Turbulence Detection Device

"When she hulas, the seatbelt sign stays on. When she falls over, the flight attendants sit."

-- A Megawhacker Captain

Two Good Bids

I've been at my company for more than three years, and advancement has been pretty slow. I'm sitting about halfway up the list of Portland based Megawhacker First Officers. The lengthy upgrade time causes the most angst among the FOs that hope to fly for a major someday, but in the meantime low seniority also means relatively little control over my schedule. By the time that pilots senior to me have bid, all that's typically left over for me to choose between are regular lines with crappy trips and no weekends off, or else reserve. Earlier this year I bid several months of reserve to get weekends off. I flew very little on reserve, which was hard on the checkbook and a little boring, so I reluctantly went back to bidding a regular line. To my suprise, the last two bids have turned out very well for me.

Last month I got a junior line - my twenty first choice, in fact! The trips weren't that great - lots of Reno involved, egh - and they covered every single weekend. In the past, I've had little choice but to fly what I'm assigned, as trip trades require an unusually high level of reserve staffing at my airline. These days, however, we're extremely "fat" on Megawhacker FOs, allowing me to drop all my assigned trips and build myself a really decent line from the unassigned ("open time") trips. In the three years I've been here, this is actually the first time my trip trade requests were granted on the first try. It's nice to be well staffed for once!

The line that I built had all weekends off but one, with a pretty good mix of trips including an entire week of daytrips that showed at 6am and ended at 4pm. It was almost like being a normal person with a real job - right down to creeping home in rush hour traffic! One of those days ended up getting cancelled and several of the legs on other days were cancelled, which hurt my pay by putting me back down to minimum guarantee (92 hours). Unfortunately, our contract does not provide cancellation pay, one of its weaker points.

I was prepared to do the same drop-and-add routine this bid but ended up not having to. In a rather unlikely turnabout from last bid, I got my first choice - a very senior line with all Fridays and weekends off and pretty good trips. One of the very senior FOs originally picked this line as his #1 choice, which I think discouraged others from bidding it, but he changed his mind at the last minute. It screwed up everyone else's bidding, or at least those who bid based upon what lines were "taken." I usually just bid what I like regardless of whether it seems taken, and it worked out for me this time.

Being summer, I normally wouldn't even be trying to get weekends off, but Dawn is planning on teaching summer school this summer so I'm still bidding around her schedule. It does appear that we'll be well staffed for a while so I'll continue to enjoy flexibility in reworking my schedule to fit my needs. That makes being junior a lot more bearable.

The Layover Routine

As much as newer flight instructors like to gripe about their job, few realize that it may be the last job in their life that allows them to sleep in their own bed every night. After flight instructing, most pilots spend a significant portion of their lives away from home. At most airlines, day trips comprise a rather small portion of the flying, and it is a senior pilot indeed that can hold a line with no overnights. The rest of us fly trips that range anywhere from two to six days long - or, for international flying, even longer. At my airline, the vast majority of the Megawhacker trips are four days long. A typical schedule has one such trip each week, so many of our pilots are spending 150 nights per year away from home.

The shortest a layover is normally scheduled for is nine hours. Now, you need to understand that this does not mean nine hours at the hotel. It means nine hours from release time (15 minutes after block-in) until show time (45 minutes before block-out). Hotel transportation to and from the airport can eat up an hour or more when we stay far from the airport or when the van is late (dismally often). Finding a bite to eat at an ungodly hour can take time. You need to allow time in the morning to shower, groom, and dress. A nine hour layover actually means six hours of sleep or so. If followed by an easy day that might be enough, but most airlines consider only legality when building their schedules. A 14 hour duty day followed by a nine hour rest period followed by another 14 hour duty day is legal, and it does happen. The airlines claim that's safe, but I doubt too many CEOs would put their families on a flight where they knew the pilots will be making their eighth landing of the day in tough weather on six hours of sleep.

