Pretty amazing video from a plane of the Space Shuttle Discovery taking off last week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE_USPTmYXM

I've had divert situations where passengers have gotten off, but there are some cases where their checked bags might not be removed (i.e. the bags would continue to the original destination). It takes no time to let passengers deplane, but removing specific bags can take a half hour or longer. There is often a critical time element to getting the plane refueled (for example) and on its way to the original destination and in these cases they're not going to hunt for bags.

This is all part of the push to achieve good "on-time" numbers for the DOT rankings. They have a cut-off time so that the load planners can put together the final numbers (passenger and baggage load) for the takeoff performance data. We (pilots) sometimes get asked later by the Chief Pilot whey we pushed back 2 minutes late! They want it on schedule.

Being on time to the plane is an understandable requirement for the originating passenger (though they sometimes encounter excessive TSA delays out of their control), but I feel bad for connecting passengers whose first flight is delayed, causing them to be late for the connection.

Pilots have zero input into this process. Same for flight attendants. This is the domain of the gate agents and they are under the gun to get their flights out on time. The Captain can stick his nose in — the four stripes gives him a lot of authority. But he does so at his peril. Get into a pissing match with a gate agent and you'll hear about it later.

No, this all comes under company policy (and the discretion of the gate agent). But once that door is closed and the rotating beacon is on, the "out" time has been recorded. If the door is now opened, an "in" time will be logged and the subsequent out time will be late. Those stats are important to the airlines. No one wants to be grist for the USA Today airline-bashing mill.

Almost never.

I once got involved in one of these situations and I'm surprised I didn't get written up by the gate agent. I was trying to non-rev home from Atlanta and I showed up (in uniform) at the gate for the flight I wanted to hop on. I was early and the gate area was empty. The gate marquee still showed the previous flight.

While I stood there, two passengers (not together) ran up to the gate, out of breath, and asked if they could still get on their flight. It was still almost ten minutes prior to the posted departure time, but there was no gate agent. I told them I would check to see what was going on.

I let myself through to the jetway and found the gate agent at the open aircraft door with the paperwork in her hand. I told her there were two passengers at the gate asking if they could get on. She told me "It's up the Captain." I walked three feet over to the Captain's window and tapped on it. He opened his window and I told him about the two passengers and asked if they could get on. He said "It's up to the agent." I told him that she had said it was his call and he said "Put 'em on!"

Those two passengers were very happy, but as I left the gate I wondered if I would get a "see me" note out of this. I never heard a word about it.

The closing of Meig's Field was a travesty. The mayor of Chicago exceeded his authority in making that move, completely ignoring due process. I flew in there once in my Piper Arrow (N36067). The closing of Meig's was a real loss to GA.

For a while we flew to Joburg out of JFK in the 767-ER and I would have loved to go there. Everyone I knew who went (including my brother) loved the city. The problem is that the trip went through Dakar, a place I'm glad to avoid. Still, I probably should have taken the good with the bad and flown one of those trips.

No, doesn't work that way. The affiliation with KLM is strictly a business relationship between the airlines; the pilot groups are separate and so are the trips. But I do get the non-rev benefits.

Pay rates are all about what can be negotiated between the pilot and the employer. I think we can all agree that a pilot on a 747 should be paid more than a pilot on a J-32 (19 passengers), so the question becomes: how much more? And what are the different pay rates based on? Number of seats? Gross weight? Trip range? There's no set formula for this and each airline and pilot group works out their own rates, strongly influenced by the financial health of the company and the current economy (and of course, we've always go to leave enough of the pie for management to get their bonuses!).

You're right about the skill level not being different, and you could also make a case that the job on the smaller aircraft is more work. When I flew the J-32 six or seven legs a day, in the weather, in the northeast corridor, with no auto-pilot, I was working much harder with longer days than I do now.

True. But you don't wait until the airplane arrives to negotiate pay rates. There have been instances of that happening and the planes sit until the pay rates are hammered out.

Thanks for posting that!

My wife is currently sitting in the United lounge at IAD. She should be somewhere over the Atlantic approaching LHR. Her 10:00am flight left on time, but about an hour into it the pilot came on the intercom and said they needed to return, a generator was out. They had tried restarting it but no luck. He said there was no immediate danger and they could probably continue, but he thought it best to return. They are waiting for new equipment to arrive and will just reboard everyone as if it was the original flight for a 6:00pm departure. This will make her 8:00am meeting in London suck.

I have three questions -

1. What could this generator problem be that is serious enough to cause them to return to IAD but not make a landing sooner?

2. How often will an airline bring in a new plane for a route rather than try to put the passengers on other flights?

3. How much would something like this screw up crew schedules?

i'd never heard of this so i read the wikipedia article. holy ****!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meigs_Field

sounds like a sweet place to land. bummed i missed it. taking off from the taxiway might be kinda fun and novel.

seriously though, i'm glad i didn't have to find out about this by having engine trouble while in the downtown chicago area. ok, i'm diverting to meigWHAT THE ****. the aopa isn't exactly impartial on this topic but the pics are scary. that runway is definitely not usable anymore:

http://www.aopa.org/whatsnew/newsite...03-1-157x.html


also +1 on the space shuttle video. my favorite part, though, is the pilot's PA about the people on the right and the people on the left -- a captain after your own heart, w0x!

