Gremlins

We got the issue solved with the guy in 23B (see last post) and roared into a brilliant Virginia afternoon. The sleek, beautiful and magnificent creature they blandly and with empty imaginations call the “757” dutifully responded to my every touch, slipping along in the upper flight levels at 475 True. After a quick stop in New Orleans we pointed the Boeing toward Los Angeles and chased the setting sun. I sat mesmerized by the colors out ahead of us, the star-studded blackness overhead pushing the orange glow into a diminishing horizon.

Then Mike's comment gave me a minor jolt. “Look at that fuel imbalance.”

I looked up at the overhead panel. The left tank had fallen a thousand pounds lower than the right. I checked that the crossfeed valves were closed. They were. I stared a while at it and looked at Mike. He shrugged. I looked back at the sunset, now bothered.

I looked back at it. Now 1,100 pounds lower. “Leak?” Mike said.

Possibly. A slow one maybe; yet any leak in the engine nacelle could be serious—if that's where it is. I yawned. “Let's keep an eye on it.” The book says we don't have to get out checklists and start praying until the imbalance reaches 2,000 pounds.

With a few more miles of Texas behind us I noticed Mike's eyebrows lift toward the gauges. Mine followed suit. Now 1,400 pounds. Mike peered across at me. “Want to start balancing?”

"Yeah." I reached for the pump switches. Then I saw it.

“AAAUUUGGGGHHH!” Big dummy! “Look at that!”

I pointed at a green light that read APU ON. I had forgotten to shut the APU down after engine start. It had sat back there in the tail running contentedly for two hours, sucking fuel from the left tank and wondering what the heck we wanted it to do. I shut it off. Mike chuckled.

Then a ding—a call from the back. They've got no water. “None?” I bark into the handset. None, she said. We had no water pressure in any of the ship's galley and lavatory water faucets—seven of them. I asked what the quantity gauge read. She told me 44 galons. I didn't know if that was normal or not. Mike affirmed it was.

What to do? We had four hours of flying ahead of us and 184 people who needed water. And we didn't have a checklist to cover that situation.

We sent a message to our maintenance center. They asked the quantity. We told them. For the next 30 minutes messages went back and forth between us and them, punctuated with calls back to the flight attendants asking them for this and that and to do this and that. Nothing worked. 

Then the maintenance guy asked me to recycle the water quantity gage circuit breaker—but they added that I will have to use “captain's authority” to do it because it is not a standard procedure. I sent a message back to them that I would not touch that circuit breaker with a 39 ½ foot pole. We would have to do without water.

Recently one of our captains recycled a breaker, for a minor problem, at maintenance's request—a seemingly simple and proper thing to do. But when the FAA found out about it they filed deviation against him for not making an emergency landing at the nearest airport. That's what must be done when ever “captain's emergency authority” is evoked.

I resolved not to fall into that trap for the sake of some running water. Then in the midst of all this busy-work I heard Mike say, “Uh oh!”

I saw him point at a warning light that read, LT HYD QTY. We looked at our hydraulic quantity gauges. The left was rapidly falling toward zero. Now, we were looking at a genuine emergency landing. I immediately thought about where we would go. Houston was off our left wing, 90 miles. Houston, it would be. Mike reached for the emergency checklist.

I was about to ask for a clearance direct to Houston when the quantity returned to normal and the warning light went out. We looked at each other with the raised eyebrows of puzzled men. Oh well. Gage problem, obviously.

Another ding from then back; another message from maintenance. The water problem was beginning to annoy me. I issued a decree. We would worry with it no more. I told them to put water bottles and Handiwipes in the bathrooms.

The message printer stopped. The dings from the back stopped. The hydraulic quantity never moved a whisker the rest of the night. The fuel stayed in balance and the man in 23B was another hemisphere away.

We began looking froward to the long layover ahead and upon getting there entering into a discussion of a great American patriot: Samuel Adams.

This guy was our problem.

Beak to Beak

The Guy in 23B

It was a fine afternoon and evening for an airplane ride down to New Orleans. There we would stop briefly to let off Bourbon Street-bound revelers (many of them already merrymaking) and pick up hung-over Love Boaters. Then we would launch on a sunset chaser to the Left Coast.

