Cockpit Chronicles: Paris – A trip with too much adventure

by Kent Wien on

I’ve often marveled at how smooth air travel has become. Contrary to media reports, tens of thousands of flights operate every day with nary an issue. That was certainly the case for the previous six Paris trips this month.

The first clue that it’d be a more interesting flight came as I walked into the cockpit after doing the walk-around inspection outside. The captain mentioned that we didn’t have any autothrottles tonight. It’s akin to driving a car for 7 hours without cruise control.

I pulled out my Macbook to check the 767 MEL (Minimum Equipment List) to see if there were any issues about flying across the Atlantic without the autothrottles. Nothing came up, which meant they could be deferred for a few days until repairs or component replacements could be made.

At this point I can already hear a few corporate and regional airline pilots screaming, “Hey, we don’t even HAVE autothrottles!”

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But it wasn’t just the autothrottles that were deferred, it was the thrust management system that also gives us information on what our maximum takeoff, climb and continuous power settings were at any given phase of flight.

That meant that, as the relief pilot, I’d need to look up the charts for the proper settings, which change as we climb.

Captain John briefed our non-normal situation while we were still on the ground:

“Kent, could you pull up the max climb thrust, max continuous and .80 cruise thrust at flight level 350?”

I had a flashback to my 727 flight engineer days. The only difference this time was that I was sitting forward in the seat instead of sideways.

Ding, went the cockpit call chime. I picked up the interphone.

“We have fluid from the lavs leaking all over the aft galley,” said the flight attendant.

I told her I’d have maintenance come out and take a look at it right away.

Dave, the co-pilot then mentioned that the ACARS unit isn’t working. ACARS (Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System) is a device that allows us to text message the company inflight through a VHF radio frequency and pull up the weather for various locations or get our oceanic clearance from ATC. These can all be done via regular VHF voice communication if we don’t have ACARS, but it’s much more of a hassle.

We checked the frequency that the ACARS unit was using, but that looked right. Fortunately, as I was telling the mechanic about the leakage in the aft galley, John and Dave got the ACARS up and running somehow.

The mechanic came back to the front of the airplane and explained to us that when the ramp crew leaves the hose hooked up to add water to the airplane’s potable water tanks, it occasionally ‘over pressurizes’ the system and causes some of the water to leak out of the coffee makers and on to the galley floor.

Fortunately, it was an easy fix and we could now begin boarding the airplane.

I sat back after takeoff in seat 2H. I was a bit more tired than usual, so I planned on sleeping if I could. Unfortunately, a 75 year-old Texan lady was making it impossible for anyone to sleep.

“I tell you what…” she’d say, followed by some sort of political opinion she felt was necessary to share with the Finnish man across the aisle.

Her rather loud conversation continued. As the flight attendants went through the cabin offering hot towels, I could hear her say, “No thank you, but could I get another glass of wine, please?”

After my one hour and fifty minute break was up, I went back to the cockpit.

“You guys might want to bring some earplugs if you plan on sleeping,” I warned John and Dave, filling them in on our loquacious passenger.

Captain John stepped back for his break. Upon returning, he told us he’d manage to hear her life story.

Dave dug through his suitcase to find some earplugs before stepping back for his break.

“Give me a ten minute wake-up call, will you?” He said.

Two hours later, he came back to the cockpit and explained that our lady friend was still chatting with the Finnish man. In fact, she was probably the only one on the airplane still talking, since most had gone to sleep after midnight local time.

John made a perfect landing toward the west, away from the sun. A minute later, as we were taxiing in, Elaine, our purser called.

“We had a passenger stand up just as we were about to touch down and move toward the front of the airplane. I met her in the aisle and she asked if she could have a bag, as she didn’t feel well.”

“Let me guess, it was the lady from Texas, wasn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes! That’s the one.” Elaine responded.

“She said she felt dizzy, so I sat her in the crew rest seat. Just as I did, she passed out, fell backwards, threw up all over the crew rest seats and then wet herself. I helped her lean forward so she didn’t asphyxiate; it’s quite a mess back there.”

“Ok, I’ll let operations know. Does she need any medical attention?” I asked.

“She’s awake now. I think it was just all the wine she had.” Elaine replied.

As annoying as it is to cross the pond without autothrottles, I couldn’t help think that Elaine’s flight was a bit more problematic for her.

I mentioned to John and Dave that I wanted to do the night bike tour offered by Fat Tire Bike Tours at some point during the month. Since Dave hadn’t been on the tour before, we decided this would be a good trip to give it a try.

The Fat Tire Bike Tour has been a crew favorite for some time. They offer a morning, afternoon and evening ride through the city that can hardly be considered strenuous. They also have a day tour out to Versailles or Monet’s Gardens in Normandy, but we’re never in Paris early enough to take advantage of that.

After a long nap, we met up in the lobby to grab a quick bite to eat. John knew of a place right near the hotel that served a €5 dinner of Kebob Sandwich, fries and a drink. This worked out perfectly, since we didn’t want to be late for the tour at 7 p.m.

We dropped by the Monoprix on the way to the metro station to pick up some baguette, cheese and salami to go with the wine on the tour. It’s always good to bring enough to share with everyone else on the tour.

We met up at the South pillar of the Eiffel Tower a few minutes before seven.

I’ve been on the day tour twice and the night tour at least three or four times, but I’ve found that it’s impossible NOT to have a great time with Fat Tire. Five hours of entertainment for €28 isn’t a bad deal for Paris.

The night tour is especially fun, since you swing by Ile Saint- Louis for some Italian ice-cream before getting on a Bataux-Mouches boat tour of the Seine. Once on the boat, the guide often breaks out a few bottles of re
d wine to share among the group.

The tour guides are probably what make the ride most interesting, though. They’re almost always from Texas A&M university, and they can describe Paris in ways that you might not read about in a guide book. They’ll even detail the methods used to clean the Notre Dame Cathedral.

For this tour, our leader, John, was actually from Houston. He turned out to be the best tour guide I’d ever had which is all the more impressive when we found out that he had just had his personal bike, a restored ’70’s vintage Schwinn, stolen at his apartment a few minutes before coming to work.

[update: John found his bike locked up around the corner of his apartment. He swears someone moved it and claims he hadn’t been drinking the night before when he parked it]

“What’s your favorite animal?” He asked the group. Someone responded, “Horses.”

“Horses, eh?”

“OK, then the theme tonight will be horse related. Pegasus away!” He said as he rode away leading the pack (herd?).

It’s always fun to meet the other riders, and we were surprised to find two New York based co-pilots were among them. There was also a couple from Australia, and a German or two, but most were Americans on vacation or touring Europe.

I brought along a cheap RCA digital video camera to mess with while biking. At least with this camera, if I were to drop it, I wouldn’t be out too much.

This made it rather easy to bring you along for our night bike tour of Paris with John from Fat Tire Bike Tours:

After the ride, we left the Fat Tire building at about 11:30 to jump on the Metro at the Dupleix station. The New York pilots, Beau and Martin, wanted to get a bite to eat at a nearby pub.

Since we needed to stay awake for at least another two hours if we wanted to sleep through the night–remember, it’s only 5:30 p.m. Boston time–we stayed around for a Guinness before heading back to the hotel.

The topic of Crepe Nutella came up, so we stopped in a cafe near the hotel for some desert. I’ve always said, it’s not an official layover until we have a Crepe Nutella and this just topped off a perfect evening.

The next afternoon, during the preflight, Dave noticed a status message, “WARN ELEX” on the lower EICAS (engine indication and crew alerting system) display.

As is the procedure with any of these messages on the ground, we simply called maintenance. The mechanics went through a few trouble shooting tests, but it soon became apparent that this might require swapping a few components out to narrow down the issue.

We called our dispatch (the person responsible for creating our flight plans and tracking our flight at the company) to let him know we’d be running late with this issue. He politely told us that we wouldn’t run out of crew duty time until 7:10 p.m.

We found that a bit funny, as there was no way we could imagine having a delay that would push our 1:30 departure back to 7 p.m.

Little did we know…

Unfortunately, our passengers had already boarded when this seemingly minor problem popped up. The station personnel were great about bringing some bottled water on board for each passenger along with a snack.

Every time the mechanics replaced a component, our hopes were dashed after we discovered that the problem still hadn’t been fixed. Captain John did his best to keep the passengers up to date on every attempt to fix the issue.

The problem was an issue with the ‘air data’ such as the temperature, airspeed and pressure sensors that were fed into our computer, known as the FMS or Flight Management System. One of these inputs was causing the problem.

After four hours of waiting, we knew it was time to get the passengers off the airplane and re-ticketed on the New York flight that would leave at 6 p.m. Those who couldn’t make that flight would have to go on another airline or leave the next day.

Business class was let off the airplane first and put on other flights, and the coach passengers deplaned a few minutes later. We were now sitting on an empty airplane while still holding out some hope of seeing our problem fixed.

The mechanics changed out component after component, reloaded the software for our flight management computers and even started the engines at the gate with no luck.

I sat on the jetbridge with my Macbook connected to the WiFi of the CDG airport, since there wasn’t anything we could do to help the cause along. Finally, at 7:10 p.m. our day was done and we were told that we’d be flying the trip home two days later, since the crew flying the trip to Boston the next day were already in Paris.

A five day Paris trip! This was exciting for everyone, but after a moment it sunk in that we’d be missing Father’s Day at home the next day. I’m sure some of our passengers were thinking the same thing.

At least we’d be paid a few extra hours of flight pay for the extended stay. But I felt terrible for my two kids, and especially my wife, since this was already day 9 in a row that I’ve been working. I would now only have one day at home before going out on yet another three-day trip.

Captain John’s wife, Amy posted about her disappointment with this delay on her blog.

But what would we do with an extra full day and a half in Paris? What would YOU do? Tune in for the next Cockpit Chronicles to find out.

In the meantime, check out more of the bike tour in photos here:

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To be continued…

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

Talking travel with a RD editor and former White House correspondent

by Jerry Guo on

I’m here with Carl Cannon, Washington bureau chief of Reader’s Digest. You might ask what he’s got to do with travel. It may have a bit to do with his 15 years covering the White House (and all the travel that goes along with the job), in particular serving as the White House correspondent for the Baltimore Sun during the Clinton and Bush 43rd administration.

He’s been a member of a Pulitzer Award-winning team at the San Jose Mercury News, a fellow at Stanford/Princeton/Harvard, and regular contributor to NPR.

Ahh, and he managed to dash off an insightful article on “free vacations” around the US in this month’s issue of Reader’s Digest.

What was your experience like being a part of the White House press corp?

On the White House beat, you are an observer, not a participant, but you are an observer of history in the making. Most White House correspondents keep that in mind, I think, because to cover the stories unfolding in front of you, a good journalist has to know what has occurred before. Learning about this history leads naturally to wanting to explore historically significant places that lay outside the “bubble,” as the protective cocoon of the White House traveling show is called. I did a lot of that, and thus learned a great deal both inside and outside the bubble. I tried to share a portion of that knowledge in the “25 Great Places to Visit for Free” piece in our July magazine.

Did you accompany the president on any of his foreign trips?

I accompanied President Clinton on several foreign trips, including one to Belgium, Ukraine, and Russia. I had never visited the former Soviet Union before, and found myself walking unescorted inside the Kremlin. It was amazing. I also covered one of Clinton’s two trips to Ireland at the height of the peace talks there. When he went to Ballybunion to golf, a couple of reporters and White House guys put together our own foursome. It was wonderful. I traveled event more extensively abroad during the presidency of George W. Bush: One one trip, we went to Sharm el-Sheikh, the resort town in the southern Sinai peninsula; we also went to Jordan and Qatar. I covered the 60th anniversary of D-Day, attended by President Bush, also going to Rome and Paris on that trip; and toured Asia with Bush 43 as well.
The work load for a daily journalist is considerable on such foreign trips–your editors are paying a lot of money for you to be there, so they tend to want a lot of coverage–but there is occasionally time to slip away explore your surroundings. In Sharm, I had a spare hour one afternoon before a Colin Powell press conference, and dashed down to the beach and snorkeled in the Red Sea before racing back up to the press room. I entered the news conference with wet hair, a detail not lost on then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, who pretended to be disapproving. He scowled at my attire, but I think he was secretly jealous: he gave me a wink as he left the podium.

On the Asian trip, we ended it up with a day and a half in Hawaii. Many of us made the time count: I found one friend from the L.A. Times to hike to the summit of Diamond Head; and two others, one from the Financial Times of London and the other from Asahi Shimbun, to go surfing on Waikiki Beach. We rented boards from a concessionaire near our hotel, and paid the guy a few bucks to accompany us out to the breakers. We rode several waves before getting back on the press bus for the States.

How did you generate the destination ideas for this piece?

I love traveling in this country, and have done a lot of it with presidents, would-be presidents and other senatorial or gubernatorial candidates on various campaigns–and on many other stories as well. (And on real vacations, too.) I’ve been to most of the places I wrote about, either while on holiday or assignment, and keep a kind of mental road map in my head so that when I travel on a story, I start thinking what is near that place that would be interesting or fun to check out.

What were some places that got left on the cutting-room floor?

One of them was the quarries of rural Indiana. Swimming in them is not usually legal, and can be dangerous, so we left it out, but diving off cliffs into deep, clean water can be exhilarating. Another was the NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley located by the old blimp hangar off Highway 101 between San Jose and San Francisco–that’s where I grew up, and as a kid, I saw that thing every time we went to a ballgame at Candlestick Park. Jimmy Stewart was stationed there when World War II started, I believe. A third site that ended up on the cutting room floor was Navajo National Monument in Northern Arizona. They are all good. A friend emailed me a 26th nomination this morning: she said you can watch the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearse on Thursday evenings. I’ve not checked that out yet, but I will try…

How many of the 25 places you mention in the piece have you personally been to? Which are your top three favorite?

Oh, I’ve been to almost all of them–some several times. Let’s see. I have not been to Shanksville, Pa., although I should certainly go there: I was at the White House the day that plane went down with all those heroic people aboard. I’ve been to Ellis Island, although it was my 13-year-old kid on a school trip who did the family search at the immigration center there. I’ve never seen the Iowa bike race, although friends of mine have ridden in it. Nor have I dug for diamons in Arkansas: Carol Kaufmann, a colleague in the Reader’s Digest, Washington bureau, came up with that one. My top three favorites: Well, the Big Hole battlefield in Montana makes me cry when I go there and visualize the Nez Perce being cut down in their tents, so “favorite” isn’t quite the right word. It’s very moving. It’s also on the Big Hole River which is a wonderful fly fishing stream. The Fourth of the July citizenship ceremony at Monticello is so special. My third? Might be the seal pool (or children’s pool) in La Jolla. I cherish that beach.

What’s your favorite museum in DC?

Ah, I can’t choose just one. I like ’em all. The National Portrait Gallery has the portraits of the first 42 presidents of the United States, including Gilbert Stuart’s famous “Lansdowne” portrait of George Washington; it has the cracked plate photo of Abraham Lincolns taken near the end of his life, a cast of Lincoln’s hands…and portraits and photographs of all kinds of other Americans. Right now there’s a special one-room exhibit of Katharine Hepburn that includes numerous pictures of her, the actual Oscar statues she won (all four of them) and a video kiosk with clips of some of her movies and interviews. That place is truly amazing. But so is the simple majesty of the Lincoln Memorial, where you can walk in and read, etched in stone the words of the Gettysburgh Address and Lincoln’s second inaugural. Also, I’m still a sucker for the Air & Space Museum.

What about national parks? What are some of your top picks?

If anyone reading this hasn’t ever seen a redwood forest, they need to head to the West Coast as soon as it’s practicable. Those huge trees are something else. In the Reader’s Digest piece, I talk about the tallest trees in Redwood National Park in Humboldt County, Calif., but there are dozens of federal, state, and even some county parks with redwood stands in them, and they must be seen to be believed: My favorite national parks, overall?

Well, when you visit the famous jewels–Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, the Everglades, Acadia, Great Smoky Mountain National Park, Denali up in Alaska–you immediately realize why they are so popular: They are awe inspiring. I’ve been blessed enough to visit all of those, as well as some of the nation’s top state parks. (My favorite state parks are Ano Neuvo Point, Big Basin and Big Sur, all in California, along with City of Rocks in New Mexico and Nickerson State Park on Cape Cod, along with two New York state parks, Saratoga Spa State Park and Adirondack, which has something like 6 million acres.

Also, here are a half-dozen of my other, lesser known, but equally wonderous, favorite national parks, recreation areas, or historic sites:

  • Point Reyes National Seashore (California)
  • Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument (Utah)
  • North Cascades National Park (Washington state)
  • Assateague Island (Maryland)
  • Harper’s Ferry (West Virginia)
  • Lookout Mountain Battlefield (Tennessee)

Finally, here are five parks that I’ve never been to, but very much want to see: Channel Islands (state park) in California, Hawaii’s Volcanoes National Park, Isle Royale in Michigan, Kenai Fjords in Alaska, and Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, which is one of only two states in America I’ve never visited.

Are you a big outdoors guy? What’s your favorite hike/trek/walk/climb?

I love the outdoor, and indoor, sports. A perfect day might be surfing in the morning in Santa Cruz, California, then driving up to trout fish the Truckee River in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at dusk…before heading into the city for dinner and maybe some cards at a casino in Reno. Actually, I once did that trip, all in the same day. It was tiring, but satisfying.

What’s the best resource for Americans who want to find out some great weekend trip ideas near their home?

Any local hiking club or outdoor outfitter will have information about great local weekend trips. So will AAA, or your local chamber of commerce. This stuff pops up on the Internet pretty easily, too.

Are roadtrips still affordable these days, with the high gas? Any tips for saving fuel on the road?

It’s still cheaper to drive than fly, unless you’re going alone. Tips for saving money on gas? Buy a hybrid. Better yet, ride a bike.

Finally, RD is quite well-known for their reader submitted content. What about travel dispatches or mini-stories? Any ways readers/budding travel writers can participate?

The staff of Reader’s Digest just completed an editorial retreat this week where we brainstormed about new ideas for the magazine. One of them was institutionalizing this travel coverage into something interactive with our readers. It’s not finalized yet, but keep an eye on our website for information on just that kind of endeavor. Meanwhile, happy travels this summer.

The Eiffel tower turns blue

by Grant Martin on

To celebrate France’s rotating presidency of the European Union (EU), the Eifel tower is glowing blue. Additionally, twelve stars are mounted on the northwest face of the tower to look like the EU flag. From the Trocadero Gardens and The Pallais de Chaillot, you can get a square view of the spectacle, which is where the above picture was taken.

The tower will continue to glow blue through the end of the summer, so if you’re in Paris make sure you stop by to take a look

Remember that for ten minutes at the top of every hour, strobe lights will be turned on the tower to make it sparkle, a feature that was originally installed earlier this decade but just brought back because of its populartiy.

Bon voyage!

Cockpit Chronicles: Paris – Chez (grand) Papa

by Kent Wien on

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

“We’ve had a minor explosion back here,” one of the flight attendants, Susan, told us during our preflight.

“There’s orange juice all over 2H and J.”

Selfishly, we all perked up. Those were our crew rest seats. The thought of sitting in a wet seat gave a new urgency to the co-pilot’s voice when calling maintenance to get the cover and cushion replaced.

I was the relief pilot again for this flight. My schedule for June is exclusively for FB trips to Paris, but occasionally I’m able to trade over to the co-pilot seat if it opens up during the month, which leaves my relief pilot position open to someone who’s on reserve or another pilot who’s able to trade into it.
There’s no difference in pay between the relief pilot and the co-pilot positions, but most pilots prefer to fly if they have the chance.

We departed Boston at around 7 p.m., and just ten minutes later I left the cockpit for my crew rest seat, hoping it wasn’t still soaked from the orange juice. Maintenance did replace the cushion and cover of the seat bottom, but the window seat was especially wet on the seat back. So I opted to sit in the aisle seat, where I put a comforter blanket behind my back.

If I’m not tired, I usually try to catch up on a few posts. There’s nothing like flying along in an airplane to put you in the right frame of mind to write about, well, flying in an airplane.

After my two hours were up, I went to the cockpit and the captain went back to our rest seat. Moments later we started to get into a small amount of light ‘chop.’ (Pilot-speak for those little, rhythmic bumps).

Typically it’s up to the captain to turn the seatbelt sign on at this point, but when he’s gone, the other co-pilot and I look at each other with the ‘you think these bumps are going to last?’ look.

“Ding.” I turned the sign on.

Sure enough, it smoothed out almost immediately. I’m starting to wonder if the sign has magical powers.

The flight attendants are required to make a PA, telling the passengers that the captain (who’s now sleeping in row 2…) has turned on the seatbelt sign. If we turn it off two minutes later, we’re sure to hit some bumps requiring the sign again. So we elect to leave it on for a few minutes longer to be sure.

I’m sure my grandpa, an early bush pilot in Alaska, wouldn’t have been annoyed by this minor dilemma. He was more concerned with far more significant issues as he flew passengers year-round in Alaska during the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s.

Ice forming on the fuel vent? Is the radiator leaking again? Does that snow look too deep to land on with these wheels? And most importantly, where can I land if this engine quits?

But we’d be given a challenge of our own from ATC. Shanwick called up using the airplane’s SELCAL system. Controllers have the ability to ring us using a special code on our airplane that sends an alert via HF radio. They usually only call when they need to clarify a position report or to give us a new routing. This time they needed us to slow enough so as to arrive at the next waypoint at or after 0621z.

ATC keeps the airplanes flying at the same altitude and on the same track spaced at least 10 minutes apart which is around 75 miles. So we were likely gaining on someone ahead. I slowed the airplane back to .76 MACH, and the computer figured out our new arrival time at the fix: 0622z.

Perfect. Challenge solved.

We sat back to marvel at the United 777 passing 1000 feet above us on the right, just as the sun was breaking through the horizon in front of us. Contrails were everywhere; most of them drawing a path in the sky that marked where we’d soon be making a right turn.

One of the airplanes 20 miles ahead was 2000 feet above us. The wake of airplanes can cause some bumps, even this far back, since it descends at about 500 feet per minute.

Depending on the winds, you’ll often get these bumps when 12 miles behind an airplane that’s 1000 feet above. Double that number for an airplane that’s 2000 feet above.

To avoid these annoying bumps, we’re allowed to ‘offset’ the airplane either 1NM or 2NM’s to the right. We put in a mile and slid over to the side, avoiding the bumps that were easy to see from the contrails.

Yet another problem solved. Grandpa would be proud.

Truthfully, there are so many other issues that make flying complicated today. I suppose my grandpa might be overwhelmed with many of the legalities, the procedures and the aircraft systems. After one look, he might even prefer to go back to his Tri-Motor Ford. I wouldn’t blame him. But I’m sure glad I don’t have to scrape ice from the wings of the airplane in the morning anymore.

We often chat in the cockpit at altitude about families, previous trips or activities outside work. But a very popular topic of conversation lately has been the state of the industry.

Just like most of the airlines, we’ve announced a reduction of around 10% in our flying for the fall schedule. This has a trickle down effect among the pilot group. Some captains will be bumped to a smaller airplane, or even back to co-pilot, which results in co-pilots either becoming more junior on their same airplane or bumped back to a domestic 737 or maybe even furloughed.

I was furloughed from 1993 to 1996, so I hope to never have to see that again. But we still have pilots on furlough from our 2001 reduction. Some of those were recently called back and I would hate to see them furloughed again. The only thing worse than getting furloughed is getting furloughed twice.

My dad always encouraged my brother and I to think about having a back-up plan in case the flying thing didn’t work out.

“It’s just such an unstable career,” he said in 1983.

How right he was. But I always knew it was the only job for me. Especially after studying accounting and management in college.

We landed in Paris and after the last passenger deplaned, we went down to the bus parked just in front of the nose of the 767. This isn’t usually the case, but in Paris we’re fortunate to jump on the crew bus right at the airplane that takes the twelve of us into the city.

The ride can best be described as excruciating. On the weekdays it’s stop and go, with jolts and surges lasting an hour and forty-five minutes typically. Some people try to sleep, others talk or listen to an iPod. I’ve actually managed to sleep a bit on these rides, but it’s not very easy to get comfortable.

Again we waited a few minutes in the lobby for our room keys. This is always a good time to co-ordinate the days activities. I had mentioned that I wanted to check out the Catacombs of Paris, which is near our hotel. Both pilots were interested, so we planned to meet up at 3 o’clock after a good sleep.

The Catacombs are a series of skull and bone filled tunnels that traverse everywhere under the streets of Paris. Apparently they were running short on land and the only solution was to relocate the grave sites into these tunnels. Obviously, this occurred long before Drew Barrymoore showed us in Poltergeist what a bad idea this was.

I was exci
ted to go down to the Catacombs, since I had read some of your comments suggesting a visit. I studied up, I knew to bring a flashlight, to dress appropriately and I even downloaded a couple of maps.

But there was one thing that I didn’t read up on; they close at 4 p.m.

We arrived a few minutes before 4 and stood in line, hoping they would let those already in line down below. Just as the line moved to the entrance, they cut us off. We’d have to come back another time. At least while waiting in line, I discovered one of the most beautiful statues in Paris:

Wifi available! Yep, this meant I could check my email on the iPhone while standing in line. I have an account with Boingo, a roaming service that allows you to bypass a lot of the fees charged at hotels and airports. Unfortunately, some of the locations are premium, which means you’ll pay about $10 an hour to use them. It turns out the parks in Paris are all in the premium category, but the hotel where we stay isn’t. Apparently, if I elected to go from the $22 a month plan to the $39 plan, there wouldn’t be any premium fees.

Since it was early still, we all split up. Jim the co-pilot worked out, Phil the captain borrowed another captain’s bike that’s parked nearby and went for a ride. One of our captains brought a bike over from the states piece by piece and built up a ten speed bike that no one would ever consider stealing. Of course that was his plan all along. He’s very generous in sharing the bike’s combination lock with the other crew members.

Of course, I’m so far behind blogging these trips, I needed to get some work done back at the hotel. We had previously arranged to meet with one of our flight attendants and two other captains from Miami and New York for dinner a few hours later.

Back at the hotel, I ran into Frenchy, one of my favorite flight attendants who’s now flying out of Miami. He’s recommended some great restaurants for the crew in the past and I wanted to pick his brain again for suggestions for our dinner tonight. He told me about a restaurant located on the grounds of a park near our hotel.

“What kind of price are we talking about?” I asked him, knowing that he generally had good taste in dining (i.e. expensive).

“Twenty to forty Euro.” He said.

Perfect, I thought. I had done a bit of ‘fine dining’ for the last two trips and it’d be nice to eat on a terrace near a park without having to take out a second mortgage on the house.

The six of us met up at the hotel and I told them of my new discovery. Everyone thought this sounded like as good a place as any, so we walked about 20 minutes to the Montsouris park.

As we approached the restaurant, Susan said, “It’s like Tavern on the Green!”

“Yeah, but without the price to go along with it.” I confidently remarked.

At 7 p.m. the place was empty, since most Parisians dine rather late. We managed to get a table without having reservations, but when we sat down and took a look at the menu, the table got a bit quiet.

The prix fix menu price was €52.

“I can’t do this.” One of the pilots said.

Since that worked out to $85 not including any drinks, and both Susan and I had spent a fair amount on dinner during the Les Papilles birthday celebration for Stephanie a few trips earlier, we decided it might be best to go somewhere else.

Jim and Phil wanted to try Chez Papa, a nearby restaurant that’s becoming popular with crews. I was happy to go along in an effort to save some money. I’m starting to realize that I need to alternate between a nice dinner and something more reasonable if I’m going to fly this trip exclusively this summer.

Susan and the two other pilots wanted to trek into the Latin quarter to find something more in between, price-wise, which I completely understood.

Chez Papa turned out to be a great choice. The choices were a bit random, with lots of Duck and Lamb offered in a variety of stews, but I opted for a potato omelette. And for a nice change of pace, this dinner ran at just €11 with a drink.


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The flight home was completely uneventful. I tried to snap a shot of Paris from the air. Unfortunately, we were climbing through 11,000 feet, so the view isn’t the best.


Phil and Jim starting to descend for the arrival into Boston.

With two Paris trips down and one to go in my 9-day in a row marathon, I still felt pretty good.

Little did I know, the next trip would prove to be a bit more troublesome…

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on each of Kent’s trips as a co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 out of Boston. For the months of May through July, he’ll focus on Paris almost exclusively. If you have any good suggestions for Parisian activities, feel free to leave your tips in the comments.

Photo of the Day (6/26/08)

by Kent Wien on

The winner of our photo of the day for today is from Dave and Chi who captured this display from the annual fireworks competition just outside of Paris in Chantilly. He calls it “Nuit de Feu – Yellow Sky”

Amazingly, our crew ALMOST went to this display on June 14th. I had plans to capture just this kind of picture. But I know that Dave and Chi probably did a much better job than I could. There’s always next year, I guess. Now that I see his pictures, I really think we should have checked it out.

Congratulations Dave and Chi! They even blogged about the experience.

Are you a Flickr user who’d like to share a travel related picture or two for our consideration? Submit it to Gadling’s Flickr group right now! We just might use it for our Photo of the Day!