Deuces no. Not here, end of discussion.

I've flown through DC for the past year. The Pentagon is one of the most easily recognizable landmarks in or around the city. Pretty sure I would have had no problem finding it without GPS or even a map on my first flight here.

It's true that you could do it. You're a pilot and you have a familiarity with picking out things from the air. I still remember my early flights when my instructor would say, "You see the airport? It's right over there about five miles away." I had no context for what I was scanning for and the newness of viewing things from a lofty vantage point made it hard to pick out common things. That ability comes with experience. (But, yes, the Pentagon is unique.)

I always sort of wondered about this. I guess it makes sense that its just experience but I always thought it must be really hard to do.

One of the things that really surprised me was how hard it is to pick out an island when flying over the open ocean. I flew a Cessna 172 from Honolulu to Kauai when I was living out there (1988). I can't remember how far that it, but I think it was close to 90 miles over water. The sky was full of small white puffy cumulus clouds and the shadows from these clouds all look like islands when you're flying down low (below 10000'). It was a little bit of a concern because I realized after coasting out that my directional gyro was bad. Luckily I was able to pick up a Navaid on Kauai and home in on that.

Let me start by saying great thread! Thx W0X0F"

That is a bit of hyperbole. I think a more accurate statement would be "nobody ever took the known thread of using an airplane as a missile seriously".

E.g. in the 1994 Bojinka plot
Clearly the FBI and US intelligence not only perceived this as a hypothetical possibility but knew that Al Qaeda had actively consider this option. Although possible, I find it hard to believe the FAA "had never considered this possibility".

In the software world, white hat hackers create and publish exploits because if they do not, various computer software companies say "that is just a theoretical security hole -- it can not be practically applied". It seems to be human nature to not take a particular threat vector seriously until someone actually uses it (or comes really close to successfully using it).

Somewhere between considering various threats and creating a threat response training curricula somebody at the FAA considered and discounted the possibility.

Please forgive my


rant. We all have our foibles. Quibbling over precision in statements about security is one of mine.

BTW, I'd like to see the guy who's kid is going to visit a cockpit post a followup afterwards. Perhaps you'll have some pictures?

Thanks again for the thread. I haven't played online poker in years (quit about 9 months after black friday) but I keep checking in to read this thread (and a few others).

It seems logical that you must almost certainly be correct on this. But in all the training I went through, that threat was never brought up.

I never received a PM from that guy, so never had a chance to make the call.

No live poker either? I'm heading to Las Vegas tomorrow for three days of poker. Hoping to jumpseat on the 0815 United flight out of IAD.

I've played a little live but not much. Without online poker to keep my skills sharp my live game is worse than it used to be.

It is fun to play but I am clearly the fish at the table now.

Listening to the JFK Tower, the lights at "Juliet" went out for aircraft landing on 22L. Everyone that landed was notifying the tower of the lights being out. It seemed that 6 aircraft in a row let them know. Is there some type of broadcast message ATC can do to let arriving aircraft know the lights are out? Also because of that, a heavy jet missed "Juliet" and had to go to "Zulu", which seemed to cause more problems and some "go-around's". They let aircraft know there would be "late landing clearances" because of the jets having problems exiting 22L. Do you have slow your airspeed when you are getting late landing clearances? Also, how long does it take the airport to fix the lights?

Juliet is the normal exit point when landing on 22L. As you can see in the diagram below, if you miss Juliet you have to go to the end of the runway and exit on Zulu. This now makes it necessary to cross runway 31L to taxi in to the gate and this can cause a delay if that runway is in use.



Yes, there is definitely a broadcast message that can advise arriving pilots of this problem with Juliett. The tower personnel simply have to add the information to the ATIS (Automatic Terminal Information Service), which is broadcast continuously at JFK on 128.72 mHz. Unfortunately, you'd be surprised at how many pilots kind of gloss over these NOTAMs (Notices to Airmen) on the ATIS.

An aircraft which misses Taxiway J and has to go to the end could definitely cause the tower to direct the following aircraft to go around. As for late landing clearances, that is just advisory. We wouldn't slow the aircraft any more for the approach, but we'd be ready to execute a go around if landing clearance isn't received.

How long does it take to fix the lights? I'm not really sure, but it would be high priority. They'd probably like to wait until some time later when runway 22L isn't needed for arrivals. But that's really a question for airport operations people.

What did you have for dinner on November 21st 1985?

Is there a lot of interaction in safety matters between the aviation world and mariners? Have you ever heard of anything like that or been involved in it? Im asking because a sea captain friend of mine mentioned that they had someone from the aviation world talk to them about safety issues here in Finland, CRM and such so i wonder if its more common. I would think many of the safety issues may be similar in the two worlds and aviation is probably way ahead in these matters. It would seem to me that in CRM and other issues relating to human psychology that kind of interaction would be mutually beneficial.

