Cockpit Chronicles: Miami Closed? You’re pulling my leg!

by Kent Wien on

Occasionally international pilots at our company will fly domestic trips, and a Miami turn I had on my schedule last week is a good example of that. Fly down and an hour later, come back to Boston. When you live somewhat close to the airport, these trips are a great way to avoid being away from home so much.

It would also give me a chance to fly with a domestic captain, Frank, who I had never flown with before. This can be good or bad, since you have no idea what kind of personality you’ll be sitting next to for the next 7 hours. Most captains I’ve flown with can be grouped into five different personalities:

• The quiet type – who manages a few words an hour.

• The thinker– who engages you with conversation about the industry or politics and keeps you pondering the future, asking questions like, “Do you think people are genetically predisposed to favor monarchies over democracies?”

• The grump– who can’t come up with anything positive to say about the day.

• The comedian– who keeps you smiling for the entire trip.

Or

• The control freak– who makes sure that his method of flying becomes YOUR method of flying.

Fortunately in our base we have very few grumps or control freaks. I’m not sure if that ratio holds up at the other bases or not.

For this one-day trip to Miami, I really lucked out. Captain Frank is a comedian. There wasn’t anything subtle about his sense of humor, as this example shows:

Often a captain will turn to ask at some point in the preflight what leg a co-pilot prefers. That is to say, which leg of a flight would they wold like to fly the aircraft while the other pilot talks on the radio. Once this is decided at the beginning of a trip, we usually trade off the flying duties for the rest of the legs. The decision as to who starts off is really up to the captain — as is the choice of meals — but if the he has no preference he may defer the choice to the co-pilot. Frank’s method of asking this question is by pulling out a plastic leg from what I presume was a very chubby doll and saying, “Whose leg is this?” with a puzzled look.

I couldn’t think of a better way to start off a trip than this. It tends to break the ice and makes for a fun day. And a fun day we had.

Halfway into the flight, I was coming back to the cockpit after using the restroom when Frank announced, “The Miami Airport is closed.”

“Yeah, Right.” That Frank is pretty funny, I thought.

“No, it really is. It’s completely fogged in,” he said, pointing to the ATIS (the current airport weather report) that we can print up inflight.

Sure enough, Miami was socked in. The second picture above shows the visibility in feet at the touchdown, midfield and roll out areas on each runway. We commented on how rare of an event this was, since neither of us had actually seen fog in Miami in our careers. It’s so rare, in fact, that the Miami airport doesn’t have an approach system called a CAT III ILS which would allow us to land by using the airplane’s autopilot down to visibilities as low as 500 feet.

So we had to enter yet another holding pattern just abeam Fort Lauderdale while we waited for the fog to clear. Fortunately we had plenty of fuel and we could literally see the FLL airport next to us, which was clear.

We did some quick calculations to figure that we could hold for more than 50 minutes given our current fuel before we would be burning into the reserve needed to go to our furthest alternate airport, fly the approach and still have 45 minutes to play with.

The next calculation was if this extra flight time was going to cause me to exceed 30 hours of flight time in 7 days, which would cause me to lose the three day London trip scheduled the next day. I might have been able to find another trip to pick up, but I had already made plans for the long layover in England. It took just a little bit of adding to discover that I wasn’t going to lose any flying the next day.

The Miami airport opened up after thirty minutes. By the time it was our turn to land, the fog had completely lifted and we were sure that passengers would question the reason for the late arrival. While that wasn’t the case, we did have a couple of people complain, one even saying, “I refuse to say thanks since you got us here late.”

I couldn’t help thinking that we could have certainly got him on the ground on time, only it would have been at the Fort Lauderdale airport.

After this trip, I’ve added Frank to my list of captains that I’ll go out of my way to fly with. Thanks, Frank, for making the day such a pleasure. And thanks to the passengers who understand that we don’t really have much control over the weather.

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: Europe without the jetlag

by Kent Wien on

I know I promised you a tip on how to fly to London from the East Coast without suffering any jetlag, but I suspect this method will be about as useful for most readers as my last post on how to park a 757.

We have a trip out of Boston that is highly coveted by pilots and flight attendants alike. It’s a two day trip that leaves in the morning and gets into London that night. Here’s what makes it so desirable; after arriving in London you can stay up until your normal bedtime as if you were at home since you leave so late the next day. This way you’ll avoid any jetlag. As an added bonus, you’ll get paid for the same number of hours as someone who is doing a three day Europe trip. The only trade off is that you won’t have much time for sightseeing.

Up until the end of last year, the 777 did both the morning and the evening departures to London. But because of some cabin upgrades in the triple seven, one of the London flights would go to the 767 for this winter only. And as luck would have it, it was the morning 2 day trip that went to the smaller Boeing. Since I’m not a very senior pilot in Boston, I knew it would be a miracle to hold any of these. Even with 15 years at the company, I find myself toward the bottom of the co-pilot list for the 757/767.
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Through some lucky bidding and trading, I was able to get a couple of London’s onto my schedule. Part of the reason may have been because I would be flying during the NFL playoffs. Obviously, Boston crews have an interest in the post season this year, with the New England Patriots quest for a perfect season on the line. But I’m happy to TiVo the game if it means flying a London trip.

