First off, thanks for this thread! This is a very interesting read for me, especially since I wanted to become an airline pilot from ages 12 through 24 (only decided to study first in case I changed my mind - which eventually happened).

As a passenger, De Gaulle has always been a nightmare for me. I've probably gone through there around 5-6 times as start/destination and 2-3 times as stopover.
You'll walk your legs off trying to get to/from the gate, then you're locked in a cubicle when they tell you that your flight is delayed by an hour or two.
Not to mention the horrid transit between terminals if necessary.

Of all flights, I believe a maximum of 1/4 was approaching on time departure (give or take 30 mins is fine by me).

I try to avoid that airport at all costs.

The esthetical part my be true, but it's hard to spot if you're locked into a cubicle.


One more question: I've heard about radiation exposure being an issue a few years ago, basically that a pilot's exposure can shorten his/her life span considerably. Is there anything to that or just some mumbo-jumbo that was popular to claim back in the day?

some cool vids:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRiCH...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXj65...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfB4xyM7tMw&NR=1

How's your hearing when you are away from work?

Great thread, been reading it from the start!

Just a few questions, how long before a flight do you have to stop drinking? Is there a certain BAC you have to be under or is it 0.00? Do they have random testing for alcohol/drugs? Do you personally know any pilots that have been in a crash? Also how often do you have to come out of the cockpit and speak with an unruly passenger or do the Marshals handle that now?
Again thank you for taking the time to do this thread, very enjoyable and imformative.

Sounds sort of romantic. Was the ATC your eventual wife? (I guess probably not, since you may have mentioned that when discussing controlling.) Anyway, if it was, sounds like a scene from a movie or something.

Pretty cool that you had Dulles all to yourself.

Very random question: is there some sort of time limit allowed for being in the bathroom? ie, if someone spends over an hour in there without opening/unlocking the door, is there going to be any way for the FAs to know?

Dude those videos were awesome! That 3rd one with the crosswind landing attempt would of made my shat myself for sure, I think the wings came inches from touching the runway.

That short runway one reminds me of when president Bush came to a small airport in Gainesville, FL (7500 ft runway) and landed the big Air Force one there. Probably pretty skillful to do but now that I am writing this 7500 feet seems standard.

Question. Considering the plane tires handle extreme weight, temperature changes, and for on impact, how are they constructed and how often do they get changed? How come you dont see more tire blowouts during landings?

As with a signal mirror, the flash or glare from the solar panels would only occur for a moment and would probably not be a prolonged glare...at least this is my guess, but I've never seen it. I have on occasion caught strong reflections of the sun off of glass-sided office buildings, but again it's not prolonged and it's not like someone put a camera flashbulb in front of your face.

More than once I've seen the sun reflecting off of those green highway signs that are used on U.S. Interstate highways. This occurs when the sun is low (just after dawn or just before sunset) and it can be amazing how bright and distinctly green the reflection is from miles away and you can see several signs on a stretch of highway reflecting the light.

That's really interesting. I'd like to see that episode.

No, I hadn't noticed it!

I assume one of the moderators did this. Very clever. In case anyone missed it, I've probably mentioned at least twice itt that I absolutely hate that particular phrase which is so overused on PAs by both pilots and flight attendants.

The airlines are full of cumbersome and tortured english. Here's one I can't stand and is very common:

At the gate: "Ladies and Gentlemen, this will serve as the final boarding announcement for flight..."

Really? "This will serve"? You couldn't muster up the courage to make an actual final boarding announcement, but this will serve in that role?


Or how about when they make 3 or 4 "final boarding" announcements? Do they even know what final means?

Or starting off every announcement with "Once again,..."

Here's one that just happened to me on my last flight home. The FA was coming through the cabin and saw my laptop in the seat back pocket. She said "I'm going to ask you to move that laptop and place it under the seat in front of you." I said, "When are you going to do that?" She looked at me blankly.

Personally I hate when the captain says "we'll be on the ground shortly." It sounds like they are planning to crash. I'd much rather he say "we'll be landing shortly."

Male pilot was the captain. Female blowing him was the FO, or co-pilot. Both were fired. Male got his job back. Female got a million dollars.

