I haven't been invited. It's kind of a misleading title on this article, since the crews seem to be the only ones excluded from the training:

I'm not sure if this has been asked before but all other considerations aside (eg. financial, commute, home life etc.) what kind of flying (for food) would you ideally like to do, flying intercontinental heavy metal as now, twin turboprop commuter stuff, bush flying in the backcountry, rotary wing, whatever? Anything you like...

W0X0F,

You have referred to the use of ballasts to handle weight/balance issues on RJs. I read a post over on FlyerTalk about a flight where they were offloading sandbags. First off, is this a common practice, and also, are there other creative pieces of cargo used for this purpose? Finally, have you ever had a flight significantly delayed and/or canceled because of a lack of materials to fix weight/balance issues?

That's really a tough one. I like variety and that's one thing I'm missing right now. When I was in the training department at ACA, I did a little of everything (line checks, simulator training, ground school, IOE, 15% rides [taking a few new hires out for bounces at a nearby field; civilian attire and very much my own show]). It seemed that every time I went to work I was doing something a little different and I loved it.

My ideal job would be to fly several types of aircraft (including helicopters) in a variety of missions, but I guess that's not a real answer. Maybe personal pilot to some eccentric billionaire who has a fleet of aircraft and makes them all available to me (for currency purposes of course).

I don't want to succumb to the "grass is greener" syndrome; I've got it pretty good right now and I do enjoy seeing the world and the schedules I get.

I was on a flight once where they loaded a pile of magazines in the back for weight and balance. It was either an ATR-72 or a RJ, can't remember now. But I do remember the ground crew scrabling to get the stuff together.

The RJ has one baggage compartment and it's aft of the passengers. This can create a nose-heavy situation when the plane has lots of people and few checked bags. We used to see this frequently for flights to LGA...a lot of the passengers were businessmen with only a carry-on bag. We would load 500 lbs of sandbags in the cargo compartment to get the CG in limits. In some cases, sandbags wouldn't be readily available and we'd incur a delay while they got other suitable cargo. I've seen stacks of in-flight magazines used in place of sand.

Many years ago, I flew with a pilot out of BWI on a Convair 580 loaded with 10,000 lbs of Wall Street Journals. This was way before the internet and he would deliver this planeload of newspapers to Charlotte and Greensboro, NC every night. When the newspapers were off-loaded, water was loaded to keep the plane within CG limits. Several 50-gallon drums were kept on board for this purpose and they were filled using a garden house.

Good stuff as always!

I know your RJ days are in the past, but because you believe in keeping the passengers informed when necessary, I want to state for the record: If I ever look out my window and see a member of the ground crew with a garden hose; I would like to be told what's going on!!

How does the 767 handle during a crosswind landing compared to the C172 or Cherokee? Does the 767's weight/size cause it to respond differently to a crosswind than a light aircraft?

And for currency of course

Thanks for the reply.

What's the worst thing (safety-wise) that could happen in a large commercial jet from a single misclick / accidental button pressing by the pilot?

I know low-cost airlines have been discussed before, but I have a further question. Would you consider any of the relatively large low-cost airlines outside the US/Europe be so unsafe that you wouldn't want to fly with them? I mean, surely there are some really random airlines in some 3rd world country that has like three 40 year old Tupolevs and badly trained pilots. But what about the bigger ones, the kind that have Airbuses or other planes that carry 100+ passengers at a time?

As an example, I just flew from Singapore to Perth a few days back. When I booked my flight, I was first going to choose a Tiger Airways flight because it was by far the cheapest. But then I read their wikipedia page, which said:

So, being afraid of flying and being oversensitive about this stuff, I thought it can't be good that presumably all their good pilots have left and they only have pilots who for whatever reason work for very little money (=pilots that can't get a job elsewhere?), and bought the next cheapest flight from Jetstar that cost about 100% more than the Tiger flight. Do you think I was being really stupid, as all these Asian airlines should be safe anyway?

You'd certainly have no need to fear any of the European low-cost airlines. They have to meet all the same standards as the full service carriers or they lose their AOC... simple. Some low-cost carriers even get better reports than some of the big names. Wizz Air for instance (based in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic), have a modern, all Airbus fleet and their in-flight service and dispatch reliability is excellent. I have friends who prefer to fly with them than some of the national flag carriers.

I'll be interested to hear the experts reply, but I do know that the "Eject Flight Deck and Deploy Parachute" button, while safe for the flight crew, has some nasty side effects for passengers.

I just wanted to pass along a general "Thank You" to a friendly AA Pilot that I sat next to on a trip last week from DFW to EWR. He was gracious enough to field my endless questions for almost 3 hours. I, of course, mentioned your blog and how helpful it is. He did mention that the aircraft is always fully configured for landing before reaching 1,000 ft. Is that standard across all airlines?

