Blogging at FL250

War Stories

2012-01-19T22:24:00.000-08:00

I spend a lot of time at FL350. A lot of time. NewCo's average stage length is longer than most regional airlines', particularly those that fly turboprops and 35-50 seat jets. For the most part that's a good thing. It means less work, less stress, less unpaid time on the ground. It results in more efficient trips and more days off work. That said, three hours of cruise time can feel very long indeed if you don't have anything to make the time pass by quicker. My company, like most, prohibits reading non-company material. After the NW188 fiasco, laptops and small electronics are verboten as well. With a few noteworthy exceptions, there's not a great deal of sightseeing to be had from six miles above the earth's surface. Reading the AOM (Aircraft Operations Manual) or FOM (Flight Operations Manual) is always an option...but the FAA frowns upon falling asleep in flight! That leaves one sole source of in-flight entertainment: the guy or gal sitting next to you.

The vast majority of Captains and First Officers I've flown with throughout my career were fantastic folks to fly with. I can only think of a few - less than one hand's worth - who I hope to never fly another trip with. There were also some perfectly nice people who weren't very talkative or otherwise stuck to themselves, and that's OK. A lot of the Captains at Horizon were a generation older than me, so we ended up talking about their grandchildren or retirement plans. That was OK too. Most of my FOs at NewCo, however, are around my age; I often find we have a great deal in common to talk about. I've made some great lifelong friends over the course of a 4-day trip.

There's a certain art to inflight conversation. You need to pace yourself, make it last. Your conversations drift from topic to topic, never lingering on any one so long it goes stale. You inevitably talk shop but try not to make it the focus. You gossip a little bit while trying not to sound like a gossip. You gripe a bit while trying not to sound like a bitter prick. You steer clear of controversial subjects until you know your partner well. You try to make sure you're not dominating the conversation. You make mental notes along the way so you don't bore your FO with the same old stories next time you fly together. You try to keep from getting so engrossed you miss radio calls. You keep an eye on the clock, and if you do it right you'll wrap up the conversation neatly right about the time you start preparing for descent.

When I meet an FO for the first time, typical preflight conversation centers around who we flew for last, where we live, how the commute went, how many days we had off. You're busy so you keep it pretty light. After the rush of takeoff and the dance of the initial climb, you tend to push your chair back a bit climbing through 18,000 feet, and you might ask your partner if they're married, for how long, what their spouse does, and whether they have kids. Leveling off in cruise, you might ask who they flew with last, compare notes on your flight attendants for the trip, and trade your most recent airline rumors. Once we've settled in a bit, I'll often ask my FO where they learned to fly. As often as not at NewCo, it's UND. When that's the case we'll reminisce a while, I'll recount how cold it was working the flight line at GFK, we'll figure out who we both knew, I'll badmouth the flying team kids a bit, and they'll tell a hilarious story about drinking with Kent Lovelace at the Down UNDer. If my FO didn't go to UND, I mention almost apologetically that I did, and proceed to gripe about how overpriced and overprotective the program is and how miserable Grand Forks was.

To steer the conversation away from flying for a bit I'll bring up skiing or travel or motorcycles and from there we talk about hobbies, which is usually good for a half hour or so unless my FO has no life outside of work (or more often, no money thanks to atrocious first-year payrates). Most of the time my FOs and I have at least one pasttime in common, and when we don't they usually have some other hobby I find interesting. I've flown with woodworkers, homebrewers, mountain climbers, and one ambitious girl who's run marathons in all 50 states and several countries besides. One FO, now a Captain, is building a Long-EZ in his garage. There are a few other FOs who are still active in general aviation - one of whom ended up doing my tailwheel endorsement in his 1946 Piper Cub, which I still occasionally fly.

The richest vein of cockpit conversation, however, are the war stories. Nearly everyone I fly with had a great deal of experience prior to joining NewCo. In almost all cases there was a previous airline or airlines, and most flight instructed prior to that. Some spent long nights flying decrepit freighters, as I did. Others flew skydivers or towed banners or did ferry work. The common thread running through all this prior experience is that it was generally more fun, more interesting, more challenging, and occasionally more frightening than flying the JungleBus for NewCo. I have rather few war stories from my time at NewCo but I have a ton of them from my time as a flight instructor and freight dog. It's the same for most people I fly with.

I've told most of my war stories from ADP, AEX, Ameriflight, and Horizon here over the years so I won't repeat myself. I will say that most war stories fall in the broad categories of rookie mistakes you made early in your career, students who tried to kill you, airplanes breaking in dramatic fashion, fantastically bad weather (ice and thunderstorms, particularly), and shady employers pressuring you to do really stupid stuff. It's my experience that war stories tend to get refined with each telling and possibly even exaggerated a bit, until you're not quite sure if you're remembering the event itself or the way that you've told it over the years.

A war story might flow naturally out of the conversation, or be sparked by something that happens in flight, or be triggered by a similar story from your partner. Lately I've been doing a lot of flying out west, including regular forays to Southern California. Few of my FOs are familiar with this area of the country so I point out landmarks, which lend themselves to the telling of war stories. There's Big Bear City, where I took an old Warrior on a summer day and had to fly the length of the lake in ground effect to escape the high terrain. There's Mount Baldy, where Daniel Katz mysteriously disappeared with Archer Five Three Whiskey and escaped detection for years despite an intense search until the wreckage was finally spotted in 2008. There's Owens Dry Lake, where I was once helplessly sucked from 6500' to 10500' in under a minute, power-off, in a Piper Lance in the clutch of unusually low wave activity.

Not all war stories took place in flight. More than a few concern particularly epic layovers - sometimes something especially noteworthy that the crew did together, but more often outrageous drunken antics on one or more crewmembers' parts. Nearly everyone has stories about flight attendants that turned out to by psychotic or merely intent on nabbing themselves a pilot regardless of his interest or lack thereof. Most female pilots have stories about seriously awkward advances from creepy old Captains. I don't know if NewCo is more sane/boring than other regionals or if our pilots just self-censor stories that occured here, but the majority of layover war stories seem to come from airlines of the teller's past.

Telling war stories reminds us of where we've been and how far we've come. Even when the circumstances of the story are astonishing or frightening or sad, there's a certain nostalgia to them. They remind us of a time when flying was stimulating, adventurous, and even dangerous - anything but routine. Mind you, the fond memories are almost entirely retrospective. Very few broke, tired young pilots have much good to say about their current situation. They're not looking for a bevy of amusing war stories, they're searching for the quickest way up and out to a better job. The 2002 version of myself would look rather dimly at 2012 Sam complaining about the boredom of Captaining a glass-cockpit jet from coast to coast. It would've sounded like a distant, lovely dream at the time. It's only in retrospect, now that time has dulled the less pleasant aspects in my memory, that I realize what a unique, often interesting life I led back then. And so it is across the industry, and indeed across humankind.

Southward

2011-12-25T03:49:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to all! Today Dawn and I are flying to Atlanta and then onwards to Santiago, Chile, for the start of a two-week vacation in South America. We'll be stopping in Santiago, Púcon, and Puerto Varas before boarding the Navimag ferry for a four-day journey through the Patagonian fjords to Puerto Natales. From there we will spend a few days trekking in Torres del Paine National Park, cross the border to Argentina, tour the Perito Moreño glacier, and stay in El Calafate. Finally we'll fly up to Buenos Aires for one day before returning to the States on January 8, flight loads and Volcán Puyehue permitting.

I have a post queued up and ready to go on our return, and then I'll get a post about the trip up as soon as I can. In the meantime, everyone have a safe and happy holidays.

Silent Night

2011-12-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

Today is December 22, the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Here in Minneapolis it is short indeed, at 8 hours and 46 minutes. The sun rises at nearly 8AM, sets at 4:30PM, and never reaches higher than 21.6º above the horizon. This is the price we pay for gloriously long summer days with lingering sunsets and dusky twilights that cling to the western horizon 'till nearly midnight. This time of year, those languid summer evenings are what the 9-to-5ers think about as they drive to and from work in pitch black darkness. I personally feel that the constant gloom of a Minnesota winter is far more oppressive than the extreme cold. Today, though, I'll feel better knowing that the worst is behind us and it will get a little lighter every single day.

Ironically, given my attitude towards winter's long nights, I love night flying. Roughly 20% of my total flight time, 1500 hours out of nearly 8000, is night time. Of course I occasionally flew at night during training and flight instructing, but it wasn't until my time as a freight dog that I regularly flew after dark. For a while I flew cancelled checks from Las Vegas to Burbank every weeknight at midnight, and it was on that run that I learned to love the homey glow of a darkened cockpit, the march of the stars overhead, the glowing clusters of civilization slipping past through the inky void of the Mojave. Alas, that was also the run on which I awoke from a micro-sleep on short final to Burbank with no recollection of the previous thirty minutes.

Today, the flow of the seasons is reflected in the pages of my logbook. The night time column, rarely touched in summers, is darkened by entries nearly every day in wintertime. Some pages, it constitutes nearly half of my flight time. I don't mind at all. Night flying in airliners may lack some of the romance of being alone over the Mojave, but it also lacks the unseen mountains, the suddenly rough engines, the unexpected icing, and most of the bonenumbing fatigue. Truth told, the modern airliner is as easy to fly at night as at high noon - and in some respects, easier. I have radar, GPS, and TAWS to keep me out of trouble. I have an FO to talk with and to keep me awake. I have flight attendants to bring me coffee. There is less traffic, quiet reigns on the radio, and ATC is exceptionally accommodating.

Most of all I love the feeling of a smooth flight on a clear, dark eve. The magic of flight, once so self-evident in my youth but lost to familiarity years ago, returns once more. The smallness of my little pressurized world of aluminum and fiberglass becomes evident before the fathomless expanse of the universe laid bare above us. The amber cockpit, dimmed to the softest glow, becomes a cocoon, a time capsule, a magic carpet floating across the slumbering earth. The cares of my day and the pressures and frustrations of my job slip away. I become peaceful, content, and grateful in the silence. Night is a wonderful time to be aloft.

I think many, if not most, pilots who've been flying long feel the way I do. I can see it on the countenance of my First Officers. Our nocturnal conversations are unusually relaxed, genial, and thoughtful. Acquaintances become friends and friends become confidants in the dimness of their shared cockpit.

For all my fondness of night flying, I haven't flown after dark in a small plane since 2004 - until recently, that is. The Cessna 170 I fly is nicely equipped for night VFR, and not being able to fly at night greatly limits your flying during a Minnesota winter. Weekend before last, I took the 170 up for three nighttime trips around the pattern. At first it was downright eerie. There was none of the comfortable familiarity of the JungleBus. I felt naked - understandably so, in a single-engine piston at a deserted, poorly lit airport. After three full-stop landings, though, the old familiarity started coming back. Dawn climbed in and we took off for a flight around the Twin Cities, looking at Christmas lights and circling downtown Minneapolis. It was a beautiful, and fun, and relaxing way to spend an evening, sharing the magic of a night flight with my lovely wife.

I enjoyed it so much that I did it again this weekend, this time with my little brother Steve and his girlfriend Torrie. She'd never flown in a small plane so I had her sit up front, and she was enraptured from the start. As we flew over their house and around downtown and past Lake Calhoun, Torrie reached back to take Steve's hand and I could see it etched on their faces: the thing I love about night flying, the thing I first loved about flying itself. On the way back out to Buffalo, I had Torrie fly the plane. Later, as we put the old bird back in her hangar, Steve and Torrie talked excitedly about what it would take to get their pilots licenses and buy an airplane.

Maybe they really got bit hard, or maybe it's just talk fueled by the excitement of the moment. It doesn't matter. It felt really good to give them that. It's said that the best gift you can give is that which you value dearly. That's exactly what I gave them. It felt wonderful...it felt, I dare say, like Christmas.

Wanting

2011-12-02T16:26:00.001-08:00

If you've been in aviation very long, you've likely heard some variation of the following story:

A student pilot was practicing touch and goes in a Piper Cub at the local grass strip when he saw a Bonanza zoom overhead. "Wow," he thought, "I wish I could fly a fast, sexy airplane like that!"

The Bonanza pilot was plodding along at 150 knots when he got passed by a Baron. "Boy, that's the ticket," he said. "I need to get a twin!"

The Baron pilot was slogging through the bumps when he saw a Cheyenne pass overhead. "I wish I had a turboprop," he groused. "I could get up and out of this weather!"

The Cheyenne pilot massaged his temples; it'd been a long night on the medivac run. Just then he saw a Citation go by. "Oh, to fly a jet!" he sighed. "Props are for boats!"

The Citation pilot looked at his groundspeed readout impatiently. There was a hellacious headwind, and if he didn't get the boss to his meeting on time there would be hell to pay. He looked up at a B747 crossing overhead. "Wouldn't that be the life!" he mused. "Big, fast airplane. Exotic destinations. Hot young flight attendants!"

The 747 Captain looked down at the earth, trying to stay awake for the tenth hour of a twelve hour crossing from Tokyo. He picked at the lukewarm crew meal that'd been grudgingly served by the very senior, very old, and very disgruntled A-line. Just then he spied a little yellow speck moving across the tree tops far, far below. A Piper Cub! The Captain turned to his FO with a smile and said, "Oh man, what I wouldn't give to be out flying a Cub right now!"

It's an aviation story, but the "grass is greener" syndrome is in no way confined to the pilot population. It is a human phenomenon. We undervalue what we have and overvalue what we do not. Especially in this age of plenty, we've become accustomed to wanting increasingly superfluous things, and getting them immediately - consequences be damned. Modern economies are essentially built on an unending cycle of desire and consumption. You could argue that the present economic malaise is due to individuals, businesses, and governments all (re)discovering that their wants far outstrip their resources.

Aviation, like so much of the country, feels like it is at a standstill right now, waiting for something to happen. There are few retirements. Nobody is growing; many companies are shrinking. American Airlines just declared bankruptcy, and few believe that airline consolidation is complete. Everyone's sitting tight, biding their time, wishing for some good news, any good news. Waiting, and wanting.

I've been a Captain at NewCo for nearly four years now. I've had the flight time to go elsewhere for some time, if anyone worth going to was hiring. I still have flow rights to WidgetCo, our mainline partner, and I've been on the brink of going there for over a year. They just announced they are not planning to hire in 2012; it's largely speculated they will hold off until 3Q 2013. I've become rather restless. I often peruse the aviation message boards and job sites in search of something better. When Tianjin Airlines recently upped their base salary for JungleBus Captains in China to $188,000/year, it was hard not to give Parc Aviation a call. Even doing something different at NewCo would help. I'd love to be a check airman; unfortunately, my company has resisted hiring check airmen in my seniority block for fear of immediately losing us to WidgetCo.

All this career angst, this wanting something different, completely ignores how good I have it right now. I'm living in base, with a 25 minute drive to work. I'm bidding at 14% seniority in my category and getting my pick of trips. I've averaging 17 days off work per month and making a perfectly livable wage. Nobody should be feeling sorry for me, least of all myself. Restlessness is truly an affliction of the comfortable. My career woes feel pretty pathetic when I talk to friends still at Horizon, or 20-year Comair Captains facing the extinction of their airline. They also feel petty next to the one, unobtainable thing that Dawn and I have really wanted for the last five years.

Longtime readers may recall me writing about Dawn's miscarriage in early 2007. That pregnancy was a surprise, but one we accepted and were ultimately happy about until we lost the baby. The realization that we were financially ill-prepared for parenthood led directly to me leaving Horizon and taking the job at NewCo. Since then we've been continuously trying for a baby. We've had trouble getting pregnant but did succeed twice, only to suffer two more miscarriages - most recently this last weekend. It was very early, less than a month in, but it hurt like hell. It felt like a door slamming shut. The first two we could say, "Well, this sort of thing happens," but now it seems increasingly certain Dawn will not be able to carry to term. It's what she wants more than anything.

My initial reaction was anger. I was angrier than I've been in a long time - at chance, the universe, God. Simply being unable to conceive would be hard enough but there'd always be that glimmer of hope. This seemed downright cruel, like Lucy and the football. The initial excitement and hope made it so much worse when it ended abruptly in a by-now-familiar torrent of physical and emotional pain. The fact that it was my wife who was going through hell and there was absolutely nothing I could say or do to make it better absolutely enraged me. No convenient target presented itself, however.

In the midst of this I had three days of simulator training scheduled - my twelve month event, the checkride I must pass to keep my job. I considered cancelling. Nobody would have blamed me given the circumstances, and the company would've readily rescheduled. Ultimately I decided to just get it over with, and flew what was possibly the best checkride of my life. It was flawless. I've always done my best flying under stress. It was also pretty therapeutic, a chance to clear my head for a few hours and do something I enjoy, and then think things over on the drive home.

Here's the conclusion I've come to after thinking it over a while: this is one hard, painful part of what has otherwise been a very good life. I've built a good career doing something I love during the worst ten years in that industry's history. I'm married to my best friend, a woman who understands me better than anyone alive and shares many of my interests. We have a nice house, good friends, and loving family. We have our health. We've been able to explore many beautiful corners of the world. We're doing well financially. There are so many people who are far worse off, especially these last few years. I have absolutely no right to be angry at chance, the universe, God, or myself because our many blessings happen to not include children, or because we have to work through the hardship of miscarriage.

Dawn and I have talked this over and concluded that while we'd love kids and will try at least once more, we can't make it the biggest thing in our lives simply because it's what we don't have. We'll live our lives as though we won't be able to have children, and if it turns out we can, fine. On that note, Dawn is starting work on her Masters degree next month. The idea is have her done around the time that WidgetCo starts hiring so her pay increase will offset my pay cut and prevent us from dipping into our savings. As a bit of a last hurrah before she gets swamped with studies, we're flying to South America later this month for 2.5 weeks in Chile & Argentina, including doing some trekking in Patagonia. It's not exactly what I wanted for Christmas, but I'm thankful for the chance to do it nonetheless.

In Bruges

2011-11-10T08:35:00.000-08:00

I'll admit it: I went to Belgium to see Bruges, and I went to Bruges because of the movie. I saw "In Bruges" when it came out in 2008 and, like everyone else, immediately put Bruges on my "to do" list. I never actually got there for a few years despite being in the neighborhood multiple times because...well, you have to go through Belgium to get there. I was led to believe the best part of Belgium is the beer, and I do enjoy that - from afar. Everything else was evidently copped from the Dutch or French, but more bland than either...or so I heard among the European backpacker set. Well, now I have been to Bruges and Belgium, and I am ready to pronounce judgement: yes, Bruges really is that fantastic, and its charms were not exaggerated by the movie. Yes, Belgium is ugly and bland...if by Belgium, you mean Brussels.

Dawn was gone to New York City for the weekend with four of her cousins, leaving me to my own devices for a three day weekend. After getting off work on Friday, I hopped on an Airbus 330 to Amsterdam - in first class, of course, it's the only way to fly! I woke up in Europe feeling reasonably fresh and boarded an Intercity train southward. I passed Den Haag and Rotterdam, changed trains in Antwerp, and again in the medieval Flemish city of Ghent. I was "In Bruges" by 2pm.

I spent the rest of the afternoon and all of the next morning walking around Bruges. I took a boat ride through the canals and climbed the belfry. I ate frites while people-watching in Grote Markt and a canal-side wafel at the Sunday morning flea market. Saturday night, I sampled some local brews in a warm, dim tavern with 400 Belgian beers on offer, met a couple of guys from near Edinburgh, and ended the night singing karaoke with the Scots in a Celtic bar with some Danish girls while some loudmouth South Carolinian drunkenly proclaimed that he was more Scottish than the lads wearing kilts (yes, really; "to get girls to talk to us"; seemed to work!). Ah, globalism.

There were quite a few other tourists, especially for late October, but they mostly mass around Grote Markt and the rest of the town largely retains its quiet charm. All the "te koop" signs in empty windows provided a clue why. Only 20,000 people actually live in the town center, a fraction of the medieval population. I inquired about one average-looking canal house for sale, and was told the asking price was €3,000,000. It had been vacant for three years.

Sunday afternoon, I took the one-hour train ride to Brussels. I wasn't horribly impressed. It's like someone took Amsterdam, Paris, and Frankfurt, put them together and shook hard, and threw in a little Stalinist architecture for good measure. The end result is that you have 16th century Flemish row houses next to elegant 19th century Parisian buildings next to ugly concrete apartment blocks next to gleaming modern skyscrapers next to a massive parking garage. The very center around the town square has a few well-preserved medieval blocks, but they are clogged with tourist restaurants and kitschy gift shops. There are some pretty spots, to be sure. There are a few tranquil squares worth lingering in. I took a tram east of the city, past the European Parliament, and found gorgeous landscaped parks with quiet lakes and swans and stately villas surrounded by rolling forestland. On my return I grabbed a cheap, scrumptious doner kebap from a ubiquitous falafal stand and parked myself in a great little bar that had good, cheap Belgian beers - and the Vikings-Packers game on TV, of all things!

Mostly, though, Brussels made me wonder if it is the source of Belgium's ho-hum reputation, and perhaps the rest of the country is quite worthy of exploration. Both Antwerp and Ghent looked inviting when I passed through. I'd quite like to visit the Ardennes. I stayed up playing cards with a group of students on my return to the hostel Sunday night, and they told me Liège is a fun town. That would have to wait for other weekends, though. Monday morning, I headed back across the Atlantic. It was a great little trip, but work awaited.

Beyond the Fishbowl

2011-10-26T07:11:00.000-07:00

The vast majority of the trips I fly involve multiple landings at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). It's where I'm based so at the bare minimum the trip will begin and end there, and in between we usually connect through MSP at least once a day. This recent trip is fairly representative:

Day 1: MSP-GRR-MSP-OMA-MSP-IAD
Day 2: IAD-MSP-MSO
Day 3: MSO-MSP-IAH
Day 4: IAH-MSP-JAX-MSP

Minneapolis is a great airport to fly out of. It's not ridiculously busy, has a pretty efficient layout, has very good ATC, and delays are few except in the worst winter weather. All the same, constantly landing at the same airport can get a little old. Moreover, being the home of my company's headquarters and its largest crew base, MSP is "the fishbowl." You're always running into chief pilots and check airmen and company bigwigs, most of whom are very nice people eager to shake my hand and call me by my first name and say nice things about me. I hate that. It's been a longstanding goal of mine for my employer to forget I exist. Jeppesen updates necessitate an occasional stealthy foray into the crew room, but otherwise my "productivity breaks" are spent in the opposite corner of the airport.

Last year we were doing a bunch of flying out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, Washington's National Airport, and Atlanta. Some of our trips avoided Minneapolis altogether, and you were virtually based in one of those three airports during the trip. The change of scenery was nice, but I hate east coast flying. It's just too much work - and not fun, interesting work like, say, a VOR-A approach to minimums in the mountains. It's constant frequency changes, inflexible routing, impatient controllers, and ever-present delays. You're not really out of the fishbowl either, it's just filled with different and much bigger fish. Given the choice, I'd fly nothing but Minneapolis-Missoula, thankyouverymuch!

Last week, though, I flew the trip of my dreams. We didn't pass through Minneapolis once and never ventured east of the Mississippi River. I didn't fly more than two legs a day. The weather was beautiful except for five minutes of marine layer IMC each day. We got fed crew meals. It was productive, with 25 hours of pay for four short days of work. The layovers were long and the happy hour specials lucrative. I don't know why I didn't bid this trip all month long. It looked like this:

Day 1: MSP-MCI
Day 2: MCI-LAX-MCI
Day 3: MCI-LAX-MCI
Day 4: MCI-LAX-MCI (Deadhead MSP)

This was my first time back to LAX since flying for Horizon. It's even more ridiculously easy coming from the east; they sequence you 200 miles out and clear you for the approach while you're at 18,000 feet over Big Bear Lake. The majority of my 2400 non-airline hours were spent flying out of Southern California, while my FO had never been there, so on the long flights out west I regaled him with tales of near-misses and lost students and 3-mile VFR days and lunch at Flo's and the time I just about took out the powerlines at the end of Big Bear's runway (the west end, fortunately). Fortunately for my FO, we had clear weather and spectacular scenery to occasionally shut me up. Here are some good samples:

I would've bid this trip for all of November except I, um, forgot to bid! My "standing bid," which exists for such a birdbrained eventuality, is very basic, requesting only maximum days off. Accordingly, I got a very good 19 days off, despite having three very inefficient training days at the end of the month. More surprisingly, I got Thanksgiving and a random Thursday I needed off despite my standing bid neglecting to mention either requirement. Perhaps I should forget to bid more often!

Alaska from Above

2011-10-15T09:05:00.001-07:00

For those who enjoyed my account of this summer's motorcycle trip to Alaska, here's a great blog that shows nearly the same route from another perspective. Jesse flew to Alaska and back in his 1966 Mooney M20E, and took a lot of fantastic photos along the way. His overflight of the Wrangell-St. Elias Range, in particular, sent me off to fltplan.com to see just how long it'd take to get there in the C-170!

Check it out: Red Feather Pilot.

Errands

2011-10-10T07:56:00.000-07:00

Last week I was running around town on a day off, checking items off my "honey-do" list. My route took me right past Flying Cloud Airport, where my club's 1949 Cessna 170 is tied down. It was a nice day with a high overcast and a light breeze from the north. I was sorely tempted to drop in and go flying, but I had stuff to get done. I drove past.

On my way back, I couldn't resist. I was making good work of the list, and figured I had enough time for a half-hour hop. The last few times I'd flown the C-170, I made pretty ugly landings. There weren't any big directional excursions, but I kept misjudging my height in the flare - bane of airline pilots flying little planes! The result was typically sinking in the last few feet for a plop with a bounce or two afterward, or worse yet driving the mains in hard to set up a crow hop. The ugliest of these took place with a NewCo First Officer in the right seat when we were playing hooky from work on a four-hour "productivity break." That was embarrassing. I figured the problem was that I wasn't flying the 170 often enough given my relatively low time in the airplane, and most of my flights were focused on sightseeing or going somewhere instead of practicing landings.

As I untied and preflighted the plane, I resolved to practice wheel landings. These require a pretty precise idea of how far your wheels are off the ground, as you need almost zero sink at touchdown to prevent a "crow hop." The 170's spring steel landing gear is fairly unforgiving of bad wheel landings, especially on pavement. The usual technique is to come in a bit low, power-on, with no flaps. Over the threshold, you begin a very slow easing off of the power, cutting it completely at the moment of touchdown. Meanwhile you don't really need to flare, as ground effect will slow your sink rate. You ease the wheel back just a smidge when you're about to touch down to bring the sink rate to virtually nil, then at the moment of touchdown you bring it forward an inch or so to eliminate any tendency to crow-hop.