Someone may have misled you on this. My brother's oldest son lost his pass privileges when he turned 23. If things have changed, I'm sure he'd love to get them back.

Used to be you could count on a wide open plane on the red-eye flights (departing the west coast after 10 pm), but now those are full too. If flying non-rev and the loads look bad, start early to give yourself the most backup flights. Best days of the week are Tuesday through Thursday. If you're going to the islands, it's a seasonal thing. Go down there during hurricane season; for reasons I can't explain, the loads drop off at this time of year.

The only on-board "turbulence sensor" is the weather radar and it will indicate intensity of precipitation using colors (green, yellow, orange, red, magenta). We'll fly through green, though happily fly around it if it's not too far. We'll start thinking of longer deviations for yellow and starting with orange we'll start to go to extremes to avoid it.

The turbulence is usually consistent with the intensity of the radar return, but it's not guaranteed and green returns can have a rough ride in them. If we find ourselves with no alternative and have to fly through yellow or worse, most pilots will sit the FAs down for their safety (and to get that heavy cart secured; no good will come of having that be a loose missile in the cabin).

The best source of turbulence information for the pilots is other pilots. Getting a pilot report on the ride from aircraft ahead on the same route is something we will actually ask for, from either the controller or directly from the other flight. Out over the ocean, we don't have VHF coverage and aren't talking to a controller so we monitor 121.5 mHZ (emergency freq) and also 123.45 which is the air-to-air freq, sort of the open party line out there. If turbulence is encountered, we might make an unsolicited broadcast on 123.45 of something like: "Delta 83 on Track Victor at Flight Level 330 started picking up light to moderate continuous chop beginning at 48 degrees West" Other aircraft will often now chime in with their own observations and someone ahead might even reply with something like "Delta 83, this is Continental 35. We're ahead of you on Victor at Flight Level 350. That turbulence lasted until about 38 West for us."

We used to have a 24 hour layover in Cabo San Lucas where the company put us up at an all-inclusive resort. Good times.

Believe it or not, Dakar was getting a reputation as a party stop until the company started clamping down (it was really getting out of hand from what I heard: sex in the pool, naked chicken fights with the FAs in the rooms). This was a stopover point for Johannesburg and Cape Town and there were always four complete crews there at any given time (2 from NY; 2 from ATL), so that's over 40 people with nothing much to do.

what kind of leeway do you have in overnight stops? Do they pick the hotel and pay for it? Can you upgrade? Can you pick and be comped a certain amount instead?


Also, to echo everyone else, great thread.

Yes, we are staying on top of everything but we're mainly system monitors for the cruise portion of the flight. On domestic flights, there is enough communication with the controller to keep things active and we are handed off from sector to sector every 10-20 minutes or so as we progress.

Out over the ocean, we'll have a stretch from about 20 West to 50 West where we are out of radar contact and VHF voice contact for several hours. We make position reports at each 10 degrees of longitude out here and keep a check on how we're doing with respect to the flight plan (i.e. are we ahead or behind on our estimated time; are we burning the fuel at the expected rate).

Between reporting points, we monitor the engine instruments as part of our routine scan but, frankly, we've got an hour or more between reports and we kill the time however we can to keep ourselves alert and engaged with something.

I've heard that some pilots will read the newspaper, a book, or do crossword puzzles or Sudoku. Of course, since this is technically prohibited by FARs as only flight related activities are allowed, I must make clear that neither I nor anyone I know of has actually engaged in these activities. Just the stuff of urban legend.

["Am I making myself clear?"

"Are we clear?"

"Crystal."]

I couldn't quantify it, but it's definitely increased. Dulles airport is where it's most apparent to me. That place used to be a ghost town and I could use it to my heart's content in a light airplane. Even in the mid to late 80s there were still light airplane flying clubs based there and it was easy to get in and out of. Now it's often running to capacity with airline traffic and GA traffic is discouraged.

Which law? Do you mean the rule restricting foreign ownership?

There are a couple of issues here.

Cabotage, or the right of a foreign carrier to operate within the U.S., would just provide extra competition within our borders that would certainly not bode well for me. I'm talking about allowing Lufthansa, e.g., to start flying routes like New York to Dallas or Chicago to LA. This is the one that really worries me and some politicians want a completely "open sky" policy within the U.S. I suppose the reasoning is that increased competition will result in lower fares, but they're already getting cut to the bone. How long can the race to the bottom continue?

