Thanks Ruthann...

That's more like it.
Originally uploaded by Fly For Fun

Ruthann thought she could come up with a more realistic avatar for my blog and website. I think she has, what do you think?

Thanks Ruthann. It's perfect.

Corporate pilot buddy Bob stops by for a visit

My good friend Bob swung by the area in his brand new Challenger 300 jet. Well, not exactly HIS jet, as he was flying it for the fractional jet charter company he works for. I have a number of friends who fly for the big two operators, Flex Jet and Net Jets, and they all seem to be pretty happy there.

Bob and I go back 15 years when we flew Twin Otters together out of Long Island. We hauled gamblers down to Atlantic City and brought them back home, usually $10,000 lighter in the wallet. We could almost tell how much they lost when computing the weight and balance. It was especially hard for us to watch all those throwing money away when Bob and I made $1000 and $1600 a month respectively. Ahh, well. They were still good times. Especially when I was able to fly with Bob, who was the best co-pilot to fly with. The kind of guy who brings donuts to the company meetings, is really enthusiastic and who flies exceptionally well.

So it was fun to catch up with him while he showed me the really slick features in the new Challenger 300. He pointed out the extra large LCD screens, the lack of any overhead switches and the plush interior. His co-pilot was busy doing Jepps revisions in the cabin. The airplane holds around 15 books and the pilots are expected to keep them up to date during their sit time. It looked like a daunting task.

With all of this paper on board, I found it funny that Canadair didn't include a clip on the yoke to hold your approach plate. Some guys have taken to buying a clip that has sticky tape on one side from Staples to hold the charts. Proof that the designers aren't pilots in every case.

I'll leave you with some pictures of this really sexy machine. But do note the revisions and yoke clip:

2nd Paris trip - The Rugby World Cup

As I was in the bus going to the employee parking lot on my way home from the previous trip, crew schedule let me know that I would be going back to Paris the next day. Fine with me. I knew I was paying back some karma from the month of September when they hardly needed me.

This time the Captain was yet another Mark T. and the FB was one of my favorite guys, Mike H. The captain was on reserve from NY since we must have been out of pilots in Boston. He had previously been based in Boston and I had flown with him a few times, as I recall.

We agreed to meet up for dinner later that night. I met one of the flight attendants who would be coming to dinner with us in the lobby of the hotel in the early afternoon. We agreed to tour around together. Nancy helped me find a great shirt that my daughter needed for her school's travel theme day on Monday. We stopped in The Mazet pub (the same pub seen in this video) where we had a beer. Both on the way in and on the way out, Nancy caught the eye of two of the more wild English rugby fans. They gave her a very warm welcome, in fact.


We continued to walk around the 'Latin Quarter' checking out the shops (got the shirt!) and sights. It never fails in Paris that you'll find a couple making out in the middle of the street, and this trip was no exception. Of course I had to get a picture to share with you...


The copilot who was supposed to have flown this trip was 'reassigned' to one of the early morning two day Caribbean trips. He had reservations at Le Volant where we've eaten before and he let Mike know that we could go in his place. It turned out to be a great thing, since most everything in Paris was full on the night of the huge Rugby match between France and England. We enjoyed our seats, even though the TV was behind a huge pillar from where we were sitting. I guess this is good as any place to sit the americans who don't actually know anything about rugby. We enjoyed the atmosphere, though.




Le Volant had people spilling out into the street as they had a TV outside for everyone to watch. It was a popular place that night. But we were ready to beat the rush for the metro to get back to the hotel, so we left before the end of the game.


We passed a few other pubs on the way back to our hotel that were equally full.


By the time we arrived at the hotel we found out that #2 ranked France lost to #6 ranked England in what was quite an exciting upset. Of course, we were pulling for France. Hey, when in France, route for the French team. If we had been in Manchester, well, we would have certainly pulled for England. But if I somehow find myself in Dallas, well, the same can't be said.

The only good picture from the flight home was of this dessert that Nancy brought to the cockpit:

Paris 3 day - Going in circles.

I wasn't too disappointed to get a Paris trip call for the next day. It's hard to complain about having to go to work when it involves a Paris or even a Manchester trip. I tend to be a night person, so the evening departures work out better for me than the 5 a.m. trip to the Caribbean.