Fortunately, nine hour "combat rest" is a pretty rare occurrence for Megawhacker pilots at my airline (it's more common on the Miniwhacker). Most of our layovers are 12 to 17 hours, with the occasional 36 hour mini vacation. These layovers let you eat and get well rested with time left over to spend as you please. Given how much we're away from home, everybody has their own routine for spending their spare time.

The first thing I do after getting into my room is shedding the monkey suit (ie, my uniform). I really don't know why, but after a day in uniform it really feels good to put on civies. Maybe I'm allergic to polyester. I pack one or two pairs of clothes for four day trips, depending on how lengthy each layover is, plus shorts and a t-shirt for working out and maybe some swim trunks if the weather is nice.

At the end of a long day of flying, scoring some grub is job one. I've discussed this in a previous post so I won't beat a dead horse too hard, but finding food late at night can be a real challenge at some layovers. Of course, if it's that late you're probably tired enough to fall asleep on a grumbling stomache. Many crew members pack food with them, at least for the first few days. I've started to do this myself lately. It's far easier on the pocket book than eating out all the time, it's mostly better for you, and it eliminates the problem of having to run into the terminal for food and dashing back to the plane on a 30 minute turn.

Many crewmembers consider exercise to be a requirement for every layover. I find this to be most prevalent among svelte young flight attendants, even though the aging potbellied pilots are far more in need of it. Really, our job is so sedentary that any exercise you get is going to make a big improvement to your long term health. Most of our hotels have exercise rooms, although the quality of the equipment varies.

Of course, many crewmembers make a point of regularly partaking in the "16 oz workout" - repeatedly lifting their favorite adult beverage in the hotel bar. Stricter company alcohol policies and FAA enforcement have cut down on the drinking on short overnights, but on longer layovers there's plenty of time for a brew or two. Crew hotels often have contracts with more than one airline, so it's a good place to meet pilots from other airlines. You won't have trouble recognizing who they are, particularly if you're in Sacramento on R&B night (they're the only middle aged white guys wearing jeans in a sea of sharply dressed, predominantly black younger folks).

Many pilots and FAs bring their computers with them. For most, it's for entertainment and staying in touch with the fam. A few of the smartest crewmembers have businesses on the side that they can work on during their layovers. I volunteer for our union in a few different capacities and tend to do this work on the road. Of course, I started this blog as something for me to do on layovers, but I've recently found that I do more of my blogging at home between trips.

I personally like getting out and exploring at layovers. I've done a lot of hiking around Helena, and also at Missoula, Sun Valley, Butte, Boise, and others. I've rented a car in Redmond and Reno to drive up into the mountains to hike. I've been waiting for a long layover on a nice day in Arcata with a cool crew to take them sailing. Every time I'm in Spokane, I walk downtown for superb BBQ and peach cobbler at Chicken-N-More.

When weather or my own sloth keeps me indoors, I tend to read a lot, assuming I've brought a good book with me. Otherwise I chat with friends online and get myself into a funk over the state of the industry by reading Flightinfo. I don't watch very much TV, though. I usually end up watching CNN and that puts me into a funk over the state of the whole world.

I find that it's a lot easier to go to sleep if I'm not worried about whether I'm going to wake up. I always request a wakeup call if we have an early van, but they're not 100% reliable so I set both my watch and cell phone alarm clocks. Once in a while all three will go off simultaneously, which is good for getting me out of bed quick.

I usually give myself 30 minutes to shower, get dressed, and pack. That maximizes my sleep time and forces me to wake myself fully to get through my morning routine in time. If we're at the rare overnight that gives you free breakfast, I'll allow extra time for that - you don't want to give up free food! Many people get up early to brew coffee in the room's coffeemaker. I don't care for instant coffee so I don't bother. I've heard of people bringing oatmeal or other hot cereal and using the coffeemaker to heat water to cook it with. There are other layover tricks, such as draping wet towels over the heater to act as a humidifier.

Before I leave my room, I take one last lap to make sure I didn't leave anything. It's really easy to do - I've forgotten my ID badge twice in three years, among other things. Then it's down to the van, hopefully on time so your fellow crewmembers aren't scowling at you when you board.