This being my first 170 flight sans passengers, it leapt off the ground and climbed like a scalded cat. I didn't know the old girl was capable of such performance! I was at pattern altitude before I turned downwind and was cleared for the option. My first landing was almost an exact repeat of my performance with the NewCo FO. I flared for what seemed like forever, and was convinced that my tires were only an inch or two off the pavement. I was spring-loaded to push the yoke forward on touchdown, and must have got tired of waiting because I jumped the gun. It turned out my wheels were feet, not inches, off the ground, and my premature push drove them right into the pavement. The impact pushed the tail down, increasing the wing's angle of attack, which sent me airborne, where my nose-down elevator input drove the mains back into the ground again. This is what I mean by crow-hopping. It is the taildragger equivalent of a Pilot-Induced Oscillation, except it's physics-induced. There's nothing the pilot can do to stop it but go around or pull up and convert the landing to a full-stall three-pointer if the runway is long enough and directional control isn't a problem. I went around.

On the second pattern, I reminded myself that the ground was a lot lower than I thought it was, and to not put in the forward yoke until I felt myself touch down. This time it worked out perfectly. I timed the flare perfectly, felt the upwind wheel squeak across the blacktop, nudged the yoke forward to keep it planted, then the downwind wheel came down. I held the tailwheel up as I slowed, then gently lowered it and used aft elevator to keep positive traction as the rudder lost effectiveness. Perfection.

By the time I had a half-hour on the Hobbs meter, I'd made five landings. Only the first was awful, two were beautiful, and the other two involved a bit of skipping but nothing horrible. I felt a whole lot better about having the right picture in the flare. As I tied down the old bird, it occurred to me that my thirty minutes of simple pattern work were more challenging - and more fun - than any flying I had done at work in months. It's a shame so few airline pilots fly on their days off. Too many associate the very act of controlling an aircraft with workaday drudgery.

This Friday, I landed the JungleBus on Minneapolis' Runway 12L in a sixty degree crosswind that was gusting to 36 knots. There was moderate turbulence most of the way down final, and the airspeed was bouncing around plus or minus ten knots of my approach speed. The autothrottles kept trying to alternate between unspooling the engines and firewalling them, so I overrode them to keep the thrust in a reasonable range. As I flared, I kicked in nearly full left rudder to swing the nose around to runway heading, while putting in enough aileron to drop the right wing and keep the plane from drifting. I touched down smoothly on the right wheel, lowered the nose just a touch, then increased aileron deflection as the left wing came down, the left main touched, and I derotated. The wind gusted mightily as I deployed the thrust reversers and braked, but quick work on the rudders kept us right on centerline. I got quite a few handshakes, thumbs up, and "well done"s from the passengers as they deplaned. It was a pretty beautiful landing, if I say so myself.

Truth be told, virtually every airline pilot out there can land well in those conditions and far worse, and does so on a semi-regular basis. That said, I've noticed a definite improvement in my JungleBus landings since I started flying taildraggers. I notice drift a lot earlier and am a lot less tolerant of it. Most modern airliners, by design and by sheer mass, will tolerate a certain amount of hamfistedness. Most old light taildraggers will not. I'm not saying I'm ready to take on a Pitts just yet, but it sure is nice to occasionally fly something that taxes - and builds - my stick-and-rudder skills a bit more than the JungleBus.

Pops and I

2011-09-30T08:29:00.000-07:00

I can't say I inherited the flying bug from Dad, but he certainly had it long before I. He wanted to learn to fly before he got married or had kids, but never found the time and money to do it. When I was six or seven and still enamored of the romance of the rails, Dad went so far as to attend ground school, passing his Private Pilot written test with what I recall was a pretty high score. He was about to begin flight training when Mom got pregnant with Kid #4 of an eventual six. Time and money got scarce again for quite some time.

Dad never showed anything but delight and support when I co-opted his dream and started flight lessons at thirteen years old. I always told him I'd teach him how to fly when I got my CFI, and we talked about buying an airplane together. We'd page through Trade-A-Plane together, circling particularly good deals. We talked for years about building an Avid Flyer or similar kitplane. Mom would get furious at him for building my hopes up, but I always understood they were pretty much pipe dreams. In the last ten years I've offered many times to teach Dad how to fly; he's always turned me down, proclaiming that these days he's happy to just ride along with me when he can.

As soon as I joined the C170 club, I planned to take it to EAA Oshkosh this year. Dawn was a bit "Oshkoshed-out" after last year's frenetic show, so I asked Dad if he'd like to come with me. It would be his first time to the show, though he'd wanted to go for some time; he readily agreed. Unlike last year, the weather cooperated nicely and the morning of July 26th dawned clear and still over KCFE as we loaded the C170 with coolers and camping gear. We took off and turned into the rising sun, skirting past Crystal and Anoka under Minneapolis' Class B airspace. It was a fantastic flight. Dad loved the 170. Ripon was far more sane this year, and we landed on 36L without incident except for a short query about a "Yellow Dot" that looked awfully green! Best of all, there was one spot left for us with all the other Cessna 170s in the vintage aircraft camping area. It was a prime spot just a hop, skip, and a jump from show center.

We were only able to stay two nights but were able to see a little of everything. Dad was like a kid in a candy store; he had a goofy grin on his face almost the entire time. It was a lot of fun to see, because it reminded me of my first time at Oshkosh. Camping in the vintage area was much different and far better experience than the North 40. People were coming up to look at the 170 and talk old taildraggers the entire time. We watched the airshows from near our plane, cooked and ate dinner right out front, and walked up to Camp Scholler to watch Top Gun at the "Fly-In Theater."

The weather was fantastic until Wednesday morning, when we were planning to leave. We waited out the rain in the B-29's bomb bay (that's something you don't do everyday!) and the exhibition hangars, then packed up and snuck out of town during a noontime break in the weather. Low ceilings forced us to turn around only 60 miles away, and we backtracked to Wautoma to hang out for several hours in their brand new pilot lounge. A mix of local characters and stranded pilots headed for the show kept things interesting for a few hours, and then the ceilings finally lifted enough to scud run a few miles, find a hole, and get on top. We reached beautiful flying conditions thirty miles southwest of Wautoma, and the rest of the flight was nice. It was dusk when we finally touched down at KCFE. It was more challenging - and more fun - than any flying I've done at work in a while.

I don't know if Dad will ever learn to fly, but he's certainly one of my favorite passengers. We're already making plans for Oshkosh next year. And who knows...maybe someday we'll build that plane after all. We had our eyes on the Rans S-6S at Oshkosh!

Latitude 62

2011-09-28T09:07:00.000-07:00

Here's the last installment in a rather delayed series of posts about this summer's motorcycle trip to Alaska and back. There are a fair number of photos so I'll try to keep the text to a minimum.

We stayed in Anchorage for two nights. Brad sold his KLR650 almost immediately upon arrival - getting $1000 more for it than he paid in Portland! - and his wife Amber joined us for few days. I was struck by just how aviation-centric a city Anchorage is, from busy Merrill Field to the seaplanes on Lake Hood to PANC, where a steady stream of cargo 747s take off and land. Everywhere we went, there were airplanes of every description flying overhead.

The ride to Seward was beautiful, as were the surroundings of the city itself. Weather prevented us from doing the full hike up to the Harding Icefield, but we did spend some time at Exit Glacier.

We spent an afternoon watching red salmon running and the bald eagles hunting them.

Brad and Amber had to fly home after one night in Seward. The next day, Dawn and I hiked out to Tonsina Point on Resurrection Bay. The initially rainy day gave way to sunshine that lit up the surrounding snow-covered peaks. We lingered on the beach, enjoying the moment. This was literally the end of the road; everything from here on in would be homeward bound.

We rode up to Denali National Park on June 29, pausing in Anchorage for lunch with an old friend from Horizon. We spent the night outside the park in a wall tent at a busy, cheery hostel. Early the next morning we rode to Park Headquarters and boarded a camper bus for the 85-mile trip to Wonder Lake. The day was mostly cloudy, preventing any viewing of Mt. McKinley or surrounding peaks, which was a little disappointing but not at all unexpected. There was a ton of wildlife to see, including grizzleys, caribou, dall sheep, moose, and fox. Just before we arrived at Wonder Lake, the clouds unexpectedly parted and the top of the mountain came out, remarkably imposing even from 30 miles away. After we made camp and ate lunch, we went for a hike to the McKinley River bar - and scurried back just ahead of a wall of rain that lasted into the next day. Friday's bus ride out of the park was a soggy, foggy affair with no wildlife viewing - until the bus driver abruptly braked and gasped in exclamation. A large Lynx eyed the bus suspiciously, tentatively steeped out of the brush not ten feet ahead of us, and trotted across the road. The bus driver said it was her first time seeing a Lynx up close in 32 years of driving.

The next stage of our trip involved rejoining the Alaska Highway for an 800 mile backtrack to Haines Junction, Yukon. After leaving Denali on Friday, July 1, we rode 200 miles through rain showers to Delta Junction, AK. The next day threatened rain but it mercifully held off through our transit of the road construction and frost heaves in Yukon Territory. We stopped for the night at a cozy little cabin on the shores of beautiful, storm-whipped Kluane Lake.

We left the Alcan for good the next morning in Haines Junction, YT. We had heard from many people how beautiful the 170 mile Haines Highway is, but even after everything we'd seen so far it left us slack-jawed. We arrived in Haines later than planned because we kept stopping to admire the scenery and snap photos. We also saw five bears (2 black, 3 griz) in as many miles. It ended up being our favorite stretch of road of the entire trip.

You don't come to Alaska for the civilization, but Haines turned out to be my favorite town/city of the trip. It is far less touristy than the other towns of the Southeast, thanks to little cruise ship traffic, and the surroundings are stunning. I could've spent a few more days there, but we had a ferry to catch on the morning of July 4.

I'd been looking forward to spending Independence Day in Alaska, but as it turned out we left Haines too late for the afternoon festivities there and arrived at Juneau too late for their events, which took place at midnight! The five hour trip on the M/V Malaspina made up for it with great scenery and whale-watching. Juneau itself was unimpressive at first due to six docked cruise ships that had spewed their buffet-grazing inhabitants all over downtown...and I may have been inordinately influenced by some jackass who shouted "get a Harley!" at me as I rode by. Once the cruisers waddled back to their ships, Juneau made a much better impression with its cute, compact downtown and the impressive Mendenhall Glacier a few miles away in the 'burbs.

The next day, we rented a 1959 Cessna 172 on bush tires with Alaskan Boyce Bingham along as flight instructor and tour guide. Our route took us 80 nm northwest to Glacier Bay. We skirted mountain edges for an eye-to-eye with mountain goats. We flew up a glacier, wheeled round at its head and followed it all the way down to its terminus at a hundred feet off the deck. It was honestly about the coolest thing I've ever done in an airplane, and it moved Dawn to tears. Boyce and I talked a lot about flying in Alaska, and I'll admit I was tempted to call NewCo then and there to quit airline flying in favor of an Alaskan bush job. Kids, if you want to build some quality flight time in an adventurous, beautiful locale and don't mind hard work and challenging conditions, Alaska's your place.

That afternoon we boarded the M/V Taku for the 30-hour trip down the inside passage to Prince Rupert, BC. We went to sleep in a steady grey drizzle and woke up to fog-shrouded Petersburg and the spectacular Wrangell Narrows. The weather improved as we droned our way south to Ketchikan, where heavy seaplane and bald eagle activity kept the shutters whirring as we docked. That night we were rocked to sleep by heavy swells in the open waters of the Dixon Entrance, and awoke at 2am to be unceremoniously dumped in the sleeping hamlet of Prince Rupert. Thankfully beautiful weather afforded us a few more hours of sleep while surreptitiously camped out behind the visitor's centre.

It took two days on to make our way across British Columbia on Highway 16. The first was beautiful weather and we camped just past Prince George. We awoke early the next morning to heavy rain and an utterly soaked tent. We unhappily packed up and hit the road already soaked to the skin. Our short 220 mile day in cold pouring rain was the most miserable of the trip. We'd been planning on camping in Jasper but jettisoned that plan despite the very cheapest hotel room being $165. We covered the entire room with drying gear and headed out to explore the pretty town. The next day, the weather was much better for our 170 mile ride of the spectacular Icefields Parkway. Our frequent stops included a hike on the famous Athabasca Glacier. In Banff we camped just outside of town; a soak in the nearby hot springs was a great end to the day.

The ride out of Banff the next morning featured the last bit of noteworthy scenery for a while, as the next 1000 miles involved droning across the Great Plains on the Trans-Canadian Highway. We knocked it out in two long days to Winnipeg, then dropped down into the states on I-29, stopping to visit a college friend in Grand Forks. It was my first visit since graduating in 2002, and I'd forgotten what a nice town it is in the summer. We spent a night with Dawn's parents in South Dakota, and finally pulled into our driveway on the afternoon of July 13, nearly four weeks after we set out. I'd put over 8000 miles on my BMW, and Dawn rode her FZ6 for 6500 miles on her second trip as a new rider. It was a fantastic trip we'll remember our whole lives. Next up? Dawn wants to do the Dragon, Blue Ridge Parkway, and Skyline Drive next spring. What can I say but "yes, Dear"?

I, Robot

2011-09-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

The aviation world has been a bit aflutter the past two weeks over an article that recently came out in the mainstream press and was subsequently picked up by various media outlets. The article, available here, was reprinted with several alternate headlines, the most sensational and popular of which asked, “are pilots forgetting how to fly?” Predictably, the article has stirred up a variety of strong opinion among pilots, with attitudes ranging from outrage to derision to hearty approval.

I actually thought the article was fairly well done for something written by and for laymen. There were some factual errors and I don’t agree with all the author’s conclusions, but there’s a pretty big kernel of truth in there. I wouldn’t say pilots have “forgotten how to fly,” but there has been a pretty fundamental shift in our role and duties over the past 20 years, and we are only now seeing some of the unintended consequences of that shift.

Any discussion of airliner automation needs to begin with an affirmation of its value. I do not like that automation makes my job less interesting or that it has decreased the value of my skills as a pilot, but it has undoubtedly made aviation a great deal safer. There was a time when good pilots, real stick-and-rudder types, were crashing airliners with frightening regularity. No matter how “good” one is, humans are fallible creatures, and in the course of operating a complex machine will inevitably make mistakes. When these mistakes take place in times of stress, in environments that inundate one with information to be sorted and interpreted, they can compound unnoticed until no amount of airmanship can save the ship. Automation decreased the pilot’s workload, sorted the information, arranged it in more easily understood formats, and trained an unblinking eye on the pilot, alerting him to all his most common foibles. The results speak for themselves.

So while we’ve seen an uptick in accidents that can be attributed to automation – or rather, the way we’ve interfaced with automated systems – one would do well to remember how many lives have likely been saved by increased automation. That said, our strength as an industry has always been our willingness to ferret out our weaknesses and confront them head-on. A spate of loss-of-control accidents is disconcerting no matter how low the overall accident rate remains, and I for one am very happy to see “the experts” recognizing the problem and doing some hard thinking about how to solve it.

The degradation of stick and rudder skills is one negative side-effect of automation, but not the most serious one in my mind, despite the article’s emphasis of it. It varies according to the aircraft, airline, and personal preferences. The JungleBus has one of the more automated, integrated cockpits out there, but my airline takes a pretty reasonable line on the use of automation. They encourage its use but caution that it should only be used at the level most appropriate to attain the goals of safety, passenger comfort, and economy – in that order. To that end, it is left to the PIC to determine what level of automation to use at any given time, so long as the pilots remain proficient in the use of all levels of automation, including its complete absence. My last airline took a similarly common-sense approach. There are, however, airlines that require automation to be used to the maximum extent possible, particularly overseas. As an example, there is a well-known British airline that prohibits its pilots from using manual thrust on the A320 except in abnormal situations.

I’ve flown with pilots who prefer to turn on the autopilot at 1000’ on departure and leave it on until 200’ on approach. I’ve also known a few guys who, left to their own devices, would hand-fly everything raw-data from takeoff to touchdown. Most of those I’ve flown with, however, are like me: hand-fly down low when the weather is good, use the automation when the weather is crappy or when in busy, complex airspace. This typically results in anywhere between three and twenty minutes of hand-flying per leg. Beech 1900 types excepted, most regional and domestic pilots probably hand-fly anywhere from 2 to 10 hours per month, long-haul pilots considerably less. Most of this time is spent in takeoff, acceleration, climb, visual or easy instrument approach, and landing. Flight directors and autothrottles (where installed) are most commonly left on.

This alone does not lead to anyone “forgetting how to fly,” least of all anyone who had a decent bit of flight time before the airlines. The most autopilot-loving JungleBus pilot has to turn it off to land, and most do a beautiful job of doing so. It does mean, however, that if automation is unexpectedly lost – especially in an unfamiliar flight regime – handling the aircraft without benefit of autopilot, autothrottles, or flight director will probably not be second nature. It will require some concentration, potentially at a time when multiple anomalies of an ambiguous nature are clamoring for attention of their own. The master warning and caution lights have loud alarms that sound with each new occurrence, but only the quiet voice of your first flight instructor reminds you to “fly the airplane!” It’s understandable that sometimes the former get more attention than the latter.

In my opinion, however, the real problem with over-reliance on automation has less to do with stick-and-rudder skills and more to do with how it has affected our habits as professional pilots. Automation was supposed to free us to think more, but instead has freed us to think less. Consider the enroute phase of flight: it’s been so thoroughly automated, there’s precious little left for the pilot to do. Your course is drawn out for you, there is no doubt as to your position, updated weather is at your fingertips, your fuel state at next fix, destination, and alternate is right in front of you, and ATC has become much better about routing aircraft around heavy weather. All of these are good things – nobody is looking to give up positional certainty, accessible weather data, or fuel planning aids - but they are not conducive to keeping one alert and engaged in the flight. It’s too easy to get lulled into passivity, to turn your brain off and let things happen.

This technology-induced torpor can linger beyond cruise into the descent phase. In Dave’s thoughtful post on this same subject, he mentioned that a strong pilot should, when told to cross 40 west of a certain fix at FL250, be able to mentally calculate his descent point in three seconds flat – “tired or not.” Not so long ago, such mathematical process was a baseline requirement of the job; you wouldn’t survive on the line without it. Technological progress has made it possible for weak pilots to fit in. Worse, it has atrophied the brains of some formerly strong pilots.

The JungleBus, like “Fifi”, has a Vertical Navigation (VNAV) system that is very capable – when it works. It can be led astray by operator error, it has some insidious failure modes, and occasionally it does things that are just plain goofy. More than once, manually calculating my descent point as I received a crossing clearance saved my bacon – not from crashing, mind you, but certainly from violating my clearance. Yet, I often witness otherwise good pilots whose very first instinct upon receiving a crossing clearance is to enter it into the FMS. Worse, when asked where they plan to start down, many do not have an answer ready. The steady stream of ASAP reports for busted clearances my company receives (and this is true of other companies operating VNAV-equipped aircraft) suggests that my experience is typical. Yet, you are far more likely to be busted on a line check for failing to enter a crossing restriction in the FMS than you are for failing to mentally back up the FMS.

I do not wish to imply that the majority of airline pilots out there are weak or lazy. The opposite is true: most wish to do their job to the best of their abilities, and expend considerable effort in doing so. I am saying that we have been unintentionally training our pilots to value the technology in their aircraft over their own common sense. We have made it passé for a pilot to fly by his wits and then wonder why those wits have become dulled with disuse. This is becoming evermore true as we start pilots on technologically advanced aircraft ever earlier in their careers, to the point that we have pilots being hired at the regionals today whose very first flight lessons were in Garmin-1000 equipped Cessna 172s.

So long as the technology works perfectly, it’s a mere academic issue. Like the JungleBus’ VNAV, technology seldom works perfectly, and is always subject to outright failure. The real question, then, becomes “what happens when the automation quits?” How our pilots handle that is the real test of our reordered priorities. The recent cases of Colgan 3407, Turkish 1951, and Air France 447 are not encouraging. In each case the crew had an abrupt and unexpected transition from full automation to partial or full manual control, in the latter two cases coupled with insidious or confusing failure modes, and they did not handle them well. I can honestly say that just about every messed up situation I’ve seen in both the Q400 and the JungleBus happened because the automation abruptly quit or did something we weren’t expecting, and we handled the transition to manual control poorly. In most cases it was because we spent too much time asking “what’s it doing now?” and “how do we fix it?” instead of just pushing the big red button and flying it like the big 172 it is.

The good news is this: pilots like to be pilots. With some changes I think we can restore a proper balance no matter how advanced our aircraft are. Firstly, an adjustment in automation philosophy is in order (at some airlines more than others). I think my airline’s policy is a good starting point: fly at the level of automation most conducive to safety, passenger comfort and economy, and leave it up to the PIC which level best attains those goals. However, I think we should also emphasize the importance of regular exposure to all levels of automation, including manual thrust and raw data, in various phases of flight, in order to maintain proficiency in all levels. Training and checking should be conducted at all levels of automation, whether the FAA requires it or not.

Secondly, we should adjust procedures to keep pilots engaged in the more automated phases of flight. In cruise, I would suggest pilots be required to complete a navigational log, perhaps collocated with the expanded flight plan section of the release. Passing over or abeam each planned waypoint, the pilots would be required to enter time, fuel load, difference from planned time enroute and fuel burn, estimated time and fuel to the next waypoint & destination, and nearest suitable airport. This is already SOP at a few airlines, but not many. It may smack of busy-work to some, but I think it would be useful as a means of keeping pilots’ brains alert and focused on the flight, as well as serving as an invaluable backup in case of unexpected loss of navigational capability. With newspapers, crossword puzzles, laptops, Angry Birds, and napping all banished from airliner cockpits, I will only half-jokingly suggest that each pilot be issued a sextant and mariner’s almanac to take sightings to back up the GPS.

Lastly and most importantly, we need to adjust our training and checking to emphasize the necessity of brainwork. Technology and mental skill ought to be mutually beneficial and neither should be employed to the exclusion of the other. Simulator instructors and check airmen should make a regular practice of failing the automation in unexpected and artful ways as a means of ensuring that pilots are actively backing up their technology and are continuously prepared to revert to lower levels of automation. Ultimately, the most difficult thing about all this is that it will require a certain change in the training mindset at many airlines. With training footprints slashed to a bare minimum, the goal has become preparing the pilot to pass his checkride in a minimum of time. The focus needs to shift back to preparing the pilot for whatever life on the line throws at him, in particular the sneaky problems that have a way of snowballing unnoticed. Vee One cuts are serious and it’s good that we practice them, but they’re not particularly subtle, nor do they require much thought beyond rote repetition. We need to move beyond “checking the boxes” mode and include opportunities for real learning in every training and checking event. This will require more simulator time and therefore increased training budgets, but I believe the result will be more thoughtful pilots more attuned to their aircraft and better equipped to handle unusual problems.

While the industry sorts out the big-picture stuff, we as individual pilots can take a few simple steps to maintain a balanced relationship with the automation in our aircraft. First, use it as a backup to your own airmanship and common sense. Calculate your descent profiles mentally and then use VNAV. When ATC clears you direct to a fix, have a pretty good idea of what your heading should be so you can check the route your FMS or GPS is proposing for reasonableness. Secondly, make a regular practice of flying under various conditions with reduced levels of automation. You can put together a regimen. I try to fly at least one approach each trip without autothrottles, and one every other trip raw-data. I also occasionally practice fully-automatic RNAV approaches, something we do in real life very little. If you are an FO, explain your habit of practicing all levels of automation to your Captain at the start of the trip. If you’re a Captain, encourage your FOs to do the same.

My third suggestion is to ensure you are paying close attention to what is on your FMA (Flight Mode Annunciator) or equivalent display at all times. Return to it often. It should be as central to your scan as the attitude indicator. Many of the “what’s it doing now?” moments I’ve seen occurred because the autopilot and/or autothrottles were in a different mode than the pilot thought he had selected. And finally, when you do find yourself asking “what’s it doing now?”, make it your very first step to fly the airplane, reverting to lower levels of automation as necessary, and not succumbing to the temptation to troubleshoot until the airplane is going where you want it to.

All these guidelines are applicable to advanced airplanes from glass-equipped C172s on up through A380s. Flight instructors, drill them into your students from the very first flight lesson. I generally believe that glass cockpits in training aircraft are overkill or even counterproductive for early flight training. I may very well revise that opinion, however, if their use results in a new generation of professional pilots who start their careers with a healthy and balanced approach to automation.

Up the Alcan (Part 2)

2011-08-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

Yikes...where has the summer gone? Ahem, where was I?...

We rode out of camp at 8am on the morning of June 23rd but only made it a half mile before the promise of hot breakfast lured us to a roadside diner. Our bellies full, we continued up the Alcan, passing a huge herd of bison in the first few miles. We had seen another large herd - or perhaps the same one? - a few miles outside of camp the previous night, as well as a large Grizzly sitting alongside the road, eating berries and paying very little attention to the continuous stream of gawkers.

We crossed into Yukon Territory, pausing to take a photo of the welcome sign with our bikes. Some of our biker friends from the campground stopped, and we took their pictures for them. It was like this throughout the day and week, continuously running into folks we'd seen elsewhere on the road. Everyone was more or less headed to the same place, and everyone on roughly the same pace. It was nice to see familiar faces out in the wilderness.

We passed through Watson Lake with its signpost forest and settled in for a long slog of straight, flat road with little to see other than a few bears we glimpsed as we rode by. This was what I had thought the Yukon would be like. But it was, in fact, a small sampling, for the Yukon would prove to be much more diverse and beautiful than I'd imagined. After an hour of flat cruising, we ascended into the Cassiar Mountains, the road meandering high above the Rancheria River. These are not tall mountains, persay, but their low treelines and bald ridges give them a wild look. Dark clouds leered over the peeks and spit out menacing rain shafts, but the road always turned before we got to them. Once, three fat raindrops slapped onto my visor. It was the only rain we encountered between Portland and Alaska, which is truly astounding if you know something of the region's climate.

In Swift River we stopped for gas and lunch; the roadhouse proprietor happened to be an avowed Minnesota Twins fan. Near Swan Lake, where the Alcan briefly dips back down into British Columbia, we saw three apparently wild mustangs. At Teslin, we crossed the scariest steel-grated bridge I've ever had the displeasure of riding across, which also happened to be the longest bridge on the Alcan. I rode onto it at around 40 mph and was instantly weaving like a madman. This is fairly normal when riding on steel grating, and while it feels uncomfortable, the best thing is to stay loose, not lock up the handlebars, and accept the unstable feeling. This one, though, wanted to throw the BMW into the guardrails. About halfway across I got it under control and dared to look in my mirrors at Dawn. She looked steady as a rock on her FZ6.

Past Teslin Lake, we passed through a beautiful valley in the White Range that reminded me of the majestic Våltedalen we'd driven through in Norway. It was now late afternoon, and surprisingly hot. Whitehorse was a welcome sight, and a much cuter, nicer town than one would think. All the other northern towns to this point had been fairly ugly, functional and industrial. Whitehorse has the advantage of some quaint architecture from the gold rush days, and has obviously been prettied up for the tourists. It occupies a nice spot on the Yukon River, has a great number of scenic, historical, and sporting destinations within reasonable driving distance, and is easily reached with airline service from Vancouver, Calgary, and Edmonton. It would, I think, make a very good vacation destination in it's own right.

