The Christmas Lift

Today is Wednesday Dec 23, 2009 and traffic is heavy.   Mall traffic actually.    

Today is the last day I have for Christmas shopping before reporting to the flight deck.  Today is also the first day of The Christmas Lift.  Right now all across the world loved ones are boarding jets, and flight crews are preparing for the biggest mass migration of modern man to occur on an annual basis.   As I pushback the CRJ from the gate at Rochester I’m hoping traffic aloft isn’t as bad as the mall traffic was.   Indications are that the flight from KROC to KBOS should be smooth.  Weather is good and ATC in this area is tight so I expect no significant delays.  

Mall traffic however, not so much.  We could use ATC for mall traffic I think.  I’ve forgotten how much of a pain in the ass Christmas shopping can be, and since today was my last chance to get it all done I was on nothing short of a mission.  Apparently everyone else was too.  Long story short…  I survived.  So now with a load of Christmas gifts on board we once again bolt into the blue with our own group of 60 loved ones.  Center is offline right now but our flight plan is properly logged into flight desk just the same.  Mother prefers it that way.  

Unicom traffic is on though.   In the world of pilots and air traffic controllers, unicom is like our own radio chat room.  When center is offline, every aircraft tunes their radios to 122.95 to announce their intentions or communicate with other aircraft.   But unlike chat rooms online, unicom traffic is all business.  From pushback at the gate, up through departure and cruise, we use unicom to announce our intentions as we go.  Most of that chatter occurs at departure and arrival.  But once we arrive at cruising altitude, unicom tends to fall silent.

Though there isn’t any significant weather, that’s not to say there aren’t incredibly beautiful things to see in the sky tonight.  Tonight the sky is filled with tons of blue sky punctuated by an endless varieties of clouds.   I’m happy to report that the ASA and REX weather software upgrades we installed recently are now working brilliantly. I can’t recommend a weather upgrade of some sort for all BVATC pilots enough.  And as usual I find myself constantly admiring God’s craftsmanship out the window.

Flight desk dings and chirps now to indicate that ATC controllers are being assigned to different airspaces.  But we still have a ways to fly before we pass over ALB and enter the Boston approach.  Just a bit more time to just fly quietly before the work actually starts.  I use the time wisely to dream and admire the sky some more.  Pastels of pink, white and blue surround the CRJ as she cruises effortlessly between the layers.  There is no moon yet but I know from driving last night that a ¾ winter moon will make an appearance later on.  I’m looking forward to it.  Checking our course now and I see that yes, we are inbound to Utica, but the DME hasn’t lit up for it yet.  We’re probably not quite in range yet but I imagine we will be soon.  For now the sky remains mine alone.  

Utica pops up soon on VOR1 with a DME of 52 miles.  Hmm… its closer than I expected it would be.  But traffic is moderate, approach has us on radar contact, so all is well.  We get our approach vectors for Boston and with clear weather ahead I expect we’ll arrive with no problems.  

Day One.  So far so good. 

Christmas Evening

We are now filing our flight plan for KBDL to KSYR.   Bradley is the second stop on a three leg trip back up to Syracuse.  Better print out the airport chart at Syracuse and make sure I know my way around the place.  I’ve been there once before, but I don’t know it anywhere near as well as I know Boston or Bradley.  Or even Nantucket for that matter.  Don’t want to fuck up the rollout when I get there.  Remember, ground incursions = bad.

As we spin up I’m monitoring the ground controller frequency.   Airforce 192 arrives off the runway and gets taxi instructions to the Air National Guard hanger.  I see his taxi lights snap on from afar, and then he eases on by on an adjacent taxiway.  Watching him roll by is… well, just plain cool.  If you’re a pilot you simply can’t avoid watching an aircraft roll by.  It’s impossible.  It’s just like how men can’t avoid watching a beautiful woman walk by.  Same thing.  Except different.    

From somewhere across the airport another aircraft contacts ground for checkout.   He identifies as a Boeing 777.  Big sucker.  Hmmm... biggest airliner in Boeings fleet eh?.  Suddenly I can’t help it.  A movie quote pops into my head.  

“Soooo, …  Lonestar ….. I see your Schwartz is as big as mine.  Now let’s see if you know how to use it.”

