Breathing Deep

We were a somber group. Homesick, all. You never get used to it. Sunday mornings are not supposed to be like this―early, dark, foggy and far from home.

The van driver loaded our bags―four crews of pilots, eight of us heading to the airport, nobody saying much. Just civil utterings.

"G' morning"

A nod.

"How's it goin'?"

"Livin' the dream, man. Just livin' the dream." Yawn. A cynical chuckle. 

A cuss. A heavy sigh.

I looked at the starless sky and remembered the line from Days of Future Passed: "Breath deep, the gathering gloom."

This was not the way the "dream" is supposed to be. Sunday mornings are for sleeping-in, for coffee and breakfasts, for church and family, and walking dogs. Sunday is supposed to be a day for rest and regeneration. And yet there I was, dragging bags and breathing the gloom. I long to live a normal life.

How much more of this will I choose to endure? I'm supposed to be retired by now. Defunct pension plans and grizzer bear markets hold me hostage here. But a hostage to what? To fortune? A different kind of fortune, Gann would say. (Of course, you've read A Hostage to Fortune, right?)

Yeah, mornings like that compel me to consider exit options. Pilots on my company seniority list junior to me would applaud that idea.

We got to gate 77 and found it full of droopy-eyed vacationers in Hawaiian garb awaiting the eastbound flight, their second leg to home, already dreading going back to work Monday. You could see it in their faces. Fifty-one weeks of hell pays for a week in Paradise. Now back to the hell. If that’s normal I don’t won’t that life either.

Mike and I woke up the slumbering Pratts and beat all the others to runway 25R. (Why are so many of my first officers named Mike? I'm not making this up.)

We were the first heavy jet out of LAX that gloomy Sabbath, maybe the first of any jet. We burst through the top of the fog in mere seconds, and our eyes breakfasted on a horizon ablaze in stunning crimson and orange. The gloom was banished. Breath deep, now, the rising sun. My spirits lifted and I ceased thinking about retirement, for the time being.

It was a good sail over the Rockies, which were encrusted with carpets of shimmering yellow Aspens. I imagined Del Gue down there yelling, "...and there ain't no churches, ceptin' this right here!"

Toward the end of the flight the head flight attendant came up and showed me an image he had just taken with his Blackberry. It was a dead fly in a passenger's omelet. I sent an ACARS request (That’s like an e-mail) to our destination station: "Please have Customer Service meet passenger in 4F to offer condolences for the dead fly he found in his omelet."

Their response: "Would you like paramedics to meet flight to resuscitate fly?"

I suppose I'll endure "the dream" a bit longer.

What is that glow on top of the fog layer?

Rolling out over foggy Los Angeles to meet the dawn

Leveling off at FL 370 and getting
ready to get the Big Eye in the eye


Two weeks ago, out Livin' the Dream with some buddies:

The humidity is causing the prop streamers

I'm the one vertically confused 

Even our props are in formation. Are we good, or what?

The Fire

It was a vivid dream, as dreams go. Holed up there, in the Hyatt–Dulles the night before a mission―make no mistake about it, airline flights are missions―it came on me near morning. At least I think it was near morning. How is it that the moment of impact is when the alarm sounds? 
I was flying the right seat. I haven’t done that in 14 years. Don’t know why I was there. In my military days aircraft commanders often flew the right seat. Maybe that’s how it came about. But in the dream I was the captain―a captain in the right seat.

It was night. A call from the flight attendants came. A fire raged back there. Then putrid smoke broke out where we were, in the cockpit. It started on the floor. The man in the left seat was flying. We got out masks and put our goggles on. Then I saw a brilliant orange flare erupt in the floor near his feet. He screamed and let go the controls. I took over. The orange brilliance climbed up his legs and engulfed his upper body. He screamed more. I turned the jet. I don’t know to what heading. Toward an airport I suppose.

Then I looked over at him. He wasn’t human any more. He was a black sculpture, his limbs frozen in mid-air, as if enroute to his face to cover it from the agony and horror.

The orange glow erupted at my feet. I felt the heat. I looked at the attitude indicator. I was in a right bank. I felt a stabbing, burning pain. I pulled harder. I knew I was in a graveyard spiral. I knew we were losing altitude in the blackness. I wanted to roll out and stop the deadly descent, but the fire hurt. Hurt bad. I couldn’t help myself. I pulled harder.

After I took my eyes off the thing in the left seat that had only seconds before been human, I didn’t think of him. I didn’t think of the passengers. I just thought about the impact and whether it would hurt.

