Cockpit Chronicles: How I Fell In Love With An Airplane (Video)

by Kent Wien on

The MD-80 just might be the Rodney Dangerfield of the airline world. It just can’t seem to get any respect. But for those who really get to know the airplane, it offers some features, and admittedly a number of quirks, that has made it near and dear to many pilots. Against all odds, this Boeing pilot has fallen in love with the Mad Dog.

Passengers either love the airplane or hate it. And much of those feelings depend on where you’re sitting. A perch up in first class offers one of the quietest cabins in the air. Conversely, finding yourself in the back row between the engines and across from the lav would only be appealing to the truest aviation geek who somehow enjoys the noise.

Compared to a Boeing, there are so many sounds, levers and quirky features in the cockpit of an MD-80 that I can only do justice by video. So on my last week of flying the airplane back in February, I decided to document a few of the features that have made me fall in love with the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 or the “Super 80” as we call it.

For all the quirks, as I mention in the video, it has an enviable safety record.

But let’s face it; the reason I’ll miss the MD-80 the most might have more to do with which seat I sat in. Bumping back from captain to co-pilot as these airplanes are retired means that I won’t find myself taxiing around La Guardia or Chicago, or any place for that matter as the captain does all the taxiing.

And the co-pilots I flew with were the hardest working aviators at the company. I will absolutely miss them as some became good friends along the way.

You never know, with the flood of A319s, A321s and new Boeing 737-800 and -900s coming at my company, I could be back in the Super 80 left seat soon, or in one of those shiny new jets. Either way, I’m glad I had the opportunity to fly the airplane before it’s gone.

[Photo credit: Kent Wien]

Related: “Captain on the MD-80? Why?” and “A Captain No More.”

“Cockpit Chronicles” takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as a captain co-pilot on the MD-80 757 and 767 based in New York. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the “Cockpit Chronicles” Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.

Cockpit Chronicles: What’s not to like about the 757? I’ll show you. (Video)

by Kent Wien on

Powerful engines providing stellar performance and short field capabilities are just some of the features that set the Boeing 757 apart from the rest. But there has to be something that pilots dislike on the airplane, right?

Well, there are two features in particular that I don’t care for.

I dream that someday someone from Boeing or Airbus will call me for advice on cockpit ergonomics. Each company does their best to lay out a cockpit to please the end user – the pilot. But sometimes there are just a few quirks that slip through. An item, which an engineer may spend only a day or two thinking about, can have a lasting impact on the pilots that fly the airplane for thousands of hours.

Generally speaking, Boeing takes pilot input into account when designing the pointy-end of their airplanes. The following two items that pertain to the 757 and 767 may seem nit-picky, but I thought I’d share them here anyway, even including a video to highlight my second personal peeve.

To be fair, these airplanes were designed in the late ’70s and went into service in the ’80s. And Boeing has, to some extent, fixed these issues in the 777. But here are my minor gripes, with a video to demonstrate the second annoyance.Chimes

You know the chime that accompanies the seatbelt sign when it cycles on or off? It happens to be my text message alert tone right now-appropriate, I suppose. Well, there’s a slightly more annoying sound in the cockpit that is supposed to represent various different alerts such as:

HF and VHF SELCAL – When air traffic control needs to get a hold of us, they have the option of sending a SELCAL (selective calling) ding that alerts us. Upon hearing the ding, we need to look either on the forward EICAS screen where the engine information is displayed for a clue as to what the ding was, or overhead to see if the SELCAL light is on. Unfortunately, some earlier airplanes didn’t have that EICAS notification feature, so we only have the overhead to differentiate the sounds.

Flight Attendant Call – We aren’t immediately sure if it’s ATC calling with a flight level change or if a flight attendant is checking to see if we need a bathroom break. The look around the cockpit for the various clues to the source can be amusing to someone riding in the jumpseat.

