By Tony Vallillo (19 June 2004)

An airline pilot considers each takeoff as being composed of several segments, each of which involves different considerations and contingency plans. During the first 80 knots or so, besides steering to the centerline, primary attention is being paid to setting the final takeoff thrust levels and confirming that all engine and systems parameters are appropriate. In this first stage of the takeoff, any abnormality will probably be cause for an abort. Above 80 knots, as speed and the difficulty of the abort maneuver increase, the reasons to abort a takeoff become whittled down to an engine failure, an actual fire, or an obvious inability to sustain flight, such as a major control malfunction. Most modern airliners have computers programmed to progressively mute certain systems warnings as speed increases. Things like air conditioning problems or partial hydraulic or electrical failures may not even annunciate above around 90 knots or so, so as not to trigger an unnecessary abort. When V1 is reached, you are, for all intents and purposes, committed to flight. At that point, the airplane is capable of continuing the takeoff successfully, even if an engine fails at any subsequent time. Perhaps more importantly, beyond V1 you no longer have any assured capability to stop within the confines of the runway.

As I advance the throttles, I bear all of these things in mind. Takeoff is as much a mental as a physical exercise, and the faster you go the faster you have to think. At speeds approaching 180 miles per hour you are traveling well in excess of 200 feet per second. There is little time to troubleshoot an apparent abnormality, since every second brings you hundreds of feet closer to the end of the runway. This is why we practice takeoff problems in the simulator again and again. Certain actions must be almost a reflex.

As the throttles are advanced, the autothrottle system is engaged. Modern airliners have autothrottle systems that can be engaged throughout the entire flight envelope, including takeoff and automatic landings. The system brings both throttles smoothly forward until either engine reaches the takeoff limit. At this point, the system de-clutches and a final manual adjustment is occasionally required to match the lagging engine to its more aggressive partner.

Today, we are using standard thrust for takeoff. In an apparent turn-about of vocabulary, "standard thrust" means reduced thrust. In search of a variety of benefits, such as cooler hot-section temps and longer engine life, we essentially take advantage of the fact that these engines are certified to get a 40<8,000 pound 767 off the ground. We don't need that much thrust to levitate 367,000 pounds, and so we can reduce the demand on the engines a bit and set a lesser thrust level for the takeoff. All of this is carefully calculated, by methods so arcane that few pilots can actually describe them cogently to a layman. No matter -- it works. The degree of reduction is limited by regulation, so we still have a good deal of excess thrust; indeed, all of the thrust is there for the asking if we just push the throttles farther forward. Modern digital engine control systems allow the throttles to be "firewalled"; that is, jammed all the way to the forward stop. On older airplanes, this would probably result in a few engine changes, as temperatures and rotor speed limits would be exceeded, but on the 767 the computers simply give us the full limit of power, without any overages. In a really extreme situation, wherein it wouldn't matter whether or not you got to use the engines again, you can overboost by turning off the engine control computers.

Since advancing the throttles, I have been steering the bird with my feet. The rudder pedals are linked to the nosewheel steering system, and allow a limited amount of steering even before the rudder becomes aerodynamically effective, at around 80-90 knots. A limited amount is normally all you need, especially at speed. Contrary to popular belief, we usually don't try to steer exactly down the centerline. There is a row of embedded lights along the centerline, and although they are "flush mounted", they still protrude enough to give a "bang bang bang" of increasing frequency as the nosewheel contacts them during the roll. So we try to steer a few feet to the side of centerline, to get a smoother ride.

The FO calls 80 knots and we crosscheck our airspeed indicators. We can also check them against the digital readout of groundspeed from the IRU"s, although the effects of wind will cause a small amount of disagreement between airspeed and groundspeed, even while on the ground. I divide my attention between the view of the runway out the window and the engine instruments on the center panel. From now on we are stopping only if we absolutely cannot fly.