After doing some shopping, we set up camp at the Robert Service Campground on the edge of the city, headed back downtown for a few brews, and returned to cook dinner at nearly 10pm. It felt like 6PM in the warm evening sunlight. In camp, we talked to our neighbor, an old-timer who, we later learned, was returning home from a doctor's appointment at which he learned he only had a few months left to live. He regaled us with stories of life in the logging camps back in the 50's and driving heavy trucks down the Alcan in the 60's. While we ate, he wandered across the campground and chatted with other campers, then returned to crack ribald jokes and expound on his favorite pasttime, gold panning. He had just spent a few days panning on a friend's claim, and he showed us a vial containing 10 or 15 grams of gold - at today's prices, a pretty good payoff for a guy in his 80s panning recreationally. Finally, after midnight, we had to excuse ourselves to get some sleep. In the still-light tent we could hear him shuffling across the campground, stopping to greet anyone still awake. I felt bad for the guy; he struck me as a lonely man who wanted nothing more than to have someone to talk to for his last few months.

Friday morning we left Whitehorse with a little bit of trepidation, for we were to finally ride on the stretch of road that everyone had warned us about. Thus far, the Alcan had been in better shape than the average country road in Minnesota. Past Destruction Bay, we were warned, it was far worse - potholes, frost heaves, and a hundred miles of perpetual construction consisting of teeth-jarring washboards alternating with thick, loose gravel, all of it obscured by thick, choking dust. As it turned out, we didn't need to wait for Destruction Bay: there was a 10-mile stretch just outside of Whitehorse, and it was tough riding. Brad, of course, was delighted to be off pavement. He tore off ahead on his KLR650 at top speed, soon came flying the opposite direction, and then passed us a second time. I was happy to be done with the construction zone but worried about what awaited us past Destruction Bay.

Shortly after, we passed a huge Grizzly, and a bit after that, a sow with two cubs. Wisely, none of us slowed down or turned around for that. We afterward learned that a sow with two cubs had charged a motorcyclist in that area only the day prior. Approaching Haines Junction, the pavement got rollier and more potholed, making it necessary to pay attention to the road rather than staring at the majestic wall of jagged ice appearing on the horizon. With each bend, the St. Elias Mountains became more massive and beautiful. I got a sudden sense of just how far north we were; just on the other side of those mountains was Alaska!

We filled up in Haines Junction and continued northwest to Kluane Lake, passing a few more bears along the way (ho, hum!). The lake was strikingly gorgeous, ringed as it was by the peaks it reflected in the still morning. A gravel ATV trail ran between the road and lake, and Brad couldn't resist the urge to dive off the pavement and onto the gravel for a mile or two. Along the southwest portion of the lake, the pavement was new and the road was curvy. It was superbly enjoyable riding, carving through the turns between glassy water and boulder-strewn mountainside. We were joined by another rider on a mid-90s BMW R100GS; he had camped near us at Whitehorse and I had briefly talked to him the night before.

At Destruction Bay we stopped for gas and lunch. As we fueled up, a couple of restored early-30s Model A Coupes pulled up behind us. Suddenly my decision to take a 26-year old motorcycle with 90,000 miles on it far into the North Country didn't seem so ballsy! I talked to the rider of the other BMW, a middle aged Alaskan named John, and invited him to have lunch with us at the diner. He accepted, and we soon found out quite a bit about him. He'd been living in Alaska for 30 years and riding for most of that time, making the trek down the Alcan and back at least once every year. He works in the schools, and therefore has the summers off to travel on his motorcycle. He is also a pilot, and owns a Super Cub on bush tires. The lunch stretched on as we chatted about motorcycles, traveling, flying, and Alaska. Finally we decided we could put off the ride ahead no longer.

The frost heaves started almost immediately after Destruction Bay. They were dramatic, but not terribly hard to ride. You'd just stand up a bit in the pegs, knees bent, and let the bike roll over the heave. It looked much more uncomfortable for those driving RVs, particularly since many of them neglected to slow down much. The potholes were frequent and sometimes spanned the entire lane, but these too were fairly easy to negotiate on a bike. Only once or twice did I fail to swerve when I should've, and was rewarded with a bone-crushing blow to my backside. The key, we found, was spreading out rather than riding together, with each rider choosing his or her line. We stopped for a break after forty or fifty miles of heaves, and Dawn was all smiles; "this is fun riding!" she exclaimed.

Shortly after that we passed an orange sign reporting road construction for the next 150 km. In fact, it wasn't all under construction, but a lot of it was. The road alternated periodically between smooth and grooved pavement, short gravel breaks, and long stretches of gravel. After a while we got used to the thin, compacted gravel, and were riding at nearly freeway speeds when we barreled full-bore into a thick layer of deep, loose rock that sent me skidding every which way. After that I was more careful, at least when beginning a new stretch of gravel.

A few times we were stopped by flaggers and had to wait fifteen or twenty minutes for a pilot car, which gave us time to get off the bikes briefly and talk with the road crew or with John, who was still riding with us. By late afternoon, we were in Beaver Creek, the end of the notorious stretch of road and our original destination for the day. We decided to press on to Tok, Alaska, which would put us one easy dayride from Anchorage. We spent a few minutes at the border taking triumphant photos with the welcome sign, and then marveled at the fabulously smooth road that began as soon as we crossed into Alaska. It was in fact a bit of Potemkin one-upmanship on the Alaskans' part, for the "normal" highway began a few miles down the road. It was still quite a bit better than what we'd been riding on in the western Yukon; it seems the Alaskans have figured out a better way to build roads on permafrost.

It was an enjoyable 90 miles from the border to Tok through what I later learned was prime moose habitat; we didn't see any. Tok itself is a fairly nondescript little town strung out alongside the Alaskan Highway. John had gone ahead of us from Beaver Creek, but had given us the name of the RV park he'd be staying at; we readily found it, set up camp, met up with John, and all headed to dinner at Fast Eddy's. We took our time eating, talking, and laughing, until I realized all the other patrons had left and the waitresses were casting anxious glances our way. It was after 11pm. We paid the bill and ambled back to camp under a bright sun clinging tenaciously to the sky.

The next morning John stopped in to say goodbye during our breakfast, and that was the last we saw of our latest road friend, although he later called to make sure we made it to Anchorage alright. We took our time packing, knowing we had "only" 300 miles to cover. We rolled out of town at the scandalously late hour of 10am. The "Tok Cutoff" proved to be a nice ride from the start, and it only got more scenic as it crossed the eastern remnants of the Alaska Range and skirted the eye-popping majesty of 18,000 ft Mt. Sanford in the Wrangell Mountains. We choked on the fumes of dozens of RVs through one last stretch of road construction, then took a late lunch in Glenallen. We also discovered that Brad's chain had stretched so much that he could no longer tighten it, and it had become dangerously loose. With no motorsports stores in town, we had little choice but to proceed - carefully! - to Anchorage.

West of Glennallen on the Glenn Highway, the weather turned ugly and we got rained on for 15 minutes, our first honest rain of the trip. I wasn't about to complain, and in any case it settled down to only occasional light showers by the time we got to the Palmer Glacier. From here to Palmer, the road tightened and twisted and became rather slow for being one of the main thoroughfares in Alaska. I'd become rather used to the wide, fast Alaska Highway. Dawn had fun with it, leading us through hairpins and chicanes with gusto. We happened upon Palmer rather suddenly and incongruously; after 2500 miles of mostly rural and wilderness riding, we were suddenly thrust into the middle of American urban sprawl with all its usual trappings.

The last few miles into Anchorage took place on a four-lane divided highway, something we hadn't seen much of since leaving I-5 near the Washington-BC border. My first impressions of Anchorage were unremarkable. Normal houses, normal strip malls, normal chain stores, normal freeway traffic. There were "Beware of Moose" signs on the highway but we didn't see any. Low clouds obscured the Chugach Mountains. My first indication that I was somewhere special came when the highway passed by Merrill Field, Anchorage's main GA airport. I was astounded to see row after row after row of small airplanes of every make, color, and condition, for nearly a mile straight! And then I recalled that many GA aircraft are based at the international airport, and a great deal more on floats at Lakes Hood and Spenard. All this, for a lowly borough of less than 300,000 people! I was clearly in pilot heaven.

And so we arrived in Anchorage after six unforgettable days and 2530 miles under our wheels. Yet, our trip was just beginning, for Dawn and I had eighteen more days to explore the north country and work our way home in a leisurely fashion. The Alcan was an adventure but we had more of that in store, plus a great deal of scenery, wildlife, and good riding ahead of us - all that, and one incredible flight that confirmed Alaska really is pilot heaven.

Up the Alcan

2011-08-01T12:27:00.000-07:00

It was an idea forged over a campfire on a freezing spring night in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania. It was the last night of last year’s ride up the east coast with my friend Brad, and so we talked about future trips as we huddled around the fire and drank cheap beer. “Why not ride to Alaska?” Brad suggested, and I loved the idea. Alaska would be the only state I had not visited. The trip was ambitious and adventurous. In 1978, my dad drove up the Alaska Highway in a beat-up $200 station wagon – it was his pot-smoking hippy phase – and as a child his tales of a lonely gravel road threaded through the vast, untamed wilderness sparked my imagination and my developing wanderlust. By the time the embers were dying down, Brad and I agreed that we would ride our motorcycles to Alaska in 2011.

I wasn’t quite sure how Dawn would react to the plan. She didn’t fret about cost or safety or how long I’d be gone. She asked to come along. After all, she had already logged nearly 5000 miles on the back of my BMW. When I mentioned it would be tough to fit everything needed for an extended trip on my bike with the two of us, she concluded she would simply get her motorcycle license and buy her own bike to ride. It was ambitious, even daring, but I didn’t doubt that she could hack it. Dawn is a quick learner with a very good head on her shoulders; she’s also tough and stubborn and refuses to quit when things get rough.

And so, on the morning of June 20th, 2011, three heavily loaded motorcycles accelerated onto Interstate 5, beginning the long journey northward from Portland, Oregon. Brad was on a Kawasaki KLR-650 he had bought specifically for the trip; he was planning on selling it in Anchorage, as he couldn’t get enough time off work for the return trip. I was riding my trusty 26-year old BMW K100RS, which I had repositioned from Minneapolis the previous weekend (1050 miles on Saturday, 750 on Sunday). And Dawn was astride a sexy, purring black-and-silver 2005 Yamaha FZ6 that we had bought in Portland in February. This was Dawn’s seventh day of street riding, her previous experience being a six-day trip down the coast a few months earlier.

Leaving our house on my 1050 mile day while repositioning my BMW from Minneapolis to Portland; camping in Three Forks, Montana; our bikes meet at last.

The stretch of Interstate from Portland to Bellingham, WA, was thankfully the last we would encounter for the next three weeks. We stopped for gas in Tacoma – our bikes’ range is 190-220 miles, but we generally fueled up at 120-160 miles, or sooner in areas where gas was scarce – and had lunch at the Skagit River Brewing Co in Mount Vernon. After lunch we took a little time to troubleshoot Dawn’s electrical system, which was acting up again after I thought I’d fixed it on the previous trip. The culprit turned out to be aftermarket lighting installed by the previous owner, which could be deactivated simply by riding with the headlights on “dim” (still blindingly bright). That solved, we crossed into Canada at Sumas and joined Trans-Canada Hwy 1 northward into the Cascades.

Group photo in Vancouver, WA; lunch at Skagit River Brewing Co.

Through the Frasier Canyon, we let Dawn lead so she could go as slow as she liked, which turned out to be fairly fast, and she gave Brad and I a few tense moments when she entered sharp turns awkwardly or with the brakes still on. After a while, she seemed to get the hang of it again, and her entries became clean and her lines rock-solid. Brad and several other riders we encountered would later marvel at how well she rode, considering her new-rider status. After ten hours and 450 miles of riding, we stopped to make camp at a sunny spot in Cache Creek, BC. We spent an enjoyable night chatting, cooking Jambalaya, enjoying a sundowner or two, and visiting with other travelers around the campground.

Camping in Cache Creek, BC.

The next morning we struck camp, ate a quick breakfast at the world’s worst Subway, and headed north on BC Hwy 97. This stretch is known as the “Cariboo Highway,” and I had imagined that from here northward it would be fairly desolate. Not so, for the highway was heavily traveled, there were frequent towns, and I saw no “Cariboo” or other wildlife. Nevertheless, it was a pretty stretch through rolling grasslands ringed by distant mountains. By lunchtime we were at Quesnel, and having noticed the profusion of A&W’s in Canada, we stopped for Spicy Mama Burgers and Root Beer Floats. Further along in Prince George, we made a quick food-shopping stop and then pressed onward up Highway 97.

If we were looking for wilderness, we certainly found it north of Prince George. The road straightened through miles of stunted forest and marshland, towns and homesteads thinned rapidly, and traffic became almost nil. I glimpsed a moose in a reedy pond. The 100 miles through McLeod Lake was as lonely a stretch of road as any we encountered on this trip. Past the turnoff for Mackinzie, we shimmied through a low pass and were suddenly enveloped in an alpine wonderland. The Canadian Rockies aren’t as high here as the more famous stretches further south around Jasper and Banff, but for my money the vistas from Hwy 97 are every bit as scenic. They are certainly less crowded.

Perhaps we were paying too much attention to the views, for we missed the turnoff for the provincial park we were planning to camp at. I didn’t realize the mistake until we had grinded our way through 10 miles of bumpy, sloppy road construction; we decided to press on. The town of Lemoray did not have gasoline as depicted in the Milepost guide, and I kept a very close eye on the kilometers remaining to the next town of Chetwynd. As it happened, all of our bikes got exceptionally good gas mileage this entire trip, and even at the 190 mile mark we were nowhere close to running out of gas. Just prior to Chetwynd we saw a nearly deserted RV park advertising Wifi and hot showers, and pulled in for the night. Normally when tent camping I despise RV parks and other highly developed campgrounds (ie KOAs), but on this trip I discovered that a few creature comforts really aren’t all that bad when you’ve spent 12 hours in the saddle.

While Dawn pitched our tent and I made dinner, Brad looked at the Milepost to plan the next day. When he mentioned that a 500-mile push would get us to Liard Hot Springs, I was sold. Liard has been a favorite stopping point on the Alcan since the early days, and a hot soak in the springs sounded like a soothing reward for a long couple of days of riding. We had covered 450 and 460 miles respectively in the first two days, so 500 didn’t sound that bad. I didn’t know what condition the Alcan was in, though. I knew it was all paved except for areas under construction, but I assumed that the farther north we went, the more conditions would deteriorate. Admittedly, the roads had been excellent so far.

Grassy pasture for our faithful steeds; Brad plans our next day's ride.

The next morning we pulled out of the RV park at 7am, ate breakfast, and headed north on the Hudson’s Hope Loop. This would put us on the Alcan 55 miles north of the official start at Dawson Creek. The bypass turned out to be a scenic route and an enjoyably curvy road. We stopped at a roadside rest high above the Peace River and enjoyed the expansive views to the Rockies.

Having skipped Dawson Creek’s “Mile 0” post and associated hubbub, our introduction to the Alaska-Canadian Highway was an unceremonious intersection with a busy road. It took a bit to find a break in the traffic long enough for us to accelerate onto the highway. Once up to speed, I thought for a minute or two about all the planning, the saving, the preparation, the 2800 miles of riding from Minneapolis that it took just to get here, riding the famed Alcan. Then the novelty wore off as I realized I was riding a pretty normal smooth, straight, and heavily traveled highway, four lanes in many areas and two lanes in others with frequent passing sections. The trees were cut back 100-200 feet from the road on each side. There were frequent crossroads that were heavily used by logging and chemical trucks, as well as the swarms of white fleet pickups that made up a good portion of the traffic on the highway. Recreational Vehicles of every size and vintage were also present in large numbers. These basic facts about the highway stayed mostly unchanged for the next 1300 km to Whitehorse, except that RVs increasingly supplanted semis and utility trucks. The days of a lonely gravel track threaded through the wilderness are long, long gone.

The kilometres flew by at freeway speeds. The long stretch northward to Fort Nelson wasn’t particularly exciting, but it wasn’t entirely unenjoyable either. The road is flung across wooded hill country without too much regard for the terrain, which combined with the roadside clearcuts makes for frequent vistas from the crests of each hill. It was a clear, sunny day – our third straight – and the Rockies were still visible to the west. We stopped for gas at Pink Mountain and then rode straight through to Fort Nelson. I dropped behind Dawn for a bit to admire her riding, then lay down on my large tank bag and listened to the BMW’s purr. It’s a very reassuring sound on a long trip, knowing that a crankshaft turning 5000 times every minute and cylinders containing 150,000 violent explosions every hour are perfectly content to do it for mile after mile after mile.

Like many of the northern towns we encountered, Fort Nelson was rather industrial and ugly, but we found good food and friendly service at Dan’s Neighborhood Pub. After lunch we set out on the 300 km push to Liard Hot Springs, on a westerly heading that brought us back across the Canadian Rockies. Here the Milepost cautions of deteriorated road conditions and narrow, winding passages, but in reality most of it still compared quite favorably to mountain roads in the Lower 48.

Eighty kilometers from Fort Nelson, the road climbed to an overlook in the foothills that provided us with our first bruin sighting of the trip, a healthy-sized black bear snacking on berries alongside the road. Dawn and I accelerated smartly past him, while Brad predictably pulled over for a closer look. Past Steamboat, the highway dropped to follow the Tesla River into the Rockies proper. At Summit Pass we pulled over to watch Dall Sheep scampering up the opposite ridge.

Alongside the Macdonald and Toad Rivers, the Milepost’s dire predictions proved a little closer to the mark as the road narrowed, twisted, and heaved its way through a narrow slot in the Rockies. I led the way, and a few decreasing-radius turns on crumbling asphalt had me glancing in my mirrors at Dawn. She never missed a beat. In the middle of one turn, two Dall Sheep hopped onto the road directly in front of me, leading to an interesting few seconds of evasive maneuvering. Shortly thereafter, we came across a female Caribou standing stock still on the centerline, paying no heed to traffic in both directions. These were the only uncomfortably close encounters we had on the trip; although we saw a great deal of wildlife on the Alcan, all of it except this section was wide and straight enough to see animals on or near the road well before we got to them.

The Toad River valley widened before we got to breathtakingly green Muncho Lake, and we could finally enjoy some wide-open vistas of the Rockies as the road became straighter and wider. Shortly after passing the lake, though, we encountered the first examples of a phenomenon well known to Alcan travelers: gravel breaks. Because the Alcan is such a vital link, it is never closed down for construction, and drivers will encounter roadway in various stages of completion, including lengths of gravel that can vary from 100 feet to several miles. These breaks are generally well marked, but they vary widely from well-packed dirt you barely need to slow down for to fresh, deep, and loose gravel that can be rather frightening to the uninitiated rider. Not knowing the difference, Dawn and I slowed way down for this stretch, leading other vehicles to pass us and choke us in billowing clouds of dust. Brad, on the other hand, was delighted to finally have a use for his KLR’s off-road capabilities, and sprinted ahead at high speed, his rear tire spitting out a rooster-tail of flying rock. Throughout our trip, Dawn and I would get a lot more experience riding on gravel, and by the end of the trip were nearly as comfortable on loosy-goosy pearock as on fresh blacktop.

Muncho Lake.

It was 6pm when we pulled into Liard River Hot Springs Provincial Park, only to find that the campground was already full. Fortunately, the park rangers allowed all the latecomers to camp in the day-use area. It turned out that virtually everyone without reservations was a motorcyclist, and in short order the day-use area turned into a biker’s party. There were old duffers on Harley full-dressers headed to Fairbanks, a couple middle-aged guys riding to Inuvik on a KLR and an uncommon Moto Guzzi Stelvio, a Gore-Tex-clad BMW R1200GS nerd on his way up to Prudhoe Bay by himself, and even a freelance motorcycle journalist test-riding a Victory Cross Roads one-way to Anchorage.

We had just come back from a dip in the hot springs when a young couple pulled up on a big old muddy Yamaha Venture towing a trailer. They had an incredible story to tell. They were riding home from Alaska, and had chosen to ride across the border via the “Top of the World Highway” from Chicken AK to Dawson YT. This is a dirt road that is known to be pretty marginal on the Alaska side under the best of conditions. This couple, however, did it in a torrential downpour. The road washed out in multiple places and was a river of mud everywhere else. A big bus-type RV overturned on a soft shoulder, and traffic came to a standstill. The wife recorded a clip of her husband standing up their 800 lb full dresser on a steep hill with a cascade coming down the middle of the road, covering his ankles in a torrent of muddy water. Despite this, they both assured everyone that the Top of the World was an incredible road not to be missed, and that Dawson was also an absolute must-do.

Brad was sold. A bit disappointed over the civility of the Alaska Highway and itching for adventure, he was soon poring over maps with the others, planning an alternate route to Dawson and over the Top of the World Highway. When I gently reminded him that we had a new rider with less than ten days experience under her belt, he told me he was 100% confident that Dawn could handle any conditions we might encounter. Actually, I figured she could, too; it was carnage of the marital kind I was worried about if I put her in that situation. Brad allowed that point but then noted that if he split up from us the next morning, he could take the gravel Campbell Highway up to Dawson, then go over the Top of the World the following day and meet us in Tok, Alaska on Saturday morning. I wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of us splitting up – we’d originally planned to do this ride together – but understood his need for some adventure. After everything it took to get this far north, there wasn’t a big chance he’d be coming this way again soon, so why not make the most of it? Brad told me he’d sleep on it.

It was after 11pm and still light out. Nobody was anywhere close to going to sleep. Dawn and I went back down to the hot springs for a bit, then came back to camp and chatted some more. Finally we forced ourselves to go to bed, utilizing eye masks to shut out the lingering twilight. There was no electricity in the camp, no cell phone service, and no noise except for our new friends happily chatting outside. We were only now getting into the North Country, but thus far I liked it very, very much.

To be continued....

Oshkosh till Wednesday

2011-07-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

I flew the C170 to Oshkosh this morning, and we are currently parked in Vintage Airplane Camping. If anybody wants to stop by and chat tonight or tomorrow night, N9186A is on the end of row 76 West.

Gone North

2011-07-20T14:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I haven't been neglecting the blog. I've been "collecting source material." I leveraged two weeks of strategically placed vacation and my high seniority into an entire month off work from mid-June to mid-July, and Dawn and I rode our motorcycles 8000 miles to, from, and around Alaska. It was a great adventure, and I have some good stories and photos to share in the next week or two. Furthermore, there have been some interesting developments in the airline world as of late that I'd like to discuss. And finally, next week I'll be flying to Oshkosh with my dad and the C-170, which I'm sure I'll want to post about. Stay tuned, as they say....

Anyone who will be at Oshkosh and would like to meet up and chat, I'll be there Monday through Wednesday and am planning on camping in the classics area just south of show center. You'll be able to find me by Cessna 170 N9186A, I'll try to remember to post the row number here.

We’ll Never See its Likes Again

2011-06-17T22:27:00.000-07:00

Just over ten years ago, one of the most storied names in aviation disappeared forever. It was April 9, 2001, an inappropriately sunny day for a wake in St. Louis. Thousands of employees gathered in a cavernous hangar, many wearing the “Two Great Airlines, One Great Future” ballcaps being handed out at the entrance. Burgers and brats were consumed en masse. A Boeing 777 and a Lockheed Constellation stood just outside the hangar, nose-to-nose, and many toured these pinnacles of their respective ages. It was a bittersweet day. Nobody but the bean counters really wanted the merger, but most thought it was a better outcome than liquidation, a real possibility considering the airline’s meager and waning cash reserves. A thousand miles away, Mohammed Atta and his compatriots were preparing the attack that would put the vast majority of these people out of work and turn STL into a virtual ghost town, but nobody knew that at the time.

Transcontinental and Western Airlines was itself the product of a 1930 merger between Transcontinental Air Transport and Western Air Express. T&WA inherited a transcontinental route structure from TAT, and a visionary named Jack Frye from Western Air Express. Frye was the man who delivered to Douglas Airlines the specifications for the DC-1, and later the DC-2 and DC-3. In 1939, Howard Hughes invested in the airline, later becoming the majority owner. Hughes ordered the fleet of Lockheed Constellations that would make the new Trans World Airlines moniker no great exaggeration. Overseas expansion began after WW2 and continued steadily for 40 years.

TWA was late in ordering jets at the end of the 1950s but they did become the first all-jet airline with the retirement of the Connies in 1967. Two years later, TWA surpassed PanAm in transatlantic traffic and opened Pacific routes to create a true round-the-world route structure. In the 1970s, they developed an extensive intra-Europe network using B727s, even maintaining pilot bases in major European cities. As one of the most visible American symbols abroad, they became a favorite target of terrorist hijackers and bombers through the 1970s and into the 1980s. By 1988, TWA was carrying over 50% of all transatlantic passengers.

It was a dominance that would not last long. Deregulation and the LBO craze of the 1980s turned TWA into a target for corporate raiders. In 1985, unwanted attention from Frank Lorenzo drove the board of directors into the arms of Carl Icahn. He turned out to be every bit as destructive a force as Lorenzo. Icahn sold off TWA’s most valuable assets to competitors, in particular their prized London route authorities to American Airlines. Icahn financed a 1986 purchase of Ozark Airlines by selling their fleet of DC-9s to lessors, then torpedoed the intra-Europe route structure in 1989 by signing DC-9 leases that prohibited operation outside the continental United States.

Icahn wasn’t ousted until 1993, by which time he had transferred hundreds of millions of dollars from TWA into his own accounts. It took a bankruptcy to get rid of him, as well as a poisonous deal that would ultimately contribute to TWA’s downfall. TWA agreed to sell Icahn’s Karibu Corporation an unlimited number of tickets at 45% off the lowest published fare for ten years, excluding tickets originating or terminating in STL. It was a bitter pill to swallow in 1993, and became even more punishing in subsequent years as internet-based ticket sales soared. Icahn sold the tickets through lowestfare.com, and TWA could not compete. Karibu cost them an estimated $150 million per year. TWA went into bankruptcy a second time in 1995, and still couldn’t get the Karibu agreement terminated.

The company fought hard for survival. They reorganized their domestic structure around St Louis to help counter Karibu. The unions gave huge concessions. Employees actually bought an MD-83 and donated it to the company. TWA pilot Bill Compton took over as CEO, continuing to fly the line once a month. TWA was on the verge of profitability when a bare wire in a B747-131’s center fuel tank sparked disaster just off Long Island. Passengers deserted the airline in droves.

By the turn of the millennium, TWA was a ghost of its former self. Their aging B747s and L1011s had all been sold in the aftermath of TWA800, and only a few transatlantic routes remained. They still had a major presence in JFK at their iconic Terminal 5, but otherwise had retrenched to St Louis. Even in the bountiful days of the late 1990s, TWA was losing money, and by the fall of 2000 they were down to under $150 million in the bank.