During the preflight, it’s a regular ding-fest. As we request the flight plan data to be uploaded to the airplane, dings come in rapidly (I’ve lost count at eight dings in less than a minute) for these items and more:

Forecasted winds at altitude uplink
Route uplink
Takeoff performance data uplink

Unfortunately, this is a time when the crew-chief on the ground calls us through a headset plugged in at our nose wheel. We may easily think it’s another nuisance ding and not answer him as these flight plan items are coming in.

As we taxi out, we could also miss a flight attendant call when the latest ATIS information is delivered or we get our load closeout information, which includes the number of people on board, the weight of the airplane and our stabilizer trim setting.

Inflight, these dings create a Pavlovian response. Around an hour after takeoff, flight attendants usually call with meal choices for us. Just as your mouth starts to water after hearing the ding, it’s always a letdown to discover that it was just the other guy updating the winds in the FMC.

Years ago, I met two Boeing engineers while I was riding in the back of an MD-80 to Dallas. On my left was an engineer who was the liaison for Boeing to the FAA as they made changes to the cockpit flight computer known as the FMC and to my right was an engineer who did the actual programing of any new features in the box.

They were excited to tell me about the new CPDLC or Controller Pilot Data Link Communication feature they were testing out on one of our 757s. The idea was that an Air Traffic Controller could send us a text message that would tell us to climb, descend, turn or change our speed. The test program would only be for Miami and a few of our 757s. Later this innovative concept expanded to other air traffic facilities for use primarily with the 777 and some newer Airbuses. After the test period, it was deactivated on the 757.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Finally I could give them some input about the ding issue.

“When ATC contacts you via this CPDLC thing, I would imagine there would be a ding?” I asked.

“Yes!” one of them said proudly.

I then prodded them on how we were supposed to differentiate the different dings for different functions, all sounding exactly the same, as they came in.

The engineer asked why we didn’t just look at the EICAS screen as it would either say, CPDLC, FMC, Ground Call, or Flight Attendant.

I explained that this was nice, but that more than half of our 757s didn’t have this EICAS ‘ding alert’ feature.

His partner jumped in, describing the studies Boeing had done that indicated that humans could only differentiate between five different sounds in a cockpit.

I sighed and pleaded for a simple telephone ring for the flight attendant call that comes in on the handset, and then for a few different tones for the rest. If I were to mistake the FMC alert for the HF radio call with these new sounds, how would that be different to what we have now?

I felt bad for them. Pilots love Boeing products so I think they were a bit taken aback. I dropped the subject and stretched out in the middle seat of the MD-80. I certainly wasn’t going to mention my second peeve to them. That is:

Dim and Dimmer

Depending on the airplane and configuration, there are between 32 and 34 different dimming switches and knobs to change the lighting intensity on the 757 and 767 cockpit lights. Of course, I knew you’d think I was exaggerating, so I made a quick video showing each light and dimming knob from a recent flight.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve written earlier about how much I love the 757 and these annoyances are amusingly minor in the grand scheme of airplane design. Maybe flying the MD-80 for a while will give me a new level of appreciation for this grand airplane.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in New York. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.

Cockpit Chronicles: Eight ways to slow a jet

by Kent Wien on

One of my first posts on Cockpit Chronicles was an explanation on how to park a 757. At the risk of catering only to people who have recently acquired their own Boeing jets, I’d like to continue with another lesson.

The eight ways to slow a jet

When you’re driving your 5-speed manual transmission car and you exit an offramp, besides just taking your foot off the gas pedal, there are a couple of different ways that you can slow down. Most people probably put on the brakes, but you could also downshift as well.

In an airliner, there are four different ways inflight and four methods on the ground to slow a jet, and often these techniques can be used in conjunction.

Unlike turboprop airplanes, jets are rather difficult to slow down and require a bit of planning in advance to avoid burning too much fuel or ending up too high at the airport for landing.

So let’s start with our Boeing that’s at 33,000 feet. Pilots will use a rough “3 to 1” guide when deciding when they’ll need to start down, adjusting for wind as needed.

To do that, take the 33,000 feet, drop the zeros and multiply it by three. 33 X 3 = 99 miles.