Then the alarm rang and I got up and flew my mission.

If you think such a dream is a harbinger of what’s to come, then we’d all be dead. I never thought that, and don’t. I think maybe our fatalistic dreams―those of us that occasionally have them―are subtle reminders that each day is a precious gift. God never promised us tomorrow.

I know I don’t have to be Charles Lindbergh, Sir Edmund Hillary, Winston Churchill, or Billy Graham to be a real person, a person experiencing the abundance of life. A kiss, a hug, a taste of wine, a dog fetching a stick I threw, or a blue moment, is all I need to say that my life here was a success and well worth it.

None-the-less, thank God for the wake-up call.

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flack and nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
--Randall Jarrell, 1945
"Death of the Ball turret Gunner"

The Moon on My Yo-yo String

The Moon was so stunning even the hotel van driver remarked about it on the drive to the airport. Yes, it was a fine night for it, I reckoned. A fine night for a red-eye trans-con.

Indeed it was, and as we pushed back I caught a glimpse of that orange glowing quarter-moon sinking into the Pacific, its sharp horn following the rest of it down like a foundering ship. When we swung our nose around on runway 24R at LAX and pushed the two big Pratts up to takeoff thrust, the Moon had fled over the horizon toward Hawaii. But not for long.

Even at over 320,000 pounds the 767 soared effortlessly out over the dark Pacific like a zooming projectile, and suddenly the Moon rose again--rose where it wasn’t supposed to rise, only where it’s suppose to set. Brilliant and orange, the pointy prow reared from the horizon. Then the rest of the arch heaved up, its glow shimmering in the water. And as it stood, hovering there while we began our big sweeping 180 degree turn back toward the east, it seemed to be saying, “Okay, you’ve had your fun with me, now let me go.”

And we did.

We pilots have the powers to make the Moon and Sun rise and set at our whim. We defy gravity daily. We heft hundreds of souls into the stratosphere and haul them across oceans and continents. It's good that aviation issues us a ration of humility from time to time, lest we start regarding ourselves as god-like creatures.

My first officer, Jose, feels far from god-like tonight. He’s praying God takes care of him and his family. He’s being furloughed next month, for the second time in five years. He doesn’t expect to be called back again. He thinks maybe there won’t be anything to come back to.

The financial pundits are predicting we will succumb again to bankruptcy this winter. They doubt there will be financing available to push us through. Liquidation, they say, is the only way. Besides, they add, there are too many airlines. At least one, they say, needs to fall on its sword so the rest can have a better go of it. I’d like to take a sword of my own to some of those contemptible key board peckers who neither risk anything nor produce anything, for their worthless scribblings.

We’ve seen it all and heard it all before. And we survived. I think we survive because we have such damn fine people working their hearts out to make it happen. People like Jose. Such a loss.

If only I could use some of this power at my fingertips that fetches celestial bodies at will, maybe I could make some sense of this crazy industry that I both love and abhor with equal passion.

Here's a poem I remember from long ago. I saw it in an issue of the USAF's TAC Attack, a magazine for fighter pilots. I'm sorry that I can't remember the author's name.

I
go on
windswept
clouds and race
the moon through
starlit skies, unfettered
free to roam, beyond night’s
faint horizon. Higher, higher, higher
above the flickering firefly lights, high
above the din and cacophony,
I tred along untrodden paths
chasing moonbeams
like a child on a
summer’s evening,
Oh God, but
couId
I

I didn't mean for this to be blurred,

but I like the way it came out.
What plane is that?

A Blue Moment

The alarm clock’s brutal twanging sends a spasm through me. I peer at it as if it were a loathed thing. It is. Oh-four hundred, it says. I roll out of bed mumbling a homage to a deity.

Many years of professional flying have taught me that in order to soar with the eagles you must often get up with the pigeons. But it never gets easier.

Down in the hotel lobby I meet my first officer, Jay Thomas, who also happens to be my fishing buddy. He’s a hopeless optimist--grinning, yelling "Good Morning!" at me from 100 feet away. I look out the door and see an ebony sky, not a hint of morning, yet there he is, coffee in hand, teeth shining, ready to fly.

On the way in to the airport while I yawn and prop my eyelids open he’s jabbering about getting up earlier than this to fish, to hunt. This is nothing, he reassures me. I want to shove him out the door. But I won’t do that; I need him today.

He’s got the 757 ready to fly when I get there with the papers. We release brakes at exactly 0600, a perfectly on time departure, and taxi out as streaks of yellowish beams climb out of the east. We’re one of the first jets to get out today.