It’s hard to say, then, what moved me to apply for an internship with TWA for the spring semester of 2001. I knew a girl in St Louis; she turned out to be nutty and drove me to drinking, but I liked her at the time. I had utterly burned myself out flying over the previous summer at UND and needed to get away from Grand Forks. Perhaps it was misplaced affection for the underdog. I said as much in the interview: “It’s do or die time for TWA. I’d like to be part of ‘do.’” It was either a winning line or there was a shortage of applicants lining up to intern for an airline apparently on the verge of collapse.

As it turned out, I worked for TWA for all of three days before they announced a third bankruptcy and purchase by American Airlines. For the remainder of the spring, I got to know a dying airline that had become a husk of itself, still living on the memory of past glory. What remained was a core of absolutely fantastic people and a singularly unique culture. At the time, I had no airline experience; I didn’t realize just how wonderfully different TWA was until well afterward.

When busy line pilots enthusiastically welcomed a lowly intern onto their jumpseat and treated me like a V.I.P., I didn’t know how overinflated egos complicate jumpseat politics at other airlines. When matronly flight attendants who had been flying since Kennedy was President tried to ply me with booze and set me up with their cute granddaughters, I never thought that other airlines’ “cat ranchers” might have a markedly different reputation. When my boss in Training Systems Development insisted that I take a week off to travel as a reward for work well done, I didn’t think much of it. When I met the retired TWA Captain in his 80s who still volunteered as a goodwill ambassador at LAX, I assumed all airlines had similarly loyal employees who couldn’t bear to say goodbye…and figured they would all be happy to have the extra help. When I helped a group of frequent fliers throw an unofficial farewell party in the old STL Ambassador’s Club, I guessed that most businessmen would get a little teary-eyed over the demise of their airline of choice.

At the Hilton in Cairo, Egypt, a very senior B767 Captain reached into his pocket and rented me a dayroom against my wishes because he recognized that a very jetlagged youngster on his first trip outside North America might do something stupid roaming the streets of a third world country. His parting words to me were, “Someday I hope to see you in the left seat. When that day comes, I want you to remember this lesson: always, always take care of your crew.” I took his words to heart and yearned for the day when I could fly with such wise old birdmen and learn from their wealth of experience.

TWA turned me into an airline pilot for life when the circumstances of the time probably ought to have sent me running for the hills. The majority of the pilots were stapled to American’s list and subsequently furloughed after 9/11. An even greater proportion of ground-based workers lost their jobs. Every single TWA flight attendant ended up on the street; in fact, I was on a TWA flight on their last day in November 2001 and every FA on the plane had over 40 years seniority. Of my coworkers in Training Systems Development, one was reassigned to Dallas and the others lost their jobs. One committed suicide less than a year later. Even Captain Randy at LAX had to finally resign himself to retirement.

Today, a sticker with TWA’s double globe logo graces my flight bag. Almost every week, pilots from the far corners of the industry approach to ask me whether I flew for their beloved former airline. My status as a mere intern in the fading twilight of TWA’s long history seems to do little to tamper these strangers’ enthusiasm; they talk to me like old friends. I think it’s because I understand a little bit of what was lost in 2001. The unvarnished reality is that by the end TWA paid their pilots poorly, flew shabby equipment, had few good routes, and couldn’t offer any light at the end of the tunnel. It was the people who made the airline. I don’t know if TWA was exceptionally talented at recruiting good folks, if simply treating their employees respectfully made the difference, or whether years of shared adversity had knit the group tightly. Whatever the cause, I now recognize that TWA had an utterly unique culture that will likely never be replicated in this industry.

If there is one overriding lesson I learned from my experience at TWA, it is this. When something good comes along in aviation, appreciate the heck out of it while you still can. Chances are, it will not last. Everything good in this industry, unfortunately, seems fated to disappear.

A Plane of our Own (kinda)

2011-05-29T21:12:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I wrote about getting my tailwheel endorsement in a 1946 Piper Cub and expressed hope that I would be able to join the flying club that owns the Cub by summer. As it turned out, the club was too good of a deal. None of the members could be persuaded to sell their share, even the inactive ones. In the meantime I got checked out to rent a 1969 Cherokee 140/160 at a nearby flight school.

Early last month, Dawn and I were out flying the Cherokee around on a sunny Saturday when she mentioned that she would really love to have a plane of our own. The last time she made a similar statement, I bought my BMW motorcycle within a week. This time I was paging through Trade-A-Plane within hours and had soon set my sights on a beautiful '67 Cherokee with 3000 hours, a new engine, new paint, new interior, and all the right mods for $27k. It looks like the recession has finally impacted light single-engine piston plane prices.

Dreaming aside, I knew that buying our own plane would be silly at this stage of our lives. We could afford the purchase price and fixed costs, but there wouldn't be much left over for five dollar 100LL. We wouldn't fly it nearly enough to justify having our own plane. It'd end up being far more expensive than renting on a per-hour basis. Sitting unused is also hard on airplanes, particularly pistons. And really, any disruption to our income would result in our dream bird becoming a financial albatross we'd have to sell in a down market.

Shared ownership, on the other hand, makes a great deal of sense for us. I ran the numbers on a 4-person partnership and concluded that with the fixed costs split four ways, you'd only need to fly about 2 hours per month to save money over renting while still retaining most of the benefits of sole ownership. The problem is generally finding like-minded partners. It's often said that aircraft partnership is like marriage, which I suppose would make a 4-way partnership like Bill Henrickson's marriage(s). You need more in common than miserliness. The ranks of NewCo pilots would provide my most likely partners. Setting up a partnership as a first time owner, though, seemed a rather daunting prospect. I started investigating the details.

In the meantime, I was keeping an eye on the Minneapolis craigslist. It was there that I saw an ad for a flying club with a 1949 Cessna 170A; no buy-in, no monthly dues, $50/hr dry. That seemed almost too good to be true, so I inquired. The 170 turned out to be a new purchase by two guys who are already partners in a 182 on straight floats. They wanted a wheel plane for the winter and when a floatplane is inconvenient. However, realizing that the plane would potentially sit for long periods with no use - particularly during the summer when they mostly fly the 182 - they decided to start an informal 5-person flying club by finding three other insurable pilots willing to fly it at least 25 hours a year. It's potentially a win-win scenario; they partially defray the cost of a plane they don't often fly, and the plane gets steady use to keep the engine happy. Meanwhile I get to fly a classic 4-seat taildragger for cheaper than an equivalent FBO spam can, retain the flexibility of a rental arrangement, but enjoy much of the ownership experience.

The devil is always in the details, but with no buy-in cost it seemed pretty risk-free to check it out. I met the partners and looked at the plane. It won't win Grand Champion at Oshkosh but seems pretty well maintained and is in good condition for a 62-year old airplane. It has a low-time engine, good interior, original VFR panel, Horton STOL kit, beefed up main gear, larger-than-stock tires, and a Scott tailwheel. The six-cylinder Continental O-300 runs amazingly smooth to someone who's used to 4-cylinder Lycomings. It's set up for snow skis, which the owners are hoping to have it on this winter.

I submitted my experience to Avemco and they approved me the same day with a 5-hour checkout requirement. I flew with a CFI friend of the owners, who happens to be a Mesaba pilot. The five hours were a nice introduction to what turned out to be a very sweet flying airplane. It's similar to a 172, as you'd expect, but a bit more nimble. The visibility is actually much better than a 172 due to a lower instrument panel and downward sloping cowling. In fact, visibility is so good you don't need to S-turn during taxi and the runway remains in view during 3-point landings, which this plane loves to do. Like most taildraggers, the 170 is particularly in its element on grass runways. My first few takeoffs and landings on pavement were a bit wobbly - the 170 is heavier and less responsive in ground handling than the Cub, and needs to be led a bit more - but it was a no-brainer on grass. Eventually I got things sorted out on pavement, even making passable wheel landings (where the 170's spring-steel gear turns out to be a bit of a handicap). The last hour of the checkout was a workout making wheel landings in a gusty 20 knot direct crosswind. It's less harrowing once you figure out to give the downwind brake a little tap as the tail comes down.

The weekend after that, Dawn and I rode the BMW out to the airport where the 170 is currently being kept and went for a sunset flight over Lake Minnetonka and the surrounding countryside. It was a clear evening with gorgeous soft, golden light blanketing the rolling, green dimpled hills. We lazed along, throttled back at 500 feet, and I couldn't resist opening a window; an icy blast reminded me that it's still spring in Minnesota. To further prove the point, upon returning to the airport the wind across the runway was blowing harder instead of dying down as forecast. I was glad for that last hour of the checkout as I slid down final in a mighty crab. A kick of the rudder, a twist of the yoke, the chirp of the upwind main touching down softly. In a trike the work's pretty much over at that point, but in a taildragger the fun is just beginning! It all worked out quite nicely this time; it would have been very bad form to groundloop my first time in a taildragger without an instructor (to say nothing of my wife's first C170 ride!).

So far, the flying club arrangement is working out great. The other members have been cool and availability is great. It's nice to fly the same plane all the time and know its quirks, and know who else has been flying it. Even though I don't own the plane, it feels like mine. If I continue to get back into GA more heavily and finances permit, ownership may well be in my future. In the meantime, this is a very nice way to get my toes in the water.

A Short History of Flight

2011-05-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

Mankind has dreamed of flight from the very dawn of time. Cave paintings and fossilized remains discovered in Croatia prove that sometime around 30,000 B.C., an early tribe of Homo Sapiens designed and began construction on a wood-and-reed aircraft clearly inspired by the wings of eagles. Unfortunately, the project was beset by design flaws, underperforming subcontractors, an overextended supply chain, and certification delays. To offset cost overruns, the village aircraft consortium floated an IPO, but it attracted little interest and share prices plummeted from the very start. The village elders were debating subsidies for the consortium when a competing tribe of Neanderthals snuck into their camp and clubbed everyone to death. Dreams of flight would remain dreams only for thousands of years.

Around 1500 B.C., a Greek communist named Daedalus and his son Icarus wished to return from Crete to Athens for the annual austerity measures riots. King Minos, an early tea party member, forbade it, so Daedalus and Icarus plotted their leave. Daedalus rejected a more traditional seaborne escape; a pleasure cruise on the sunny Mediterranean, he declared, was a bourgeois extravagance of the corrupt middle class. His escape could only be revolutionary, and to that end Daedalus superglued duck feathers onto his and Icarus’ arms and they flew out over the sea. Daedalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus rejected the fascist paternalism of the reactionary generation and flew where he damn well pleased. In the process he got a very nasty sunburn, stopped flapping to apply aloe, and plummeted to the sea where the modern laws of physics were already in effect; water tension snapped his spine and liquefied his internal organs. Daedalus torched a bank in Icarus’ honor.

Jack and Joe Montgolfier were French farmers who wished there was a quicker way to get their produce to market. Observing the way that smoke rises from lit fires and orating politicians, Joe deduced that heat rises and built the first hot air balloon in 1783. At first things went swimmingly, for their balloon transported their ducks, sheep, and roosters quite safely and efficiently. But then a rumor sprang up that the balloon was German, and all the Frenchmen started surrendering to it. The brothers Montgolfier solved the problem by sending up a man on all subsequent flights to shout Frenchy things, and human flight was born.

Otto Lilienthal was German, and surrendering Frenchmen were forever impeding his experiments with gliders in the late 1800s. It became such a problem that he built an artificial hill near Berlin, where he could work in peace without Frenchmen surrendering to him. His life was cut tragically short in 1896, when he crashed into a lost Polack. His last words as he lay dying were “Kleine Opfer müssen gebracht werden!,” which means “We should probably just annex them both!”

The Wright Brothers were bicycle mechanics and visionaries who saw that bikes were clearly on their way out; after all, who in their right mind would toil and sweat and risk getting trampled by horses when they could fire up their trusty 3 horsepower Stanley Steamer and cruise to work in comfort and safety? Instead, the Wright Brothers turned their attention to powered heavier-than-air flight. In 1903 they got Charlie Taylor to build them a light gasoline-powered engine, strapped it to a Lilienthal glider, checked carefully to make sure there were no Frenchmen or Polacks present, and flew into history (actually, into a sand dune 100 feet away). They spent the rest of their lives suing anyone who challenged their assertion that they were the Fathers of Flight, as well as anyone who tried to repeat their feat in a similar aircraft. Among the Wright Brothers’ greatest accomplishments is the creation of the aileron.

In 1914, all of Europe went to war and dragged all their colonies along with them (including the cute ones who naively insisted they were ex-colonies). Two happy side effects were massive depopulation that prevented the world from starving to death by 1972, and a rapid advance in aircraft design. Everyone had a jolly time shooting off their propellers and dropping flour bombs on the trenches. It was so much fun that the French stopped surrendering and joined in heartily. The Red Baron pioneered the first airborne pizza delivery service, and everyone was happy and well fed during their 3-week average lifespan at the front.

A major flaw in World War One aircraft was uncovered at the end of the war, when it was discovered that wood-and-fabric planes could not be easily turned into beer cans. Instead, barnstormers flew them around the country, inspiring thousands to leave the comfort and safety of their Stanley Steamers to take to the air. One of these was Charles Lindbergh, a disgruntled postal worker who decided to fly across the Atlantic. He brilliantly realized that the surest way to find one’s way to Europe is to do so in an airplane without windows, and he did exactly that in 1927, all the way from New York to Paris. There he was mobbed by thousands of surrendering Frenchmen, a traumatic experience that turned him into a lifelong German.

In 1939, failed Bruno Ganz impersonator Adolf Hitler said “Kleine Opfer müssen gebracht werden!” and annexed both Poland and France. All of Europe went to war and dragged all their colonies along with them (including the cutes ones who pretended to be neutral for a few years to prove their independence). Two happy side effects were massive depopulation that prevented the world from starving to death until 2086, and a rapid advance in aircraft design. The French sat this one out, but everyone else had a marvelous time. Many people joined flying clubs and warbird associations, for such classics as the P-51, Spitfire, Bf 109, and B-17 were readily available then. Airshows were held almost daily. Fly-ins were held at prime holiday destinations like Italy, the French coast, and the South Pacific. Eventually the Germans insisted on all events being held in Germany, which made it all rather dull, so everyone went home (the Americans by way of Japan for one last airshow). This time everyone had the foresight to build their airplanes of aluminum for easy beer-can conversion.

After the war, the Americans turned their undivided attention to making peaceful technological advances for the betterment of humankind. They invented jet engines and installed them on supersonic fighters to keep the peace. They built massive bombers to pulverize any troublemaking cities quickly and humanely. They developed bigger and better nuclear weapons to wipe out whole countries of miscreants with the least pain and inconvenience to the recipients possible, and invented giant rockets to deliver this humanitarian assistance in mere minutes at the press of a button. Contrary to all hopes and expectations, massive depopulation did not result, and mankind was doomed to eventual starvation. More happily, the new technology was readily transferred to the realm of space exploration, where great strides were being made. In 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon. He memorialized the occasion by exclaiming “Holy [redacted], I’m [redacted] walking on the mother-[redacted] moon! Can you [redacted] believe it!?” NASA deemed these remarks unsuitable for television audiences and substituted moon landing footage that had been pre-recorded on a Hollywood sound stage.

Meanwhile, ordinary Americans were doing what Americans did best: bilking other Americans out of their hard-earned money. Legendary men like Eddie Rickenbacker, Juan Trippe, and Howard Hughes built airlines like Eastern, PanAm, and TWA into global powerhouses that would stand forever as immortal testaments to the inherent goodness, wisdom, and morality of American Capitalism. In 1958 Boeing launched the jet age with the 707, an airplane that whisked passengers to their destinations in half the time and half the comfort of the old propliners. Suddenly there was no place in the world that Americans could not quickly and easily go to loudly complain about how inferior everything was to America.

In 1978, everyman Edward Kennedy and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter lamented the fact that commercial flying was still too expensive for the Average Joe. Failing to see any way to decrease the inherent cost of using a finite fuel source to accelerate an object weighing hundreds of thousands of pounds and consisting of thousands of intricate parts painstakingly assembled by skilled craftsman to near-supersonic speeds and loft it to altitudes at the outer reaches of the atmosphere and do so with great reliability and safety, Kennedy and Carter hit on a plan to simply transfer the costs. The Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 indeed made flying much cheaper for passengers, and much more expensive for airlines, their employees, their suppliers, and their shareholders. It was wildly successful. By 2000, so many people were flying that nobody could fly anywhere without a three hour delay.

Saudi bad boy Osama bin Laden graciously lent a helping hand in 2001, the newly created Transportation Security Administration did its part, and soon traffic was humming right along with nary a delay. The airlines took advantage of the breather to rid themselves of all their old, nasty, polluting narrow body aircraft and replace them with comfortable, efficient Canadian Regional Jets. These aircraft were flown by pilots so experienced that they met or exceeded FAA minimums, and their crews were paid near or sometimes even at the federal minimum wage. Any remaining gaps in the system were gamely filled in by Southwest Airlines, which seemed to come out of nowhere with an audacious business plan that involved young, attractive stewardesses in gogo boots serving free booze (who could’ve anticipated that working, especially in Texas!?!).

In the mid-aughts, airline executives courageously declared that they would not allow such stirring success to go unrewarded. Convinced of the justness of their cause, they took their companies to court, where some of the bravest judges in the free world did the right thing and transferred more of the cost of flying onto airline employees, suppliers, and shareholders. At long last, airline executives were able to share in the bounty of all they had wrought through the force of their blood, sweat, and tears. After striking such a blow for freedom one might expect the executives to rest on their laurels, but they were relentless in their pursuit of justice. With hardly a pause, they embarked on a crusade against the rapacious work rules that kept them toiling night and day. In short time they had merged six airlines into three, thus emancipating countless executives from the tyranny of their duties and freeing them to enjoy the fruits of their labors with such middle-class pastimes as yachting, mansion decoration, and making love to the secretaries of their Vice-Presidents’ Executive Assistants’ Assistants’ Assistants to the Assistant Executive Assistants.

The remaining executives, meanwhile, were finding their obligations much less taxing as they had discovered they could run an airline without actually running an airline. Through the magic of codeshares and global alliances they could sell tickets and take in revenue while poor executives still enslaved on the dark shores of Europe and Asia did the hard work of actually flying the passengers. Whatever could not be done offshore was subcontracted to regional airlines, whose executives still worked very hard flying so many legs every day but didn’t seem to mind so long as wads of cash were being constantly stuffed in their suits.

Boeing executives took note of airline management’s stirring example and threw off their own chains by shutting down production of every airliner except the most dated one, which Southwest bribed Boeing to keep building with gogo-booted stewardesses and free booze. Meanwhile they designed a revolutionary new airliner clearly inspired by the wings of eagles and built with advanced wood and reed composites, but the project was beset by design flaws, underperforming subcontractors, an overextended supply chain, and certification delays. None of this bothered the executives much, for all the hard work was being done overseas, freeing them to enjoy such middle-class pastimes as yachting, mansion decoration, and making love to the Secretary of the Air Force.

As the second decade of the twenty-first century dawns, America stands triumphant in the field of aerospace, as in most other things. We have the biggest airlines, who are burdened with very little flying. We have the best airplane manufacturers, who only need do very little building. Our marvelous aviation industry, in short, has achieved the American Dream, so succinctly summed up by that philosopher of the mother country, Mark Knopfler: “Money for nothing, and chicks for free.” Let the Canadians, the Brazilians, the Japanese do the hard work. We will have a jolly time yachting and mansion decorating and mocking those blinkered Airbus executives working hard shouting Frenchy things at their Polack workers and surrendering wheelbarrows full of cash to their German bankers. The future is bright!

Stuck in the Mud

2011-05-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

Last week, Southwest Airlines topped off a month of unwanted publicity when one of their B737s slid off the end of Runway 13C at Chicago's Midway Airport. Thankfully, nobody was seriously hurt and the aircraft appeared to suffer only minor damage. It's not the first time Southwest has been off the runway in Midway: in 2005, SWA1248 departed the same stretch of pavement (in the opposite direction, on 31C) at high speed, crashing through the airport fence and coming to rest on South Central Avenue, where a six year old boy in a car was killed.

This time around, the happier ending had a few airline pilots making cracks at Southwest's expense. It's true, SWA's accidents have all involved running off the end of runways, and their pilots do have a reputation for taxiing at a, umm, brisk speed. That said, I think there's a bit of schadenfreude over SWA's financial success and the fact that their B737 pilots are now better paid than senior widebody pilots at all the legacy airlines. The old advice about stone-casting in glass houses definitely applies here. The fact remains that Southwest has yet to kill a passenger in 40 years of flying, something none of the legacy airlines can claim. Moreover, to the extent legacy pilots haven't been running airplanes off runways lately (ahem), it's worth pointing out that much of their flying to marginal airports has been outsourced. Delta and American and United jets have all gone on offroad adventures lately, but in each case the airplane was operated by a regional carrier. Every Southwest jet has a Southwest pilot at the controls, something that should shame legacy pilots a whole lot more than Southwest's superior payrates and work rules.

The 2005 accident occurred while landing downwind on a contaminated runway in an intense snowstorm. Touchdown occurred 2000 feet down the runway, and the thrust reversers failed to deploy for 18 seconds. This incident took place in considerably better conditions, although the runway was reported to be wet. The NTSB will do its thing and we'll find out what went wrong, but for now it's worthwhile noting that the airplane went off the end of the runway to the side, and not straight ahead into the EMAS bed that was installed to prevent a recurrence of the 2005 accident. I'm guessing the pilot tried to make a fast left turn onto Taxiway Echo and lost traction.

Regardless of what mistakes were made in this case, Midway is a pretty marginal airport for most jet airliners. Runway 31C is the longest landing runway with 6059' usable, and all the others have under 6000 feet. There are no approaches to 22L/R, and only the ILS 31C is available in under one mile visibility. Circling approaches and landings with strong crosswinds or slight tailwinds are all common. There's really nothing wrong with the airport that an extra 1000' of pavement for each runway wouldn't fix, but that would involve bulldozing a fair amount of South Chicago low-income housing. It isn't going to happen.

In the meantime, Midway is one of those airports that require special attention. I am particularly mindful of what the wind is doing and what runways are available, and will divert rather than land downwind. O'Hare is very close, and there are a number of other usable alternates within a half-hour's flight time. I always land with full flaps regardless of landing weight (we land at normal airports with "Flaps 5;" full flaps make the Junglebus "shake like a dog trying to pass a peach pit!"). At Midway, my idea of the "touchdown zone" shrinks significantly, and I'll usually touch down in the first 1000' or so of runway.* I'll always try to touch down firmly, and few of my MDW landings would be considered "pretty." A firm touchdown ensures that the landing gear proximity sensors close immediately, extending the ground spoilers and enabling immediate braking. All of this is admittedly overkill on a good day, but I use the good days to practice for the really bad ones.

Most pilots that land at Midway or similarly marginal airports with any regularity can understand how it wouldn't take a whole lot going wrong to end up sliding off the end of the runway. Seeing the Southwest 737 stuck in the mud off Runway 13C is a good reminder to stay vigilant and continue doing everything I can to prevent it happening to me. Incidentally, I worry a lot more about the "Engine Failure at V1" scenario in MDW than a long landing, and there's not much I can do to decrease my risk in that department. The good news is that the chances of anyone suffering a complete engine failure in the few seconds between 100 knots and Vr while departing Midway are rather small, which makes my own personal risk quite tiny indeed.

* Touching down at 1000' requires going below the VASI in the final stages of the approach. Some airline pilots balk at this based on a flawed understanding of 91.129(e)(3), which requires pilots to "maintain an altitude at or above the glide path until a lower altitude is necessary for a safe landing." If you follow the VASI all the way down, you will touch down 1500-2500 feet down the runway, which is unacceptable at Midway with anything other than dry, bare pavement. Most airplane's contaminated runway numbers are contingent on touchdown at the 1000' mark. I certainly don't suggest dusting off the chimneys of the houses surrounding Midway, but with the displaced thresholds and lack of high obstacles on approach, going below VASI in the last quarter-mile at MDW is both safe and legal. You will see most aircraft cross the displaced threshold at well under 50'.

Shakedown Cruise, Part II

2011-04-26T15:25:00.001-07:00

Predicted rain again failed to materialize, and the fourth day of our motorcycle trip dawned clear and crisp over Shelter Cove, CA. A thick cloud bank roiled just offshore, threatening a change of weather should we linger too long. I was excited to be going, as we would finally be riding a stretch of road I'd never driven, to a place I'd never been other than just passing through. The weather was again forcing a change in plans, this time delaying our arrival to Redding by a day. A happy side effect was the addition of today's leg down US-101 to Napa Valley.

But first we had Shelter Cove Road to pass again. I needn't have worried, for Dawn tackled it with skill that belied her fourth-day rider status. She was starting to relax and really enjoy the trip, which made it all the better for me. We were back in Redway not 40 minutes after leaving Shelter Cove, and eating breakfast at the House of Burgess in Garberville shortly thereafter. There was no threat of rain now; the sun was shining brightly through the redwoods and we could cover the 150 miles to Napa Valley in leisurely fashion, if we so chose.

In fact it went rather quickly. The section of US-101 south of Leggitt, which I'd never been on, is mostly four-lane highway, albeit the rather fun type with lots of fast sweepers through several pretty valleys. It's a split personality road, though: every once in a while it abruptly narrows to two lanes, slows down, and snakes through a dense redwood grove, or twists over a ridge, or shimmies along a cliff. Just as suddenly it opens back up and you're again cruising on an expressway hacked through the wilderness. To me this is the perfect kind of road: enough variety to keep things interesting while the miles fly right by.

South of Cloverdale the road straightened out and the terrain opened up as wine country began in earnest. We were making good time to Calistoga, our destination for the day, so we turned onto CA-128 at Geyserville to take the scenic route. It was an unexpected treat, a quiet stretch of good blacktop alongside neat vineyards hemmed by prim rows of Valley Oak. We tucked in behind a Harley with two helmeted riders festooned with Iron Butt Association regalia, and then were quickly left behind in a thunderous cannonade as they charged into a twisty section through a brookside oak-copse. Not your typical Harley riders, I thought as they disappeared around a tight right-hander in a Moto-GP lean. I kept the FZ1 at a dignified trot and soaked up the glorious afternoon sun.

After checking into the lovely Wine Way Inn in cute-as-a-button downtown Calistoga, Dawn and I continued down the valley two-up on her FZ6. St Helena, Rutherford, and Yountville proved to be equally as pleasant, with dozens of inviting wineries in between each town. I was starting to see the appeal of Napa Valley, my only previous experience with which was one hurried pass through urban Napa years ago. In the interest of staying upright and DUI-free, we limited ourselves to one wine tasting, but found a few really nice wines to take home. In Napa we turned around and completed our circuit of the valley via the Silverado Trail as the sun disappeared over the hills. Back in Calistoga, we parked the bike and walked down Lincoln Avenue for a very nice dinner - best meatloaf ever! - at the Flatiron Grill. After that we enjoyed a quiet night of reading and sipping wine back at the B&B, which felt a great deal more civilized than most motorcycle trips I've been on!

