Archive for the ‘Aviation Careers’ Category

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What I miss about GA

Monday, May 21st, 2012

I recently did a flight from DTW to Kalamazoo (AZO). We had some time on the ground to kill, and our gate’s location gave us a great view of the approach end of Runway 17. Several airplanes were doing pattern work, including a Cessna 172 (with a horribly ugly paint scheme, I might add), a Piper Cherokee, and one or two others. A couple were flown by students, as evidenced by the hesitant radio transmissions and the near-misses of nosewheel-first landings. Others were likely someone out just practicing, taking advantage of the clear sky and summer-like March weather.

My first officer and I began chatting about how nice it would be to trade places for a day with these pilots.

The truth is, I can’t tell you how much I miss general aviation flying. I don’t get to do it nearly as much as I would like because of the cost, and when it comes to travel, you can’t beat the free flight benefits of the airline.

But I miss everything about GA—getting dirty on a preflight, being able to turn the radio off, tracing my flight on a sectional (not easy at 400 knots true while in the flight levels), or just taking the airplane around the patch one more time because I didn’t like my landing. If I tried that at my day job, I’d have more than a little explaining to do. They might even deduct the cost of the extra fuel from my paycheck. And I especially miss doing primary flight instruction. I’ve long maintained that if I could make the same income as an instructor as I do now, I’d trade my uniform for shorts in a heartbeat.

On occasion, we will see a 172 or a Cherokee on our TCAS that is flying at or below 1,000 feet just sightseeing or slowly going from place to place, or maybe even nowhere in particular. Once in a while we see those airplanes doing ground reference maneuvers or lazy 8s. It’s hard not to think about how far my own career has come watching somebody else go through those maneuvers that I too had to master.

If you are pursuing a professional career, take the time to enjoy the steps along the way, and if you can pull it off, stay involved in your GA roots. You will miss it more than you ever will imagine. I fly whenever I can, and I keep my CFI certificate active; I worked way too hard to ever let it expire.

There may be a thing or two about GA that I don’t miss—the broken orange juice cans in the Cessnas, not having a weather radar, bouncy fuel gauges, and I’d like to have an autopilot—but the benefits way outweigh the cons. I think I’d like more than anything to be able to fly a cross-country and substitute my iPod for ATC…just once.—By Chip Wright

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The only thing faster than the airplane is information

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

It is amazing the contrasts in government efficiency–or the lack thereof–that exist every day. For instance, the FAA has spent billions to get the NextGen ATC system off the ground, and for all of that, we still have NowGen and YesterGen. Likewise, as my AME likes to say, the pilots are flying in 2012, but the FAA is practicing medicine in 1960-something. On the other end of the spectrum is the IRS. Get their attention, and you will be hearing about it immediately. They don’t mess around.

But, for all of the bad FAA jokes (my favorite: I’m from the FAA and I’m not happy until you’re not happy), the feds are by and large good people who do the best they can with the tools they have been given, which means they aren’t any different than you and me. I recently got a reminder that when they need to do something fast, they can.

I recently had an encounter with severe turbulence while climbing out of Baltimore. It was a short encounter, and not all that unexpected because of the weather. But, as with any encounter so severe, it got my intention. So, being the dutiful air-person and practitioner of air-person-ship that I am, I reported it to ATC.

The Washington Center controller asked a flurry of questions, and I responded with a flurry of information: altitude, exact location, a description of what happened. Every other airplane on the frequency immediately wanted to know where it was, and they requested deviations away from my little find.

The controller began by asking all flights climbing and descending in our area for ride reports. All the flights were in 737s or bigger, and they all reported “moderate” or “heavy moderate,” and you could hear the bounces in their voices. This made sense, because the CRJ that I fly has short, skinny wings, and it does not absorb turbulence very well at all. What would be severe to us might very well not be to something bigger; of course, the reverse applies as well.

What was so impressive was how quickly the word got out. On every frequency that I used for the balance of our flight to Cincinnati, the controller was issuing the pilot report about our encounter. On the first frequency change, as we were checking in, he was reading the news to everyone in his sector. I told him that we were the reporting aircraft, and he had a couple of follow-up questions, mostly pertaining to the accuracy of his information. It was spot on. It was quick, accurate, and given the proper sense of urgency.

