"Are You Feeling Lucky, Punk?"

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

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

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

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

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.