Mike—a seasoned Navy pilot—and I had the cockpit set up and were ready. Only a few last minute bags to be loaded and we would be pointing the 757 toward the Big Easy. 

Then came the comment from the lead flight attendant that no captain ever wants to hear. “Captain, we need to have a CLR moment.” CLR means Command, Leadership and Resource management. It's a far too heavy subject to talk about, but you can guess it up, I trust.

Such a statement elicits a big sigh from the guy with the four stripes, usually accompanied by a subtle smirk on the guy with three. He knows his boss is about to earn the bucks he doesn't get.

“A lady in seat 24C is worried.”

I waited expectantly for more details. Was she worried about the weather? The condition of the plane? My flying skills? What?

“She's worried about the guy in 23B.”


Mike chuckled. I sneered at him.

She proceeded to fill in the details. The guy in 23B looked to be Arabic. The woman suspected he was up to no good. He had asked her for a pin—a sharp pin. He said he needed it to take the SIM card out of his phone. Apparently she was afraid he would use the pin to convert our jet to a weapon of mass destruction, and that she might be the first of thousands of victims. When he could find no supplier of a pin he did something that utterly stunned the woman—he slowly opened his passport.

Yes, he opened his passport.

I considered calling the FBI. The man opened his passport, for pete's sake. Mike leaned his head back and cackled like a hyena.

The flight attendant was not amused. “But the woman said he had something sharp in his passport. She's worried.”

“What?” I asked. I wanted to say “Knife? Axe? Spear Gun?” but knew I could not trivialize the flight attendant's concern. That is bad CLR and would invite trouble.

“I think it was just a writing pen,” she answered. “So what should we do?”

I sighed and look back at the smirking Mike. He knew his overt amusement annoyed me.

“Do you think the man is behaving strangely?” I asked.

She thought. She shook her head. “No.”

About then a customer service agent stuck her head into the cockpit. “Zone wants to know why we are not closing up.” I looked out front at the camera mounted on the terminal, pointing at us. Big Brother was watching. (“Zone” is a mystery to pilots in our company. We can't talk to them. Don't want to. They've got no frequency and no phone number known to us. We don't know where they're located. They communicate with us via proxies, such as the agent.)

“Tell them we are discussing a possible security problem.” She nodded and disappeared.

I looked back at the Lead. “Do any of the other flight attendants back there think the man is behaving strangely?” 

She left briefly and came back with two of her compardres in tow.

“No. They all think the woman is over re-acting.” The other two nodded.

“Then, do you think maybe the woman is a problem with our flight, and not the person she is accusing?”

She thought, looked back at the compadres. “No. I think she'll be all right.” They nodded.

“Then what's your recommendation for me?” I asked.

“I think we can go on. We'll keep an eye on them both.” The compadres nodded.

I looked across at Mike with arched eyebrows. He knew this was an invitation for his opinion.

“I'm okay with it, Boss,” he said, grinning like a goof.

The Lead faded back into her lair, satisfied—apparently. So was I. The CLR moment was over. Successfully negotiated. With that brush fire stamped out, we were anxious to be off.

But other haunts would emerge from the recesses of our Boeing bird before the night was over.

Stay tuned.

                                                                             Pretty, eh?

The Logbook in Your Head

Not much flying for me these days. My still beautiful bride of 38 years is recovering from surgery and I'm staying home to do the requisite chores. Actually I am practicing up for retirement and finding I'm pretty good at it.

None-the-less, Thursday was so springlike I secured permission to leave her alone for a while (she was glad to be rid of me). I called Squatch to see if he wanted to take off work early and mount a Yak attack upon the unsuspecting peaceful countryside. No surprise; he was exceedingly like-minded.

We put our two rip-snorting flying tanks up into a February sky as pure as a blue sapphire, as smooth as a baby's butt, and warm as a Hawaiian sea breeze. We waltzed around like we were riveted to each other, made earth and sky swap, swirl, and tumble―made the sun curse us for confusing it and abusing it. We dropped low over the Paint Rock River valley and watched our shadows race across farms, ponds, and woodlands.