Foreign ownership is the other issue and it's a business thing. As an American, it doesn't sound like a desirable thing to me, but what do I know?

You may be mixing accidents. The Cali accident I know of was an American Airlines plane that had a CFIT accident (Controlled Flight Into Terrain).

Alaska Airlines had the MD-80 with the busted jackscrew in the vertical stabilizer that resulted in a crash. They went out over the ocean to troubleshoot the problem and it was a convenient area for ATC to allow them to maneuver and not conflict with any other traffic. It was definitely not because they thought it was likely they were going down.

The sad thing about the Alaska crash is that they had been experiencing problems earlier in the flight and overflew several potential landing sites before they finally decided they had a "real" problem.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It may very well be that he has the best of intentions, but on a short flight (1000 miles or less) there's not much they can do. Even using a higher cruise speed for a leg of that duration is not going to make up more than a few minutes.

Then you have the pilots who will try to get shortcuts from the controller, always asking to cut corners on the airways with direct to a fix. Even when they get the clearance, it will shave 10, 20 maybe 30 miles off the route. At 480 knots, this isn't really going to make the huge difference you're looking for.

On transatlantic flights, I have flown with Captains who are in a hurry and ignore the company's planned cruise speed of .78 Mach (for example) and request .82 for the Oceanic Clearance. Since we are flying thousands of miles, the time savings starts to become noticeable and we can make up maybe 30-45 minutes.

Every rookie ends up making these lame promises. I stopped holding out this false hope over 10 years ago.

Great thread. I wasn't trying to intrude on your thread at all, but have to say i would agree with pretty much everything you've said thus far.

Is this happening on the smaller jets (RJs)? They are much more prone to the overheating problem. When I was at ACA, we sometimes had planes with an inoperative APU, which meant that there was no good way to cool the plane on the ground (the Canadair RJ did not have a receptacle for ground supplied conditioned air the way larger aircraft do). On hot summer days, Captains would often refuse to accept such a plane for use due to the unacceptable cabin temperature on the ground. As the Chief Pilot there, I would back them up on this. Occasionally, we had no spare plane and were then faced with: either cancel the flight or find some way to get the plane cooled. We'd blow cold air directly into the cabin prior to boarding and then set up the operation to try to board, push back, and get engines started as quickly as possible so the A/C could be run.

At Delta, passenger comfort is high on the list of priorities that pilots are told to consider. Safety is obviously #1, but pax comfort ranks ahead of fuel savings. So if this is occurring on a Delta flight, someone needs to be reminded of the priorities.

OK, here goes...

I have what people like to refer to as an "irrational fear of flying."

Because hurtling at hundreds of miles per hour in a pressurized giant tube at 35,000 feet is such a natural act.

Anyway, I really do understand the statistics, and I really do understand that they say that turbulence doesn't bring planes down, etc etc.

As you are flying, does it ever occur to you what an insane thing it all is?

And take my word, I am not risk-averse or just generally cautious or a pussy or whatever. It's just that sometimes, I am sitting on a plane saying "what the hell am I doing?!"

It's not common but it does happen. Windshear is the big culprit and can be a threat if there are nearby thunderstorms or convective activity. We are trained to look for the effects of windshear (airspeed fluctuations of more than +/- 10 knots) and if it's encountered we go around. Then we have to decide whether to try the approach again, divert to another airport, or to hold and wait for the windshear conditions to abate.

My last divert of this type was about 3 years ago, flying in to DCA. We could see a storm (on radar) approaching from the west and it was a race to land before the storm reached the airport. Flying north up the Potomac we got down to around 500' AGL and began getting airspeed fluctuations of nearly 20 kts. It was an easy decision to break off the approach. We landed at IAD and a bus was provided to take any passengers who wanted to go into D.C. (many were actually happy to be at Dulles).

I have no idea, but I get the same anxiety as everyone else when I am forced to check a bag, especially with my golf clubs. So far I've never had a problem, but I try to always make do with carry on bags.

Probably the best thing a passenger can do to reduce the chance of lost luggage is to verify that the bag is tagged for the right destination.