Within minutes we’re streaking westward across the Virginia horse country, gaining speed and altitude in a perfectly smooth atmosphere and finally I am beginning to make some sense of the world, to see purpose in the day. If I didn’t, Jay would most certainly tell me.

The only thing wrong with this otherwise perfect morning is the imposing overcast of thick gray clouds casting a dreary shadow across the land. As we climb it swallows us.

Jay turns on the engine anti-ice. We hit bumps. We wonder how long we must fly blindly in this depressing soup of boredom. I yawn and think of the sleep I’ve been cheated out of, while Jay chatters cheerfully and incessantly, yet never misses a single radio call from the center. He stops in mid-sentence, answers the call, changes frequencies, checks in with the new controller, and resumes his discourse precisely where he was interrupted. I yawn again and nod approval of whatever he is saying.

Then, in a heartbeat—BLUE SKY! Big blue. Huge, John Wayne blue. Long delirious burning blue, a poet-pilot once wrote.

We rocket away upward, watching the tops of the cloud layer sink away. Jay yells, "THE BLUE MOMENT! THIS IS IT! THIS IS WHAT WE LIVE FOR, MAN! THIS IS WHAT MAKES THIS JOB WORTH IT!"

I look over at him and he’s peering out and grinning at the vast blue skyscape stretching forever ahead and over us. "What did you call it?" I ask.

"The Blue Moment," Jay responds, with a grin the size of Texas.

He’s right, I thought. This is what makes it all worth it. The Blue Moment is like an epiphany that gets experienced again and again, each time as fresh and as new and as awe-inspiring as the first time.

The Blue Moment is one of the pieces of treasure that you file way to remember and savor in the times ahead when your memories fuel your final years through life. Guys like Jay make my treasure file overflow.

Who was the poet-pilot?

A Golden Moment


What book and movie does this sight remind you of?Who wrote the book and who starred in the movie?

Three-holer Legacy

I pranged a 757 onto 24 Right at LAX the other day. Thought I had it wired. Nice day. Little wind. Long runway with a turnoff down toward the end. No hurry to stop. Should have been a greaser.

PRANG!

I grimaced over it as we taxied in. I brooded over it on the van ride to the hotel. I analyzed it over dinner. Why does it bother me like this. No one can make perfect landings every time. But then, I remembered Warren Nelson. Now, there was a man who could do it.

Nelson was a master of the "3-holer," the Boeing 727, so dubbed because it had three engines clustered close together in and on the tail. It was a reliable and versatile aircraft that could fly fast and make up lost time to maintain schedule integrity. Unlike more modern planes, it required a third pilot acting as a flight engineer.

The 727 was highly responsive to control inputs and more of a challenge to fly than later generation passenger jets. Some called it the fighter of the airline world. It was especially difficult to make soft landings in. Many pilots loved the 3-Holer so much they stayed on it their entire careers and mastered it to perfection. Those who only passed through the 727 world on their way up the ladder to bigger and newer planes marveled at how the old heads tamed the cranky jet. As a 727 first officer I flew with many of them, but one that stands out is Captain Warren Nelson.

Nelson was a reserved, gentlemanly sort--pensive, intelligent and articulate. Those qualities drew him into leadership positions with ALPA but he rarely talked unionism. Affable and agreeable though he was, he simply didn’t say much, and when he did say something he commanded attention.

I had never seen Nelson make a bad landing in the 3-Holer. In fact they were all supremely wonderful greasers that I envied and tried in vain to emulate. I was able to do it sometimes, but not with his consistency. Finally, though, the day came when the 3-Holer turned on him.

It was the last landing of a four-day trip back at the mother base, O’Hare. The last landing of the trip is the most important one because it’s the one you’ve got to live with until you get back to work. It you’re going to prang, do it early in the trip while redemptive opportunities are still available. Nelson knew this.

All looked good to me. His airspeed was good, as was his sink rate, crab and power settings. The runway hurdled toward us; the 727’s approach speeds were high. Nelson retarded the throttles and flared, then relaxed back-pressure to allow the main wheels to catch the runway surface on the upswing as the nose lowered. That maneuver, referred to as "check and roll," is unique to long bodied aircraft that sit relatively low to the ground. It's also a hard one to master. 

But it was no problem for a master like Warren Nelson. I watched, expecting our trip to end with yet another of his smooth-as-a-baby’s-butt arrivals.
 
We hit, and we hit hard. The airframe shuddered as if every nut, bolt, rivet and fastener yelled in unison that they were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore.

