrument approach or trying to land at the wrong airport VFR, for instance, but those aren’t aircraft problems—problems with the configuration or functionality of the aircraft—those are pilot problems. And while forgetting to raise the gear after takeoff or leaving the power set to climb power at cruise or reducing the power to descent but forgetting to reset or disengage autopilot would be serious errors, they probably aren’t going to kill you. Not right away anyway—you have time to correct and recover. So I think it is safe to limit the really critical phases of flight to takeoff and landing.

We’ve already gone over what can kill you in a jet on takeoff, but what about the Twin Comanche? Speed brakes aren’t a factor and the Twin Comanche is normally flown flaps up for takeoff (except for a short field takeoff which I don’t recommend for any twin and certainly not for the Twin Comanche where best angle of climb and minimum control airspeed are the same), so flaps are not usually a killer here either. So what is? Fuel for one. The Twin Comanche can only use fuel from the mains for takeoff, and, of course, there has to be fuel in those tanks. What does happen if the gear handle is in the UP position on takeoff? Of course it shouldn’t be, but if it is, as soon as some weight comes off the struts but before it can fly, the gear will try to retract, with what could be disastrous consequences. (Okay, it probably won’t kill you, but it’s a major accident for sure.) Finally, is the directional gyro in agreement both with the magnetic compass and with the runway? Why is this critical? What if it is set wrong and you fly the wrong heading after takeoff. Worse, what if you’re on the wrong runway, one that is too short, or is closed, or one that has power lines at the end, or that intersects another runway being used for landing? It only has to happen once.

That’s probably it for critical items for a VFR takeoff –you’re not trying to redo the entire Before Takeoff Checklist, just a last minute double check of the items that can kill you. For an IFR takeoff I would add a last minute check of the vacuum pressure and the ammeter: vacuum pumps are notoriously unreliable, which is why the Twin Comanche has two, and a quick last minute check that neither of the red buttons on the vacuum gauge is visible would confirm that they are both working, and with the ammeter gauge right beside it a quick check of alternator output insures you’re not going to be on battery power just as you fly into the clouds. Both vacuum and electrical power are essential to safe instrument flight.

So for a VFR takeoff the last minute check would be directional gyro heading, runway and compass agree (all at the top of the panel), drop down to check the gear handle down, across to the far right to check fuel quantity and then down to the floor to check that the fuel selectors are on the mains. For an IFR takeoff (and I would do it this way every time if instrument rated, just to be consistent) after checking the DG I would drop straight down and check the vacuum gauge, the ammeter and then go on to gear handle, fuel quantity and main tanks. That should keep you from killing yourself on takeoff.

Now, landing. I find it sometimes useful to carry an argument to its logical extreme to check its validity: if it seems to make sense a little bit, then it should still make sense if extended to its most extreme case. For example, Daily Saving Time: Good Idea or Bad? (My daughters dread the changeovers each year because they know they’re going to have to listen to me go off again on how stupid I think it all is. So there’s my answer already.) If Daily Saving Time is a good idea because it gives us an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day, then wouldn’t two extra hours be even better? Why not carry the argument to its logical extreme and add 12 hours? Then we could have day light all night long.

In the case of determining critical items for landing, the logical extreme would be to ask what would happen if we did absolutely nothing? If nothing adverse happened, then there wouldn’t be any critical items. So what would happen if we adjusted the power and airspeed as necessary to land, but left everything else as it was at cruise, not even checking the engine gauges, only responding to whatever happens? For the Twin Comanche at cruise the gear would be retracted, the flaps up, the power would be 75% or less, the prop would be back—RPMs would be reduced—the fuel could be set to any tank, mains, aux, tip, with anything from almost full to almost no fuel in it, the boost pumps would be off and the cowl flaps would probably be partially if not fully closed. So let’s assume either a total idiot or the laziest pilot every known starts down from cruise and doesn’t do anything. What would happen?

Initially, probably nothing would happen. But at some point fuel management, or mismanagement, would probably rear its ugly head: fuel wouldn’t flow evenly from an aux tank or tip tank on the descent or approach, and power would fluctuate. Or it might simply run empty. So in response our star pilot would presumably do what he knows he should have done and turn the boost pumps on and select fuel from the main tanks which we hope still have fuel in them. Still alive. So everything is going fine again and now he is on approach or in the traffic pattern and everything is still fine: power is well below max for maneuvering and descending so the prop rpms being reduced isn’t a factor, and, surprisingly, the mixture still at the lean setting for cruise doesn’t seem to be causing any roughness because the power level is reduced well below max, and the cowl flaps being closed are also not causing too much of a problem for the same reason. So Captain Clueless continues on around, lines up on final, or breaks out on approach, trucks on down to the runway, crosses over the numbers, reduces power for landing and the landing gear warning horn goes off. Now he has a problem: the mixture is lean, the props are not set for go around power, he is closer to stall speed than he thinks because the flaps aren’t out and the only thing that is going to save him from a gear up landing is a go around and the aircraft is not configured to do that. He may be able to save it by pushing everything forward or he may not: a second’s hesitation or pushing only the throttles up and the next thing he’s going to hear is props striking the runway. Or the worst case scenario, one engine powers up right away and the other hesitates. The next sound is going to be louder than props hitting concrete.

So, surprisingly, when you look at this extreme case, there actually isn’t that much that is absolutely critical on approach and landing, but there are some, and that’s what we want to be sure we double check on short final. (You may be wondering why the lack of flaps didn’t already get him before the gear not being down did, and they might have if he weren’t careful with his speed control and angle of bank, but the simple fact is that landing flaps for general aviation aircraft don’t decrease the stalling speed all that much; their may function is glide path control. For the Twin Comanche, for instance, the difference between clean and dirty stall speed is only 6 knots, and at a recommended approach speed 30% above the dirty stall speed, that still leaves a good margin—not something to do intentionally, but it won’t kill you.) What will kill you, or as a minimum hurt you and your airplane, is running out of gas at a low altitude, trying to land with the gear up, and trying to do a go around with less than full power. So I would say that the critical items, the items requiring a last minute double check for the Twin Comanche would be: props and mixtures full forward, gear down green light, and fuel on mains. (Sounds a lot like the old GUMP checklist, doesn’t it?) And you could develop a quick scan for this double check by reaching over to make sure the props and mixture controls were full forward, a quick downward glance for the green light, and then reach down to feel for the fuel selectors on the mains. And I would make a point of running this double check at the same point each time, maybe right after lining up on final, or as soon as possible after breaking out on approach. If you do that every time, you’re never going to unexpectedly run out of gas on final or land gear up, and you’re always going to be able to extract yourself if, for any reason, landing is not possible.

These are techniques, borrowed from airline practice, for safe single pilot operations: develop cockpit flows for all key phases of flight, back up your flows with checklists, double check the critical items before every takeoff and landing. Anything else? These techniques will take you a long way, but there are a couple of other things you can do, and they both are meant to counter complacency, distraction, and boredom. One is to stay involved, and by that I mean do things: keep a log, check the weather, get the whiz wheel out and compute the true airspeed or the pressure altitude, experiment with different prop and power settings, reset the mixture, figure the winds aloft, ask ATC if they have winds for any other altitudes and get the performance manual out to see if it’s worth climbing or descending, anything to stay involved. Don’t just sit there.

The other thing, and I learned this from one of my check captains transitioning from copilot to captain on the Boeing 727, maybe the same one who inspired the heading and title for this blog, is to look around. Don’t just sit there staring at the primary instruments in front of you. Look around. All the time. Look up, look down, look to the left, way left to the side panel, right to the entry door and latch, even look back. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “You’d be surprised what you can see if you just look.” You’ll catch a thing or two, a switch out of place, a breaker that has popped, a latch that isn’t catching completely, and you may even be inspired to get out the flight manual and review how something works that you see that you don’t normally use, like an alternate air selector. You are providing your own set of extra eyeballs, the ones that are missing because you don’t have a copilot or a flight engineer. It’s not easy flying without help. These techniques should make it easier.

Greeters

2009-11-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

I wrote about my last flight as an airline pilot in a post called “Last Flight,” published in September 2007. What I didn’t mention there was that as I exited the aircraft, going through the terminal, I was greeted by locals who meet every military flight coming and going through Bangor International Airport, thanking the troops for what they have done and what they will do. It’s a program that started during Desert Storm and has continued every day and night of the year since—Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, doesn’t matter.

I was reading The Wall Street Journal this morning, as I do almost every morning, and I came across a review of a show to be shown on PBS on Veterans’ Day, November 11, at 900pm, Eastern Time. It is part of a series called P.O.V. and the specific show is called “The Way We Get By.” The show is about the greeters, what they do and why they do it. It sounds great. It’s about time these people were better known, and I hope it inspires others. PBS gets a rap for being the “nuanced crowd’s” network of choice, but this sounds like the right thing to do on Veterans’ Day.

This photo was taken as I was leaving the aircraft, looking back. It is being fueled and catered for the leg outbound to Shannon. The greeters are just behind me. The troops had already deplaned to stretch their legs, and, if they were smart, have one of the Bangor Airport snack bar's famous lobster rolls. It would have to last them for a year, when they came back through Bangor, and were thanked again.

Single Pilot Cockpit Techniques, Part I

2009-10-23T13:21:00.000-07:00

We all start out in single pilot aircraft. That doesn’t mean single seat aircraft, it means aircraft that only require one pilot to be flown. (And that doesn’t mean they can’t be flown by two pilots—most aircraft do have dual controls—only that they were designed to be flown by a single pilot.) We first encounter the reality of a single pilot aircraft on the day our flight instructor steps out and says, “I think you’re ready to do this on your own. Take it around three times and taxi back here. Have fun.” Suddenly the airplane is empty and you have your first experience with single pilot operation.

Aircraft that require two pilots come in two varieties, those that are designed that way from the beginning, and those that are required to be operated that way by the regulatory part under which they are operated. Those that are designed to be operated by two pilots do not have to have all pilot controllable items—switches, levers, circuit breakers, knobs—accessible from the left seat, they only have to be accessible from one seat or the other. A dead give away to whether an aircraft was designed to be flown by one pilot or two is to look at the gear control lever: if it’s on the left side of the cockpit it’s a single pilot aircraft; if it’s on the right side it’s a two pilot aircraft. (Professional pilots often use the phrase, “I pulled gear for so and so…,” meaning “I was a copilot for so and so.”) Aircraft flown by two pilots have what every first solo pilot wants: someone to help. So for the pilot going from a single pilot aircraft to a dual pilot aircraft, the transition is fairly straight forward and simple: just keep doing what you always have, but let your copilot help. Help can include everything from “pulling gear,” letting you concentrate on flying and not having to reach blindly for the gear handle or glance away at a critical moment, to handling the radios, keeping track of the flight log and fuel management, programming nav computers, digging approach plates out, or anything else you want him or her to do. In professional practice, pilot often “swap legs”, alternating flying and non flying duties, and in the co-captains arrangement (my least favorite mode of crewing) they alternate seats as well, the captain for each leg alternating and sitting in the left seat. (It is my least favorite because it often leads to blurring the line between the pilot in command and the second in command. But that’s a story for another day.)

There aren’t any aircraft being designed any more for a three man crew (I guess I have to say “three person crew,” but when these aircraft were being designed, “three man crew” was how they were described), but there used to be lots, in fact the three man crew was a crew member or two less than those before them that also had navigators and radio operators. The third crewmember was a flight engineer, a non flying position, and his (or her) primary job responsibility was aircraft systems management, primarily the engines but also all systems associated with those engines: electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, fuel, pressurization. It was a big job because these were big airplanes with very complex systems, multiple redundancies, and very specific troubleshooting and reconfiguring checklists. The transition from a two man aircraft to a three man aircraft was not so simple: you had more help, but how you put that help to work, and how you divided the duties while insuring that someone was still primarily responsible for flying the aircraft and nothing else wasn’t obvious: it had to be learned.

To see how this works, imagine yourself as the Captain in the left seat of an L-1011 at cruise altitude and everything is going along just fine, nice and quiet, when suddenly your flight engineer says, “Hey boss, I think we’re losing C system—the fluid level is less than half and dropping steadily.” Exactly what this means isn’t the point: in fact, the C system on the 1011 is the main hydraulic system, the one that powers all the flight controls and operates the gear and the nose wheel steering, and while there are backups, and while the gear can still be manually lowered (but not raised) and while the aircraft can still be controlled (by any one of three other hydraulic systems) even if the system is lost completely, losing C system is one of the big ones. (“Big ones” as in the Gary Larson cartoon where the captain announces to the passengers, “Well folks, we’ve got a warning light on up here, and dare if it isn’t one of the big ones.”)

The point is, how are you going to handle the problem? Just before this problem arose, you were the pilot flying—it was “your leg”—the copilot was the pilot not flying, the one handling the radios and the paperwork, and the engineer was leaning back in his chair with his feet on his desk looking at his panel like he always does. So what do you do now? If you try to help the engineer out, who’s flying the airplane? You could have the copilot try to help him out, but as a practical matter it is a lot harder for the right seat pilot to turn around and see what the engineer is doing than it is for you, you just have to turn sideways in your seat, and in any case, do you really want to just turn this problem over to the two of them while you just sit there? Probably not, so what you do is you say to the copilot, “I’m going to work the problem with the engineer. Your airplane.” meaning you, the copilot, are now the pilot flying, and the copilot would acknowledge the transfer by saying, “My airplane.” This means he has to handle the radios and paperwork as well for awhile, but at cruise that shouldn’t be a problem, and he can always ask for a little help if he gets overloaded, and it leaves you free to turn around in your seat and work with the engineer on the problem, going through the checklist carefully, agreeing on what you are seeing—a lot of checklists are, in reality, troubleshooting trees, with lots of “If this, then do this, if not, then do this” type commands—and confirming that he has his finger on the correct switch before pushing it: this would not be a good time to inadvertently disconnect one of the other hydraulic systems. So a big part of being a captain with a three man crew is learning how to best manage that crew, and the best way to learn it is as a copilot, watching captains deal with the problems that do come up. The next best way is in training, and the least best way is The Hard Way, or what we euphemistically call “experience”. The point is, going from a single pilot operation to a two pilot operation was fairly intuitive, but going on to a three crew operation was not.

So traditionally, meaning during the time I was coming up as a pilot, the normal progression was from student pilot to single pilot in command, then to copilot and captain of a two man operation and then eventually at some point usually through the same steps to captain of a three man crew (often with a stop along the way as the second officer, as pilots who are trained and serve as flight engineers are called in airline jargon). But over time things changed; As manufacturers learned to take advantage of computers and more robust, more reliable, and ultimately simpler aircraft systems, the flight engineer, or second officer, was eliminated, first on large two engine aircraft such as the Boeing 757 and 767, and then on all aircraft, Airbus 330/340s, MD-11s, 777s, even later models of the 747. And crews that had flown for years with three crew members, and who had gotten good at working together and relying on each other, had to learn to make do with just two crewmembers again. And that turned out to be a whole lot harder than learning to go from a single pilot to a dual pilot operation.

The main difference between going from a single pilot operation to a two pilot operation, versus going from a three man crew back to a two pilot operation, is that the single pilot is already used to having to do everything himself, whereas the pilot of a three man crew is used to having, and working with, lots of help. The single pilot who suddenly finds himself with a copilot has to learn to use that help, and the pilot who suddenly loses his flight engineer has to learn to make do with just the two of them. Each has some learning to do, but it is very different for each.

One of the main differences is that the three man crew is used to having back up: with three crew members, someone is always looking out for the other two, whether it is the flight engineer monitoring the radios or the captain backing up the flight engineer on his panel or the copilot monitoring the captain as he flies an approach. A good sort of dependency develops among an experienced crew—I can’t begin to count the number of times in my 727 or 1011 flying where one crewmember caught a mistake that the two others had overlooked, and no one crewmember had a monopoly on it—each made mistakes, and each caught mistakes. I used to say, as part of my standard crew briefing with pilots and flight engineers I hadn’t flown with before, “If you see something you don’t like or don’t understand or something that doesn’t seem to make sense, speak up. If it’s a mistake developing and we can correct it and keep it right here in the cockpit, it isn’t a mistake,” meaning if we can correct it before there are any negative consequences—something someone outside the cockpit is aware of—we’ve done our job.

The problem with that, with what I call a beneficial dependency, is that when you go back to the two man crew, you have to learn certain techniques to compensate for the fact that you don’t have that backup anymore. With a two man crew you are, of course, aware of what the other pilot is doing, but each has his job responsibilities and neither has the luxury of being able to just sit back and monitor the other. The airlines were very concerned with this lack of backup capability when the two man aircraft came back into their fleets, much more so than they were with the more obvious question of whether the aircraft could be flown safely and reliably without a flight engineer. So they developed some very specific policies and procedures to insure flight safety with just two pilots. Those policies and procedures are the subject of my next post, “Single Pilot Cockpit Techniques, Part II,” because those techniques also apply to pilots flying by themselves without any help at all.

Bonding

2009-10-10T08:57:00.001-07:00

About to head out for Day Three marshaling for The Presidents Cup, and wanted to let you know that yesterday, before the start of play, I had a nice long conversation with Freddie Couples. He was on his way to the driving range and as he went by my position I said, “Good luck,” and he said, “Thank you.” And Michael Jordan in one cart, and Greg Norman in another, almost ran me down on the 18th fairway in a hurry to get to 17 where an important match was winding down. It’s a big fairway and I still somehow managed to find the one spot where they needed to go. But they smiled as they went by and we’re all still pals. All in all, I’m having a pretty good time.

Cleared for The Break

2009-10-08T18:23:00.000-07:00

This post is about aviation, but it starts out with golf.