Acceleration on takeoff in airliners varies considerably depending upon a number of factors, the two most significant being the number of engines and the weight. Generally, a two-engine airplane has much greater acceleration on takeoff than a three or four engine airplane. I still remember my first takeoff in an A300. It seemed to shoot down the runway like a bullet, and I seemed to be just hanging on! Eventually I got used to it. The reason, of course, goes back to takeoff planning. All airliners plan takeoffs against the possibility of one engine failing. On a four-engine airplane, that is a loss of around 25% of available thrust. A two-engine airplane is down by around 50%. Another way of looking at it is that the two-engine airplane, with both engines running, is almost 100% overpowered, relative to the minimum required performance. The 4-engine airplane is only around 33% overpowered. That big excess of power on a two-engine airplane yields a lot of acceleration! And if the airplane is light, relative to its maximum weight, the effect is even greater. One of the most rocket-like takeoffs you can experience in an airliner is in a 757 out of Orange County, in California. The short runway both limits the weight and requires maximum thrust, and the combination is spectacular performance -- until you are airborne around 1000 feet, and thrust is reduced for noise abatement, when the effect is not unlike the scene in "Apollo 13" when the first stage of the Saturn Five cuts out!

Tonight, our weight is well below maximum, so acceleration is fairly brisk. Just as well, for we must accelerate to a goodly speed. We are using flaps 5 for takeoff, the minimum extension permissible for takeoff and one of three available takeoff flap settings on the 767. Which setting we use depends upon the conditions. Flaps 5 is used when there is plenty of runway, and you are seeking to optimize climb performance. Flaps 5 gives you less drag, although it also produces less lift and results in a somewhat longer ground run, and rotation and liftoff at higher speeds. Tonight, on a 14,000-foot runway, that is no problem. Flaps 20, the maximum extension for takeoff, results in the greatest lift at the slowest speed, and is used when the runway is shorter, and there is no obstacle in the departure path that would require greater climb performance. Flaps 20 will get you off the ground in less distance and at a slower speed, but you won't initially climb as fast. Flaps 15 is a good combination of runway and climb performance, and is more or less the standard takeoff setting, the others being used only in situations where they are advantageous.

In short order, the FO calls V1 and we are fully committed to takeoff; now, not even an engine failure will keep us on the ground. Tonight, V1 is 153 knots. A heartbeat later, at 157 knots, he calls "Rotate" and I begin a gentle pull on the control column to raise the nose slowly. At around five or six degrees nose up, the ship becomes airborne, a condition signaled first by the click of the gear handle lock releasing, followed shortly by climb indications on the Vertical Velocity Indicator. When the altimeter joins the party by registering an increase in altitude, I command the landing gear to be raised verbally, and also with a hand signal. The hand signal is something of a relic from the DC-2 days, when cockpit noise was so great that the verbal command might not be heard. Today, especially on rear-engine designs like the MD-80, the cockpit is so quiet that the sound of a pin dropping might cause an abort! The 767, with its engines much closer to us, is not quite that peaceful, but even for us the hand signal is just a procedure - it's not really needed.

Tonight, our initial climb instructions are to turn right to a heading of 150 degrees. This we do at 400 feet, our minimum altitude for turns after takeoff. Only at certain airports on specific runways is the first turn after takeoff commenced at a lower altitude. At one time, ORD was one of these, and the takeoff on 14L, for example, was often spiced up by a hefty left turn started just above 100 feet! It's been a long time since I've flown out of ORD, and I don't know if this is still the case. If it were up to pilots, we wouldn't turn at all after takeoff until we reached at least 1000 feet and had begun the clean-up cycle. Turns after takeoff are almost always the result of noise abatement procedures, which, in turn, are the result of people living around most airports.

Airports have long exerted an almost magnetic attraction for development, however far they may have originally been from civilization. The area around JFK itself, for example, was once both idle and wild! Today we have specific arrival and departure procedures there and almost everywhere else, which represent a largely successful attempt to at least minimize the noise on the underlying communities. The task is a difficult one in the New York area, since all three airports share a good deal of common airspace, and the duty runway configuration at JFK is dependent upon that at LGA, and vice-versa. And, although wind direction is a principal consideration, the active runway is, when possible, rotated through the day to prevent any one area from having too long a period of airplanes flying over. The 13's at JFK are a good configuration, since the 150 heading takes us over the shore of Jamaica Bay, and over a relatively sparsely populated area of Rockaway. The arrival to the 13's, of course, is the famous Canarsie approach, which also tends to minimize overflights of populated areas until very close to the airport. It looks spectacular from the ground, but I suspect it is nowhere near as difficult to fly as the old Kai Tak airport approach over the checkerboard!