Yes, that has become somewhat of a standard at most airlines these days. The reason is that statistics have shown that some accidents in the past occurred due to unstable approaches. Being "stable" means being fully configured (gear and landing flaps) and on speed with the engines spooled up (not at idle) in case of a go-around.

There are speed limitations for the landing gear and flap selection. We have to continually slow to select more flaps. For example, we can select Flaps 1 (leading edge slats) at 240 kts, but we can't select Flaps 30 until we're much slower, well below 200 kts (the number escapes me right now; it's placarded on the front panel and can vary slightly from one plane to the next so I don't waste brain cells trying to remember the speeds).

Things that might conspire to keep us from getting fully configured include ATC asking us to keep the speed up in order to keep their arrival flow orderly or the self-induced problem where pilots try to keep it fast as long as possible just to get there sooner.

We are supposed to execute a go-around if we aren't fully configured by 1000' agl. In real life, you might find someone fudge this by a little, but that's the guideline and no one is going to purposely ignore it.

Hey W0X0F,

Awesome thread, ive been following it for years it seems, and always happy to see I have a bunch of reading to do whenever I look at it again.

Anyways, my dad is a Captain at Westjet and he's been trying to convince me to stay away from the profession for a few years now. I finally went with him on a short overnight trip (YVR-YYZ) and that trip combined with a few years of looking to find something else (im 22) with no success means i'll be starting my PPL in the summer. Not sure if ill go military yet or not but I will apply for the ROTC (to keep my options open, but its really hard to get in, so that may not be a factor anyways)

On to my question. While in Toronto I guess he could tell I was pretty serious about not wanting to do anything else and he pulled out the "radiation card" Pretty much saying that pilots dont live very long because of the radiation from being up there so much. I asked some of the FA's as well as the FO on the flight back and most of them said it only applied to the long haul pilots that do those long routes forever. Any thoughts on that? or was it just my dad's last ditch attempt for me to find a profession with a pension?

ps. my dad is very supportive if it is what I really want to do, hes calling up a guy he knows that owns a flight school for me, so his help will be amazing. also I know that you get a pension from the military lol

what the ****?

How frustrated do you guys at the pointy end feel when you're flying as safely and professionally as possible but your airline consistently gets caned for having poor in-flight service/meal quality/baggage handling etc? Do flight crew ever get together and make representations to management when they feel they're being let down by other aspects of the businees? What's the chat like in the crew room about such matters? (This is a general question btw and not specifically directed at Delta crew)

I really don't know that much about the subject (and I should), but we do get more radiation at high altitude because we've lost much of the shielding effect of the atmosphere. The guys who get the biggest doses are the ones doing the long-haul polar routes. The atmospheric radiation barrier is much thinner at the poles to begin with and the prolonged exposure is established fact. What I don't know is how much more exposure this actually is and what the long term effects are.

I just did a simple Google search and found this article at sciencedaily.com on the topic. One interesting bit of information from that article is that at 39,000' everyone on a plane is exposed to 64 times the radiation experienced at sea level. (I didn't try to verify that this is true...just assuming that sciencedaily is trustworthy.)

I should probably worry about this more than I do.

I wouldn't worry:

I'd love to see a larger version of this. What is the source of this graphic? Thanks for posting it.

http://xkcd.com/radiation/

Thanks. I took a closer look at the graphic and it does put things in perspective, but it actually makes me more concerned than I was in my previous ignorant state. It shows that a trans-con flight (one-way) is equivalent to about two chest x-rays. So if I fly four international trips per month, I'm getting the equivalent of more than 16 chest x-rays. That's a little disturbing.

The frustrating thing from my point of view (and obviously I don't speak for all pilots), is the lack of accountability for some of these problems. If there are problems at the gate or ramp delays or late bags, it doesn't seem to generate the same level of finger pointing that occurs if a pilot (or FA) causes a delay. Believe me, if through my action (or inaction) the flight is delayed even a couple of minutes, I'll very likely hear about it.

As far as going to management about any such issues, it would have to be a pretty blatant and consistent problem for our pilot group to do anything like this. We have to trust that the company has department managers who are aware of systemic problems and taking action to solve them.

This first-person account of a flight into Tokyo was emailed to me today. I thought you might find it interesting...

--------------
I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It's 8am. This was my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least. So far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar. (By the way, stunning scenery flying over the Aleutian Islands.) Everything was going fine until 100 miles out from Tokyo and in the descent for arrival.

The first indication of any trouble was that Japan air traffic control started putting everyone into holding patterns. At first we thought it was usual congestion on arrival. Then we got a company data link message advising about the earthquake, followed by another stating Narita airport was temporarily closed for inspection and expected to open shortly (the company is always so optimistic).