Specifically, it starts out with the first practice day, Tuesday, October 6, 2009, for The Presidents’ Cup golf tournament, held at Harding Park in San Francisco, California. This is a match play event between the 12 highest ranking golfers from the United States versus the 12 highest ranking golfers from the rest of the world, except Europe. (The reason Europe is excluded is because the more famous Ryder Cup pits the US versus the best European golfers. The Presidents’ Cup is, therefore, a “Ryder Cup” for the rest of the world.)

My wife and I volunteered to be marshals for the event, marshals being the people who control the foot traffic and tell people to be quiet and stand still while the golfers are hitting and putting, and yesterday we were assigned the task of controlling a fairway pedestrian crossover, using ropes to open the crossway when there were no golfers taking shots or walking down the fairway. All in all, a great way to see a lot of great golf, and great golfers. (And celebrities too. Michael Jordan for one, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George HW Bush for another.) But, and this is big, this is also Fleet Week in San Francisco, meaning the Blue Angels are in town. And, in fact, manning my gate early on with nothing much to do because the golfers were still several holes away, I heard an aircraft noise that had that sound that is hard to describe but is the sound that military fighter aircraft have and civilian air transports do not. I looked up, and there, out past the golf course running north up the shore line, were seven gold and blue F-18s, six in tight formation, one solo behind: The Blue Angels demonstration team plus the two seat, support and training aircraft. I mean, here I am, on a great golf course, a beautiful fall day with temperatures in the high 60’s, watching some of the most famous golfers in the world (yes, Tiger Woods, but also Freddie Couples, Greg Norman, Ernie Els), while The Blue Angels fly by. For me, at least, you just couldn’t make up a more perfect setting.

That evening, watching the local news, both to see what they covered of the first day of golf but also to see if they had anything on The Blue Angels, there were pieces on both, and for the Blue Angels they noted that they had arrived at San Francisco International Airport (KSFO/SFO) after having done a flyby up the coast and over The Bay. The film coverage showed the flight of six as they made their break for their visual approach and landing. It was a beautiful sight, as only a precision break can be, and it got me to thinking about breaks in general and memories of specific breaks.

The first question that always comes up is, “What is a break?”, and the second is, “Why do they do them?” (other than that they just look like an awful lot of fun to do, and they can, so they do). The Break was originally developed as a tactical maneuver to avoid enemy fire around the base when returning from a mission. The idea was to approach the field, in formation, at pattern altitude but at a high rate of speed. This obviously made it harder for ground fire to hit the aircraft, but left them still in formation and going too fast to land. The maneuver that resulted in their being separated, in trail, and slowed down, was called The Break, and it was done by having each aircraft, one at a time, roll into a 90 degree bank angle, turn 180 degrees, and roll out level on downwind. The 90 degree banked turn dissipated the speed very quickly—an airplane generates essentially zero lift at 90 degrees of bank so the only way to maintain level flight is to trade a lot of airspeed—and, it kept the aircraft within the general confines of the base. With each aircraft breaking off in a carefully timed sequence it put the formation in trail, and from that point on the approach and landing was conventional, a descending base leg, lined up and on speed/on glide path on final, flare over the numbers, landing one after the other.

Whether The Break is still a necessary return to base maneuver is a good question—most bases, both Air Force and Navy, are located well away from any potential enemy—but the tradition continues: fighters always arrive in formation and land after having been cleared for The Break. I saw this on a regular basis after I first upgraded to Boeing 727 Captain at ATA. ATA had a contract with the Air Force to fly personnel to and from Nellis Air Base, North Las Vegas, to Tonopah Air Base, which was near the little town of Tonopah, Nevada, but was, in fact, actually part of a giant restricted area in the interior of Nevada. Tonopah air base was a highly classified test center for stealth aircraft, but the area included everything from underground nuclear test sites to high speed, low level training runs. By the time ATA had the contract to ferry people back and forth the stealth program at Tonopah was publicly acknowledged, but still, parts were highly classified, a base within a base that you could see from the flight line but no one went into without proper clearance. And I mean no one. It was surrounded by fences, spot lights, guard towers, warnings about mines between the fences and machine guns armed to fire at any intruder. So I never got to go in there. But I did get to see a lot of aircraft departing and arriving, both F-117s at Tonopah, and F-16s and F-15s at Nellis. Since Nellis was also the home of the Thunderbirds, the Air Force demonstration team, we occasionally got to see The Break done to perfection, but it was always a sight to see, no matter who was doing it.

Later on I transitioned to Captain on the L-1011, which went all over the world. One of my favorite stops was Naval Station Rota. Rota is near the ocean in southwest Spain, orange, olive, Sherry and Flamenco country. Rota is a joint Spanish-US base (see previous post, “Azores,” for more on joint air bases) and the Spanish had a squadron of Harrier fighters based there. The Harrier is a vertical takeoff and landing fighter, and you have to see these things to believe them, flying fast like a fighter one second, and hovering and taxiing like a helicopter the next. The Break, for them, started normally, approaching the field in formation at high speed, just like fighters always do, breaking off one by one to line up downwind. But when they came across the threshold to land they were still about 50 feet in the air, doing about 50 knots. They decelerated to zero knots by the end of the runway, and, from a hover, rotated in place 90 degrees and taxied in to their spot on the ramp, descended the last 50 feet, and shut down. You just couldn’t believe your eyes: the fighter you just saw going by at 250 knots or so slowing to zero and landing from a hover.

On one of my last trips to the simulator for B-757 training we had some extra time at the end and the instructor asked if there was anything I wanted to try with the remaining time. I said, “Sure, I’d like to see what it’s like to fly The Break. So I lined it up with the runway several miles out at 1500 feet, shoved the throttles forward to accelerate to red line speed, chopped the power over the far end of the runway, rolled into a 90 degree turn, rolled out on downwind below maximum flap extension speed and from there on it was just another visual approach. Kind of disappointing. I think the thrill of The Break comes from, first, being in formation: this is the wolf pack coming back from the kill, with the Alpha Wolf leading the break with his pals following; second, it’s just a lot more exciting to see aircraft roll into 90 degree banked turns, one after the other, than it is to actually do one. Still, it’s got to be a thrill to come back to the field at high speed, in formation, and to hear the controller say, “Cleared for The Break.”

Azores

2009-03-11T17:00:00.000-07:00

I watched a food program on the Azores the other night, and watching it brought back good memories of the many times I had been to the Azores flying for ATA. The Azores, a 300 mile long series of islands formed by mountain tops sticking out of the ocean, with Pico, at over 7000 feet, the highest, are technically part of Portugal, but they are a long way from Portugal, well out in the North Atlantic, and have a history and culture somewhat different from the mainland. Because the islands were settled over a period of several hundred years, and because the distances between them are considerable, each island developed somewhat separately with its own traditions and culture. (The locals say they can still tell which island someone is from by the way they talk.) The islands have also become popular vacation spots for the Portuguese, both European Portuguese and Portuguese-Americans, many of whom have summer homes on the islands.

ATA (then American Trans Air) used to have a weekly run every summer out of BOS to both Ponta Delgado on the island of San Miguel, and to Lajes on the island of Terceira—the Boston-New Bedford area is home to many Portuguese-Americans, many originally from the Azores, having migrated there to work in the fishing industries. (I am amazed at what an impact the relatively small country of Portugal has had all over the world—if there is saltwater with fish in it, you will find a Portuguese community. Hawaii, for instance, has a large Portuguese component to its culture.) These flights were extremely popular with the Portuguese-American community for two reasons: one, they were a lot cheaper, being charters, than the scheduled airlines were; two, they were direct flights to the Azores—the only other way to get to the Azores from the US was to go to Europe first, normally Lisbon (Lisboa in Portuguese), and then fly back, a two day affair. So they always went completely full, and since everyone was usually going for a fairly long stay, and since everyone had family there for whom they were taking gifts from America, they were also some of the heaviest loads we ever flew.

Since the Azores were formed from volcanic peaks sticking out of the ocean, as a rule there aren’t many good places for airports. The airport at Ponta Delgado, for instance, was hacked out of the side of the mountain. It is also fairly short (for an L-1011, anyway), and had steep drop-offs at both ends. It was more like an aircraft carrier than an airport, and after a long night of flying, and having just broken out under a heavy overcast after shooting a non-precision, non-radar approach to see that little strip of runway clinging to the side of the mountain, the landings that resulted were also often closer to aircraft carrier landings than they were to air carrier landings. But it was all great fun, and the kind of thing that pilots love to do.

The exception to this rule is Lajes airport, on the big island of Terceira. Terceira is like the island of Maui (Hawaii), in that both were formed when two volcanoes were joined by the outflow from one of them, forming large, relatively flats areas in between. This created a perfect spot, in both cases, for airports.

Lajes is long enough to be an emergency landing site for the space shuttle, and wide enough to handle a B-52 (300 feet wide, versus the more common 150 feet). It was also the first place the pilot of an Air Transat Airbus 330 (August, 2001) headed when he lost power to both engines after a fuel leak over the North Atlantic, taking advantage of its huge runway to execute a safe, power off landing. Lajes has been used as a refueling stop since WWII, and has been a permanent, shared air base for the Portuguese and US Air Force ever since. And that was the other reason for my many trips to the Azores, military charters, Lajes being a regular stop on the US military world wide transportation circuit.

Unlike many shared facilities in the world, where the US military presence is often tolerated but not welcomed, the relationship between the Portuguese and US military at Lajes was very harmonious. (I put this in the past tense because I haven’t been to Lajes for several years now, and I assume this is all still true, but I’m looking back here.) For instance, the two air forces shared a common officers club with a pretty good golf course. You could get an American hamburger or Portuguese grilled squid in a tomato, garlic sauce in the clubhouse, and you could pay for it with either dollars or escudos (now euros). There were no hassles getting on or off the base, and air traffic control was equally professional and courteous regardless of whose air force was handling it.

The only real challenge to Lajes were the winter winds, and since the military operates year round, they couldn’t be avoided. Terceira is in the middle of the ocean, and the winds coming across the North Atlantic can be ferocious in the winter. Compounding this was the physical location of the airport, in the flat part of the island but snuggled up against a long ridge formed by the smaller of the two volcanoes, which caused the wind to curl up and over it and create a strong crosswind in the middle of the runway, while the larger volcano caused the prevailing winds to swirl in the opposite direction. The result was often three entirely different winds over the length of the runway, a headwind at touchdown, a crosswind midway, and a tailwind towards the end. Except sometimes they swapped, and the headwind became a tailwind and the crosswind would switch to the other side—you never really knew, but with three windsocks, one at each end and one in the middle—you at least had some clues. Fortunately, the L-1011 was probably the best aircraft ever made for handling these kinds of conditions, and while you often had a hand full of airplane and couldn’t take anything for granted, you also knew you had an aircraft that could handle virtually anything and would do whatever you asked it to do. It was a challenge but it was also great fun. (I wrote a post in 2008 titled “Track Up” about a particularly nasty approach into Oakland airport. The difference there was that I was then flying a B-757, and while the 757 is a terrific airplane, better than the 1011 certainly in terms of reliability, automation, and efficiency, it is no 1011 when it comes to gusty, crosswind landings. But I was new to the 757 at that point and I didn’t know that yet and expected more from it.)

The nearest town to the Lajes airport was a little place right on the water called Pria. Pria is a very typical little Azorean fishing village with great restaurants and cafes and it was all pretty cheap, too. One summer evening, handing off the aircraft we brought in to the crew taking it out, the outgoing captain said they had found a really great place to eat and we had to check it out, it was just down the beach from the hotel, wasn’t marked real well, but it looked like a big beach house of some sort and was the only one along that stretch, and we just had to try it.

Crew often pass along tips like this because they are always looking for places friendly to American crews and accommodating of our preferences (like separate checks, and not having to wait until 9 o’clock to eat, and menus we can understand), and someone always gives them a nickname like The Broken Chair or The Red Door and everyone knows where they are and what to expect there. I thought I knew every place to eat in Pria, but this sounded like it was worth checking out, and it didn’t even have a nickname yet.

So after checking in and cleaning up we—my copilot and my flight engineer and I—headed down the beach to look for this place. We found a place that had to be it, but to say it wasn’t marked well was an understatement—it wasn’t marked at all. It looked like a private house, with no signs or menus posted or anything that indicated it was a restaurant. It was still early in the evening (but late for us, and we were hungry), so we climbed up the stairs to a veranda and peaked inside and we could see what looked like it could be a restaurant, with a small bar and lots of tables and a door that could have gone to a kitchen, but we still weren’t sure. Then someone appeared inside and saw us peaking in, and came over and opened the door. We said we had heard that this was a good restaurant and wondered if we could get some dinner. He said something vague like, “Come on in, have a seat at the bar,” and disappeared. So we sat there for awhile and eventually someone else came out and asked us what we wanted to drink, and I think we had some beers, and slowly a few more people did come in, older couples mainly, and pretty soon we could smell good food smells, so that seemed promising, but we still hadn’t seen a menu or a waiter.

By now we were getting really hungry, and a little puzzled as to what exactly was going on, so I asked if we could see some menus. Whoever he was at the bar said, “Oh, there are no menus.” I said, “How are we going to know what to order?” and he said something to the effect of “Everyone just gets pretty much the same thing, but if you want I can take you to the kitchen and show you what we have.”

So I said, “Great,” and off we went, the three us, following this guy around in the kitchen and there were big pots of all kinds of good looking and good smelling things all around and I keep asking what each was and he keeps saying, “Oh, you don’t need to know the names, it’s not important,” and I’d say, “But I want to remember what it is so I know what to order,” and he says, “”Oh, don’t worry about that,” and finally we just gave up and figured what will be will be and hoped for the best, which at that point we were so hungry a spoon to lick would have been fine.

So we sat down at a big table, room for probably eight, and someone else comes over and says, “You will want to drink wine with dinner, and here in the summer we always drink Vino Verde, so do you want to order some Vino Verde?” I had never heard of Vino Verde but I knew it meant Green Wine and that didn’t sound so good, but it didn’t seem like it was really a question or a choice, and I looked at the other two guys and they just shrugged, so I said, “Sure, Vino Verde.” (It is actually a very light, slightly sparkling, slightly sweet wine that is perfect in warm weather with spicy food. And it does have a green tinge to it.)

Then, I don’t really remember in exactly what order, other people arrived and some sat down with us at our table, and slowly food started to arrive in big bowls, food I recognized from our kitchen tour, and more Vino Verde arrived and at this point, still having not seen a menu or a price list or any attempt to keep track of who ordered what, we just gave in and started eating and drinking and not worrying about how it was all going to work out. The men at our table, mostly older and very distinguished looking with very good English, seemed to know a lot about aviation and American Trans Air, and we had a great time talking and enjoying the food, which just kept arriving until I realized that we had something from every pot in the kitchen. Towards the end of the meal a very elegant man arrived at our table, dressed with a silk scarf and an expensive looking sweater with a jacket draped over his shoulders and offered us an after dinner drink. We still didn’t know what any of this was going to cost, and had had plenty of Vino Verde anyway, so we thanked him and declined, but he insisted, sat down and we all talked for awhile, still not knowing who anyone was.

Eventually, getting late, we thanked everyone for their company and said we needed to pay and get on our way, and no one seemed to pay much attention to any of that, and finally I said to one of the men who had been at the table since the beginning, and who seemed to be kind of a leader, that this was a wonderful restaurant, but very unusual, and he said, “Well, it isn’t exactly a restaurant. Do you know where you are?” And I said, “Well, I thought it was a restaurant, but I guess not. So where are we?” He said, “We are all generals in the Portuguese Air Force. I am the Chief of Staff. The man who offered you the after dinner drinks is a priest and also the Head Chaplain for the Portuguese Air Force. We all have summer homes here on the island and this is our private club.”

Needless to say we very embarrassed and apologetic, but he said, “No, no problem at all—we see each other enough and it is good to talk to other pilots and it’s our club and we can welcome whomever we want. We hope you enjoyed your evening.”

We never did see a bill but we did leave some money that we hoped went to the staff. I think we played golf the next day. I don’t really remember. We never did give it a nickname.

Big World, Small World

2009-02-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

Back in the “old days,” back when transitioning from domestic to international flying usually meant also transitioning from two and three engine narrow body aircraft like the DC-9 and the 727 to three and four engine wide body aircraft like the L-1011 and the 747, one of the first things you noticed was that “the world gets bigger and the runways get shorter.” That’s how a senior captain once described the experience to his very inexperienced 1011 First Officer, me. What he meant was, you start to cover very large distances when you can fly at Mach .85 for nine hours, and you realize what a big place the world is. You also discover that to do that—to carry that much weight in terms of fuel to go that far with a big airplane full of people and bags—that you also need a lot more runway both to takeoff and land. Where you might have been pretty comfortable with a 7000 or 8000 foot runway before, 7000 feet was now a short runway.

But the more you fly and the more people you fly with, the smaller the world gets as well. (But it doesn’t make the runways any longer.) You meet so many people in aviation, and often spend quite a bit of time with them, get to know them well, and then things change—you change aircraft, or bases, or companies, and you never or seldom see them again. But you do meet and see other people who often knew the same people you did. In aviation, it is both a big world and a small world.

I remember, for instance, back in 2004 or 2005, doing a Honolulu turn out of San Francisco on the 757 for ATA, talking to my copilot who, it turned out, grew up in New London, New Hampshire. I told him that I knew New London very well, having lived just a few miles away in Hanover, New Hampshire for four years when I flew corporate jets for AMCA International out of Lebanon, New Hampshire. It turned out that he knew several of the other AMCA pilots as well, no surprise there, but what was a real surprise was that he also knew one of the captains I had flown with at a previous job, Cub Snively, because Cub was also from New London and one of his sons was my copilot’s best friend from childhood. He also told me that, sadly, Cub had died a few years earlier. (Pilots often seem to die young—I joke that it’s the coffee—but more likely it’s the strain we put on our bodies being awake at all sorts of odd hours combined with years of extra radiation bombardment. Or maybe it’s nothing, maybe we just remember the ones who die young.)

