Cockpit Chronicles: Domestic Duties

by Kent Wien on

I can’t wait for our one European destination to come back to Boston in May. These crack of dawn departures don’t fit my circadian rhythm at all. I’m convinced in fact, that when I retire I may never again see the sun rise.

That said, it’s just so amazing to walk down the jet bridge and out the side door to start the preflight inspection and see the sunrise shining down the polished fuselage just as the light breaks through the horizon. Even after so many years it’s still enough to get you excited to climb once more into the sky, turn left to one-four-zero and pop through a thin cloud layer into the bright sun. For me, this is the best part of the job. Not the layovers or the diminished travel benefits, but the ability to fly an airplane I could never afford, to places I never thought of seeing with other pilots and flight attendants that I enjoy working with.

This morning’s flight down to Chicago was completely full. The captain, Roland, was someone who I hadn’t flown with before and we had two American Eagle pilots in the cockpit jumpseats. The 757 has two seats located just behind the pilots that are used for FAA checkrides or for extra relief pilots who sit there for takeoff and landing. But they’re most often used by pilots who are trying to get to or from work. Often these pilots work for a different airline.

%Gallery-21627%After passing through a series of checks with the gate agents, jumpseating pilots make their way into the cockpit and introduce themselves where the captain will look over their paperwork and I.D.’s. Most of these pilots are apologetic for crowding into our workspace for their flight to or from home, but I actually enjoy having them along. It’s nice to catch up with what’s happening at other companies, and since I’ve used the jumpseat at FedEx and other airlines so many times, I’m happy that we can return the favor.

The two Eagle captains filled us in on some of the details at their airline such as how much time it’s taking to upgrade to captain, where the senior bases are and some interesting rumors.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t flown into Chicago since 2005. Not much has changed, except for the renumbering of a few of the runways. A new east/west runway on the north side of the airport is being built, which meant they’d have to rename the two parallel runways from 27 Left and 27 Right to 27 Left, 27 Right and 28. It’s not nearly as confusing as it sounds.

The weather was clear and calm, which allowed for a relatively quick turnaround of about an hour in Chicago. I didn’t even go into the terminal, since I had just enough time to do another preflight inspection and the cockpit setup tasks. The next leg was to Miami and just like the first one, it was a full flight, with two more jumpseaters.

We have a normal power setting and a maximum power setting that we use for each takeoff. Maximum power is used only when the runway is short, there’s any tailwind or if the winds are shifting significantly. Today, we had a slight tailwind, so a max power takeoff was required. Even with every seat full, the 757 was a rocket–climbing over 6000 feet per minute at a deck angle of 20 degrees and still accelerating.

One of our jumpseaters, Brett, was an Eagle co-pilot and the other was a 737 pilot for us. They were both commuting to work. We enjoyed chatting with Brett who was finishing up his first year at the airline flying the Embraer regional jet. His enthusiasm was infectious and when we found out that he’d be staying at the same hotel in Miami that we were, we insisted he come with us for dinner.

He was genuinely surprised when we covered his meal, but really, who’s going to let a first year Eagle pilot pay? The dinner at Norman’s (a shrimp BLT sandwich) at north Miami Beach was excellent.

Back at the Miami Beach hotel I went to my room and spent a relaxing night writing up a Plane Answers post for Friday. When I’m at home, I usually watch the kids while my wife gets some work done after I’ve been gone for the past few days. So I can only write in the late evenings after everyone’s asleep or during the layovers. Occasionally I can write while deadheading.

The next morning we met the van outside the hotel while it was still dark. Roland and I flew the early morning flight from Miami to San Francisco. Our flight attendants were based in Miami, so we met up with them at the airplane.

My favorite thing about these domestic transcon flights are the beautiful opportunities for pictures above the Rocky Mountains, Bryce Canyon and the Sierra Nevada mountain range. We were kept lower than usual, due to the headwinds that were stronger up above us, so the view turned out to be perfect for a few pictures. Allow me to take you across the country, over New Orleans, Dallas, the Rockies, Bryce Canyon, Utah, Yosemite, and into San Francisco with this gallery:

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I’ve never had any intention of writing a blog. I just started out sharing these kind of pictures, and the captions began to grow into blog posts. My English teacher would always say, don’t tell me, SHOW me! Well Mr. Park, here you go–I’ve got my camera right here.