Thursday morning was fairly chilly but at least clear, and the sun had warmed the valley considerably by the time we finished breakfast, loaded the bikes, and headed north on CA-29. The route over the Mayacamas Mountains looked worse than Shelter Cove Road on the map but actually turned out to be quite easy. North of the summit, we crossed into Lake County and the road was quite good and fast. I'd seen the area around Clear Lake many times from the air but never from the ground; I didn't realize how sparsely developed the area is, particularly between Clear Lake and Williams. Failing to find an opportune gas station, we coasted down to the central valley on mere fumes. After filling up, we headed north on I-5, the first stretch of freeway we'd seen in five days and 900 miles. We covered the 100 miles to Redding astonishingly fast and still got passed with regularity. Interstate travel may be somewhat lacking in charm but it is certainly efficient.

My sister Rachel was still in classes when we arrived in town so we headed to the nearest Cycle Gear store, drooled over many things, and purchased a few things I deemed necessary for the subfreezing temperatures expected over the passes on Friday - namely insulated gloves and riding pants for Dawn. After meeting up with Rachel, we were convoying to her apartment when Dawn accidently killed her bike in the left-turn lane of a busy intersection. When she attempted to restart it, the battery slowly turned the engine over for a few seconds and gave up. I parked the FZ1 and ran out into the street to pushstart the Fz6, and then rode it around for 20 minutes in low gear in an attempt to charge the battery back up. No luck, it was still quite dead when I got back. Back we went to Cycle Gear to purchase our second motorcycle battery in three days. Once I swapped it out, my "test drive" conveniently included a fast ride up Shasta Dam Road with my sister on the back in time to catch the sunset over the Trinity Alps.

I spent the night with an anxious eye on the Caltrans and ODOT webcams at Black Butte Summit and Siskiyou Pass. At 3900' and 4300' respectively, these were the highest points on our trip and had been receiving quite a bit of winter weather, our reason for delaying this leg by a day. Friday was forecast to be clear before snow moved in again on Saturday, but subfreezing temperatures were expected overnight and I was concerned about melting snow freezing on the roadway. I've had a few experiences with ice on motorcycles and while they did not result in crashes, I have no desire to repeat them nor to expose Dawn to similar situations. The temperature at Siskiyou Summit was 22 degrees when we woke up on Friday morning.

To compensate, we left Redding a little on the late side, which I'd rather not have done since we were hoping to make it all 430 miles back to Vancouver WA on Friday. I hadn't really looked at the map, I didn't realize that it was an hour's ride from Redding to Black Butte Summit, and thus the sun had warmed the air to a balmy 28 degrees by the time we crossed it at 11am. There were a few patches of snow around but no ice on the roadway, so I felt alot better about Siskiyou Pass when we stopped for brunch in Yreka. There was actually no trace of snow at the summit, and we cruised down the north side into Medford OR luxuriating in the nice warm, 50 degree air.

We only stopped twice after breakfast, both times to refuel. I kept asking Dawn (via intercom) whether she would like to stop to rest, and she always replied that she felt good. The FZ6 turned out to be a better cross-country machine than I hoped, with a comfortable stock saddle that minimized monkey-butt and an upright riding position with very little pressure on the wrists. Dawn did complain of a stiff neck throughout the trip due to excessive wind striking her helmet with the stock short windscreen, so we ordered a taller model when we got home.

I let Dawn lead pretty much all day. After six straight days of riding, it was amazing to see the giant strides she had made in confidence and ability. Back on the Sunday we started out, we stopped at our old favorite bagel shop for coffee and bagels before our training sessions, and she had confessed that she was pretty terrified of getting on the bike. It had been 9 months since she last rode a little Virago 250 in the MSF class, and she had dropped that twice on the first day. I reassured her but privately wondered if I was pushing her to bite off more than she could chew. Now, I followed her over a winding section of I-5, admiring her riding style. She consistently chose good lines through the turns, used the brakes and throttle judiciously, and showed keen awareness in dealing with other traffic.

That said, she wasn't exactly always the model student. On one 45mph-rated curve, she slowed to a sensible 55 mph, leaned hard left, kicked her inboard knee out, and pinned the throttle. The howl of her 97-horsepower inline-4 reached inside my helmet and I found her pulling away from my 147-hp FZ1 rather rapidly. "Uhh, Dawn...?" I activated the intercom as she came out of the turn, mild concern in my voice.

"What's a matter?" she responded innocently.

"Check your speed." I was showing a bit over 80mph.

"Ooh! I didn't realize I was going that fast!"

Yep, I'm gonna have to keep an eye on this one....

Our arrival was considerably slower, as we spent the last 20 miles in stop-and-go rush hour traffic. Finally, a bit before 6pm, we pulled into Brad's driveway, 1440 miles after we left the previous Sunday. I shook Dawn's hand rather officiously, then gave her a hug and a "well done." Brad and his neighbors invited us to a BBQ they were kicking off as we pulled up. A few beers and burgers and a soak in the hot tub later, the 430 miles of the day were but an abstraction of memory. That will be a pretty average ride our Alaska trip, for days on end, on slower and rougher roads than I-5. I can't wait, and now neither can Dawn.

Shakedown Cruise

2011-04-14T18:11:00.000-07:00

It was Dawn's idea in the first place to take motorcycles down the west coast in the first week of April, during her Spring Break. She had a brand-new-to-her 2005 Yamaha FZ6 waiting in Portland. I bought it for our planned trip to Alaska this June, but she quite sensibly balked at the idea of riding 6000 miles through wilderness on a bike she'd never been on. A trip down the west coast would be a perfect chance for her to build experience and would serve as a "shakedown cruise" for this year's big adventure to the Last Frontier.

I said no. The Pacific Northwest weather is too fickle in April. We'd have other chances to do it before June. I'd been over the route before. I'd have to borrow a buddy's bike, the surest test of a friendship. I wanted to go to China after years of intending to visit soon. Dawn agreed; China it would be.

And then our spring break plans were once again shattered, this time by a tragedy in Dawn's family. Her aunt Becky, who we had lived with once and were pretty close to, suffered a massive stroke during a comparatively routine surgury. For a week she clung to life with friends and family in constant attendance before passing away peacefully, surrounded by her ten siblings. It was a week before we were due to leave, and obviously family came first. We canceled our China plans to attend Becky's wake and funeral and to be with Dawn's family. Oddly enough, the remainder of Dawn's Spring Break was perfect for a six-day motorcycle trip down the west coast. The weather forecast was favorable. My friend Brad loaned me his 2006 Yamaha FZ1 without a moments hesitation. For the second year in a row, our Spring Break overseas travel plans were upset but replaced with a very enjoyable domestic trip on two wheels.

We landed in Portland late on Saturday April 2 and woke the next morning to grey skies and an ominous forecast: two inches of rain on the Oregon coast on Monday. Those are ugly conditions for an experienced rider, to say nothing of a novice, so I compressed our "training day" into a few hours to depart Portland a day early, on Sunday afternoon. Dawn practiced low-speed maneuvering in a parking lot for 30 minutes, took a few spins around Brad's neighborhood, and then took a ride around Vancouver (WA). I followed on Brad's FZ1 and offered tips and encouragement over our bluetooth bike-to-bike intercom. With that we were off to the coast, me leading a very anxious Dawn through the traffic of downtown Portland and the endless stoplights of Highway 99W. Past McMinnville, we exited onto OR-18 to Lincoln City. This is the least steep and winding of the routes of through the coast range, but still has enough curves to be thoroughly enjoyable if I weren't worried about how my new rider was doing.

I needn't have worried. The FZ6 is a wonderfully nimble, responsive bike, and Dawn carved through the turns like a seasoned pro from the very start. Our riding became progressively harder over the first three days but Dawn showed herself up to the challenge. By the end of the trip, it was her leading me back into Portland.

Threatening skies held their peace as we headed south on US-101 from Lincoln City; only after we reached our destination for the day did drizzle start falling through the gathering darkness. We were a day early for our reservation at Heceta Head Lightstation Bed and Breakfast, but the innkeepers were more than accommodating - not only switching nights but also upgrading us to a room with a view of the lighthouse and the angry-looking seas beyond.

The B&B is situated in the former innkeepers' cozy house, an 1893 Queen Anne with a white picket fence surrounding a neatly trimmed yard hemmed by the towering pines of Heceta Head. After we unpacked and explored the grounds it began to rain in earnest, just in time for our ride to Florence for dinner. We ended up just picking up some groceries from Fred Meyer, so as to ride back to the lighthouse before the steep, winding, rough, and wet road was completely dark. Thankfully we were both riding on Dawn's FZ6 and she had but to hold on from the back seat.

Our evening was quiet but very pleasant: a light dinner of hot sandwiches followed by hot tea and reading and chatting with other guests around the fireplace. Once we retired to bed, I fell asleep to the sounds of crashing surf and rain pelting the windowpane as the lighthouse beam swept by our window every 10 seconds.

Despite the light dinner I was unprepared for the seven-course assault on my stomach of the next morning. Every offering was delicious but I couldn't help protesting each time the chef emerged with another dish - but I cleaned my plate every time, of course. Our fellow guests were all friendly and witty, which is good because breakfast lasted an hour and a half! It was 10am by the time we waddled out to our motorcycles.

The rain of the night had ended and although another wave was coming in, lighter skies beckoned to the south. The air was chilly but we were both pretty well bundled up. It seemed so recently that I had followed the same route south on my BMW, but in fact it was December 2009. We had a late, light lunch in Gold Beach, which I know from my days flying for Ameriflight. South of Port Orford, we paused to take photos of a dramatic stretch of coastline I'd admired on my last trip. The clouds were thinning and the day warming; I was relieved that we apparently outrode the forecast rain. Dawn was riding the curvy sections of US-101 with considerable skill and more confidence than the previous day.

We arrived in Crescent City, CA, around 4pm and considered our options. The original plan was to proceed to Klamath, spend the night, and ride to Redding via Eureka the following day, tuesday. However, the forecast suggested we'd be stuck in Redding for a few days before the passes into Oregon on I-5 would be passable by motorcycle. Besides, we were a day ahead of schedule - why not take our time and explore further south? We decided to spend the night in Crescent City and ride to Shelter Cove on the Lost Coast the following day.

We were still stuffed so we skipped dinner altogether and instead explored the area on Dawn's FZ6. Crescent City itself was considerably less charming than I'd assumed, but the surroundings were beautiful. We walked to Battery Point Lighthouse and rode the first 15 miles or so of Highway 199 through breathtakingly gorgeous redwood groves. I wanted to venture further but the light was fading, so we retreated to our cheap-but-clean motel room, which disappointingly did not come with a sea view and a living room with a roaring fire and a 120-year old lighthouse faithfully showing the way just outside our bedroom window. In the words of one of my favorite movies, "We don't want to spoil the girl!"

The next day dawned bright and beautiful, with pink wispy clouds floating in from the sea and over the solemn redwoods. I was really excited about the stretch of US-101 south of Crescent City. It was one of my favorite stretches from the 2009 ride. Sadly it was less spectactular than I remembered, certainly less than the section of US-199 we rode the previous evening. Memory is a tricky thing. Fortunately I detoured onto the Newtown B. Drury Parkway through Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park and was rewarded with a road that bested the US-101 that had existed in my memory. We stopped for a hike at "The Big Tree," which lived up to its name.

We stopped in Eureka to attend to some pressing business. Brad had warned me that his FZ1's battery was having trouble holding a charge overnight, and indeed we had to push start it in the morning at Heceta Head and again in Crescent City. In Eureka we visited the local Yamaha dealer to inquire about a new battery. I was gobstopped to learn that the OEM replacement battery, indeed the only compatible battery they had in stock, was $214. I knew it shouldn't run more than $90 but the only other nearby motorcycle store was closed on Monday and not wishing to tarry in Eureka, I ponied up. I'm sure they thought "what a sucker!"

We stopped in the charming Victorian town of Ferndale for lunch and continued southward via the Avenue of the Giants. I'd done at least a portion of this ride in 2009 but don't remember it being so fantastic. Having a sunny day to send narrow beams of light piercing down through the majestic gloom certainly elevated the cathedral effect. I opened my visor, breathed deeply of crisp, piney air, and enjoyed the ride. When a series of tight curves slowed our progress a bit, my intercom came alive with a squeal of delight. "This is FUN!" Dawn exclaimed. I glanced in my mirrors for the first time in a while. She was right on my tail, leaned over hard in a tight left hand turn with her low knee slung out and her eyes out around the curve, a grin hidden behind her helmet but evident in her voice. I could have burst with pride.

At Redway we turned off for our object of the day, Shelter Cove. It is a lonely outpost of the Lost Coast, so called because even the intrepid road engineers of the 1930s deemed it too rugged to be traversed. Highway 101 veers inland to the north, and CA-1 squiggles its way back down to the sea at the southern end. Shelter Cove is in fact the only town along this stretch of coast, and the only access is either via light airplane (an airstrip forms the town's nucleus) or a winding, deteriorated narrow little strip of asphalt flung over 23 miles of mountains from Redway.

If I'd been on that road before, I'd probably have declined to do it again with a novice rider along. Very little of it was easy riding, and for the finale it climbs straight up and over the last ridge in a series of tight, steep switchbacks. On the way down, Dawn's voice made it clear that she was no longer having fun. I dropped behind her and coached her through it. Despite her anxiety, she had exactly the right idea: coast along in low gear, brake to a near halt before the tightest turns, then let go and swoop around them before gravity builds your speed back up.

Our reward for the last challenging bit of riding was a neat, quiet town with a lovely view of the ocean and stunning coastline in either direction. We rode the local roads as far as they would take us, then relaxed the evening away, sharing a bottle of wine outside our cabin as the sun sank to the sea. After sunset I built a crackling fire in the wood stove, which combined with the distant crashing of waves to lull me to sleep without even a thought that we'd have to ride the same treacherous road first thing in the morning.

Growth and Rumors of Growth

2011-03-31T22:04:00.000-07:00

Rumors are a constant fixture of airline life. People trapped in aluminum cylinders for hours on end will talk to pass the time, and seldom limit their conversations to unembellished, supported facts lest they die of boredom! Union politics, management backroom wheeling and dealing, the latest "stupid pilot tricks," scandalous layover love triangles - the topics are limitless. Nearly any source will do: buddies, friends twice removed, check airmen, assistant chief pilots, sim instructors, flight attendants, maintenance guys, some random guy who overheard a VP on his cell phone.

The most common rumors concern growth; new airplanes are perpetually just around the corner. Everyone wants to believe it, because everyone benefits from an instant shot of seniority. Without growth, the only way to move up is when someone else moves out. In times like these when the majors aren't hiring and Age 65 has the codgers "flying till they die," only growth has the power to turn FOs into Captains and reservists into lineholders.

Horizon's seniority list was especially stagnant, so growth rumors were constant; everyone desperately wanted them to be true. We were getting more Q400s; we were going to fly for Northwest. We were converting the Q200s to freighters and starting a cargo operation. We were getting Embraer 195s - in fact, engineers were in the PDX hangar figuring out how to modify the door to accommodate the E195! Bill the airport shuttle van driver said so!

What actually happened was that Horizon lost their Frontier JetExpress contract three years into a 12 year deal, brought those CRJ-700s back to the Horizon side and put them on unprofitable short routes, sold half of them, then sold all their Q200s to CommutAir, replaced them with fewer Q400s, withdrew from a bunch of small markets that couldn't support a 76 seat airplane, and then leased the remaining CRJs to Skywest to fly Horizon's former routes as Alaska Express. Horizon is 30 airplanes smaller than when I left in 2007.

There have been rumors at NewCo, too. We were going to fly as Alaska Express. WidgetCo was furious with Republic becoming a competitor by purchasing Frontier and Midwest, and was going to terminate their feed contracts and give the flying to us. For the last six months, there were persistent rumors of new JungleBuses, albeit a smaller version than we fly now. Management consistently denied specific rumors while coyly suggesting that our new ownership certainly opened the door to additional flying.

About a month ago I was flying with Jay, one of our most senior flight attendants and also the head of NewCo's flight attendant union. "So have you heard of any rumors of new airplanes?" he asked me before our flight to Vancouver. "Naw," I replied with a grin, "Not much. Just that we're getting ten airplanes from Australia and Italy and they're coming this summer." Jay nodded seriously. "Yes, that's basically it. The announcement comes out Monday."

I politely suppressed a chortle, because not once in my career has an "impending announcement" rumor come true. I quickly forgot about what Jay said, and indeed Monday came and went without a hint of an announcement. But a few days later, I was sitting at home when I got a call from Mitch, a Horizon friend who recently came to NewCo.

"Dude, you hear about the new planes!?" he asked excitedly.

"Suure! Pretty much constantly for the last six months!" was my sardonic reply.

"No, it's for real this time. Check your company email!"

So for once a growth rumor came true, and it was even pretty accurate. NewCo is getting 12 used JungleBusses, six from Alitalia and six from Virgin Blue, at a rate of one a month starting around June. NewCo will grow 33% over one year, from 36 aircraft to 48. I'd probably be more excited about it if I were on the cusp of an upgrade or was just about to hold weekends off or was nearly off reserve. But being a senior Captain, the growth will have very little impact on me.

I can't help but note that this isn't true growth, but a capacity reshuffling. Widget's available seat-miles are remaining essentially flat from last year. Some of our growth likely replaces Widget DC9-30s and -40s that were parked last year and the -50s that will be parked this year. As someone who would like to fly for Widget soon, that's not a good thing. I would rather see mainline aircraft replace mainline aircraft (and in a perfect world, replace regional aircraft too!).

For the most part, though, we're growing at the expense of Comair. Those poor guys don't seem to have a friend in the world. Widget management has been rather vindictive to Comair since their pilot strike ten years ago, and is now apparently intent on dismantling them piece by piece. Regional pilots are mostly sympathetic to the Comair pilots' plight but of course stand to gain from their misfortune. Widget pilots generally range from neutral to downright gleeful over the situation. There's a lot of bad blood there, much of which stems from a few very public spats the respective unions had in the late 90s and early 2000s. A surprising number of Widget pilots bear a grudge over the Comair strike itself, feeling that it cost mainline so much money that it helped lead to eventual bankruptcy. These are usually the same crusty old types who gripe about regional pilots working for slave wages; God forbid it's one of their slaves that revolts for 89 days.

So really what's happening here isn't any different from the situation with Alaska and Horizon and Skywest. Flying is being transferred from one carrier to another largely based on who pays their employees less money. It's the latest round in the twisted game of musical chairs that is the regional airline industry, and I'm not sure that grabbing a seat this time is really cause for celebration when you're still stuck playing the game.

That said, you can also look at it this way: Comair was going to lose that flying no matter what. Widget could have awarded it to Republic or Skywest or Pinnacle. I have nothing against those carriers (well, the first two anyways) and have friends at each, who I would be happy to see benefit from growth. But I have a lot more close friends at NewCo, and I'm very glad to see them moving up and gaining the quality of life that I've enjoyed simply because I got here a few months before them. I'm sure that at some point NewCo will be the one left standing without a chair, but like everyone else at the regional airlines, I hope that my friends and I are long gone when that happens.

Yellow Cub

2011-02-25T10:33:00.000-08:00

O.K.! Your turn!” Logan shouted and half turned and flashed me a good-luck grin; then I felt the stick go slack and I grasped it, scooting my feet up to the rudder pedals. “If you don’t like what you see,” I shouted back, “don’t wait to take over. No hurt feelings here!” Logan is a first officer at NewCo with whom I’ve flown a number of times, but I didn’t want him to treat me as anything other than a student pilot about to make his first landing in a tailwheel aircraft. He responded with an encouraging nod and turned forward.

We were shouting because even a tiny Continental C-75 engine emits a surprisingly throaty roar when you’re seated a few feet away with nothing but a bit of fabric between you and eternity, and the plane’s battery-powered intercom was weak. Even this is an unusual luxury for a 1946 Piper J-3 Cub, few of which have electrical systems or any of the things we take for granted on most light aircraft: starters, radios, lights. Student pilots and their instructors have been shouting back and forth in Cubs for seventy years.

Abeam the threshold, I chopped the power and nosed down to maintain 70 mph, or thereabouts. Logan is a tall guy with broad shoulders, and I could only occasionally stretch out to catch a glimpse of the airspeed indicator in front of him. Even when solo one pays only slight attention to the Cub’s five rudimentary instruments, but with a passenger or instructor in the front seat it becomes a truly seat-of-the-pants affair. You guess your airspeed based on the noise of the wind whistling through the wing struts; even a 5 mph change produces a discernibly different pitch. And oddly enough, a maxim usually applied to jet flying, “pitch plus power equals airspeed,” comes in very handy in the back seat of a Cub. About the only two things you can easily see are the tachometer on the extreme left of the panel and the position of the exposed engine cylinders relative to the horizon.

I turned left onto base leg, using ample amounts of rudder to roll into and out of the turn. The Cub was designed in a time before differential ailerons, control interconnects, and yaw dampers made adverse yaw a mostly theoretical phenomenon easily handled with slight nudges of the rudder. Use only aileron in a Cub, and the nose will visibly slide over in the opposite direction as your butt slides downhill and the slipstream batters the exposed fabric on the down-wing side of the fuselage. You don’t really need an inclinometer to know when you’re uncoordinated in a Cub, which is good since it’s well out of sight in the middle of the panel.

I glanced to my right to look for traffic on the ILS, and then turned onto final approach. The view wasn’t much different than from a C172, or the JungleBus for that matter. I reckoned I was a smidge low, and bumped the power up 100 rpm. Coming over the threshold, I smoothly brought the power to idle, waited to what I hoped was four or five feet of altitude – it’s hard to judge when you haven’t flown a small plane in a while – and eased the stick back. I initially pulled too hard and floated, then started sinking quickly, and overreacted with a little jerk on the stick. The oscillation was really only a little bobble, but it brought back memories of the time I nearly wrecked a little yellow C150 with a severe PIO when I was 15. I corrected it and kept the backpressure in while I waited for the wheels to touch. The runway ahead completely disappeared, blocked by the raised nose. There was a chirp, a slight bounce, and then we were down. I had meant to make a three-point landing, but the tail was still a few inches too high when the main wheels touched. There was a slight swerve after the second touchdown, but it was easily corrected with the rudder. I had anticipated more squirrely behavior on the ground, but of course the Cub is a pretty tame taildragger compared to, for example, the Cessna 195 - to say nothing of a Pitts!

“Not bad,” said Logan after I brought the Cub to a halt. “Hold it off a little longer. And make sure you don’t have any drift, you bounced that one because you landed with a little side-load.” That was a surprise, I had no idea I was drifting - but I had no forward vision at the time, either. “Use your peripheral vision,” Logan told me. “You gotta use peripherals to land a Cub!” I poured on the coals, brought the tail up, and rose into the sky for another pattern and another try.

The next landing was very similar to my first, though without the oscillation in the flare. The mains touched first, bounced a bit, touched down again, and there was a slight swerve that I quickly corrected with rudder. I tried again, with the same result, and yet again, and again. None of the landings were bad, just not quite right. Finally it occurred to me that I should take more careful note of the plane’s attitude on the ground, and use that to judge whether I had the nose high enough prior to touchdown. I was actually surprised by how far above the horizon the cylinders were.

On my next landing, I slid my butt over to the side a bit and kept my eyes moving between the nose and the pavement beside me. I held the plane off longer than before, and lowered the left wing a touch to keep from drifting as we slowed. Chirp! No bounce. No swerve. All three wheels touched down softly at the same time. Logan turned around and grinned. “That was perfect! Want to call it a day?” Not really – this is wicked-fun flying! But I had someplace to be and I felt a lot better quitting now that it had “clicked.”

A week later we were back at Airlake Airport for another round of Cub training, this time on a warm, clear day with a direct crosswind of over 15 knots. It would have given me pause in a C150, much less a Cub, but Logan thought it would be good practice. He took the first takeoff, and I was a little shocked when he used full aileron to raise the downwind wheel at the same time as the tailwheel, lowering the upwind wing until it seemed mere inches from the pavement. The plane didn’t drift an inch from centerline, though. He used the same radical slip on landing, touching down on the upwind main wheel only and not letting the downwind main touch until the tailwheel was ready to come down. Then he turned the controls over to me, and I wondered just what I’d gotten myself into.

To my surprise, handling the crosswind wasn’t really that difficult. Like any airplane, you just do what you have to do, using as much control deflection as you need to keep the airplane going where you want it to go. Because we were making wheel landings, the visibility was a lot better and it was easy to see and correct any drift. It was harder to figure out the proper pitch attitude for wheel landings and to touch down with no sink rate. Initially I was landing too tail-low, or else plopping down, either of which resulted in a little bounce. Eventually I figured out to come in flatter, power-on, and to not completely cut the throttle until touchdown, right as I gave the stick a tiny forward nudge. Actually Logan had explained all these things to me, but it was in half-heard shouts over the roaring engine as I was flying the pattern and going over the mistakes of the last landing in my head. Sometimes no amount of explanation will help, you just have to figure out things for yourself.

My second to last landing was my first truly ugly one in the Cub. I ballooned, then didn’t react quickly enough when I dropped back in. Meanwhile my crosswind correction had come a bit undone and so the plane had a fair sideload when the mains hit hard. I was still well above stall speed so of course the plane bounced mightily, the nose swinging about as a gust pushed us over toward the side of the runway. I gave the throttle a good burst, re-established a level attitude, got the upwind wing back down, and gave the rudder a boot to get the nose back on runway heading. The second touchdown wasn’t bad at all; I was mostly happy with the quick recovery.

Again, everything came together on the last landing. The crosswind had picked up again but I kept the left wing pinned down hard, I kept a little power through the flare, and the left main touched down with barely a chirp. I retarded the throttle and just kept flying the plane, left wheel rolling along, as it slowed until full left aileron couldn’t keep the right wheel off anymore. As it touched down, I moved the stick back a bit, the tail came right down, and then I held it there with full up elevator as I danced on the rudder to keep the nose pointed right down the runway as we slowed to a crawl just before the turnoff for the hangar.

Above all, one thing struck me about this flight. For the first time, I realized what tailwheel pilots mean when they say you have to “fly it until the last part stops moving.” In a tricycle gear airplane, there’s a pretty clear difference between the landing and rollout phases. The nosewheel comes down very shortly after touchdown, and it completely changes the aircraft’s behavior. A good pilot will keep in the correct control inputs throughout the rollout, but they don’t have nearly the effect they do in the air, and in all but the worst conditions a lazy pilot can usually get away with abandoning aileron and elevator inputs after touchdown. The line between “flying” and “taxiing” is much, much fuzzier in a light taildragger, and the landing is more like a gradual movement from one end of the continuum to the other rather than an abrupt transition between phases. You keep flying it until there is no airflow over the control surfaces, and simultaneously start taxiing it as soon as your wheels have friction. This was a real revelation to me even though I’ve “known” it from my earliest days as a pilot.

