In late March COVID shut down a few towers around the country including LAS which was a frequent destination at my old company. Although many flights were cancelled we still operated a few per day into LAS. It was pretty surreal flying into one of the worlds busiest airports making radio calls like we were in a 172 at the local uncontrolled field.

About 20 miles south of the field or so approach control asked if we had the airport in sight. We confirmed we did, so he cleared us for the visual approach and told us to switch to LAS ctaf. Although the traffic had obviously scaled way back, there were still several aircraft on frequency. We chuckled when a Southwest aircraft reported "Southwest 123 is a 737 on a 6 mile final for 26L. "

I'll never forget that day. Walking through the terminals felt like something straight out of the apocalypse. Completely empty and silent.

Reading about pilots using CTAF at LAS reminds me of the time a controller had a stroke on duty. Scary stuff.

The CTAF stuff sounds interesting.

Here's how I'm interpreting that, is it close?

• There's a reserved frequency that all aircraft in the area are supposed to monitor
• Each pilot then knows what the others are doing
• So, as a whole, the landings and takeoffs become orderly
• Except for the occasional GA numbskull as noted

So if somebody called out a movement which was wrong, the rest of the CTAF planes would correct them instead of an ATC person, right?

Also, does the CTAF frequency vary with the airport, or is it a national (global) standard?

That description of CTAF is pretty spot on. I don't know that other aircraft would "correct" someone, but they would be aware someone was doing something somewhat non-standard and make allowances for it.

All the frequencies for a given airport will be listed on their plates. You can find the plates at https://skyvector.com/airports if you're curious.

There's a reserved frequency that all aircraft in the area are supposed to monitor

True. In many cases, the Tower frequency becomes the CTAF frequency whenever the tower is closed. For uncontrolled fields, there will usually be a CTAF frequency on the Jepp chart. For very small fields, the Unicom frequency is used for traffic advisories. The problem with the Unicom situation is that many airports use the same unicom frequency.

When I started flying, 122.8 was a very common Unicom frequency and that's where I would announce my position when flying out of Manassas, which was uncontrolled in those days. But Woodbridge, Warrenton and Culpeper airports were also on 122.8, so I'd hear traffic there too. That's why it was so important to start the transmission with "Manassas Traffic, ..." It could be unnerving to be on final for landing and hear another plane announce "Cessna 24V is on short final." No airport. No runway. Is it my airport and runway? How lucky do I feel?

Each pilot then knows what the others are doing

That's the goal and it works if everyone uses good phraseology and radio discipline.

So, as a whole, the landings and takeoffs become orderly

True. The main emphasis is safety, of course. Knowing where other traffic is.

Going through photos, I happened upon this one of Manhattan...one of my favorites that I've taken. I never got tired of the views from the cockpit.. The deserts of the western U.S. always provided some breathtaking views. I'll post some of those too.




Here's one from not long ago. Chicago at night., as we fly westward, just south of the city. Lake Michigan is the black void to the right.

And the little spit just into the lake near downtown is was Meigs Field.

Beautiful pics.

Don't get me started about Meigs Field. The mayor should have been prosecuted for bulldozing that airport overnight.

I have an interesting story regarding that airport. I was flying my Piper Turbo Arrow IV from Manassas, VA to Meigs Field for reasons I can't even remember now. This was well before I went into flying professionally.

I was flying VFR and went to cut across Lake Michigan. Little bit of a pucker factor, as I was many miles from land when out in the center of the lake. I started off at 5500' (a VFR altitude) and had to gradually descend to remain VFR as I proceeded west.

The cloud deck kept getting lower and I stayed beneath it, ending up at about 1100' MSL, which seemed like it should be safe. But I kept looking at the choppy, cold water beneath me and it sure looked closer than 1000'. Then, as I got close to coasting in, I could see the buildings of Chicago and they were higher than I was!

I looked at my sectional chart and saw the elevation of Meigs Field was over 700' MSL, which meant I wanted a pattern altitude of 1500-1700' MSL. It was then that I realized: Lake Michigan is about 700 feet above sea level! I was naturally assuming that such a large body of water was sea level. So when I was flying at 1100' MSL, I was only about 400' above the cold, unforgiving waters of the big lake.