Day Two of the lift almost in the bag.  We roll out from BDL into the night air yet again.

Christmas day.  Chicago to KBOS.  

Syracuse to Chicago earlier today.  Now we are setting up for the long leg back to BOS.  At departure time the weather is slushy snow, and comes complete with the usual ton of delays.  Even though the weather might be clear and beautiful in one part of the country, it might not be in another.  And we get to fly into and out of that crap regularly.   Today we have the added bonus of the Christmas Lift mass migration out of the busy Chicago airport.  Apparently everyone in the known universe is trying to get home today, and apparently the only method of transportation known to man is the modern airliner.  

We were lucky enough to pushback on time though.  Then we only had one minor non-weather related delay at the hold short due to a small medical emergency.   Just before liftoff the 7 year old copilot comes up to the flightdeck and reports that he has a headache.  Earlier today he had wonked his head real good on an open cabinet door in the kitchen.  It drew blood and everything.  He had some aspirin earlier but it has apparently worn off and he’s having just a bit of trouble getting to sleep.  I think a little more aspirin now would do the trick just fine.   Besides he’ll need the rest.   It’s his turn to fly the next leg out of Boston tomorrow morning and I have no intention of letting him wiggle out of it.  He’s a sharp co-pilot but he’s also really good at wiggling out of things.  7 year old co pilots usually are.

After that short delay at the pull off we run through the final takeoff checklist once again.  As we get to the part in the checklist regarding ice protection (if needed) I think briefly about our delay.  We have been sitting 10 minutes on the hold short pull off in Chicago in a downpour of slushy snow.  I have to wonder how the wings are holding up.  I’m trying to get a good look at them but it’s hard to tell what’s out there.  I squirm a little and start scanning for the nearest deicing truck.  

There’s a guy I know of in Boston who works on one of those trucks.  I feel for that guy.  That’s crazy dirty cold wet work, and yet absolutely essential for safe winter flying.  I’ll tell you this though.   I would sure feel a lot better if he and his truck were around right now.  But he’s not.  And now there’s traffic backing up behind us.   I have to make a quick command decision and determine that slushy snow is a lot different than its more dangerous rim ice cousin.  The slushy stuff should blow off the wings on rollout.   Still, forward shields ON for now.   Then with throttles forward we go tearing down runway and up into that slushy snow.  

Performance is good though, the ship is stable, and I feel comfortable.   Five thousand feet comes easily, then seven thousand feet and we are up and out of the snow and into the clear air.  With a sharp turn eastbound we settle out into cruise on course and up to FLT260.  15 minutes later and we are at altitude and wow what a tailwind!  I glance down to see that we are rocking 320kph with only 60% engine power, the overspeed warning chirps once or twice and the nav bots start calling for less power.  The nav bots whirr and spin for a minute as they work to keep the speed down at 280kph.  Only a few seconds pass before the CRJ is comfortable again at 62% power and 280kph shows on the board.  

Outside that 3/4 moon hangs directly overhead and I can see the Milky Way cutting right through it.   I think of the stars at the Desert Hot Springs resort just outside of Palm Springs one night when I was soaking in the hot tub on vaca.  I was staring at the stars feeling at peace with my place in the world when the desert wind picked up suddenly and started blowing all the palm trees all around.  I can still remember the sound of the wind in the trees.  I kept waiting for the stars themselves to be blown around as the wind increased.  It was awesome. 

I love this part of flight.  In the clear high altitude air you can see so many more stars than at ground level.   The air is thinner, you’re closer to the source, there are fewer clouds, and  I could get on a soapbox about light pollution as well but I won’t right now.  For now, I’ll just say that I love to be in dark places at night with the sky blazing open overhead.  I think that’s a big part of why a part of my soul will always live in the desert.    

Another thing I’ll say is that as much as I pride myself on my navigation skills I wish I understood orbital dynamics and planetary rotation better.  I’d like to say that I can navigate pretty much anywhere on the face of the planet.  But when it comes to getting from Earth to say, oh I don’t know, maybe Mars?  Well that’s a bit different.  But I think about it a lot.  I really do.  Especially when I have the stars splayed out over me on a flight like I do now.  But from this position at FLT260 you can see so much too.  You can see the curvature of the Earth.  You can see that the Milky Way is just directly above.  And then knowing that the Milky Way is actually one of the spiral arms of the galaxy that we live in which relates to which way we are pointed to the plane of the ecliptic.  And knowing that the Earth rotates at a 23.5 degree tilt to the plane of the ecliptic, to the pole which relates to everything else well, and that north is sortof up thataway and then ww…..ow.  my head is spinning.  Musta blown a fuse. 