Logan’s schedule hasn’t lined up with mine for a few weeks since that last flight, so I’m itching to get back in the Cub again. According to Logan, I probably need one more flight to polish my three-point landings and I’ll get my tailwheel endorsement. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to blast off on my own in the Cub just yet. It belongs to a 12-person flying club, of which Logan is a member but I am not. Only about half of the members are at all active, so I’m trying to find someone willing to sell me their share. With luck, I hope to have a little yellow Cub that’s 1/12th my own in time for warm summer evenings spent loitering over golden fields with the door open and the wind in my hair.

Places I've Flown

2011-02-17T08:02:00.001-08:00

View Places I've Flown in a larger map.

Red = NewCo
Green = Horizon
Blue = Light Plane
Orange = Nonrevving

Home

2011-02-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

When I left Horizon in 2007, I knew I was doing the right thing for my career. I was a lot less sure about everything else. Dawn and I had a nice life in Portland, with good friends and a nice house and beautiful surroundings we loved to explore. It was home. Our families were all still in Minnesota, but it had long ago ceased to feel like a place I belonged. Quitting Horizon and moving back to Minnesota were two huge decisions we made over the course of about a day and a half, and I questioned whether we did the right thing for months afterward. I missed our old life.

The circumstances of the first year after our move didn't reassure me. When we initially moved back, I unsuccessfully tried to sell our townhouse myself, and then handed it over to an agent. She quickly found a buyer willing to pay near our asking price, but the transaction dragged out and finally fell apart at the very last minute in March of 2008. We put the townhouse back on the market but nobody was biting; the housing market in Portland was following the rest of the country off of a cliff. We resigned ourselves to renting out our former home.

At first we lived in Dawn's aunt's basement, a less than ideal situation necessitated by paying the mortgage on our empty townhouse while I took a 50% paycut. Eventually we rented a two-bedroom apartment in trendy Uptown Minneapolis, at first with a roommate and later on our own. We sold our Blazer and I took public transit to work and walked everywhere else. After I upgraded, we were able to aggressively pay down the townhouse and then sock money way for the place of our own that we yearned for. The timing was never right, though. The housing market was still in freefall, the RedCo-Widget merger was casting serious doubt on my future employment, and the commitment of our townhouse mortgage hung over us. We ended up staying at our cozy little apartment for three years, the longest we've lived anywhere in our nomadic life together.

This last spring, we started seriously looking into buying a place in the Twin Cities. In May, we put in a decidedly lowball offer on a short sale in Waconia, a small town about 30 miles west of Minneapolis. Two months went by before the bank accepted our offer as written. After that, things dragged out painfully slow. Bank of America, the mortgage holder, was impossible to deal with. They raised the price once on us after we supposedly had a purchase agreement, failed to tell us the house was about to go to a Sheriff's sale, and then raised the price again in late October. We'd had enough; we told them to drop dead. Our summer had been consumed by dealing with house purchase matters, all for naught.

Only a week or two later, a listing caught my eye and I asked our agent to arrange a showing. From the moment I set foot in the front door, I knew this was our new home. Dawn saw it a few days later, loved it as much as I knew she would, and wrote up an offer which was accepted within a day. The purchase process went smoothly and we closed in mid-December, rented back to the sellers over the holidays, and moved in last month.

Our new house sits high on a ridge overlooking the Minnesota River valley, with a backyard that slopes down to rolling forestland. There's a huge deck out back, and a stone patio out front. There's a three car garage with a workshop that is perfect for working on my motorcycles. The kitchen is shockingly big and useful after three years of trying to cook in a narrow galley kitchen with no counterspace. The house is truthfully too big for two people, but we'll be able to fill it with visiting friends for now - and eventually, we hope, a family. We've only been living here a few weeks, and it already feels like home. I hope we live here a long, long time.

Minnesota, too, finally feels like home to me again. This winter has been as cold and snowy as any, but it hasn't really bothered me. We're looking forward to another full season of cheering on the Twins in their beautiful new ballpark, and rediscovering our state from the unique perspective of a small plane lazing along at 1000 feet above the trees and lakes. Lately, Minnesotans have even discovered the virtues of good beer: I've been able to find Franziskaner, Moose Drool, and Black Butte Porter on local shelves and taps. Really, though, all these are just reasons to like Minnesota. The surest measure of home, for me, is the warm feeling in my chest that I get when I touch down in MSP on the last leg of a 4-day trip. Wherever I've been, there's no doubting that I'm truly home.

How Not to Build a Trip

2011-01-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

Last month I was assigned a trip that is an excellent example of how the current rest and duty rules are woefully inadequate and change is long overdue. I have reproduced the trip key below with only format changes to improve clarity. I hasten to add that although this is a NewCo pairing, every airline out there has these trips to some extent, and they are relatively rare here. Since their work rules were stripped away in bankruptcy, even the major airlines build some rotations like this one, and a few regionals build trips far worse than this one as a regular practice.

M7284 BASE REPT: 1050L

DAY FLT DEP-DEST STD STA BLK TURN

MO 5694 MSP-YYC 1135 1343 308 37

MO 5876 YYC-MSP 1420 1803 243 132

MO 5778 MSP-MDW 1935 2103 128

BLOCK 719 DUTY 1028 REST 1658

DUTY END: 2118L REPT: 1416L

TU 5749 MDW-MSP 1501 1635 134 230

TU 5755 MSP-BHM 1905 2134 229

BLOCK 403 DUTY 733 REST 926

DUTY END: 2149L REPT: 0715L

WE 5887 BHM-MSP 0800 1038 238 237

WE 5784 MSP-OMA 1315 1425 110 30

WE 5729 OMA-MSP 1455 1606 111 254

WE 5657 MSP-MSN 1900 2004 104

BLOCK 603 DUTY 1304 REST 926

DUTY END: 2019L REPT: 0545L

TH 5649 MSN-MSP 0630 0740 110 240

TH 5696 MSP-MKE 1020 1132 112 35

TH 5696 MKE-MSP 1207 1332 125 208

TH 5850 MSP-ORD 1540 1657 117 103

TH 5850 ORD-MSP 1800 1925 125 E75

BLOCK 629 DUTY 1355

DUTY END: 1940L

TOTALS BLOCK 2354 LDGS: 14 CREDIT 2354 T.A.F.B. 8050

Since most readers don’t likely see many trip keys, I’ll break this one down. The first two days are pretty easy, with three and two legs, respectively. The first layover, at Chicago-Midway (MDW), is a long one of nearly 17 hours. The following day, two legs to Birmingham (BHM), has less than 8 hours of duty time. That night, though, has only 9 hours and 26 minutes of rest time. In this situation, 9 hours is the legal minimum. It might even be adequate if followed by a moderately easy day and a long overnight. The trip, however, goes rapidly downhill from there.

On day three, there are four legs, three of them short, which combine for 6 hours of block time. Duty time, however, is 13 hours and 3 minutes thanks to two lengthy sits in Minneapolis. The day ends in Madison, WI with another barely-legal overnight. After 9:26 minutes of rest time, day four begins at 5:45am - completing the circadian swap from a trip that began on a P.M. schedule. There is a nearly three-hour sit in Minneapolis after the first leg, followed by a Milwaukee round trip and another two-hour sit. The day concludes with a Chicago O’Hare turn, with a little over an hour spent in Chicago. Block time and pay is 6 hours 29 minutes, but duty time is nearly 14 hours.

In all fairness, I bid for this trip, although not intentionally. I set my computer bidding preferences to look for efficient trips, those that have the most pay per day. This one is fairly efficient from that standpoint, with nearly 24 hours of pay in 4 days. It is inefficient from the standpoint that much of the down time is spent at airports, where there is no possibility of sleep, instead of at layovers. This is not, however, a criteria that our bidding system can sort. I was surprised when this trip appeared on my line, but on closer inspection saw that it did indeed meet all my criteria. There was nothing to do but fly the trip and get as much rest as I could in the little time allotted.

The first two days went fine. Everything was on time, the weather was good, and we even got into Birmingham a half hour early on day two, lengthening the layover to a full ten hours (although a late hotel van meant that less than nine was actually spent at the hotel). Day three was pretty long and tiring. We had plane swaps on each of our long sits, and the Omaha turn was delayed for a late inbound and for deicing. When we got to Madison, I was ready to hit the hay. Instead, we got to wait a half hour for the hotel van, and then spent twenty-five minutes riding to the complete opposite end of Madison. It was 9pm by the time we got to the hotel. I hurriedly ate a late dinner and went to bed. I tossed and turned for a long time before finally falling asleep, and then woke repeatedly throughout the night for a noisy fan that wouldn’t turn off.

The 4:30am wakeup call came bone-achingly early. The long ride to the airport, coupled with a shuttle that leaves on the top and bottom of the hour, meant we had to take a 5am van for a 5:45am show time. A hot shower and early cup of coffee didn’t do much to break my stupor. The short flight to Minneapolis seemed to take forever. A nap on our long break would have done wonders, but there was nowhere to sleep at MSP. The crew room is constantly busy, bright, and loud, and the designated quiet room off the side has been declared off limits to all but airport reserves. Instead I had another large cup of coffee. It worked, for a while: I was practically jumping off the seat on our way to Milwaukee.

Then I came crashing back down on the return leg, and I found myself missing radio calls and messing up simple things. On the descent, I fought an aggressive case of the nods by using the oxygen mask on 100% oxygen. We still had a two hour sit in Minneapolis – often more tiring than actually flying – followed by a four hour Chicago turn. There was no way I was going to make it. I called in fatigued shortly after landing.

The crew scheduler sounded incredulous. “Fatigued? You’ve only done three legs!” I told him to take a look at the trip, but that didn’t move him. “You’re going to have to talk to a chief pilot about this!” he exclaimed, obviously annoyed that he would need to find someone to cover the O’Hare turn. I told him I would go downstairs and talk to the base chief pilot that very minute, and hung up.

I’m happy to report that the base chief pilot was very supportive. I showed him the trip key and explained how the cumulative shortage of sleep was affecting me, and he agreed that the trip wasn’t exactly conducive to obtaining sufficient rest and thanked me for doing the safe thing. I know that fatigue calls are handled in a much less positive manner at certain other airlines, and that previous flight ops managers at NewCo reportedly took a different tack. In this case, the only negative effect I suffered was the loss of around $180 in pay.

It’s worth noting that none of my other crewmembers called in fatigued. They all said they were tired, but felt they could battle through the day safely. Fair enough; fatigue affects different people differently, and they may have been more successful in getting sleep the previous night. It’s impossible to say how the loss in pay may have affected my poorly paid flight attendants’ and First Officer’s decisions.

In any case, it’s hard to see how our crew planner could put together that pairing without it occurring to him that chances were excellent that at least one crewmember might become severely fatigued. At most airlines, not just NewCo, there is a prevalent attitude that “If it’s legal, it must be safe.” From a statistical perspective I suppose they’re right. We just finished the third year out of the last four without a major airline fatality in the United States. If pilots are flying around tired, they’re doing a remarkable job of not killing people in the process. The ATA and RAA’s obstructionism of the new rest and duty regulations shows they’re utterly willing to accept an occasional Colgan 3407 here, an American 1420 there, right up to the point that the body count causes passengers to start booking away.

Fair enough. They have tickets to sell and profits to make, and these days corporate responsibility in this country tends to start and end with the stockholders. It’s not like the majority of passengers disagree; I suspect the vast majority would willingly sacrifice 100 strangers every few years to keep ticket prices low. As a pilot, though, safety is my only concern. Sure, I put in the effort to run my ship in a timely and efficient manner, but I don’t lose any sleep if I block out a few minutes late or burn an extra hundred pounds of gas. My real job, indeed the very core of my professional identity, is to minimize the risk to my passengers in every way practical.

This is also, theoretically, the FAA’s only job. They do not have a responsibility to ensure the airlines turn a profit. Congress removed their responsibility to promote aviation economically a few years back for the very reason that I’m writing this post. Now, the FAA’s only job is to manage risk, and fatigue is clearly the chief risk factor they have allowed to go unaddressed for too long. It’s high time to put the new rest and duty regulations into effect and end the silliness of asking pilots to fly exhausting trips that tempt them to fly fatigued.

Old World New Year

2011-01-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

As mentioned in my last post, I took advantage of my new-found super seniority to bid thirteen consecutive days off without the use of vacation time, which gave Dawn and I the rare opportunity to travel during her Christmas break. Not wishing to altogether shun our kin over the holidays, we attended our families' respective festivities on December 23rd through 25th, and then took off for Spain on Christmas afternoon. Old Man Winter very nearly nearly threw a monkey wrench in the whole works when Atlanta's first white Christmas in some 128 years resulted in our flight to Madrid, among many others, being scrubbed. Instead, we flew to Amsterdam and connected to Madrid on Iberia, arriving scarcely an hour later than the original plan. Unfortunately, my brother Jon, who had been planning on coming with us, backed out at the last minute both due to the weather difficulties and anxiety about making it back for the start of his next college semester.

Last-minute changes notwithstanding, it was a wonderful trip; we enjoyed Spain immensely. I planned a rather ambitious itinerary, encompassing Madrid, Seville, Tangier (Morocco), Granada, Valencia, and Barcelona in the space of seven days. We could have spent a week at any one of these places - Seville and Granada particularly - and will hopefully get the chance to do exactly that sometime in the future. In the meantime, this was an excellent introduction to the country and a great way to ring in the New Year.

We took some 700 pictures over the course of the trip; sorting and editing the photos was a sizable undertaking on our return. Here are a few of my favorites so far, with a few notations.

I wasn't that impressed with Madrid at first blush. It was a nice enough city, to be sure... but it struck me as being fairly blandly, typically European with nothing really identifiably Spanish about it. It reminded me a lot of Paris, which I suppose is rather high praise, except that when I wish to visit Paris, I generally go to France. This was my first impression. But it was a sunny Sunday afternoon, the day after Christmas, and the streets were soon overflowing with Madrileños - at El Rastro Sunday flea market (top), at Plaza Mayor and Puerto del Sol and on Gran Via, in the tapas bars on Calle de la Cava Baja (bottom), in the galleries at Museo de la Reina Sofia and Museo del Prado. It seemed like the entire city was out and about in 40º weather (4º C), having a good time. That sort of thing is infectious, and I found myself liking Madrid a lot more.

We loved Seville at first sight, even though our first experience in the city was getting hopelessly lost among the tangle of medieval streets at the end of our 5-hour drive from Madrid. Palm and orange trees lining the streets and squares (top) put one in a tropical state of mind on a cloudy 15º C day. The houses and buildings are varied and interesting, and Spain's Islamic past echoes through the years in an abundance of beautiful and intricate geometric adornment (second). Of course there are grander remnants of the Caliphate of Al-Andalus such as La Giralda, the magnificent 12th century minaret that became the Cathedral of Seville's bell tower after the Reconquista (third). Among the maze of back alleyways of the Barrio de Santa Cruz are many hidden treasures like tabernas and tapas bars no much larger than the average American bathroom, or the unmarked entrance to former coal storehouse turned flamenco club La Carboneria (bottom).

I approached our side trip to Tangier with a little trepidation. Not quite Africa, not quite the Middle East, but certainly not Europe, I wasn't sure what to expect. The town's reputation for seediness is as ancient as its port, and travel forums overflow with tales of fraud, petty crime, and persistent touts. After disembarking from the ferry and shaking one of those touts over the course of three blocks, we decompressed over sodas on the terrace of the famous Hotel Continental (top) before wandering into the Medina in search of accommodation - and immediately becoming hopelessly lost. Paying a young Moroccan a few dirham to show us to the Petit Socco (second) earned us persistent entreaties to be our tour guide for the remainder of the day. We found our way to the Kasbah, Grand Socco, and Cafe Hafa (third and fourth) just fine without him, although perhaps his presence might have dissuaded other touts. I do have to say that everyone we encountered aside from the touts was unfailingly kind, polite, and helpful. As our ferry pulled away from Tangier the next morning (bottom), it looked much less foreign than it did the previous day, and I reflected that should I have the opportunity to return, it'll be much easier with a knowledge of the Medina and practice in turning down touts.

Like Seville before it, Granada secured a special place in our hearts. It's a graceful, beautiful town (top) in the shadow of the snowcapped Sierra Nevada mountains, Spain's highest (second, third), and the magnificent Alhambra. The entire complex is beautiful, but the Nasrid Palaces are particularly breathtaking. Photos cannot adequately capture the beauty of their situation, design, and intricate detail (fourth through eighth). We could have spent days wandering the Alhambra, but the sun was soon setting and beckoning us to join the Granadans in staying out late among the multitude of tabernas, bodagas, and tapas bars (bottom).

I've always admired Santiago Calatrava's sweeping, innovative designs, so it was a real treat to be able to visit his Ciutat de les Arts i Ciéncias in Valencia. Several of the structures within the complex are notable in their own right, but to see these sleek designs clustered together in a futurescape of tile, steel, and water is quite striking, and a treat to photograph (first through third). Several kilometers northwest, we climbed the Cathedral belltower for a bird's eye view of the rather more traditional architecture of Valencia's city core (fourth). After dark, the town really came alive (bottom); strolling, people-watching, paella, sangria, and midnight flamenco kept us occupied until 1am, when we realized that an early drive to Barcelona must keep us from staying out quite so late as the Spaniards.

I was impressed by the Spanish roads and drivers, both of which were better than I'd been led to believe. In the interest of time we most often stuck to the Autovias and Autopistas, but made an exception for a glorious stretch of C31 that is scratched into rocky headlands jutting from the Mediterranean south of Barcelona (top). With a wheezing 1.0L engine, our Kia Picanto (bottom) wasn't the fastest car on the road, but it was the best handling. No, wait, it wasn't... but it was quite comfortable. Er, actually not that either. It was truthfully about the worst automobile I've driven in my life. All the same, after 1440 miles I had some unaccountable fondness for the little car.

The highlight of our short stay in Barcelona was a visit to Antoni Gaudi's still-unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia (top, second). I can only hope it is completed in my lifetime. Just down the road lie Gaudi's other contributions to L'Eixample's modernista architecture, Casa Mila (third) and Casa Batlló. Across the Barri Gotic is the original source of Barcelona's wealth, Puerto Vell (fourth), which once hummed with shipping to and from the Americas. Shortly before midnight, we pried ourself away from good Rioja and tapas to join the throngs on La Rambla, headed to Placa Catalunya (fifth). The atmosphere was jubilant and chaotic, but surprisingly there was no mass countdown to midnight. Instead, each counted and celebrated according to his own watch (bottom). I noted that 2011 should be an excellent year for us, as we have seven more hours to make good use of it than all of our friends!

The original plan was for Dawn to fly home on 1 January and for me to remain for a few more days, but then the flight loads closed up on Saturday and opened up for Sunday. Dawn agreed to stay an extra day, and I decided to go home with her. In the meantime we had an extra day to go somewhere we hadn't originally planned on visiting: the Pyrenees of Spain, Andorra, and southern France (top, second). The driving was excellent and the plucky Kia took to the mountains like a fish to water, so long as I didn't mind about 20 degrees of chassis roll from one curve to the next! We spent the night in the foothills some 60 km northeast of Barcelona, in an attractive but sleepy little town called Vic (third). The next morning we drove to BCN, said goodbye to our little car, waited rather shortly for seats (bottom), and flew to New York.

Senior

2010-12-06T09:14:00.000-08:00

The course of a flying career may be measured in terms of one's progression between two extremes. At one end, you work your butt off for very little pay. At the other pole, you fly your choice of trips only rather occasionally and seemingly rake in the dough. In general, you do everything in your power to move from the former position to the latter, but for the most part one's career progress is a matter of time and luck.

Meanwhile, this progression is repeated on a smaller scale at the individual employers one might fly for over the course of a career, and even within individual fleets at companies with a variety of equipment. Aviation is a 24/7/365 sort of industry, and whether the unions forced its use or not, seniority is the only workable method of determining who spends Christmas with the kids and who spends it shooting ILS approaches in the snow. Consequently, one's career progression more resembles the game of chutes and ladders than one continuous incline. You start completely over at each individual company over the course of your career. Within each company, your relative seniority suffers as you bid onto larger aircraft.

This does introduce some element of control in an often out-of-control industry. You can choose whether to leave for a more lucrative job, or whether to bid for the bigger airplane or for a Captain slot. By choosing to pass those things up, you can gain more time off, more control over your schedule, and greater stability; in turn you often forfeit a larger paycheck or future career opportunities. At every step of the career you see pilots who have made this choice. There are grizzled old freight dogs flying tattered Metroliners long after they needed to. At the major airlines, there are thousands of widebody FOs who could've held a Captain slot on narrowbody equipment ages ago. At the regional airlines, there is an increasingly huge contingent of lifers who are content to keep a decent schedule and a middling paycheck rather than play "furlough roulette" at the bottom of a major airline's seniority list.

With the recent departure of 60 senior NewCo Captains flowing up to WidgetCo, I suddenly find myself in the unusual position of being quite senior; next month, I will be #25 out of around 400 pilots. I've never been senior anywhere I've worked. I was the designated mop-up guy at AEX (my first part 135 gig), couldn't even get my choice of Lance routes at Ameriflight, was only around 50% of the Q400 FOs after 3.5 years at Horizon, and wasn't an FO at NewCo long enough to enjoy the fruits of seniority. I'm not complaining, because those moves were all the right thing to do from career and personal standpoints. I have, however, become quite accustomed to reserve, working weekends and holidays, inefficient trips, and other things that go along with being junior.

Earlier this year, my company closed our Memphis base and most of the Captains, many of whom were junior to me, came to Minneapolis. I went from 55% seniority to 45% seniority in my seat over the course of a few months. That small change was like flipping a switch. I went from being able to hold only one or two weekend days a month off to holding a cushy Monday-Thursday schedule. I was able to hold efficient trips. I was able to bid a lazy 75 hours instead of an excruciating 95. I was getting 3-5 more days off every month. This was a revelation: flying can be a really nice gig! Suddenly I get why regional lifers stay put, particularly at high-paying places like Horizon.

The thing is, being senior is no guarantee that you'll stay senior, particularly at the regionals. Our seniority list is riddled with pilots who had a good gig before their last airline went belly up or fell on hard times. That's enough to put any thought of sticking around at NewCo out of my head. I'm keeping my options open, but at this point there's a decent chance I'll wind up at WidgetCo sometime next year. If that happens, I'll be tickled, but I will be very, very junior for a long time. Therefore, I'm enjoying the benefits of being senior now - starting with having the 24th through the 31st of December off, heading to Spain with Dawn and my brother, and ringing in the New Year in Barcelona.

Security Silliness

2010-11-16T09:11:00.000-08:00

The least favorite part of my workday is at the very beginning, when I am required to subject myself to security screening by the Transportation Security Administration. The checkpoints are usually crowded, power-tripping TSA agents are often barking orders, I feel like a jerk cutting in front of long-suffering passengers, and then there's the process of trying to disassemble and reassemble my luggage ensemble in a timely matter without battering surrounding fellow-sufferers. There are usually no less than five items to send through the X-ray machine: flight kit, overnight bag, lunch bag, bin with laptop computer, bin with hat and overcoat. It's small comfort that they don't make flight crew remove their shoes.

All this inconvenience would be an acceptable part of my job if I felt that it serves some purpose. It does not. It's completely absurd to screen the pilots who will, in less than an hour's time, be seated at the controls of a fuel laden aircraft in flight, with crash axe within easy reach! This was recognized before 9/11 and we were allowed to bypass security. That changed in the wake of 9/11, but not due to any credible threat of terrorist acts by pilots or pilot impostors. Rather, it was believed that seeing flight crews forced to go through security would make the public more accepting of new procedures. This is exactly the sort of useless display that has become the TSA's primary stock in trade, what security expert Bruce Schneier refers to as "security theater."

Recent changes in TSA equipment and procedures have elevated flight crew screening from a mere inconvenience and exercise in stupidity to an outright violation of rights and decency. The TSA recently installed hundred of whole body imaging scanners, both of the Millimeter-Wave (Terahertz) and Backscatter X-ray varieties, in order to better detect non-metallic weapons and explosives. These machines penetrate clothing to create a nude image of the subject. Ostensibly this image is to be viewed in private by a screener of the same sex, and TSA claimed that images cannot be saved; both of these assurances have been shown by events to be false. TSA also asserts that the devices are perfectly safe and cannot cause health problems. Expert opinion is not nearly so settled, particularly regarding backscatter technology, and in any case there have been no independent studies to verify that the TSA's health claims are any more authentic than their privacy claims.

Anticipating these objections, the TSA danced around Fourth Amendment issues by allowing pilots and other travelers to "opt out" of whole-body imaging and subject themselves to secondary screening instead. Simultaneously, the TSA changed their secondary screening procedures to make them infinitely more humiliating and invasive, and thus discourage further opt-outs. I have witnessed this process first-hand at several airports. First, the TSA agent loudly exclaims "Opt out! Opt out!"; this is sometimes parroted by other TSA agents, and has the effect of drawing the attention of other passengers. Then, in full view of those passengers (unless the subject specifically requests a private screening), a TSA agent aggressively pats down the subject's body, including breasts and genitals. The TSA manual states that the breasts and genitals are to be searched using the back of the hand, but I have twice observed TSA agents breaking that rule (at LaGuardia, I even observed an agent take both of a woman's breasts in the palm of her hands and squeeze hard twice - "honk, honk!"). This would be sexual assault if anyone other than the government were doing it. Worse yet, they can and do subject children to the search (again at LGA, I observed a TSA agent groping a crying 3 or 4 year old girl).

It is one thing to pass through a magnetometer and have my belongings X-rayed as a requirement of my job. It is another thing entirely to be forced to choose between a virtual strip-search that adds to the radiation I already get on the job (higher than a nuclear plant worker!) and a government-sponsored molestation. Those are absolutely unacceptable conditions of employment, and it's high time that pilots fight back. Toward that end, both the Allied Pilots Association (American Airlines' union) and the US Airline Pilots Association (USAirways) recently issued recommendations for their pilots to opt out of whole-body imaging, request a private room for secondary screening, require the presence of a supervisor or law enforcement officer during the pat-down, report inappropriate TSA behavior, and call in sick if the process leaves them too shaken to fly safely. That is excellent advice which has the potential to quickly overburden TSA checkpoints. It has already had the effect of reviving a long-stalled program to verify flight crew employment and allow them to bypass security. Sometime soon, I may not have to subject myself to the TSA's goons to go to work.

But what about when I travel out of uniform? What of my wife and parents when they nonrev? What of all our passengers, our customers, our bread and butter? Many of them are required to fly as a condition of their livelihood. Why should they be required to give up their Fourth Amendment rights by dint of setting foot on an airplane? Why have airports become rights-free zones? Because aviation has been targeted by terrorists? Trains and subways have been extensively targeted worldwide, should search and seizure without probable cause be allowed on them as well? New York City itself has been repeatedly targeted by terrorists more than any other city in America; should the Bill of Rights no longer apply on the island of Manhattan?

