Chaos in Paradise

Trouble is often an ephemeral presence that visits you, wreaks some measure of havoc, then pretends to go away. You attribute its apparent demise to your skill and cunning in dealing with it, but it only hides nearby and snickers at your naivete.

And that's precisely what it did when we successfully avoided the embedded thunderstorms north of Aruba. And did so, as you recall, with all our radios succumbed to a bout of mysterious, chaotic static during which we could hear nothing. After dodging the storms we needed to re-establish our course to Aruba. The 180 vacationers on board were eager to get to the beach.

Beatrix Control, on Aruba, had finally broken through the static and saluted our deviation around the storm (it was to be done with or without their approval), but their answer to our next question gave us a hint of what lay ahead. Chris asked for clearance direct to AUA, the Aruba VOR station which is located on the airport. The thickly accented Hispanic voice said, “Roger.

“Roger” is not a clearance to do anything. It only means “I understand you.”

Chris asked again, but the man was busy with planes arriving at Aruba ahead of us. We were headed southwest toward nothing but blue water. After repeated tries to get a clearance resulted only in a string of “Rogers,” I turned south to AUA.

The thunderstorms receded behind us but multiple broken cloud layers partially veiled the island. Then welcome but puzzling news: Beatrix asked if we had the island in sight. We had only a piece of it in sight. The weather, though not below VFR, was unusually bad for Aruba, consequentially you would expect an instrument approach would be in order.

Chis reported that the island was in sight. The only response was—you guessed it—“Roger.” So we continued inbound to AUA.

Aruba usually lands east into the prevailing Trade Winds, but that day the winds were westerly, and the only approach to that runway was a VOR approach. We don't do those often, but we're trained for it. A VOR approach would be okay. As we tracked inbound to AUA we set up for it.

Through thin, misty clouds, I saw the north coast with its string of resort hotels—most of our passengers' destinations—slide underneath our nose. Our course ended only a few miles ahead and we were hanging at 6,000 feet with no further clearance. Chris appealed for a clearance but none came. Logic and experience suggested we would be issued radar vectors to the final approach course at the VOR. But logic does not always prevail in some parts of the planet.

The VOR and the airport upon which it sat slid underneath us. Chris and I looked at each other. He shrugged. I decided to hold the inbound heading. It seemed logical that we would pass overhead the airport and turn east for a left downwind to runway 29. But, there was that silly logic thing again. Shouldn't be thinking that way.

As we headed out south over the water Chris finally got Beatrix's attention. “How far south are you going to take us?” he asked.

Their response was, “Say your radial and DME from Aruba.” He told them. Their answer? You know.  

Not good. Obviously they didn't have us on radar and, worse, they weren't admitting it. They resumed talking to other aircraft, while we cruised southward toward the Venezuelan coast. I got jumpy. This couldn't go on. That was dictator Hugo Chavez's territory ahead and it was getting bigger by the minute. Chris called them again, and again they asked our position.

I knew we could get intercepted if we violated Chavez's airspace. His fighters would force us to follow them to Venezuela, he would make a big media deal of it and Chris and I would spend time as guests in his jail. I weighed the options: Clearance deviation (with small possibility of mid-air collision), or Venezuelan jail (with large probability of abundant misery).

The decision took about a nanosecond. I turned east.

We carefully watched the TCAS scope and kept our eyes searching for conflicting traffic. I saw the island off the left side. Beatrix asked us again for our position. When Chris gave them the information and told them we were eastbound, they told us to report on a 10 mile final for runway 29. FINALLY, A PLAN!

We looped around to the west and tracked inbound on the VOR approach. Just as the airport swam out of the gloom two miles ahead, the tower cleared another aircraft for takeoff. The guy was slow to take the runway. The last thing I wanted was a go-around under the conditions of marginal weather, bad radios, no radar coverage and people controlling us who were only pretending to control us. The guy lifted off just as we touched down. I've never seen it that close even at Chicago.

We turned off, found our gate and shut down. I slumped back. Chris said, “Can you believe those guys? They had a radar outage and didn't even tell anybody!”

Yep. I could believe it. 

Ever heard the old expression, Never stop flying a tail-dragger until you tie it down?

Same goes for a 757—especially in Latin America.

Answer to last post's puzzle: Anonymous nailed it.

How about this for an office window view?

NORDO

NORDO is not my dog's name, but it would make a clever name for a dog. It's pilot-speak for, “NO RADIO.” How can that happen in a modern airliner? It did.