We got back to the patch at sundown and plopped the Yaks onto the grass, rolled out and trundled back to the nests. A gratifying peacefulness grabbed hold of me as I closed the hangar door. Pete's not a man of sentimental wordiness, but I saw it too in his smile when I waved so long.

I slept soundly that night, just remembering that simple flight―one of 10,000 flights I've logged in my lifetime―not because it was better than the others but because it was today.
 
I'll get back to the Line in a couple of weeks―back to the rat-race; back to the restless masses, back to the not-so-gratifying life of a reserve airline pilot; back to the depressing and uncertain realm of management/labor wars.

Amidst all this dizzying tizzy I will occasionally find therapeutic refuge in the nose of Boeing 757 or 767 watching a sizable chunk of the planet unscroll out of the yonder world, and I'll file that satisfying experience away with the Yak flight and others.

Think of it: Suppose, as pilots, we had the ability to time stamp and mentally file away, some where in the gray matter, every flight we ever made, and be able to recall it and re-relish it. There would be two drawers, one for the flights you like to sleep on, and one for those you wish to keep on file only for purposes of not forgetting how fortunate you are to still be alive.

I make an effort to remember every flight as if I'm about to hang up my wings. When that time comes, I'll sleep on them all.  

 

Approaching a San city

 And another San city

A little vertical separation is a good thing.

Happiness is brake release.

The roll is freedom in motion.

The oppressive elements of earth are broken with back pressure...

We are alone.

--Ronald E. Pedro

"A Platform and a Passion"

Bad Night in Omaha

I knew it would be a bad night.

I was at the Omaha Hilton, on New Year's Eve. It was a short layover, so we couldn't even stay up for the fireworks because we had an Oh-Lord-thirty wake-up call. As we headed up to our room we nudged past hundreds of New Year's revelers, some dressed for the hotel's big midnight bash. Miniskirts and ball dresses abounded. Most of the wearers of these garments had drink in hand. The line to the elevators was 100 feet long. This was going to be a bad night. You know it.

As I go lights out I feel the hotel shake from the booms of the fireworks. Too bad, the show is on the other side of the hotel. The noise is tolerable so far. The hallway is fairly quite but loud voices in room a few doors away are annoying. To mitigate it I turn on my nifty Android app that creates background noise. I hook it to my mini-speaker set and choose chirping crickets. 

But the crickets are no match for the noise. I blend in a crackling campfire sound. Still not enough. I mix in a burbling brook, then bring in the cicadas. An hour after turning-in I've got so many noises on the speakers they spew a soup of static, and stillI can hear voices, music and the “pump pump pump...” of a rock band drummer somewhere below. 

This is an all too familiar scenario. I've spent enough New Years' Eaves in hotels to know what's coming. But this is to be the worst yet. 

After the traditional mid-night cheer, the noise dies down a bit. I turn off my night noises and drift aslumber. Then I bolt upright at a blood-curdling scream outside my door. I thought a woman was being assaulted, but then she laughs. Other drunken voices join in. I look at the clock: 1:30. I consider calling hotel security but I know that's a hopeless call. My crew has six rooms in this place tonight. The other 294 rooms are filled with party-goers. We hold no sway.

I lay there wondering why Omahans can't just get drunk at home. I dare say most of them live locally. As doors slam and people yell, scream and sing in the hallways, I imagine the various ways I would put an end to it. A trip wire across the hallway would be fun to do. But an AK-47 would be far more effective.

When the alarm sounds at 0415, I'm wide awake, still bothered by the riots. Should I call the company and tell them this flight will not go until I get some rest? It's their fault―you know it is. Scheduling an 0600 take off on January 1st creates a certain compromise of crews' rest periods. But I pull myself together and meet the crew in the lobby. Knots of drunken Nebraskans―college-aged youths―mill around slobbering, stumbling and slurring.

To a man (all four flight attendants are men) we are all tired and sleepless. Every one else on the crew experienced the same. Yet they want to get to work so we go to the airport. 

