Any comments on this video, Wox?

In the first thread, you said you had about 15,000 hours. Eleven years on, how many hours do you have now?

Surprisingly little, and none at all in the mechanics of flying. I had a very good landing at SFO and the flight was great, smooth most of the way except for some weather we had to dodge in the Cheyenne, WY area.

I was concerned about the procedures being rusty (e.g. preflighting the cockpit, loading the FMS) but that really wasn’t a problem either. In my crew brief before the flight, I told Sean (the FO) that the biggest threat for our flight was the very little actual flying we had both done in the previous three months. Sean had one other trip about two weeks ago and he also just completed his recurrent sim training in Atlanta, so he was actually pretty current.

I told Sean that we’d slow down the whole process as much as necessary to avoid simple mistakes or omissions. I encouraged him to speak up if there was anything he didn’t like. The beauty of the procedures, coupled with checklists, is that there are several opportunities to catch minor lapses before they become errors. This is one place the crew concept really pays off. It’s not a mistake unless we both make it.

The only thing I forgot was to log on to CPDLC for our route clearance. This became immediately obvious when I got to the point of doing my briefing for the flight. It’s at this point that we discuss how we’ve been cleared, what altitude, etc. Since I had no clearance, I realized I had forgotten to log on so I just did it then, the clearance came through, and we proceeded.

We did get two curveballs thrown at us. As we were pushing back, company Operations called and instructed us to pull back in to the gate for three connecting passengers who had been delayed because at least one was in a wheelchair. Going back wasn’t a big deal, but now we needed new “numbers”, the weight and balance data, required for takeoff performance. This necessitated coordination with our dispatcher and getting the numbers via ACARS, and rebriefing our takeoff parameters (V speeds, flap settings, engine derated power required).

The second curveball is that Ground Control changed our departure runway which meant we needed to again obtain new performance data for the new runway, and we also needed to brief the changes in the departure caused by this change. At this point, it was starting to feel like a sim ride, where the instructor throws these little things at you to make sure you follow procedures for these changes.

The checklists prove their worth in these situations and from that point the flight was without incident. On the return flight, we were on final to runway 22L at JFK at about 8:50 pm. Fireworks were going off all over Long Island. It was a pretty great view.

btw, we had 48 passengers to SFO and 52 on the way back. This particular 757 holds 168.

😉

Glad to hear you're back flying.

I watched a couple of episodes of "Mayday: Air Disaster" today, and the show about the crash of Delta 191 short of DFW got me thinking about weather-related issues. At the time of the accident back in 1985, they had only begun testing ground-based Doppler weather radar for detecting microbursts at DEN and onboard Doppler radar was not standard yet.

Wind shear and microbursts used to be significant hazards and we eventually developed technology to detect those situations. I'm wondering if there are any current known weather-related hazards for which there are still no technological measures for detecting them.

Also, are you aware of commercial aircraft currently in service on which onboard Doppler radar is not standard, or any carriers that don't require all their aircraft to have it?

This is pretty nuts. A cargo door breaks off the airplane. Causes a bunch of damage. Pilot lands safely.

Jump to :40 for the break.

Guy I used to do work with on Martha's Vineyard, a contractor who built $5M+ dollar homes and worked his ass off and was just starting to have the world by the balls, was getting instrument-rated when I first started doing work with him. After a while he bought a Mooney and explained to me it was like the Jaguar of planes. Guy was a airport commissioner(?) on MV at this podunk strip where you needed to actually turn the strip lights on from your plane on approach because nobody was there. He used to beg me to let him come pick me up at a local airport near me, but I always declined and drove over an hour, then took a 45 minute ferry, because I am not a big fan of flying, particularly prop planes.

Long story short, he went down to FL with his master carpenter for a weekend in Key West. There was a big storm on the entire east coast, hitting FL and then climbing up the entire eastern seaboard. Once the storm left FL, they took off and followed the storm up the coast. They landed in Providence for a quick gas-up and basically had a puddle-jump to MV left. It was raining and nighttime, and his friend actually called his ex-wife and told her he was scared shitless and didn't really want to do the last leg, but of course they did.