Flows & Checklists

There are many things about airline flying that are very different from GA flying. You often cannot apply techniques from one to the other. I'm reminded of a Piper Aztec crash about 50 years ago. It was being flown by a TWA Constellation pilot and two other TWA pilots were riding along when they lost an engine shortly after takeoff. The airplane wasn't climbing well - the first Aztecs had only 150 hp per side - so the pilots applied the engine-out technique used in the Constellation: deploying the flaps. The results were predictable and an aviation truism was born: "The only thing more dangerous than an airline pilot in a light plane is two airline pilots in a light plane." That said, there is one area of airline operations that GA pilots would do well to mimic: our usage of flow patterns and checklists.

Most GA instructors do teach their students to use checklists, but they are most often taught as "do-lists." In other words, as you read each item, you flip the switch, adjust the knob, or read the gauge that it directs you to. This can be cumbersome, as your attention is continually flitting between the checklist and the instrument panel, and longer checklists can take a long time to work through. Many pilots stop using checklists as soon as they have the procedures memorized and they're out of their instructor's watchful gaze. When I was an active CFI, I found that advanced students who'd been flying on their own for long had to be cajoled and threatened into consistent checklist usage.

At the airlines, the desire to keep one's job provides ample motivation to use checklists and comply with the other dictates of standardization. Fortunately, we have a pretty good system of checklist usage. They tend to be fairly short given the level of complexity in our cockpits. If it's not important, it's left off the checklist, and if a number of switches can be grouped into one item, they are (de-ice boots, prop anti-ice, pitot-static heat, and windshield heat are all grouped under "Ice Protection," for example). Furthermore, checklists are actually used as checklists, not do-lists. You first configure the airplane appropriately for the stage of flight and then read the checklist to verify that the listed items have been accomplished.

"But wait!" you protest. "My instructor told me not to memorize the checklist!" Well, your instructor told you that so you wouldn't ditch the checklist the moment he was out of the plane! If you're using the checklist to verify everything, it's perfectly acceptable to accomplish the procedures by memory. At the airlines, we memorize every procedure for each normal stage of flight, on airplanes considerably more complex than the average light plane. Now, the best of us occasionally miss items, but that's what the checklist is for. Another tool we have to help us remember the procedures are flow patterns.

A flow pattern is simply a logical pathway across the panel or panels that will guide you to the systems that need reconfiguring for each phase of flight. Each phase of flight will have a different flow pattern, but they often follow roughly the same order. Here's a picture of the First Officer's "Before Start" flow pattern on the Megawhacker:


If you asked me to name each of the fourteen items that the Flight Standards manual says I should accomplish before start, I could rattle them off to you - not because I memorized a list of procedures but because I can visualize the flow pattern and know which systems it leads me to and in which order. Obviously, this works only because the flow pattern follows a logical, linear path. If it had me jumping all over the panel, it'd be worthless and I might as well remember the procedures by how they're listed in the FSM.

The airlines have full-time flight standards people to put together and revise flow patterns, procedures, and checklists. You can do it for the airplanes you fly, though. You can develop your own flow patterns, checklists, or both. The goal is to come up with something that you like and that you find easy to use consistently, and keeps your eyes out of the cockpit for more time than the system you're using now.

You'll typically design flow patterns for the following phases of flight: before start, after start, before takeoff, after takeoff, approach, before landing, after landing, and parking. I suggest you work out the flow patterns either by sitting in your cockpit or using a high resolution picture of it. For each phase of flight, trace an easy-to-remember "trail" that connects each item that needs to be checked or reconfigured in an order that makes sense. Memorize each "trail," thinking about which items you would be touching, checking, or moving along the way.

Here's a sample Before Start flow I put together for the Cessna 150:


You start at the lower left corner of the panel with the master switch (turn it on) and work your way counterclockwise. This directs you to the electrical panel (CBs in, lights as required), trim (set), throttle quadrant (throttle & mixture set for altitude & type of start), flaps (up), radios (off, ELT armed), flight instruments (clock and altimeter set) and finally back down to the lower left corner (prime as appropriate, then in and locked). You would then read a simplified Before Start checklist that ensures the major items for the start have been accomplished.