You Mach Rangers out there know the drill all too well: three hours of boredom is often followed by an hour of chaos. (Notice I said “chaos” not “terror.” Terror is very bad ju ju. Chaos is just annoying stuff. The difference between the two defines the professional.)

And, following the rule precisely, the chaos began as my first officer left for a head call. The pretty young flight attendant, Maria who came to the flight deck to guard the door in his absence, was about to acquire the “acid taste of fear.” (I wish I had invented that phrase, but it belongs to the master—Gann.)

I had just finished informing Maria, in a self-serving, amusing manner, that we were over the much fabled Bermuda Triangle. Her eyebrows went up. She began telling me about a scary TV program she had seen about the Triangle only a few days earlier. Before her story ended the radio receiver speaker (we use the speaker at cruise altitudes) erupted in an ear splitting, screeching, screaming din. Maria saw me turn forward and press my mic switch. “Santo Domingo, United 539 radio check, how copy?”

Nothing but a soup of chaotic noise. I tried again. Nothing still. I went to the previous frequency. Same. I was reaching for radio knobs and switches across the cockpit and making unanswered appeals to the cacophony spewing from the speakers.

The F/O came back up. “Tom, we've lost radio contact!” I said. He heard the speakers spewing their shrilling, buzzing clamor. It sounded like a blend of a piece of chalk screeching on a blackboard and a flying saucer sound from and 1950s sci-fi flick. Maria turned white as a sheet as she stood watching us grabbing charts, dialing-in various frequencies and trying in vain to re-establish contact with the world. We even tried New York on HF. But no joy on any radio. The TV show Maria had seen about the Bermuda Triangle was becoming her personal nightmare.

Marie timidly asked if we were in trouble. We told her we would figure it out. Unbeknownst to us, she went back and told the other flight attendants that we were over the Bermuda Triangle and in serious trouble. They all got alarmed. I learned later that Maria was so frightened she avoided cockpit visits the rest of the day; when a flight attendant's presence was required she sent one of the others.

After 15 minutes of useless attempts, which we figured was caused by our antennas icing over in the clouds (not a common thing), I decided we would declare an emergency when we got to our normal descent point, 80 miles ahead. Without a radio, the only way we could do that was by squawking the emergency code, 7700 in the transponder—but we knew that would not alert the Caribbean controllers of our problem unless we were in radar contact. That close to Aruba, we hoped we would be. That was to be hopeless hope.

So that was the plan—squawk emergency at the planned letdown point and start down for Aruba. Then we would change the squawk to 7600, the standard NORDO code. But then another problem popped up. Weather.

An embedded thunderstorm appeared on our radar dead ahead. We had to turn. “Okay,” I told Tom. “We'll squawk 7700 when we make that turn. At the precise moment when I was about to change the code and turn, Tom got a hard-to-read, garbled response from Beatrix Control, in Aruba. They approved the turn.

I spun the heading select knob 40 degrees right and the 757 tipped. The air got rough and Tom made a PA announcement. “Flight attendants, be seated!” We watched the ugly red splotch on the radar display slide to our left. The air smoothed out and we relaxed. Now, we only needed to get clearance from Beatrix control to turn back toward Aruba.

We relaxed too soon. Our troubles were only beginning.

Stay tuned.

We are fliying at Flight Level 340. What direction

are we going and about what time of the day is it?

Attempted Suicide?

Incredibly, only three days after the medical event you read about in Call Me, it happened again. We were approaching the final hour in the Washington-Seattle flight. I was thumbing through approach and airfield pages to select the ones I would be needing soon.

'Dings' (the little single note bell you hear when a flight attendant calls) come often. The first officer usually answers because chances are it's an air conditioning request and the controls for that are on his side. But I can always tell there's trouble afoot by the way he/she reacts to the call. If he answers and cuts eyes immediately toward me I know something unusual is up.

So, you can imagine what I thought when I heard him say, “What do you mean they are giving her oxygen? Who's 'her'? Who's 'they'?” He listened longer, staring at me. “Wait,” he said, “The boss needs to hear this.”

I punched my service button and asked what was going on. “You don't know?” she said, surprised. “I thought the flight attendants in the back called you.” This riled me. Something serious was happening and they had left us in the cockpit out of the loop.

A 25 year old woman lay unconscious on the aft galley floor. Two doctors and two EMTs, all of whom were passengers, were tending her. The two flight attendants working the aft galley―I later learned―were cut off from their communications panel by the mass of people tending the woman. They could call neither the Lead flight attendant nor me. The fourth flight attendant, standing in the aft aisle, couldn't tell what was happening, but at least she could have went to the mid-ship station and called up front to tell us something unusual was going on. She assumed someone else did. 