At 1000 feet I lower the nose a bit and start to accelerate. Up until this moment, we have been maintaining an airspeed of V2 + 15 knots, which approximates a best-rate-of-climb speed. Now, we accelerate and begin configuring the airplane for normal flight. Flap retraction begins at Vref + 40 knots with the selection of flaps 1, and continues at ref + 60 knots with flaps up. In clean configuration, the minimum speed will be Vref + 80 knots, but we won't tarry there. We'll go right to 250 knots, the speed limit below 10,000 feet. This limit, introduced decades ago in the aftermath of the mid-air collision over Brooklyn, keeps aircraft closure rates to a manageable magnitude, and allows for evasive action to be taken if a conflict develops. It also helps the controllers keep track of things in the really congested airspace.

Today we don't have to rely completely upon our eyes, though. Some years ago, TCAS was mandated for all airliners, and many other airplanes have it as well. Some pilots call it the "fish finder", and with it we not only see other transponder-equipped airplanes, but can avoid them vertically as well, through the TCAS resolution advisories. The system is not totally foolproof -- witness the tragic collision over Zurich a year or so ago -- but it is a big safety boost, especially in the terminal area.

Over to departure control we go, and they clear us direct to Hapie intersection, a left turn of 30 degrees or so. The 767-300 is perhaps the best handling of all of the 757-767 series. Turns are smooth and require little effort on the yoke. In fact, when the flaps are down, the roll rate on both 767 series is fairly sprightly for a big airplane. This is because there are two ailerons on each wing, an inboard and an outboard. The outboard ailerons move only when the flaps are extended to any degree - they lock out when the flaps are retracted. The inboard ailerons, assisted by differential spoiler deflections, provide all the roll needed at higher speeds. The 757, on the other hand, has only outboard ailerons, plus spoilers of course. For some reason the 757 is much heavier on the yoke when rolling -- so much so that, on my first takeoff in the real airplane, I asked the check airman if we had a control malfunction! The wheel takes significantly more effort to move - not excessively much more, but enough to make you certain you are flying a 757! Perhaps that is why Boeing set it up that way, although you already have a big clue when you step into the cockpit -- the step is down on the 757, and up on the 767!

The 757 and 767 share a common type rating, which was a new concept when it was introduced in the early 1980's. Prior to that time, at least a major portion of the airframe had to be identical in order to have commonality in the rating required to fly it. Type ratings are special addendums to a pilot license, allowing a pilot to command a specific make and model of airplane weighing over 12,500 pounds. All airline transports require type ratings in addition to the Commercial or Airline Transport Pilot certificate. The rating indicates that the airman has successfully mastered the mechanical aspects of the airplane, knows its systems and operation, and has shown that he or she can fly it to the standards required by the FAA. So, for example, a pilot might have a B-707 type rating, which would allow command of any variant of the Boeing 707, such as the 707-100, the 707-300, or the 720. The Boeing 727 type rating was good for both the -100 and -200 series, and so on. All of these previous "common" ratings involved airplanes that were no more than stretches of the basic design, or perhaps had different engines, or both. When Boeing proposed to have a common rating for a wide-body and a narrow-body airplane, pilots were at first skeptical. But Boeing has done a good job of it. The differences between the 757 and 767 are mainly in the fuselage and the engines. The systems are very similar and the cockpits are virtually identical, different only in the engine readouts (EPR and an extra tachometer for the N3 spool) and a few switches in the hydraulic and air systems. Led in blindfolded, you might actually have to look at the engine instrumentation to tell what you are sitting in!

The general trend nowadays is to make at least the cockpits similar or identical across model lines. So, for example, Airbus uses essentially the same cockpit layout and control system in everything it has built from the A320 onward. Boeing has used essentially the same flight and navigation displays in the new generation 737's as are installed in the 777. There are tremendous benefits to all of this. When a pilot transitions to another aircraft type these days, a great percentage of the ground school and simulator time is spent mastering the autoflight and navigation systems. Commonality in these systems has the potential to reduce certain transition training by a week or more, which will be a big cost reduction, to say nothing of a convenience for the pilot, who now has to spend less time away from home at the schoolhouse!

