That seems like good life advice in general.

Except for BBQ of course.

I could have quoted those airport elevations to you from memory...Las Vegas because I went there so often and KCI because it's exactly the same elevation as ATL. The last time I landed at KCI was due to a medical divert while flying LAX-JFK in a 767. They don't get many 767s there apparently because a lot of ramp personnel were out taking pictures of our plane as we came in.

The difference in elevation and, I presume, temperatures could significantly affect the V speeds for your takeoff.

I'd pay $50 to see you land a 767 at the old KCI.

How did I miss that? The one I'm talking about is MCI, not KCI. I Googled KCI to see where that airport is and found some interesting backstory about the confusion between the two:

That's interesting, but I was referring to the old main airport in KC that is now known as Charles Wheeler Downtown Airport. I didn't realize there was also trigraph confusion. Prolly be sporty to land a 767 in East Timor too.

Robot Cargo Planes

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ntually-people

I can see why Fed-Ex is excited about this emerging technology. If they can replace most of their delivery trucks with drones that drop your package right in your front (or back) yard, they'll save a ton of money on labor costs.

I'm not sure if I would ever want to fly on a pilot-less, (i.e. human pilot-less), commercial airplane. It's probably true that "computer chips and software" can react quicker and more efficiently to "unusual situations" than human pilots. Be that as it may, I would still rather have an experienced human pilot (with gray hair around his temples) dealing with an emergency situation rather than a computer chip that doesn't give a damn if it crashes and burns. The MCAS fiasco with Boeing's 737 MAX proved that going all out with cockpit automation may not be the wisest way of doing business.

Out shoveling in blizzard conditions this morning, I was surprised to hear a jet pass overhead.

Brought two questions to mind:

Is flying in a snowstorm any different than flying through a summer storm?

How high would you generally be to get above the storm and be able to see where you're going again?

It's rare to have a snowstorm with significant convective activity, probably because they don't usually have as much energy as a summer storm. In all my experiences with flying in snow, it's been a pretty tame ride.

As for how high you have to go to top a snow storm, they don't usually build up to the levels of summer storms and that's because you're not dealing with the great temperature gradient that you get with mature thunderstorms. I think normal cruise levels (in the 30s) will get on top of the majority of snowstorms, but maybe I'm relying too much on my memory on this one.

Some of the most mesmerizing views I've had out the front of the plane have been when flying in snow, especially at night. You can get a similar effect when driving your car through heavy snow. The snow seems to emanate from a point forward of the car and this effect is even more pronounced when flying at speeds of 200 mph or greater. I've been in the approach area of an airport and had to fight the urge to get lost in the view. It really is hypnotic.

I remember one flight into DCA in the venerable MD-88, flying south at 4000' on the downwind leg for runway 1 and it was snowing pretty hard. The view was incredible but that snow was also causing a build-up in static charge on the airframe. Static on our radios was increasing as the charge grew and was getting to the point that communications with ATC was unintelligible. I've only encountered this problem a handful of times in all my years of flying, but it does cause concern. Going NORDO while flying into DCA (perhaps the most restricted civilian airspace in the country) is not a pleasant prospect.

But just as were beginning to consider proceeding without comms, there was a loud bang and a bright blue flash just forward and to the left of the cockpit, and this sudden dissipation of the static charge gave us back clear communications.

Thanks for the info.

I get what you're saying about the snow coming from a point source, though my experience is much slower. I bet it is pretty cool at airplane speeds.

Wasn't there a "static electricity discharge" in the Twilight Zone episode where Captain Kirk saw the boogeyman?

This is not flight related, but what U.S. airport has the most scheduled arrivals and departures to/from unique airports? I'm thinking it's McCarran, but the info seems difficult to obtain.

So JFK -> LAS would count for JFK, JFK -> ORD -> LAS would count for ORD.

Quick google search came up with:

Just thought that this might be of interest

And now for something completely different

In your opinion, what do you think happened here?