The Captain was again Mark, and Russ was the FB. I was happy to be flying as the FO today. Before I left, I texted a friend of mine in France who is just finishing up his training with the French Air Force. I usually let him know when I am in Paris, just in case he can make it out. He's usually many hours away by train, but he had the time off this time so he agreed to meet up with me. I first met Nicolas 6 years ago when he came to stay with our neighbor with hopes of improving his english. He wanted to apply for an ab initio Air France pilot position and part of that interview involved speaking and understanding english. Linda and I agreed to host him for two weeks at first, but we enjoyed having him so much that he ended up staying for most of that summer and the next. He didn't get the Air France job, but after the second summer with us, he applied with the French Air Force and was accepted. He's currently flying the Alpha Jet and really enjoying himself.



Mark gave me the leg for the flight over, but as we approached Paris it became apparent that neither of us would be making the landing this morning. The ceilings were around 100 feet and the visibility was between 150 and 600 meters. The autopilot can perform a Cat III Autoland down to 75 meters, so that is what we set up for. Landing turned out to be the easy part, it was the taxiing in that proved more difficult. We could only see about 300 feet in front of us, so we proceeded with caution.

I was only able to get in a 45 minute nap before I had to get back up. I rolled out of bed and walked deliriously down to the train station to meet up with Nicolas. We had lunch at a Creperie close to our hotel and then visited for the next 5 hours until he had to go back to his home in Nantes. We talked about all sorts of flying stories and he happened to ask me about flying a holding pattern in the Boeing. "It's SO much easier with the FMS, Nicolas." He lamented about holding at night with charts that were hard to read in the dimly lit cockpit. But it was funny we should talk about holding patterns...

I slept for a big portion of the evening after Nicolas left. I had sprung for the $30 internet fee which I almost never do, but I wanted to share some stuff with Nico. So after taking another 2 hour nap, I was up surfing away. But I couldn't hold out much longer and I was soon sleeping the night away. If you ever really want to get some good sleep before departing the next day on one of these trips, try the no nap after arriving in the morning method. It's a killer, but you WILL sleep well that night.

Captain Mark had brought his wife and they had a good time in Paris. He insisted the next day that I fly the landing back in Boston, which was very generous. But when we arrived in Boston, the weather was approaching Cat III minimums, so we set up for it instead. So we would be flying two legs in three days and no one would be hand flying a landing. Typically you might see one Cat III autoland in a year, so this was a little unusual.

But before we landed, almost as if to pay homage to Nicolas, we were given a hold for one turn just east of Boston. Unlike holding when you're getting your flight ratings, Boeing makes this process pretty simple. Just type in the name of the fix, the inbound radial, the length of the leg and you're set. No need to decide if the entry is a direct, parallel or teardrop, it does it for you. Here's an example of the FMS page and the resulting drawing shown on the map page.

Back to work...

When you are on international reserve, the company can potentially call you at any moment for a trip. However, you're usually notified around noon the day before the trip. For domestic reserves, you need at least an 8 hour period of designated rest in 24 hours. When they run out of reserve coverage from the domestic pilots, they will give the international pilots this designated rest period just in case a domestic trip comes up.

Last night I was given a rest period that ended at 5 a.m., meaning that they couldn't call me until 5. just as my clock read 5 a.m., my phone rang this morning and I knew this couldn't be good news. They had a trip for me that signed in at 7 a.m. I could make that, I figured, but having not flown for the past month, it took a bit of time to convert my suitcase from vacation mode to work mode. I found myself taping my i.d. back together after I broke it while trying to install a carseat in an airplane during our trip home 2 days earlier. I dusted off my jacket that we never wear during the summer months and changed out the manuals in my kitbag. Finally I took a look at the trip on the computer. Wow, a 'ferry flight' down to Miami with a deadhead back home. How easy. No passengers at all going down and just ride home and catch up on some video on the iPhone. Deadhead trips have become much easier ever since the invention of the video iPod or iPhone.

I hadn't flown with this captain, Steve, yet. He's on the domestic side and I probably fly 3 domestic trips a year or so. Steve also is a fellow mac user who's very involved in video editing, so we had plenty to talk about.

In fact, so much so that I really didn't get any pictures at all during the quick flight to Miami. I hope to make it up on the next trip. One interesting thing about the flight was our very light airplane resulted in an approach speed of 110 knots or 126 mph. That's about as slow as I've seen.

The flight home saw a rarity. We raced to our gate expecting to have a middle seat in the back or even a cramped cockpit jumpseat, but they had two seats available in first class for us. It's been a long time since we've seen that happen. After saying hello to the Boston international crew flying the plane home (two friends) we sat back and enjoyed the flight home. Total time away from home: 11 hours. Not too bad.