When we landed, I called a friend of mine used to fly for us. He now flies for Southwest and was getting ready to commute to work from Providence, R.I. I told him to be ready for a bumpy ride, and relayed our experience. When he arrived in Baltimore, he called me back and said that the ride into BWI on the 737 flight he took was “737 moderate, and borderline RJ severe. That was a good call, and I’m glad I wasn’t there.”

I wish I hadn’t been either, but I’m glad that the FAA has the means to disseminate that kind of critical information as quickly as it did. Of course, these are the folks who got thousands of airplanes on the ground on September 11, 2001, in record time, so they deserve credit where credit is due.—By Chip Wright

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Evaluation by the Administrator

Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

I was recently in the simulator helping out with some training, and I had an epiphany of sorts. You may have noticed when you read the FARs that in all too many instances is the phrase (or something similar) “will be evaluated by the Administrator, or his designee.”

In short, this means that the head cheese of the FAA is supposed to personally evaluate or test just about everything in the aviation universe. To do so would be a monumental and impossible task, even if the Administrator did nothing else. So, by law, the Administrator can have designees do the work. That way, the Administrator can spend his or her time Administrating.

I’ve explained in previous posts how some of this works with regard to check airmen/-women/-persons at the airlines. I have the honor, privilege, and responsibility of fulfilling this role as a line check airman at my company.

What struck me this week was the level of respect and integrity that this process really does engender. On my first day in the sim, I was flying as a captain for a first officer who was undergoing some training in the right seat. The sim instructor was a friend of mine who is quite a bit junior to both of us. The session went well, and when necessary, Joe asked to see the FO re-fly a maneuver that could have been done better the first time. He did, and when the session was over we all went our separate ways.

The next day, Joe was working with two very senior (and in this case, much older) captains who were being brought back to the training department after having flown the line for awhile. One of them was also being qualified for the first time in our 700/900 variant, and he was wrapping up his training by being officially qualified in the right seat. He won’t fly the line in that capacity—he won’t fly the line in the left seat of the 700/900 either—but he needed to be qualified nonetheless.

I happened to be in the break room with all of them, shooting the breeze and talking shop while waiting for my own session to start. What struck me was the way the tone of the conversation changed when one of the “students” asked a question about the lesson plan for the day. All three of them immediately fell into a very professional mode and demeanor, and Joe was accorded the same respect and decorum that the Administrator himself would have garnered.

Here were two fellows who had at least 10 years of seniority—one had close to 20—on Joe’s time at the company. They were older. Out on the line—heck, it had happened just a few minutes before—Joe would have been the subject of some good-natured kidding and ribbing as an FO or as the baby chick in the henhouse. But at the drop of a hat, when the talk turned serious, he was recognized as the man in charge. He had the ability and the authority to stop the training process in its tracks if necessary or if warranted by poor performance. In my own sim session the day before, he could have grounded me, even though the event had nothing to do with me.

I’ve seen this kind of thing a thousand times in the past, but I never really appreciated it as I was watching it happen. For some reason, it caught my attention this time. I left the room before they had finished their discussion, but I didn’t need to be there to see how it would end. And I knew that once in the box, all three would be professional, cordial, and respectful of one another.

This sort of interaction goes on every day, and it is a testament to the success of the system that allows—forces—the FAA to place a great deal of authority and autonomy in the hands of its field representatives.

Pilots, mechanics, dispatchers, doctors, and dozens of others treat their burdens and responsibilities with great care, and exercise the extreme limits of their duties with restraint and when circumstances require. They don’t do it because they have an axe to grind or a seniority number to gain or vendetta to exact. In fact, in cases where two people simply can’t get along, they will often agree to seek another evaluator to avoid allegations of a conflict of interest.

This system works, and we should all be grateful that it does.—By Chip Wright

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FOQA

Monday, April 30th, 2012

In a previous post, I discussed the Aviation Safety Action Program (ASAP) that is used at some airlines to create a new kind of safety environment. In addition to ASAP, there is a program called the Flight Operations Quality Assurance (FOQA, pronounced “Foe-KWA”). Whereas ASAP relies on self-disclosure for its success, it is limited to those reports that are turned in, as well as by the information that is actually provided in the narratives, thus limiting its scope and effectiveness.