I flew into DFW last night with a 650' ceiling and 1 SM visibility, which from a passenger perspective is pretty exciting. I'm curious what that does to the attitudes of you guys up front? Does it increase the stress much or is it just another day in the office? I know y'all just follow the glidescope down and know that the lights will pop up in front of you, but isn't it at least somewhat unnerving? In a relative sense what kind of visibility is that? Zero, poor, slightly less than optimal? Also, with those sorts of numbers is the decision point really at issue yet?

Completely unrelated. You often mention that during your sim time they'll ask if there's anything you'd like to try out. I've seen video of a Delta training captain trying to land flight 191 (really giving it his all). Do they have specific incidences like that programmed in like the Holodeck? Seems to me like every pilot would want to try their hand at something like that to see if they pull it out. Would the difference in type really matter much, and any guess as to how you might fair?

Lastly, I asked a while back but never saw an answer. You've mentioned ATC providing a phone number to pilots who really screw something up. I've heard it happen on LiveATC, also. Who answers that phone when you call? FAA? NTSB? Pilot's 3rd grade teacher? I gather the repercussions are pretty serious.

I've never heard of any such interaction, though I suppose there could be some benefit. But other than the command structure (i.e. one guy, the Captain, has command authority) I can't think of much similarity between the two worlds.

Is this landing just another day at the beach for you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TZMiX96g40

650 and 1 would be weather I would relish. I love flying an instrument approach in IMC and when the weather is reported to be above minimums by several hundred feet there is little chance of a missed approach. Low ceilings and visibility don't really add to stress. In fact, I get a lot more satisfaction out of approaches in those conditions.

I assume you're referring to Delta 191 (Dallas-Ft.Worth, 1985), which was a windshear accident. There was also a crash of American 191 (Chicago, 1979), which was a slat malfunction caused by a severed hydraulic line. In any case, the answer is no, we don't have programmed scenarios as part of the simulator software. The sim instructor would just have to try to replicate the conditions of the situation, which would be easier for the Delta crash. The American crash would be impossible to set up in the sim without having some specific programming done and that's not something available to the sim instructor.

We get plenty of windshear practice during recurrent training, largely as result of the Delta 191 accident. It's been stressed ever since. As for the slat malfunction, yes I would like to try that if it could be made available to me. It just might be an impossible scenario to recover from. Not sure how I would do.

I've actually got sim training coming up in another 10 days and I think I might ask the instructor to put me at FL350 thirty miles from JFK and then kill both engines to see if I can glide it in successfully.

It's going to be someone from the FAA and it's never a social call. The pilot's demeanor will go a long way in determining what the result will be. My advice to any pilot who has to make such a call is to not BS the guy. Simply own up to what you did wrong and apologize. A good attitude may just avoid certificate action if you've really screwed up.

This has come up a few times itt. From the video, it looks to me like this KLM 747 is just a tad low. We should cross the runway threshold at 50'. I've never made the approach into St. Maarten (which I assume this is), but I wouldn't have any problem with it. The sight picture of the runway from the cockpit is the same and everything else works out just fine if you stay on the proper glidepath.

For any of you who might be interested, I adapted a story I told long ago in this thread for a blog I occasionally write for Air & Space magazine's website. Here's a link to that story:

The Day I Dropped the Oxygen Masks on my Passengers

Thanks for maintaining this great thread and passing along the link. Good story!

Would love to hear how this goes. After you nail it, would you like to try the same in TGU?

In the sim? Sure. (But I've never been into Tegucigalpa irl)

HeyW0X0F,
I got a question for you, this is regarding Airbus 320 so you might not be familiar with the controls as with Boeing but here it goes.
We were flying back to JFK few months ago approaching Long Island over the ocean at around 6000ft ??maybe more or less but. I could tell the engines were at around idle or with little thrust. All of the sudden the engines spooled to what seemed like max thrust for few seconds and came back to normal for about 10 more minutes before landing. To me this seemed little odd, first of all we weren't climbing if anything we were descending. My first impression was the autopilot came off and the throttles was set to max??? Not sure if this is possible since auto throttle would pull back the lever.
Anyway, I am curious as to what might have caused this as I've never experienced anything similar. I may also add that it was a choppy approach with moderate winds but I doubt that played a role.

Great read, thank you.

Yeah, it was the Delta crash that I meant (didn't know O'Hare was 191 also). Just out of curiosity, the Delta training captain in the sim didn't make it, either. Is that more likely the result of it being a less trained occurrence at the time, or were the conditions at DFW that day particularly nasty?

Thank you so much. It won't allow me to PM you, but as soon as I can, I will (which is hopefully soon as the flight is on Sunday!)