You are a bonafide cool dude, W0X0F.

I read a book by the Bednareks about the history of General Aviation that came out in 2003. The last chapter was about the post-9/11 challenges, but it ended with an optimistic note about the agreement to keep Meigs open and used it as a sign of brighter times to come for GA. Sadly, between when the book went to press and when it actually hit bookshelves, the midnight bulldozing occurred. I felt almost as bad for the authors as I did for the GA community.

Please do! And +1 to everyone who chimed in to reassure you that you have a very grateful audience here, retirement or no retirement.

I guess there's a lesson in there!

I just chose a few pics I took while in the simulator to show off the realistic video we have during training. These are all in the 757 or 767.


Here are two shots of the gate area in SLC on a snowy day...





They even have a ramp guy waving you in to park. When you reach the stop point, he crosses the wands. You can't see it here, but when we're parked at the gate, we can look through those windows and see passengers walking through the terminal.



Looking across the ramp at SLC on a nice day.




I think we're sitting on the runway at Boston, ready for takeoff.

Here are some pictures of one of the people I admire most. This is Ken Coskey. He was a squadron mate of my dad in Sanford, Florida back around 1960. They were in VAH-1, a heavy attack squadron flying the A-3D (which was referred to as "All 3 Dead", in some dark Naval Air humor, because there were three crew members and no ejection seats; instead, egress was through a hatch on the bottom of the plane).

VAH-1 Squadron Patch (the A-3D was a nuclear delivery plane; hence the mushroom cloud)



Ken volunteered for Vietnam and flew the A-6 over there. This is a two-man attack airplane, capable of carrying about 12,000 lbs of ordnance (more than a B-17 carried in WWII). Here are some photos of him next to (and seated in) his A-6 on the carrier deck, getting ready to go "downtown."






He was flying a night reconnaissance mission off the aircraft carrier America on Sept. 6, 1968, when his A-6A Intruder was shot down over North Vietnam and crashed on an island in the Song Ca River, southeast of the city of Vinh. He ejected from the aircraft before it crashed and landed in thick brush, twisting a knee. His bombardier-navigator was rescued by a U.S. helicopter, but Ken was captured by the North Vietnamese. I remember this very well. I was 13 years old at the time and knew Ken's two children, both a little younger than me.

He had a broken kneecap and was beaten by villagers before being driven in the back of a truck to Hanoi and imprisoned. He spent a year and a half in solitary confinement.
Ken was released with 590 other Americans in Operation Homecoming in the spring of 1973.

Here is his return to American soil.



Though he flew with my dad, Ken and I became very good friends, based on our mutual love of flying.I took him for a flight in my 2-seat Grumman American Yankee and he talked me into flying it down with him to Pensacola Florida to see an old Navy buddy of his who flew the RA-8, supersonic reconnaissance airplane. We flew from Clinton, MD (near Andrews AFB) to Pensacola Florda and never got higher than 1000' agl. That was his request, to fly low level. It was a great way to see the country, but I had to clean a lot of bug smashes off the windshield and leading edges of the wing.

Later, I was co-owner of a Piper Turbo Arrow with Ken and three other guys. We flew quite a bit together and when he died in June 2013, I spoke at his funeral. I considered it an honor, as most of the other speakers were Vietnam POWs who had shared that experience with Ken.

I will never forgive our President for calling our men in uniform suckers and losers. And Ken will always be a hero to me, despite the fact that he was shot down. In fact, maybe because of the fact he was shot down and endured so much and still returned filled with a deep, abiding love for this country and for the United State Navy. He once told me that joining the Navy was the best thing he ever did.

wow...just wow.

Take solace in the realization that the doddering old fool was merely projecting his own shortcomings, and in the twilight of his life as the darkness approaches, there will be no hiding from his own cowardice.

RIP Ken, a true hero.