The Lead flight attendant, whose station is just behind the cockpit has the responsibility of overall cabin management and keeping the captain informed. She didn't live up to her title. Basically, our situation in the far aft of the plane was a mild chaos

All I knew was we had a medical emergency―again.

I looked at the EHSI. Spokane was coming under the nose. That looked like a good place to go. I sent a “CALL ME” message to dispatch. A response flashed within a few seconds and I made contact on a good frequency. That was a big relief after the fiasco I had endured two days back.

While Dispatch set up a conference call with Medlink the Lead tried to fill me in. The woman's boyfriend had been pouring liquor down her since the beginning of the flight. After she was thoroughly sauced he picked at point 36,000 over Coeur d' Alene, Idaho to inform her he was dumping her. She became hysterical and fled into the aft galley lav where she proceeded to swallow every pill she had, which included asthma medicine and ant-depressants. She came out and collapsed. 

The passengers responded, not the crew. The two doctors and the two EMTs sprang to the aft galley and began tending the woman. The flight attendants stepped back and watched. They became passengers.  

The doctors asked for our onboard emergency medical kit, which can only be used by a credentialed medical professional. They had taken her vitals and were giving her medical oxygen.

Then Medlink came up. I passed on the info I had. The Medlink doc asked more questions. I put him on hold. By now Spokane was receding behind our tail. Decision time was coming. I told the first officer to begin preparing for a Spokane divert but to hold off till I gave word. Medlink held while I returned to the service interphone and asked to speak to one of the doctors in back. A very calm voice came up and gave me the info Medlink requested, plus more. I said, “Doctor we are 15 minutes from Spokane and 30 from Seattle. What do you want me to do?” He said, “Let's take her to Seattle. The care there for this will be better.” I relayed that to Medlink and he concurred.

I resumed control of the plane (it was my leg) and the first officer declared a medical emergency. We then had a free pass to break the sound barrier, if we could have. We pushed the airspeed to the barber pole and got permission to bust the mandatory 250 knot limit below 10,000.

A few minutes later we were rocketing across the foothills west of the Cascades at 350 knots, barely 2000 feet above the terrain. Quickly the airport appeared. The last thing I wanted was a go-around so I started the slow down about 20 miles out. They gave us the inboard runway. I planted it, jumped in to the brakes and reversers and had we were in the gate in about a minute. Red and blue lights greeted our arrival, flashing everywhere.

The passengers obeyed their orders to stay seated while the EMTs took the woman off. As she passed by the cockpit I saw she was conscious but delirious, crying, moaning and saying words I couldn't understand.

I called a crew meeting after everyone had left. It was unacceptable that the pilots did not know about this incident until 15 minutes into it. If the woman's condition had been more serious the extra few minutes at high altitude versus descending toward Spokane could have made a critical difference. I told the two who said they were cut off from their com panel to use their authority as crew members to clear the area and do their job. I explained what “assume” meant to the one who lurked in the aisle and watched.

Another report had to be generated that night. I hate reports.

But I love smoking along at 400 mph close to the ground. Haven't done that in many moons. At latest that part was fun. The guy sitting to my right had never done it.

I wonder if the most persistent memory I'll have of this job when I leave it is that obtrusive little sound that can bear any manner of message from: "Your meals are ready," to "There are four men back here threatening to...."

Ding

"I knew, like hearing the faint tingling of a distant bell when the ear really awaits a tolling, that tiny excitation of my fear glands...It teased and became almost a pleasurable sensation."

  Earnest Gann

  Fate is the Hunter

I treat you with a Mt. Shasta crossing--and my lunch in my lap.

Call Me

Just a few minutes short of six hours, it was—the Boston-San Francisco transcon. We joked. “Who's takin' the first break?” Chris shook his head. “Man, this is damn near a Boston-London run, without a relief pilot.” He yawned. I looked out across the Great Plains, then at the clock. I yawned. We were about half way. Then came the 'ding' that that turns you on your head.

“Captain, one of the flight attendants in the back wants the paramedics to meet her at San Francisco.” My antennas went up. I circled my wagons. This spelled trouble.

She went on to explain. It seems the subject flight attendant had recently been tested for possible heart ailments. Now she was experiencing periodic stabbing back pain. She feared a looming heart attack, but didn't want too much attention. She could sweat it out to destination, she said.