The Hapie 3 departure leads eventually to Yahoo, a point southeast of Nantucket. We can see the islands and Cape Cod off to the left. On a clearer day you might catch sight of Boston. Out of 10,000 feet, cleared to FL 230, we signal the flight attendants to begin their duties, which is the start of a transatlantic food fiesta over the next several hours! Shortly thereafter, a chime in the cockpit alerts us to the arrival of our "insert", a plastic container provisioned with enough sodas, water and ice to keep us out of the flight attendants' hair for at least an hour or two!! Our FB is busy calculating the timing of our breaks, which usually begin out of 18,000 feet when we enter the cocoon of the Positive Control Area, or Class A airspace. Above this altitude, all aircraft operate under positive ATC control under instrument flight rules. There is no VFR flying in this airspace, and the FB is no longer needed for traffic watch, so he soon retires to the cabin to begin his break. The coveted second break is then fought over by the Captain and the FO!

All around us we hear, and occasionally see, the other airplanes in the great America-to-Europe-Airplane-Race, playing nightly in airspace near you! We are in the vanguard of a migration that will, before the night has ended, see almost 1000 flights traverse the ocean, to almost every city in Europe, and many beyond. Seen on the screens of tracking computers in our Dispatch Center, it looks like an army of ants on the move, funneling into the six or eight Atlantic tracks over Newfoundland and Labrador. Things have gotten simpler in the last 30 years or so. When I started flying the Atlantic in 1972, in a C-141A, there were no common North American Routes (NARs) linking Nantucket, say, to Torbay or Gander. We had to go from navaid to navaid, and the navigator got to have an early break - we wouldn't need his services for a while! Today, after Yahoo, the route is direct to Vitol, then all the way to Lompi, southwest of Torbay, a distance of 460 miles. A short hop over to Jarom and we will be on the NAT track. (Those of you with eagle eyes may recall mention in part one of this missive of a waypoint named Rafin. Well, that was one subject of revision one to this story, which did not make it to the editors in time for the deadline! Despite three or four complete read-throughs too! I liken this to the fabled efforts of the ancient Persian rug weavers, who, when weaving a rug, always made one deliberate incorrect knot, thus acknowledging that only the Almighty is perfect!)

We find the air smooth at FL 350 as we level off; or, more often, as the autopilot levels off. Modern autoflight systems are a world away from old "Iron Mike", the Sperry gyro pilot that first appeared on the DC-3s. The 767 autoflight system can handle the airplane from a few hundred feet above the ground on takeoff, to a full stop after an automatic landing on a suitably equipped CAT III runway. Pilots generally hand fly the airplane for the departure and initial climb, and turn things over to "Otto" when they are sated with the joy of flight, or when other duties begin to demand attention. But sometimes, like tonight, I hand fly all the way to level off. Actually handling the airplane is one of the real pleasures of this job, and on long trips like this I may only have an hour or so a week of actual flying! I generally want to make the most of it.

Hand flying is done not just for the sheer fun of it. A big challenge in airline flying these days is proficiency. Two kinds of proficiency are demanded of us: proficiency in operation of the autoflight systems, and proficiency in hand flying, which essentially means instrument flying proficiency. The two are completely different. We get lots of time in cruise and the high altitude portions of climb and descent to polish our button pushing skills. But unless a pilot makes opportunities, the time spent hand flying can be as little as 5 minutes in an entire JFK-Rome trip! If this sort of thing becomes routine, one's instrument skills can deteriorate quickly, and hand flying becomes an intimidating chore, which leads to more reliance on the autoflight, and so on in a vicious circle. In cruise though, especially on the North Atlantic, the autopilot is an absolute necessity. Few of us could fly for over 6 hours precisely on altitude and speed. But with airplanes separated by 1000 feet vertically, this is exactly what is required. So Otto spends a lot of time at the controls!

After the airplane gets settled in at FL350, it's time to tell the people how lucky they are to be flying with us tonight! The Public Address system has been an airline fixture for almost as long as there have been passenger-carrying airplanes. "This is your Captain speaking..." is an airline cliché, although quite a few pilots begin their orations that way. I prefer to identify myself by name, so that the complaints will at least get to the right mailbox! Even so, speaking on the PA is an art, and, used correctly, the PA can be a valuable tool. In an abnormal or emergency situation, it can be and often has been a lifesaver. Tonight, though, it will merely serve as a way to welcome the folks aboard, tell them some things about the flight that the flight attendants have not already mentioned, and stress observance of the seat belt sign. At this hour, as they begin to contemplate the gastronomic joys of modern air travel, that is about all that they are interested in. If I spoke Italian, I could score some additional points with the Italian passengers, but alas, I speak only the world's second language! I actually attempted to learn Italian last fall, at the local high school at night, but discovered to my dismay that a long life, compounded by massive intakes of diet sodas over several decades, had resulted in extreme difficulty in learning by rote memorization! Or perhaps the brain is like a hard drive, maxxed out with airplane knowledge (not unlike your C: drive with MSFS!) and unable to accommodate further input, especially of something as mundane as language!