The wind was really howling at the San Francisco airport, up to about 40 m.p.h., but it was pointed down the runway. Of course Roland rolled it onto runway 28 nicely.

Here’s where this trip started to look ugly. We arrived in San Francisco before noon, but we’d be leaving for Boston at 11 p.m. With just a bite to eat, and some well-needed sleep, we’d be flying all night to Boston.

Roland had a favorite restaurant that turned out to to be a bit of a hike, especially with the wind blowing from the bay right at us. I broke one of my self-imposed layover rules and didn’t bring my camera. I had no idea it would be such a scenic walk. The low res iPhone camera was all I could use to give you an idea where we walked.

When we made it back to the hotel three hours later, it wasn’t hard to sleep–even though it was in the middle of the day. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t have more time there, since this was one of the best hotels in our system. More and more hotels are getting flat screen televisions, but this was the first I’ve seen with actual HD content. Not only that, but they included a panel where you can plug in your iPod, computer or mp3 player. Finally a hotel that isn’t clinging to the idea that guests are only interested in outrageously priced ‘on demand’ movies.

I enjoy flying at night. It’s usually smoother, and there’s far less chatter on the radio. After taking off from San Francisco, we were given a direct route to Albany, N.Y. which is the first point on our approach into Boston. This direct routing shaved off twelve miles from our original flight plan. That only amounts to a saving of three minutes but we were happy to take whatever they would give us.

Halfway through our last leg, I agreed with Roland that this trip was really much better than it looked on paper. No one likes to fly the all-nighter trips, but this one really wasn’t that bad. In fact, I prefer this flying over the early morning flights we have to Miami and then to the islands. But I just couldn’t see switching to domestic, since I’d miss the Caribbean and European flying.

Everyone has different priorities though, and that’s one of the benefits of working for such a large company. My brother is also a pilot here, and he prefers domestic flying for the most part. Recently the 777 captain position has become within his reach and he’s seriously considering flying from Chicago to our 777 destinations of Shanghai, New Delhi, Moscow and London. This would be a dream for me since it would at least give me something new to write about and it would also pay more, but Kurt’s really having to think it over. I may just have to jumpseat with him on one of those trips if he decides to take the plunge. Ten years ago I rode with him from Seattle to Tokyo when he was flying as a co-pilot on the MD-11.

I thanked Roland for a great trip as we waited for the bus to the parking lot. I then jumped in my car for the hour-long drive north to New Hampshire. My wife was just getting up with the kids and after a nice welcome home, I went upstairs for some sleep.

I was completely exhausted and delighted to finally fall into my own bed for a much needed rest…

Then crew scheduling called.

They let me know that I’d be needed for another trip in the morning. And of course, it left at o’dark-thirty.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston.

Cockpit Chronicles: Caracas and New York

by Kent Wien on

Being the only pilot on reserve, I figured I’d be getting a call to fly over the weekend. Sure enough, Camille called on Thursday to tell me I’d be departing at 6:30 the next morning. It was a new sequence that I hadn’t flown yet. They took away our Panama City and Caracas trip and replaced it with a Caracas and New York layovers.

While I wasn’t really itching to fly to Caracas again, the idea of a day in Manhattan sounded like fun. We seem to get N.Y. layovers every year or two for a few months at a time.

John K. was the Captain and he was yet another one of the Boston pilots I enjoy flying with. I know I’m constantly pointing out how nice it is to fly with the Captains I’m paired up with, but I sincerely believe that Boston has the most good-natured group of pilots at the company. I have no scientific proof of that, but I’m sticking with it.

John and I had a great time in Paris a year ago, when he showed me that some bread, cheese and wine at the local grocery store can be the perfect way to enjoy Paris on a summer evening. So I knew we could find something interesting to do in New York.

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He gave me the early morning leg down to San Juan, Puerto Rico. The sun was just coming up while we were waiting our turn to takeoff, affording a good opportunity to snap a shot of an airplane crossing the path of the rising sun.