The captain was called out to cover another pilot who was sick. He brought his girlfriend along and they planned to hit the ground running the next morning and see as much of the city as possible. That would make for a very long day for them, but I’d do the same thing if I could have brought my wife.

We pulled up the flight plan in operations and noticed the very strong tailwinds across the North Atlantic of up to 185 mph. Suddenly, it was looking like we just might be able to see at least the second half of the Patriots/San Diego game in a London pub. The flight attendants were already making plans: Meet down in the pub, watch the last of the first game and maybe even part of the second game. So bring on the tailwinds!

It wasn’t long into the flight before we slid into the jetstream and enjoyed 174 knot (200 mph) winds almost directly at our backs. The ride was smooth and the ground speed clicked up to 632 knots (727 mph). There would be two meals served, a breakfast and only a few hours later, a dinner. I thought the meals were especially good this time, but I’m usually happy just to get something to eat. Believe it or not, there’s a site where contributers upload pictures of airline meals and review them if you really want to see how the meal will look for your next trip. Not surprisingly I recognized quite a few of the choices.

As is becoming customary for any European trips, I let a friend in Ireland know what time I’d be passing over her place. Ruthann lives near Galway, and ever since she was a kid, she’s listened to airplanes on VHF and HF receivers, checking in with Shanwick ATC as she’d fall asleep. I met her last year when she asked me to put a picture in her Flickr.com group of Shannon airport photos. She visited us in New Hampshire last fall. So I’ll usually say hello on the radio as we pass overhead, but it’s a one way conversation since she has no way of transmitting on VHF. Ruthann is a huge aviation buff, and she’s talked me into meeting her and her family for a trip to the Duxford Aviation Museum near Cambridge on my next London 3 day trip in a week. Stay tuned for that report.

Just five hours after departing Boston, it was time to review the approach into Heathrow and begin our descent. Moments later, we were told that we could expect to hold at 14,000 feet for 35 minutes over London.

It seems they were in the process of moving the British Airways 777 that had landed short of runway 27L due to a loss of power a few days earlier. It’s never a good idea to speculate on the reasons behind an accident, as the investigators will find the problem and prove most armchair analysts wrong. The AAIB has ruled out one possibility: not enough fuel. Contrary to the initial media speculation, early reports indicated that the airplane had 20,000 pounds of fuel on board upon ‘landing’ which is 2 1/2 hours worth, and investigators have confirmed that now.

We were one of the first airplanes to land on the newly opened runway. Any chance of seeing the first half of the football game was out of the question due to the half hour spent in the holding pattern. We piled on the chartered bus and I text messaged a friend to provide game updates to us for the next hour while we rode into the city. The whole crew placed bets on the score at the half and for the end of the game. After checking into our rooms, everyone came downstairs to the hotel’s “Tavern Pub” (is that name a bit redundant?) to watch Tom Brady flounder a bit. I managed to win the halftime pool and doubled my $5 investment. “Whoo hoo!”

Oh, and New England won.

The next morning it was blowing and raining, and I really didn’t want to go outside. The Museum of Natural History and the Science Museum are just blocks from the hotel, but I just felt like sleeping in as long as I could and then jumping on the computer for a few hours. Exciting, I know. But getting a bunch of rest before the longer flight home is so wonderful. Besides, I’d be coming back next week for a 44 hour layover.

I managed to sleep until noon, which is 7 a.m. back home before getting up and cracking open the computer. I use a roaming service called Boingo and many of the hotels where we stay have agreements with them. Otherwise the fee would have been £20 or $40 for 24 hours of web use. That’s just fleecing. If you travel a lot, Boingo seems to be one of the best ways to get online for ‘net junkies like me.

The tailwind that we enjoyed while flying to England last night was of course on our nose going home. Our flight plan took us as northerly as possible to avoid these winds and kept us relatively low, at 30,000 feet. When the ride became rather bumpy, we elected to go higher to a smoother altitude. We tried FL340 (34,000 feet) and finally settled on FL360 which was smoothest. The airplane burns less fuel at the higher altitudes, but if the wind is stronger up there, then you need to make an educated guess on which altitude will be the most efficient. It often comes down to which altitude is smoother. We put passenger comfort ahead of any fuel savings.

I’m using the photo gallery feature of Gadling (above) so you’ll start to see more pictures from these trips in the future. I like to think of these “Cockpit Chronicles” as a running logbook, but instead of just the dates and times found in a normal logbook, I’ll include a few stories and pictures. Thanks for coming along.