FOQA, like ASAP, requires a joint approach among the airline, the FAA, and the pilot unions. Where FOQA differs is in the fact that the information is gleaned from the flight data recorders (FDRs) on board the airplanes. The data from the FDR is downloaded by the designated personnel, and the information that identifies flight numbers, crews, et cetera, is immediately separated.

Using some pretty sophisticated and slick computer software, it is possible to choose which parameters to study. Say, for instance, you want to check out all flights that exceeded a certain rate of descent in the terminal area, and did so for more than 10 seconds. You can find that.

Or, if you want to flnd flights that landed more than so many pounds over the max landing weight, you can. There are hundreds of parameters that can be searched individually, or thousands of combinations can be created. There are usually certain trends that the airline wants to track at a given time, so they will search those, as well as any other trigger points that have their interest.

The information can be viewed numerically or graphically, and it can also be viewed as a video playback, which allows it to be seen in real time and in context. It’s all very slick, but it’s also very time consuming to produce the videos, so only a select few are made.

Even if the folks in the FOQA office find that certain performance parameters are being exceeded by a certain amount, they can’t just call the crew or ground them—remember, they don’t know who the crew is, and nor does the FAA. Further, cockpit voice recorder (CVR) downloads are not used. However, they can reach out to the designated representative(s) from the union, who can then “open the envelope” to see who the crew is. Only the designated contact persons can actually contact the crew, and the crew does not have to share any information at all—or they can share whatever information they want to, without fear of retribution or discipline.

The reason that the program works this way is that it is against the law to use FDRs for discipline; CVRs are not used because voices are too easy to identify. In fact, the FDR and CVR can only be used when there is an accident. For some pilots, the very thought that the FDR information can be viewed outside of an accident is unsettling. FOQA works because the respect for the privacy of the crew is not only paramount, but also it is the fundamental basis on which the program is designed.

In fact, no crew will ever know that one of its flights or actions is being scrutinized unless the designated contact person calls. More importantly, the company and the FAA will never know. The tradeoff is that the airline—and the FAA—are able to extract extremely useful information that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get. As an example, a major airline was able to find out from FOQA that crews on one of its fleet types was unable to meet certain visual approach criteria at a particular airport. Thanks to the FOQA data, changes were made.

The U.S. airline industry is in the midst of an incredible run with regards to safety and accident prevention–which is proof that, done correctly, ASAP and FOQA, along with other safety and training programs, work. Industry and government have both embraced each program, and we have all embraced the results…even if we didn’t know it.—Chip Wright

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It looked easy on paper

Monday, April 23rd, 2012

Why is the day that should be easy the one that gets difficult, and vice versa? As I write this, I’m on a trip that started off as a fairly long, potentially hard day. It was scheduled for five legs, with an airport check-in time of 6:09 in the a.m. The nine minutes is the company’s idea of being generous with extra sleep.

As a result, I woke up at four-something at the hotel in DTW to catch the 5:35 van. Our duty period was scheduled for 13 hours. Any number of things could have gone wrong. The consolation for me was twofold: The overnight was scheduled for my home city, so I could spend the night in my own bed; secondarily, the trip got easier with each day. The second day only had three legs, and it was scheduled to end at 1:30 in the afternoon. Very gentlemanly.

The first day went off without a hitch. All five legs went as planned, even with a flight attendant change in the middle and an FAA operational observation in Raleigh-Durham. We even had light loads, which always helps.

The second day did not start so promisingly. All of our flights would be full or close to it. The first one was full with a company dispatcher trying to get on our jumpseat. (Dispatchers are required to get five hours a year of observation time in the cockpit.) It was raining steadily when we got to the airport, and the weather in Memphis was lousy, which required an alternate. The closest one was Nashville, which is not close—it was 40 minutes away, so we had much more fuel than we usually do for a flight to Memphis. We spent at least 10 minutes trying to make the math work to get the dispatcher on board, and every time we thought we had it, something would change (like more luggage). It got so that not only did the dispatcher not make it, but neither did one of the passengers (who actually appeared to be quite pleased with the development).