Entering your cockpit before dawn on January 1st and seeing mechanics scratching their heads, thumbing though manuals, and making phone calls is not a good way to start off the year. They have deferred the auto-speed brake―we can live with that―but the elevator trim is not working. Bad.

While they fiddle with that I go down to Ops to review the paperwork and check the weather. The O'Hare winds are gusting to 40 knots. Wonderful. I rub crusty eyes, sign for the jet and go back up. The trim problem finally gets solved as hoards of bleary-eyed people file on-board. I look across at Rick, my F/O. “Man I don't think I can take the Chicago – LAX leg this afternoon. I'm pulling out at Chicago.” I get my phone out and while I dial the duty flight manager I ask Rick, “You too?” He nods.

The DFM is sympathetic with our plight, and even asks if we should perhaps go back to the hotel instead of coming in to Chicago. I told him we had all discussed it and determined we were good for the short flight. He tells us he will take us off the trip and get us into a hotel as soon as we hit the ground in Chicago.

But as we're starting engines, Rick has second thoughts. “Man,” he says, “I can't afford this.” As the RPM spools-up, he pauses to move the fuel lever to run, then says, “I'll lose 11 hours pay. My family can't take that.” (As an F/O at this company, Rick makes far less than most plumbers.) The four flight attendants have already told me they plan to keep going. They too will lose their hours if they declare fatigue. I told Rick to call the DFM and ask to be re-instated, if that's what he thinks is right. I waited with engines running while he called. He got his wish.

I fought the gusting crosswinds to a reasonably succesful meeting of rubber and concrete, parked the jet and bade Rick good luck. I checked into the O'hare Hilton and turned-in for much needed sleep. As I faded I thought about Rick and the flight attendants winging their way across the continent (with a reserve captain), nodding and battling the fatigue monster. Such is this business.

Peaceful and safe New Year.

Where?

No Rest for the Weary

As usual, when the government says I'm here to help you, check your six, check your wallet and look around for an open window. Their intentions may be good, but in my opinion, more often than not they make your life more complicated than if they had left you alone. Such may be the case with the new fatigue rules. And as usual you need to hire an attorney to interpret them.

The big change is pilots will now have 10 hours minimum rest. That's up from nine. Click here for details. That’s better than nothing I suppose, but then there's this: if you report for duty between 0500 and 1959, (that's “Way-too-Early” and “End of Happy Hour” for us Air Force types) you can fly nine (9) hours un-augmented (basic 2 person crew). That's down from the previous rule, which was eight (8). So, you see there's good news and bad news. And it's worse than you think. Here's why.

An east-bound Atlantic crossing from the upper East Coast to Western Europe typically takes less than 8 hours, but the return, which is against the winds, takes more than eight. Therefore airlines use a relief pilot, which allows them to fly longer, even though they don't need the relief pilot for the goin' over leg. Now they may not need one for the coming home leg either. 

See what's coming? Or rather, what's going? Going out, that is—relief pilot. Yes, soon when you go to western Europe you may have only two pilots up front the whole way. This is the manna from heaven airline companies have waited for. Now, not only can they shed themselves of some of those pesky pilots, they can sell an extra seat, because a rest seat for pilots won't be needed.

But, you say, so what? I work 8-9 hours about every day. Yep, going to London with two pilots is pretty easy; further east destinations are a little harder but doable. Here's the rub: those trips typically don't start until late afternoon or evening. So, 8-10 hours after being up since your normal get-up time you start work. The most demanding part of your flight, the approach, occurs at about 0200 on your body clock, and you have not had a rest break. 

And coming back from Europe we usually start out at about 0100 on our body lock. How about pulling a nine hour shift with no rest and no break after getting up an hour after mid-night?

Incidents of pilot deviations will go up. Somebody will pay for this change, and the price might be enormous.

If any of you Mach-Rangers think I've mis-interpreted this or gotten my facts wrong, sound off.

"A-RAAAH, A-RAAAH, A-RAAAH! A stinking beeper, the loneliest and most pitiful cry in the world."