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: How to park a 757

by Kent Wien on

So you just bought yourself a 757. Congratulations are certainly in order. But when you approach the gate in Aruba for your well deserved vacation, you find no one to guide you in. They’re all just standing around waiting for you to line up your shiny new ride.

Fortunately you’ve read this blog just in time. Usually when you approach a gate, you’ll have someone from the ground crew who will guide you into the gate with wands and tell you when to stop. But let’s take a look at how to self park at a gate with an automated parking system. The version seen here in Aruba is one of the earliest types used. But this tip will also come in handy in Miami and soon JFK where they’re installing even more advanced versions. These things are popping up all over the country.

As you can see in the pictures below, there is a small box right in front of the airplane with two vertical lights (A). If you’re centered, both lights will be green. Move off to the right and the right light will turn red. So you simply position the airplane until you see two green lights that indicate you’re on the centerline.

To stop, look over to the right at the black board (B). Now just line up the lighted florescent tube (shut off in the photo below, after the jump) with the line that notes the airplane you’re flying.

How to:

Today’s flight was just a one day trip, also known as a ‘turn.’ Leave Boston in the morning for a 4 1/2 flight down to Aruba, sit around for an hour and then fly home. The total flight time is 9 1/2 hours. Any flights over 8 hours in a day requires a relief pilot which allows for each of us to get an hour break on each leg of the flight. We take the breaks back in the first class cabin which usually results in some strange “who’s flying the plane?” looks.

Oh, and for the ‘photo of the trip,’ it’s a sunset shot off the left side of the airplane that we often get while on the way home from the Caribbean. I usually take a nice picture of the captain when this happens, but I was sitting in the left seat at this point in the flight while el Jefe was back resting. So I had to be the one in the picture. Thanks to Dave the co-pilot for snapping this.

For the next trip, I’ll show you how to go to London and back without experiencing any jet lag whatsoever.

Blogger Kent Wien

by Kent Wien on

Introducing the newest member of the Gadling team… Kent Wien

Since air travel is such a significant part of most of our lives, we’re bringing on Kent to share his experiences as a commercial pilot with Gadling. Kent will be writing about each of his trips, giving you an idea of what life is like at the pointy end of an airliner. Keep an eye out for his “Cockpit Chronicles” feature, and follow along with him in the air and on the ground.

1. Where was your photo taken: 38,000 feet, on the way back from San Juan to Boston in a Boeing 757.

2. Where do you live now: Exeter, New Hampshire

3. Scariest airline flown: I was once a flight engineer (3rd pilot who sits sideways) on a 727 for a small charter/freight company that operated out of Dallas. We were contracted to fly within Alaska for a summer to haul fish and cargo throughout the state. Due to what was later blamed on improper maintenance, we landed in Kotzebue with all main tires locked up. The tires never moved while we skidded down the runway. That got my attention. I left shortly after and a few weeks after my departure the FAA shut the airline down for a month due to maintenance violations.

4. Favorite city/country/place: I suppose most people have a soft spot in their heart for their hometown. I was lucky enough to grow up in Anchorage, Alaska.

5. Most remote corner of the globe visited: A Soviet ice camp 160 miles north of Barrow, Alaska. We brought two Norwegian scientists to this huge floating complex complete with temporary buildings that had telephones between them, a cafeteria and dozens of Russians who traded with us relentlessly. I suppose I’ll have to post a feature on that experience — just in case anyone else happens to find themselves floating on a Russian ice camp.

6. Favorite guidebook series: Since I occasionally get called out at the last minute on a trip somewhere that I’ve never visited, I like to load up the Wikitravel.org page of that city on my laptop or iPhone and take it with me. I’ve found that Wikitravel cuts right to the important points of a city and it’s a good start when looking for something to do.

7. Worst hotel experience: During training in Texas I once found nearly 20 cockroaches in a florescent light fixture above my bed. I took the light apart and dumped them into the toilet. The next day there were 20 more. I did this ritual every day for the entire month I was there. We stay in some pretty nice hotels while on trips, but for some reason our training hotels rate at the bottom of the scale.

8. Leeches or mosquitoes: Mosquitoes have a new talent. They’re killing people. Even when I was living on a lake as a kid, I would’ve preferred leaches over mosquitos any day.

9. Worst place to catch a stomach bug: In the cockpit on a flight from Las Vegas to Dallas with the above mentioned charter airline. It was my one and only experience with food poisoning. I doubt it was fun for the other two pilots.

10. How did you get started traveling? I was fortunate enough to have a dad who was also an airline pilot when I was growing up. One day he got a call to deliver a 737 from Seattle to London. My sister and I convinced him to take the trip, since we knew it was our opportunity to fly in an empty jet and even get a chance to ride in the cockpit. We spent a few days in London, saw some plays and really enjoyed our first taste of international travel. I later went to France for summer exchange student program and it was these two experiences that inspired me to fly internationally for a living.