Master Switch-------ON
Lights--------------AS REQUIRED
Throttle------------SET
Mixture------------ SET
Radios--------------OFF
Primer--------------IN & LOCKED

Note that this checklist says nothing about flaps or trims even though it's in the Before Start flow. That's because you'll also be checking them in the before takeoff flow, and then they're in the Before Takeoff checklist. You keep the checklists short and usable by including only items that are applicable to that phase of flight, even though you may be taking care of "housekeeping" items ahead of time in the flows.

The C150, like most smaller piston singles, is simple enough that you can use the same flow pattern for most phases of flight. For example, imagine how the above counterclockwise flow would cover approach items: lights set as appropriate, mixture set for density altitude, ATIS received and radios set, altimeter and DG set, primer in and locked.

I remember using an abysmally long before start checklist for the PA28 that was actually a do-list and went so far as telling you, step by step, how to start the engine. The engine on the PA28 really isn't that complicated to start - you don't need to include simple memorized procedures like this on your checklist. Now, there may be more complicated variations that you don't use often - hot or flooded starts, for example - and it's perfectly acceptable to include these on your checklists as designated do-lists.

Certain time-critical emergency procedures are memory items both in GA and at the airlines. For an engine failure at low altitude, for example, there is a procedure you should have memorized and be able to execute within seconds. These memory items should have associated checklists that can be accomplished if time permits to make sure that the appropriate actions were taken. Any emergency checklist that does not back up a memory item should be used as a do-list. If you don't have a good emergency checklist for your airplane, make one - the emergency checklists in the Pilot Operating Handbooks are typically inadequate and usually inaccessible anyways. Keep yours in a handy place and make it visible - I suggest pasting the checklist to hot pink card stock and laminating it.

Flow patterns and checklists used as checklists aren't completely foreign to General Aviation: most of the structured Part 141 training programs use them from Day One, as do more progressive FBOs and independent CFIs. If you've never used this method, I suggest you give it a try. It makes good cockpit discipline a whole lot more palatable.

Stick and Rudder

Never let anyone tell you that today's automated cockpits make basic flying skills any less neccessary. As an example, take a look at these two extraordinary videos of B757s landing at Tegucigalpa, Honduras. On the second video note just how far out they are when the radio altimeter makes the "100" call. American runs eleven 757s in here each week.

View from the ground

View from the cockpit

Risk Management or Micromanagement?

I've found that the biggest difference between general aviation and airline flying is the level of standardization. As big and complicated as a Megawhacker must seem to the average GA pilot, I suspect your average Seneca flyer would be comfortable with it after a few hours in the sim. What most GA pilots could not easily adapt to, however, is the regimentation of flow patterns, checklists, memory items, limitations, standard profiles, and emergency procedures. As a CFI, I had to hound students to consistently use a simple checklist. The airlines will not hire you unless they believe you have the ability and discipline to follow established procedures every flight.

It wasn't always this way. During the airlines' early days, each captain was truly the master of his ship; things were done his way and copilots were expected to adapt. World War II provided the impetus for change as the demands of war required thousands of pilots to be trained quickly. Standardization of procedures substituted for experience in providing the consistency the military demanded. The advent of jet aircraft necessitated the airlines' adoption of the military's methods.

Today, the Captain is still nominally the master of his or her ship - but they'd better comply with the Flight Standards Manual, or else! There are certainly a good many advantages to this approach. First Officers no longer have to adjust to the whims of each Captain and Captains don't have to guess how to avoid falling astray of the chief pilot or check airmen. We all know what is expected of us. Having everyone on the same page allows flight standards managers to more effectively manage risks. Air travel has never been safer.

If everything in aviation were neat, tidy, and clear-cut, complete standardization over every aspect of flight would be utterly acceptable, even desirable. The reality is that aviation is fluid, ever-changing, and sometimes unpredictable. It punishes those who confine themselves to a small box of rote procedures with no room for variance. There was a NASA study that found that around 80% of airline emergencies involved situations for which there is no checklist. This demands crews that are adept at gathering available information, critically thinking through the options, and making smart decisions without worry that their actions will be questioned by those safely esconded in their cubicles. It requires experienced pilots who've seen a strange thing or two before and know how to bend established procedures to fit the situation. A culture which dictates every action for every phase of flight and demands blind compliance is not the best environment to produce such pilots.

The inability of many flight standards managers to realize that procedures cannot and should not be written for every conceivable situation has produced a disconnect between those who write the procedures and those who fly them. While flight standards people often have encyclopedic knowledge, many line pilots consider them to be out of touch with the realities of the line. We call them "bean counters." We are particularly vexed when they consistently take quantitative approaches to risk management which ignore the real-world consequences.

One example of this at my own airline came over a change in landing procedures. I've written before that the Megawhacker is a harder-than-average airplane to land well, given a six degree maximum pitch angle for tailstrike avoidance. In the past, we had the option to do landings at Flaps 15 or 35. F15 is the harder of the two because your angle of attack on approach puts you closer to maximum pitch on touchdown. Furthermore, the situations that require F15 landings are often marginal ones: Cat III approaches or heavy, hot & high landings at mountainous airports. In the past, many line pilots (myself included) made it a point to practice one or two F15 landings per trip to keep ourselves sharp in case we had to do one in marginal conditions.

Now, we've never had a tailstrike, but other airlines have, and it's a very costly occurrence that management would like to avoid. The flight standards people decided that the best way to reduce our exposure to the risk was to reduce the number of F15 landings we did by restricting when crews could do them. They issued a FSM revision that made F35 the standard configuration and permitted F15 landings only when flown by the Captain using the Heads-Up Guidance System. Now, many first officers, some of whom had been flying the Megawhacker since we first got them, took this as an insult to their abilities. The company countered that they merely wanted crews to use the HGS, since it provides tailstrike protection in its symbology, and this is on the captain's side only. But the revision also restricted F15 landings to Cat III approaches during less than Cat I weather, or when performance required it - in other words, under marginal conditions only. Yes, they were reducing the number of F15 landings, but they were ensuring the remainder were flown by pilots who might've not done one in months.

In the wake of our 16C overrun incident, the flight standards people realized that the revision had unwittingly prohibited Captains from practicing Cat III approaches for proficiency. So now they're planning on revising the FSM once again, to require three Cat III practice approaches every 90 days! It is this sort of reactive micromanagement that makes line pilots disdainful of the "bean counters." If a line pilot were writing this section of the FSM, it would say:

The Captain will use discretion in selecting landing configuration to be used, taking into account weather conditions, aircraft weight, performance requirements, currency, and any other factor he or she believes could affect the safety of landing in any given configuration.

That's it - easy to use and it directs the Captain to be conservative while acknowledging that the Captain is best suited to choose the safest course of action. Of course, it would give the company lawyers less specific things to accuse the Captain of when they're trying to distance the company from his actions after an accident.

I fully recognize the benefits of having flight standards to follow and of having people dedicated to managing our risk exposure. I just wished they realized that micromanaging the cockpit has its own negative consequences, that Captain's authority is a positive thing that should be reinforced, and that asking the pilots who fly the line every day before making revisions would result in much better procedures that don't attempt to do a Captain's job for him.

There But For the Grace of God...

I've been waiting to get more of the story before writing this post, since it's a bit of a sensitive subject around here and one that the company would probably rather I not blog about. I think there are some related safety concepts that are worthwhile to discuss, though. Now that I've heard the Captain's side of the story, I'll relate some thoughts on my company's overrun incident on Rwy 16C at Seattle a few months ago.