Four hours later we were on approach to Puerto Rico. In the past, when you landed on runway 10 (pronounced “one-zero”) in San Juan, it would feel like you were about to lose a few fillings in your teeth. After a construction period that lasted at least a year, we were ready to give the freshly-restored runway a try. For whatever reason they used the more expensive concrete instead of asphalt on the runway this time and the results were excellent. There’s one less thing I can blame a poor landing on.

When you sign into the computer in operations at the beginning of every trip, it tells you how many hours you have on the type of airplane you’re flying and the number of landings you’ve made. The records indicated I had 2994 hours. I did the math and realized that I’d be reaching 3000 hours just after we took off from Miami on our way to Caracas. I figured I’d note the time and celebrate to myself after we leveled off.

John was explaining to me about the ‘issues’ he had with some beavers that had taken over his pond. He now has an otter that has been feasting on the fish. The image in my mind of an otter clearing out John’s half frozen pond of largemouth bass was all I needed to completely forget about my little milestone until the next day. The only way to properly celebrate the moment would have been to snack on some mixed nuts. I guess I’ll have to wait until 5000 hours now.

John flew the leg into Caracas. We’ve been landing there for the past few months only at night, so it was nice to have a chance to see it in the daytime. But I was a bit surprised at the smog that was coming from a series of smoke stacks along the shoreline. After we landed it took a while to get used to the smoke in the air.

After a quick nap, we met at the hotel pool before eating at the restaurant a few feet away. This is pretty much the only option, as we’re ‘encouraged’ not to leave the hotel. I had my favorite ‘pizza margarita’ and John had a steak. It almost seems like the prices had doubled since the last time we were there. I can’t remember what I paid before, but the pizza and an iced tea were $17.

The next morning I was checking my emails through the painfully slow internet connection when I got a message that my card had been ‘frozen.’ It seems the account was flagged with “unusual activity” just because I used it in Venezuela. I’m sure the fraud department at credit card companies must really wonder about a card that might see use in Panama one day, Venezuela later that night and then Miami or Boston the next day. I frantically tried to log into the banking website, but I could only load a page or two before the browser stopped responding.

Pickup was at 7 a.m, which was an improvement over the 3 a.m. wake-up time the day before. We made it through Miami and landed at LaGuardia by 2 in the afternoon. John made a perfect landing in the howling wind aboard the U.S.S. LaGuardia. (A nickname referring to the short runway surrounded by water just east of Manhattan.)

I had recently seen Nathan Lane on the Jon Stewart Show plugging his latest Broadway comedy, November. For a moment, I pondered the feasibility of flying down to N.Y. from Boston with my wife just to catch this show. I immediately came to my senses when I thought through the logistics involved in even a short outing like that. Not to mention the cost of a New York city hotel.

It hadn’t even dawned on me that I might find myself in New York just a few days later. I told John about the play and I could tell he wasn’t so sure about spending the $80 to see this play. I convinced him that we could find a good deal at the TKTS booth in Times Square. He was up for it.

The TKTS booth has temporarily moved to the Marriott at Times Square. Fortunately I looked up the TKTS entry on Wikipedia which mentioned that they only take cash. After convincing my bank in person that I wasn’t an international credit card thief, I was able to take some money out.

Amazingly, ‘November’ is one of the plays that’s available at the booth, even on a Friday night. It payed off to get the booth early, since some of these shows are sold out months in advance, and often the TKTS booth has only leftover or returned tickets. After we picked up our discounted tickets, we went to Johns favorite place to eat–appropriately enough called ‘John’s’.

‘John’s Pizzeria’ is located in a converted theatre. I couldn’t resist trying out the margarita pizza, even if I had it the night before in Caracas. I didn’t regret a single bite.

We had plenty of time before the play, so what else is there to do in New York city? Visit one of the city’s most famous landmarks; the Apple Store on 5th Avenue of course! John and I played with the super thin and feather light Macbook Air a bit before walking to the theatre on 47th street.

We had no idea if the seats we were given were any good. I figured they’d be ‘obstructed view’ seats or something way in the back. We were rather shocked that they were 11th row orchestra (floor) seats perfectly aligned in the center of the theatre. Not bad for 35% off.