I’m thinking about all this right now because I got an email the other day from another former AMCA pilot, Keith Hasperg, who found me because he had stumbled across my blog. I hadn’t talked to Keith in many, many years, going back before ATA, but often thought about him, for two reasons: One, he was one of the funniest and smartest people I had ever known, and two, he was one of the best pilots I had every flown with, a very skilled pilot, but, unlike most “naturals,” very careful and conservative as well. So it was great to hear from him again. But he also had bad news—another of the AMCA pilots, Nate Lake, had died in July of 2007, and I had fallen so out of touch with Nate that I didn’t even know he had died—I just assumed I could call him any time I wanted or go up to New Hampshire and that he would be there. It struck particularly hard because Nate really was one of the best pilots I had ever known, and taught me an awful lot about how to fly airplanes well, simply by his example and his tactful, always diplomatic “suggestions” for better ways of doing things. He was also a great friend, and that doesn’t always happen.

I remember asking Nate once how it was he was able to hand fly the aircraft so well, exactly on altitude and airspeed—you almost couldn’t tell if the autopilot was on or not when Nate flew, except his hand flying was, if anything, smoother than the autopilot. He said that when he was in Navy primary flight training that they trained in tandem seat aircraft, and that his primary instructor carried a small stick with him. Communication was difficult from front to back, so this guy would just tap him on the helmet whenever he saw anything he didn’t like, like the altitude being off by 20 feet. Nate said it just got easier to never let anything deviate than to put up with that d… stick. What it really was was Nate’s careful way of telling me that anyone can do it, you just have to try.

After I left AMCA, I got into aviation writing and eventually got a contract to do what would turn out to be the first edition of my navigation book, The Aviator’s Guide to Modern Navigation. The first person I consulted before starting was Nate Lake because he was also a trained Navy navigator. He read all of my chapters in draft form and caught many mistakes and made many helpful suggestions. I owe him a lot. If it hadn’t been for aviation being such a small world, I never would have found out what a big world it is. If I have any excuse for not having gotten in touch with him later, it was that I thought he would live forever.

We'll See

2008-10-27T13:34:00.000-07:00

Winston Churchill is famous for many things, and one of those things was his quick wit. One of my favorite examples came after his defeat as Prime Minister following World War II. (Despite leading England from The Battle of Britain, Their Finest Hour, to eventual Victory in Europe, he was thanked for his efforts with rejection.) In the dumps, his wife apparently tried to cheer him up with a typically British, “Come on Winston. Chin up and all that. Might even be a blessing in disguise.”

He is alleged to have replied, “In which case, it is very cleverly disguised.”

I’ve had one of those “very cleverly disguised” moments with my proposed new book. After struggling for a couple of years with what exactly I wanted to write about (see my last post, “After Oshkosh"), and, having finally come up with an idea and a rough outline, I then had to decide if I really wanted to intrude upon a retirement schedule that I have grown very fond of (the best part of which is not having much of a schedule at all). I, of course, decided that I did want to—as much as I enjoy retirement I also know I need projects and a book is a good project—so I emailed my publisher with a quick summary and asked him if it sounded like something he was interested in. He promptly emailed me back saying that they weren’t doing any new aviation books, that they just couldn’t get shelf space for them anymore at the national retail level (read Barnes & Noble and Borders), and he hoped I could place it elsewhere. So, as the Brits like to say, “And Bob’s your uncle.” That’s that.

My retirement schedule is still intact, and as Mrs. Winston Churchill said, “Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.” We’ll see. It’s still pretty cleverly disguised at this point.

After Oshkosh

2008-09-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

I have taken a bit of a vacation from doing regular posts since my week in Oshkosh this summer. There isn’t any specific reason for that, I just had other things to do and was still sort of absorbing the experiences of Oshkosh. I also began to feel that I may have told enough ATA stories: the stories could go on for a long time, but the important ones—the ones with, what seem to me anyway, important lessons—I think have been told.

One of my first thoughts in starting this blog was that I hoped some of the articles and stories would make their way into a book. I had an idea that I might write a book in which each chapter started with a story that would set the tone and background for the subject that followed. But I found that the stories took on a life of their own and were too long to serve as introductions to chapters; I also didn’t think they warranted a book of their own. I still wanted to do a book, but I couldn’t get a good idea of what I wanted to do or how to structure it.

Then, as usually happens, a book idea came to me once I had let go of the previous idea and after the experience of Oshkosh, a part of aviation I had been away from for many years. It was centered on the idea of adapting professional aviation standards to general aviation. I sort of touched on the issue in the post “Pro-Am,” where I talked about the differences between general aviation and professional aviation, and, in a way, it is something I have been thinking about since my very first book, written back in 1983 and now out of print, Fly Like a Pro.

I‘ve got a starting outline, and how that happened is an interesting story in itself. I had tried, back before going to Oshkosh and before I had a clear idea of where I wanted to go with the book, to make up an outline, or at least a list of topics, and had really struggled with it: no coherence, just a bunch of different ideas, some that could become chapters, others that were just thoughts, and I couldn’t even get a consistent writing style in listing them. I put it away, thinking it was a start and could be improved on later after I had thought about it more.

When the idea did click in my head to specifically focus on professional standards and general aviation, I didn’t even go back to that first outline. I just sat down with a notepad and a pencil, and within 30 minutes had a pretty good outline. A good start anyway, consistent in style with each idea for a chapter of about equal importance, and fairly complete. I have thought about a few additional ideas and it still needs a lot of fleshing out before I can submit it as a proposal to my publisher, but the hard part is done. (That experience of struggling when trying to make a dead end idea work versus everything falling into place once on the right path, is so common, it is kind of a lesson in itself: When it’s right, it works, when it isn’t, it doesn’t. And you can’t force it, you have to step back and hope you can get back on a path that makes sense.)

I also quit doing regular posts partly because I think I finally got down, shortly before leaving for Oshkosh, what I think the most important lessons were from my flying career, and I have, in fact, listed those three posts on the right hand side in a section titled “Credo.” So I have a sense that I have done what I wanted to do with this blog, and probably won’t be doing any more posts on a regular basis.

If you’re used to checking here to see if I there is anything new, I thank you and I apologize for not having done anything lately to justify your interest. It’s probably not going to get any better. If my proposal is accepted, I will be tied up writing on a daily basis for six to nine months and probably won’t do any posts. The next thing I need to think about is whether I really want to do that. But I probably will.

Oshkosh, Saturday and Sunday

2008-08-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

Saturday was another good day. Sunday has been a bit of a let down.

Saturday was good for lots of reasons--good weather, a productive hour and a half at the Authors' Corner, another great airshow and lots more walking around--but Saturday was also good because Tom Jacobs, an ATA First Officer and International pilot who used to fly with me a lot on the Hawaiian turns, showed up at the Authors' Corner, with his father, an aeronautical engineer. And I also meet up with another old friend from ATA, Bill Leeds, Lt. Col. AF (Ret.) and a fellow L-1011 and later 757 captain in San Francisco. Bill had major heart surgery three years ago and was looking great. Also, funny and charming as ever. It was great to catch up with these old friends and introduce them to my family.

Sunday was a let down because Sunday seems to be "Get out of town" day. I got to the airport just after 9am, and probably half of the aircraft were gone already, and most of the rest left before the airshow which started early, 2pm. It was still a nice way to finish up--no crowds with a nice cool breeze. I walked all the way down to the end of runway 36 and discovered a separate area for ultralights with its own grass strip. Even on the last day you can find new things.

The highlight of the airshow today was the Aeroshell three ship acrobatic team of T-6s'. (The T-6, or SNJ for the Navy, "Harvard" for Canada, was the most common primary trainer in WWII and there are still a lot around.) These guys were real pros and I always find acrobatics with more than one aircraft so much more interesting than single ship demonstratinons. The single ships can do more extreme maneuvers because they don't have to worry about aircraft around them, but I find them to be a little repetitious after a while. But three aircraft doing complex formation flying is always thrilling.

The photo about shows the team diving straight down into a three way split at the bottom. Pretty impressive.

Oshkosh, Friday

2008-08-02T06:03:00.000-07:00

We got a late start Friday (birthday party the night before plus some people still on California time), but made up for it after that. I gave the new arrivals an orientation tour--the show is so big, you hardly know where to start otherwise. Most of us toured a restored Piedmont Airlines DC-3 (photo above) which was flown in by the Carolina Air Museum. They asked for a dollar donation, "To help pay for the 800 gallons of gas we'll need to get back." A really nice restoration.

Then we picked our spots for the air show which was highlighted by a limited demonstration flight of the F-22 Raptor, the newest air superiority fighter. The F-22 does everything the F-15 does, except faster, slower, tighter, and stealthier. The demonstration was limited because Oshkosh doesn't have a big enough "box"--protected airspace--for a full demo, but it was still very impressive. On takeoff, it points straight up for two thousand feet or so, until it comes to what seems like a complete stop, then, incredibly, pitches straight ahead to level flight and accelerates away, a sort of upside down L pattern. If you don't know airplanes, it's kind of a "so what." If you do, you can't believe your eyes.

Then there was a "Warbirds on Review" show, a series of fly-bys and overhead formation passes for every kind of warbird, from L-19 Birddogs to B-24 bombers, with lots of ground pyrotechnics to simulate an airfield under attack. Very impressive. All the kids watched with their hands over their ears, but I noticed that during an kind of lull in the action, they all had little model airplanes in their hands which they ran around with shooting their brothers' and sisters' airplanes down.

The only hitch in the day was a line of thunderstorms that went through that, fortunately, missed the airfield but threatened to cancel the show. I even saw some nasty looking stuff coming out of the bottom of one, scratchy patches of clouds swirling in circles, but nothing developed. When we got back to the house though, the outdoor umbrella was on the ground and turned out to have a broken strut. The neighbor said there was only one big gust, but it was enough to launch it 15 feet or so. So I owe the owner a new umbrella. It was worth it.

Oshkosh, Wednesday and Thursday

2008-08-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

Wednesday was an off day--Rusty and I played golf with another friend, Ron Galbraith, a retired Denver Center controller and Master Certified Flight Instructor. (There are only 600 MCFIs' in the country, versus something like 90,000 CFIs'.) He is also a 4 handicap golfer (that's very, very good) and was very patient with us.

Thursday started off with the Master Instructors' Breakfast, which I was lucky enough to attend as Rusty's (see "Prelude to Oshkosh) guest. The Acting FAA Administrator, Bobby Sturgell, talked and handed out some awards, as did Hal Shever, founder and CEO of Sporty's Pilot Shop and an Aviation Hall of Fame honoree. Sporty's is a major sponsor of EAA.

After that I checked out the retail exhibitors--four huge hangars full--wandered around the outdoor exhibitors, which are mostly aircraft manufacturers, and then went to Authors' Corner. There was more traffic today, and I sold a few books. An ATA pilot, Loren Madison, stopped by and reminded me of a trip we did together on the 1011 to Edinburgh and what a good time we had. He also caught me up on some people we knew in common at ATA's. So all in all that was a very successful hour and a quarter.

Thursday was also my wife's birthday and we had a great time that evening with both daughters here, Hilary and Nicole, Hilary's boyfriend Matt, and Rusty. Thursday was the best day so far.

Oshkosh, Tuesday

2008-07-30T12:47:00.000-07:00

Tuesday was another great day, but hotter and stickier (but with a cold front forecast). My talk (Air Navigation, Past, Present, Future) went well, although it wasn't as well attended as last year. But then again, everything seems to be a little bit down from last year--aircraft, visitors, campers--I assume due to the high cost of gasoline. Still, the slide show worked, no one walked out, and I was pleased with how it went.

The Author's Corner that followed was less exciting. Author's Corner is essentially a section set aside in several of the different sales venues for authors to sit and meet people interested in their book, sign copies, and make some sales. I was assigned the 400pm to 515 pm slot on a hot afternoon with an airshow going on. I got exactly zero visitors unless you want to count the one guy who thought I was an employee and wanted to know if we had a certain book he was looking for (not mine). I have two more times assigned this week, better times, I hope on cooler days, and I hope with better results.

My wife and I have walked many miles looking at aircraft of all sorts. The photo above is my favorite so far, a perfectly restored Twin Beech, circa 1946, an important year for me as well as this aircraft.

Oshkosh, Monday

2008-07-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Oshkosh opened on a perfect day, sunny, good visibility, temperature in the low '80's with dry air and a nice breeze out of the northeast. It still got hot, but then again, it is summer.

This is a huge event for this area, of course, and while everyone knows about it out here, they don't call it "Oshkosh," because Oshkosh is where they live. They call it "EAA," which they know is the huge organization behind it. The EAA calls it "AirVenture 2008." I kind of like "Oshkosh," because that is what everyone in aviation calls it, you just can't do that here or they look at you with a funny look that says something like, "What do you mean "You're here for Oshkosh?" You're in Oshkosh!"

Opening day traditionally begins with the arrival of several fleets of "warbirds"--restored military trainers and fighters. The photo above was typical of their arrival.

Prelude to Oshkosh

2008-07-18T08:26:00.000-07:00

I’ve been taking a break from posts for awhile for several reasons, but probably the main reason is that the last two posts, “The Test” and “The Way”, represented fairly major efforts and I sort of wanted to sit on them for awhile before I did anything new. Also, “Oshkosh” (more properly, “AirVenture 2008”), is coming up in just over a week, and I want to wait for that to begin anything substantial. My talk is ready, with, I hope, foolproof illustrations on a Picasa Gift disk, which I learned includes the Picasa software so it can be used on any computer. (Picasa is a free download from Google and works great.) I will also be promoting my navigation book at the Author’s Corner on three separate occasions. If you’re there, I hope you will come by; I will happy to personalize and sign any purchase. (Part of the proceeds go to EAA, a non-profit organization, so you will be helping them as well as me, a little bit more of a feel good sort of thing than a regular bookstore purchase.) My wife and daughters will be there along with one of my oldest friends, Rusty Sachs, a Marine Corp Viet Nam vet chopper jock with a Purple Heart to show for it. Rusty retired recently as the head of NAFI (National Association of Flight Instructors), a component of EAA. It should be a fabulous week and I hope to make regular posts with photos. (Last year's event provided many of the photos used on previous posts, including this one).

For more information on the event, including daily schedules (every afternoon features an air show, for instance), go to www.airventure.org.

The Way

2008-06-14T14:31:00.001-07:00

The question is this: Can we say, in just a few words, what it is that makes a good pilot? A quick review.

First, we know it isn’t luck. Luck—the random, the chaotic, the unpredictable—is always there, in aviation as in anything, but for good pilots randomness is just part of the fun, part of what makes it interesting. Good luck has nothing to do with what it takes to be a good pilot, and bad luck has nothing to do with being a not-so-good pilot. It’s not luck. (See “Are you feeling lucky, punk?”)

Second, what, more than anything else, distinguishes a good pilot from a not-so-good pilot? Simple: The good ones make it look easy; the not-so-good ones make it look hard. (See “The Test.”)

So the question boils down to this: How do the good ones make it look easy? And I think the key to answering that question lies not in how the good ones make it look easy, but in how the not-so-good ones make it look hard: It’s easy to make it look hard, just act real busy all the time without actually doing anything. But it’s very hard to make it look easy. And there’s the rub: The hard way is the easy way. Let me try to explain what I mean.

Mark Barnard was a very good friend of mine at ATA. I first met him when he taught my navigation class and later, when I upgraded to 727 Captain, he taught general operations, otherwise known as “Charm School.” (“Charm School” is where an experienced Captain tries to tell new Captains how to stay out of trouble.) He impressed me both times not just with his knowledge, but also with his wit and intelligence. He eventually went on to be the Chief Pilot for the L-1011, a position that suited him perfectly because he loved the 1011, was on a first name basis with most of the 1011 engineers at Lockheed, and was probably the most knowledgeable person outside of Lockheed on that airplane. He and I, along with another friend and Check Airman, John Stahl, were in Indianapolis working on a major revision to the L-1011 operations manual on September 11, 2001. I ended up doing a rescue mission when flying resumed, but in street clothes because I hadn’t taken a uniform. No one seemed to mind. We never finished the revision. So we have a little history.

Mark used to say that his father, an Indiana farmer with little education, was one of the smartest people he ever knew. He quoted his father a lot, and one of his better sayings was, “If you don’t have time to do it right, you sure don’t have time to do it wrong.” It was funny and smart at the same time, which made it easy to remember. It was also another way of saying, “The hard way is the easy way.”

This wasn’t a lesson that came to me naturally. I’m not very good with tools. I don’t know why. My father is, my brother Dean was, but I’m not. A lot has to do with my impatience and some has to do with laziness. (An FAA inspector once told me that the goal of all pilots was to have the most amount of fun with the least amount of effort. Not too far from the truth, actually.) I’m much more likely to reach in the kitchen drawer and grab a table knife to tighten the screw on the pot handle than I am to go to the basement where I keep my tools and get a screwdriver. And I’ll do this knowing that the best that can come out of it is that the pot handle will still have to be retightened a week later, and the worst that can come out of it is that I will ruin the knife, wreck the slot in the screw, and have to either throw the pot out or spend some money getting somebody who knows what he’s doing to fix it. The hard way to fix it, for me, is to take the time to go get the screwdriver—the right one, the one that fits, even if that means going back to the toolbox again—and do it right the first time, because that seems to take extra effort. But the hard way ends up being the easy way.