Now begins the long stretch of monitoring systems, navigation, the performance of the autopilot, and the making of the occasional radio call to ATC. Ironically, with the exception of the radio calls, we are doing almost exactly what the pilots of a Pan Am Clipper would have been doing at this same point 65 years ago. The Boeing 314 had a flight engineer to monitor the engines, aircraft systems, and set the power. We have computers and automatic systems monitors and an autothrottle system to do just that. The Clipper had a navigator to determine position and tell us what heading to fly. The Inertial systems and the navigation computers do that. The Clipper had a simple autopilot to hold that given heading. Our autoflight system actually holds the precise track, including wind corrections. The Clipper had a radio operator, who passed all radio traffic back and forth, much of it in Morse code. We have to do his work ourselves, and thank goodness it is all in telephony, not telegraphy. I had to learn Morse in pilot training over 30 years ago, and have since forgotten all of it! Today I doubt I'd have any better luck with it than I did with Italian! The Clipper pilots had only to keep an eye on things on the flight deck and a casual lookout to the fore. In essence, so do we.

Fine dining in the sky, corner table!

Soon a chime rouses us from our reveries of yore and the number 5 flight attendant asks for our entrée preferences for dinner. Airline food has been the butt of innumerable comedy routines since the fried chicken box lunches of the golden age! In reality, however, it's pretty darn good, considering what it has been through! By the time I partake of it, it has been cooked at the caterers, packaged, containerized, shipped to the airplane in whatever weather exists at the moment, loaded aboard, subjected to the near-zero humidity levels in the cabin once airborne, and re-cooked in whirlwind ovens by hurricanes of hot dry air. The fact that it even looks good on the plate is a minor miracle! And, in truth, it tastes pretty good too. The Atlantic and the other long distance routes feature the best cuisine, with domestic food being downsized in lockstep with the discount fares, at least in coach. First class service on the transcontinental flights is still very good, pretty close to tonight's menu. Speaking of menus, tonight's features lamb, steak, salmon, and our old favorite, chicken! This chicken, however, is not fried, but is a boneless breast, grilled and smothered in a mango salsa of sorts. Bon appetite!

The modern day American Airlines chicken!

We won't actually be eating for a few more minutes yet, which is time enough for the upper atmosphere to get set up for the Captain's Table Dining Hour! There is a hoary axiom in aviation, to the effect that it will be turbulent when it is the Captain's turn to eat. In over 27 years of airline flying, this one has been true well into the 70th percentile! And tonight will be no exception. Right on schedule, we run into some light chop. A check of the outside air temperature reveals that the temp has dropped, a good sign of some bumps to come. Since light chop, here and now, may well become moderate chop in a few minutes, I turn on the seatbelt sign, which has been off since level off. There are two schools of airline pilot thought about the seat belt sign. One group holds that the sign may as well be on all the time, since we now require passengers to remain seated except for trips to the "blue room", at least partly for security reasons. The other school, of which I am an adherent, claims that it is better to use the sign as a real time warning of bumps ahead. That way, the sign can warn the flight attendants as well.

Turbulence is the bane of a group that I will call the reluctant flyers. For over 20 years I have spoken to a group at LaGuardia airport which does an excellent job helping people to cope with the fear of flying. Over all this time, questions about turbulence have outnumbered all other questions at least two to one. The shame of it is that turbulence is inevitable and will occur to some degree on each and every flight. The overwhelming majority of the time it is merely an annoying nuisance, such as now, when I get my meal tray from the number 5. But for someone who is already apprehensive, turbulence serves to highlight the unnerving fact that they are aloft in an unstable medium. If it looks like it might get really bumpy, I'll make a reassuring PA. For the moment, though, it looks like it will remain just a nuisance. Oh, and I just spilled some mango salsa on my shirt!

