I don't think it's that so much as there isn't really much populated land in the southern latitudes. It makes more commercial sense to go from Auckland say, north and have sectors to maybe Singapore, Dubai and then to Europe. Other routes, say Auckland to Santiago de Chile or maybe Cape Town don't take you via the South Pole anyway.

The great circle route from Perth, Australia to Santiago, Chile goes over Antarctica, but a brief search of flights makes it look doubtful that anyone flies between those cities direct.

Edit: Great Ciricle Mapper is a pretty awesome website for exploring these kinds of things.

I have yet to be on a flight where the weather at the destination was so low that an autoland was required. The only autolands I've ever done in the 767 have been done in VFR conditions and were done just to keep the autoland certification for the airplane. When the autoland is needed, the dispatcher will include a remark on the flight plan requesting that the crew perform one. Some guys ignore this request because they want the landing. Coincidentally, I just sat through one last Monday on the flight from Amsterdam to Boston.

I did have one time in the MD-88 where we used the autoland capability. It was an approach into Pensacola and we didn't see the runway until we were about 30' above it.

I'm pretty sure the Atlanta to Beijing flight was a polar route (I don't think they fly it anymore). The only problems up there come up if there's a failure of the Inertial Nav or GPS systems. The VOR-like change at the pole, which you refer to, would only apply to a magnetic compass and wouldn't be at the geographic pole since magnetic north is quite a way off from the pole.

That's why we refer to True North and Magnetic North in navigation. The difference between the two varies depending on where you are on the earth and it is called Magnetic Variation. This value is depicted on VFR charts so that pilots can account for it when using their compass for navigation.

Look at this chart for the D.C. area and you'll see two dashed magenta lines on the chart; one is labeled "10° W" and one is labeled "11° W" (you'll have to look closely for them — it's a very cluttered map; the 10° line is on the left side of the map). Those are isogonic lines – the difference between magnetic and true north is constant along the line. On the "10° W" line, you would need to add 10° to your magnetic heading to achieve the corresponding true heading.



As you can see, with the magnetic north and true north not being co-located, the magnetic compass is virtually useless at the very high latitudes because of the extreme, and rapidly changing, variations.

It's mainly just the lack of major city pairs in the Southern Hemisphere that would benefit from a polar route. There might be some other considerations too, such as a lack of suitable divert fields for ETOPS operations (this wouldn't affect 4 engine planes).

Hi W0x0F, I recently watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" which is a documentary about the collapse and failures of capitalism in America. In the documentary, Michael Moore interviews a pilot who is living off of foodstamps; the pilot goes on to mentions that there are many other pilots in the same predicament. My initial thought to this was "how is this possible, piloting is a very respectable job". Moore even states that managers at Taco Bell have a larger salary than airline pilots. Has the pay really dropped to such low levels that some pilots must rely on foodstamps?

I'm not a big fan of Michael Moore, but he's not exaggerating the state of pilot pay, especially for the entry level jobs. This isn't a recent development – pay at the so-called regionals has always been abysmal and many First Officers at these companies qualify for food stamps.

My initial pay as a First Officer on a Jetstream 32 (early 90's) was about $16.50/hour. You can usually count on about 1,000 paid flight hours per year, so I leave the math to you. I left a job as an engineering manager, paying about $80k, for this. I couldn't have survived on my flying income so I did computer consulting on the side for several years until upgrading to Captain (p.s. I never got food stamps).

Just wanted to thank you once again for this thread W0X0F. About to take my 10th flight in 10 weeks (after flying only about every other year until now). I am getting more and more used to it, and less scared and this thread has been a huge help in keeping my anxiety under (relative) control.

10 flights in 10 weeks? You fly almost as much as I do! I'm heading out today too...JFK to Las Vegas for a 20 hour layover. I should be at a poker table somewhere by 8 pm at the latest.

The only thing I will still eventually need to get over is my distrust of airlines I am unfamiliar with, especially after my last ****ty experience with UAL. Thankfully any flights in the near future will be to either Texas or Minnesota, so I will be able to stick with JetBlue and Delta.

Have you ever been afraid of a passenger that walked in?

Yesterday, 8/2/2010, was the 25th anniversary of the crash of Delta 191 at DFW, with the main cause being windshear. Is that flight referenced in your training today? Have you ever experience windshear?

No, I can't think of even one time.

How far of a drop would it take for passengers who aren't bulked in to fly up and hit the ceiling?
I know in the past you have said that when you hit some bumps and get the falling feeling in the pit of your stomach it is usually only from the plane dropping 20-50 feet, due to a downdraft?

That accident is largely responsible for the emphasis on windshear recovery that all airline pilots now routinely receive in their recurrent simulator training. The flight itself is rarely mentioned anymore, but most pilots who have been flying for more than 10 years know of it.

In our simulator training we have windshear scenarios for both takeoff and approach. The takeoff scenario involves a wind shift from headwind to tailwind that causes the airspeed to stagnate just prior to rotation speed. If we get to the last 2000' of the runway and we're still below takeoff speed, we have to rotate anyway and firewall the thrust levers. We will raise the pitch attitude to whatever it takes to avoid a sink rate and we may even ride the edge of a stall. The alternative to rotating at this low speed is to go off the runway which would be disastrous.