My first thought was, where are we setting down if this turns worse? Denver lie 180 miles ahead and south of our course. That was the obvious place. I asked Chris to set up a conference call between our dispatcher and RadioDoc (made-up name). As he went about that, I thought about the earlier times when our company had its own medical staff. Whenever we called for advice we recognized the doc's voice (there were several of them). Those guys were well versed in aviation medicine—ex-miltary flight surgeons—and often gave us our physicals. Now, no more. The medical department was closed years ago and the staff fired.

Chris sent the ACARS message to Dispatch: “CALL ME.” Within seconds the message popped up. Frequency 129.4. Chris tuned in the frequency and tried to establish contact. But the frequency was full of static and a squeal so loud he could hardly understand the dispatcher. He swapped radios; tried dispatch on VHF-1. No joy. He asked for a different frequency but the dispatcher's reply was garbled. Chris tried to tell him we needed a RadioDoc conference call. More static. More squeals. More garbled voices. 

Then the ACARS printer spewed out a form. It wanted a bunch of information on the “patient.” I called back to the Lead and asked her for the info. With Chris shouting into VHF-2 trying to communicate, the lead flight attendant on the interphone spewing info to me, and me trying to monitor Denver Center on VHF-1, the hand basket slid closer to hell. My blood pressure started to rise, but I reminded myself that we were not in the process of crashing. Life will go on—for now.

Finally I got the info and handed it to Chris. He tried to read it to the person on the other end—we didn't know who that was. RadioDoc is a clinic somewhere that supposedly has contracted with our company to provide in-flight medical advice. The woman we heard through the static and squealing was talking too damn fast. She didn't understand radio-speak and had no idea we couldn't read her. I wondered even if she was a physician. Might she be a physician's assistant? Nurse? Candy-stripper sitting at home with her babies?

Chris, patience stretching thin, literally shouted into his mic: “GIVE US A DIFFERENT FREQUENCY!”

Twenty minutes into this goat rope, I noticed Denver passing abeam us. If we couldn't get the medical opinion we needed to assess this woman's condition, would it not be prudent to play it safe and divert to Denver? What a hell of a costly stop that would be. But suppose we passed up Denver and this woman was indeed in more serious trouble than she herself realized? In times like this I tend to notice the four stripes on my shoulder when I look aside, and they feel heavy

A new ACARS message flashed: “LET'S TRY 131.80.” Chris swiftly switched to the new frequency. It was just as bad as the first one. This was now more serious a problem than our medical situation. Without radio contact with Dispatch we are totally independent and cannot get the info we may need in any emergency situation. Your dispatcher is your link to the world, to safety. He gives you everything from weather and performance data to field conditions and game scores. You feel naked without Dispatch contact.

As Chris tried in vain to make sense of the voices on the other end of VHF-2, I began planning our divert to Denver. I decided I will not risk the woman's life and my career by bypassig a safe harbor in the throes of doubt. I was about to press the mic and tell Denver Center to clear us for diversion to Denver when Chris seemed to start making progress. He had to tell the woman to slow down her talking. After asking more questions she advised us to put the flight attendant on oxygen and continue to San Francisco while keeping an eye on her for changes or worsening.

What a relief. Chris signed off with Dispatch and slumped in his seat. I stared ahead and thought about how close we were forced to come to wasting tens of thousands of dollars and causing 185 people needless hours of delay.

The paramedics met us and examined the flight attendant. They found her fine. She merrily walked with us to the layover hotel.

But that wasn't the end of they day's ills. In only one hour after the RadioDoc fiasco—before we landed—the weight of the four stripes would be felt again when another kind of hell broke loose and I would be exercising “Captain's Emergency Authority.” That means, literally, breaking the rules to stay alive.


Stay tuned.

 Funny virga. Why that one little spot?

Columbus

This is the worst part of the all-nighter—an hour and a half to go, just before the horizon ahead begins to glow. We've done well so far in the dark journey from California. A late meal, the day's paper, the daily crossword and some lamentations about the endless management/labor war have all served to keep us alert. But now we begin to feel the fatigue festering behind our eyelids.

I look over and see Andy looking out and down. He's studying something intensely. He looks back and notices I'm watching him. He jerks his head toward his window and smiles. “Columbus.”

I nod. “Yup. Nice town. I hope they're—“ [yawn] “—sleeping well down there.”

Andy seems pensive.

“Funny,” he mumbles. “Every time I fly over Columbus I remember something. Comes back to me as vivid as can be, but it was a long time ago.”