--Jack Broughton, Thud Ridge

Nothing Else Compares

I look over at Dave. He's nodding off. His head bobbles, sways. The chin drops, snaps back up, then drops again. This routine goes on for several minutes before the chin becomes pinned, permanently it seems, against his slowly heaving chest. He's not supposed to be doing that. Perhaps he's praying. That's not prohibited, so I'll give Dave the benefit of the doubt. He brought his girlfriend with him for our long Roman layover, which we just concluded, so I presume he has much to be prayerful for. Me? I'm just gazing out over the wonderfully blue North Atlantic―a prayerful sight itself.

Now that we've left radar contact and entered oceanic airspace, we no longer have to monitor the radio. If they want to call us a chime will ring. Then we'll turn up our HF volume and answer them. If you ever crossed the ocean constantly listening to the hissing, squealing cacophany of raw HF radios, you know what a magnificent invention SELCAL is. Much better than sliced bread.

When your co-pilot is indisposed, prayerfully or otherwise, things get really quiet in the cockpit. The gently hissing slipstream tries to lure me into nodsville. Can't let that happen. Listening to music is verboten, but at times like this it keeps me alert. It raises my awareness.

The sky and water are beautiful. The ride is glassy smooth. In moments like this I'm given over to idyllic ponderings. The 767 slips along like a galactic cruiser. Destination: somewhere way out yonder. I put on my headset and look for a selection from my Android's music library. Too many to choose from. I flick the slider with my finger and let it glide. What ever it stops on, I'll hear.

It stops on Cold Play's “Clocks.” My eyes water up when I see it. I start it and resume my gaze across the horizon.

I always will remember Clocks as “Keavy's song.” It was playing on the speakers on my porch one evening when she was hanging out logging some porch time with us. She stopped talking in mid-sentence and cocked an ear toward the speakers. “What's that song?” she asked. “Wow, I love that song!” Little did I know Keavy's days among us were short. (Read “Ode to Keavy” if you haven't.)
 

...a tiger's waiting to be tamed.

No wonder she liked that song. Taming a tiger was on her agenda.
 
And I sit, in the nose of this big flying tiger watching a blue world go by, listening to Keavy's song, remembering her, thinking of her mom.

...gonna come back and take you home.

Some die young at the hands of this compelling passion we call flying. Others are left to grow old and reflect on why they lasted so long. Here I am really living out a dream―the sarcastic jokes about that phrase aside. Masses of people by the billions would want to do this, and yet here I am. The significance of that is not lost on me. And it never will be. 
 

Nothing else compares. No, nothing else compares.

―Cold Play, “Clocks”

Loggin' Light Years (Last Part)

 
Bob was happy to have survived the deep downturn in the mid-forties when high-speed intercontinental seafloor rail service took a heavy toll on the airline business. The recovery from that bust began when the combined rocket-hybrid synergistic particle-impulse engines were developed in the fifties, becoming the revolutionary breakthrough the aerospace industry had long awaited. Finally, fuel was no longer a major problem. Aircraft designers’ new challenge was to make the ships as big and heavy as possible. With the new engines, more weight meant more efficiency. Ground facilities seemed to be the only limiting factor. Bob pondered it with fascination. What a radical turnaround!      

So much had changed it boggled his mind. Suddenly he wondered how long it had been since he had actually spoken on the radio to a controller. How many years?

As he shook off his musings and began his re-entry preparations, a bright object caught his eye. It was the comforting sight of the glistening emergency docking station 50 miles overhead. He had been there only once when an electrical fire had broken out on his 937 a few years ago. All 700 passengers had evacuated safely into the station and stayed for several orbits until another plane picked them up. But that was a costly flight for his company. Haliburton didn’t operate those stations out of kindness.

Just as he was becoming agitated that he might not get his meal before re-entry he heard the chime. The serving door opened behind them and out rolled the trays. He gave one to Jennifer and placed his tray on his velcro-lined retractable table.   

Then the chime rang again. A flight attendant in the left upper aft sub-cabin said it was too hot. He made an adjustment and mumbled that the automatic temperature controller must have been designed by the Seattle town drunk. Jennifer giggled while tearing off a printed message. She frowned and handed it to him: drug test at McMurdo. He let out a heavy sigh and wished he had lived in the old days when pilots could just fly and not have to put up with pointless annoyances.  