In the middle of all of this, I had to review the MEL to make myself familiar with the procedures to use when a fuel pump is not working. The pumps are so reliable that this was only the second or third one I’d seen deferred in more than 9,000 hours in the airplane.

The end result was a late push followed by a headwind of well more than 80 knots. To add insult to injury, our gate was occupied upon arrival in Memphis, and we lost precious connection time waiting for another one. The poor visibility in the morning had slowed the operation considerably.

We made it to Cincinnati with the only aggravation being a different runway assignment than we had expected, which led to a longer-than-planned taxi, but we were still late. None of us could fly any farther without some food, so we ran to get something to take with us. And finally, fate smiled upon us: The weather system had pushed through, and the jet stream finally gave us the push we needed. We left 10 minutes late for Richmond, flew fast, and landed on time. The crew that took over the airplane had no idea how grateful we were to see them.

I handed the captain the keys, packed my bags, and bid him fare thee well. Oh, and by the way, there’s this fuel pump issue you should be aware of…—Chip Wright

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ASAP

Monday, April 16th, 2012

Aviation, if you haven’t noticed, is loaded with abbreviations and acronyms. There are FARs, the AIM, MAPs (not to be confused with maps), ILSs, and DHs, METARS, TAFs, and NOTAMS. Airspace used to have TRSAs, ARSAS, and TCAs…and I haven’t even mentioned NASA, which speaks acronym-ese. Speaking of NASA, all pilots are able to participate in the ASRS program, which brings me to ASAP.

ASAP stands for Aviation Action Safety Program, and it is commonly in use at Part 121 air carriers. At first glance, it appears to be just like the ASRS program, and it is…sort of. Like the ASRS, pilots and other participating employees can self-disclose when they make a mistake. For example, if a pilot taxis two feet over the hold-short line for a runway, he is guilty of a committing a runway incursion. Now, it is possible that the controller never saw it because of the vantage point of the tower. It’s also possible that no other aircraft was affected.

But the pilot still made a mistake and inadvertently violated a federal aviation regulation. Worse, it’s an area in which the FAA has been aggressive in the last few years to change pilot behavior because the safety ramifications and some accidents.

With ASAP, the pilot is able to fill out a form (usually online) and explain what happened, and if possible, why. In this case, it might be something simple (“I just screwed up.”) or it might be a previously unknown safety issue (“The paint was difficult to see, especially at night,” or “The flashing lights were not working”). The report then goes to a central data base where it is reviewed by a committee.

The committee can be called any number of things, but what’s important is who is on it. At unionized carriers (which is almost all of them), the committee consists of a representative from the FAA, the airline’s safety department, and the safety committee of the union. You typically won’t see chief pilots or anybody who can impose discipline on the pilots. The reason is that the program is built on trust and confidentiality.

Once the report is opened by the committee, they discuss it in detail, and decide how to act on it. If, in the above case, they agree that the incursion was simply inadvertent, they may close the report. Or, if they suspect something else may have been involved, such as fatigue or poor judgment, they may call one or both pilots in for questioning to see what might be done to prevent similar problems in the future. If the problem is poor paint or broken lights or a bad airport diagram, then the information is forwarded to the appropriate people as quickly as possible.

The only time a pilot can face discipline is if the committee agrees that the pilot deliberately violated a FAR or exercised poor judgment, or if the infraction was reported from someone other than the pilot (the assumption then is that the pilot may have gotten caught anyway, even without participation in the ASAP program). Acknowledging that you crossed a hold-short line because you were discussing impact of artificial turf on the lifetime batting stats of career designated hitters is bound to get you not only called in, but also may lead to a Letter of Warning from the FAA.

The overwhelming number of reports in ASAP files fall under “Oops!” banner, but many go deeper than that. Pilots can also report on any aspect of their company or FAA operation that they feel needs to be addressed. Examples run the gamut: Poorly designed approach and arrival procedures have been flushed out; better operational practices have been developed; charting errors have been corrected more quickly; and most importantly, better training has occurred because of the ASAP umbrella. ASAP is not a get-out-of-jail free card. It’s a tool that is used by the airline, the FAA, and the pilot community to maintain the highest level of safety.