When it happened Andy was just starting out in this profession. He was a pilot for a small freight outfit flying Navajos and Barons. He had just finished a long hard day of flying that included an early get-up and a lot of weather work. He was glad to feel his wheels touch down at the home plate. But the props had hardly stopped when the boss came out and said he must fly a load over to Indianapolis and then come back. Andy told him he was too tired, to get another pilot. The boss said all the others were out on assignment. He was the only one.

When he first hired on the boss had showed him two log books to keep up. He said, “This one is for us. This is how we pay you. This other one is for the FAA. Make sure you don't exceed their duty limits.” Andy was young then. He needed that job to build his time.

Andy gave in. He helped load the Navajo and took off. The night wore on. He couldn't believe how tired he was as he offloaded the stuff at Indy. On the way back home he could hardly fend off the deadly nods. Then came a break in the clouds, and there, on the nose, a cluster of lights, warm and inviting. Columbus. He flew over the university, then saw the airport below. He had landed there many times. He knew the folks at the cargo center. They worked round the clock and they had a nice quiet pilot lounge with magnificent, soft recliners.

He suddenly canceled his IFR clearance and cut the power. He spiraled down and landed. He shut his engines down and went to the lounge. He called his boss and said he couldn't make it any farther, that he would sleep a few hours in Columbus and bring the plane back in first thing in the morning. The recliner sucked him into its safe, peaceful folds and he fell asleep within seconds.

Alas, but the part about landing was a delusion Andy often indulges in. He never did that. He pressed on through the night and took the plane home. Didn't have the courage to do what he wanted to do, needed to do. Yet his many passings over Columbus in the years since and the thoughts of sleeping in the lounge that night continue to be so compelling he practically feels he actually did it. 

And now Columbus is to him a symbol of a safe haven never taken; a paradise out of reach; a salvation not appropriated.

“Oh well,” he mumbles again. “I was young.”

I nod and reflect on my own sins of omission. We were all young once. We all paid our dues in this business. Some paid with their lives.

We all have our own Columbus. 

The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the starts.

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, 'Wind, Sand, and Stars,' 1939

FIGMO

While I work on my crossword puzzle my first st officer, Chad, chats with our jump-seater, who is a pilot at a small regional airline. They're discussing the future of the profession.

I'm more concerned with 68-across, a four-letter word for “site of many scrapes.”

Their topic turns to the problem of where all the pilots are going to come from to fill the looming “great pilot shortage.” (You long time readers know what I think about that. Go here: The Skies of Wrath.)

They don't seek my opinion, apparently sensing it's neither available nor reliable because of my status as a dinosaur. With two years to go till retirement, I'm FIGMO. (Ask your local Viet Nam vet what that means.)

While they speculate, opine and lament, I notice the horizon beginning to turn milky gray. I switch on the X-band weather radar. Sure enough—just as the route briefing prophesied—a band of embedded thunderstorms blocks our eastbound path across Minnesota, embedded meaning they are shrouded in stratus cloud. The Mark-1 eyeball does no good in evading these types of thunderstorms. You need the trusty X-band.

I thought of the article I had read in AOPA Pilot only the day before. A numb-nuts Bonanza pilot had flown through a thunderstorm. He managed to land the plane but it was so twisted and buckled his insurance company totaled it. He bought another Bonanza and again flew it into a thunderstorm. He took that one to his repair shop with popped rivets and buckled skins, and sheepishly told the mechanics, “I did it again, ha ha.” They repaired it. He went back up with three passengers and attempted another penetration. The third time was not a charm. They found body parts and Bonanza pieces scattered over 15 miles.

I'm certainly not the Bonanza idiot, but I know the thunderstorm ahead is no respecter of the stripes on my shoulder, the magnitude of the metal I ride, or the multitude of hours in my logbook. I interrupt the discussion and ask Chad to get us clearance to deviate left, toward a gap in the cells. We turn the Fasten Seatbelt sign on and order the flight attendants to get seated.

As they resume their discussion of how the old order of aging military jocks-turned airline pilots (that would be me) must inevitably give way to legions of eager pig jet pilots spawned by regional airlines (them), I achieve a profound epiphany, 66-down: one curl or push-up. 

Yes! R-e-p. Now I have a clue to the last word.

Suddenly Minni Center intrudes on my muse and the guys' bull sesion. A Boeing 737 is approaching in a climb at 12 o'clock. The controller assures us the 737 will level off 1000 feet below us. I lean forward and peer into the gloom. So does my seeing-eye copilot. Nothing but gray tendrils of swirling cloud. I switch the scan down to 40 miles. A little diamond comes at us on the scope, the vertical separation -1700 feet. I look back out. Nothing. I switch the range to 20 miles. Now the diamond approaches us at a quicker pace. Vertical separation -1400 feet. He's climbing fast. Will he miss his level-off? Will he overshoot? Are the guys in that cockpit discussing the future of the profession and not monitoring their altitude?