From our perspective things were obviously looking a little different. The Japanese controller's anxiety level seemed quite high and he said expect "indefinite" holding time. No one would commit to a time frame on that so I got my copilot and relief pilot busy looking at divert stations and our fuel situation which, after an ocean crossing, is typically low. It wasn't long, maybe ten minutes, before the first pilots started requesting diversions to other airports. Air Canada, American, United, etc. were all reporting minimal fuel situations. I still had enough fuel for 1.5 to 2.0 hours of holding. Needless to say, the diverting aircraft started complicating the situation.

Japan air traffic control then announced Narita was closed indefinitely due to damage. Planes immediately started requesting arrivals into Haneda, near Tokyo. A half dozen JAL and western planes got clearance in that direction but then ATC announced that Haneda had just closed. Uh oh! Now instead of just holding, we all had to start looking at more distant alternatives like Osaka, or Nagoya.

One bad thing about a large airliner is that you can't just be-pop into any little airport. We generally need lots of runway. With more planes piling in from both east and west, all of them needing a place to land and several now fuel critical, ATC was getting overwhelmed. In the scramble, and without waiting for my fuel to get critical, I got a clearance to head for Nagoya, fuel situation still okay. So far so good.

A few minutes into heading that way, I was ordered by ATC to reverse course. Nagoya was saturated with traffic and unable to handle more planes. Same for Osaka. My situation immediately went from okay to minimal fuel, considering we might have to divert a much farther distance. Multiply my situation by a dozen other aircraft all in the same boat, all making urgent requests to ATC for clearances somewhere. Air Canada and then someone else went to "emergency" fuel situation. Planes started to head for air force bases. The nearest to Tokyo was Yokota AFB. I threw my hat in the ring for that initially. The answer: Yokota closed! No more space!

By now it was a three ring circus in the cockpit, my copilot on the radios, me flying and making decisions and the relief copilot buried in the air charts trying to figure out where to go that was within range while data link messages were flying back and forth between us and company dispatch in Atlanta. I picked Misawa AFB at the north end of Honshu Island. We could get there with minimal fuel remaining. ATC was happy to get rid of us so we cleared out of the maelstrom of the Tokyo region. We heard ATC sending some planes toward Sendai, a small regional airport on the coast which was later the one I think that got flooded by a tsunami.

Atlanta dispatch then sent us a message asking if we could continue to Chitose airport on the Island of Hokkaido, north of Honshu. Other company planes were heading that way. More scrambling in the cockpit - check weather, check charts, check fuel, okay. We could still make it and not be going into a fuel critical situation ... if we had no other fuel delays.

As we approached Misawa we got clearance to continue to Chitose. Critical decision thought process: Let's see...trying to help the company, plane overflies a perfectly good divert airport for one farther away. I wonder how that will look in the safety report if anything goes wrong?

Suddenly ATC comes up and gives us a vector to a fix well short of Chitose and tells us to standby for holding instructions. Nightmare realized. Situation rapidly deteriorating. After initially holding near Tokyo, starting a divert to Nagoya, reversing course back to Tokyo then to re-diverting north toward Misawa, all that happy fuel reserve that I had was vaporizing fast. My subsequent conversation, paraphrased of course... went something like this:

Me: "Sapparo Control - Delta XX requesting immediate clearance direct to Chitose, minimum fuel, unable hold."

ATC: "Negative Ghost-Rider, the Pattern is full" (I'm paraphrasing)

Me: "Sapparo Control - make that - Delta XX declaring emergency, low fuel, proceeding direct Chitose"

ATC: "Roger Delta XX, understood, you are cleared direct to Chitose, contact Chitose approach....etc...."

Enough was enough, I had decided to preempt actually running critically low on fuel while in another indefinite holding pattern, especially after bypassing Misawa, and played my last ace...declaring an emergency. The problem with that is now I have a bit of company paperwork to do but what the heck. As it was, we landed safely at Chitose,, with at least 30 minutes of fuel remaining before reaching a "true" fuel emergency situation. That's always a good feeling, being safe.

They taxied us off to some remote parking area where we shut down and watched a half dozen or more other airplanes come streaming in. In the end, Delta had two 747s, my 767 and another 767 and a 777 all on the ramp at Chitose. We saw two American airlines planes, a United plane and two Air Canada as well. …Not to mention several extra Al Nippon and Japan Air Lines planes.

Post-script - 9 hours later, Japan Air Lines finally got around to getting a boarding ladder to the plane so we were able to get off and clear customs. That, however, is another interesting story. By the way, while writing this I have felt four additional tremors that shook the hotel slightly - all in 45 minutes.

Cheers !

Sweaty palms. God damn.