How does this apply to aviation, to being a good pilot? The answer is probably not the one anyone wants to hear, but here it is anyway: There is no easy way to be a good pilot. No one is born a pilot. It has to be learned, and no one learns anything without an effort, and no one retains the skills and knowledge without practice and review. Flight planning and preflights, weather briefings and weight and balance do not happen by themselves. There are no short cuts, no easy ways, “Nothing will come of nothing.” (King Lear, Act I, Scene 1.) The good ones make it look easy because they have worked hard to be good pilots. They are never content to reach a certain minimally acceptable level and then quit. The good ones read, they think, they never have aviation too far from their minds. As a practical matter, they know that being a good pilot takes time—both time to learn and time to do it right.

This means they don’t just check the destination weather and forecast; they get a full briefing. This means they don’t just open the hangar doors, drag the airplane out and fly away; they do a complete preflight including powering up the panel and checking the flight instruments and aircraft systems. It means, if they are VFR-only pilots, that they don’t just stick a Garmin on the panel and launch, hoping for the best; they prepare a dead reckoning log with VOR cross checks to back up their GPS. If they are instrument-rated, they file IFR for every serious cross country—anytime the object is to get somewhere, as opposed to just flying around to have fun—because they know that is the sound and sensible way to do it and the best way to stay current and confidant in their instrument skills. They also prepare a flight log and keep a running tally of times and fuel enroute, and when the trend is negative they have a Plan B. It means they sometimes file to destinations that are further away from where they want to go, but that have good approach facilities and long runways. It also means that when they do try to fly to small airports with limited approaches and facilities, they don’t keep trying when the first attempt doesn’t work; they divert to their alternate, an alternate that does have good approaches, good facilities, and much better weather forecast. They land, and that’s that—no drama, no scares, no worries.

In means, in short, that good pilots do what they have been trained and taught to do, not what is easy to do. I can’t list everything a good pilot should do—that’s what flight training is for. I can only tell you that that is what you must do if you want to make it look easy. Good flying should be boring—the exciting part is having a flight go off smoothly and without a hitch, even if you’re the only one who knows how much work it took. The hard way is the easy way. All the rest is just, “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5.)

Edited by Nicole Clausing

The Test

2008-05-14T17:06:00.000-07:00

Back in the early ’70s, shortly after I was released from active duty as a tank platoon leader, I found myself in a graduate-level course in English at the University of Michigan. (In cockpit conversations, stories like this usually begin with, “In a previous life….”) How that happened, and why, and where it went from there, is not terribly important. What is important is something I learned in that course, something that had very little to do with the study of English per se, but an awful lot to do with life in general.

The course itself was a comparison of the works of Henry James and Mark Twain, two 19^th century authors about as far apart as the Army was from graduate school. Both were master story tellers, but where Twain’s stories were full of action on the surface but with much more complex and even sinister currents underneath, James’s were enormously subtle, even, at times, tedious, on the surface, but with powerful, slow moving currents underneath. Twain was far easier and more enjoyable to read, to me anyway, and to most of the other students in the class, while James was a bit of a struggle—his slow-paced, somewhat archaic character studies didn’t appeal to our need for action and drama.

The professor knew this—I’m sure he dealt with it each time he taught the course—and he was ready with a defense of James. He asked the question, “How do you know when someone is really good at something—better than almost anyone else? Not just good at writing novels, but anything: baseball, music, art, acting, raising kids—anything.” That was quite a question. I don’t know what we said; whatever it was we clearly didn’t have the time to come up with a well thought-out answer, so he answered it for us.

“I think,” he said, “We know when someone has done something exceptionally well when he, or she, makes it look easy. The outfielder, for instance, who always seems to be standing right where the ball is hit makes it look easy. The outfielder who needs to make a spectacular diving run to catch the ball makes it look like he is good, and he is to an extent, but the better player is the one who was standing there already. And the same applies to writers, Henry James, in this case. It seems like nothing actually happens in his stories, but in fact we are mislead because he makes something that is actually very difficult, a story that centers on character, not action, seem so easy. We are tempted, with James, to think that nothing is going on, just as we are tempted to think that the outfielder who is always in position is just lucky. But, in fact, both are actually making something very difficult look easy, and they are able to do that because both are so good at what they do.”

That class was a long time ago, so I’m not quoting his exact words, but that is more or less what I remember, and I remember it well because it was, I thought, a tremendously significant insight. It applies, of course, to aviation as well: The good ones make it look easy, the not-so-good ones make it look hard. The good pilots always seem to have easy, even boring flights; up and down, the same old thing every day. Once in awhile a curve ball gets thrown, a long line of thunderstorms has to be circumvented, an aircraft system malfunctions, a medical emergency occurs, but the good ones seem to just take care of the problem and move on. The not-so-good ones bark orders, change their minds, focus on a small part of the problem and let the big part get worse and often compound the problem before finally solving it. Their flights are seldom uneventful and are usually full of drama. Ironically, often they, and sometimes others, think that they are the good ones, taking charge, making decisions, barking orders, and that the ones who make it look easy are just lucky or lazy.

There are, of course, times when every pilot needs to get busy, take charge, and, if not bark, at least issue some orders. Making it look easy is not the same as doing nothing, and making it look hard doesn’t mean it isn’t actually sometimes hard. Just as it’s sometimes difficult to distinguish between a sales pitch and good information, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between making it look easy and being easy, and making it look hard and being hard. But it usually doesn’t take very long to figure it out. The lazy pilot will get in trouble at some point—his, or her unwillingness to do what is required will eventually result in a small problem becoming a bigger problem. And the pilot who lacks the ability or the willingness to make the solution look easy will always make it look hard, even when it isn’t. Sometimes, he or she may even want to make it look hard to show to fellow crewmembers what a terrific pilot he or she is, afraid that no one will notice otherwise.

So what I learned in that English course almost forty years ago stuck with me and has formed the basis for what I call The Test: Are you making it look easy, or are you making it look hard? If you’re not making it look easy, as easy as it can be anyway, then you’re on the wrong path.

The Test itself is simple—a question you can ask yourself to see how you are doing. Getting on the right path is the hard part, and that will be the subject I will take up in the next post, to be called The Way.

Edited by Nicole Clausing

Plans for Oshkosh Continued

2008-05-07T09:50:00.001-07:00

I meant to include in my last post, "Plans for Oshkosh," that I also plan on doing a daily post during AirVenture2008, which runs from July 28 to August 3. I hope to focus each day on a different aspect of the event---one day might be the warbirds flight line and another the exhibitors' hall, for instance--and each will probably include something that I found significant that day. It will also be an excuse to post some photos. What it won't be is a recap of events. You have to be there for that.

Plans for Oshkosh

2008-05-06T12:24:00.000-07:00

I have rented a house for the week of AirVenture 2008 (“Oshkosh”). It has several bedrooms and is on a tributary of Lake Winnebago. Lacking an airplane and needing a car, my wife, Emmy, and I will be driving to Oshkosh. I am hoping that my daughters can be there at least part of the week, and will be inviting a few of my very best pilot friends and their wives as well, the exact number depending upon my daughters’ plans. So it should be not just a great week at Oshkosh, but a nice summer vacation as well.

I will be giving a presentation sometime during the week—the schedule hasn’t been published yet—on the subject of air navigation, past, present, and future. I will also be participating in the Authors’ Corner, promoting my navigation book. I’m really looking forward to the week. If you have ever thought about going to Oshkosh, I strongly encourage you to make plans to do so this year (see www.airventure.org). I guarantee you won’t regret it, in fact the only thing you will regret is that you waited so long. If you do go and see me at either the presentation or at the Authors’ Corner, please introduce yourself to me as a blog reader. I would like to get to know the people at the receiving end of this transmission.

"Are You Feeling Lucky, Punk?"

2008-04-27T13:41:00.000-07:00

There is a website that attempts to rank the best all time movie lines, and, amazingly, Dirty Harry’s question to the fugitive he has on the ground, with a gun within reach, after asking the “punk” if he thinks he has any rounds left in his 44 magnum, isn’t number one. It fact, it was more like 48, just ahead of, “Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?” (Reservoir Dogs), which was good, but would hardly rank on my top 100. I would have put “Are you feeling lucky, punk?” right up near the top. In fact, my biggest problem would be which came first, that, or “Make my day.” But “Are you feeling lucky” gets the nod here, because this post is about the role luck plays in aviation, indeed, in life.

Lee Trevino supposedly said, “Yah, there’s a lot of luck in golf, but the more I practice, the better my luck.” There’s a lot of luck in aviation, too, and the same rule applies. Not always, of course, otherwise we wouldn’t call it luck, we’d call it karma, but hard work does seem to put the odds more in your favor.

I had some bad luck early in my career at ATA, really nothing I could do much about, but after having finally made it to L-1011 captain, I found out less than a year later that I was going to be bounced back to the 727—the victim of another round of cutbacks, a perennially favorite of airline management. There’s nothing wrong with the 727, but it was a smaller, older airplane, it meant a pay cut, some retraining, and it meant having to go back to commuting—there were no 727 slots in Boston, my preferred base. But I did it, and less than a year or so later, management decided that the problem wasn’t too many 1011 captains after all, it was not enough (another perennial favorite of management, changing their minds without ever admitting their mistake, but at least it worked in my favor this time). The result was that I again found myself down in Miami (where ATA kept its 1011 simulator), to get a quick check out on the 1011 after a year away.

The check airman was Tom Hopp (see “Turns”), which I was happy about because I always had a good experience with Tom’s training and checks. I was paired up with a copilot who was also coming back to the 1011, but, unfortunately for him, he was coming back to the 1011 as a copilot because he had “busted”, or failed, his six month check as a 727 captain. There probably was more to the story than that, it usually takes more than a single bust to get dropped back to copilot from captain, but that wasn’t my business. What was my business was that I was paired up with a sim partner who was, understandably, not happy to be there.

The first day was a warm up and refresher, which Tom started off in the briefing room by trying to set a relaxed, no pressure tone, first telling my partner how sorry he was the way things turned out, but that it was just a little bump in the road, and to give it his best and he’d be pack in the left seat in no time. We then had a little chit chat about what we were going to do that day and the next, and he then started going over the various maneuvers to be covered, with questions thrown in as appropriate—a common (and, I think, very good) way to work into “oral questions” without making it seem like a test. At that point in my career I had been through several of these little question and answer sessions with Tom, and hadn’t always gotten all the answers right but had been smart enough to make notes afterwards and had a pretty good little file on his “orals”—which I’m sure Tom knew, and was probably something he wanted you to do. I knew for sure he didn’t want you to come back a year later and still not know the answers to the questions he had asked you a year before. So Tom started by asking my partner all the questions first, and it became pretty clear pretty quick that he hadn’t studied at all and had only the vaguest memory of 1011 systems. He had a particularly bad habit of starting each answer with, “I’m going to say...” He might as well have said, “I have no idea—but I’ll make a guess and maybe I’ll get lucky.” Each time my partner didn’t know the answer, Tom would turn to me and they were all questions I had gotten previously, so I pretty much knew all the answers, but each time it got a little more awkward.

Finally Tom said, “You know, Brian [not his real name, of course], there is no good reason that Clausing here is the only one in the room who knows the answers to my questions, because I’ve been working with Clausing for a long time and I know he’s not all that sharp.” (I took that as a left handed compliment—that I was good enough to take a jab from Tom—but with Tom you never really knew for sure.) “So,” he continued, “I’m not going to ask any more questions right now, but when you come in here tomorrow, I’ll expect you to have some answers.”

Poor kid, I thought. He’s going to be up all night.

So we moved on to the simulator, and as you can probably guess it didn’t go all that well either. There were lots of excuses and complaints—“The simulator’s messed up”—“The visuals are no good”—Tom even offered to climb into his seat “to see what the problem was”—which put an end to most of the complaining, and when it was over we headed back to the briefing room. A very quiet walk down a very sterile corridor, the kind of walk where all you hear are footsteps on linoleum.

I didn’t know what was going to come next, I had never been in that sort of situation before. Tom started with words to the effect that that didn’t go very well, and if we all were going to get through this checkout we needed to spend a whole lot less time blaming the simulator and a whole lot more time concentrating on the maneuvers. Then he paused for a moment and said, “Brian, have you ever had the experience where you got your bid for the next month [your bid is your schedule and the name of the other pilot you were going to be paired up with for that month], and you found out you were going to be flying with Captain Blackcloud, and you just knew it was going to be a long month—that everything little thing always seemed to go against this guy, lots of little problems and hassles, nothing ever seemed to go smoothly, the weather was always bad for this guy, his airplanes always broke, his passengers always had problems, he just had the worst luck in the world and you just wished you’d bid another line?”

And Brian said, “Sure, happens a lot.”

And then Tom said, “And then the next month you get your bid and you find out that you’re going to be flying with Captain Sunshine, and you just know it’s going to be a great month, this guy just has the best luck in the world, everything always seems to go along just fine without any big problems or hassles when you fly with him, and you wish you could fly with him very month.”

And Brian said, “Yah, sometimes that happens too.”

And then Tom said, “You know what, Brian? It’s not luck.”

That was almost 20 years ago and I have spent the rest of my career trying to figure out what it is if it isn’t luck. Because what “it” is is the essence of what it takes to be a good pilot, maybe the essence of what it takes to be good at anything.

Tom had some of the answers, things like anticipating problems, reacting but not over reacting, listening, looking around, and, mainly, fixing small problems quickly before they became big problems. It was all good advice but nothing revolutionary and nothing you could say in just a few words: “This is it. This is what being a good pilot is, this is why some guys seem to have all the luck and others none.”

As a check airman I used to spend a lot of time watching the good ones, the Captain Sunshines, the ones who seemed to be completely in charge and at ease, trying to figure out what it was that told me right away they knew what they were doing, and, conversely, what it was that told me right away that the not so good ones weren’t completely at ease or in charge. And I’d like to say that I finally figured it out, but I can’t. The best I have been able to come up with are two little ideas. One is a sort of standard, or test, a very general idea to help determine whether you are headed in the right direction or not. The second is a sort of “mantra,” an easily remembered phrase, or saying, to help in getting that standard right. These two ideas are all I really know about being a pilot that is worth anything, and each will take a little bit of explaining. The first idea will be the subject of a later post, to be called “The Test.” The second will be the subject of a further post, to be called “The Way.”

Turns

2008-04-08T15:52:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of this blog may remember that in “Pro Am” (Archives, January, 2008) I said that one of the things a general aviation pilot has going for him or her that an airline pilot does not, is that the general aviation pilot never, “has to fly with a difficult copilot, one that is argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, or unresponsive.” If you’ve never flown in a professional cockpit (a two pilot cockpit), you might think that that statement was a bit petty, perhaps overreaching. How often could that be a problem? And the answer is, quite often. They put human beings in cockpits for a reason, and the price paid is a considerable amount of pushing and pulling between two individuals with strong opinions and often strong egos. The captain has to listen to his copilot—good CRM (Crew Resources Management) demands it—but he still must maintain his authority: there can only be one captain. The copilot has to defer to the captain when questions of technique arise, but must be forceful when he or she feels that safety is being jeopardized. In between is a gray area of cosmic dimension. In the best of worlds, each gives a little when there are differences, and reasonableness prevails, like in any partnership. But at times, reasonableness does not prevail, and a stronger stand has to be taken.

Tom Hopp was one of several pilots, check airmen, and simulator instructors that ATA was lucky enough to get from Eastern Airlines after those pilots were unlucky enough to see their strike fail. I remember once riding jump seat on an L-1011 with Tom Hopp as captain. His copilot was being difficult at nearly every turn, insisting on doing things his way, dragging his heels with Tom’s requests, and at times simply ignoring him; in short, he was “argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, [and, at times,] unresponsive.” I knew Tom had a lot of patience, but I also knew we were headed for some kind of a show down, I just didn’t know what kind.

Tom put up with it for the whole flight, which fortunately was not a long one, saying things like, “Well, I know that’s one way to do it, but this time I really do want to do it this way.” When the flight was over, though, after all the checklists were done and everyone had started to pack up his stuff, Tom got up, closed and then locked the cockpit door. That’s never a good sign. He said to the copilot, “Do you know why I’m in this seat [the captain’s] and you’re in that seat [the copilot’s]?” It was a rhetorical question, he wasn’t supposed to answer, and, he didn’t, the first smart thing he had done all day.

Tom said, “It’s not because I’m such a great pilot and you’re not, and it’s not because I’m more deserving than you are, or luckier, or anything else. There is only one reason I’m in this seat and you’re not, and that is because it’s my turn. That’s all—it’s my turn. And someday it will be your turn. And when it’s your turn, you can run the cockpit the way you want to, but as long as it is still my turn we’re going to run it the way I want to. Okay?” Another rhetorical question, and again, no answer. But he got the message.

We all understand the concept of “having a turn,” because from infancy we are taught to take turns, to wait our turn, to be fair about whose turn it is, and so on. It’s a fundamental of the socializing our elders teach us, something that keeps us from descending to savagery and chaos with each generation. I’ve been thinking a lot about “turns” since I retired, because in the simplest sense, retirement meant my turn was up, it was someone else’s turn, and it helped me understand the change: I wasn’t a captain up until then because I was the best of the bunch, it was simply my turn; and I didn’t have to quit being a captain because I wasn’t any good anymore, it was just that my turn was up.

Kids understand turns very well, because they have to deal with taking turns every day, from sunrise to sunset. I was reminded of this by my Italian teacher. We were discussing the verb “toccare”, which means “to touch,” but is also used idiomatically to mean to take a turn: “tocca a te,” means “your turn,” tocca a me” means “my turn.” (I don’t know why Italians call a “turn” a “touch”—there are a lot of things about Italian I don’t understand—maybe it comes from chess. I don’t really know why we call it a “turn” either—who turns?—but we do. Language is funny. ) In fact, kids understand the concept of taking turns so well they shorten the phrases to “tocca-me, tocca-te,” in Italian, just as English speaking kids say, “My turn,” or “Your turn.”