‘November’ is a play about a fictitious U.S. president, played by Nathan Lane, who is universally disliked by the people. He’s not ready to leave after his first term, but he’s completely out of money to continue his campaign. So he manages to blackmail the turkey industry by threatening to pardon every turkey before Thanksgiving unless the industry group coughs up $200 million for his campaign.

The best line of the show: “I’m thinking of a number so high, dogs can’t even hear it.”

We had a lot of laughs and John and I both gave it a solid 8 out of 10. Hopefully I’ll fly some more of these trips to sample some other plays in N.Y.

Leaving the theater, we marveled at the low clouds that looked as if they were caught on the tops of the buildings. I managed to snap this picture on Madison Avenue. We were almost expecting the “Bat Sign” to illuminate on the clouds at any moment.

The next morning those same clouds had reached the ground and fog enveloped the LaGuardia airport. To make matters worse, our airplane was located over at JFK and they were waiting on a reserve captain to get to JFK to ferry the airplane to LaGuardia. We were a bit confused as to why they didn’t call us a bit earlier to do the ferry before flying to Miami and then home to Boston. They probably thought that it would be faster to have a reserve pilot called out to bring the airplane over to us. Unfortunately it didn’t work out that way. We left LGA late and tried to make up as much time getting to Miami, but we landed just as a connecting flight to Belize was departing. This meant that ten of our passengers, including a really nice family that visited us in the cockpit while we were parked at the gate in New York wouldn’t make it to Belize until the next day.

We were in a bit of a hurry in Miami while we changed from one plane to another. We refer to this as the “bag drag.” When I got to the next airplane, I realized that I left my aluminum Sigg water bottle in the previous airplane. I knew we didn’t have time for me to run back to retrieve the bottle, and I was resigned to the fact that I had finally lost it. Amazingly, after we closed the door the agent showed up with the bottle, standing on top of a belt loader to get to my window. While the ground crew was still loading a few last minute bags, our incredibly helpful agent managed to toss me the bottle through the window. But it took two attempts:


Fortunately the bottle is well padded in a neoprene casing. After a quick turn in Miami it was back up to Boston. The whole northeast was covered in fog, and as we approached the Logan airport, there were reports of thunderstorms in the area. These are two conditions that don’t usually occur at the same time. The visibility lifted a bit, and the thunderstorms were well off to the west by the time we arrived. Still, the Logan tower reported a wind shear advisory to us while we were on short final. The major airports have equipment that looks for rapidly shifting winds. An alert means you may see a gust of plus or minus ten knots while landing. As ugly as it sounded, we had no issues getting in and we didn’t see any of the gusts that were advertised. Still, it was nice of them to let us know that the possibility existed. Technology has gone a long way to improve the level of safety in this industry.

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Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston.

Cockpit Chronicles: Lonely paradise

by Kent Wien on

It must sound so exciting. “Why, sure, I’ll take the Aruba 2-day trip, with a layover on the beach!” Even I was thrilled for a moment. At least I wasn’t being sent out to do the Panama City and Caracas three-day trip. There’s nothing wrong with that trip, really, it’s just that I’ve been holding out for something that we don’t often do, and laying over in Aruba was certainly unique.

We usually fly to Aruba out of Boston as a day trip, staying on the ground for only an hour, but this gave me a rare 17 hour layover there. Who wouldn’t want to get away from the ugly spring we’re having in New England. So of course I jumped on it. The trip would require me to ride down as a passenger (a.k.a. deadhead) to Miami before flying on to Aruba.

I was actually looking forward to the deadhead leg down to Miami, even if it did leave at 5:30 in the morning. Most pilots dread deadheading, but I’ve been enjoying the ability to catch up on the news or a podcast on the iPhone. I even managed to sleep a bit, but I agree with Andy Ihnatko who recently said: “the sleep you get on an airplane is the junk food of rest. Empty calories with no nutrition.” Sure enough, my neck was stiff and I didn’t feel any more rested, but I caught up on a weeks worth of the Daily Source Code podcast.
I met the Washington D.C. based Captain at the airplane in Miami. His original co-pilot who flew with him to Miami was also on reserve and since his days off would start the next day, I was called out to pick up the rest of the sequence.

Captain Gary gave me the leg to Aruba. It was blowing a bit (30 m.p.h) but at least it was right down the runway. Aruba is known for its constant breeze, and I doubt I’ve ever landed there with less than 10 m.p.h. of wind.

