Cockpit Chronicles: Too much adventure (Part II)

We left off in the last episode looking at an extra two nights in Paris after a mechanical issue caused our flight back to Boston to cancel.

This was because our 7:10 p.m. required departure time had arrived and the mechanics still hadn’t found the problem. So now there was no way to get to Boston without exceeding our 14 hour maximum time on duty.

We couldn’t believe the situation. A five-day Paris trip? I’ve always envied the British Airways and Virgin crews that layover for days in the Caribbean. We’d finally get a chance to experience Paris after a full night’s sleep.

Later that evening, the mechanics narrowed down our problem to a faulty total air temperature probe. This probe supplies the temperature information for the FMS (Flight Management System – The airplane’s ‘computer.’) which calculates our Mach number and how high we can fly, among many other things. They’d have to fly a new temperature probe in from Chicago the next morning.

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I was sure we’d have to wait a few hours for a bus to pick us up at the airplane after we finally ran out of duty time. Amazingly, though, the bus was right at the nose of the airplane when we were ready.

On the ride to the hotel, we ran through our options for the next day. It came down to two choices. We could either go to the Nuits de Feu, which is a fireworks contest in Chantilly, or we could spend the day in Versailles with the Fat Tire Bike Tour.

Nine of us elected to do the bike tour. Since one of our flight attendants actually lives in Paris, he preferred to go home, obviously. The other two flight attendants were happy to do their own thing,

I called Fat Tire as we drove to the hotel. They were fully booked up for the Versailles tour, but since we had so many in the crew, they thought they’d go ahead and put on an extra guide for us–a private tour at no extra charge.

A large group of us went to the Latin quarter for a bite to eat after getting to the hotel at nearly 9 p.m. We didn’t want to stay out late, since we were meeting up at 8:30 a.m. the next day for our eight hour ‘tour de France.’ But we managed to stop for a Crepe Nutella before hitting the sack. The perfect end to a long day.

I was impressed that everyone who said they wanted to go the night before, actually showed up the next morning. So the nine of us jumped on the metro to the Dupleix stop near the Fat Tire headquarters. They decided not to split the tour into two groups, so there would be just over 20 of us.

I almost prefer it that way, since it’s fun to meet the other people on the tour, and the large group can actually be more fun. Our guide for the day was a really sweet and enthusiastic girl named Eliza, but since she looked so much like Indy Car racer Danica Patrick, she will from here on be referred to as Danica.

The €60 price included the RER train ride and a ticket to tour the palace at Versailles.

After picking out our bikes at Fat Tire, we pedaled over to the station. This was the most challenging part, since the train’s doors would only be open for a matter of seconds.

We’d have to get our bikes on board and stow them near the doors as quickly as possible. To facilitate this, Danica turned our handlebars 90 degrees which made it easier to stack the bikes four at a time on the train.

The RER train took us to Versailles in less than 20 minutes. We stopped at the farmer’s market where we shopped for nearly an hour, loading up with enough bread, meats, cheeses, fruit and wine to hold a grand picnic lunch on the grounds of the Versailles Gardens.


The Palace of Versailles was established to house the Royal Family just outside Paris. The idea was that it would lend an air of mystery to the Royals. “What were they doing out there?” the Parisians would wonder.

After years of taxation–an 80% tax rate, with 3/4 of that going straight to Versailles, the people of France rose up mounted a successful revolution.

Only one word could come to mind when riding around the gardens, past the guest house and Marie Antoinette’s villa. Opulence.

We parked ourselves at the end of the cross-shaped lake looking back at the palace at the other end of the pond.

We broke out the food on the thick grass and had a good laugh about the troublesome trip from Boston three days earlier. One of the flight attendants, Elaine, couldn’t decide if having to scrape off the vomit from her shoe was worth getting a five-day layover.

We met up with two girls from Houston who were touring Europe, a nice couple from New Jersey and we even toasted the 21st birthday of one of the riders.

I managed to shoot a short video of the relaxed and enjoyable ride so far.

It’s just about impossible to walk the entire gardens in a day, but with a bike it was simple and fun to get around. Versailles was one of the largest Palaces in the world.


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We could have stayed at that spot all day, watching the airplanes fly over to land at a local small airport, eating the world’s freshest strawberries and raspberries, but we needed to bike back to the palace for our grand tour inside.

Many people walk these gardens, but there’s just no way to really see it all unless you take a bike. The beach cruisers that Fat Tire uses were rather comfortable to ride all day. That is until someone loses a chain.

The scale at which this palace was constructed is hard to imagine. Marble columns everywhere, a hand-dug lake, and a Palace that takes over an hour just to tour the half of the home open to the public.

Inside, they give you a headset, and you simply put in the number of the room you’re in and it describes what you’re seeing. The furniture in the Palace is mostly removed to help the flow of traffic through each room. There were times where I’d call it heavy traffic indeed.

The “Hall of mirrors” was fantastic. Mirrors were incredibly rare in those days, so they would use polished silver to make these mirrors. In fact, I ran across some graffiti on one of the silver panes. If you look close, you’ll see it was scratched into the mirror in 1842.

The room everyone wants to see is, of course, the bedroom of Marie Antoinette. I stopped there for a moment to send a text message to everyone I knew via twitter “Spending father’s day in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom!”

After returning our bikes in Paris, we jumped on the Metro for the trip back to our hotel. There was talk of getting together for dinner again that night, but we were all so tired, we decided to skip food in favor of some extra sleep. I was still plenty full from the hour-long picnic.

The next morning we joked about the possibility of another cancellation. We were unanimous in all wanting to get home at this point. My nine-days in a row of flying had already turned into 11 days, and I really needed to get home to give my wife a break from the kids and a bit of respite.

It might sound like 11 days in a row at work is a marathon, and I certainly thought it was, but I realize that my wife Linda has her hands full with the kids every day without a break while I’m gone. I honestly don’t know how she does it.

The marathon wasn’t quite over, though. I would only have one day off before heading out for another three-day trip to–you guessed it–Paris again. But I’m not complaining, I swear! My family on the other hand…well, let’s just say it was time to bring something home on the next trip.

I’ll leave you with a gallery of other photos from our Versailles trip. Thanks for coming along!

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

Cockpit Chronicles: Paris – A trip with too much adventure

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.