There is much more to the program than what I have described, and it goes beyond pilots. Mechanics, dispatchers, and flight attendants can also craft ASAP programs, and the air traffic controllers also have their own. There have been a few instances when ASAP programs have been shut down by a participating group, and when that happens it almost always comes down to the suspicion that the necessary level of trust has been breached. Airlines and labor don’t always get along, but with ASAP, the level of trust is high, and the real beneficiary is not the participants, but the traveling public.—By Chip Wright

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Truly rare events

Friday, April 6th, 2012

For more than 20 years I’ve been flying airplanes, 15 of them for an airline. As a student and a flight instructor, one skill I practiced repeatedly was the missed approach (or go-around for VFR flying). It’s a critical task to be able to do in any possible landing configuration in any airplane. If you want proof, try doing one in a heavy Cessna 150 with 40 degrees of flaps on a hot day. It’s a challenge, to say the least, and it requires a fair amount of finesse to do well. As an instructor, I probably did no fewer than five go-arounds or missed approaches on a given day. Any that were done for real were almost always done because the preceding traffic was still on the runway.

In airline flying, however, they are exceedingly rare. Controllers handle the spacing, and even when there is a snafu, the missed approach is almost always done in visual meteorological conditions, and it almost always starts from an altitude of 500 feet or above.

What is even more rare, though, is to do one because of weather. I can recall doing fewer than 10 for wind shear or a microburst that beat me to the airport. And I have only done two—two—because we could not see the runway. The first one was an ILS in low ceilings but with good visibility beneath in Charleston, West Virginia. In fact, we saw the runway on the go-around. We came back around and landed on the second try.

The most recently was in January 2012. I was flying the right seat with a simulator instructor in the left. Both of us were slightly out of our element. The weather everywhere that day had been lousy, and we’d already done three ILS approaches to minimums, including our previous leg into Cincinnati that morning. The weather was down to a ceiling of 100 feet and a reported visibility on Runway 18L of a half-mile with the runway visual range hovering at 2,400 feet. The previous aircraft got in, but the crew reported that it was awfully close. We quickly reviewed the missed approach procedure again and went over the calls.

Since I was the nonflying pilot on this leg, it was up to me to make the altitude calls, and it would be up to me to call for the missed approach if the captain did not see the approach lights or the runway. One thing that experience teaches you is that the color of the clouds changes fairly dramatically when you near the base and will break out. These clouds stayed battleship gray. Further, we were flying into the sun, which did not help. The radar altimeter told us when we were crossing the Ohio River. The river and its deep valley have a stark impact on the local weather, and today was no exception. There was no sign of the runway at 500 feet above the minimum descent altitude. No sign of it either at 200 feet or at 100 feet. At the MDA/decision height, I called missed approach. We never once saw the ground.

Normally, an airline crew going missed is all thumbs because of the lack of practice. This one, though, was right out of the book. We had to deal with a flurry of activity in the ensuing minutes as we planned our next course of action. The flight behind us also went missed, and the controllers immediately turned the airport around, which opened the Category II approach to Runway 36R; the RVR was down to 1,600 feet, and the ceiling was holding steady. Our immediate concern was whether or not we had the fuel to do another approach and still safely divert. A call to our dispatcher confirmed that several airports within close range had VFR weather. His fuel computations matched ours, so we decided to try it again.

They only procedure that is on par for me as an unseen runway is a Category II ILS. This was only my fourth one, and it was my first from the right seat (we fly the CAT II as a captain’s-only maneuver). Being two miles from the top of the river valley made all the difference. We got the lights in sight just before reaching our DH, and in the blink of an eye, we had the runway in sight.