1) Actual stuck PTT button
2) Co-pilot didn't want to put up with this attitude, and pushed his button to get this on tape
3) Other

Sounds like a stuck mike to me. If the other pilot pushes his own button, it would not pick up the first pilot's transmissions so clearly, i.e. each pilot controls his own mike.

In other words, own goal.

Simple solution to a common problem.

Everyone who boards an airplane without noise cancelling headphones deserves what they get.

I'm watching a show called "Airplane Repo." Know anyone in that line of work W0X0F?

I've seen at least one of those and was wondering how they managed such good production values while engaged in what should be a very quick, surreptitious operation. Like it was staged.

I've never actually heard of anyone who does this in real life, but I guess it is a real thing. I'd be a little concerned about hopping in a plane in the possession of a deadbeat. Might it be possible that such a person would skimp on maintenance?

When I first moved here, we had someone who was important to FedEx' early days come in to give us a motivational talk (he was friends with one of our founders).

Afterward, he hung out in the room and told stories of his life (also was in the Johnson administration in some capacity).

Really interesting stuff. The one I think I recall was something like creditors being after FedEx planes when they first started. Something about the pilots having to evade them, I want to say it involved bailing out of the windows to get away. That seems infeasible though.

The first plane that FedEx had was a Falcon 10, a small bizjet that currently sits in the Air & Space Museum just south of Dulles Airport. I'm not sure how long it was before they started getting 727s. I'm trying to imagine how bailing out of a window (which is possible on many planes) would deter a repo man. Perhaps they have to be served, like someone receiving a summons?

Now you've got me interested in the history of the company. Wikipedia skimps over the early days and makes no mention of that first plane. I think I might do the old man thing and stop by the library today.

Walking around the neighborhood today, a commercial jet broke through the clouds, apparently on approach to DEN. Seemed kinda low to me, but they're the pros and I'm not.

This got me to thinking about old-time flying, how tough it must have been. I assume there was a point where it was all visual?

During your career, what were the greatest innovations/changes? i.e., if you took beginning W0X0F and fast-forwarded him, what things would blow his mind the most?

Also, was there anything that seemed like a good idea, but didn't work out in practice?

In the beginning...

It was all visual and when guys started flying the mail in their open cockpit biplanes, they pushed the bounds of visual flying. The mail had to get through and those early pilots were under threat of losing their jobs if they elected not to fly due to weather. Consequently, many of them died as a result of flying into instrument conditions. The inner ear is easily fooled and this is one of the early demonstrations that a flight instructor makes for beginning pilots.

The danger of losing spatial orientation is that it is easy to stall or overspeed the airplane. Of these two possibilities, the overspeed was the more serious as you could very quickly exceed the structural integrity of the plane. Once a flight control surface breaks, bends, or departs the aircraft, you're just a passenger until impact.

If a pilot got into a situation where he lost spatial orientation, one life saving technique was to put the plane into an intentional spin. This is a very low stress maneuver and the idea was that you would exit the bottom of the clouds, regain visual cues, and recovery from the spin. One obvious potential problem was if the base of the clouds was too low to allow for recovery. Also, this was not nearly as useful during a night flight.

The three big ones that came before my time were instrument flying, the autopilot, and the jet engine.

Since I started flying, I guess I'd list the following:

(1) Navigation
When I started, all navigation centered on the use of VOR (VHF Omni-Directional Range). VORs superseded the low-frquency radio range which my father used flying in the Navy, and before that there were actual visual beacons across the country for use by the airmail pilots. You'd fly towards one and the idea is that the next one would become visible allowing you to continue on your route.

Everyone used VOR for domestic flying and the international flights used Inertial Navigation Systems or LORAN (LO RANge navigation). LORAN started becoming available for light aircraft in the late 70s and I had my 2-seat Grumman Yankee equipped with a Maritime LORAN, which was not technically legal for instrument flying, as it was not certified for aviation, but it worked well. One of the drawbacks is that the early units did not have named waypoints; everything had to be entered as LAT/LON.

LORAN had a very short shelf-life as GPS came on the scene and was better in all aspects. The entire airspace system started to be revamped, adding named waypoints where before all we had was VORs.