I switch to the 10 mile range. The diamond shoots at us. Now -1100 feet. Now -1000 feet. Now -900 feet. Is he overshooting his altitude?!?! I grab the control yoke to be ready if the TCAS commands a conflict resolution maneuver. The vertical separation returns to -1000 and stabilizes. We strain our eyes out ahead into the dull gray abyss.

There! Red and orange. The ephemeral form of a 737 swimming from the misty soup below and to my left, flashing by like a specter and vanishing into our six.

I slump and relax.

Chad turns back to the jump-seater and they resume their talk about contracts, routes, and aircraft acquisitions until they exhaust all speculation about their future as airline pilots and descend into private sessions of soul-searching.

I suddenly jolt them from their broods. “GOT IT!” They look at me with arched eyebrows. “Knee!”

I jot in the last word and deep-six the crossword. My day is made.

Theirs is only beginning. I hope they have a nice career.

Was this a good arrival procedure, or what?

Fooled the duty thunderstorm at MCO again.

What can you conceive more silly and extravagant than to suppose a man racking his brains, and studying night and day how to fly?

— William Law, 'A Serious Call to a Devout and Holly Life XI,' 1728.

Smilin' Jack

Last year a guy named Jack and I were enroute from Dulles to O'Hare under a clear and abundantly starry sky. We saw a brilliant object coming out of the west, obviously high overhead. We shook our heads in amazement. It was far too big to be an ordinary satellite, yet had no characteristic flashing strobes a plane would have. And it was in the wrong part of the sky to be Venus, which had hoodwinked me before. (Read This Time of Night.)

As the object sailed overhead, the thought hit me. It had to be the International Space Station. The solar panels on that thing were huge—the size of a football field if memory serves. Jack perked up. “Yeah! That's got to be it!” Jack ought to know; he's been to the edge of space himself.

Months later I was on a longer trip with Jack and got to know him better. He's not the usual F/O. He is a smart dresser, even on layover. No jeans or tennis shoes. His uniform is immaculate. He has let his hair grow out since Uncle Sam employed him, but it stays neat—not a strand out of place. So as to keep it that way, Jack goes hatless.

He articulates softly and clearly, sans profanity, and likes to shake hands with everybody he meets—bartenders, waiters, mechanics, bums on the street. Despite being older than most of the guys I fly with (late 50s) he sports boyish looks, smacking of shyness but hinting of slyness. I suspect he never goes bingo fuel on the tank of on female companionship. He's a retired USAF colonel. A nicer gentleman, you'll never meet.

Oh yeah. Almost forgot. He flew the SR-71 Blackbird.

“How high you been in that thing, Jack?” I asked, adding, “If you can say.”

He smiled. “Over 85,000.”

That was almost twice as high as I had ever been at the controls of an aircraft. I grinned back. “Can you see the earth's curvature up there?”

“Oh yeah!” Another, even wider grin.

“What's it like?”

Jack just shook his head. “Beautiful.”

 “What about the sky color? Blue or black?”

He seemed to meditate, then looked over and smiled. “Very dark blue—directly overhead. Almost black.”

A minute or two later, after I pondered going that high and seeing that, I posed the next, inevitable question. “How fast have you had that puppy?”

I wondered why I had to pull these things out of Jack. He seemed glad to answer but didn’t volunteer much. I eventually realized that Jack's holding back was simply modesty about his achievements. He didn't want to convey the impression he was boasting about piloting the Blackbird.

How fast? The grin re-appeared, bigger than ever, like a teenage boy who had just dated the most train-stopping gorgeous girl in the school, and I was his eager buddy trying to find out what happened.

“Mach 3.3.” Then he added with a loud cackle, “But I wasn't supposed to push it that fast!” 

That was exactly three times as fast as I had ever flown an aircraft.

When we got to the Las Vegas layover, Jack—a professional bachelor—told me how he and his fiance met. They were shortly to be married. It was the stuff of Hollywood. He had dated her for a while back when he was pushin' the Blackbird. She worked for a contractor. Then they drifted apart.

