Cockpit Chronicles – Riots in Panama

by Kent Wien on

I’ve flown with Captain Jim on the MD-80, the 737 and the 757/767. It’s always a pleasure to work with him and we often discuss everything from politics to aviation — but lately he’s also become my mentor in photography. Jim has been trying to expand my interest in shooting in the manual mode on my Canon DSLR. I tend to spend more time with the angles and composition than the exposure and white balance of my photos. But whenever I’m on a trip with Jim, he brings along his gear and shows me how it should really be done.

I’ve run into him a few times this month and we’ve talked about trying to get a Panama City, Panama and Caracas, Venezuela trip together so we could visit Casca Viejo in Panama. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, and perfect for a day of photography. Through some trip trading, I was able to get on one of these three-day trips with him.

As you’ll see after the jump, it didn’t go exactly as we’d hoped.

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Day 1 BOS-MIA-PTY

The first day we left at 6 a.m. for a flight to Miami and then on to Panama City, Panama. It’s strange to head due south out of Miami and eventually get to the Pacific Ocean side of Panama.

The ride to Miami had some moderate turbulence that caused one of our breakfast trays to fall from it’s perch on the jumpseat and land on the floor, breaking the glass bowl and plate. These bumps are certainly annoying, but as we explain to nervous passengers, as long as you keep your seatbelt fastened when instructed and anytime you’re seated you’ll be fine.

Jim lugged his camera and three lenses and I brought my still cameras and the HD video camera. You would have thought we were headed out on an African safari.

I told him about the protests that were happening this week in Panama City. On the 14th of February, a riot involving construction workers upset with the working conditions broke out right next to the hotel where we are staying. Panama City is going through an amazing construction boom; It seems like half of the city’s skyscrapers are under construction. There are cranes everywhere and it seems the workers are being pushed to their limits.

One worker was shot and killed during this demonstration which resulted in yet another riot the next day — again at our hotel. Unfortunately, I wasn’t flying one of those trips or I would certainly have video for you to see. But I did find this video that someone took from our hotel.

I figured that we might get some pictures of the demonstration’s aftermath, but if we didn’t see anything there, we had planned on going to another area that was in the news this week: Casca Viejo.

The newest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is being filmed in Casca Viejo, near the presidential palace. In fact, my co-pilot friend Rich had Judy Dench on board from Panama City to Miami just a few days ago.

According to the British tabloid, Daily Mail, they’ve been having a terrible time with items being stolen from the production team during the making of this movie. So apparently the producers hired a gang for security while filming. The rival gang in town didn’t appreciate this, so things got pretty ugly this past week. There was even talk about the production leaving town and rewriting the script to shoot in another country. But according to the comments on the article at our sister-site Cinimatical.com, the Daily Mail has blown the story out of proportion, since they’re confusing the construction worker shooting with this filming which is located a few miles away.

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Our approach into Panama took us right over the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal. It’s amazing to see all the ships lined up to enter the canal. It’s easy to see why this is considered one of the man-made wonders of the world.

The best laid plans…

After our arrival in Panama City, we talked to the outbound crew (also from Boston) at the gate. They tell us that because of the unrest near our hotel, we were now staying near the airport: a good 45-minute drive from the city. Our big photo opportunity was lost. I thought for a moment about getting a cab to go into the city, but I figured that would be kind of reckless considering that our company had gone out of its way to keep us out of the area. (It wouldn’t have stopped me! You gotta bite the bullet – sometimes literally – for interesting photo opportunities)

We met up at a bar similar to something you might see at a Denny’s restaurant back home. After I ordered, Mark, a British guy next to us asked me if I had just ordered the fajitas. He was disappointed that he hadn’t seen the fajitas before he ordered a few minutes earlier.

We struck up a conversation with Mark, who had just sailed a Catamaran across the Atlantic, stopping in St. Lucia, Aruba and some other places before coming through the Panama Canal the day before. He’s been writing about the trip (his fourth or fifth time across the Atlantic) in a great blog that he’s able to update using an Iridium satellite phone. Mark’s semi-retired, even though he’s in his early forties. It turns out he’s a Mac user as well. He started www.vtc.com, a training video service where you can learn anything from Photoshop CS to web and flash design for a flat fee of $30 a month. As a way to give something back, his company has created a huge library of free video content for teenage students wanting to improve their math or science skills called www.tutorom.com. They’ve even got courses on photography as well.

The best part about traveling is the people you come across along the way, and while Jim and I are still bummed that we hauled all of our gear on this trip without getting a chance to use it, we had such a great time chatting with Mark that I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Day 2 PTY-MIA-CCS

The next day we flew from Panama City back to Miami, and then Caracas, Venezuela. Interestingly, many people are doing just the opposite this month: fleeing Caracas to Panama City. Caracas hasn’t been a very safe place for some time according to the State Department’s travel safety site. Here’s my favorite part of the warnings:

Violent crime in Venezuela is pervasive, both in the capital, Caracas, and in the interior. The country has one of the highest per-capita murder rates in the world. Armed robberies take place in broad daylight throughout the city, including areas generally presumed safe and frequented by tourists. A common technique is to choke the victim into unconsciousness and then rob them of all they are carrying. Well-armed criminal gangs operate with impunity, often setting up fake police checkpoints. Kidnapping is a particularly serious problem, with more than 1,000 reported during the past year alone. According to press reports at least 45 foreigners have been kidnapped in the first eight months of 2007. Investigation of all crime is haphazard and ineffective. In the case of high-profile killings, the authorities quickly round up suspects, but rarely produce evidence linking these individuals to the crime. Only a very small percentage of criminals are tried and convicted.