So, for a descent at idle thrust, the pilots will need to start down within 99 miles of the airport. Any later and they’ll be too high and need to add drag to get down, and any sooner and they may need to add power and level off for a while. Either way, more fuel is burned.

A side note: If the engines were to fail, our airplane would likely be able to make it to the runway if it were within that 99 mile point. It’s just going to take some perfect planning on the part of the pilots, as was the case with the Air Transat and Air Canada flights.

Since an airplane burns far less fuel at altitude, it’s best to stay up high until the airplane can descend, ideally at idle thrust, all the way to the final approach segment. That’s our goal, subject to air traffic control requiring something different.

It’s not uncommon, especially in the U.S., for air traffic controllers to leave you at altitude past your normal beginning of descent point. In this case, it’s going to take more than idle thrust to descend quickly enough.Speed Brakes

In this situation, we can use speed brakes, which are the panels on top of the wing that move up equally on both wings to increase the drag on an airplane and reduce the lift.

So they’re the best method to initially increase the rate of descent and/or slow the airplane.

Since there are usually no airspeed limitations when using speed brakes, they can be deployed anytime they’re needed.

Flaps

The next method to slow an airplane involves using the flaps. These devices are panels that extend from the leading and trailing edges of the jet to change the shape of the wing to provide more lift. This allows a high-speed wing to quickly transform into a wing that can keep the jet in the air at much lower speeds.

In addition to creating more lift, flaps also create drag, and can slow a jet nicely. Unfortunately, we can’t begin to use the flaps until below 250 knots or so. Each step of the flaps has a different speed limit, above which too much stress will be placed on the flaps and a maintenance inspection would be necessary if that limit were exceeded.

We now have a program called FOQA, or Flight Operations Quality Assurance, that records the exact speed at which the flaps are deployed among many other parameters and sends a report to the company (see my personal experiences with FOQA here). Should the flap speed limits be exceeded, the airplane is taken out of service and given a thorough inspection, sometimes costing tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance man-hours to accomplish, not to mention the revenue lost when an airplane isn’t flying.

So let’s say that we’re flying into Miami or Los Angeles which are two airports known for the ‘slam dunking’ that ATC occasionally needs on certain arrivals.

Imagine that you’re now at 230 knots with the first notch of flaps extended and you still aren’t descending at a high enough rate. What can you do? More flaps would add drag, but you’ll need to be below 220 knots before you can go to flaps 5. And you’d better not hit a gust or any turbulence that sends you above 220 with those flaps out.

Landing Gear

So the next solution is the landing gear. This can be extended at any time you’re showing 270 knots or less of airspeed. They add a similar amount of drag as the spoilers, which are still extended in our scenario.

Pull up, pull up!

Finally, as with any airplane, our 4th method to decelerate is pretty basic; lift the nose up which initially decreases our rate of descent. We adjust the descent to slow the aircraft to bring the flaps out on schedule.

Often times there are points along an arrival where we’ll need to be at a certain speed and altitude. These ‘crossing restrictions’ are very important to meet and add another challenge for the arrival.


Pull Up, Pull Up!

Fortunately we don’t have to rely only on the 3 to 1 calculation to properly meet these targets when planning our descent. We can plug in the speed and altitude we want when flying over a waypoint into the FMS, or Flight Management System, that will calculate the time we should start down, using a function called VNAV, or Vertical Navigation.

Slowing down after landing – Ground Spoilers

Finally when we touch down, ground spoilers will automatically deploy from the top of the wings. This is done by using the same handle which deploy the same panels as the speed brakes, but now a few extra panels that open even further than the speed brakes are included.

These panels not only give us added drag, but when deployed, they add weight to the wheels which dramatically increases the effectiveness of our second method of stopping, the brakes.

Brakes!

All airliner brakes have anti-skid protection and the option to use ‘autobrakes’ for landing. We can preset the brakes before landing to automatically activate soon after we touch down. There are five different levels to choose from, with ‘max auto’ the one to use on slick runways. The same setting on a dry runway would leave a nose print in the setback in front of you, however.