Later years found him buying drinks for some young pilots at a unit reunion when he spotted her across the room. His jaw fell agape amid a Blackbird tale. The group watched him put his drink down and go to her. He said he knew the first ten seconds would decide if they had a future together. (10 seconds = 3.7 miles at mach 3.3.) Jack knew the answer when he saw the sparkle in her eyes. He had soared into space at last.

As to the remainder of his career, he lamented that he will probably never be a captain. He got started in the airline business too late. One of the regrettable downsides of the seniority system is the loss of potential cockpit leaders like Jack. He harbors no regrets, though. He seemed one of the most contented people I've ever flown with. He even whistles while he's making a landing.

Lucky too. The hotel gave us each a $5 credit at the tables. One hand took my five. Jack left with $45 after only one hand. Blackjack/Blackbird. Close enough. Jack was the man.

You've read about many different personality types and backgrounds in this blog of the people I fly with. Not many of them have a logbook like Jack's, but most of them are pilots I'm proud to share my cockpit with. I'll accept that as a suitable substitute to seeing the Earth's curvature.

North Florida: Here's what the X-band showed.

Here's what the Mark-1 Eyeball showed.

Viva la X-band!

What they Don't See

You get that angsty what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here feeling every time you lower your butt into the seat in that darkened box—that place of toil and judgment you know so too, too well. 

As you settle in you get the creepy feeling that a gazillion electrons are running amuck through your body. You can smell their electrical breath and you want fervently to be somewhere in open air. Somewhere far, far away from here.

The sounds in this place—humming fans, thrumming hydraulics, metallic clinks of your belts and straps, switches being moved—bring on longings for music, bird songs, barks, anything wholesome and natural. This place ain't natural.

Its sights—row upon row of blinking and steady lights—green, amber, red—compel your eyes to yearn for far stretching blue sky. A lake or forest. Both are lifetimes from this place.

You're back again. Back in the sim.

We're in civvies—both wearing jeans, polos and sneakers. This contrast of technology and attire serves to link us to the saner world and for a moment we can imagine we're doing this for fun. We are private pilots, winners of a lottery, come here to play with the big iron. But this fantasy, we know, is about to be shattered with an onslaught of streaming demands on our brains and hands that borders on violence.

Today is a short one—only four hours and we're on our way back to the line. It's a refresher and an introduction to our new procedures, the products of the merger with that other company. They do things a lot different and it seems we are being compelled to do it their way.

“Okay, are you guys ready?” the IP asks as he closes the back door. The box grows even dimmer. We look across at each other with raised eyebrows. We nod.

Then the words from the IP's seat behind us that we've heard a hundred times, that we'll carry with us the rest of our days. “Motion coming on.” We feel the box raise high above the floor on its hydraulic legs. We steel ourselves. Remember Mose's prayer just before the Comanche charge in “The Searchers”? (Of course you do.)

Thank you, oh Lord, for that which we are about to receive.

What we're about to receive is that which passengers never see and hope not to.

The much revered Ernie Gann wrote about the box of cerebral torment 60 years ago, but he called it a “Link Trainer.” If only the passengers knew, he mused.

His truths still endure.

Those Mid-America People

Disclaimer: I love Seattle. There's no more beautiful city on the planet and I have met many nice people there. That being said...

Dawn had broken over Mount Ranier in a glorious array of purple and amber rays fanning out overhead, and I was thinking it would be a great day to fly. As our crew bus rumbled along from the operations building toward the terminal I listened to the flight attendants chattering, as they are prone to do even in the early hours. They were very senior Seattle-based ladies plus one guy. I didn't pay much attention to the chatter until I heard a woman use a phrase that shocked me out of my morning yawn fest. Contempt dripped from her lips.

“...those mid-America people...”

My eyes snapped to the woman. She was telling a colleague how she dreaded working a flight that had people from the interior states. They were unfamiliar with flying, understood nothing, asked too many questions, made too many demands and caused myriad problems. She sighed, shook her head. She was hoping today there wouldn't be too many of those kind of people aboard.

Did I actually hear what I thought I heard? Unbelievable. Unfathomable. I'm not a middle-American, but rather a Southerner, and I suspected she regarded the people of my region with the same contempt, if not more.

The needle on my ire gauge arose and swung to the red arc. I'm not one to burst into a rage—although I've had my temperamental moments in past years. But I had to tell myself to hold back. Words are awesome weapons. Yet what I had just heard hit me like an atomic bomb.

I refrained from counter-attack, since she had not directed her snobbish arrows at me, but as we filed into the elevator I found my opening. A different flight attendant mentioned that the house next to her was for sale and she hoped she would get good neighbors. I stormed into the conversation. “I hope you don't get any of those wretched Mid-America People in there next door to you.” My eyes cut to the culprit's face as I said it. She diverted her eyes. “That would be terrible,” I pressed.

