OK, you're crazy. I suppose you'd prefer to hear a loud, distracting, spurious warning throughout a flight?

It happens, but so far never to me. Almost diverted into Iceland once for a guy who was unconscious. But we talked to UPMC (Univ. of Pittsburgh Medical Center) on the SATCOM and also found a doctor on board, and the consensus was to continue to the destination. He lived.

How realistic do the airline flight simulators feel? Do they simulate motion too?

That was no BS. Even today, I look before I turn. It's just an ingrained habit. At ACA, we were trained to say "Clear left" before beginning a left turn (e.g.). (Note: this is much more critical when not in Positive Control Airspace, which begins at 18,000'.)

And on the ground it's just as important. If we are coming up on an intersecting taxiway, the guy in the right seat will say "Clear right" and the guy in the left seat will say "Clear left".

In primary flight training we teach the use of "clearing turns" before executing any maneuver. This is because we are often sharing the skies with many other aircraft (and perhaps a lot of other student pilots) so we want to make sure our "chunk" of airspace is clear. So before doing "turns around a point" (a good basic maneuver to teach overall control and wind correction) we first make a turn to the left followed by a turn to the right.

(p.s. I used to fly into Gatwick, but Delta stopped service there. We stayed in a little town whose name I can't recall right now...started with a "C" I think)

A weather balloon would have to be pretty big to show up on radar and even then, it will only be a primary return (I don't think they put transponders on those things), which doesn't stand out to the controller.

I occasionally see small party balloons floating through the air (the kind a kid would get at the mall). I've never heard of anyone sucking one through an engine and I'm not even sure they would do anything to the engine...might just go straight through (in bits of course).

My only really bad encounter was in Sao Paulo, Brazil about a year ago. An aircraft ahead had reported a "balloon on final", which at least alerted us to be on the lookout. There was no mention of the type of balloon and I assumed it was a small party balloon.

We were established on the ILS, passing through about 2000' when we saw it ahead of us and it was a monster. It's hard to estimate how big it was with nothing for scale, but I would guess maybe 100' in length, top to bottom, and it looked kind of like a hot air balloon with a gondola, but it was much more oblong than spherical.

We had to maneuver around it...it was right on the localizer (extended centerline of the runway). If we had been IMC (in the clouds) at that time, we would have never seen it. I'm not sure what, if any, damage it would do but I wouldn't want to find out. I'm sure it would do a number on an engine and could seriously foul some flight controls.

Yeah, I've seen that before. I'm in favor of anything they can do to make those safety briefs more palatable.

Crawley.

Which is probably one of the worst Welcome To England towns they could put anybody in.

I now live in the US but when I was commuting back and forth to London, I loved Gatwick and would choose it over Heathrow anytime.

I see you work for Delta. My last flight with them was LGW-ATL-LAS in Aug 2004. On all 4 legs of the flight our in flight movie was Garfield !!

That's the place!

No disagreement, though it did have a very good Indian restaurant (not unusual in England).

I agree with this also.

You shouldn't be upset because Garfield is a movie you really need to see 4 times go get all of the nuance.

Seriously though, that's really surprising. I thought they had different movies for East and West bound flights and for International vs. domestic flights. Did your trip start in August and return in September? Sometimes they take the Westbound movie from one month and make it the Eastbound movie the next month.

What's the most exhilarating experience you've had in a plane? You said your first solo flight was something you'd never forget. Are there any other moments like that?

Have the passengers ever done anything ridiculous? Something you've heard about in the cockpit?

What influenced you becoming a pilot? Did you just one day decide that you thought it would be really fun, or was there someone who was a particularly strong influence?


Thanks for doing this. It's really interesting.

Thoroughly enjoying this thread. One thing that has always baffled me, and maybe you care to enlighten me...whenever a plane makes a well-executed turn, it is hardly noticable for the passengers, as you mentioned earlier in this thread. I also noticed that whenever this happens, I don't exactly feel that I am being pressed towards one of the sides of my seat (gravity hardly noticable). I would expect differently really.

Is there some sort of physical law going on there, or am I just imagining things?

Thanks for doing this, I could not close my browser after I found this thread, amazing read.