Radio traffic has been quiet for some time now but then a burst of static cuts through the head spinning and the stargazing.  It’s another company ship somewhere nearby.  

“Hey, has anyone heard something about a highjacking on a Northwestern airliner?”

Say, what now?  

I trigger the mic switch.  “ah,, United 35 here.  What was that last transmission regarding a highjacking?”

The company ship replies.  “Yeah.  I just heard about it.  Apparently a passenger tried to blow up a Northwest ship somewhere over Detroit just now.  I just caught wind of it from some Cape Air chatter.”

“Ah,  um,  no we haven’t heard about that.  But hang on let me see what I can find.”  I flip open my cell phone and look up MSNBC.com and there it is.   Wow.. .breaking news about a terrorist attack on an aircraft en route…. as in it just happened.  Just now.   Uh oh.  This is grim.  

Here we are in an airliner at 26,000 feet and people are trying to blow up airliners right now?  Bad.  Very bad.  I’m trying to get some more information.  It seems that someone did indeed try to blow up an electric jet tonight.  But was apparently the attack was foiled by other passengers.  I relay what I find back out over unicom.  More unicom traffic is chiming in now.  A previously quiet flight has suddenly erupted in urgent chatter.   Word is spreading all over the system at the speed of radio about the incident and air captains are clamoring for as much information as they can get.   Trapped here at 26,000 feet our only source of info is what we can get off Unicom and what we can glean from our cell phones.   I feel very isolated in a not-so-good way.

Suddenly everything is different.   The mind races about possible threats to this ship, this crew, this set of 60 loved ones.  We are a domestic flight though, and not very big in the grand scheme of things so probably we’re ok.  But whose to say there aren’t more attackers airborne right now?  I also don’t think there are any sky marshals onboard either.  Now I feel very vulnerable.  Do the passengers know?  I know cell phone use is prohibited but there’s always some idiot who quietly surfs his iPhone in flight.  So who knows what the passengers might know or not know.  I don’t know what information they might have access to right now.  And if they have information then they are really, really scared right now.  And on Christmas day?  Dang.  That’s grim.

 Damnit…  Focus now.  Focus on the task at hand.  Focus on managing the machine in front of you.  We are 14 DME from Erie and we’ll need to turn on to the next leg shortly.

The approach into Boston is typical.  More slushy snow.  Down into the soup we go, shields are on and the landing checklist looks good.  American 2097 is in front of us and we follow them in without a hitch.  Tonight is a cold shutdown at the gate and then off to bed.  I’ll check the news briefly when I get in but I’m not going to dwell on this right now.  There’s nothing I can do right now except make sure I’m sharp for whatever lies ahead.  With the lights of KBOS fading in the rearview window of the courtesy van I’m off to bed.  I’m sure we’ll know more tomorrow.

.. ..

Disorientation.

December 27, 2009 - KBOS to JFK 

It’s the last official night of the Christmas Lift.  There will certainly be some more loved ones to shuttle back and forth over the next few days.  But most of the heavy lifting is done.     

It’s a cold night in Boston as we taxi down november to the holdshort for 22 right.  We had a bit of delay getting out of the gate though.  We had requested our usual Plymouth 4 arrival plan at JFK but clearance delivery had other plans for us.  After a brief bit of paper shuffling we are assigned a reroute to LUCOS, then PARCH then CCC – which is essentially the same as the Plymouth 4 except that instead of PVD VOR being the entry point to the turns to CCC, we are to take the roundabout way from point LUCOS to PARCH and then CCC.  Annoying yes, but I’m sure ATC has their reasons.  

The only thing is, and I have to confess, I’m not 100% sure where LUCOS is.  I have it showing on my Logan 4 departure chart as DME 46 off the 067 radial from PVD.  OK, but that’s not pure triangulation.  I would prefer to have a second reading off some other VOR station that shows an exact triangulation intersection of where LUCOS is.  But still I feel fairly confident we’ll be ok since our departure instructions indicated that we will receive radar vectors to LUCOS after liftoff.   So now, with a vague understanding of where LUCOS is we roll up to 22 right on a cold Boston night with another company ship rolling right up behind us.  