To manually operate the brakes, pressure is applied to the top of the rudder pedals with your toes which, if they were selected, will also kick off the autobrakes. We generally don’t manually apply brakes until we’re below 100 knots. Pilots can even control the right and left brakes independently by pressing the tops of the right or left rudder pedals.

Reverse thrust

The noisiest, and third most effective way to stop an airplane on the ground is to use reverse thrust. This is done by lifting some handles that are in front of the thrust levers (throttles) when they’re at idle. The farther we pull these handles, the more thrust is deflected forwards to slow the jet. If these devices are inoperative, or a specific airport has restrictions on their use during late night hours, only 400 to 600 extra feet are needed for landing.

As we slow through 80 knots, we’ll bring the reverse thrust to idle and coming through 60 knots we are advised to stow the reverse thrust sleeve completely.

Here is a video of the reversers in operation that I caught while mechanics were making adjustments.

All of these methods can be seen in this picture of the center console of a Boeing 757:

Aerodynamic braking

There’s actually a fourth method of slowing an airplane after landing, but it’s generally not effective in the airline world, and more often seen when watching the Space Shuttle land. Aerodynamic braking is when the nose wheel is held high off the ground to use the drag of the airplane as a way to slow down. It’s not really effective, and it delays our ability to use brakes (and reverse thrust on the MD-80) while the nose wheel is still off the ground.

To taxi to the gate, the captain will use a combination of throttle and brakes to control the speed, which the FAA says shouldn’t exceed that of a person walking briskly. In reality, five to fifteen knots while taxiing is far more common.


So there you go. Oh, and congratulations on your recent jet acquisition. Or for those of you just worried about an Airport ’75 event occurring on your next flight, this could come in handy.

Either way, stay tuned for some more obscure airline flying tips!

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in New York. Have any questions for Kent? Talk to him on the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.

Cockpit Chronicles: Airline de-icing

by Kent Wien on

Not only does the frosty precipitation add weight to an aircraft, but it also disrupts the flow of air over the wings and tail and can cause an accident if the circumstances are just right. The FAA and NASA have gone through great lengths to teach pilots about the adverse effects that snow and ice can have on an airplane.

But the most important lesson pilots learned from was from the infamous Air Florida 90 crash in Washington D.C. in 1982. But snow on the wings wasn’t the only problem that aircraft had to deal with. Even more of a factor was the iced up engine probe that is used to display the amount of thrust the airplane was developing during takeoff. The result was that the 737 was producing much less power than the pilots thought, at a time when the snow and short runway made an accurate power setting vital.

Airline deicing has presented a problem long before the jet age arrived. During the twenties while flying passengers in Alaska, my grandfather not only had to make sure the wings were clear of snow and frost, but he had to preheat the engine oil, usually over a stove in the coldest conditions, before putting it back in the preheated motor that was warmed from below using a custom made stove with large blankets wrapped over the engine.


Noel Wien Photo – 1929

While flying to the Eskimo villages outside of Bethel, Alaska, as a new co-pilot I was tasked with using a push broom to get the snow and ice off the top of the wings of the Twin Otter. Usually it was a simple matter of brushing the cold snow from the wing while crawling across the slick aluminum with a push broom. But sometimes the ice was so thick that it was necessary to break it up as gently as possible with the side of handle. It was during one of these mornings, in the cold dark winter, that I thought to myself that Twin Otters were also flown in Hawaii and that I might want to look into that. I managed to capture some of those ice-cold days in a video from back then.

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Prior to landing a flying job, I worked for Era as a ramper on the night shift and one of the tasks I was trained to do was to de-ice aircraft in the morning. I learned two lessons from that experience. Firstly, that it was very important not to spray the glycol based de-ice fluid into the wind, and second, that this fluid tasted a lot like maple syrup.

How much does it cost and how long does it last?