So the concept of taking turns begins in childhood and the pain and sadness of having your turn be over is universal. But there is something worse than having your turn be over, that is having it taken from you. On April 3, 2008, ATA ceased operations. On that day ATA pilots didn’t have their turn come to an end, their turn was gone: They went to bed that night as ATA pilots, and they woke up the next morning unemployed. That is a wrenching change and one that is much worse than simply having your turn come to an end. So I feel very lucky that, whatever feelings of sadness I had as I walked away from my airplane for the last time (see “Last Flight”, Archives 2007), I was able to see my turn through to its end.

This will be a difficult time for all those ATA pilots who lost their jobs, but almost all will survive, land on their feet, and come out the other side with something that gives them satisfaction and security. And I hope that someday they all have the somewhat sad satisfaction of seeing their turns come to an end.

For the record, the picture at the top is what it looks like when you walk away from an airplane for the last time. Bangor, Maine, September 24, 2006.

ATA

2008-04-03T11:10:00.000-07:00

I just found out that ATA Airlines will cease operations today, April 3, 2008. This is a very sad day for me. You can read a formal announcement, with an explanation for how this all came about, at www.atairlines.com, then scroll down to Press Release, under Media.

Oshkosh

2008-04-01T16:33:00.001-07:00

I’m making plans for AirVenture2008, or “Oshkosh,” as it is more commonly known, to be held this year from July 28 to August 3. I went to Oshkosh last year at the invitation of my old buddy from high school, Rusty Sachs, who, at the time, was Director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI). (NAFI is a part of EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association. EAA is the sponsor of AirVenture.) Several of my previous blog entries were based on that visit (“Catania,” for one) as where many of the photos. I was also one of many presenters there, and the talk I gave can be found under Articles (right hand column, second group). It was called “CPR for DR: Breathing Life into Dead Reckoning.”

I have agreed to be a presenter again this year, and my topic will be “Air Navigation, Past, Present, and Future.” I hope it goes better than last year. Probably the best part of my talk last year was the title, and the rest was downhill. I was nervous about talking for almost a full hour without a prepared text, but the result was, I am afraid, pretty boring. It’s hard to read a talk outdoors, with temperatures in the 80’s, at 2 in the afternoon after everyone has had lunch and is feeling a little sleepy, and not be boring. It didn’t help a bit that I couldn’t get the installed AV system to work and my backup, my own laptop, didn’t work either. (Actually, I think it did, I just didn’t know what button to push to direct the output to a remote screen instead of the computer’s. And there wasn’t enough time to trouble shoot it.) So I had to do without illustrations, a real disaster. I’ll be much better prepared this time and will make sure I find time to check it all out ahead of time.

But there was one really good thing that happened. At the end I said I would hang around a little bit if anyone wanted to talk to me, and a few did, nice, patient people that most AirVenture participants are. Then, after almost everyone else had gone, a young man came up to me and said, “Did you write Fly Like a Pro?” And I said, “Yes, yes I did. That was my first book, in fact.”

He said, “That book is the reason I am in aviation now. I read it and it made my want to be a pilot.”

I was overwhelmed. I really didn’t know what to say except “Thank you, that’s really great to hear. That’s what every author wants to hear.”

And then he left. Made my day. I hope he comes back and gives me another chance.

Weren't Listening

2008-03-06T11:19:00.001-08:00

I was talking to a friend years ago, a friend who happens to also be the owner/pilot of a Cessna 421, about some flying experience I had had, something involving the L-1011, and the story involved the flight director (FD). I’ve long since forgotten the details of the story, but I’ve never forgotten his response, because he said, “Do you use that flight director thing often?”

I was puzzled and even a little astonished by his question. I used it all the time—every 1011 pilot does. Not having a flight director—flying on “raw data” (basic altitude, airspeed, pitch, roll, rate of climb, and nav position data) is practically an abnormal situation for a 1011. A 1011 pilot— any turbine aircraft pilot, really—will almost certainly fly a couple of raw data approaches in initial training, and a raw data approach is sometimes one of the discretionary items for review in annual training, but normally, meaning 99.9% of the time, flying a jet aircraft means flying using flight director commands. So the question puzzled me, because it showed that he clearly didn’t understand how valuable they were.

So I said, “Well, yah, almost all the time. Why? Don’t you have a flight director in your 421?”

And he said, “Yah, but I never use it. What does it do for you?”

Since then I’ve noticed that he is not at all alone. Most general aviation pilots have no idea what a flight director does, and if they have one never use it. Most seem to think that it just tells you what you know already, so what’s the point, and it kind of gets in the way of seeing the artificial horizon. I’ve noticed also, checking out ads for aircraft for sale, that very minor equipment options often get a big splash: “Rosen sun visors!”, while the existence of a flight director is often relegated to almost an after thought—Bendix Three Axis Autopilot/FD. Most aircraft ads also show cockpit panel pictures, but the pictures almost never show the flight director in view, as if no one cares about something as inconsequential as that. But the fact is, a flight director not only makes flying jet aircraft easy, it can make flying any aircraft easy, especially on approach in instrument conditions.

So what does a flight director do for you? A flight director is a computer that knows what you want to do because you have told it so using panel selectors and buttons, just like you do for the autopilot: maintain an altitude, fly a given heading, track a VOR radial, fly to a waypoint, intercept and fly a localizer and glide slope. It then looks at all the relevant flight data to determine what you need to do at any given instant to achieve those outcomes, and it directs that requirement to a command bar (or bars: more on the two main types of flight directors later) that, if followed by the pilot flying, will accomplish those ends. If, for instance, you have selected Altitude Hold for 8000 feet, and it sees that you are actually at 8025 feet, it will command a slight pitch down. To follow the command you pitch the aircraft down until the aircraft symbol on the artificial horizon matches the flight director command bar. As the aircraft corrects back to 8000 feet, the command bar will move back up slightly, you match that by pitching up slightly, and as long as you continue to match the aircraft symbol with the command bar, you will stay at 8000.

So how is that different from simply doing your normal job as a pilot to maintain an assigned altitude? If you see you are at 8025 feet and are assigned 8000 feet, all you have to do is pitch down slightly with a little forward pressure on the yoke, and wait for the altitude to correct, then release the pressure. What did the flight director do that you wouldn’t do anyway? And the simple answer is, done perfectly, nothing. But the flight director makes it easy. The flight director has all the available flight data in one place, in its computer. It doesn’t have to rely on a scan of all the data the way a good instrument pilot flying by raw data does. It also has a computer generated profile to accomplish the goal as efficiently and smoothly as possible. The flight director knows exactly how much forward pressure is required, and it knows when to start releasing that pressure to perfectly recapture the altitude (or the localizer, or the heading, or any other flight profile). And it knows that if you are off by 100 feet that that will take a bigger pitch change then a 25 foot deviation, and an earlier change in pitch to recapture. The flight director takes all the guess work out, puts everything you need to know in one place, and makes flying smoother and more efficient.

Where the flight director really comes into its own is on approach. If it only served to make smooth corrections to altitude and heading it probably wouldn’t make much sense, but when you are dealing with a very dynamic environment, that’s when putting all this information into a single instrument that tells you exactly what to do makes sense. Think about what happens on a typical instrument approach: first come several altitude, airspeed, and heading changes as you descend and position yourself for the approach (or the heading changes could be tracking changes if you are doing a non precision approach or are in a non radar environment ). Both descending and speed changes require power adjustments. Engine parameters have to be monitored to avoid temperature shocking the engine (assuming a reciprocating engine). Tracking changes, frequency selections, turning fuel pumps on or off, opening cowl flaps, all involve looking away from the primary flight instruments. Descent and landing checklists have to be accomplished. Outside temperatures may have to be checked if it is cold enough for icing to be a factor, and, if it’s hot, convective activity may be a factor. And with all this going on, an intermediate approach course has to be intercepted and, for a precision approach, a glide slope intercepted and for a non precision approach step down points have to be identified and descents begun. It is just a very busy time. Anything that can be done to reduce that workload is a good thing, and that’s what the flight director does because it takes the scanning part out: everything you need to know to fly the approach is shown right in front of you on not only a single instrument, but on the most important one, the artificial horizon, directly in front of you. (The artificial horizon is often called the attitude direction indicator [ADI] on turbine aircraft, and the electronic “glass” version is called an EADI. The picture above is 757/767 EADI.) Wander a little off course while reaching over to change frequencies? When you look back there it is right in front of you: a command bar telling you to bank a little to the left. Didn’t catch the glide slope coming down—you looked down to open the cowl flaps? Command bar shows a pitch down. The flight director doesn’t eliminate the need to scan—the smart pilot is always keeping his or her eyes moving—but it makes the scan much less critical, a backup rather than the primary focus. With a flight director the right thing to do is always right in front of you in the form of flight director commands.

We been saying “command bar” but there are actually two types of flight directors, one that uses a single cue, or command bar, and one that uses two. (The one shown is a double cue command.) The single cue is sometimes called a “bat wing” cue because it looks a little like a wing: to command a fly up the wing goes up, to fly left it tilts left, and to fly up and left it moves up and tilts left. All the pilot has to do is maneuver the aircraft to keep the airplane symbol snugged up against the “bat wing” to execute the selected command.

The second type is sometimes called a “cross hairs” cue because the two cues look like cross hairs on a rifle scope: one vertical bar and one horizontal bar. To command a turn to the left, the vertical bar moves left: The pilot banks left, into the command bar, and when the bank is correct the vertical bar will return to center. Same thing for pitch: Bar goes up, pilot pitches up to match the bar. To command both a left turn and a climb, the vertical bar goes left of center, the horizontal bar moves up from center, and the pilot aims at the point where the two cross: left of center and up from center. So instead of matching the aircraft to a bat wing, the pilot puts the aircraft where the two bars cross—“in the sights.” The main advantage to the bat wing is that it is intuitive and easy—a kid could do it, just tell him or her to keep the aircraft symbol as close to the bat wing as possible without covering it. The main advantage to the double cue is that it is more precise: you can put the aircraft symbol exactly on the cross hairs, whereas with the bat wing there is always either a little bit of a gap between the symbol and the wing, or an overlap. It is still very precise, but not quite as precise.

Prior to going to work for ATA, my only experience with the two cue system was a few hours as a copilot on a Cessna 421, which happened to have that type installed. (Which was also how I knew that my friend’s 421 almost certainly had a FD as well, but I wasn’t sure what kind.) I didn’t use it much because I didn’t really understand how it worked then either and no one else I was flying with at the time seemed to know much about it, or if they did have any desire to show me. Training on it was non existent and trying to figure it out myself wasn’t easy either because it wasn’t intuitive the way a bat wing flight director was. After the 421 I went on to Citations and Falcons, all of which had bat wing flight directors. They were easy to figure out and I used them a lot. Eventually, years later, I ended up at a now non existent charter airline in Boston called Five Star Airlines as an 1011 copilot. The Five Star 1011s came from TWA and had bat wing flight directors as well. So, as far as I knew at that point, the double cue flight director was an earlier technology that had been completely replaced by the “newer” bat wing type command bar and the fact that I still didn’t really know how they worked didn’t seem to matter much because I would probably never see one again. I was wrong, and I was headed for trouble.

The Five Star job was maybe the best job I ever had, so of course it didn’t last. Less than a year later I found myself unemployed and that’s when I went to work for ATA, then known as American Trans Air. I really would have been happy with almost any flying job at that point, but ATA was attractive because it was a lot like Five Star, only bigger, and they had 1011s as well and a base in Boston which was important because that was close to where I was living. What they didn’t have, as I discovered on my first day in ground school, were bat wing flight directors—ATA used the “old” double cue, cross hair type. Great, I thought. On top of having to start at the bottom with another airline, I have to figure out how to use this ridiculous cross hair flight director and act like I knew how to do it all along.

I got through initial indoctrination and 1011 ground school, and several weeks later I found myself, along with my sim partner (who also came from Five Star, Andre Paillex, and who is also now retired and still a great friend), sitting in a briefing room in Miami about to go into the sim for the first four hours of 1011 flight training using a type of flight director that I had almost no experience with.

The sim instructor was a legendary, retired Delta captain named Clark Willard. Clark had so many ratings he had to have several extensions put on his “ticket”—it unfolded like a road map. But he been flying airplanes and instructing in airplanes and simulators for a long time, and, after finding out that we had virtually no experience with the double cue flight director, he tried to put us at ease. He told us that he was going to explain the secret to using it, and, if we did just like he said, we wouldn’t have any problems at all. He said to just forget about snugging up to the bat wing and forget about when and why the needle on this new thing goes left or right or up or down or what it means when it stops moving or when it starts back, and just remember one thing: Put the center of the airplane symbol, which was a dot right in the middle of the aircraft symbol (it’s a square in the flight director shown above—same thing), right on top of the cross hairs—where the vertical and horizontal bars cross. “If they move, you move. Just keep the dot on the cross hairs. That’s all you have to know about this thing. You do that and everything will be just all right.”

Sounded real simple. So we went into “The Box”—the simulator—for our first session. The first session is simple, of course, no abnormals or emergencies, you start with a normal takeoff, some straight and level, speed changes, some turns to headings, some air work—steep turns, stalls, the usual stuff everybody does in any new airplane. We took turns flying, Andre and I, swapping seats so we did all of our flying from the right seat, the seat we were headed for, and we eventually worked our way back to the pattern for vectors to final for a couple of ILS approaches in VFR conditions. I remembered what Clark had said about keeping the dot on the cross hairs and it worked out pretty well, I thought, particularly on the ILS approaches. As soon as the localizer course came alive, actually, before that—the 1011 flight director was smart enough to know it was approaching the localizer course even before the needle came alive—the vertical bar would shift left moving the cross hairs, the aiming point, to the left. We banked to the left to put the airplane dot on the cross hairs and as long as we kept the dot on the cross, tracking the localizer was a piece of cake. When the glide slope came alive we went to flaps 22 at two dots above, gear down a dot above, and then landing flaps at glide slope intercept—the standard approach configuration profile for the 1011. At glide slope intercept the horizontal bar dropped down, moving the cross hairs down, and again putting the dot on the cross started us down the glide slope and all we had to do to adjust for deviations high or low was keep the dot on the cross hairs. It worked great, and I was very relieved to know that adjusting to this new type of flight director wasn’t going to be such a big problem.

So at the end of our first four hours of flight training we found ourselves back in the briefing room, where I fully expected to be told what a great job we had done on our first session, and how he didn’t see any reason why we couldn’t just whip right on through the syllabus without any real problems, and how pleased he was to be working with professionals. (I had a little speech all made up for him, just in case he needed it.) Instead he said absolutely nothing. He sat across the table just looking at us for awhile, and finally he said, “Well, I guess you men weren’t listening when I said, ‘Just put the dot on the cross hairs.’ This is what I meant.” He got up and went to the wall board, one of those white, plastic things that you draw or write on with a felt tip pen that squeaks a lot, and drew a great big circle. He then drew a single vertical line straight down through that circle, and a horizontal line across it. He stood and looked at it for a second, and then he said, “So this circle is the dot. And these lines are the cross hairs. Notice how, when I do that, the cross hairs divide the dot into four quarters, each equal in size. That’s what I mean by ‘Put the dot on the cross hairs'.”

I looked at Andre and he had a very diplomatic, neutral look on his face, but I was thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” This is going to be a long couple of weeks of training. As a practical matter, even if you could put the dot exactly over the cross hairs, the actual cross hairs virtually obliterated the dot—covered it up—unlike his great big circle with two thin lines across it. There weren’t “four quarters, each equal in size,” there was maybe just little bits of the dot just visible underneath the vertical and horizontal bars. We knew he was exaggerating for effect, but it still seemed a little ridiculous.

But I have to say, the lesson took. The next day I didn’t just “put the dot on the cross hairs,” I tried my best to divide that dot into four equal sections. And darn if I didn’t start shooting some pretty good approaches to minimums, the kind where, exactly at decision height, you hear, “Runway” (the standard call out by the pilot not flying when the runway or runway lights have been picked up visually), and you look up and there it is right directly in front of you: approach lights, runway end markings, centerline lights, and big rectangular landing zone markings. Pretty neat. “Don’t touch a thing until you hear ‘50 feet’, you’re doing just fine.” At 200 feet it’s very important that that runway be right in front of you because you can’t be very far off the center line or at all high or low and still make a safe landing that close in. It has to be right there in front of you, and I learned that if I kept that dot on the cross hairs so that it divides the dot into four equal parts, that’s where it would be.

So that’s why I was so puzzled by my friends question about whether I ever used that flight director thing or not. I’m sure there are people who can fly a perfect ILS approach every time without using a flight director, but I’m not one of them. Raw data approaches are still fun, and everyone should practice them now and then to maintain proficiency in case you have to do one, but the flight director takes all the sweat out of it regardless of what type you use. (But I am a total convert to the cross hair system, and it seems to me that that type is now the more common one, at least at the airline level.) I can’t imagine not using one if I have one, and if you have one but have never really figured out what it was for, go find yourself an instructor with some real world experience with flight directors (not all flight instructors have that experience—I didn’t when I was one), or a corporate jet or airline pilot who will fly with you, and go out on a good day and start playing around with it. It could change your life.