Ground has us both hold at the runway for a moment.  Apparently there is some other confusion on the part of some other aircraft on the airport grounds, and that confusion needs to be sorted out first.  I’m cool with that.  I would hate to have someone who isn’t sure where they are or what taxiway they need to pull onto my runway while I’m screaming down said runway for liftoff.  Ground incursions = bad.  So both company jets run through their departure checklists once more to kill time while the ground traffic disorientation is sorted out.  The hold is only about 3 minutes and we are cleared #1 for takeoff.

Positive rate of climb, gear up, turn to 140 degrees immediately for the Logan 4 departure and handoff to center.  Center confirms radar contact and has us shoot outbound for a bit longer to make way for the company traffic coming right up behind us.  Then comes the instruction… “United 35 turn heading 240 direct to LUCOS”.  

Huh?  Ok wait a minute, I was expecting radar vectors to LUCOS.  Dang.  Now I have to figure out where LUCOS actually and precisely is.  I find myself really, really wanting that second VOR fix which would give us a solid triangulation and remove all doubt as to where LUCOS is.  Instead I have to boot up the GPS and take a best estimate.  Ugg.  I loath to use the GPS.  It seems an awful lot like cheating to me (and I have to say to pilots that rely on the GPS too heavily… turn the damn thing off and learn to navigate the old fashioned way).   The GPS isn’t much help though anyways.  It does indicate several waypoints ahead of us but they are not labeled so I can’t see precisely which one LUCOS is.  I point the ship at my best educated estimate as to where LUCOS is and start watching the DME and VOR in an effort to angle in and hit that exact 46 DME reading off PVD VOR radial 067.  

Then comes the creeping doubt.  The instruments don’t seem to be responding exactly how I would expect them to given the information I assume to be correct about our position.  Then comes the disorientation and vertigo.  Where exactly are we now?  Are we really where I think we are right now?  Why is NAV2 drifting off to the right?  It should be drifting to the left, but it’s not.  I’m about 15 seconds away from calling center and asking for a nav fix when things start to clarify themselves in my head and I come to believe that we are on course and will hit LUCOS within 2 or so miles.  That’s an acceptable margin of error for hitting airspace nav fixes.  Ok but wow… I haven’t been disoriented like that in since I can’t remember when.  I vow that as soon as I get next to some charts I’m going to generate an exact triangulated fix for LUCOS if I have to drive out there in my car and take a reading by hand.  I’m reminded of a verse from Fate is the Hunter.  What is the proper dialog when an off duty captain visits the flight deck to chat with the flying captain?  All in jest of course, but still it goes like this….

Off duty captain:  “Lost again?”

Flying captain:  “Hopelessly”

And then I see my problem.  LUCOS isn’t 46 DME off Providence VOR, it’s 46 DMS off the SANDY POINT VOR!  SEY not PVD!   Fuck.  Fix it, continue flying.  Shortly after our disorientation I hear com chatter of another aircraft also disoriented trying to find LUCOS.  I didn’t catch whether it was the company traffic behind us or not, but that would correlate.  So what the heck is going on here?   I haven’t seen so much confusion on the part of so many ships in quite some time.   Everyone is distracted somehow, but still the system goes on.  The system still works.  Sortof.

Then another.  An aircraft whose pilot has a very thick and heavy Russian accent has missed his localizer turn and doesn’t seem to even realize he’s missed it.  He seems to also be struggling with understanding the instructions from ATC.  Jeez.   I’m sure ATC will keep them clear of other traffic until they figure it out.  We are switched over to NYC center as we pass over PARCH and are inbound to CCC.

The decent and setup for JFK presents no further disorientation.  But as we approach I think again about the Northwest flight a few days ago.  The powers that be have been unusually silent about what happened as far as security lapses and such.  And the only instruction we’ve had regarding security rule changes is that the PAX may have to be seated with laps clear for the last hour of the flight.  Yeah, as if that’s going to fix anything.  Seriously, if someone wanted to blow up an airliner keeping laps clear in the last hour isn’t going to change that.  They could still easily adieu to the mens room earlier in the flight and simply ignite their device behind privacy and locked door of the Loo.  So really the only thing that the “laps clear” rule does is annoy the PAX and put them even further on edge.  I’m far more concerned about lapses in security at the airport that allowed a man with explosives strapped to his balls to board the aircraft in the first damn place.    