I sat shocked. The master was flawed. I saw him glance quickly aside at me, as if to say, "Keep your tongue." But I needed to say something in spite of my reverence for Nelson.

After turning off the runway I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. I had to show this man, whom I admired and wanted to be like, that I approved of him no matter that I had found him to be imperfect. "Warren, I thought you had it wired all the way down," as if my evaluation was worthy of mention. His only response to my deference was a grunt.

As the engines spooled down at the gate he stared straight ahead out the windshield. I had forgotten about the landing and was busy preparing to leave when he uttered to no one in particular, "I’ll go home, pour a Scotch, sit in a dark room and think about that one."

Whoever said airline pilots never take the job home with them never met a pro like Warren Nelson.

What's the Price?

I’ve had a request to comment on airline “price gouging.”

Asking an airline pilot about ticket prices is like asking a petroleum geologist about gasoline prices. We don’t know. (I'm both.) My concern is the product. The pricing of that product is far above my head. It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. My best advice is plan ahead and buy the ticket as early as possible.

I can only look at the worth of the product. Two hundred years ago it took you six months to a year to traverse the continent, and the chances were slim of your making it without freezing, starving or getting your hair lifted. That is, if you could afford the journey. You needed a wagon, mules, supplies and probably a guide.

One hundred years ago it took you a week. You rode at 50 mph, inhaled coal soot with every breath, didn’t shower, and slept little. That is, if you could afford it. They bitched about train ticket prices back then, too.

Seventy-five years ago it took you two to four days, depending on the weather. You were now finally airborne, but 30 hours of hearing 36 cylinders pounding away at two three-bladed propellers drove you to the limits of your sanity, and you probably used your life savings to pay that ticket. And you probably knew someone who tried to take a trip like that and ended up in a smoking crater.

Fifty years ago it finally started feeling comfortable. You had two jet engines on each side of you purring along while you trekked across the USA, and they even served you a meal. But the ticket price! Forget it. You couldn’t have afforded that flight.

So now, here we are, almost done with the first decade of the 21st century. You cross the continent in four hours. You watch a movie. Have a drink. If you’re up front you get a meal. If you’re in back you bring a sack lunch. You don’t know anybody who ever died doing this, and can’t remember the last time a plane this size went down, at least in the good old USA. You’re probably fuming that the flight is 15 minutes late, but you don’t know that was caused by a shortage of baggage loaders. Someone had their job sacrificed because you insisted your ticket be as cheap as possible.

The real question is, what's the value of your life? Because that's what's at stake when airline professionals start you toward your destination.

BTW: this didn't cost me anything.

I, the Guinea Pig

A guinea pig is a cute little rodent commonly used in lavatory tests. But in the world of commercial aviation a guinea pig is any pilot who first ventures up to test questionable weather before others takeoff. And thus, so are his trusting passengers. But sooner or later somebody has to do it, lest the airport remain at a standstill. Last week at Denver I became the pig, or rat, or whatever the thing is.
  There were a dozen planes lined up behind us. We were number one to takeoff, but I had an uneasy feeling about the threatening weather. A gigantic thunderstorm inched its way eastward south of the airport. Its arms of turbulent cloud weaved overhead like an octopus’s probing tentacles. But the main body of the beast was ten miles away, which gave us plenty of room to turn away from it.

Confident that his ride in the tower cab would be a smooth one, the tower controller cleared us for takeoff. I lined up the 757 on runway 17R, but only for a look/see. Our radar verified the storm was a safe distance away, however the gunmetal clouds billowing and curling overhead boded an atmosphere ripe for windshear.

Suddenly, with the urgency of an air raid klaxon, a voice blared at us: “WINDSHEAR AHEAD! WINDSHEAR AHEAD! WINDSHEAR AHEAD!” The voice was that of “Bitching Bob,” our own plane shouting to us. I looked down at the electronic horizontal situation indicator. A splotch of bright red marks sat two miles ahead of us. Its unspoken message: Fly through here lads and they'll weep at your wake. 
 
I told Mike to inform the tower. The busy tower controller, who was managing operations on three runways said, “Who’s reporting windshear?” He sounded annoyed, as if the news was now severely complicating his life. Or was he agitated that his own windshear detection system had not seen what our plane’s gear saw? 
But seconds later he too got on the bandwagon. “Okay, our equipment sees it now. ATTENTION ALL AIRCRAFT. MICROBURST ALERT! DENVER, RUNWAY 17 RIGHT!”\
Long minutes passed as we sat poised for take-off. I tried to relax but couldn’t. No pilot enjoys sitting on an active runway, unable to check his six. We watched and listened as a 737 approached Runway 8, which was perpendicular to us. “That guy ought to have his head examined,” said Mike, a seasoned Naval aviator. I agreed. As if hearing our comments, the 737 pilots wised up and went around. 
Many jets were waiting behind us. We could see them to our right front on the parallel taxiway. I knew they were watching to see what we would do. Windshear is a fickle thing. It comes. It goes. When would we roll? We waited. They waited.
 “You want to take precautions?” Mike asked.
“Yeah!” I said. “We’ll use maximum thrust. And work me up an increased Vr.”

Mike nodded and calculated a rotation speed based on our maximum runway limit weight. Using the extra momentum of a longer takeoff roll we would slingshot ourselves into the turbulent sky—the theory being if we hit windshear we should have the energy to punch through it. But we still had to wait until the warnings subsided.

I thought about the Pan Am flight at New Orleans in 1982. They took off with a thunderstorm nearby and hit a microburst. They all died. Nobody knew then what a microburst was, much less how to predict it and prepare for it. A microburst happens when a thunderstorm spits its windy wrath straight down. In the aftermath of the New Orleans disaster the excellent predictive windshear system embedded in the nose of our jet was developed. It uses Doppler radar to detect horizontal wind movement.

Windshear reports began to flow in from other parts of the airport. On the west side the shear was 50 knots. I looked at the windsock beside our runway. It hung limp―not enough to fly a kite. Creepy. Finally the warnings stopped—both ours and the towers. Tower cleared us to takeoff.

At that very moment we heard a “ding,” the forward flight attendant calling. Mike let out a big “Phsew! What now?” I answered the call. A passenger had to go to the lavatory―couldn’t wait. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. The whole airport was waiting for us, and some guy had to tinkle. I said, “No way. He stays down!” But before she hung up her handset I revaluated. “No. Wait! Okay. Tell him to get it done QUICKLY and report back when he’s seated!”

The tower wanted to know why we weren’t rolling. Mike told them. I could almost hear his frustrated sigh, along with the chuckles of the other pilots waiting.

The sky ahead boiled and flowed with menacing tendrils emanating from the storm but the windshear warning stayed silent. I worried our window of opportunity might close. Finally another DING. He was down. I kicked the parking brake off and shoved the two big Pratts to maximum power. The roar of 75,000 pounds of raw thrust catapulted us forward. We heard a clattering crash of metal in the galley behind us. The flight attendant had not secured the galley drawers and the acceleration emptied them onto the floor. We ignored it and concentrated on the takeoff.

The wind sock kicked out with a direct crosswind as we rolled. I held the yoke into the wind but not too much, less the spoilers, which aid the aileron function deploy and impede our acceleration. The speed picked up fast but hung up at 90 knots for a few troubling seconds, then increased again. I concentrated on the white stripes racing at us while Mike hunched over staring with shifty, suspicious eyes at the engine instruments watching for a malfunction. I waited for the windshear warning. I was ready. If it came prior to V1 I would abort. 
A high speed runway abort is one of the most dangerous maneuvers airline pilots are called on to do. The decision has to be made instantly, the physical reaction must be instantaneous and it must be done right. A hundred and eighty-five breathing, frightened bodies back there would get slammed forward against their seat belts while hearing the engine reversers belch a hellacious roar. Ever heard the old saying ‘There are no atheists in a fox hole’? I submit to you that there are also none riding out a high speed abort.

The expansion joints in the concrete thumped under our nose wheel like machinegun fire, ever faster and faster. Finally, Mike said, “VEE ONE.” I kept the nose down gathering even more precious speed, far more than we needed under normal circumstances. Then, “ROTATE!” I gingerly raised the nose, not too much—didn’t want to dissipate energy. The runway fell away and our ride turned smooth. Mike raised the gear, then the flaps. We turned east, away from the storm.

As we climbed out I wondered what the guy who had to pee thought when the engines exploded with a tearing roar, kicking us ahead like a lit afterburner, just as his butt hit his seat.

And another thought: I distinctly remembered hearing a quick transmission during our takeoff that must have come from one of the aircraft waiting behind us. I was sure is sounded like “Oink oink!”

The other planes watched us climb away. One by one they fed onto the runway and followed their guinea pig into the restless sky

Aiming for the Dawn

It flashed across our nose like a home run hit out of Heaven’s ballpark. A searing, white-hot dart streaked across the black sky and burned like a tracer bullet through the starry night, plunging below the southern horizon in a heartbeat. I wondered how many denizens of the dark planet sprawled below us saw it.