A final thought, if you’re still with me:

What’s the relationship between the flight director and the autopilot? Don’t they both do the same thing? And the simple answer is, yes, they do: the same commands can be selected for each and each has the same data inputs, but the autopilot uses that information to actually fly the required profile while the flight director shows you what to do to fly it yourself. In complex installations, each has its own computer and receives its own data inputs, computes its own solutions, and one directs those solutions to the autopilot servos and the other to the flight director command bars. If the flight director and the autopilot are both engaged, and if they both arrive at the same solution, the flight director will mirror what the autopilot is doing: they will agree and the autopilot will appear to keep either the aircraft symbol snugged up against the bat wing or the dot over the cross hairs. If they disagree, the flight director will command something different and that may be the first good clue that a malfunction is imminent. Each serves as a check on the other, which is why when you have two separate systems, which you usually do at the turbine level, the flight director is normally displayed even when the aircraft is controlled by the autopilot. For simple installations, where both are controlled by a single computer, the display is a redundancy when on autopilot, but it is still good to engage it in case the autopilot drops off. Assuming the reason for the disconnect is limited to the autopilot, like reaching a trim limit, and not something common to both the autopilot and the flight director, the flight director will continue to provide guidance for hand flying, which is a very good thing to have when an autopilot suddenly and unexpectedly disconnects. There is just no end to all the good things a flight director can do for you.

KDTW

2008-02-13T15:34:00.000-08:00

Airports are like little cities in many ways. Actually, big airports are like little cities, and little airports are more like villages, but in each case they represent microcosms of the cities they serve. In the case of major airports that means they come complete with hotels, restaurants, banks, stores, and an enormous underground, behind the scenes world that is almost organic in the way it maintains the life of the airport.

Airport names usually parallel the city they serve and also often include the name of someone honored: Washington National Airport, for instance, one of the oldest and most historic airports in the country, was recently renamed Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. (There are many who still call it simply “Washington National,” for many different reasons.) Airports also have familiar three character identifiers: DCA for Reagan National, for instance, BOS for Boston, SFO for San Francisco. Smaller airports don’t get the full three letter treatment but are assigned three character codes: The airport where I began my career in aviation, LaFleur Airport, Northampton, Massachusetts, is 7B2. (It was renamed simply Northampton Airport after Larry LaFleur sold it, but the identifier is still 7B2.)

Major airports also have a four letter ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) identifier, an internationally standardized method of identifying major airports. (Or sort of standardized, anyway. As usual in aviation matters, the United States, partially for historical reasons, and partially because we’re just so big and tend to get our way, usually does things a little differently.) The ICAO standard divides the world into regions: Northern Europe is a region, for instance, southern Europe, called Lower Europe, another. Then within each region there are countries, and within each country are airports. The first letter in the ICAO system represents the region, E for Northern Europe, L for Lower Europe, for instance, and the second letter represents the country: G for Great Britain, D for Deutschland, I for Ireland. The problem of having two countries that begin with the same letter is solved by putting them in separate regions: Ireland, Italy and Iceland all get I’s, but Ireland is in the E region, Italy is in the L region, and Iceland is in the B region. Thus Irish airport identifiers all begin with EI ,Italian with LI, and Icelandic with BI.

The last two letters stand for the city, which means that if we assume all 26 letters are available, then 26 times 26 equals 676, and that is the maximum number of airport identifiers available in each country. Thus Shannon Airport becomes EINN, Rome Fiumicino is LIRF, LFPG is Paris Charles DeGaulle, and EDDF is Frankfurt International. With a little bit of familiarity with international airports and some creative guesswork, you can often figure out the airports from the identifiers alone: LIRA means Lower Europe, specifically Italy, and RA is for Rome’s Ciampino Airport (Roma, in Italian, hence RA.) LEMD is also Lower Europe, but the country is Spain (the E in LEMD is for Espana; the names of the countries are in the language of that country), and the city is Madrid. Okay, maybe it takes a lot of familiarity and guesswork, but there is a system.

North America has a somewhat different system. North America is divided into three regions, Canada with a C, Mexico with an M, and the United States with a K. (I’m sure there’s a reason for the K, maybe even a good one, but it doesn’t jump right out at me.) What we also got was not having to use the region, country, two letter airport system, but instead got to add the common three letter identifier to the K. Thus Washington National, DCA, became KDCA, Los Angeles KLAX, Detroit KDTW, and so on. And KDTW is where our story comes in.

If airports are actually small cities themselves, then it stands to reason that life’s comings and goings also happen there, just as they do elsewhere. And not always for the better. One particular incident stands out in my mind, one that made clear to me that airports are more than just places for airplanes to takeoff and land. I had just gotten back to Detroit, my base at the time (full name Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport, KDTW), after having done a “Vegas Turn.” I was riding the employee parking bus, useful also for connecting between terminals—I was on my way to another terminal to get a jump seat ride home. The bus stopped at the main entrance to the Northwest terminal and I saw a bunch of Northwest flight attendants standing outside at the curb as we pulled up, waiting for the bus. I also saw a middle aged, very nicely dressed woman standing there with two other women standing on either side of her, sort of supporting her. The woman in the middle had her hands to her face and was staring somewhat upward, off into space, with a look on her face that was hard to identify, something between confusion and concentration.

The doors opened to the bus, the Northwest flight attendants got on, lots of noise, bags being dragged up the steps, scrambling for seats, shouts of recognition from other Northwest flight attendants already on the bus, and in the midst of all this commotion one of the flight attendants who had just gotten on said, “Did you see that woman on the curb back there? She just found out her son had been killed.”

Then it got real quiet. In an instant we all went from thinking about the day behind us and getting home, to a realization of what we had just witnessed. And I knew I would never again see the entrance to that terminal without seeing that woman’s face.

Big Sky, Montana

2008-01-28T15:38:00.000-08:00

I just got back from another week of skiing with my buddies from back east, this time at Big Sky, Montana. (It should be called Big Mountain, Montana, see picture above.) Virtually nothing related to aviation occurred on this trip, unlike the previous one to Snowbird (see “Amazing”, December 12, 2007), except I did see a Socata TBM 850 taxiing at Bozeman Airport, the aircraft pictured in the previous blog “Pro Am”, and, more importantly, I now have a digital camera, a Canon G9, which I took on this trip, facilitating considerably my ability to include pictures. (Virtually all of the previous photos were taken with a Leica M6, a great camera, but film only, which means that I have to have the photos scanned and converted to digital. It works, but it is slow, costs money, and the result is a big step removed from original quality. The direct to digital obviously has many advantages when doing a blog.)

The main reason I wanted to blog something about this trip, aviation related or otherwise, is because of a really funny thing that happened at the airport waiting to go back to San Francisco. Two of my buddies were waiting for an earlier flight to New York, and one of them, Dan, called home to say he was on his way and got his nine year daughter, Dana, on the phone. After the usual chit-chat, Dan said, “It sounds like you picked up a cough while I was gone.”

“No,” she said, “the kitchen’s on fire.”

“The kitchen’s on fire?

“Yah, mommy burned something in the microwave and now the microwave is on fire.”

“Well, maybe you ought to get out of the house!”

“Okay, dad, see you when you get home.”

I guess it wasn’t really a bad fire, but they may need a new microwave. Good nerves on Dana. May make a good pilot someday.

Pro Am

2008-01-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

I like to play golf, but I’m terrible and never seem to get any better. Which means I’m always hitting balls out of bounds, or in water hazards, or into the woods. It’s frustrating not only because it means extra strokes every time I do that, but looking for golf balls is a real drag.

When I watch the pros play, they don’t do that of course, or at any rate, they don’t do that very often, and when they do there are usually lots of people around, people who see where their ball went, and sometimes even people who stop the ball from going any further, keeping a bad shot from becoming a horrible shot.

The pros also have some other things going for them that I don’t have (besides actual talent and a lot of experience): they have caddies to help carrying all their stuff, to tell them the exact yardage to anything on the course, and to act as coaches and help with putts. In addition, if a pro has a question about the rules there is an official with every party to answer their question and keep them out of further trouble. Shoot, I could probably break 90 most of the time if I had everything going for me that they do for them.

Of course, I have some things going for me that they don’t. For one thing, I don’t need to worry about the rules much, except in serious tournament play, because the way I play no one really cares how I score it. I also don’t have any TV cameras aimed at me, no is about to take my picture during my backswing, and no one yells, “You da Man!” as I pose, watching my drive soar hundreds of yards down the fairway. Knowing exact yardages isn’t too important either, because I can’t hit the ball an exact yardage anyway. So we each have some things going for us that the other doesn’t—we’re playing two very different versions of golf.

And I got to wondering if the same thing doesn’t apply to aviation, because when I look back at my professional career, and forward to maybe flying just for fun and personal transportation, I am aware of how much help I had as a professional—how much I had going for me thanks to others—and how much tougher the general aviation pilot’s job is. But, then again, the non-professional pilot also has some things going for him or her too. So I decided to try to make up a list for each, a list of what each has going for him that the other doesn’t (which also means “going for her,” but I just can’t bring myself to say “him or her” every time).

My list is not meant to be complete or detailed, just an overview. I put it out there for your comments and responses, which I would very much like to get, both to improve and fill out the list, but also to get your opinions: is this or that item really an advantage, or just a difference, or irrelevant or whatever..

Here's my list:

What an airline pilot has going for him or her that a general aviation pilot doesn’t:*

He knows he’s legal in terms of training, flight physical, and currency, because someone else is watching it for him.

He knows his airplane is legal and airworthy—all certificates are in plain view and maintenance has signed off on it in the logbook.

He has help—a copilot, possibly a flight engineer or international officer—with preflight inspections, W&B, cockpit prep, takeoff computations, copying ATISs and clearances, taxi routings, maintaining a flight log, approach monitoring, problem solving and checklists.

He knows he has a good flight plan that virtually guarantees a safe outcome that someone else (a dispatcher) has prepared and taken equal responsibility for.

He has the most current facilities information in the form of complete NOTAMS.

He knows he can make a safe takeoff, even after an engine failure.

He knows he can reach and land at a safe airport if he loses an engine, and he knows he can go around on the remaining engine or engines at any point prior to touchdown, if necessary.

He knows he can handle virtually any systems abnormality or malfunction enroute.

He knows he has the performance and equipment to handle, or the information to avoid, adverse weather—snow, ice, icing, thunderstorms, low visibilities, turbulence.

He has almost instantaneous access to outside, expert help—company operations, engineering, legal.

He knows his flight is being monitored and that he will be notified if anything significant changes enroute—destination or alternate weather, delays, facility outages, severe turbulence or icing reports, customs problems, curfew problems—anything that might adversely affect the safe outcome of the flight as planned.

He has another set of eyes and ears to catch his little mistakes before they become big mistakes.

What a general aviation pilot has going for him or her that an airline pilot does not:

He only has to comply with Parts 61 and 91 of the FARs.

No one is looking over his shoulder and second guessing him, neither in the cockpit nor from the outside.

He never has to keep an eye on a weak copilot and decide when he needs to instruct or intervene and he never has to fly with a difficult copilot, one that is argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, or unresponsive.

He doesn’t have to coordinate with a cabin crew and he doesn’t have to make passenger announcements.

He can take as much fuel as he wants, and usually does by filling the tanks.

He has complete freedom to choose where he flies, when he flies, by which rules, and along which routes to an airport of his choice.

He doesn’t have a schedule to keep, which means there is no pressure to arrive on time.

The more time, money, and effort he is willing to expend, the closer he can come to having the best of both professional and general aviation.

*What follows applies to a large extent to all professionally flown operations, but in particular airline ( Part 121) operations. Professional pilots operating under other parts such as Part 135 (air taxi) and Part 91 (corporate) will still have many of these things going for them, but not all will be required or available—there is no dispatch requirement outside of Part 121 scheduled service, for instance.

Track Up

2008-01-03T17:44:00.001-08:00

San Francisco has some of the most unusual weather in the world, a fact perhaps first noted by Mark Twain in his now famous quip, “I spent the coldest winter of my life one summer in San Francisco.” Tourists still don’t get it, assuming that San Francisco means California and California means fun in the sun, so pack those shorts and flip flops. My wife and I regularly hike up to Twin Peaks, a 900 foot hill above our house, partially for the exercise and partially for the 360 degree views of the entire Bay area, and there are often vendors there making a nice living selling sweat shirts with Golden Gate Bridge emblems on them to freezing tourists for outrageous prices. The wind off the ocean up there is strong and cold, even in July.

The reason it is cold is because it has just crossed hundreds of miles of ocean that is 50 to 55 degrees at the surface. The reason it is strong is because the central valley heats up to 100 degrees or more every day in the summer, creating a powerful vacuum that sucks that cold air inland, dragging cold fog along with it. The gap known as The Golden Gate, the narrow opening that separates San Francisco and Sausalito (a gap that was there for a long time before a bridge was built to cross it, in fact for a long time before it was called The Golden Gate), creates a kind of venturi, aggravating the wind and fog, and creating, at times, some of the most localized stormy weather in the world. And as you can imagine, the same vendors selling sweat shirts on Twin Peaks also do a nice business at both ends of the Golden Gate Bridge.

In the winter the pattern changes somewhat. The water is still cold, but the central valley doesn’t heat up in the winter like it does in the summer, so cold wind and fog is much less common. But winter is when Pacific storms, many originating thousands of miles away and having a tremendous amount of water and massive blocks of cold air from the Arctic to support them, hit the West Coast. San Francisco is no more vulnerable than any other area along the coast, but it’s unique geography again exacerbates the conditions when one of these storms does hit, the hills along the shore lifting the winds, the Bay itself swirling them, and The Golden Gate accelerating them.

We have such a storm forecast for later today and on through the weekend, January 3, 2008 until January 5, 2008. Heavy rain is forecast, becoming snow as it hits the Sierras, up to five feet, and winds are forecast to gust to 70 miles per hour in the Bay area, up to 100 miles per hour in the mountains. It is forecast to be one of the strongest storms to hit the Bay area in several years. The last such storm hit in November of 2002. I know, because I was flying that night.

I was doing a Maui “turn”, where you leave SFO in the morning, fly to Maui, turn around and fly back later that same day. Very routine, always the same track over, the same track back, visual approach to the north at Maui, often a visual to 28 left at SFO, unless the weather is down and the wind is out of the south, when you can plan on an ILS to either 19 left or right. The only thing that varied a little bit on those turns was the weather.

That night the weather was forecast to be quite stormy coming back to SFO, but nothing that would indicate anything other than maybe some arrival delays and a rough approach. As I remember the forecast was for rain with ceilings of 1000 feet or so, visibility a mile or two, occasionally down to ½ mile, with winds of 25 to 35 knots from the south, right down 19 left and right. Oakland, just across the bay, had the same forecast, so it wasn’t a good alternate that night, but Sacramento was forecast to be much better, the storm really wasn’t supposed to hit it hard at all. So despite the somewhat adverse weather, not going was never really a consideration: we would probably have arrival delays—you always did when the weather went down to instrument conditions at SFO—but we had plenty of fuel for that, and Sacramento was a good alternate if needed, and we had plenty of fuel to get there. The weather would be rough but manageable, we had anticipated delays, and we had a good out, so I was comfortable leaving Maui.

Approaching the coast all seemed well: weather was as forecast with no delays anticipated. Then, suddenly, things changed. Just seconds from PIRAT, a common holding point for arrivals from the west, center told us to hold as published, SFO was closed due to a “microburst.” “Microburst?” I thought. Thunderstorms were possible anytime you have a clash of air masses, but weren’t forecast or expected. But whatever, we quickly slowed to holding speed, programmed the FMC to enter the hold, got an expect approach clearance time, which the controller said was just an estimate, who knew how long the airport would stay closed, and starting figuring up how long we could hold, which looked like an hour comfortably, maybe a little more if we were lucky.

This is one of those times when ACARS, an automated system for communicating with the company, pays for itself many times over. I got on the ACARS and quickly sent a message to dispatch telling them we were holding, gave them our fuel remaining, asked if they had any more information on SFO and asked for the Sacramento weather. They came back that a major storm was going through the whole area, including Sacramento, and all airports were reporting winds of 50 to 60 knots, gusting to 75. The best airport, ironically, was SFO because the wind was right down the runway, but it was closed. San Jose and Oakland both had the same 50 to 60 knot winds, and both had runways perpendicular to the wind. So we decided to wait it out for awhile and hope conditions improved.

They didn’t. As we approached the end of our comfortable holding time, I told the International Officer, a young pilot named Matt Gibbs, and a terrific pilot in his own right—to contact the company directly on the radio and get updated Sacramento weather, and check to see if any other airports had improved, and to tell them that if Sacramento was still the best alternate that we were going to take our chances and divert there. While he was on the radio approach control came on and said, “Amtran 123, Oakland has opened up, we are accepting approaches, you’re number one.”

I said, “Standby, we’re checking with our company,” and he said, “There’s only one opening, you’re it, yes or no.”

I said, “Yes.” I yelled back to Matt, “Tell them Oakland’s open for one arrival, we’re going there.” And we did. It was a wild ride, the aircraft barely controllable, the FO hanging on to anything he could get a hold of, the IO wedged between the jump seat and the center console, and I was hanging onto the controls as best I could trying to keep it upright. I remember at one point glancing down at the EHSI, the electronic horizontal situation indicator, which displays an average wind vector showing the direction and strength of the wind, and it was showing 70 knots directly from the right. I thought about going around, but I didn’t know where else we could go that would be any better. I could have declared an emergency and landed at SFO anyway, a closed airport, but that was a pretty extreme measure and in any case only solved the cross wind problem, not the wind itself. So I continued.

It turned out alright, but a lot of that was just good luck. I got it on, got on the brakes, had to keep flying it all the way to the end of the runway, actually it still wanted to fly even taxiing in, bouncing and bucking all over the place, and taxied to a spot on the ramp in rain so heavy I could barely see the marshaller. It was all he could do to stand upright, but he was able to indicate where to park. (It turned out he wasn’t even a marshaller, but a United mechanic who saw we had nowhere to go and just parked us, all on his own. I wish I’d gotten his name, he was a real hero.) I was so glad to be on the ground, I took a big deep breath, turned around in my seat and all I could see were four big eyes staring at me. I guess we were all pretty scared. I could second guess what went on that night for the rest of my life, but it worked out. We were down, no one was hurt, and nothing was broken.