There is a lot of satisfaction in executing a difficult maneuver correctly, and a go-around can certainly qualify, especially with tail-mounted engines and wings with no slats. But the training and practice pay off, and that is critical when you are starting the maneuver so close to the ground that you might actually bounce. I haven’t done that yet, so I can’t help but wonder what it’s like…—Chip Wright

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The many ways of doing the same things

Monday, March 26th, 2012

Pilots are odd creatures. We all learn the same basic fundamentals of flying, and we all learn the same set of FARs. We also learn in the same basic set of airplanes: single-engine Cessnas, Pipers, and more recently, Diamonds and Cirruses. But fly with two pilots from a specific group, and the odds are that they will do a lot of things differently. Some may use the checklist diligently, some not at all. Some will always use flaps on takeoff, some won’t. They may use different speeds in the pattern. Yet, we all manage to take off and land safely most of the time.

The airlines and corporate departments counter this by coming up with a rigid set of protocols that allow two pilots who have never even met before to know exactly what to expect from each other when flying together for the first time. The system really is quite extraordinary.

What is truly amazing, though, is to watch two airlines operate a similar airplane in such wildly different fashions. I’ve flown on the jumpseat of the 737 for more than one airline, and while I didn’t pick up on all the subtleties and nuances, I definitely could see some differences. I really notice it when sitting on the jumpseat of another airline’s CRJ, which is what I fly.

Single engine taxi is a common strategy airlines use to save fuel. My company only does single engine taxi on the right engine because the right engine will provide enough hydraulic pressure to all the brakes without a configuration change. Others will alternate engines, and simply use the hydraulic pumps to pressurize the brakes. Neither is more right or wrong than the other. Our system eliminates a potential human error, and the other ensures even run time on the engines, which saves money.

Checklist philosophy is a major difference. My company requires that every checklist be verbalized by at least one crewmember, if not both. That way, in the event of an accident, the CVR will confirm whether the checklist was completed. Other carriers only verbalize certain checklists that are designated as “challenge and response.” There are pros and cons to both methods.

Sometimes, you see items on a checklist that make you say, “Really? Why is that on there?” Somewhere in the management structure is a person or persons whose background provides a reason. Or maybe they just don’t like the way something looks on a screen, so they create a checklist item to clear it. It happens.

More carriers are coming up with ways to deal with cell phones being left on. I never thought I’d see the day. The truth is that we should probably all have that. More than once mine has started vibrating on takeoff or landing…even at 10,000 feet. Oops.
Carriers will also use different flap extension speeds based on their own experience with flap issues that may be related to aerodynamic pressures caused by high speeds. Sometimes crews are mandated by their carrier to have the gear down at a certain point. We even use different maneuvering airspeeds. A carrier that has a lot of low time, new-hire pilots or a lot of turnover will build in more conservatism than a more stable or experienced company.

The biggest problem with checklists is complacency, and the best way to deal with that—in my opinion—is to change them just a little bit every six months or so in an effort to prevent relying them on memory alone. Just don’t count on anybody else using the checklist in the same way.—By Chip Wright

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The best instrument there is

Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

When I first started flying, I used to hear a lot of old timers tell stories about navigating with NDBs and the four-course range. VORs were the sexy new toy of the future. I still didn’t understand how one could safely navigate across the ocean, since VORs didn’t exist on water. I knew that the concept of taking star sightings existed, but I also knew that it was premised on a clear night. Conceptually, I think I knew that the speed of jets would make such triangulation difficult, but not impossible. It also didn’t dawn on me that not every nation in the world could just lay out VORs willy-nilly the way the United States did.

I also heard a lot of stories about the development of the flight instruments. Early versions of attitude indicators and directional gyros were primitive by the standards I was used to. The radios themselves were not always very good. It seemed like there were two classes: top-of-the-line Bendix-King…and everybody else. The Cessna radios were pretty good, but they didn’t have any of the “cool” features like flip-flop windows, DME, and the like. DME, by the way, was some kind of cool. Garmin rules the radio world now, it seems.

It wasn’t long before I began to follow in earnest the homebuilt movement. Kitplanes were just beginning to spread in great numbers—early RVs, Glasair, Lancair, and Kitfox dominated the advertising—and they also spawned a great deal of innovation that we now take for granted. A lot of the modern avionics that cost truckloads of money got started in the experimental arena. Certification wasn’t nearly as stringent, and the rapidly improving computer technologies (both hardware and software) invited a great deal of experimentation. A lot of the inspiration was drawn from airline and military “stuff,” but much of it was simply new. The cost was much lower than it would have been had everything been put through the gamut of FAA testing. It was clear that the homebuilders were leading the way. Nowadays, new airplanes with “glass” technology are taken for granted.