When we checked in at the hotel, we were both beat. Waking up at 2:30 in the morning tends to ruin any plans you may have for hitting the beach. If I had fallen asleep in the intense Aruba sun, this bright and dyn-o-mite white Alaskan would have cooked for sure. I slept in the ‘heavenly bed’ for over two hours before the alarm went off for dinner.

Gary and I ate at a place called Salt & Pepper. Apparently if you bring them a pair of salt and pepper shakers, they’ll give you a glass of wine for free with your dinner. The salt and pepper shaker collection was overflowing on the walls.

We sat next to a family with a really cute 3 year old daughter. You can’t really go far without some reminder of what’s waiting for you at home. So as nice as an Aruba layover might sound, without the ability to bring your family along, you’re really left with an empty feeling. At least Gary was fascinating to talk with and a genuinely nice guy.

On the way back to the hotel, I snapped a few nice pictures of the beach. There were a number of cockatoos and parrots along the walkway near the pool. They had apparently been put to bed since a heavy tarp covered each cage. The sun was going down and I figured I’d sit on a beach chair from our hotel and watch the view. Unfortunately, 30 seconds after I sat down, the hotel staff came and insisted on picking up all the chairs from the beach. Couldn’t they see that the sun was about to set?

So I started back to the hotel room, trying not to think of all the sandcastle building and feet burying I could do with my 6 and 2-year-old girls here. I walked back toward my room and saw a swing-set and play area for kids. I continued around the corner and saw the kiddy pool area. Something was trying its best to convince me to come back here with the family.

Sometimes pictures don’t quite describe the moment, so here’s a quick video clip of the beach.


The beach at Aruba during a sunset from Kent Wien on Vimeo.

I passed on paying the $15 to get on the internet. I remember it being painfully slow on the last visit here, so I actually watched a bit of TV — an amazing HBO miniseries about John Adams — before getting to bed.

The flight back to Miami was entirely uneventful. Gary flew the visual approach to runway 9, touching down nicely. I thanked him for a great trip and made my way to the gate for my deadhead flight back to Boston. The pilots of this flight were Boston-based friends of mine, and while I wouldn’t have minded sitting in the cockpit to visit with them, I really preferred to sit in the back, this time in coach, to sleep on the way home.

Whether it’s sleeping, reading, watching a video on an iPod or listening to music, if you have something to do, it can really make all the difference when you’re a passenger. I just can’t wait for the WiFi that we’re slowly going to start seeing this year. Unfortunately it will only be available on domestic flights. I’ll be sure to test it out if I run across it during a deadhead on one of those flights.

As usual, I have no idea when or where I’ll be going next. I kind of like it that way. Stay tuned!

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston will be there.

Cockpit Chronicles: A three-legged turn

by Kent Wien on

I raced to the phone to check the caller ID. It was crew scheduling. Of course I had to answer. As much as I hoped I wouldn’t be called for an Easter trip, I knew it was likely to happen–It’s part of the job when you’re on reserve.

Camille had two trips to offer me, one of which I had to take. The first was a San Francisco two-day trip. It had an early departure from Boston, arriving at SFO before noon. Then after 10 hours of rest during the daytime, the flight would leave at around 10 p.m. and arrive back in Boston at 6 a.m. I felt like a vegetarian listening to the waitress read off the prime rib specials.

“No thanks!” I interrupted. As much as I like San Francisco, I wasn’t interested in a short layover that required you to sleep during the day before flying an all-nighter back home. Not to mention that the layover hotel was at the airport.

The other trip was the usual Caribbean turn, this time to St. Thomas. But instead of simply one leg down and one leg back, they had us going from St. Thomas to San Juan, Puerto Rico before heading home. Apparently, due to some very strong winds and high seas, a fuel tanker couldn’t dock at a number of Caribbean Islands to supply them with fuel. So we would need to continue on to San Juan to make a quick fuel stop.

The 757 can hold 74,500 pounds of fuel — enough to make it there and back — but we wouldn’t have been able to take all the passengers with us if we filled up with round-trip fuel. So the San Juan fuel stop was arranged for all the flights from Boston and New York to the islands that weekend.