Good question.

There are several different levels of flight simulators, ranging from desktop models all the way to full motion and visual simulators (often referred to as a Level D sim).

The desktop models are often called Flight Training Devices (FTD) and are useful for practicing procedures. Large FTDs can replicate the entire cockpit, i.e. they are like a simulator without any motion or visual component. We use these at Delta before using the Level D sim because the Level D is pretty expensive to use (several hundred dollars per hour) and you don't want to waste it by covering simple procedural and checklist stuff.

Here's an FTD:



The Level D sim is a box sitting on hydraulic actuators that has several dimensions of movement and the movement is used to fool your kinesthetic sense. Thus, if you are sitting in the sim looking out at the runway and apply takeoff thrust, the visual shows you moving down the runway. The entire box, however, is tilting so that the front of the box is raised. This gives you a component of gravity towards the back of your seat and feels like acceleration (you can't perceive the tilt because the visual shows you level on the ground).

Similarly on landing, when you apply the brakes the entire sim tilts forward, throwing you into your seat belt and shoulder harness. Heavier braking results in a steeper downward tilt of the nose.

Even without full motion, the visual cues alone are enough to give a very real sensation of being in the plane.

Here's some pics of the sims:

A couple years ago I had a connection from Cleveland to Pittsburgh. I was in the front row on a small prop plane- probably only seated 20-25 or so. I was able to watch the pilots in the cockpit the whole time. I remember thinking, "Well this is a lot different than the window view I typically have."

First solo is definitely an event ever pilot remembers. I remember looking over at the right seat after takeoff and thinking, "Wow, no one is going to get me down safely but me!" Definitely an exhilarating feeling.

Here's a few other memorable moments off the top of my head:

• A ride in an open cockpit bi-plane with Duane Cole at Luck Field in Ft. Worth TX. Duane Cole was a pretty well known aerobatic pilot and I've even seen a picture of him and his plane at the Smithsonian. (Google him) He did his whole act over the field with me in the front seat. I had never been upside-down in a plane before that.

• Taking aerobatic lessons at Frederick MD in a CAP-10 trainer. This plane was capable of inverted flight and we spent a lot of time upside-down. Also did a lot of spins.

• Sitting in the cockpit of a U-2, while not exactly exhilarting, was certainly memorable. I did that at Wallops Island VA at the invitation of my first primary instructor, Jim Cherbonneaux, who used to fly the U-2 in the late 50s and was Gary Powers' backup pilot the day he was shot down.

• Flying from Hyde Field in MD to Pensacola FL in my Grumman Yankee and never getting higher than 500' agl. You see a lot of the country that way, and you get a lot of bug smashes.

• Flying down the Potomac River below treetop height and then flying under power lines across the river. (not recommended)

• Flying over 70 miles of water in a single engine Piper (going to Freeport, Bahamas)

• Having a pair of F-4s fly 500' over me in my Grumman Yankee (which had a plexiglass canopy, so I got a great view). (McGuire AFB controller had called the traffic for me, so it wasn't a surprise.)

• Flying a glider on the north shore of Oahu out of Dillingham Field. You could literally stay up in the air all day because the trade winds create a very reliable updraft off of the mountains up there. Beautiful view; you see the entire island.

Nothing comes to mind. I'll ask around and see what other people have experienced.

My dad was a Navy pilot (they like the term Naval Aviator), but that wasn't a big influence; he never really talked about it at home. I guess with me it was just some innate desire from the time I was very young.

The bug really bit me when I was 12 years old. We were living in Virginia Beach at the time and I had been invited to go to Ocean City MD with best friend from McLean. My parents OK'd it and part of the package was a plane ride from Norfolk to DC on an Eastern Airlines Lockheed Electra (4 engine prop). This was 1967.

I remember just being completely enthralled with the flight. Typical summer day with large, puffy white cumulous everywhere. Some bumps and some maneuvering around the build-ups. The clouds looked so substantial to me, as if you could walk on them.

The entire week at the beach with my friend, all I could think of was the flight back home...I couldn't wait.