So I just stayed at the hotel. I did manage, however, to get out to the pool.

Landing Slump

I’ve been on a bit of a landing slump lately. These usually happen after a streak of great landings where you think you’ve got it all figured out. There’s no stopping you. And then you hit a slump. Instructors like to say that a good approach will lead to a good landing, but that’s just not so. There’s so much going on in the flare and I’m convinced that what you did in the approach has very little to do with how you’ll touch down as long as you’re at least on speed and on the glide path when you cross over the runway. Is there a crosswind? Maybe a slight tailwind? Is the runway sloping down? How’s your speed? Your sink rate? Did you start the flare too early or too late? Are you on the centerline? Are you trying to make a turn-off to the terminal that effectively shortens your runway? Does the airplane have winglets?

My landing last night in Caracas wasn’t that great. You see, runway 10 slopes upwards for the fist 1200 feet or so and then starts to angle back down. The key to a nice landing is to touchdown before the runway starts to head away from you. If you miss the ‘bump’, it’s far less likely that you’ll get a smooth touchdown. Manchester, England is the same way.

After three landings only a mother could love, I’m declaring this an official landing slump. I’ll let you know when I have it figured out again. It doesn’t help that I’ve been flying with a few captains lately who must be on their own good landing streaks.

Jim let me use his wide-angle lens again so I took a few cockpit shots. It’s always nice to find creative angles and this lens gives me a few more chances at a good shot. Here’s what I came up with:

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Day 3 CCS-MIA-BOS

The icing on the cake of this trip was saved for the last leg, our sixth in three days. The lunar eclipse was starting just as I did the walkaround inspection in Miami and it finished just as we started the approach into Boston. I managed to get a bit of video and some pictures of it, but there’s no way to capture the feeling of breaking out of the clouds and seeing the eclipse right in front of you. A few pilots commented to the air traffic controllers just how amazing the view was. It seemed a bit cruel to the controllers since Miami was under mostly cloudy skies. I managed to shoot a little video clip of the day’s flying:


Next month I will be going down for recurrent training in the simulator and classroom and I hope to bring you along for the ride.

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.

The worst U.S. cities for gridlock

by Catherine Bodry on

Our good buddy Christopher Elliott has laid out the 5 worst U.S. cities for traffic — and there’s only one surprise. It’s unfortunate that cities with the worst reputations haven’t been able to do any problem-solving. In more than a few of the blacklisted cities, the traffic is getting progressively worse.

So, what are they? First on the list is — surprise, surprise — New York City. Welcome to gridlock hell. With an already top notch public transportation system, there doesn’t seem to be any easy solutions on the horizon for the Big Apple. Elliott suggests that the only reasonable fix is congestion pricing — charging motorists who use roads during peak hours.

Next up is San Francisco, another no-brainer. And like New York, it’s got a great transit system in place. No problems easily solved there. Any suggestions?

Third is Seattle. I grew up there, and I watched the traffic go from bad to worse to I’ll-never-live-here-again. The city is getting a light-rail system, but I’m pretty pessimistic about it being able to alleviate traffic. But I’m hopeful.

Minneapolis came in 4th, due in part to the collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge. The city already had an awful traffic problem, but the 35W bridge was a main access point to the city. Not no more. The commute has been compared to Los Angeles’ nightmare — and that was before the bridge collapse.

At number 5 is Miami. It may seem like a surprising choice, but Elliott links to a list of construction projects and challenges you to disagree with him. He argues that he knows no one who regularly uses its mass transit system, and the roads can’t keep up with the city’s growth.

Wondering where L.A. is? Elliott listed it as a semi-finalist. If L.A. is a runner-up, then the winners must truly be awful.

America’s Favorite Cities from Travel & Leisure and CNN

by Catherine Bodry on

60,000 people chose their favorite towns from 25 choices across the U.S., and the list is in. The results are divided into 9 categories and 14 subcategories, including Shopping, Food and Dining, Culture, and After Dark. The winners are to be expected: New York won a first-place favorite for diversity, ethnic food, and classical music. Also consistently near the top were Washington D.C., Chicago, and San Francisco. No surprises there.

Missing? Philadelphia didn’t get too many votes — one third place win for its Farmer’s Markets. Miami didn’t fare too well either with no top-three wins, and same goes for Orlando and Dallas.

What’s your least favorite city? (I think that’s a much more interesting question than asking about favorites.)

Check out the results at CNN, and get more info on methodology at Travel & Leisure.

U.S. Cities With the Worst Traffic Are …

by Justin Glow on

The U.S. Department of Transportation has recently announced nine of the most congested U.S. cities which are in the running to obtain federal traffic-fighting aid.

Atlanta, Dallas, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Miami, New York City, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle where the nine semifinalists, with a “winner” set to be announced in August. The winning city will receive $1.1 billion in federal program aid designed to fight traffic using “levy tolls that vary based on traffic volumes,” and new mass-transit options for residents.

I thought Los Angeles would be on the list for sure. [via]

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