The approach scenario has a windshear on short final when only a couple of hundred feet in the air. Recovery is initiated at the first sign of windshear (a loss or gain of more than 10 kts of airspeed) and we fly at whatever pitch angle we need to avoid sinking. After clearing the windshear, we clean up the plane (raise the gear and flaps) and decide on our next step (probably a divert to another airport).

Yes, I've encountered windshear and I'm glad to say it was much tamer than the scenarios we train to in the simulator. For one thing, it occurred when still about 500' above the ground which made the recovery much less exciting (sometimes dull is good).

I should point, in case this discussion causes anxiety among any white-knuckle flyers, windshear doesn't just pop up at random and surprise us. We know when windshear is likely, either due to local convective activity, windshear reports from the tower, or PIREPs from preceding aircraft. Whenever we have reason to believe that windshear is possible, we brief the recovery procedure and also brief airspeed parameters for the non-flying pilot to closely monitor. By initiating windshear recovery at the first sign of the shear, we make the recovery almost a non-event.

Not even this one?

I couldn't sleep one night, so I decided to read some ACARS reports. Have you ever filed one? After reading several, it appears some of them were for the most mundane of situations, i.e. ATC had a bad attitude that day. What are your thoughts on these reports? It seems like a good idea, but how often does something get corrected from them?

Good point. That really is the nightmare in air travel these days.

You mean ASAP reports, right? They're also called ASRS or NASA reports. ASAP is the Aviation Safety Action Program; ASRS stands for Aviation Safety Reporting System. For more information, this link provides a good overview.

I think these reports are a great idea. They allow a way to bring attention to safety issues that might otherwise remain hidden, waiting to form a link in the error chain. The anonymous nature of the reports (the reporter is known only to the ASAP program; any use of the information is de-identified) along with the freedom from fear of any regulatory action against the reporter makes the system possible. [I should note, however, that it's not a "Get Out of Jail Free" card; it won't protect against willful disregard for regulations and it can't be used to shield someone from violation action for an incident that the FAA is already aware of.]

Many airlines have their own in-house version of the FAA's program and they're all good as long as they adhere to the principles of anonymity and impunity for the reporter. It hasn't always been handled in this way (see this related article).

Hard to say how often some systemic problem gets corrected as a result of ASAS; I don't know if any results of this type are published. Just this year the FAA has changed the rules on taxi instructions for crossing runways. Up until 2010, a taxi clearance to "Taxi to Runway XX" specifically cleared the pilot to taxi across all runways on the way to XX. With the recent change, we must now have explicit clearance to cross any runway along the way. I don't know for sure that this is a result of ASAP runway incursion reports, but that's my guess.

I lot of the reports you see in the program may seem trivial but if the same reports keep cropping up they will probably get attention. Not sure about the "bad attitude" report, but if it results in safety being compromised I guess it's a consideration.

Look at Post #839 for an example of an issue I reported. This one was unusual enough that the NASA people at Moffett Field called me for follow-up information. When I wrote that report, my main motivation was to bring attention to an issue that I thought was a major safety issue (having a special needs passenger on a plane without a flight attendant), but it was also on my mind that we had technically busted an altitude assignment as a result of the incident.

I recently read a story about puppies dying on an AA flight. Is airline travel generally not safe for pets? Are they just kept with all the luggage?

Makes me think of how race car drivers correct oversteer before the car even looks sideways, which makes it look like nothing was happening to begin with. Just cool the way someone highly skilled can make difficult things look easy.

Animals travel in the baggage compartment which is pressurized and temperature controlled. However, the ability to keep a comfortable temperature is limited and that's why we won't accept animals for transport during the hot summer months.

I found an article on-line regarding the AA puppy story. Looks like someone screwed up by accepting the puppies for the flight. (bold comments are mine):

Yea that's def a common rule. I had a friend who was flying a dog from Las Vegas to Costa Rica a few years back. It was in, I think, Sept 06. It was way too hot in Vegas for Continental to even consider allowing the dog on the LAS-IAH leg. He drove the dog to Houston and then the dog took the IAH-SJO leg. He had to do something similar a few months back when the dog came back to the US.

Here's some pics taken with my iPhone on my flight to Las Vegas 5 days ago (these were taken on the portion over Kansas and Colorado while we were at 38,000'). These look innocuous, but you would not want to fly through any of these...they were all painting red on the wx radar and we took care to fly around them.

Last night, coming back from Vegas on the red-eye (about 3 am EDT), I watched a very impressive lightning display to the north of us. Flashes were going off every 1-2 seconds across a wide expanse of sky and it stretched for over a hundred miles and went on for about 30 minutes. I asked the controller if he had weather to our north and it was an area stretching over Minnesota, Wisconsin and into Michigan with tornado warnings. Nice to watch from a distance.

So are those thunderstorm clouds or just bad turbulence clouds? I often see those big puffy marshmellow clouds but they are white and doesn't look like it is raining below