My next flight was 4 years later, going with my brother on an Eastern 727 to visit my grandparents in Texas. It cost $600 round trip (compare that, $600 in 1971 dollars, to the cost of air travel today) which I had saved for all summer, working for $1.25/hour. Again, I loved the flights.

Still, I probably would have never acted on the urge to fly unless my neighbor hadn't offered to give me free instruction when I graduated from college. Once I took that first lesson, I was hooked.

No, you're not imagining anything. In a properly executed turn (we call it a coordinated turn), you should not feel any sideways force. In other words, you won't feel a force towards the ground, you will only feel a force downwards into the seat.

Think of a car coming into a steeply banked turn. By carrying speed through the turn, there is no tendency for the car to slide down to the low side of the road; the acceleration through the turn keeps the car firmly on the road and the feel to the driver is a force straight down in the seat.

It's the same in a plane. That's also why water doesn't slosh out of cups on your tray table in a turn. Here's a simple graphic I found on the internet, showing that the resultant force in a turn is straight down through your seat.

It was probably a 19 seater, which is the maximum passenger occupancy that doesn't require a flight attendant.

The requirement for larger aircraft is to have at least one flight attendant for every 50 seats on the plane.

During my first solo, I remember being somewhat surprised at how much faster the plane got in the air without the instructor on board.

Could a regular person ever get into one of those sims? That looks like it'd be unbelievable fun.

Yeah, the absence of the instructor's weight makes a 2 seat trainer much peppier.

You'd have to have some kind of connection (maybe know one of the instructors) or perhaps be a reporter of some kind...they might allow it for the PR. When I used to do sim instruction for ACA, I got some friends in a couple of times.

We used the sim to check out new pilot applicants and I would get the call to come out at 10 pm and put 4 or 5 guys through the new hire scenarios. Each guy took about 15-20 minutes, so afterward I would often use the balance of the sim time (it was scheduled in 4 hour blocks) for myself. I could program it for an engine failure at takeoff and set the weather down to minimums (200' ceiling; 1/2 mile visibility) and then just go fly it.

You're right, it can be a lot of fun. But for guys getting checked, it can be a sweat box. My next recurrent training is in March and I'll get two days in the sim, but it won't necessarily be fun.

Have you ever flown with a pilot that reeked of alcohol? I am Woxof's little brother and thought that I would throw a question out there

Hi

I have a small question regarding flight hours, as far as you know whats the most number of hours a single commercial pilot has gathered?


Keep up the good work :P

Yes it was an Aug-Sept crossover.

I also remember thinking how antiquated the plane felt, with the aisle TV's, as for years I had been used to seat back tv's on VS and the like.

Recently just flew IAD-LAS in F on UA and was shocked to see aisle TV's there too.

Thanks for answering my Sim question. I appreciated and noticed the amount of time you put into answering it. You went way and above the call of duty.

I've never been in this situation, but I've known pilots who were and they had to firmly tell the other guy that he is not flying. If he persists, I've heard that guys will tell him, "Either you call in sick, or I'm going to call the Chief Pilot."

One Saturday when I was chief pilot at ACA, I had the TSA flag one of our Captains coming through security. They said they could smell alcohol on his breath. Naturally we couldn't let him fly and I had to personally take him to the Reston Hospital Walk-in clinic for an alcohol test. He was furious and I don't blame him. I didn't smell a thing and he passed the test. Not sure what they were smelling.

(OK, John, you've posted a question. You can go back to playing golf now.)

What are the mechanics of flying upside down? Wouldn't the plane drop like a rock since the "lift" being generated by the wings is now pushing the plane torwards the ground (in addition to the weight of the plane itself)? Is the scene in Top Gun where one plane is flying inverted directly above a plane flying right side up even possible?

While many airline pilots have in excess of 20,000 hours, a lot of them don't actually keep a log anymore and any number they give is a wag. (For an interesting article on this topic, see http://www.airspacemag.com/history-o...-of-Hours.html). As an airline pilot, you'll get close to 1,000 hours per year.

A guy named Max Karant was reputed to have over 50,000 hours but who could ever verify that? Without question, he did a lot of flying. He spent many hours ferrying light airplanes across the ocean.