I was the relief pilot alongside Captain Mike and FO (first officer or co-pilot) Mark. I was happy to fly with another set of people I enjoyed. A few of the flight attendants were some of my favorites as well–Roz and Rita specifically.
Before going to work, I managed to spend a half hour taking pictures of my two girls (ages 6 and 2) while they were busy finding Easter eggs all over the house. I think they discovered about thirty plastic eggs before I had to head out the door for my quick trip to the sun and back. I was thrilled to at least get to do a little egg hunting with them, though.

After meeting up in operations, I went off to do the exterior preflight inspection–looking over the general condition of the airplane, checking the tire pressures and brake wear indicators and a few other essential items. FO Mark set up the inside by programming the FMS and testing the fire warning horns. Captain Mike printed out the flight plan and picked up some coffee for everyone. He’s that kind of guy.

Since I was just along for the ride when we took off from Boston, I managed to take a few nice shots of the city.

We each had a one-hour break going down to St. Thomas. I managed to rest a bit, but like most people, I’m never really able to completely sleep in the back of an airplane.

The arrival into St. Thomas went smoothly, as did the entire flight. After landing, I sat in the cockpit and marveled at all the different airlines that fly to St. Thomas. So I snapped a few pictures of Delta’s freshly painted 757 and a USAirways 767. A Gulfstream II taxied in and pulled up to the terminal. There were so many corporate jets all over the airport that I didn’t bother taking a picture of the G-II.

A United pilot asked the tower, “who’s the big-wig in the Gulfstream?”

A kind of unusual question, I thought. He must be able to see something from his end of the terminal as they were getting off.

“Can’t tell you.” Said the controller.

Then another pilot jumped in and said, “Obama.”

I figured it was just a joke, maybe a response to the fact that everywhere you turn lately, you’re seeing the presidential candidates stumping for votes. But I found out today that it was, in fact, Barack Obama in the Gulfstream. A strategic vacation during this lull we’re in for a few weeks before the primaries pick up again, I would think. I wouldn’t be surprised if he swings into Puerto Rico to campaign a bit on the way home.

Of course the only airplane I didn’t get a picture of was that Gulfstream.

Note the new versus old Delta color schemes:


Since we had three flights that day, I kindly persuaded Captain Mike to give me the leg to San Juan.

Which led to this:

Actually it was Mike’s idea that I fly to San Juan. He didn’t have to twist my arm for me to say yes, and luckily I didn’t really have to grab him by his tie. A short hop that was flight planned for 27 minutes, where you hardly have to turn on the autopilot is by far the most fun you can have in an airliner.

The flight to San Juan ended up taking 25 minutes and we never climbed higher than 10,000 feet. If it weren’t so cloudy, we would’ve had an amazing view of Puerto Rico.

Because of the added fuel stop, we were running almost an hour late. We had a few passengers that were trying to connect to the London flight out of Boston, so we did our best to call the company and plead for them to hold the flight. The evening London flight has an arrival slot time that needs to be met, so they were very reluctant to hold the flight. We managed to land ten minutes before the London flight left, and I assume the passengers made it to the London flight three gates away. I sure hope so. The flight attendants let them know that they might not arrive in London with their bags because of the tight connection. They were still willing to give it a try.

I’ll be on reserve for April. The chances are slim that they’ll use me again before my days off start this weekend. So until next month…

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston.

Cockpit Chronicles: A view from the office window

by Kent Wien on

There’s a bit of strategy involved with being a pilot on reserve. At least that’s the case at our company. On any given day there may be 4 our 5 reserve pilots qualified at the base to fly a particular airplane and division (domestic or international, for example.) If another pilot calls in sick or if there’s an unassigned trip the next day, crew scheduling will assign a trip to the most junior pilot first, unless that pilot has more flight time for the month than the other pilots on reserve. If everyone is equal, a senior pilot may either choose to fly a trip or pass it along to the next pilot.

Why would someone choose to go to work when they don’t have to?

They might want to take a two day trip tomorrow instead of a four-day trip the day after. Or they may prefer the destination or even the pilot they’d be flying with. I usually try to hold out for an interesting destination if I can.