Boosted J (and all simulator questions):

It still surprises me to this day, in my side of the business, how easy it is to get visitors into sims. I mean, it's the tip of the spear type of sim, has everything in exact that the F18 has, and I can just schedule time and get in there and show anybody who stops by. In fact, Surfinillini stopped by Lemoore a year ago and I got him an hour of box time. Of course, we're limited in why we can show, what weapons loadout we can utilize, and we don't really turn ANY combat systems on, but he did a carrier landing and I showed him some of the advanced handling characteristics. The physics in the sim are remarkably accurate, and the slow (35 alpha) flight handling is creepy-accurate. I always enjoy taking people into the sim, most people turn into little kids as soon as you turn on the 360 visuals.

Oh and about the landings being easyish, they really are easy in any aim for any aircraft. The challenge comes when the radios come alive, you have to start talking checklists with other dudes in the crew, and many small external factors start adding up.

The generator itself may have failed or it could have been that the CSD had high oil temperature or low oil pressure, requiring the crew to disengage that generator.

[The CSD, Constant Speed Drive, is the linkage between the engine and the generator that keeps the generator spinning at a constant RPM so that it produces its rated output. The CSD has its own oil supply (separate from engine oil) and if it malfunctions it has to be disengaged from the engine gear box so that it stops spinning. Otherwise it could disintegrate, causing more serious problems. The pilots have a guarded switch for disengaging either CSD if they need to. Once it's done, however, the CSD can only be re-engaged by a mechanic on the ground.]

With that generator failure, they now have one remaining engine-driven generator and they'll start up the APU for a backup power source. For a domestic flight they could safely continue to their destination and write up the faulty generator for maintenance there. But you can't coast out (i.e. head out over the Atlantic) with a problem like this. For ETOPS flying, the requirements are stricter.

That's a call for Operations and depends on whether or not a plane is available (this isn't always the case; they schedule these things pretty tightly and often there's not one just sitting around) and how long the repair will take (if the spare part is available).

If the original pushback was at 1000 and they're now planning a departure at 1800, it's pretty tight. That's an eight hour delay and the flight from IAD to LHR is probably right around 8 hours, putting them at a 16 hour duty day. And I'm ignoring the fact that the crew went on duty an hour or an hour and a half prior to scheduled departure. That time counts too, so they're going to be over 16 hours.

I don't know United's rules, but this scenario would definitely call for a change of pilots for us. For a domestic flight, there would be no question because the 16 hour limit is regulatory, i.e. the pilots could be subject to action by the FAA if they took off knowing they would exceed 16 hours. But for international flying, that reg doesn't apply. It comes down to the contract the pilots have with the company.

Have you flown east into LAX? If so, prior to CDAs what altitude were you at approx 20nm from the airport.

Only as a jumpseater. All of the flights to L.A. where I was part of the crew originated in N.Y. On those jumpseat flights, I don't remember anything about altitudes approaching from the west, but I'm sure they must keep you high since the preferred departures are to the west (keeps the noise out over the water while we climb).

What is/are "CDAs"?

Bags would be the least of my worries. If I am on my way home I wouldn't care if my bags were a day late. And in the case I cited my bags were flown in the next morning.

I can understand wanting to push back on time or even early if everyone has boarded. But closing a door 10 minutes early when the gate agents know that not everyone has boarded seems a little ridiculous to me. I am sure those two passengers were very grateful that you stepped in to help them out.

Thanks for the response!!

That guy doesn't seem as excited as this guy. Holy Smokes!

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1165-...-canada-flight

Okay, back with another question.

Yesterday I was flying ORD-PHL on a not-so-full UA A319 and they made an announcement while boarding along the lines of:

"we have E+ seats available for upgrade for $29 but, until we take off, we need everyone seated in their original seats for weight and balance reasons. after we take off, just let us know that you'd like to upgrade and we can move you into an E+ seat. The E+ seats are the ones in front of the wing."

I have a few questions about this...

1. Do airlines intentionally seat people behind the wing for weight and balance reasons? If yes, does it only matter in the sense that they need to know and then adjust based on that or is it a requirement to not have it be too far out of whack?

2. Since they were letting people move after takeoff, does weight and balance not matter as much for in-flight and landing concerns? I assume they weren't radio'ing up to the pilot with info on a plane like an A319 with info on who moved or w/e.

3. Or was this just ******** to help them with their on-time departure ratings?

Don't really have a question but found this sick video if a pilot landing his plane on a field after engine failure and thought I'd post it here.

http://www.dump.com/2011/02/14/pilot...landing-video/

I think there are safety regulations, which prohibit to let passengers deboard and let their bagage on the plane. Supposedly to prevent bomb planting and then leaving the plane. (Favors the suicide attacks). However, this may be hear-say (I'm sure W0X0F will correct me).