Frenchie didn’t see it. He was heads-down, reading. His sidewall light spewed a yellow cone onto the boating magazine in his lap. The red and white reflections of the cockpit flickered, danced, and flowed in the lens of his reading glasses. I considered describing the vivid meteor I just saw but thought the better of it. Frenchie would only have grunted and glanced outside, then returned to his reading.

I looked ahead and took stock of the starscape. Constellations hung above us like clusters of glistening celestial grapes waiting for a colossal hand to reach for the plucking.

The radio crackled with a voice far away in a dark room. I imagined the glow of the radar scope casting a green sheen on the man's face as he keyed his mike and gave us a new frequency followed by a lethargic "G'nite."

We were the San Diego-Dulles red eye flight, eastbound over the desert southwest. I saw only a scattering of feeble, lonely lights speckled across the beneathworld. The people were sleeping down there―farm and ranch families. Even if some of them were lying awake, pondering the coming workday, they wouldn’t care that we were sailing high over their roofs. I gazed down and remembered a question that was once asked of me.

I was a first officer on the DC-10. Jim Blue, the captain, was a scab. He had crossed the picket line in the 1985 strike and was now numbered among the shunned. He didn’t talk much. He wasn’t used to it. Every time he came to work, since he scabbed, he dined on cold shoulder in the company cafeteria and felt scornful stares piercing his back. Once while we cruised high over the Midwest, Blue asked me an odd question. “What do you see when you look down there?” I looked down at the vast checkerboard of cultivated farmlands stretching from horizon to horizon. I looked back at him and shrugged. “Farms.”

Blue went silent again and looked out his side window, as if pitying me for my shallowness. He gazed down a long time. I wondered what he saw that I didn’t. He finally resumed his perpetual straight ahead stare, then muttered something. I didn’t understand it. I asked him what.

“Hard work,” Blue said. “Hard work is what I see down there.”

Blue had long since retired, and now as a captain I too occasionally felt a yearning to ask my first officer profound questions. But not that night. Frenchie would only grunt and shrug.

I looked down. Surely none of those hard working ranchers would be up that time of the night. Yet if the winds were calm enough our jet noise would trickle down to the ears of those who might be standing outside, looking up and watching for our starlit contrails. What might they be thinking about us? Hard work?

Hardly.

Maybe an amateur astronomer sat down there searching the Arizona skyscapes for new comet. Or perhaps a farmer-philosopher stood gazing at the heavens pondering his place in the scheme of things. If so, they would be able to see our contrails easily. Earlier I watched another jet a thousand feet below angling across our course. In the streaming starlight I could clearly see the long white ribbon of water vapor stretched out behind it. In times past we would have flashed landing lights at each other―a high silent salute. Most pilots didn’t do that anymore. I wondered why.

Things had changed. Maybe our profession had too quickly gone from a grass roots cadre of old sentimentalist's to new legions of dispassionate button pushers fresh out of air colleges, without a chance to pass tradition along, or worse, without an inclination to do so. I had begun to notice the younger pilots never referred to the jets as her or she. To them the plane was simply “it.” That seemed spiritless. The creature I was riding through that ebony sky was alive. Her heartbeat was a pulsing electronic purr and the hissing slipstream her breath. She was a Boeing 757. Pilots at other airlines called her the "Seven Five." We call her the "Fifty-seven."

I wasn’t sure the pragmatic Frenchie felt the same way about planes’ having lives of their own. He was a retired Marine light colonel who had flown Phantoms and Hornets. And I was pretty sure he had no patience for imagination, although I once heard him call our jet a pig, back when he and I were on the 737. After that, the 737 became the "Pig Jet" for me. But whatever Frenchie's displeasure was with the Pig Jet, even that insult was a veiled confession that he regarded her as a creature, not a machine.

Frenchie was a good pilot. He had been a squadron commander, but here in the quasi-military world of airline flying he had rebelled against authority. He thumbed his nose at the airline’s uniform dress rules; he wore black loafers instead of the required plain-toed shoes and had long ago shed his hat and dress jacket. He preferred wearing a non-descript overcoat. The only way anyone in an airport would know Frenchie was a pilot would be to see him towing his travel bag with his sticker-studded pilot flight kit bag riding piggyback on it.