However, due to a lack of pilots on the reserve list, more often than not you won’t have any choice when crew scheduling calls. We may be short of pilots, but at least my airline hasn’t resorted to using this kind of tactic to fill a trip. Camille or Myra will usually call the night before to let you know that you’ll be flying a trip the next day. That was the case last weekend when they ran out of reserve pilots domestically and needed someone to fly a two-day trip to Los Angeles.
I wondered what I’d do in L.A. for 24 hours. I looked up who the captain was and I was thrilled to see it was Bill, an exceptional pilot, who I always enjoyed flying with. It seems like half of my domestic trips are with Captain Bill. We tend to talk about airplanes for most of the flight. Not Boeing products, mind you, but small planes or as some like to say, “real flying.”

You might be surprised to learn that most pilots don’t fly small planes anymore. Some like to say that they can’t imagine doing any flying after coming home from work, and others just don’t feel they can afford it. I’m rapidly slipping into the latter category. Having grown up around ‘little’ airplanes, I could never imagine giving up flying them completely, but now that I have a family and home, it’s hard to find any extra money to pay for $5 a gallon fuel.

Bill has it figured out though. He avoids flying larger cross country airplanes such as a Beechcraft or Cessna, and sticks with the low and slow variety. Airplanes that give you the most “fun per dollar” as I like to say. He lives on a lake in Massachusetts and flies a light sport airplane he calls his contraption out of his back yard. It’s an amphibious biplane that looks like a blast to fly. I’m sure most other pilots think he’s crazy, but once you’ve flown this kind of airplane with fantastic visibility and the ability to splash down almost anywhere you just can’t give it up. And he’s burning car gas at the rate of about 4 gallons an hour. That’s $14 an hour to operate not including any maintenance.

About the only time I’m able to fly small planes has been when I go fly a friend’s or a relative’s airplane, like we did on a San Francisco layover in December, or my brother Kurt let’s me borrow one of his airplanes. Kurt moved 1000 miles away to Michigan, so this isn’t very easy anymore. There’s always that elusive captain upgrade, when I hope to buy this. If I can just convince my wife, of course.

The flight out to L.A. gave me a chance to get a few scenic pictures. I enjoy the view down below and we don’t get as much to look at when we’re flying international trips over the Atlantic or Caribbean sea. I snapped some pictures over the Rockies and just east of Las Vegas I took a few pictures of Lake Mead, which researchers are saying could dry up in fifteen years. At least it will make it easy to get to this airplane that’s at the bottom of the lake. I’d love to get a closer view of this extraordinary area of the country someday.

We flew over the Big Bear ski resort and Red Rock Canyon just west of Las Vegas which looked great. These gallery pictures below are best viewed large. Click on any of them to get the full view.

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The arrival into LAX was uneventful. Bill was nice enough to give me the Westbound leg. It was a kind gesture since we were flying a 767 there and a 757 back. I owe him one. As I’ve mentioned on my last 767 trip, it’s a nice treat to fly the larger airplane.

So what big plans did I come up with for the long Los Angeles layover? Lots of sleep, a burrito for lunch at Chipotle and dinner with Bill at a Japanese place. An exciting layover for us! But I just can’t pass up those fresh Chipotle burritos and the WiFi in the hotel kept me occupied. It’s so tough to get anything done at home with kids in the house, so I often get my blogging done on a layover–this time finishing the training story from last week.

Surprisingly, I haven’t had any excessive delays since I started writing about my trips 15 months ago. With all the stories in the press of late flights and stranded passengers, you would think I’d seen more of this. My luck ran out on Saturday though. Our airplane that we were taking to Boston was about an hour late arriving at LAX. As it landed, it flew through some heavy construction dust that was blowing across the runway. Enough in fact, for the mechanics to decide the engines needed a borescope inspection. Since that would take our airplane out of service for the day, we had to wait a few hours for another airplane to arrive. After a 5 hour delay, we landed in Boston at 2:30 in the morning. Because I slept 12 hours on this layover I wasn’t feeling the least bit tired.

Thanks for all the comments and the great response. We’re going to start a weekly feature called “Plane Answers” in a few days. Anything you’re curious about, feel free to email me. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll surely find someone who does.

I’ll leave you with this video showing more of the view from this office window taken over the past year.



Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston.