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.

Not exactly your regular LAX ‘stripper plane’

by Jerry Guo on

Neil has written about the infamous Los Angeles to Las Vegas “stripper plane” run by Southwest. From what he said, it seems to be a completely legitimate operation.

This stripper plane, however, was not. Recently on a French airline, a couple of flight attendants were caught–on film–giving a saucy striptease to the pilots in the cockpit. The video was subsequently leaked (though it did take a whole three minutes of Googling for me to find it — NSFW), and now there’s a widespread investigation all across Europe to track down these folks.

The incident follows right on the heels of another piloting fiasco–this one on a Heathrow flight, when the co-pilot decided to have a mental breakdown at 35,000 feet. Ahh… reminds me of the year of the drunken pilots. Was that ’05? Last year?

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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.