He munched on his chicken flavored alpha-keratin soy sticks while watching Antarctica, brilliant and magnificent, rolling out of the south toward him.  It was hard to believe so many people lived in South Victoria. Too cold for him, though.

He noticed Jennifer eyeing his tray. “Are you going to eat that?” she asked, gesturing toward his untouched tube of broccoli paste. He shook his head and gave it to her. He hated his company might lose Jennifer, but he knew she was logging time for a big airline job.

He realized it was time to get to work.  He had two more legs to fly today, up to Mumbai and on over the top, back to Chicagoland. Already he felt tired. He hated these one-day trips.  It was too bad he would never have the seniority to fly the big new long-haul birds with all the latest bells and whistles. Thinking about it, he slowly shook his head. Yeah, those guys really had it made. 

When Jennifer finished her meal Bob said, “Okay, time to take her on in and land her.  Make it so, Number One.” 

“As you wish, Captain.”

He smiled thoughtfully and took in all the sights and sounds he could pack for future memories. Yeah, was going to miss this job. Most of it. 

Never make predictions, especially about the future.
--Casey Stengal
 

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/future_10.html#ixzz1elzWGn4K

Loggin' Light Years (Part II)

The two pilots complied with the checklist as the aircraft read it to them, while Bob continued to visually monitor the taxi progress. He saw multiple launches taking place on the runway 18L complex far to his left on the southern horizon and recoveries flowing in from his right into the 18R tiers.  Approaching the entry point he could see the broad downward sloping ramp to the 27LL tunnel. A sub-orbital narrow body was powering up for its break release on the middle tier. On the top runway Bob could barely see the fins of two regional jets accelerating away in formation. 

Almost imperceptibly, he shook his head at the thought. Innovative ideas had been put into practice to deal with airspace separation limitations, some not so rational, he mused.  Ironically, one solution was to put planes closer together so that in effect they occupied the same piece of airspace for takeoff, breaking away later to their respective destinations. Remarkably there had not been a single formation related accident in the years they had been doing that but the training costs were enormous. He knew that old procedure was finally coming to an end, and just ahead of him was one reason why.

The two pilots carefully checked for obstacles as the 957’s nose swung onto a yellow line turning off of the main route, much as a railroad engineer didn’t steer but monitored the progress of his locomotive entering a side rail. The upload pad lie ahead where two regional jets waited on each side of the 957’s path. In a few minutes both smaller jets were lifted and securely attached to the wings of Bob’s mothership. Bob and Jennifer complied with all the aircraft’s instructions and confirmed that the parasite crews were ready. Jennifer pushed the ready icon. A clearance flashed on their CRTs from the O’Hare tower. Bob initiated engine start.

He taxied the big ship into the tunnel just as a supersonic transcon flight rolled in the runway above their heads. When the takeoff clearance flashed in their HUD-shields Bob initiated takeoff sequence and Jennifer confirmed.  The ship heaved ahead.

Lights in the runway 60 feet below began to scroll underneath them and soon the lighting in the overhead structure started to race by. Suddenly the cockpit windows changed from clear to tinted as the laser brilliance of daylight burst on them. With his hand hovering near the sidestick controller Bob monitored the rotation and liftoff. The Air-Boeing’s voice recommended gear up. Bob initiated and Jennifer confirmed.

After an intermediate level-off at flight level 180 they released their RJs in sequence, watching them fall slowly away and bank toward their destinations. Then they received clearance for sub-orbital acquisition. 

Bob double-checked that the fasten seat belt sign was on and locked. He remembered the captain who forgot about it ’53 and got a frantic call from his purser that a thousand or so passengers were floating.  Some giggled and glided like Superman through the cabin while others fretted and groped for some solid object to stop the tumbling. After that incident all seatbelts were modified so that they could not be released unless the captain’s switch was out of the locked position.