The most unusual thing that happened though, had to do with the way modern glass cockpits are designed. The EHSI is based on the HSI—a mechanical horizontal situation indicator that is essentially a slaved gyro compass with a course deviation indicator overlay. Because the compass is gyro stabilized and slaved to a remote magnetic reading device, it is a steady and reliable indicator of magnetic heading. With an airplane symbol in the middle, the combined device shows at all times the aircraft heading at the top, and with the proper course set it shows the relationship between aircraft heading and track: when on course, the difference between the two will be the wind correction angle.

The traditional HSI is a mechanical device, but the EHSI is an electronic device and is not limited by its mechanics to a compass rose and a single course indicator, but can be configured in a variety of ways to suit different situations and different preferences or policies. One of the ways is to configure it like the traditional HSI and this is the way many pilots transitioning to EHSIs like to configure it because it is so familiar. Because the heading is always shown at the top in this configuration it is called, logically enough, “heading up.”

But the more common configuration, the one all experienced EHSI users almost always use and the one less experienced users normally transition to as they get comfortable with the EHSI, is called “track up.” That is, instead of showing where the aircraft is pointed, or headed, at the very top, the top shows where the aircraft is going—where it is tracking. Normally the differences are slight and barely noticeable because the difference between the two, which represents the wind correction angle, is usually only a few degrees. With a wind correction angle of five degrees to the right, for instance, with heading up, the top of the EHSI would show the aircraft heading straight ahead with the desired course five degrees to the left of that. With track up, the course would be at the top and the heading bug would be five degrees to the right of that. In either case, if you were to look carefully at the ground you might be able to see that where you were headed and where you were going were off by five degrees, but in almost all cases both heading and track would be close together, one up and one to the side, which one depending on whether you had selected track up or heading up.

I was using track up that night, just as I almost always did, the normal configuration for the 757. But that night, with a 70 degree crosswind from the right and an approach speed of around 140 knots or so, my wind correction angle was 35 degrees to the right of course. I broke out of the overcast at about 1200 feet with what appeared to be good visibility underneath, five or six miles. The EHSI showed me dead on course, straight ahead, but looking straight ahead all I could see was water. I could see the city of San Francisco to the right, so I knew I was in more or less the right place, but I couldn’t find the airport: it was 35 degrees to the left of where I was looking, well outside of my peripheral vision and, in fact, hidden from view by the pillar between the front window and the side window. I was directly on course, but couldn’t see the runway. It took me a couple of heart stopping seconds to figure it what was happening and find the runway behind the pillar. The greater the wind correction angle, the greater the difference between track and heading and the greater the difference between what you see straight ahead and where you’re going. I knew that, in theory anyway, some dim memory from ground school, but after that I knew it for real.

Once we were parked, it took an hour or so for the wind to die down enough for air stairs to be safely driving up to the aircraft and we off loaded our frightened but relieved passengers onto chartered buses that took them back to SFO. An hour or so after that the storm had passed through, SFO opened up again, and we refueled and flew it back there empty for the next day’s launch. Driving home I saw trees down everywhere, and most of the city was blacked out. My wife had long since gone to bed in the darkness and cold—no heat—because she didn’t know exactly where I was but wasn’t worried because she knew I wouldn’t be silly enough to be out flying on a night like that. I read in the paper the next day that winds had hit 100 mph at SFO and a maintenance shed had been destroyed along with a lot of minor damage all around the airport. So maybe it wouldn’t have been such a good idea to have declared an emergency and gone to SFO after all. Not with a perfectly good airport right in front of me.

Shell Card

2007-12-26T13:01:00.000-08:00

Military charters—troop movements either to or from the United States—don’t work the way scheduled service trips do. They don’t even work the way a normal civilian charter does. Which makes them hard to describe or explain without getting awfully confusing. It’s a little like trying to explain baseball to a foreigner: a very simple game, really, hit a ball that’s been thrown to you somewhere where the other guys can’t catch it. You get three tries, and if the pitcher throws you pitches that aren’t any good, you get to go to first base for free after four of them. Except for foul balls, which count as strikes. Unless you already have two strikes, and then they don’t. And so on. Baseball starts simple and gets complicated fast. Likewise with military charters, but let me try to explain, because unless you understand something about how a military charter works, a good part of this story won’t make any sense, and the not making any sense part will probably then become the focus, which would be too bad because this is really a Christmas story.

A military charter typically starts or ends at an Army air field, an Air Force air base, or a Naval or Marine air station. (We’ll assume here the trip is one “going over”—leaving the US for some hot spot overseas, but the same process happens bringing troops back.) The airplane for that trip has to be flown into the air base from somewhere else—“ferried in”—by one crew, and will be picked up to start the trip by another crew that has commercialed in separately. This allows the working crew—the crew who will begin the actual troop movement—to be fresh and maximizes their duty day, which maximizes the length of the first leg. Because these troop movements typically cover such long distances—Hickam Air Base in Hawaii to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, is not unusual, for instance—that first crew almost never takes the troops the whole way. So another crew is prepositioned further down the road—Bangor, Maine, Shannon, Ireland, Frankfurt, Germany, are typical crew change points—and that crew picks up the flight and takes it from there. Typically that crew cannot go all the way either, but hands it off to yet another crew who often complete the final leg to the destination, and do a “turn”—turn the aircraft around and fly it back empty to the crew who brought them the aircraft. That crew has had 18 hours of so of crew rest and they take the airplane back to the first crew, who have had two days or so of crew rest, and that crew brings it back to the States somewhere, wherever it is needed for its next trip.

When everybody gets to where he or she is supposed to be—everyone is in place—and the airplane isn’t delayed anywhere, it all works fine, but even at its best it is a complicated operation. The troops don’t get any stops for rest—they are on the aircraft the entire time from departure in the States to arrival at the final destination. You never hear any complaints, though, mostly because they’re military and it’s just part of the job, but also because they know they are on a civilian airliner with hot meals and pretty girls, and they know that the alternative would be a sling seat on a C5 with MRI’s, and that the closest thing to a flight attendant would be a loadmaster.

ATA, then known as American Trans Air, flew many missions into Mogadishu, Somalia, beginning in December of 1992. The crew changeover points for these missions were typically Shannon, Ireland and Cairo, Egypt. I did several of these missions as an L-1011 First Officer between Cairo and Mogadishu, which meant I had to first “position”—get myself from the US to Cairo using the regular commercial airlines—well enough ahead of the arrival of the actual aircraft to have my legally required crew rest and be ready for my leg. One trip in particular stands out because I was commercialling over on TWA out of JFK to Cairo, and as it happened a very senior TWA crew, consisting mostly of management pilots and check airmen, was also on the aircraft positioning over to do a Mogadishu “turn” out of Cairo as well, just a few hours before our scheduled mission. We exchanged pleasantries, and they said it would be their first mission to Mogadishu, and expressed some apprehension about the whole affair. (I think TWA had contractual limitations on using line pilots for these kinds of trips, which meant management pilots had to do them—I don’t think they were exactly willing volunteers.) Anyway, I said I had been there before, that it wasn’t any real big deal except for the odd chance of getting shot at (nervous laughs all around), but that there were a few things to watch out for which I would be glad to go over if they were interested.

And they certainly were interested. I told them that the airport was basic and limited: one runway, no taxi way, and a small ramp, “small” meaning room for only one civilian wide body at a time (they were going to take in a 747). That meant you had to be right on schedule, and it meant taking a lot of extra fuel in case things didn’t work out and you had to hold waiting for room on the ramp.

“No taxi way” meant you had to turn around at the end of the runway, on the runway itself, and then taxi back to the ramp. The tricky part here is that the runway was only 150 feet wide and wide bodies like the 747 and the 1011 need a minimum of 142 feet to turn around—a very small margin of error on either side—and if you blew it you would bury a "truck"--a whole set of main landing gear--in the sand on the side of the runway, grounding you for days and shutting down the airport. No one wanted to be on the airplane that did that. But, I said, there is good news: it isn’t shown on the airport diagram, but there are extra little half moon shaped turn around points at both ends of the runway, which give you quite a bit more room to turn and really take most of the sweat out of it. They were relived: turning a wide body on a 150 foot wide runway is something most pilots spend their entire careers trying to avoid.

Finally, I said there is no fuel available in Mogadishu, which means you have to tanker fuel—carry extra fuel with you—so that you can go on to Djibouti, the nearest facility that did have fuel. (Djibouti is both a city and a country, like “New York, New York.” It is on the horn of Africa, and is an ally, of sorts, of the United States. Mostly I think they like our aid and our business, but that’s another story.) I told them that Djibouti won’t take credit cards for the fuel, not even American Express, only cash or Captains’ checks (checks the company provides that the captain can use to make cash purchases. Surprisingly, they are accepted nearly everywhere.) One of them said, “Oh that’s no problem, we have a Shell card, it won't be a problem.” That was news to me, but I didn’t say anything. Maybe they knew something we didn’t—they were TWA after all, everyone had heard of TWA, but American Trans Air? (The usual response to "American Trans Air" was, “Is that part of American?”) I said to my captain, “How come we don’t have Shell cards?” He shrugged and said, “Who knows.”

So that was that. We landed in Cairo and went to our separate hotels. The next day we left for Mogadishu and on our arrival overhead the airport we saw their 747 below us, taxiing back into position for takeoff, presumably headed to Djibouti, so we assumed everything had gone alright for them at that point.

This was in December of 1992, months before the infamous "Blackhawk Down" catastrophe, but Mogadishu, in fact, all of Somalia, was already a very dangerous place. Rebels were assumed to have air-to-air missiles, so we took different, random routes over Somalia into Mogadishu each time. (The route from Cairo took us down the length of Egypt, over Sudan, over Ethiopia, and then across Somalia. I never heard of any missiles being launched, but you never knew.) Once on the ground at Mogadishu, the airport itself was squeezed between the ocean and a bluff probably 100 feet high that ran the length of it. Looking up at that bluff from the ramp you could see militia types walking around with rifles, machine guns, and grenade launchers. A lot of troops were actually camped on the airport grounds, and the bad guys would occasionally lob a mortar onto the field just to keep everyone from sleeping too well. Again, not while I was there, but it kept you on your toes. No one needed to tell us that we needed to make a quick turn. Nonetheless, it still probably took two hours or so to off load the troops, get all their gear unloaded and get cranked up and turned around and on our way.

The hop to Djibouti for fuel was a short one, less than an hour, so by the time we got there it had probably been three hours or so since the TWA 747 had left Mogadishu, plenty of time to get to Djibouti and refuel and go on its way. So we were surprised to see it still on the ramp when we taxied in. The captain, the flight engineer, and I all headed into what passed for a terminal, really just a two story building with various government offices, to start the fussy process of paying landing fees, filing ICAO flight plans, and paying for handling, lav cleaning, air stairs, and water service, none of which we needed but were obliged to pay for anyway—your tax dollars at work around the world. We were even more surprised to see the entire TWA crew sitting in the terminal lobby, looking quite disheveled and unhappy—ties had long ago come off—and something much worse than the weariness of an already long day had set in.

“Hey, guys, how’s it going? What are you guys still doing here?” someone said.

After several moments of silence and irritated looks all around, one of them finally said, “They won’t take our Shell card.”

“Wow, bummer. What are you going to do?”

“We’re trying to get some cash wired in, but the company says it could take as long as 48 hours.”

“We tried to tell you” wasn’t what they wanted to hear. After a couple of awkward attempts at sympathy, our flight engineer—flight engineers are, if nothing else, experts in the practical world of thinking on their feet—perked up and said, “You know, $50 can go a long ways in this part of the world.”

“Really?” one said. “Do you think that’s all it would take?”

“I don’t know, but it sure wouldn’t hurt to try.”

So one of them, I think maybe their flight engineer, went upstairs to the fueling office, and came back down after less than five minutes with a big smile on his face. “You were right. They find they can accept our Shell card after all.” Smiles all around.

So we all refueled, got our lavs cleaned and water serviced, paid outrageous amounts of money for it all, and headed out again on our separate ways, which in our case meant back to Cairo where the crew who brought the airplane into Cairo was waiting to take it back to the States.

When we got to Cairo most of us on the crew elected to stay on the airplane and ride it back all or part of the way to the States, even though we had rooms reserved for us in Cairo and could have gotten off there and later made our way back home commercially. But with big first class seats to sleep in and racks of movies to watch, staying on the aircraft with another crew to do the work made getting home a lot easier and a lot quicker. The company didn’t care because we saved them from having to pay for hotel rooms in Cairo and plane fare out of there, so everyone was happy and we set off for the next refueling stop which was scheduled for Shannon, Ireland.

When we got to Shannon most of the crew elected to stay on, but the captain and I had had enough of airplanes for one day, and we were kind of looking forward to a night in Shannon, and we knew we would have an easy trip back to Boston where we both lived the next day. So we got off and were picked up by Conway transporters, our regular crew bus providers, so regular that we knew the drivers by name, and were taken to the Limerick Ryan, our favorite hotel in the Shannon-Limerick area, a place we had spent so much time in it was almost a home away from home. (It has since been converted into something like a retirement home, I think, to the dismay of all crew members from the many airlines that used it over the years.)

The core of the Limerick Ryan was an older Irish mansion, and added to that over the years were restaurants, bars, lounges, and a rather ugly, ‘60’s era tower that housed the actual rooms. (No one minded, you didn’t spend much time in your room.) By the time we got there the public bar was closed, but, one of the great traditions of both English and Irish hotels, the residents’ bar—a private bar for guests only—was still open. (Actually, the residents’ bar has no hours and will stay open as long as there are guests to serve, and after that there is always the Night Porter who will fetch a Guinness for you. You never have to think about a having a Guinness all the way to Ireland only to find out that the bar is closed when you get there; a way will be found to accommodate you.) The residents’ bar was more like a living room, and the staff had decorated it for Christmas, there was a fire in the fireplace and it was all very relaxing and quiet, the perfect end to a long day that had started in Cairo. And then it got even better: someone said, “Oh, Sean, give us a song, will you?”, and Sean said, "O'course I will," and someone else sat down at the piano and Sean sang Christmas carols for us for a half an hour or so, and I was reminded of James Joyce’s great short story The Dead, which also took place around Christmas time in a musical setting with snow falling over all of Ireland.

The next morning, standing outside waiting for Conway to take us back to the airport, there was no snow, but there was the smell in the air of coal being burned, a smell that I loved because it took me back to my childhood, to Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, where we had lived for three years when I was a boy. And amongst those memories, I tried to imagine how a place like Mogadishu, and a place like Shannon, could both exist at the same time, and how one could hardly be any worse off, and the other could hardly be any better.

Amazing

2007-12-12T18:20:00.000-08:00

I just got back from a week of skiing at Snowbird, Utah with some of my old friends from the East Coast—my “ski buddies,” a bunch of guys who regularly meet to ski together. Since our abilities and interests vary somewhat (and ages, too, I’m the oldest of the bunch, which tells you something about where my interest and ability level is relative to theirs), we sometimes go off on our own for awhile. That was just what I was doing, cruising along on one of the easy “groomers” (a slope that has had the bumps smoothed out of it), when two guys wearing similar yellow parkas stopped beside me. They turned out to be mountain hospitality agents, which is something like a Wal-Mart greeter on skiies, and we chatted a bit, and when we got to the part where they asked me what I did, I said I was a retired airline pilot. One of them said, “No kidding? What a small world. This guy here [the other guy in yellow] is an airline pilot too.”

“Really,” I said, “for what airline?” He said, “Continental. How about you?”

I said, “ATA. You have some of our airplanes. We sold you several of our '300s' [a Boeing 757-300, the stretch model] during our bankruptcy.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m on the 757/767. We’ve probably flown the same airplane.”

“Amazing,” I said.

“Want to ski a run together?”

“Sure,” I said. And then they showed me a way down the mountain that I hadn’t known about.

And the other guy in yellow, the one who asked me what I did, turned out to a helicopter pilot and had air lifted most of the lift towers in place years before when Snowbird was being developed. You never know who you’re going to run into on a ski slope.

Engines, More or Less

2007-12-02T17:59:00.000-08:00

Most aircraft today have either one or two engines, but it certainly hasn’t always been that way. Historically, the number of engines has corresponded inversely with engine power: the less powerful the engines, the more needed. The B-36 bomber, the first intercontinental strategic bomber, had 10 engines, six huge Pratt & Whitney R-4360 Wasp Major engines, the most powerful and complicated reciprocating engines (recips) ever produced in any significant numbers, supplemented by four jet engines, two on each wing tip. As a young corporate pilot I used to fly with a captain, Richard Howland, who flew B-36’s in the Air Force. He said they almost never came back from a mission with all the engines still running, and often had more than one shut down. The B-52, the successor to the B-36, had eight turbojet engines. The eight engines were not there for redundancy, but because it needed that many to power it given the engines available at the time. .

Pilots love to argue the merits of different numbers of engines, but the fact is there is no right or wrong answer because the number depends on two variables, power required and reliability, and the two are interrelated. As a generalization, most larger general aviation aircraft have two engines because they need that many to be adequately powered. Whatever redundancy results from having more than one engine is secondary, and marginal—better than nothing (except at very slow speeds, where, unless the control response is precise, the remaining engine is often more liability than asset), but not much better. The Beech 58P Baron, a high performance, pressurized twin, is powered by two 325 hp engines, for a total of 650 hp. There are no reciprocating engines currently in production capable of producing that much combined power, hence two. (More powerful recips were made, like the Wright Cyclone shown in a previous post, Gone Wrong, and the R-4360 Wasp, but they have all been replaced by turbine engines.) The most powerful reciprocating engine still in production is the rare and exotic Continental GTSIO-520, a geared monster producing 375 hp. The more commonly available Lycoming 540, the engine that powers the pressurized single engine Piper Malibu Mirage, produces 350 hp. The Beech Baron needs 650 total hp because it weighs 4500 pounds empty and grosses out at 6200 pounds versus less than 3000 pounds empty and a gross of 4300 for the Malibu. There is no way the Baron could replace its two 325 hp engines with a single, existing reciprocating engine and perform adequately, and conversely, the only way the Malibu can carry any more weight would be to replace its single engine with twin recips (or with a turbine engine, which, when done at the factory makes it a Meridian, and when done by retrofit makes it a turbine Malibu). The Baron has two engines because it needs two engines, and the single reciprocating engine Malibu can’t carry any more than it does because it doesn’t have the power to do so.