The De-ice Process

I have a lot of sympathy today for the certified deicers that clean our airplanes. It’s not an easy job.

Before every ‘snow event’ as our base in Boston calls these storms, crews are assigned and trucks are prepared for the day’s worth of spraying. It’s ultimately up to the pilots when and what type of de-icing fluid is to be used, but the deicers do a good job of planning ahead, especially at our base.

Everything is based on what’s called a ‘holdover time.’ This is the amount of time the FAA says the Type I or Type IV fluid can prevent snow, ice-pellets or freezing rain from adhering to the wings.

Years ago, Type I fluid was really our only option. It’s a de-icing fluid that is used to remove the snow and ice from the airplane. But it’s holdover time was then and still is today rather limited; typically between ten and thirty minutes in duration. So by the time you’re de-iced, if there is any delay departing, which invariably happens during a snow storm as the airport opens and closes runways for clearing, the holdover time is often met.

It is possible to takeoff with an expired holdover time, but it involves an inspection by a pilot from inside the cabin or certified de-icer from the outside within five minutes of departure. This might explain why you’ve seen a pilot come back to check on the wings on occasion before takeoff.

This inspection is very rare today, since we now have Type IV fluid, which is an anti-icing fluid. It’s far more common now to use a two-step process using Type I to remove the snow and Type IV to ensure a long holdover time. Our charts show that Type IV fluid can resist snow for as much as an hour and a half.

While the wings must not have snow or ice adhering to the upper surfaces, the fuselage is usually cleared as well, since the added accumulation can add weight to the aircraft.

The whole process isn’t cheap. Currently Type I fluid costs $3.29 a gallon and Type IV fluid runs a rather steep $5.79. Often these fluids are diluted with up to 50% of the solution made up of warm water, but it’s not uncommon for an airline to spend over $5,000 on a single ice-coated airplane.

Even though it’s so expensive, the effectiveness of Type IV fluid is rather startling-it’s not uncommon to fly for a few hours and still have an oily film sticking to the surface of the airplane after landing.

Occasionally, when the snow fall has slowed a bit, it’s common for the airplane to be de-iced before it’s even boarded, so you won’t encounter the delays from the de-ice process. But the station has to make a determination that the snow won’t be picking up in intensity anytime soon.

If the airplane is to be de-iced after pushing back from the gate with passengers on board, we close off any outside air from entering the cabin during the de-icing to prevent the fluid smell from entering the airplane. A few years back, an Alaska jet had a well publicized incident where de-icing fluid mist filled the airplane while it was getting de-iced. Closing the engine ‘bleed air’ and turning off the air-conditioning ‘packs’ reduces this smell significantly.

Finally, there’s one other anti-icing fluid used to make flying safer and that’s on the runway itself. Airports often add anti-ice fluid in the form of potassium acetate to a runway after plowing the snow in order to keep the braking action fair or better as reported by the airplanes landing there.

The next time you see a de-icer giving your airplane a glycol bath, give ’em a thumbs up. They could use any warm thoughts you might be able to send their way.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston. Have any questions for Kent? Check out Plane Answers or follow him on Twitter @veryjr.

Embraer’s private jet allows for toilet take offs and landings

by Grant Martin on

Two hours into a Tarmac delay, have you ever wondered why passengers aren’t allowed to be in the lav during taxi and takeoff? It’s actually got to do with the FAA rules for protecting a passenger during a potential crash — there have to be enough restraints in place to provide ample protection, and without a seatbelt and surrounding support a toilet-bound passenger could be in serious trouble in an emergency.

Seems like a reasonable restriction for commercial passengers, but what about high paying private passengers? Brazillian airframe manufacturer Embraer has your solution: seatbelts on toilet seats. The Phenom 100, Embraer’s very light business jet is just about to get approval from the FAA for toilet assisted take-offs and landings, meaning that luxury passengers wont have to move from their comfortable spot before leaving the Tarmac.

According to SeattlePi, current Phenom 100 owners will be able to upgrade their equipment later this year.