Got to empty runway, activated the runway lights, missed on their first pass at landing and were never seen again. Wreckage started washing up on the beach a few days later and they were found a few more days after that.

link

He was such a great guy, which is too often the case.

I don't blame you, I ****ing hate small planes.

RIP to him.

I got a little sloppy keeping up my logbook. But looking at my flight time records on line with Delta, it looks like I have about 20,500 hours total time.

There is still no way to detect or reliably predict clear air turbulence. Our only real early warning for this is from PIREPs (pilot reports). If I give a pilot report to ATC and use the word “PIREP” when making the report, ATC is required to pass it along to all other aircraft in the affected area.

I don’t know of any air carriers that are not equipped with modern weather radar.

I may need to stop watching "Mayday: Air Disaster," but it's fodder for questions. One of the contributing factors to the loss of Colgan Air Flt 3407 was violating the sterile cockpit rule. They discovered this violation when reviewing the Cockpit Voice Recorder when it was recovered after the crash.

Are there random audits of the CVR for violations, or do we only find out about it after an incident?

No, there are no random checks of the CVR. It is only accessed if needed for investigation of an accident or incident. Also, the CVR operates on a 30 minute loop, continually recording over itself, so only the 30 minutes prior to removal of power (as a result of a crash, or by pulling the CB) is available.

Wow, 30 minutes doesn't seem like a very long time. You'd think with a lot of crises you would want a longer history that that.

Well, it turns out that advancements have been made since the Stone Age of aviation when I started flying. I found the following when I did a simple Google search:

I heard something over the weekend about Delta cutting pilots' pay. Any inside info?

Labor action?

The company and the pilot union are in discussions. Something has to give and I foresee furloughs. But I’m 40 days from retirement, so I confess to not really keeping up to date with what’s going on.

So what is the term for a pilot retiring? I am "Turning in my wings" like Cougar in Top Gun? Or maybe "banging my last FA"?

I don’t think I’ve ever heard any kind of catchy phrase for retirement. A pilot is said to “Fly west” (into the setting sun?) when he dies.

I remember talking to aviation pioneer Dick Merrill in 1979, 85 years old at the time. He had long since retired (in 1960 or 61, he retired as #2 with Eastern) and was the honorary curator of the Aviation museum at the Fredericksburg VA airport. He gave me a personal and fascinating tour of the museum. Many of the things on display were from his amazing career. (There is a book about his life, title Wings of Man, which I have on my shelf.) At one point, he told me that he could feel the end of the runway coming up. He died in 1982.

old pilots never die, they just fly the jumpseat

Such a shame you probably won't have another commercial flight. When you first mentioned retiring in 2020 I was thinking we should all try to get tickets on your last commercial flight. Would have been a great way to celebrate this thread. Hopefully the thread will transition into stories of teaching people to fly or something similar as I believe that doesn't have the age limit.

I’ll hang around and see how it goes. Thanks for the kind words.

I would love to have you continue to post with your opinions and observations on various events happening in general aviation and especially events in commercial aviation. Your comments would be a level above those from others just because of your level of expertise!
ALL the BEST!!

According to the interwebs, I live about 21 miles WNW of DEN. (If it matters, it appears DEN is at about 96th street and I'm at 118th, so maybe 2-3 miles of that is North).

For a few weeks, I've noticed westbound flights going every few minutes in the evening further north from my house.

Last night, I noticed planes flying west south of my house instead.

Looking on google maps, I see DEN has east-west runways both north and south of the terminal. I assume previously, they were using the north runway, and last night the south.

Any idea why one day they'd use one runway/takeoff path and one day another? Or, is it they'd really been using both, and I just happened to notice different flights on different days?

Probably wind related. Always try to take off and land into the wind.

Yeah except......he said they are both east-west runways.