But, here’s the catch: As engines are tuned to extract more power, they also tend to become less reliable. Common ways to extract more power are to reduce weight and to increase temperatures, often in the form of turbocharging. Turbochargers are nothing more than exhaust driven turbines, operating on the same principle as turbine engines do, except instead of using the turbine to drive a fan or prop, the turbine drives a compressor, increasing the air available for combustion. (Turbine engines also drive compressors, an essential component of their operation.) A byproduct of compression is heat. Weight reduction and heat both lead to less reliability. So to a certain extent you add a second engine not for redundancy, but to reduce the demand for power from those engines and, hopefully, make them be more reliable. So, paradoxically, part of the reason for the second engine is to ensure you never need it.

Early jets, the Boeing 707 for instance, had four engines because the early jet engines, straight turbine engines without a fan, did a better job of converting jet fuel to noise and smoke than they did power. They needed four engines to be powered adequately. But they also were tremendously more reliable than the recips they replaced. So while the four engines provided multiple redundancies, it was seldom needed. The four engines were there mainly for power, not failures.

Adding fans to jet engines not only made them more powerful, but also made them quieter and more efficient. In fact, engine designers quickly figured out that the fan was the component that had the greatest potential for increasing power, and each new generation featured bigger fans with higher bypass ratios—the ratio of air going around the hot section to the air through the hot section. A beneficial byproduct was sound reduction: the cold bypass air muffled the scream of the hot air coming from the compressors and turbines. And with increased efficiency came cleaner burns, which meant less smoke.

Among the first aircraft to benefit from fan jets were the Boeing 727, 737, and the Douglas DC-9. The 707 was also retrofitted with fan engines. The smaller aircraft, the 727, 737 and the DC-9, didn’t need four engines to be adequately powered, and started what would become a trend in airliner design continuing today: fewer and fewer engines. The 727 was, as far as I know, the first three engine aircraft since the Ford Trimotor. Larger, more powerful engines with big fans, the Rolls Royce RB211, for instance, made it possible to design large, wide body aircraft with just three engines, aircraft like the DC-10 and L-1011. Then Airbus, with the A-300, introduced a wide body aircraft with only two engines, and, while controversial at the time, established the trend for virtually all airliners thereafter.

Two things made all of this possible: power and reliability. You have to have both if you want to reduce the number of engines, and the modern, high bypass turbofan engine does that. The very largest aircraft, the 747, the C-5, and now the Airbus 380, still have four engines, for the usual reasons, but as far as I know there is no reason even larger and more powerful engines can’t be developed allowing even super sized aircraft like these to be powered with just two engines someday.

So, how safe is all of this? I have to admit that after almost 15 years of flying nothing but three engine aircraft, the Boeing 727 and the Lockheed 1011, I was skeptical about flying two engine airplanes over long stretches of water—what the FAA calls ETOPS, for Extended Twin Engine Operations. (ETOPS is also jokingly said to stand for “Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim.” It’s funny the first time.) Even though turbine engines almost never quit, I loved knowing I could lose one and still have two left, and I also loved knowing I would still have at least two generators, two engine drive hydraulic pumps, two sources of air and so on. I say, “at least” because the center engine on the 1011 had two engine driven hydraulic pumps, meaning I had the same hydraulic redundancy as a four engine aircraft as long as it was a wing engine that failed. And if the center failed (which it did once for me, see previous blog Gone Wrong) I would be down to two engine driven pumps, but that was what two engine aircraft started with. And I loved knowing that if one of those engines did fail over water it would be a huge non-event: just descend to a lower cruising altitude and continue or turn back, depending on the ETP (see previous article Equal Time Point Considerations). A little bit scarier was thinking about losing another one after that, because then you would be down to your last engine and your last set of fully functional engine driven systems, and fuel remaining could be critical if you had to cruise for any length of time on a single engine, but it could be done, and it was a whole lot less scary than thinking about losing a second engine on a two engine aircraft.

So it was with less than full enthusiasm that I transitioned from the 1011 to the Boeing 757/767. (The 757 and 767 cockpits are identical, except that you step down into the 757 and step up into the 767; the type rating allows you to fly either). But it didn’t take me long to get over my misgivings. The 757/767 has multiple system redundancies, even with just two engines: power transfer units, ram air turbines, hydraulically driven generators, an auxiliary power unit with an electric generator unit identical to that on each of the engines, and so on. But what made it most easy to accept was that not only did the engines always work, but the systems themselves always worked. The 1011 was (I should say “is,” but there are only a few left) an incredible airplane, but it was complex and fussy: little things were always going out on it, usually nothing serious because it was so well designed with so many backups, but many nuisance failures nonetheless. The trip without a “write up”—something for maintenance to fix—or the log book without a deferral—something minor that had been deferred for a short period of time, usually long enough to get it back to a maintenance hub—was rare. The Boeing, on the other hand, just didn’t have failures. It was a much simpler aircraft, much less complex, but rugged: “If it’s a Boeing, it’s going.” The 1011, on the other hand, loved the gate, as they say. Once you could get all those little problems squared away and get it in the air, it was your castle: nothing could touch you. But it would often be sitting at the gate, or on the ramp, long after all the 757s had departed.

So I came to trust, and even love, maybe not in the same way as I did the 1011, but still respect and admire, the 757. It proved itself to me by never letting me down for many hours over many miles of ocean. And the other two engine aircraft flying today, the Boeing 737 and 777 and the entire Airbus family except for the 340 and the 380, do the same thing every day. Because of that record of reliability the FAA now allows two engine aircraft to be flown for as many as 180 minutes away from a suitable airport at single engine cruising speed (and for as many as 207 minutes in the Pacific, three hours and 27 minutes), meaning they can fly virtually any route they want in the world without having to deviate to stay within range of suitable airports. (Specific ETOPs procedures apply, but mostly they just mean everything has to be working—generators, hydraulic pumps, Flight Management Systems, etc.—to be dispatched at the 180 or 207 minute limit.) The FAA is saying, in effect, we don’t expect these aircraft to lose an engine very often at all, and when one does fail we don’t expect the remaining engine to fail in the three hours or so it takes to reach land, ever. (The actual requirement is to demonstrate a shut down rate better than one in every 50,000 hours of flight.) If you can expect an engine to fail less than once in 50,000 hours, it is pretty safe to say that that engine is probably not going to fail during the three hours it takes to fly on one engine to a suitable airport.

Which raises an interesting paradox about probabilities. The odds of pitching a coin and having it come up heads 100 times in a row are astronomical—virtually impossible. But, assuming you have already tossed the coin 99 times, and it has come up heads all 99 times, the odds of pitching heads again on the next pitch are still 50/50. The past record has no bearing on the next outcome. It seems impossible, but it’s true: the fact that it is so difficult to throw 100 heads in a row would seem to tell you that that the odds are getting worse with every toss that comes up heads, but the odds on each toss are still 50/50. The coin doesn’t know. And the odds of losing the second engine are the same as the odds of losing the first: very low, but the same. If the odds were one in 50,000 of losing an engine, either engine, then having lost that engine the odds remain one in 50,000 of losing the second one too.

But wait, you say, doesn’t having two engines give you two chances to lose one? Yes, of course, but each has the same one in 50,000 chance, there are just two of them. The remaining engine doesn’t know the other has failed, any more than the coin about to be tossed knows you just threw 99 heads before it. Flying along for three hours on one engine may sound scary, but the odds that it will fail during that three hours are the same as the odds that the first one would fail in the first place: 50,000 to one, in our example. Nonetheless, human nature being what it is, my guess is that despite having flown thousands of hours in a two engine aircraft before a single engine failed, it would still be a very long and anxious three hours flying on that remaining engine, no matter how many times you told yourself that the second one was no more likely to fail than the first one was. The one that just failed.

Which brings us full circle to the question of the single engine Malibu versus the twin engine Baron—or any other single engine aircraft versus any other light twin. We said that the number of engines always revolves around two issues, power and reliability. The power issue can be solved fairly easily, as long as money is no object. We can increase the power available for the single by replacing the recip with a turbine; we don’t have to add another engine.

So power isn’t the question anymore, we just have to replace the recip with a turbine—exactly what the airline industry and the military did in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, replacing all of their reciprocating engine aircraft with turbine powered aircraft. Which leaves reliability. And there again the answer is very simple if money is no object: replace the recips with turbines. I don’t have exact figures, but there isn’t any question that turbine engines are more reliable than recips—a lot more reliable. (They also cost a lot more, but that’s another issue that we will get to later.) The reasons are several, but the most obvious is that the turbine engine, even in its turboprop form, is many times simpler than a recip: all the pieces go around in circles, the fuel and air are dumped into a combustion chamber that has continuous, self sustaining combustion, there is no intricate valve or ignition timing involved, no carburetors or magnetos to adjust, and reciprocating motion doesn’t have to be converted to rotary motion. The one thing a turbine engine has to do that a reciprocating engine doesn’t is sustain very high temperatures. That turns out to be a pretty simple problem to solve, though, compared to those for a recip anyway, it just takes money. The metals necessary to withstand those temperatures are very, very expensive. Which is why we still have recips.

For an easy way to see the difference between recip reliability and turbine, compare times before overhaul (TBO) for each. Reciprocating engines typically have recommended TBOs between 1200 and 2000 hours, and require regular maintenance in between, usually on a 100 hour in service schedule, and still often don’t make it to TBO. Turbines typically have TBOs between 3000 and 4000 hours, with minimal maintenance in between, the only major service being a hot section inspection at the mid point for cracks. And they almost always make it to TBO. Turbines are also lighter (for a given amount of power) than a comparable recip, have less vibration and are often quieter. Finally, they burn jet fuel, which is not only cheaper than avgas, but much more readily available (and always will be, whereas avgas, while not an endangered species, is a very small part of refinery production and is no longer universally available). So for all kinds of reasons, turbines are the way to go, if you can just get past that initial cost. (Recips do have one advantage over turbines, and that is that they burn less fuel, but not much less, and that fuel still costs more, so the result is close to a wash.)

So we’d all love to have a turbine engine in our general aviation single or twin, but, of course, money is a factor, and replacing a recip with a turbine can be a prohibitive expense. Assuming we are staying with reciprocating engines, what about this single versus multi thing? To answer that question intelligently, I think we have to start with an acceptance of the relative lack of reliability of reciprocating engines: we may be able to show that turbine engine failures are so rare that we can assume we will never have two fail in a three hour period, but we can’t assume that same degree of reliability with recips. Recips will fail, with much greater regularity than turbines do, and we have to take that into account.

So does that mean that if we are going to fly with recips that we have to have two of them? What about the accident rate for multiengine aircraft, and their miserable performance on one engine? Aren’t we sometimes better off in a single, even if we do accept the fact that it could quit at any time and leave us with no alternative to an emergency landing?

And I think the answer is, “Yes,” sometimes we are better off in a single, or more specifically, some pilots are better off in a single, and some pilots are better off in a twin, depending on their training, experience, proficiency, and currency. A well trained, experienced, proficient, and, perhaps most importantly, current pilot—meaning he or she flies a lot and at regular intervals—will always be better off in a twin than in a single. The single engine performance may be very marginal, even close to nil shortly after takeoff, but it will still be something, and something is always better than nothing. But without good training, and a lot of flying experience in general, and without proficiency at keeping a twin engine aircraft upright on one engine and currency in flying that aircraft, he or she is better off taking his or her chances in the single. Those chances can be improved considerably by careful planning and good judgment: using airports with multiple emergency landing sites, using the longest runways at those airports, and, once airborne, keeping a continuous tally of suitable airports within range and adequate emergency landing sites when out of range, flying around mountainous areas and large bodies of water, flying as high as is practical to increase gliding range, avoiding areas with low ceilings, all are ways to increase your chances after an engine failure, meaning your chances could be pretty good. If you can’t handle a twin engine airplane on one engine really, really well, you’re better off taking your chances on your gliding skills than on your engine out skills. Because when you lose an engine on a single engine airplane, you have one very simple task ahead of you and that is to find some place to land. But when you lose an engine on a twin engine airplane, you have a beast with a mind of its own that will turn on you unless you do something to control it. Single engine safety is only as good as the planning and judgment that goes into it, and multiengine safety is only as good as the pilot flying it. And that’s the long and short of it, more or less.

Gone Wrong

2007-11-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Wright nine-cylinder Cyclone engine, as installed in a North American T-28 Trojan. Photograph taken at AirVenture 2007, the Warbird Flight Line, Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

“England and America are two countries separated by a common language.” George Bernard Shaw.

“Have you ever had an engine gone wrong?”

The question was asked me by a young boy, 10 years old or so, in the cockpit of an L-1011 while on the ground in Manchester, England. We had just completed a night time crossing from Orlando, Florida, a regular charter run for ATA at the time, ferrying Brits back and forth “on holiday” to the sunny South. We still had one more leg to go, Manchester to London Gatwick, and as was common, had invited the kids going on to Gatwick to visit the cockpit while we were on the ground.

The kids were excited, of course, because they were going back home after a fun vacation. The questions came thick and fast. “What does that do?” “How do you know what all these things do?” “Is it hard to fly an airplane?” But, “Have you ever had an engine gone wrong?” was a new one.

“Gone wrong,” I thought. You mean, like get into drugs? I didn’t say that, of course, but that’s what I was thinking. “That was a good engine until it started hanging around with a bunch of recips.” How could an engine go wrong?

So I did the only sensible thing and said, “Could you ask that question again?” And he said, “Have you ever had an engine gone wrong?”

Right. Probably shouldn’t ask again. So I said, “Do you mean fail? Have I ever had an engine failure?”

“Yes,” he said.

“No.” And at that point I hadn’t. I probably had 7000 or 8000 hours of flying at that point, most of it in multiengine jets, and had never had an engine failure. In fact, I’ve only had one in my entire career, and except for the fact that it occurred on Christmas Eve, ironically departing Orlando (but for Boston, not Manchester), that failure was a simple affair, losing the center engine on a very lightly loaded airplane in good weather at 1000 feet. We shut it down (it was vibrating severely and probably was about to come apart), told the tower we had an engine shut down and needed to come back, circled around and landed. Spoiled Christmas for a very disappointed crew of 12, but it was a big non-event otherwise. Modern turbine engines, unlike their reciprocating ancestors, seldom fail, and when they do it usually is without too much drama.

He said, “Thank you,” and that was that. Then another kid said, “I miss my cat.” With kids, it’s not always about airplanes.

Bardufoss

2007-11-17T14:08:00.000-08:00

As the days get shorter, I’m always reminded of a trip I made to Bardufoss, Norway. The trip itself was an interesting one. We picked up a company of army reservists from Augusta, Georgia (the closest I’ve ever gotten to The Masters) who were deploying for several weeks of winter warfare training in northern Norway, above the Artic Circle. It was March, which doesn’t sound like winter, but Bardufoss is surrounded by mountains, it sits at the end of a fjord, actually, way up in the very northern part of Scandinavia where Norway, Sweden, and Finland all come together. It may have been March, but it definitely was still winter.

Since it was March, the days were fairly long, close to the 12 hours a day of daylight that the entire world experiences at the spring equinox. But I was curious what it was like to live in Bardufoss in the winter and summer since I knew it had to have several days of total darkness each winter and an equal number of midnight sun days in the summer: The Artic Circle is the line of latitude, North 66 degrees, 33 minutes and 39 seconds, that experiences one day of total darkness and total daylight per year. Bardufoss was above that at North 69 degrees 3 minutes and 21 seconds, so it had to have at least one full day of light and darkness each year; I didn’t know exactly how many such days they would have two and half degrees or so above the Artic Circle, but guessed three or four.

What really made it interesting to me was that Bardufoss otherwise seemed like a perfectly ordinary Norwegian village. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly, not igloos for sure, but maybe something more like Greenland or Labrador—something very basic and utilitarian. But it wasn’t. There was a pizza shop and a video store and a nice hotel, the one we stayed in, and the houses were very attractive, modern Scandinavian homes. The kids ran around outside after school dressed in standard European/American outdoor gear with colorful Norwegian touches. We could have been in Minnesota. All very prosperous, clean and healthy. Yet these people lived for a long time with very short days, including several non days each year, and also for a long time with almost no nights, including several when the sun never fully set.

So I cornered the handler—the local agent assigned to handle our flight the next day, I think we went on to Ramstein Air Base in Germany—and asked him how many days a year they had of total darkness in Bardufoss.

“Days?” he said.

“Yah, how many days of total darkness do you have here each year?”

“It’s more like months,” he said.

“Months?” I said. But you’re only a few degrees above the Arctic Circle.”

“That may be, he said, “but the mountains block out the light for several hours after sunrise and before sunset, and even with the sun not completely setting we don’t see it here. It’s dark for months here in the winter.”

“But,” I said, “here we are in March with 12 hours of daylight and just a short while ago it was completely dark. That’s a lot of change.”

“Yes,” he said, “the length of the day changes by about 10 minutes every day, longer or shorter. You notice a difference from one day to another.”

“So what’s it like to live like that?” I asked.

“It’s just the way it is,” he said.

We didn’t get into Daylight Saving Time. It didn’t seem appropriate.