The standard worn-out answer is, "If you don't like it, you don't have to fly." That's a horrible excuse that can be expanded to cover nearly every trammeling of God-given rights. You don't have to travel by train or subway, or visit or live in New York City, do you? You don't have to use the sidewalk by your house, do you? In that case, should using these purely optional pieces of public property be probable cause for a police officer to detain and strip search you? I'm not saying we shouldn't have security at airports, nor that every right should apply (the 2nd ammd clearly does not, for example). The courts have clearly held that security checks at airports, as previously conducted, are constitutional administrative searches. That said, unelected officials have made a very large leap from minimally invasive passive technologies such as magnetometers and explosive trace sniffers to highly invasive technologies and techniques without a sniff of public debate on the constitutional implications and the poor precedents that might be set. That worries me.

Not everyone is so worried about rights. Some are a lot more worried about terrorism. Some are willing to give up almost any right "so long as it makes us safer from terrorists." It's not a mindset I agree with, but even by this standard there is not much reason to support the new body scanners. Many security experts doubt whether they would've detected the components that the "underwear bomber" of NW253 sewed into his undergarments. They cannot see under the skin, nor in body cavities. Remember that both surgically implanted bombs and bombs inserted into body cavities have already been used in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and presumably any operation sophisticated enough to produce a viable high-explosive device would use one of these methods of gaming the body scanners. In a German test of one of the machines, a subject was able to hide all the components needed to assemble a bomb on his body (not in cavities) and pass through the scanner undetected. The Israelis don't use them for airport security and have no plans to; the head of security at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport called them "expensive and useless." For detecting explosives, sniffer machines are also expensive and maintenance intensive but considerably more useful. More low-tech but still one of the best means of detecting explosives: trained dogs. It just happens that the body imaging companies have far better lobbyists. Chief among them: Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security immediately preceding Janet Napolitano.

I'm on the front lines here. If, God forbid, a terrorist should succeed in detonating an explosive on board an airplane in flight, there's a decent chance that somebody I know will die, and I will find myself out of a job in rather quick order. I'm generally in favor of things that decrease the possibility of that happening. I don't think subjecting ourselves, spouses, and children to a virtual strip search or public molestation does anything to help in that regard, and the one thing it does do is make flying a far less pleasant experience. Meanwhile, rampers and other airport workers with much less extensive background checking than pilots are allowed to bypass security entirely. The TSA refuses to considers the one thing the Isrealis have found to be effective: behavior-based profiling, essentially ensuring that each traveler gets some face time to chat with a trained security officer and tailoring further screening according to their behavior.

I think it's high time we put our foot down to the TSA's incompetence and boorishness. To that end, the recommendations put forth by APA and USAPA show the best way forward: use the opt-out process to bring the whole works to a grinding halt. I suggest that everyone who will be flying on November 24th participate in "National Opt-Out Day."

The "A" Model

2010-11-05T12:07:00.001-07:00

There's an old saying in aviation that goes "Never fly the 'A' model of anything!" It neatly encapsulates the conservatism and resistance to change that, whether through innate personality, training, or experience, is an enduring trait of professional aviators. There's also the hard fact that a number of new aircraft designs over the years had hidden flaws that became apparent only after a fatal crash or two. Much more commonly, the bugs aren't serious enough to cause an accident, but cost early-adopting operators considerable time, money, and operational reliability while they work through the teething stage. This was the case with Horizon when they were the launch customer for the Q400, and with the JungleBus when jetBlue, USAir, and Republic took their first deliveries (At jetBlue, it was popularly known as the E180...because you'd always make a "180" back to the gate!).

On Thursday, a Qantas A380 suffered an engine failure six minutes after takeoff from Singapore's Changi Airport enroute to Sydney. Although modern engine failures are quite rare, they do happen, and they're not always indicative of a design or widespread manufacturing flaw. Even in a new design like the A380, an inflight engine shutdown would likely attract little interest outside of Qantas, Airbus, and Rolls-Royce.

This engine, however, failed in a very violent fashion, essentially blowing itself apart - a rare event known as catastrophic failure. When any such failure does happen, it most typically originates in the fan stage. For this reason, cowlings are built extraordinarily strong in the area around the fan blades, and engine manufacturers conduct rather spectacular tests to ensure they are sufficient to contain any catastrophic failure. You can see the "Blade Off" test for the A380's Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines here.

In this case, the failure appears to have originated in the high-pressure compressor or turbine sections, creating an uncontained engine failure. Any uncontained failure is an extremely eye-raising event, given its extreme rarity and potential danger, but never more-so than in a brand new design. What makes this one worse yet is the extensive damage it did to the airplane. The worldwide press, usually happy to hype minor incidents out of proportion, has been unusually reserved in reporting this as a mere engine shutdown or loss of a cowling. Photos of the damage to tell an entirely different story:

There are at least two major complete perforations of the wing visible, along with several smaller ones. Fuel vapor is visibly streaming out of the two large holes in the upper picture. Considering that those holes were likely made by turbine blades that have a normal operating temperature of 500-900º C, and that onboard witnesses reported seeing flames around the engine, I think the potential for a catastrophic fire resulting in the loss of the aircraft and 466 souls was very real. I don't think Qantas, Lufthansa, or Singapore Airlines were overreacting by grounding their remaining Trent-900 powered A380 fleets pending initial inspections.

Whether this failure originated in a design flaw or faulty procurement or manufacturing processes, or was simply a one-off fluke, will probably take some time to determine. In the meantime, there will be plenty of very concerned folks at Airbus, Rolls-Royce, and the early A380 operators - to say nothing of A380 passengers. Meanwhile, I don't think anyone at Boeing is popping champaign corks over their competitor's troubles: the forthcoming B787 is powered by the similar Trent 1000 engine, which suffered a very similar uncontained failure during ground testing this last August.

Roman Holiday

2010-10-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

One of the least desirable effects of the recent sale of NewCo is that our non-rev benefits are getting decimated on January 1st. Buddy passes are going away, priority passes are going away, our priority is getting lowered, and parents will now have to pay "yield fares" so high that they make non-revving a moot point. Worst of all, our international travel will be limited to one round-trip per year. I don't mind saying that this is a slap in the face to a lot of people who've served WidgetCo's passengers well the last few years, and we're going to lose some of our best flight attendants over the arbitrary removal of a benefit that costs WidgetCo nothing.

That said, it doesn't look like anything we do is going to change the situation, so many of us are taking advantage of the benefits we have while they last. This weekend, I had four days off and Dawn was busy, so I was looking to take a quick trip somewhere. My mom, who has never been overseas, said she'd like to go to Europe before her benefits get cut off. To my mind, if you can only go one place in Europe in your lifetime, it has to be Paris or Rome. I've spent about an equal amount of time in each, but the flight loads favored Rome, so that's where we went.

I got off work at 8pm on Thursday, traded in my crew bag for a pre-stashed backpack, met up with mom, and boarded the 9:50pm flight to London. We got business class on the way over - the lie-flat seats on the B767-400 are great! - and landed in London a few minutes early. Good thing, too, for the later Alitalia flight to Rome had filled up; our early arrival allowed us to just make the earlier connection. We touched down in Rome a mere 10 hours 20 minutes after takeoff from Minneapolis, which has to be close to a non-rev record!

We had a great weekend. Highlights included unexpectedly seeing the Pope say Mass at St. Peter's Basilica and a madcap scooter ride through Rome's crazy traffic. Despite forecasts calling for rain, the weather stayed very pleasant (partly cloudy & 70º F) until Monday morning, when we departed. We got on the first flight out that we tried, although we subsequently made it out of JFK by the skin of our teeth after flights to Minneapolis unexpectedly filled up. And then I got to fly MSP-ORD-DTW-BHM-DTW on Tuesday, just as the largest windstorm in recent memory struck the Midwest. The altimeter in MSP was 28.66 when I took off on Tuesday morning!

I'm going to miss taking little trips like this. It's just added motivation to get out of NewCo ASAP. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the weekend.

Fall Flight

2010-10-06T09:19:00.000-07:00

Fall is in the air in Minnesota, which is good because I love fall weather, football, postseason baseball, thunderstorm-free flying, apple cider, pumpkin pie, and changing leaves, and bad because our six-month winter is just around the corner. Autumn here is measured in weeks, not months, so it behooves one to get out and take advantage while you can.

Last Sunday, Dawn and I rented N738FZ for a leaf-peeping excursion to Duluth and up Lake Superior's North Shore. I originally planned on making a day of it by stopping at Two Harbors or Silver Bay for lunch and returning via Wisconsin's Apostle Islands, but someone else needed the plane after us, so we just did it as a non-stop 260 nm round trip. Obviously, we need our own airplane!

It was a beautiful day for flying, and the leaves in the northern portion of the state were at their peak colors. We flew low, navigating by roads, rivers, and lakes. Dawn would occasionally open her window and lean out into the icy blast to take photos, and other times would take the controls so I could do so out my side. It was a lovely time, and a reminder of just how great small planes are for gaining fresh perspective on familiar territory.

Here are some of the best photos from the day.

(Another) New York Story

2010-09-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

From our position at Gate 5, I couldn't see the lightning flashing over the skyscrapers of Manhattan or the tenements of the Bronx, but the flashes were reflected in the dark, heavy clouds above. Even inside the JungleBus cockpit, the air was thick with the smell of rain. A week after my introduction to LaGuardia, I was back for another turn, but this was shaping up to be a potentially much longer visit. I reloaded the radar screen on my phone. It showed an angry purple line just over the Hudson River. The storm was moving fast, 40 knots or better by my guess. Our flight attendant Eric handed in the passenger count, and First Officer Rob bent over the FMS to punch in the numbers and request our weight and balance numbers. A Captainly decision was in order.

Realistically, there was no way we were going to take off ahead of the squall line - not during the 5 pm rush at LaGuardia. The real question was whether we wanted to ride it out at the gate, or while in line for takeoff. It didn't particularly matter from a passenger standpoint; they were all on board already, and the gate agent wasn't going to want to deplane them for the 20 minutes it would take the line to pass. If we pushed back now, we would have an on-time departure - something the company has really been emphasizing lately - and a spot in line for takeoff once the airport reopened, potentially saving an hour or more of additional delay time. If we stayed at the gate, we would have to wait at least ten minutes after the storm passed to push back - that's how long it takes the ramp to reopen after a nearby lightning strike - and would then be competing with everyone to get out at the same time, a sort of ground-bound reenactment of my experience over Ripon. "Let's get out of dodge before the ramp closes," I decided. The gate agent closed the main cabin door, retracted the jet bridge, and waved goodbye as the first fat droplets of rain smashed onto our windscreen.

We pushed back from the gate just in time; the flashes were becoming brighter and more frequent, and the ramp closed only a minute or two after our ramp crew disconnected us at Spot 34. We started one engine and called for taxi; Ground Control informed us that the airport had just closed for departures, but we could taxi westward on Bravo, pull in tight behind a Cactus Airbus just past Mike, and shut down our engines. We did so, and then watched the western sky go completely black as the storm rolled across the airport. The southerly wind started blowing hard, shaking the plane with each gust. Planes and buildings on far side of Runway 4/22 disappeared into the rain, and within another minute a veritable wall of water was upon us.

Visibility shrank to almost nil in the extremely heavy rain. We were pulled up fairly tight behind the USAirways A320, yet I could barely see his tail, and couldn't make out his winglets or red beacon. The grassy areas between Taxiway Bravo and Runway 13 filled with rainwater within minutes. I would later learn that wind gusts approaching 100 mph were recorded in other parts of the city, and one man in Brooklyn was killed by a falling tree. For all its fury, though, the line took no more than five minutes to pass. As suddenly as it began, the rain petered out, the aircraft ahead of us reappeared, and the setting sun's golden rays burst through the gloom.

It took nearly 30 minutes for departures to resume. The wind was still favoring Runway 13, which would run departing aircraft right into the storm that had just passed. Instead, a steady stream of arrivals landed on Runway 22. Gridlock soon ensued as many of these arrivals could not make it to their gates due to the crush of outbound aircraft, or because their gates were still occupied by delayed departures. The departure line behind us snaked down Bravo, then back up Alpha to past Mike - completely cutting off access to and from the Widget and USAirways terminals. Finally, departures started trickling out, but the lineup on Bravo didn't budge until an hour after we pushed back. At that point, I estimated at least 40 aircraft ahead of us for departure.

Now I was seriously second-guessing my decision to push back before the storm. We had undoubtedly saved our passengers an hour, probably more, by doing so. However, the dreaded Three Hour Rule was rearing its ugly head. For those who are unfamiliar with this debacle, earlier this year unelected bureaucrats at the Department of Transportation decreed that air carriers could spend no more than three hours on the ground without giving their passengers an opportunity to deplane. The fine for violating the rule is a draconian $27,500 per passenger - more than $2 million on a full JungleBus, or more than the price of one of our engines. The Number One Imperative for airline pilots - short of "don't crash" - has become "don't violate the three hour rule." We have detailed procedures established for lengthy taxi delays, one of which decrees that you must begin a return to the terminal after two hours at any airport where congestion could significantly delay your taxi back. LaGuardia definitely qualifies in that regard.

Therefore, we had less than one hour to get off the ground, and a good 40 planes ahead of us. On good days, LaGuardia's maximum departure rate isn't much over 40/hour, and this was not a good day. When we returned to the terminal, it would likely entail another two to three hours of delay, assuming they didn't just cancel the flight altogether. All in the name of "Passenger Rights!"

But then a funny thing started happening: the Three Hour Rule actually worked in our favor as aircraft in line ahead of us began hitting the two hour limit and requesting to return to their gates. In many cases they were on the west side of 4/22, only ten or fifteen aircraft from departure, and it took ground control a long time to get them back across the runway and slowly working their way back on already-congested Taxiway Alpha. Those of us on Bravo, however, moved ahead steadily. I kept dispatch appraised of our progress every fifteen minutes or so, and continued to make PAs and ask our flight attendants about the mood in back.

At taxiway Golf-Golf, the lineup split into two: those headed north and west from New York proceeded straight ahead on Papa to Runway 13, while those of us going south stayed straight ahead on Bravo to cross 4/22 at Echo. One of the south departure gates, WHITE intersection, was still closed by the storm; those of us filed over WHITE had to be recleared via BIGGY, and then re-sequenced to provide adequate separation in trail. When we finally reached Echo, we were cleared to cross 4/22 and take a right on Delta-Delta, and told to contact clearance delivery for our reroute. The clearance delivery frequency was predictably jam-packed, and it took several minutes for Rob to get a word in edgewise. We had less than 20 minutes left. Once our reroute was copied, entered into the FMS, verified, and briefed, we told ground control we were ready to roll. He told us to hold short of the windsock and monitor tower, who would sequence us. Aircraft were converging from DD, CC, BB, and Papa; with less than 10 minutes remaining, our fate was wholly dependent on however ATC chose to sequence us.

"NewCo 5837, you're next, left on Golf and Papa, hold short of runway 13." We're getting out after all! We were cleared into position behind a departing Dash 8, waited for a United 757 landing on 22, and then cleared to take off. We roared down Runway 13 and lifted off one hour and 55 minutes after we pushed back.

We got lucky. I'm still not sure whether my decision to push back ahead of the storm was the correct one. Given the massive gridlock in the storm's wake, its possible that pushing back 40-60 minutes later would have still entailed a 2 hour taxi-out. The bottom line is that the Three Hour Rule makes it very difficult to operate at an airport like LaGuardia in anything other than perfect conditions. It has done absolutely nothing to improve the average passenger's experience; far the opposite. That hasn't stopped the unaccountable cretins at the DOT from claiming moral victory and proposing a new bevy of "passenger rights" rules. Even worse, they're playing fast and loose with the rules they do have in place, as evidenced by them fining United $12,000 for "wasting valuable Department resources" by dutifully reporting four delays that exceeded three hours!

These fools deserve to be run out of Washington on a rail, as do the politicians who allow this chicanery to go on. This is a bipartisan politican rant, by the way: while the Obama Administration owns this DOT, Secretary Ray LaHood is a Republican, and it's not like Republicans haven't appointed their share of idiots to the DOT (here's looking at you, Libby Dole). A pox on both their houses: our entire political establishment is corrupt and rotting. Come November, only one principal will guide my voting: no incumbent will receive my vote. A country where a vast, unaccountable bureaucracy has the ability to confiscate vast amounts of wealth based on arbitrary rules they impose at whim might not feel like much of a democracy - but by God, at least we still have the ability to Throw The Bums Out!

The Show, Part 2

2010-09-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday morning, I woke to the considerable racket of a early-model Learjet departing Runway 18. I wanted to beat the morning rush to Ripon, so we got up, broke camp, and packed everything back into Foxtrot Zulu. Our neighbors helped us push her out of the wet grass and up onto the taxiway. Taxiing the full length of the flight line to Runway 36 was like being in a parade, given how many people were sitting in front of their airplanes eating breakfast and waving to passing aircraft. We lifted off and turned westward toward Ripon at 7:30am.

The airspace over Ripon was much calmer than the previous evening. I spotted a Ercoupe following a Tri-Pacer, and fell into line. A Cessna 150 approaching from our 3-o'clock position s-turned to follow me. We proceeded up the tracks to Fisk, where both vintage aircraft were sent east along Fisk Avenue, while I kept trucking northeast by myself for the right downwind to 27. Approaching the numbers, Tower told me to follow a TBM on a two-mile final, follow him, and land on the green dot. I scanned the shoreline of Lake Winnebago for the svelte single-engine turboprop, and instead spied a chunky, dark-blue radial-engined warbird. Of course, a TBM Avenger, not a TBM-700! I followed close behind and put Foxtrot Zulu right on the green dot, making a much nicer landing than the previous evening's effort in Fond du Lac. After ten minutes of following EAA flagpersons down a narrow service road, I was marshalled onto very soft grass on the northeastern side of 9/27; a mighty blast of throttle was required to keep moving until we reached our parking spot. I shut down with a happy sigh. We had made it, after all.

The North 40 was shockingly empty. Usually by Tuesday every square foot of grass around Runway 9/27 is filled with airplanes and tents, but when we arrived there were no more than 100 airplanes in our immediate vicinity, plus a few early arrivals scattered around the south side of the runway, stranded in the bog. Over the week, the entire area eventually did dry up enough to accommodate campers, but I don't think the North 40 ever completely filled up after Tuesday.

We attended the show on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and then flew home on Friday morning. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the show.

2010 is the 75th anniversary of the venerable DC-3, so there many DC-3's and C-47's in attendance.

Never was an overpriced burger so good as on a hot Wisconsin afternoon filled with the noise of radial engines.

The history of this airplane is rather astounding.

Dawn's favorite airplane, she's been begging me for a ride in one for a while. So, uh, anyone here own a Stearman?

Did you know Wacos are still in production? I didn't! When I hit the jackpot....

The ultralight field is, for my money, the most fun you can have at Oshkosh. Crazy people giving rides around the patch in questionable machines while funny old dudes kibitz over the loudspeaker? What's not to love?
On the other hand, when you need to get away from the heat & crowds, you can't beat the seaplane base. I took a really nice nap on the grass, dangling my feet in the water, occasionally opening an eye to peek at whatever was taking off or landing.

I can't imagine the expense of owning and operating an F-4, but I'm glad that at least one guy considers it a worthwhile use of his money.

Sean Tucker is a no-name chump, real men do Akro in a Beech 18! One of our favorite acts.

This is just...unnatural. I mean, even moreso than normal helicopters.

Don't try this at home, kids....

Covering an elevator at the Stitts Poly-Fiber fabric workshop.

All in all, it was a great time, if a bit overwhelming at times. Oshkosh has that reputation. Dawn said she had a lot of fun and would like to go back sometime, but maybe we should skip a year or two first.

Our flight back on Friday was smooth and relaxing. On my way back in '99, I let my ten-year-old brother Josiah do most of the flying, and taught him how to navigate VOR-to-VOR. This time, I had Dawn do most of the flying and navigation using dead reckoning and pilotage. She did a great job.

On the way back, we stopped in Siren WI to pick up my seven-year-old nephew, Dylan. We were bringing him to Grandma and Grandpa's house for the weekend, and it was his first airplane ride ever. The afternoon air was a little turbulent, but Dylan did great. I promised him that he could sit up front with me next time, and I'd show him how to fly.

The Show

2010-09-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 1999, when I was 18 years old and freshly graduated from high school, I flew a Cessna 172 to the Experimental Aircraft Association's Annual Convention and Fly-In - then newly branded as "EAA AirVenture Oshkosh" - in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I along brought my little brother Josiah (then ten years old), and we camped under N738FZ's wing for the week. For a plane-obsessed kid about to head to college for aviation, it was absolute heaven.

I didn't make it back for eleven years. I got busy with flight training, and then moved to the west coast. Although I stayed current in small planes for a while, it wasn't a priority, and by this summer it'd been over three years since I'd flown one. My work tends to scratch my flying itch, so I never felt any overwhelming need to go back to Oshkosh.

It turns out that I've been blessed with a wife with a flying itch of her own, and my job doesn't do anything for her. Dawn had been nudging me to get checked out in a light plane here in Minneapolis, but most of the FBOs and flight schools of my youth have withered away and the survivors' rental rates are painfully high. In July, though, I got back in touch with my first flight instructor and had the chance to get reacquainted with N738FZ. My first few landings, it must be admitted, were humbling, but before long I got the hang of Cessna wrangling again. I meekly asked my old CFI what he'd think of me stealing Foxtrot Zulu for a week and taking Dawn to Oshkosh. He said yes without batting an eye.

The plan was to fly in on Sunday 25 July, the day before the show begins. Mother Nature had other ideas. Eastern Wisconsin, already the recipient of record rainfall in July, got an utter drenching that Thursday night. On the very eve of the world's largest airshow and fly-in, virtually every unpaved inch of Oshkosh Airport was either underwater or was a bottomless mud bog. There was no place to park the 12,000 expected aircraft, no place for RVs and tent trailers, few places even suitable for parking cars. I checked the uniformly grim site updates through the weekend. Maybe we should throw in the towel and just head to Spain instead? My friend in Girona invited us to come on over. We almost did, until insane loads to Atlanta made the open flight to Barcelona a moot point. Finally, EAA announced that general aviation camping would be opening at some point on Monday. We decided to take off from on Monday morning and head that way.

The air was still as lifted off Runway 16 at CBG and turned eastward to climb out over the St Croix River. We leveled off at 5500 feet and admired the stunningly green Wisconsin scenery as it passed slowly by. Dawn helped me identify landmarks from the WAC chart; no GPS in this old bird! Past Eau Claire, scattered cumulus started popping up around us. I weaved around them for a while until they became too numerous to avoid, then descended to 2500 ft and followed a high-tension powerline eastward. Approaching Wisconsin Rapids, I tuned up the Oshkosh ATIS. It was still faint but I picked out the words "General Aviation Camping closed." Oh well. I chopped the throttle and banked into the downwind for Runway 20 at KISW.

There was only one spot to park N738FZ, for we weren't the only ones waiting to go to the show. I talked to a couple of guys in Super Cubs with bush tires, one of whom had come from Edmonton. Long flight. A couple of ultralight trikes landed for gas. I checked the OSH site update page on my Palm obsessively; frequent updates kept promising an imminent opening but suggested it might be after the airshow. Dawn and I walked into town for lunch. Sure enough, while we were at lunch Oshkosh opened briefly for general aviation campers, but we didn't have enough time to get back to the airport and fly to OSH before it closed for the daily airshow. I figured we'd take off around 5:30pm to arrive over Ripon around 6PM, when the airport usually reopens.

Everyone at Wisconsin Rapids had the same idea; we all took off in quick succession and proceeded southeast en masse. Approaching the start of the VFR arrival procedure at Ripon, it quickly became apparent that everyone within a hundred-mile radius of Oshkosh had the same idea. The approach control frequency was utterly clogged with pilots self-announcing their arrival over Ripon and holding over Green Lake, contrary to the NOTAM's instructions and the approach controller's exasperated admonitions. "OK, we have entirely too many airplanes over Green Lake," she finally declared. "Everyone pick a spot near you and circle it until we reopen the airport and get Green Lake cleared out!" I spotted a Mooney circling under us, and dropped down to stalk him around his circuit of a large marsh, playing with his wake. Within a few minutes I saw a Cherokee doing the same thing behind us.

The airport reopened shortly after 6PM, as expected. At first the line out of Green Lake, over Ripon, and up the railroad tracks seemed to proceed in an orderly fashion. Then somebody cut in line, and a speedster caught up to a slowpoke, and soon the frequency was again utter chaos. The approach controller kept admonishing the pilots to listen rather than speak, then gave up in frustration and was relieved by another controller. Finally the end of the line was reached and all of us holding outside Ripon were given clearance to proceed inbound. I stayed behind the Mooney, establishing a half-mile in trail at 90 knots and 1800'. With any luck, I thought, I'll be able to follow him into the line and up the tracks. That turned out to be wishful thinking.

As we approached Ripon, an utterly incredible sight unfolded. The airspace above the small town was positively swarming with dozens of airplanes buzzing about in every which direction with no sense of order whatsoever. It strongly reminded me of a dogfight sequence in an old WWI film. As we closed in, even more airplanes appeared, more than I've ever seen flying in close proximity; for a few seconds I was filled with utter dread, and then we were in the thick of it, planes all around us. I followed my Mooney guide toward the tracks, my head on a constant swivel. There were five or six of us roughly abreast of each other, all converging on the tracks. This was not going to work. The Mooney had some competition of his own and bugged out to the left. I had just rolled into a left bank to follow him back around the northern edge of Ripon when a C210 flashed by right-to-left a hundred feet or so ahead of us, cutting into the slot between me and the Mooney. I slowed five knots to increase the separation, then kept following the interloper in the absence of any other semblance of order around us. Our little conga line again made a move towards the tracks and was again thwarted, then snaked off to the southwest around the west side of Green Lake. Another conga line was going the other way, up the east side. When it ended, the Mooney swung around to follow, with the Centurion and Foxtrot Zulu close behind. Ah, order out of chaos! There were still planes on every side, above and below, many of whom attempted to cut in, but our impromptu squadron held formation through the gauntlet.

The radio was strangely calm during this frenetic fifteen minutes, for the approach controllers had mostly succeeded in berating the pilots into holding their tongues and waving their wings in reply. Now, as we closed in on the town of Fisk, I listened intently for them to call Brown and White Cessna. "Red RV4, follow Fisk Avenue for left downwind 18L, monitor tower 126.6. Yellow Cub, wag your wings. Thank you, Yellow Cub, follow the tracks for right downwind 27, tower 118.5. Blue and Yellow Biplane, rock your wings...good rock, sir! Follow the RV4 for 18L, tower 126.6....OK, white Mooney, rock your wings!" I perked up - the Mooney was two ahead of us. "OK, Mooney, Oshkosh is saturated, break left, start holding at Rush Lake." Uh-oh. "Retractable Cessna, follow the Mooney. Brown and white Cessna, follow him, everyone hold at Rush Lake."