LOL,..it took me a while to realize that "aim" is a typo and it was supposed to be "sim"; I was thinking that maybe it was some local colloquialism I had never heard of.

I used to get people into ACA's sims when I was an instructor there and they enjoyed it, but it can't compare to flying a sim for a front-line tactical fighter. I would love to be able to try that out.

I recently flew aboard a Delta A330-200 from LAX to ATL, and it was by far the fastest transcon flight I've ever been on; about 3 hours 20 minutes in the air. There were 160 mph tailwinds and at one point the plane reached a groundspeed of 681 mph. Is this common? How fast have you gone in the 767?

I found the A330 to be a really nice plane. It was extremely quiet, and the landing was so soft that the spoilers didn't immediately deploy. The takeoff felt pretty powerful, too. Still, I'll always love the 767.

First of all, who in their right mind would pay $29 to change to a slightly better seat for a flight that's just over an hour long? It's not even First Class they're selling, right? And even First Class on a flight of this length just means free alcohol. You're not getting a steak dinner. BFD.

I'm a little surprised they had any W&B issues on an airplane of this size. The A-319 seats about 128, give or take, depending on the particular airline's seating configuration (i.e. how little legroom they dare allow you). It's usually only when the plane is very lightly loaded that there are issues of this kind and now that I think of it, we did have guidelines on the MD-88 for when we had fewer than some number of passengers. I can't remember the number now, but if we were lightly loaded, all pax had to be forward or aft of a certain row (I can't even remember now which it was).

Larger aircraft also have multiple baggage compartments and they can adjust the loading of bags for best W&B. Planes like the CRJ 50-seater have only one baggage compartment and it's aft of the passengers. It wasn't unusual when I flew IAD-LGA in the CRJ that we'd have to put 1000 lbs of ballast in the cargo compartment because so many people made the flight with only carry-on bags.

The bottom line is that it is important to have the plane within certain W&B limits for safe handling characteristics. Ernest K. Gann, in his book Fate is the Hunter, tells the story of flying a load of iron beams out of Greenland for the Army during WWII. They weren't secured properly and on the takeoff roll they all shifted aft, creating a dangerously out-of-limits CG. It took the combined strength of both pilots to keep enough forward force on the control wheel so that the plane didn't over-rotate into an excessive nose-high attitude which would have stalled the plane. They were able to get it around the pattern and land without incident. (Gann tells it much better.)

You're right that no one is telling us is people are moving around. On the J-32, I could tell if someone was moving from one end of the cabin to the other just because of the trim change. On large aircraft, the weight of the people is a much smaller percentage of overall weight and thus has a much smaller effect.

In reality, it probably wouldn't dangerously affect the takeoff for a few people to move, but we're ruled by liability in the airlines. If the numbers say that those passengers should be aft for takeoff, we make sure that they're there just in case of a mishap (e.g. aborted takeoff and we run off the runway) and the subsequent finger pointing.

You mean rather than take the time for the payment and re-seating prior to takeoff? Possible I guess, but I honestly don't know if this is done.

This is definitely true for international flights. We've had cases where a passenger has checked in at the airport but then doesn't board for some reason (maybe they're drunk in the airport bar) and so we have to find and remove their bags. I've had this delay the flight by as much as 45 minutes.

This rule doesn't apply to domestic flights for some reason (or at least it didn't; the rules are always changing so I could be wrong on this now). It certainly wouldn't apply to a diversion where a passenger decides to get off the plane. If both the passenger and his bags were on the plane originally, there's no security concern with keeping the bags on board once the passenger gets off at the divert airport.

I've seen groundspeed readouts over 600 knots only a handful of times. (600 knots = 690 mph)

I've never flown on a 330, but I think it's a great looking plane. It's got a graceful looking wing, very noticeable when you view it from behind.

There must be an appreciable difference between Boeing and Airbus wing designs. Consider the relative size of the winglets on an A380 against say those of a 767. It suggests to me that Airbus wings are fundamentally more efficient than Boeing's wing designs. I realize this is probably a little out of your field but do you have any thoughts?

You're right, it's out of my field. Any opinion I express on this matter would be from a gut feeling, with no sound basis. But I'm not sure why the size of the winglets is an indication of overall wing efficiency. Is this your field of expertise? If so, please educate me. (But dumb it down for me.)

Yea, it was just for a bit more legroom, F was full (only 8 people, I think all upgraded). But the plane was so empty, I think everyone had a spot next to them so it wasn't an issue anyway because you could just angle your legs.

I was in F (CO Elite status coming in handy) and I can confirm no steak dinner. But we did get a few shots at a decent snack basket and obviously free alcohol.

Off topic, but the food in F on my LAS-ORD leg was awesome, probably the best food I've had on any domestic product. Gotta give UA some credit there.

Thanks for the awesome answer. I thought it must've been some sort of liability thing or on-time thing since I really doubt W&B would be affected by a few people moving up to E+, even on a lightly loaded flight.

Wouldn't the MD-88 be a different story w/ the fuselage-mounted engines versus the wing-mounted engines on the A319? I assume those things weigh quite a bit so that's why the plane can't be overloaded in the rear if it's lightly loaded.