In the last post, Fred commented that pilots seem to have an "inordinate attraction to analyzing accidents and incidents." He's right. There's probably a bit of a voyeuristic attraction and there's occasionally some armchair quarterbacking involved, but most pilots regard accident analysis as an integral part of their professional education. For me, the greatest value lies not in picking out the crew's major mistakes but in identifying the familiar elements - the situations I can see being in or the actions I could see myself taking. It's the perfect antidote for invulnerability and complacency. In this particular case, it's easy to see that a crew ran a near-STOL airplane off the end of a 9426 foot runway and dismiss it as nothing more than a monumental screwup. Closer inspection shows just how it could happen to you or I.

The incident took place on a foggy Seattle morning with Category III ILS approaches in use. All Cat III approaches at my company are hand-flown by the Captain using the Heads-up Guidance System. The runway visual range (RVR) was hovering near the approach minimum of 600 feet. In fact, the RVR at the far end of the runway, which is not controlling, was lower than 600. The crew planned on rolling out to Papa taxiway [TAXI CHART], which is significantly further down the runway than where we typically exit under normal conditions. Due to the poor visibility at the roll-out end of the runway, the crew missed Papa and subsequently decided to exit at the last taxiway at the runway's end, Quebec. They didn't see this taxiway until the last moment and only then realized they were still doing about 50 knots. There was nothing to do but throw the props into reverse and stand on the brakes. The airplane ran over a couple of threshold lights before coming to a stop, but nobody was injured. The airplane did suffer significant damage, and the incident was a major embarrassment to the crew, the company, and the FAA.

I'm sure many of you are wondering what in the world they were doing at 50 knots in such thick fog. What few realize is just how few visual cues there are use in estimating speed in this kind of visibility. Both of the crewmembers were peering outside for the first sign of taxiway Q, not at their instrument indications. They had no idea they were still going so fast. One major psychological factor was having traffic not too far behind them on the ILS. Missing taxiway Papa likely exacerbated the situation by hurrying the crew to get off on Quebec rather than slow down to find it.

Those who know anything about the Megawhacker will likely question why the crew planned to exit most of the way down a 9426 foot runway when we normally exit in half the distance without trying. This is where it gets interesting.

At the time of the incident, Seattle's SMGCS program was in effect, prompting crews to use the correct Low Visibility Taxi Chart. The chart in use showed taxiways P and Q as the only "low visibility taxi routes" exiting Runway 16C. For years, the FAA had maintained - and the company trained - that these routes are mandatory, so that when low visibility operations are in effect, one must roll all the way to P or Q. In the Megawhacker, this means adding power after touchdown to keep up your speed. In the aftermath of this incident, the FAA is saying that the crew was misinformed and it's actually permissible to exit on any lighted taxiway! Mind you, this is not what the FAA or the company taught in the past. I know Captains that were given demerits in the sim for exiting on the "wrong" taxiway after a Cat III approach. To be sure, the crew was at fault for hurtling past the end of the runway, but in my opinion it was the FAA that put them there in the first place. I have yet to hear an explanation of just what exactly a low visibility taxi route constitutes.

This is what is known as a "system error" - where poorly thought out regulations, procedures, or training leads to or contributes to an accident or incident. The classic systems error accident was the American DC-10 that crashed on takeoff after shedding an engine that was installed using a "money-saving" procedure that turned out to unapproved by McDonnell-Douglas. The cause-and-effect relationship isn't nearly so direct here, but I have no doubt that the system error was a contributing factor. For me, the lesson to be learned here not a new one: Procedures are not the end-all and be-all of piloting. They are set down by humans and are therefore fallible; they can even lead you down the wrong path. I think Earnest K. Gann said it best: "Rule Books are paper. They will not cushion a sudden meeting of stone and metal."

When you look at the factors that came together to cause this incident, you can see that while responsibility ultimately lies with the Captain, this is something that could've easily happened to any of us - there but for the grace of God go I. Cat III approaches at Seattle are a pretty common occurance for me, as is pressure to get off the runway for the next guy. Although this time nobody was hurt, the incident will follow the pilots through their careers. It should provide ample motivation to read the regs and procedures with a critical eye for well-intentioned dictates that reduce the margin of safety, become aware of the built-in "gotchas," cry foul when necessary, and exercise Captain's authority when in the left seat.