[Aside: I flew the VOR route structure for many years and I can still tell you the frequency for many VORs in the Northeast U.S. just from memory. In my immediate area: Washington National (DCA 111.0); Casanova (CSN 116.3); Montebello (MOL 115.3); Armel (AML 113.5). I swear I didn't have to look those up.

The three letter identifier was broadcast every 15 seconds to permit a pilot to confirm that the proper waypoint had been tuned. A knowledge of Morse code was nice but not essential, as the dots and dashes were depicted on the navigation charts. After a while, you inevitably become pretty familiar with Morse.

I'll never forget the identifier for the ILS to Runway 12 at Dulles airport because for some reason it sounded to me like the cadence for a dance step. The identifier was I-AJS: .. .- .--- ... di-dit di-dah di-dah-dah-dah di-di-dit

At this point, I'm probably starting to worry some of you. ]

With VOR flying, we flew a route structure with numbered airways that went from one VOR to another. With GPS we could go direct to any point and many of the small heading changes en route became unnecessary. To this day, we use the numbered airways but now it's not uncommon to be given a short cut to fly direct. Quite often, flying the red eye out of Las Vegas to JFK, once we got above FL180 and talking to L.A. Center, they'd give us direct to Wilkes-Barre PA, a feeder into New York. You couldn't have done that in the VOR days as the maximum distance at which you could receive a VOR signal was about 160 NM.

They also started just naming fixes, just LAT/LON points which they created for handling greater volumes of traffic. All fixes have a 5-letter identifier and the original naming was often left to the local ATC facility. For example, one arrival into New Orleans has fixes RYTHM and BLUEZ. I remember flying an arrival into Denver and the fixes on the arrival were DHATT FFFAT DOGGG DONTT BARRK. And my all-time favorite were the fixes on the ILS to Runway 16 at Portsmouth, NH (PSM): ITAWT ITAYA PUDYE TTATT. The missed approach point for the ILS was IDEED.


(2) TCAS
You'd be surprised how many old-timers were resistant to this bit of progress and I'm not sure why. TCAS (Traffic Collision and Avoidance System) was introduced in the early 90s and now many pilots don't want to take a plane if the TCAS is deferred. It's a great thing to have throughout the airspace and particularly useful in the terminal environment for situational awareness.

The display will show all traffic within 40 nm of your plane and +/-2700 feet in altitude relative to your plane. Those limits can be increased to 8700' above or below by selecting a switch on the box. We make this selection when climbing or descending but leave it at the default when in level flight, just to de-clutter the display.

They've incorporated advisory and resolution capability into the box and this will give commands if a collision is imminent (within 30 seconds). We are trained to obey those commands without question and it is a legitimate reason to deviate from an ATC clearance. I've only had them in the simulator where we practice complying with the evasive maneuvers. (It will only say climb or descend; it doesn't give heading changes.)

(3) GPWS
A follow-on to TCAS is the Ground Proximity Warning System, which will give warnings and, if necessary, resolution commands (e.g. "CLIMB! CLIMB NOW!). The system has incorporates a database of the world's terrain (and, iirc, man made structures) and will depict terrain in various colors to show the threat level: GREEN- no problem; YELLOW- terrain within 1000' below us; RED - terrain above our altitude.

The warning system isn't limited to terrain avoidance. It will also make an aural warning if you get too close to terrain without flaps or gear down. ("TOO LOW! FLAPS!" or "TOO LOW! GEAR!"). If you start going below the glidepath on an instrument approach, it will shout "DON'T SINK! DON'T SINK".

I had a terrain warning one time, flying from SWF to HPN (Stewart Newburgh NY to White Plains NY), repositioning an empty J-32 at night. There is a ridge line there and ATC had us at 3000' when we got the "TERRAIN! TERRAIN!" warning. We climbed and notified New York Center that we were complying with GPWS (pronounced Gyp-Wis). His response, "Yeah, we get that a lot out there," seemed a little casual for my taste. Certainly got my heart rate up.



That's a tough one and nothing comes to mind. If something occurs to me later, I'll come back to add to this.





Did anyone make it through this entire post?