The nose rotated and the big ship comfortably accelerated. Bob and Jennifer looked through their HUD-shields as blue changed to black and stars appeared by the zillions. They watched as the ship rolled 180 degrees to wings level inverted and saw the green and ochre Yucatan Peninsula drift overhead. Far above their heads, silhouetted against the sapphire Caribbean, they saw the multiple thick contrails of the Trans-American tracks connecting North America with the thriving economies in the South. He remembered flying those routes earlier in his career when he rendezvoused with company tankers to take on a precisely measured amount of fuel to optimize his burn. That was another of the desperate measures airlines contrived to conserve every ounce of fuel. But its efficiency never proved out, and air refueling―long a staple of the military―was short-lived in commercial operations.    

To the south and far below he saw the sun glinting off the wings of a cargo train inching its way across the stratosphere. The air freight companies had resurrected an old concept, towing. Their widebody freighters towed two and sometimes three pilotless glider-freighters behind them. Pilotless aircraft were not new. The last manned military aircraft had been retired almost a generation ago, and some overwater cargo operations were remotely controlled. Passengers, however, still demanded humans in their cockpits, and a few automation failures over the years had proved that to be wise. 

Now that 20 minutes and half the 10,500 mile trip was behind him, Bob felt the call of mother tummy. He dinged his purser, asked about the crew meals, and was promised receipt of same, soon.  

The few minutes he had now before descent was his only chance to relax and reflect on the waning days of his career. While Jennifer busied herself with re-entry preparations he thought about seeing what he was seeing for the last time. Sure, he would see the curving arc of the Earth’s circumference again―from a passenger window when he and his wife took their trips in retirement. But it would never be the same. 

Already he had reservations for a lunar vacation in two years―the soonest he could get them. But when he heard about the first Wal-Mart store going up in Tycho Crater City, he thought he just might cancel and wait on the Marriot Grand Martian to open. Even if he could somehow afford that trip, it wouldn’t excite him like flying this great sub-orbital cruiser did. 

He had seen much happen in his time. He had watched aircraft engine technology go from the ill-fated experiments with nuclear steam powerplants back in the twenties to the highly successful solid fuel jet engines developed in the forties. 

He remembered scoffing when ESOPS was approved in 2042. He had vowed never to fly a single engine airliner across the ocean, but eventually he logged hundreds of blue water crossings in them. (continued next post)

 

We drive into the future using only our rear view mirror.  

--Marshal McLuhan

Loggin' Light Years (Part I)

The long dry spell continues. I have logged only about 50 hours in the last eight weeks. This makes for poor pickings for blog topics. But it generates a lot of time to muse up crazy stories. Loggin' Light Years is a story of a day in the life of an airline pilot who lives far in the future. I asked some of my first officers to come up with ideas about what the future of the airline profession might look like. Some of those ideas went into this story.

Part I

Captain Bob Stickman flashed his taxi light, noting with satisfaction how all 18 of the launch crew quickly formed a neat line in front of the aircraft. Some held hydraulic arming pins high for him to see. Others put their thumbs up. The launch captain stood in front and rendered a sharp salute. Bob returned it and instructed First Officer Jennifer Winger to request taxi clearance. She pushed a button on her work station console and a minute later a message flashed clearing them to taxi to runway 27 Left-Lower.

This was Bob’s first trip with Jennifer in several years, but he had flown with her on the atmospheric fleets and remembered she was a good first officer.  He looked forward to flying with her again.   

The eight mile long taxi route immediately appeared on Bob’s EHSI. He touched the Arm HMP icon and saw that it began flashing on both his and Jennifer’s console. “Engage HMP,” Bob uttered. They both touched the icon and noted that it switched from red to green. He felt a barely noticeable lurch as the hydraulic motive power engaged the wheels. Bob watched for obstacles as his behemoth moved forward and the nose swung around toward the taxi route.

Certain critical functions in the 957’s cockpit required both pilots’ agreement to initiate. If the consenting pilot did not confirm the action within ten seconds, initiation would be automatically canceled. There was also a minimum reaction interval, three seconds. The aircraft’s designers didn’t want pilots to respond too fast. The extra time forced them to think about what they were about to do.  
 