We didn't even get to Rush Lake when the controller announced that General Aviation camping was closed for the night, but showplanes could proceed inbound. Technically, any airplane built until 1970 qualifies as a showplane - and we later saw many beat-up spam cans in showplane camping - but Foxtrot Zulu is a '78 model. The door had slammed shut. I decided to beat a quick path to Fond du Lac before everyone else got the same idea. I climbed well above the swarm at Ripon and then turned east and began descending to FLD.

Fond du Lac was as busy as I expected, with the controllers issuing the same continuous stream of instructions to anonymous aircraft as Fisk Approach was. Our downwind was extended to follow a flight of T-28s, and then on a three mile final were told to maintain at least 90 knots for a P-51 breathing down our neck. I kept the airspeed high all the way to the numbers, then bled it off seemingly forever in ground effect before making an embarrassingly flat, skittish landing. I braked hard to turn off and was barely clear when the P-51 went roaring behind us. Our timing was fortuitous, for we claimed the third-to-last camping spot on the airport. As we set up camp, representatives of the local EAA chapter came by to fleece us to the tune of $50 (!); this, in addition to $25 per person per day to shuttle to Oshkosh. The airport had very basic facilities, no potable water for cooking, one food stand, and nothing else nearby. After the adrenaline rush of aerial warfare over Ripon, this was a bit disheartening.

Dawn and I talked about it over burgers and cheese curds. We hadn't come all this way to camp at Fond du Lac and take a bus to Oshkosh, we decided. Tomorrow we would break camp and brave the crowded skies above Ripon once again. It would be Oshkosh or bust!

(Next: The Show part of The Show)

Big Apple Arrival

2010-09-13T09:25:00.000-07:00

If I had my way, I'd never fly anywhere but Montana. The scenery is beautiful, the people friendly; the flying is just challenging enough to be interesting, but ATC is relaxed and delays are few, making for a pretty stress-free experience. All this is true of most of the west coast, actually, but Montana has all these qualities in spades. Alas, I don't get to fly west all that often anymore.

Instead, the great majority of my trips these days send me east from Minneapolis. Flow control, holding, last-minute reroutes, ATC inflexibility, clogged frequencies, postage-stamp sized sectors, gridlocked taxiways and ramps - these are a few of my least favorite things, and they are all permanent features of east coast flying. In fact, the severity of these problems seems to vary in direct relationship with one's proximity to New York City. Flying to any of the NYC airports - JFK, LGA, and EWR, "The Trifecta of Suck" - is just asking for a screaming migraine. I can't imagine being based there, which probably guarantees I will be at some point.

Although I've long been well acquainted with Newark's wonders, thus far I've managed to mostly avoid JFK and stay completely away from LaGuardia. This has been through a combination of lucky and purposeful bidding, as well as the occasional strategic trip trade. A lot of other guys see a New York airport and dollar signs flash before their eyes: there's an excellent chance of picking up over-block on these flights. I'm more than willing to help them out, as the hassle and stress isn't worth the extra money to me. With NewCo's increasing presence in New York over the last few months, it's getting tougher to stay out. The last few months, I've flown into JFK several times. And then last week, I could avoid LaGuardia no longer.

I actually had two LaGuardia turns, one at dusk on Wednesday night and the other at dawn on Friday morning. Keith, the FO I was flying with, had been into LGA a number of times so I had him fly the first turn, while I took the second. We got some holding on the arrival on Friday night due to gusty winds forcing a runway configuration change; after landing, taxiway gridlock and a last-minute gate change (to a remote pad, utilizing air stairs and a bus) upped the stress level for a few minutes. On departure a few hours later, it took 20 minutes to push back and over an hour to taxi out thanks to extreme congestion and some VIP activity on the airport (we departed #2 behind Air Force Two). The turn on Friday morning involved quite a bit less hassle, but the lineup for departure was still fairly long. Congestion is an unavoidable fact of life at an extremely popular airport that is inherently limited by its configuration and is hemmed in between Queens and Flushing Bay with no room for expansion.

Despite the hassle factor, I rather enjoyed the visits to LGA thanks to being able to fly the famous Expressway Visual approach to 31. LaGuardia actually uses another neat approach, the River Visual, whereby one steams up the Hudson at low altitude for the full length of Manhattan before cutting straight across the Bronx on final to Runway 13. The Expressway Visual offers a little less in the way of skyline appreciation but makes up for it with nice seat-of-the-pants flying that's a rare treat in a transport category aircraft.

You can find the approach plate here. Approaching from the southwest on the Milton Three arrival, we were cleared to DIALS early on and spotted the twin white tanks before we reached the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Cleared for the visual approach, we descended to 2500 feet until reaching the tanks, then turned right to intercept and follow the Long Island Expressway through Queens. Approach handed us off to tower, who told us we were #2 to land after traffic on left base and cleared us to land. I clicked off the autopilot, cleared the flight director, and called for "Flaps 3, Speed 160" as I began a 3-degree descent. There is no vertical guidance on this approach until you pick up Runway 31's VASI at relatively low altitude, so you take a guesstimate of flying miles remaining and maintain a descent that puts you at 300 feet for every mile to the runway.

Passing through 1500 feet, I called "Gear Down, V-Approach, Landing Check" and Keith read the landing checklist as we slowed to our approach speed of 131 knots. Coming abeam Meadow Lake, I rolled into a 20-degree left bank to follow the Flushing River out of Flushing Meadows Park, pirouetting nicely around ~~Shea Stadium~~ Citi Field. Passing 500 feet, I shallowed my bank to make a sort of slightly curving final approach all the way to the runway; tall cranes by the mouth of the Flushing River prevent us from making a straight-in final the last 500 feet, as is usual practice. The VASI came into view; we were right on glidepath. On about a half-mile final, I finally leveled the wings completely. The winds were gusting out of the north, and as I came over the threshold I kicked in left rudder to align the nose on runway heading while using right aileron to keep the upwind wing slightly down. Squeak-squeak-squeak went the right main, left main, and nosewheel, just the way I like it; our light weight allowed me to use minimum reverse and medium braking to slow in time to make the taxiway Tango turnoff, just the way tower likes it.

I'm sure a lot of my GA pilot readers are looking over my description and thinking "What's the big deal?" Visual approaches by reference to surface features are the rule rather than the exception in light planes. The context that you're missing is the stultifying routine of the great majority of airliner arrivals. For us, the rule is being vectored onto a 20-mile final for an ILS-served runway 10,000 feet long, 3 miles in trail, 160 knots to the marker - over and over again. Turning off the autopilot, flight director, or even autothrottles (gasp!) are about all you can do to provide some variety, and even this is barely enough to keep the rust off. Good stick and rudder skills are seldom needed in the airline world; here, being a good pilot is primarily about effective crew coordination and decision-making skills. Chances to go beyond being a cockpit manager, to go back to being a pilot, are relatively rare and genuinely cherished. The Expressway Visual 31, or the River Visual 13, or the Carnesie Visual 13L/R at JFK, or the River Visual 19 at DCA are what passes for fun flying in the airline world. Well, that and flying to Montana!

If you'd like to see what the Expressway Visual looks like the cockpit, here's an excellent video on youtube. This crew is approaching from the northeast, so they overfly LaGuardia and Manhattan before turning in at Prospect Park, but the approach is otherwise the same from about the 5:40 mark.

(R)Evolution

2010-09-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

I've put off writing this post for two months, with good reason. When NewCo was unexpectedly sold off on July 1st, I was so emotional about the whole thing, so utterly pissed off, that anything I cared to write would have been a fireball launched directly into the face of my new employer, daring them to fire me. Since then, I've had time to simmer down and think through what this sale, and even more disruptive recent events, mean for the industry. There have also been some positive developments that are making me think that perhaps I'd like to keep my job, after all.

On the morning of July 1st, I was flying from Houston to Minneapolis on day three of four. I was paired with Mike, an excellent FO and great guy with whom I'd flown a number of times. We'd just pulled into gate G18, completed the shutdown checklist, and turned on our phones; they both began going crazy with multiple texts and voicemails we'd missed during the flight. We looked at each either; it was obvious something big was up. My first text was from a friend who flies for Pinnacle. "What the heck...you guys are screwed!" it exclaimed. When a Pinnacle guy says you're screwed, he isn't kidding. I loaded up the company website and discovered that WidgetCo had sold NewCo late the previous night. That wasn't the shocker; there had been swirling rumors of an impending sale. The unexpected part was who we were sold to.

Our new parent company has been around for some 30 years. I'll give them the pseudonym "Osage Airlines," in honor of their early days flying to Lake of the Ozarks. They are privately owned by one individual, who built the airline from the ground up. They do not have a good reputation among pilots. Part of it is their industry-wide reputation for being cheap. There are lots of cheap regionals, though; most of the animosity stems from something that happened about five years ago. Osage had been awarded new CRJ-700 flying for a major airline. Because of a scope clause at one of their existing mainline partners, they were forced to start a new certificate. The original plan was to use Osage pilots; however, when their ALPA MEC refused to fly for below-market rates, Osage decided to bypass them by using non-Osage pilots. This appeared to be against the Osage pilots' contract, which stipulated they were to do all flying controlled by Osage Airlines. Osage management got around this by creating a new holding company to own both Osage Airlines and the new company, and then successfully arguing that the contract was between the pilots and Osage Airlines, not the new Osage Holdings. The new airline - let's not sugarcoat it, I'll call it Pariah Air - took delivery of 25 CRJ-700s and hired pilots while Osage was getting rid of older turboprops and furloughing. It created an enormous amount of ill will among pilots, and those who went to Pariah are despised by many regional pilots - including the many Osage furloughees that ended up at NewCo. My First Officer, Mike, was one of these furloughees. You can imagine his reaction to learning that WidgetCo sold NewCo to Osage Holdings.

We had a three hour break after our arrival from Houston, so we packed up and walked down to the crew room. The mood there was veering between bleak and apoplectic. Between the press release and an employee FAQ, we got a few details. NewCo was sold for a paltry $20 million, which was financed by WidgetCo, who also leased the aircraft back to Osage Holdings. We were to be operated as a separate airline, alongside Osage Airlines and Pariah Air. Our nonrev benefits were to be slashed to those of a contract carrier. Most alarmingly, the flowthrough agreement to WidgetCo - our senior-most 60 pilots were scheduled to flow yet this year, with me close behind - was revealed to be subject to cancellation due to the sale. Although the FAQ said that all parties would meet soon to determine the future of the flow agreement, the consensus that morning was that it was toast. Delta didn't want it and Osage didn't want it, we believed, and we were the suckers for ever thinking it might work despite the failure of other flowthrough agreements across the industry. Our company president, to his credit, showed up in the crew room to deflect angry inquiries from an increasingly hostile crowed. I didn't believe one of his answers and made it clear to him. Finally, Mike and I headed out for the flight to our Columbus overnight. During the crew briefing, I told him: "If there was ever a flight in which we were distracted a dangerous level, this is it. Let's both be extra vigilant and watch out for each other." We did, and got to Columbus just fine, where we promptly headed to the nearest brewpub to commiserate over beers.

It helped to empathize with our colleagues at Mesaba, for NewCo wasn't the only airline that WidgetCo sold on 1 July. A little history is in order. Mesaba was forced into bankruptcy in 2005 after the bankrupt RedCo withheld millions of dollars in payments owed them; RedCo subsequently purchased Mesaba for mere pennies on the dollar. Fast-forward to 1 July 2010: WidgetCo, having bought all of NewCo's assets including Mesaba, sells Mesaba to Pinnacle Holdings for $62 million. I would say a lot more about this but everything I could type would constitute more of those fireballs I was talking about.

It turned out that this double sale was only the start of interesting developments for the regional industry this summer - or perhaps the continuation of trends I noted earlier this spring. Skywest recently announced the purchase of erstwhile industry giant ExpressJet Airlines, which it plans to merge into subsidiary Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA). Meanwhile, Freedom Airlines shut down after WidgetCo won litigation allowing it to cancel its contract for poor performance; the survival of Freedom's parent Mesa Air Group seems increasingly in doubt. American has made it increasingly clear that Eagle is for sale if someone would just make a reasonable offer. Just last week, Comair (still wholly-owned by WidgetCo) announced that it would slash its fleet to half of its already-diminished number and furlough a substantial portion of its workforce.

Just what is going on here? A key component is the increasingly obvious obsolescence of the ubiquitous 30-50 seat regional jet. The $150/bbl oil of 2007 felled the first blow, the depressed revenue environment of 2008-2009 gave the RJ a further bludgeoning, and major airline consolidation into 2010 just may have put the final nail in the coffin. Mind you, 30-50 seat RJs will always have a niche to fill, but it has become apparent that there are far too many in use today for roles they do not fill well. This has left many regional airlines desperately exposed; as 30-50 seat contacts come due and are not renewed, these airlines stand to shrink significantly, with an accompanying explosion of their cost structure and subsequent loss of competitiveness in all seat categories (see: Mesa Airlines).

So what to do? I think there are essentially four choices out there for those who own or manage regional airlines. You can try to go independent, either with existing aircraft or by acquiring larger aircraft. From Independence Air to go! to branded ExpressJet, the track record is not encouraging here. You can acquire larger national airlines and use them to compete with mainline "partners," as Republic Holdings has done. The jury's still out on that one. You can acquire other regional airlines in an effort to diversify your air service agreement portfolio, obtain synergistic cost savings, and decrease competition for increasingly scarce RFPs. This seems to be the tack taken by Skywest, Osage, and Pinnacle. Or, you can position yourself to be acquired. I think this is what WidgetCo is doing with Comair, and American with Eagle.

So I get what Osage and Pinnacle were thinking when they picked up NewCo and Mesaba. The real question is what was Widget looking to gain by selling these airlines off - particularly for a paltry $82 million, a tiny fraction of WidgetCo's total debt? I'm still trying to figure this one out. You could take Widget's CEO at his word when he told investors that it was simply a way to decrease Widget's liability. Think about that one for a sec. It implies that the bean-counters were so concerned about the possibility of a crash and ensuing liability from one of the regional airlines 100% under their control that they chose to move those airlines out from under their control, and ostensibly decrease their liability in case of a mishap. Doesn't give one the warm fuzzies, does it?

In the week after the sale, surprise and confusion gave way to seething anger. Dawn said she had never seen me so negative about my career in the decade she's known me. That's no way to go through life, though, and I've cooled off considerably since. Thus far it's looking like Osage is willing to let NewCo keep running the way it's been run - which isn't perfect, mind you, but has improved considerably since I started and is at present a pretty decent operation that backs up its pilots when they make safe decisions. Furthermore, I was pleasantly surprised when WidgetCo agreed to keep the flowthrough agreement for all NewCo pilots on property as of the sale. If current hiring projections hold, there is a real chance that I'll be at the controls of a Diesel 9 or Mad Dog or Fifi sometime next year. I sure hope it happens - the regional industry is getting far too interesting for me as of late!

I haven't mentioned one potentially truly revolutionary development. The Continental and United pilots are demanding, as a condition of cooperating in the merger between their airlines, a gradual end to outsourcing, with all regional flying eventually to be flown by pilots on the combined seniority list. I consider this a definite long-shot to actually happen, but if it does you will see a great deal more turmoil in the regional industry as well as great celebration from airline pilots of all descriptions.

The Long Road Home, Part 2 Photos

2010-08-09T11:13:00.001-07:00

Dawn at Horseshoe Falls in Niagara Falls, ON.

American Falls, seen from the Canadian side.

On the MS Chi-Cheemaun near Tobermory, Ontario.

Trying to figure out how we're going to get around Lake Huron now that the ferry is returning to port with its bow stuck open.

Lake Huron near Au Sable, Michigan. I fly over Au Sable every time I work EWR-MSP but had never seen Lake Huron from the ground before this trip.

Riding over the Mackinac Bridge between Michigan's Lower & Upper Peninsulas.

Lighthouse on Lake Michigan at Manistique, MI.

Soggy morning at Indian Lake near Manistique.

Minneapolis at last! Left 10 July 2009, Returned 31 May 2010.

14,679 miles, 4 oil changes, 2 sets of tires, and a rebuilt transmission later...the Beamer is home.

The Long Road Home, Part 2

2010-08-07T20:10:00.000-07:00

Nonrevving back to Buffalo two weeks later proved much easier than anticipated, and we touched down shortly after 11PM on Friday, May 29. The final leg of my adventure was planned to go up Canada's Bruce Peninsula, across the top of Lake Huron, back into the US at Sault Ste Marie, and across Michigan's Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin to Minneapolis. The only potential hitch was the ferry ride across Georgian Bay's Main Channel; there are but two crossings a day, the latest at 1:30PM, which we would need to catch on Saturday in order to make it back over the three-day Memorial Day weekend. Consequently, we rode the 40 miles to Niagara Falls on Friday despite the late hour of our arrival, crossed into Canada at the Rainbow Bridge, and rented a cheap room at the Day's Inn for a very short night of sleep.

Despite the need to put some kilometres behind us early on, Dawn and I took some time in the morning to view Niagara Falls, which until now I'd only viewed from the air and Dawn not at all. Having been forewarned not to expect much more than a touristy town next to a really big waterfall, I didn't come away disappointed. The alloted half-hour was more than enough time to enjoy the view, and we were soon in the saddle and heading north out of town on Queen Elizabeth Way. Soon Lake Ontario came into view, and as the QEW transited its west end towards Toronto, the traffic became both heavier and faster. In Hamilton we turned off on ON-6, the highway that would take us up the Bruce, and the pace immediately relaxed. I was happy to find the traffic light and the road in good condition. The scenery consisted mostly of flat farmland, but was punctuated occasionally by picturesque towns with ancient stone-and-timber shops, churches, and ramparts. Past Owen Sound, the countryside became progressively less populated as we entered the peninsula proper, and the last forty miles took us through a wild-looking forest of scrub-pine.

Our worries about making the ferry were needless, for we reached the end of the peninsula at Tobermory by noontime. After buying our ferry tickets, we ate lunch at a dockside Fish-N-Chips joint and wandered around the quiet town until the ferry's horn summoned us back to the quay. We and a few other motorcyclists were the first vehicles onto the ferry; after tying the Beamer down securely, we headed up top to poke around the 365-foot MS Chi-Cheemaun and claim some Adirondack chairs near the stern. The last vehicles loaded, the ship gave a parting blast from her horn and cast off. I was thoroughly enjoying the beautiful sunny day and the spectacular scenery of Fathom Five National Marine Park when Dawn mentioned that we didn't seem to be going very fast. She was right; the thirty-mile crossing normally takes two hours but we were making no more than five knots. Within a few minutes, we stopped completely, and then began a slow 180 degree turn. "Ladies and Gentleman, this is your Captain speaking," cackled a loudspeaker on deck. "We have encountered a problem with the bow of the ship that is not allowing it to latch closed, and therefore it is unsafe to continue to South Baymouth. We will be returning to Tobermory, everyone will need to disembark, and your fare will be refunded."

Hundreds of miles from the nearest NewCo airplane, the announcement suddenly gave me the feeling that I was at work. The irony of being on the receiving end now didn't escape me. I talked to a crewmember who said that the nearest mechanic was several hours away and that parts might need to be special ordered; even the following morning's sailing was in doubt. I didn't feel like an indefinite wait on a remote peninsula in the middle of Lake Huron, which left two options: going around Georgian Bay to the east and joining our original route, or riding around the south end of Lake Huron and heading to Chicago, then Minneapolis. I got out my Palm; Google Maps said the Georgian Bay detour was considerably longer. That made the decision for us; Chicago it would be. As soon as we collected our fare refund, we saddled up and headed back down the Bruce Peninsula. It was just after 3PM, and I figured we could knock out another 200 miles before sundown.

As soon as possible, I deviated off of ON-6 to the west and followed ON-21 around the eastern shore of Lake Huron. The road wasn't right on the lake but allowed occasional glimpses of it, the riding was pleasant, and the miles went by quickly. As the sun sank lower, fatigue began to set in, but we pressed on. The more miles we rode now, the fewer miles to ride in Memorial Day traffic on Monday. At the south end of the lake, we joined the ON-402 freeway westbound, which faced us into the late-afternoon sun for an extra dose of drowsy. I pulled out my iPod, synced it to my bluetooth helmet intercom, blasted a Tiesto album, and saddle-danced my way to the border crossing at Port Huron. We crossed the border behind two old guys on late-model Honda ST-1300s, both of which had higher mileages than the not-inconsiderable number on my 25-year-old BMW. Two miles after entering the US, we exited at Port Huron, Michigan, to make camp at the municipal campground - really an RV park, but nonetheless a decent grassy spot to camp for not much coin. We had ridden 475 miles since Niagara Falls.

After making camp we rode downtown to a microbrewery by the port, where we had a fine dinner and I sampled a tasty IPA. I talked about my disappointment at being unable to explore the northern shore of Lake Huron and at how comparatively dull the mostly freeway-bound new route would be. "Well, we don't have to go through Chicago, right?" Dawn queried. "You could still go through the Upper Peninsula, right?" It seemed like an awful long detour to go that way, but when I checked Google Maps it was a difference of only about 50 miles. That seemed like a very reasonable tradeoff for an infinitely more enjoyable route. And then I realized that rather than taking I-75 all the way up to the Mackinac Straights, we could hang a right on US-23 and hug the shore of Lake Huron. This would add on another 50 miles, but it was another area I'd flown over often but never seen from the ground. In for a dime, in for a dollar, as they say.

I slept well that night despite the busy freeway next door, and felt well rested as we broke camp early the next morning. It promised to be another long day of riding. I put on my chaps and thick gloves and pressed my legs tight against the engine as we accelerated onto I-69 in the chilly morning air. The first sixty miles passed by quickly despite some heavy construction as we approached Flint, then we skirted the city on I-475 and joined I-75 northbound. We passed through Saginaw, which I've flown into and overnighted at often, but the area looked entirely different from the freeway. Shortly after exiting onto US-23, we stopped for breakfast at the North Forest Cafe in Standish. The joint was packed with old-timers, and we enjoyed people-watching from our small two-top to the side of the bustling room as much as we enjoyed the $2.99 breakfast special and 99-cent steaming coffee.

The first half of the ride up the coast took us through an unbroken vacation-land of lake cabins, resorts, B&Bs, various tourist businesses, and occasional small towns. The road never strayed far from the lake, and the glinting waves often flickered invitingly through the pines. Past Harrisville, the development petered out and the road backed off into the hills, thick forests hugging both sides. The sunny day was getting quite warm, and I stripped off my chaps and took the liner out of my leather jacket when we stopped for gas near Alpena. I subsequently rode off without paying for the gas - no pay at the pump out here! - and got several miles away before I realized my mistake. The cashier still hadn't called the cops by the time I returned with a profuse apology.

We rolled into Mackinaw City a bit after 3pm, stopped to cool off with ice cream cones, and rode across the magnificent Mackinac Bridge to St Ignace. I landed here on a long cross-country flight in a Warrior ten years ago. Low on gas, I waited in an FBO attended only by an old golden retriever for over an hour until the fueler showed up, then took off over the straights at dusk as the lights on the bridge twinkled to life. Back then it seemed like making a long trip by small plane was the ultimate adventure. I think it still could be, but it's been a long time since I've flown small aircraft, and I associate flying too closely with work.

I had a bad scare about an hour after I turned westward on US-2, at around our 400th mile for the day. I rounded a sharp, rolling corner around a cliffside without backing off of my 65 mph pace, only to discover the Buick I'd previously been following by several hundred feet was stopped in the middle of the road, waiting for oncoming traffic to pass before making a left turn. Actually it took me a few seconds to realize that he was stopped, as the Buick had neither left turn signal nor brake lights on. By the time I jammed on my brakes, he was perhaps 100 feet away and I quickly realized I would not stop in time. I had to make a snap decision between two unsavory options: I could swerve to the right, where there was a ton of loose rock and not much room between the Buick and a small shoulder bordered by a yawning chasm of a ditch, all placed at the entrance to a left-hand curve to make staying on the road especially doubtful. Or, I could swerve inside of the Buick, straight towards the oncoming traffic, and then jerk back into my own lane before they hit me.

In a fraction of a second I let go of the brakes, snapped the throttle open, and leaned hard to the left. "Don't turn now, don't turn now!" I prayed as we blew by the unsuspecting Buick. The moment we were past him, I leaned back hard to the right and swerved back into my own lane with a good second to spare before the Ford cargo van roared by, horn blaring. It was several seconds before our intercom crackled to life. "That happened quickly," Dawn said. I didn't say anything for a while. I could have stopped if I'd seen the Buick as soon as I rounded the curve - but I didn't. The lack of brake lights were partially to blame, but I had also been cruising along fat, dumb, and happy, my attention span wilted in the late afternoon sun. At least I reacted very quickly and correctly. I rode on feeling curiously calm about the incident. I think it was over too quickly to produce much adrenaline.

We camped for the night on the shores of Indian Lake in Manistique. The town itself was pretty quiet on Sunday night, and the pub that a park ranger recommended was closed. We rode further downtown and found the unapologetically divey Buckshot Bar open for 99 cent Old Milwaukee and all manner of fried food. The Twins were playing on the old TV over the bar so we lingered to watch them complete a home sweep of the Rangers before retiring to camp for the night. On our return, our older neighbors invited us to sit by their fire and eat smores with them and their grandson.

Sometime during the night it began raining and had yet to abate when we could put off rising no longer. Breaking camp was a soggy affair, and it looked like my 41st and last day of riding around the States might be a wet, cold ordeal. By Escanaba, though, the western sky had begun to lighten, and the road was perfectly dry by the time we crossed into Wisconsin, the 32nd state of the trip. After turning onto US-8 at Norway, we quickly found ourselves plunged deep into the Wisconsin Northwoods. We looked for breakfast in a tiny town and came up with only a gas station diner (which proved surprisingly good). Deer sightings were quite frequent. Twenty miles out of Rhinelander, a black bear scampered across the road and up the opposing bank.

After Prentice, the more familiar landscape of northwestern Wisconsin began to unfold, and it finally started to feel like the trip was really coming to an end. When I'd set out westward from Minneapolis last July, I had no idea that so much time or so many miles would pass before I rode into town again - or that I'd be coming from the east. As we approached the Minnesota border at Taylor's Falls, the Memorial Day traffic got progressively worse, as I feared. At least we had made good time across Wisconsin, and I was still feeling alert. I needed it for the last forty miles of heavy traffic on I-35 and I-35W.

And then...I rounded a corner in the freeway, and there sat the Minneapolis skyline across the river. A few minutes later I exited I-94 onto Hennepin Avenue, rode the last few blocks, parked in front of our apartment, and turned off the Beamer. It was finished. I looked at the odometer. My trip around the states totaled 14,679 miles, an average of 360 miles per day of riding. Dawn rode along on 5000 of those miles, and my friend Brad rode alongside for 2500. As adventures go, this was an excellent one; I'll cherish the experience for the rest of my life. The last five years, Dawn and I have primarily done our traveling overseas, so it was good to be reminded how big and beautiful and varied my own country is. There's a lot left to be explored, and there are few better ways to do it than from the saddle of a trusty motorcycle.

(Photos to follow)