As we filed off the elevator and made our way as a group toward the plane, I continued to vent my ire. Sensing their normally mild-mannered captain was gravely pissed, all prattle stopped but mine.

“Those mid-American people! All they do is grow our food for us. Produce our energy for us. Teach their kids good work ethics. Miserable wretches!”

We walked on. Not a word was said by anyone else. And still, I wouldn't leave it alone. Shooting a derisive glance at her I mumbled, “All they care about is flying their flags, going to church, cheering their football teams! What do they know about the world? Those mid-America yokels!”

As we winged eastward she never apologized and I don't much blame her. I scared her. My reproach was misdirected. If had any trace of viable leadership qualities I would have calmly and privately told her that her remarks troubled me. I would have reminded her of how she feels when people stereotype flight attendants, and how such attitudes make the chasms of cultural misunderstanding and disrespect deeper and wider in our endangered great republic. 

Unfortunately, thanks to me the only thing she likely learned was to be discrete about voicing her prejudices. 

 Cruising toward a distant spiral galaxy?

 Nope. Just LAS.

Andy

I like to grab a coffee, stroll back and mingle in the few minutes I have after setting up the cockpit for departure. I want a respite before the turbines spool-up and the electronic voices from my earphones begin spewing their enjoinments.

Since the 757 loads amid-ships (don't you love it when I talk navy?) I get a clear aisle in first class. I chat a bit, answer a few questions. Even grumps get civil when they see a pilot pause take an interest in them. I don't do this to make my company look good; I do it for me.

I also look for kids to invite to the cockpit. But the last several years of doing this has taught me not to bother asking teenagers. You likely won't get the courtesy of a verbal answer. They will only shake their heads, and may not even look up at you from their lightning fast orchestration of thumbs against tiny keyboards.

I've often wondered which of their curious emotional states are responsible for this behavior—overwhelming fixation on their texting tasks, or a reluctance to demonstrate they are interested in anything outside their tiny sphere of reference. Even if they are, it's simply not cool to be inquisitive about things that excite younger children or that adults are interested in.

And so it is to the pre-teens to whom I gravitate with invitations to visit our Jurassic aged Boeing cockpit. Sadly even they have succumbed to the spell of the Google god and the Apple alchemy. 

A few days ago two of them in first class curtly rejected my offer to go forward. So I ventured deeper back into the 757's bowel. It was busy back there—they were still boarding. But I noticed a kid about five rows back who had severe Down syndrome. When his mother noticed me I asked if he would like to visit the cockpit. She hesitated, then nodded. I halted boarding at the door and waited for the aisle to clear.

The boy, whom she called Andy, weighed at least as much as she did. His age was hard to determine. He could have been an adult.

I expected him to get up and accompany her forward, but it became evident he couldn't walk. He winced in pain when she maneuvered him into her arms and stood up. I was stunned to see her carry that boy to the cockpit and carefully place him in my seat.

Again his face became contorted with pain as she sat him down. The first officer, Karl, tried to help her, but she waved him off. She had her method. Then she backed away and raised her camera for a picture.

Andy's eyes widened to the size of dinner plates; his mouth fell agape and a guttural cry came out so loud that I'm sure the kids back in first class heard it. Probably snickered. But it was a cry of fascination and joy—I saw it in his big round eyes. Andy's head bobbled around as he tried to take in all the sights of the cockpit accoutrements. His babbles were gibberish to us but sweet exclamations of delight to the mom.

Then she wrestled him from the seat and heaved him up to her chest, holding him like a big baby with his head looking back over her shoulder. She passed me and said “Thank you.”

“No!” I said. “Thank you.”

She was gone before I could say any more, but what I wanted to add was this: “Thank you for showing all of us what unconditional love looks like.”

I noticed one kid in first class actually looked up from her phone with wide eyes and gaping mouth, watching Andy go by clinging to his mother as she carried her precious burden back to their coach seats.

I stepped back toward the cockpit door and passed by a flight attendant wiping tears out of her eyes. Karl and I just sat for minutes after that, not saying much—just thinking about Andy and his mom, and waiting for the push signal.

The sky was bluer that day. The ride smoother. We didn't complain much.

Never Forget

American flags flies permanently over Boston Logan Gate C-19

where Captain Victor Saracini and First Officer Mike Horrocks

 departed on their final flight, September 11, 2001.