I haven't heard corrections very often, at least not between aircraft (between you and your copilot every nonstandard maneuver or radio call is open for heavy criticism). Maybe because the legal requirements are extremely light. If you don't come recklessly close to colliding with another aircraft you probably aren't breaking any laws. But I did have a situation recently that I felt was so egregious it needed to be called out.

So there I was, doing traffic patterns at a single runway, uncontrolled airfield. The typical landing direction was 33, which was also the only direction with an ILS approach installed, but winds slightly favored 15 so that's what we were doing. We had been using that direction for about 30 minutes, even had another aircraft come in and work some patterns going the same direction, when some Army helicopter called saying he was doing a practice approach on the ILS. I thought it was a bit odd he didn't acknowledge that traffic was landing the opposite direction, but he was still like 10 miles out and simply shooting an approach to the opposite direction runway is perfectly reasonable, so whatever. I just put it in the back of my mind. But you can probably tell where this story is going.

The Army helicopter kept making calls simply for the ILS to 33, 5 miles out, then 2 miles, never bothering to specify which direction he intended on making the actual landing, which naturally made me more and more suspicious with each call. I was in the downwind for 15, called out that I was starting my turn to base, to which he responded "Army helicopter on final, ILS runway 33." If you're familiar with aviation you'll note that he still hasn't technically mentioned that he's landing on 33, or even overflying it in a way that would cause a conflict, but failing to mention his specific plans after hearing repeated calls indicating opposite direction traffic, it's safe to assume he's just completely oblivious to the impact he's having. So I give in and say I'll land to the parallel taxiway cause I don't feel like engaging in a game of chicken with another helicopter. It's on my side of the runway and landing to taxiways is one of the perks of rotary wing flight. But I also say "hey Army helo, where are you going specifically at the completion of this approach?" and he replies what I feared he might, "we're just doing a low approach over the runway." The audacity and/or obliviousness of his reply just set me off. So I said "FYI if you look at the bottom of your approach plate there are circling minimums you can use if your approach goes to an opposite direction runway, maybe try that next time."

I'm fairly certain that's the only time I've ever called out another aircraft over CTAF, and it might also be the only time I've heard anyone do it, but he deserved it. Army pilots are the worst.

Watching Top Gear last night. Testing some high-end BMW, "naught to 60" was 3.6 seconds (I think).

Happen to know the naught-to-60 times for the big jets you flew?

I don't, but it's significantly more than 3.6 seconds. The time is going to vary depending on gross weight. When I took off in Istanbul on a hot day in August with a takeoff weight of 410,000 lbs, we used almost 10,000 ft of runway to get airborne and the plane seemed to lumber down the runway. Take the same plane on a repo flight (empty) on a cold day, and the performance will be remarkably different. Even then, however, I don't think it will get to 60 in less than 5 seconds.

My Tesla P90D will do it in about 2.5 seconds, and it definitely throws me back in my seat more than I ever experienced in any plane I've flown.

Hey, does anyone here remember the crash of Asiana 214? It was July 6, 2013 and the crew was cleared for a visual approach to runway 28L at SFO. With four pilots in the cockpit, they hit short of the runway and came to rest left of centerline.

Three days later, I was flying to SFO. I was a first officer on the 767ER at the time and it was the Captain's leg, landing on 28R. I took the opportunity to take a couple of quick pics. You see the hulk of the 777 and the debris still on the runway.

I think I would remember that anyway, but I always associate it with this:


Great pics, though. What were your thoughts/emotions when seeing that?

I remember that report. Unbelievable that the newscaster didn't catch on immediately, but I admit that I did laugh at the gaffe.

It was very disturbing to see the hulk of that 777 sitting in the grass. I was kind of surprised that the plane came to rest parallel to the runway. Looking at it, I couldn't understand how they could be low enough to hit the sea wall, given that it was VMC conditions.

Was that the one where the poor guy survived the crash and then got run over and killed by one of the fire trucks coming to the rescue?

I know only reason I remember it was because I was in Vegas for WSOP.

Yeah, but your plane's 0-500 speed is way better.

That Tesla sounds like tons of fun. Maybe a pic of that?