GPS, of course, has changed everything. I personally miss the days when pilots learned the intricacies of aerial navigation not just to pass a written test, but because their lives depended on it. But GPS simply makes a mockery of pencil-and-paper travel. With GPS, you don’t need to call Flight Watch for winds aloft; the heading for the nearest airport is a button push away; and the moving map makes a paper sectional seem quaint…but I still like the paper chart.

NDBs are relatively rare, and the GPS overlay approach can provide lower minimums. Other things long on a pilot’s wish list were an RMI, an autopilot, loran, weather radar, and better “orange juice cans” for the Cessna series. Today, such items have either been leap-frogged or accomplished.

But the most important instrument in the plane doesn’t get much attention. It isn’t fancy or sexy or sold by women in bikinis. It is, however, the cheapest in terms of bang for the buck, and it doesn’t let you down.

As fast as computers are, and as nifty as Nexrad weather is; as efficient and reliable as a moving map is; as handy and helpful as a TCAS display is; the fact is that nothing on an aircraft—or even a spacecraft—can hold a candle to the value and utility of…the windows.—By Chip Wright

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Some meandering thoughts

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

It doesn’t take long in any industry, I suppose, to notice certain trends and oddities. My wife is a teacher, and the stories she has of parents and students are enough to make you shake your head. Put together, they are somewhere between a riotous TV sitcom and pure Shakespearean tragedy. My father was an attorney, and the tales of idiocy that he would bring home would make you question the entire human condition.

Being a pilot isn’t any different. I was recently reminded of this when it comes to tourists, especially those from other countries. As a little background, I am huge baseball fan, but not just of the modern game. I love the history, of reading about the great players of years gone by that I never got to see. Of particular interest to me several years ago was the period of integration and the “Wait til next year” era of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Bums, as you may know, had an era of remarkable success on the field, but like Cinderella going to the dance, they just couldn’t beat the clock. Instead, they were beaten consistently in the World Series by the Yankees…until 1955, when they won their only title before moving to LA.

As a fan of the history of the game, I own two Brooklyn Dodgers hats with the distinctive “B” on the front.

On a bus ride recently from the hotel to the airport in Detroit, I saw a young lady from Japan. Delta has a large presence in the Asian country, and a large number of Japanese folks travel through DTW. Many are business travelers (especially for Toyota), and others are tourists. The Japanese tourists are as easy to pick out as it gets: They take pictures of everything! The airport, the airplane, the pilots (me included), sites that catch their attention, food, and anything with Mickey Mouse. Further, they keep detailed logs about everything they’ve seen, and they do so with the seriousness of a student studying for finals. Sometimes, I think we both need to take a lesson from each other…

As for the young gal on the bus, she was wearing a pink and black baseball cap. As many Americans do—and I don’t know why they do this, so if you can explain it to me, please do—the bill of the cap was still flat, and it still had the various this-is-a-new-hat stickers on it. And it had the unmistakable and distinctive “B” of the Dodgers. I didn’t get a chance to speak with her, so I don’t know if she thought it was a Red Sox cap, or if she just got it because she liked it. But it was yet another indicator of just how much the rest of the world looks to Americans for inspiration, style (they do this at their own risk), social norms (ditto), and the ability to make of yourself what you can. This young lady may have been an avid baseball fan herself—the Japanese love the game and have produced a number of exceptional major leaguers, including some signed by the (LA) Dodgers.

I’ve flown with so many foreign-born pilots that I’ve lost count, but the common message that they have is that no other country affords the aviation freedom and opportunity that the United States does, and we do it cheaper than they do. I was struck too by the realization that, in this country, we need to do everything we can to keep that dream alive not just for other nationals, but for ourselves and our kids. She, after all, was counting on a pilot most likely born in the United States to take her home. And we are counting on being able to do that in the future, as well as bringing her back to spend her money in the U.S.—be it at Disney World, a baseball game, or a hat store.

But I still don’t know why she was wearing those stickers…so keep flying, so we can get her back here and ask her.–By Chip Wright

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