Like me, he was also a brooder. He would sit for hours saying nothing much―only a grunt, a nod, a chuckle. But over beer and burgers at the layovers he gushed with garish stories of his days with the Corps and his old Marine buds, laughing at the memories with heavy cackles. When the stories were over the brood settled back on him. I knew he was wondering if the best was behind him.

With an hour left in the trip my eyelids grew heavy. My gaze dropped from the star-studded windshield to the glowing instruments, as familiar and contented a sight to me as my family’s faces. As fatigue crept into my eyes the instruments blurred and merged.

I shook it off and remembered Charles Lindbergh’s compelling story of his lone Atlantic crossing 80 years ago. He desperately battled the fatigue demon while his hands and feet struggled constantly to keep his plane under control.

He had nine clattering pistons on his nose whirling a propeller carved from a tree trunk, a whiskey compass, a mariner’s map, and only himself, for 33 hours. While fighting off sleep and the death it bore with it, he still had to fly the plane and navigate. Somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic, Lindbergh, for the first time in his life unsure of himself, stopped trying to guess the screwy winds, the drift angle, the ground speed, and the true course. He resolved simply to hold to an easterly course and hope for the best.

I wondered if Lindbergh, an admitted doubter, ever trusted any power other than his own. But I do know that as the earth turned toward the sun he steered for the only direction he knew his salvation lie―the dawn.

I too was headed east. I could see the ebony expanse ahead taking on a blue hue―the sun driving back the night. Soon the welcome sight of the Appalachian ridgelines and a new day would scroll into view. I wondered what the next day, year, and decade would bring to this once proud profession. I had gotten in on it just as the golden age of the airline pilot was ebbing. I had seen the ugly spoils of labor and management wars. I saw compensation steadily erode as low cost competitors and regional feeders hired people eager to haul trusting passengers for peanut wages, the ink on their commercial pilot licenses still wet.

I watched, numbed, as suicidal zealots cut the throats of my co-workers in their cockpits, turned our jets into missiles, and butchered thousands of innocent people. I saw the industry fall apart in the aftermath, changed forever.

In those dim days after the terrorist massacre, when we all feared for our country, family and jobs―as we still do―I overheard a conversation in the operations room. "What do we do?" a despondent young pilot asked his buddy. The other one replied, "We do three things: Trust God. Trust God. Trust God."

In the wake of the wasted lives and shattered dreams of 9/11, the energy calamity, and the economic meltdown, I constantly wonder what the future holds for me, nearing the end of my career, and for the young ones who never flash their lights, never wear their hats, nor ask the profound questions. I have no idea what lies ahead. I just try to remember the "three things" and―like Lindbergh―hold a steady course and aim for the dawn.

Round and round it goes...

On the way in to Kansas City flight operations we passed a mass of people waiting to get on our jet going to Denver. They pecked at Blackberrys and listened to I-Pods behind dull eyes. They had paid to get there safely. They expected it and that’s all that mattered to them. I’m cool with that.

I knew there were thunderstorms threatening Denver (DEN), so I made sure we had enough fuel to divert to Colorado Springs (COS), plus some extra in case we had a ground delay.

You guessed it, as we reached the end of the runway the tower told us DEN was in a ground stop. We were to expect over an hour delay. I looked over at my first officer, Mike. He was shaking his head. We couldn’t afford to sit there that long cooking fuel. Our APU was deferred inoperative. We decided to wait 15 minutes, and if the ground stop was still in effect we would go back for fuel, but that would incur still another delay. Fifteen minutes later the tower cleared us for takeoff. We smirked at our excellent decision. Where does the airline find such [lucky] men as us?

Then, approaching Denver, the dreaded call from Center: “Are you ready to copy holding instructions?” Upon hearing that question all airline pilots’ antennas go up. They know they will be earning their pay that day. Denver was covered in thunder bumpers.

We got our hold instructions. They included an expectation of holding for 50 minutes at the Oathe fix. We checked our fuel. Could we hold for 50 minutes and then go to Denver, shoot the approach, and still go to Colorado Springs and have 30 minutes fuel left? We decided we could. We let the jet fly the holding pattern on autopilot and while the cloudy world rotated around us we checked the weather at COS. A thunderstorm gust front was moving through. Now the stakes went up. Our alternate was socked in.

Our senses went into override. We got weather for Pueblo (PUB). It looked good. But would there be enough fuel to hold 50 minutes, shoot an approach at Denver and go to PUB? We didn’t know. We needed to know how much we would burn from Denver to Pueblo. We guessed 4,000 pounds. We asked our dispatcher, via data link, to give us our landing performance data at Pueblo. He did. We were good to land there if necessary. But we didn’t have the gas to hold 50 minutes.