The aircraft itself also had a say-so. Bob marveled at the safety redundancy built into the plane, remembering how the aircraft might challenge an action initiated by one pilot and confirmed by the other. A big yellow Air-Boeing logo would begin to flash at them. The unwritten message was, Do you really want to do that? The engineers wanted, no doubt, to put those exact words on the CRT but they didn’t. Instead a brief explanation would appear advising the pilots why they might want to reconsider.

Engaging the HMP was one of those critical functions. Hydraulic motive power was old technology, developed many years ago during the fuel crisis. The two pilots were well aware of the early problems that abounded when aircraft electric hydraulic pumps were modified to power hydraulic motors installed on the planes’ wheel trucks. The idea was to save fuel by taxiing without running the engines. The modification took many years to perfect, but the fuel it saved helped the industry survive the great fuel crises between 2015 and 2025. Bob was in high school then and Jennifer wasn’t even born, but they both had heard the stories and read the histories.

 As the 957 crawled toward the expansive vertically tiered runway complex, Bob, nearing the end of his nearly 50 year career, found himself more often reflecting on the changes he had seen and the profound things that had happened before his time.

His dad had told him the stories about the troubled times in ’15 when the fuel started to get scarce―not that it ran out. Oil supply was already in a slow steady decline by then, and there wasn’t enough to satisfy the world’s growing thirst for it. Finally the government decided to act decisively and began earmarking fossil fuels for critical uses only. Surface transportation was forced to find other fuels and technologies while military air power and commercial air transportation were given a reprieve and allowed to use what oil was available for refining. 

Bob was aware that it took many years to bridge the gap between the end of the petroleum era and the beginning of the new synthetic fuels and their engines, hard times for many people. And the wars that resulted had cost millions of lives. Hard to believe, Bob thought, that people would try to exterminate each other for a bunch of black goo. He shook his head. How did his parents ever live through those years?

(to be continued)

The future ain't what it used to be.
 --Yogi Berra

The Skies of Wrath

In the last 64 days I have flown seven times. Seven days, one leg each of those seven days. The longest was Zurich to Washington. The shortest Chicago to Washington. There was also a 3-day simulator proficiency check somewhere in there.

This idleness is ostensibly because the company announced it would decrease flying in our fleet beginning September. Boy, did they ever. The line-holders have been cut back to 70 hour lines. They have been used to 85 or so. Now they pick up all the open flying they can get to make up for lost pay. This leaves little flying for reserve pilots like yours truly, but we are accustomed to 70 hours (minimum pay), so we are kicking back and enjoying the time off.

Why so few flights? Here's the strategy: You cut back on service. That's less fuel you pay for, less maintenance you must perform, and lower payroll costs. But, you say, that's also less product to sell. (Product being a seat available to put a paying butt in.) Think.

Ah, but now you see the light. Reduce service and raise the prices. As long as demand does not diminish, you get more bucks for the butts. Those of us working in the trenches are ill-informed about such things, so we don't understand them. Somehow we think that as long as demand is strong, why not increase capacity and reap an even bigger harvest?

So, it makes you wonder about this alleged coming pilot shortage. Yeah, I know. Lots of retirements are looming and military pilots are saying it ain't worth it. But, are you hearing the numbers they're throwing around? Tens of thousands of new pilots needed soon.

Don't believe it. They (the airline industry) just want you to think pilot shortage. Remember The Grapes of Wrath? It's based on historical events. The California growers sent messengers to drought-stricken Oklahoma farmers telling them there was an acute shortage of fruit and vegetable pickers in their state. They put up billboards on Oklahoma highways that said Come to California: JOBS!

The Okies did so in droves. In fact so many of them showed up there weren't enough jobs. The growers low-balled wages. The “lucky” Okies―the ones who could find jobs―had no choice but to take the peanut wages offered. The growers patted themselves on the back. Mission accomplished. 

You, my young friend―you building up your time and working hard on your certificates―may have your heart set on landing one of the coveted airline jobs for which applicants are so scarce.  Don't get duped. Tell them to show you the money. Then and only then will you believe in their much hearlded coming great pilot shortage.