I'm on reserve for the next 6 days, so I'm sure something else will pop up. I suspect I'll be flying a lot more than last month. Hopefully I'll have enough time off to put the final touches on the swing set project!

Danger, elderly people in Ireland!

We've been to Ireland to visit Linda's friends and family seven of the past ten years. But this was the first time we've been able to bring my mom along. She's been a good sport and she even posed with this unusual sign along the road...

Q & A

I finally have a chance to catch up on a few questions from Patrick of Switzerland concerning transatlantic flying. I figured I'd answer here on the 'trip report.'

Patrick asks:

Relief pilots, you call them FB (flight buddy?) have to be Captain-qualified on the specific type of aircraft (e.g. 757/767). Meeting that requirement, can you bid this position (crew schedule) in order to get to more international long-haul destination or is being FB a non-loved duty because you can't log a landing? 

The FB name probably comes from the term First Officer-B. So it's really like a second first officer position. It pays the same as the co-pilot position. The disadvantage is that you usually don't get a landing on your trip. Almost always the FB position goes junior to FO, but they still run a bit more senior than many of the domestic FO's flying narrow body aircraft. It really comes down to what you enjoy flying the most. My brother (also a captain here) prefers domestic flying, even though he's flown a good deal of international in his career. I prefer the layovers in Europe even though they are becoming more and more expensive with the low value of the dollar. It's nice to work at a major where you can choose what kind of flying you'd like to do.

Patrick also asks:

When your aircraft is ADS-B equipped, that means you don't have to make position reports at all, right? CPDLC requires ADS-B but you can flying without CPDLC over the Atlantic with ADS-B on, so you'll have to make only a position report on HF when switching airspaces.

Right. We tested CPDLC (Controller Pilot Data Link) in the 757 when flying through Miami's airspace a few years back. They aren't doing it anymore for some reason. About the only non verbal way we communicate with ATC anymore is by the position report capability built into a few of our 767's and 757's. All of the 777's have this capability.

This makes life much easier when crossing the Atlantic. Currently, every 10 degrees starting at 50 then 40, 30 and 20 degrees, we have to call up either Gander on the Canadian side or Shanwick on the Ireland side of 30 degrees and tell them our flight number, position, altitude, time estimate for our next position, the name of the next point after that and our fuel on board. They will then relay this information to a separate air traffic controller and also to our company who tracks our fuel and position. So it might sound something like this:

"Gander American one four six, position."

"Go ahead American one four six."

"American one four six position five one north, five zero west, 2230, flight level 370, estimating five two north, four zero west at 2315, five two north, three zero west next. Fuel six zero decimal five. (thousand pounds)

That's not so hard, but getting a word in through the extreme static of the HF radios can be a challenge. Some have likened it to talking into a geiger counter. I believe in a few years, these automatic position reports will be standard on all north atlantic crossings. I can't wait.

While we're on the subject of technology, I'm really excited that we've been granted FAA approval to carry 3 of our airplane manual books in digital form on a laptop. This will save a couple of pounds for those of us who regularly carry a computer anyway. We can also access any part of the manual quickly through the search function. We're told this will start on October 15th. Since this results in opening up a significant amount of space in my kitbag, I hope to bring my good digital SLR camera with me occasionally. Maybe someone will invent a smaller kitbag for us as well, although we're still required to carry the Jepps manuals which are between one and two books per trip.

This is just an intermediate step until we get our class three EFB (electronic flight bag) early next year in the 757/767. Once all of the airplanes are converted, I would imagine we will be able to leave almost all of our books at home. I never thought I'd see the day! We'll be telling junior pilots in ten years, "Back when I was a co-pilot, you had to replace hundreds of pages every week in those manuals! You don't know how good you have it, son!" All the while, they'll be thinking, "Geezer. Get out of my left seat."

Speaking of getting out of the seat, it looks like the retirement age for pilots in the U.S. will be going up to 65 years from 60. This will slow down some hiring a bit, but I suspect a number of pilots at AA will be going at 60 anyway. My guess would be 50%, but no one really knows. I know my dad was fully capable of flying well past 60 and he's still flying formation flights in WWII aircraft even today at age 77. But not everyone agrees with the change, especially those around my seniority. I can clearly see both sides of the argument, but most of those who I fly with would prefer no change to the rule. I won't truly know how I feel about it until I put in my 36th year while looking at 5 more.

The ones mostly affected will likely be you guys who are learning to fly right now. I'm hoping it's offset a bit by all the new positions available in the corporate world, which is set to really take off. (Oh, that was a weak pun.)

Thanks Patrick for the great questions!