But then, wa la! Colorado Springs reported frontal passage. We went back to plan A. We would hold for the full 50 minutes. But then Center told us the wait in the holding pattern had been extended to an hour and a half. That did it. We told them we were bolting for COS. They cleared us directly to it.

Just as we were approaching the COS airport, the Center said Denver was good and we could go direct to it if we wanted. We looked at our fuel. We had burned a bunch of it maneuvering at low altitude. What if we didn’t get in at DEN? Was there enough fuel to get back down to the Springs? We decided there was. We turned north to DEN. That’s when we heard the low level wind shear warnings at Denver.

So, what to do now? Turn back immediately to COS, or continue to DEN and “have a look”? We decided on the latter. I got out my checklist and reviewed the wind shear escape procedure.

Turning on final at DEN a flight ahead of us reported mild wind shear on his approach. We didn’t get it. The landing was smooth. We blocked in and every one got off and switched on their Blackberrys and donned their ear pods. They didn’t give any thought to what we had gone through. They didn’t need to. They paid to get there safely. They got that, and I’m cool with it.

...and where its stops, nobody knows.

And now, this week's mind boggler:
Look at this pic I took out the front. We are high up, cruising east out of Denver with the sun setting behind us. What causes these unusual "sun rays"?

A Pathetic Confession

I wondered why so many people would swarm into an airport at such an unsociable hour. The sun wasn't even up. Decent folks were supposed to be still in bed. But the security screening line at the Tampa airport teemed with humanity. Our crew flashed our IDs to a sleepy uninterested agent and walked past hundreds of people, dutifully lined up for what they believed was a necessary and thorough checking over of their bodies and bags for items of evil potential.

We assembled at the front of the line and started the numbing drill of emptying pockets and hoisting bags onto the belt. While I waited my turn I noticed a worker coming alongside the screening portal pushing a large cart piled high with material. He appeared to be a repairman or construction worker.

His cart contained boxes and large storage cans. He circumvented the screening station, pushing the cart through the exit portal. This didn’t surprise me; anything too big to go through the x-ray machine normally went around it and was visually inspected. After pushing his cart through, and as I expected, the worker came back around and got in line for screening.

He got in ahead of us crew members because he only had to empty his pockets, while we took longer. He quickly went through the walk-through screener without a problem.

On the other side of the security screen I noticed a man wearing the emblem of the security screening contractor on his jacket, standing with his hands behind his back smiling and observing the activities at the two screening stations. This I took to be the shift supervisor. I watched to see how closely he would inspect the cart.

The supervisor smiled at the worker, nodded and said something, a greeting perhaps. Obviously they knew each other. Then I stood dumbfounded as the worker took his cart and pushed it along his merry way without the screening crew giving it so much as a glance. My blood started to boil.

After collecting my stuff on the other side I approached the supervisor.

“That work cart that just came through here…”

He smiled and nodded. He would have made a great Walmart greeter.

“I was watching. You didn’t inspect it. Aren’t you supposed to do that?”

He shrugged. “Well, yes. I guess I should have.”

Then he just stood looking at me with a dumb grin. I fumed. I had to get a hold of myself. I felt like grabbing the man’s neck. “DON’T YOU KNOW HE COULD HAVE HIDDEN WEAPONS IN THOSE CONTAINERS?” I barked the question through my teeth, trying to constrain myself.

He looked at the floor, then back I me. “We know him.” He shrugged again. “He comes through here every day!”

My glare bore a clear message: This isn’t over!

I hurried to our Tampa station operations office and asked where the station manager was. The company used its station managers as local security coordinators. I was told she wasn’t in yet. I called airport security and told them what I saw. Then I went about my business of flight planning and getting the plane ready to fly.

When I landed in Chicago later that morning my cell phone rang as soon as I turned it on. It was the FAA. The agent said he had reviewed the surveillance tapes. He saw the cart go through, saw the security crew ignore it, and saw me talk to the supervisor. The FAA and the airport authority had suspended the security crew pending an investigation. He told me they considered the incident serious and that I was to expect a call from the FBI.

Later that day when I landed in Denver my phone rang again when I turned it on―FBI. They were intensely interested in what happened and wanted to schedule me for a deposition. The agent told me to expect a call the following week. The day was September 5, 2001. I never got the call.

The security supervisor's pathetic confession to me (“I guess I should have.”) is one that an entire nation may well have said of its complacency and carelessness—and come to profoundly regret.