We’re on final inbound to JFK now.  I see the lights of Long Island below me and I think of family I have here.  My uncle lives in Queens now and years ago he was in the Trade Towers when the first airliner hit.  He was just hanging out in the Barnes and Noble having a coffee and reading a book when he said the entire place shook and swayed.  He escaped the building safely, but as we drop gear I realize that we now have two family members who were in the system so to speak at the exact moment a terrorist attack occurred.   Orwell’s 1984 comes ever closer to being a reality.  

Soon we are 1000 feet from a beautiful floater of a landing.  The ship is balanced neatly on the tip of a pin again and I feel one last thought surface regarding the Northwest ship.  This thought is different than all the other ones though.  I think to myself ….  “If anyone tries to blow up my fucking airliner right now after I’ve set up this beautiful floater of a landing for the PAX I swear to God I will fucking kill them.”   I guess I’ve moved on from the shock phase to the anger phase. 

Throttles back and the ship grabs the runway right on the paint.  I dedicate that landing to my good friend and fellow BVATC pilot Fred.   Tomorrow night he and I and a bunch of other friends are coming over to my place for a belated holiday dinner.  I really look forward to that dinner every year.  With family scattered all over the countryside it’s rare that family comes to dinner on the holidays.  My friends have become my surrogate family.  We’ll all eat turkey, catch up on gossip, and drink many cervesa’s.  Then while the ladies gibber gabber over glasses of wine the men will retire to go fly MS flight simulator for hours on end I’m sure. 

Yeah.. we’re seriously defective like that.

.. ..

A short Epiloge -

Dinner is done, dishes stowed in the dishwasher.  Autostart ENGAGE on dishwasher and the gents retire to the computer room and boot up FSX.  Pilots Fred and I, with PAX Anander and Jamal, are suddenly on a ski trip vacation in Switzerland.  Anander, being a world class guitarist and recording artist is due back in Paris to play a live gig with Seal and Jamal is ready for a snooze.  Fortunately we brought along the Mitsubishi Marquis turboprop which should get us from Meiringen (identifier LSMM) to Paris in style and speed.  

Meiringen is a short field and surrounded by mountains on all sides.  Good for skiing, bad for aircraft.  Fred is at the controls tonight and he tears it up and out of the field in style.  God knows we should have had our charts up in advance, but being that it’s FSX and we’ve all put down about 4 beers each and are switching to scotch now we are now officially playing “Lost in Europe”.   Fred climbs to 25,000 and points the ship vaguely west while I research charts on the laptop.  Luck would have it that we find an acceptable procedure for runway 27.  Posted on the internet by a fellow FSX pilot.  It’ll have to do.  I’ll spare you the details of the beer fueled landing in Paris. But for your enjoyment, the procedure (sans alcohol) for westbound traffic I give you as follows.

 See you back on the line.

·  Track the 348 degree radial from Coulommiers for 11.0 miles and then turn onto the localizer course. ....

·  Set the NAV 2 radio to CLM and the NAV 1 to the localizer on 110.7. Set the NAV 1 OBI to 268°, the final approach course, and the NAV 2 OBI to 348 degrees. Set the ADF to 356, the frequency for RSY, an NDB outside the OM but on the final approach course. ....

·  Fly outbound from CLM. The note just above the CLM VORTAC requires that you cross the VORTAC at 7,000 feet, which you did, and then descend to 4,000 feet. Retard the throttles and descend at 2,000 FPM to 4,000 feet. ....

·  Upon reaching 11.0 DME, switch to NAV 1 and make the left turn onto the localizer course. Maintain 4,000 feet until intercepting the glideslope. Maintain a speed between 160 and 180 KIAS until glideslope interception. ....

·  When the glideslope needle enters the bullseye, lower the landing gear and start down the glideslope. Adjust the throttles to maintain 160 KIAS, until you start adding flaps. With full flaps, your approach speed should be between 130 and 145 KIAS. ....