Mood indigo,the magic of twilight.

As I savor the chicken a la mango, we pass south of Halifax, Nova Scotia. For the last twenty minutes or so we have been talking to Canadian ATC. Other than a few phrases like "radar identified" instead of "radar contact", you wouldn't know the difference. Within the span of my 32-year flying career almost all of the world's airspace has come under some form of radar traffic control, with VHF communications. For the most part, position reports and non-radar procedures are a strictly a feature of overwater areas. With the exception, in some areas of the world, of controller (and, to them no doubt, pilot) accents, we could be flying between JFK and Buffalo. But now yet another chime confirms that we are not shuffling off to Buffalo! The ACARS printer, a digital data link device with which we receive various text messages in flight, is sending us our oceanic clearance.

Although our original ATC clearance at JFK read "cleared as filed" to FCO, that only pertains to the overland portions of the route. The NAT track portion requires a separate clearance, with route, altitude and Mach speed specified. Once upon a time, when all the world was young, dinosaurs ruled the earth, and I was embarking upon my flying career, oceanic clearances were obtained by radio, often HF radio, and involved complete copy and read back of the entire coordinate set for the cleared route. This led, as the number of flights increased, to some very lengthy delays in the process, as each of hundreds of flights had to spend at least a minute or two copying and reading back its clearance. Nowadays, these clearances come direct to the printer in hard copy, and eastbound we need only confirm receipt by voice radio. Westbound we can confirm directly by data link, with no voice contact at all -- a big improvement. Our clearance reads, in part, "Track Y-- Jarom, Bobtu, 44/50, 45/40, 47/30, 48/20, 48/15, Etiki, Reghi, Mach 80 FL350. This is a complete written read-out of our clearance and we now check each waypoint against the FMC. This will be the first of three checks we carry out on each leg.

Armed with authority to navigate in oceanic airspace, we attend to another task, checking alternate weather. Flight in excess of one hour over water in two-engine airplanes is subject to a number of requirements dictated by good old conservatism. The aeronautical kind, not the political kind. Since the failure of an engine for any reason would result in flight on only one engine, and since this condition mandates immediate landing at the nearest suitable airport, there has to be a suitable airport "near" at all times, and the weather and other field conditions have to be above certain minimums. The definition of "near" has evolved over the last two decades since the 767 inaugurated the concept of commercial passenger flights over water with two engines. In the early 1980's, when the 767 first ventured beyond Gander, the rule had previously been one hour from the alternate. This was modified to two hours to allow the 767 access to the ocean, at least without having to overfly Greenland and Iceland. Over a period of a decade or so, experience showed that this could be increased to three hours (the 180 minute rule) provided certain even more conservative assumptions were made regarding fuel planning and alternate selection. This is where the rule stands for the 767 and most other two engine airplanes today, although the 777 has been approved for around 3.5 hours on certain routes in the Pacific.

Tonight we are using Montreal, Santa Maria in the Azores, and Shannon, in Ireland as our enroute alternates. Montreal has been pressed into service since the weather at Gander, Torbay, and Goose Bay Labrador is below limits for use as enroute alternate. Three alternates means that there will be two Equal Time Points on the oceanic flight. The ETP is the point at which the time required to turn around and go to, say, Montreal is the same as the time to press on to Santa Maria. In the Clipper days, an essentially similar point went by the more dramatic moniker of "Point of No Return". This made for great suspense in "The High and The Mighty", but is excessively melodramatic, and so we use the more mundane "ETP". Throughout the oceanic legs, we will check our progress relative to these ETP's and be mindful of where we need to go if anything untoward happens. We'll discuss the procedures for untoward happenings on the NATs in Golden Argosy, part four: The Flight Home. (Hey, if the gal who wrote the Harry Potter series can stretch it out that long, so can I. I just wish I were getting her royalties!)

As we approach Jarom, we prepare to enter the "oceanic" portion of the flight. Tonight, this is somewhat academic, in that we have been over the ocean the entire time since we crossed the beach at Rockaway! It is somewhat unusual, though by no means rare, for the tracks to lie this far south. Over the last two years I have seen the eastbound tracks as low as 42 north and as high as 60 north, and westbound tracks the same. Southerly tracks make for a longer leg between the 10 degree points - up to 40 or so miles longer per leg. The lines of longitude converge toward the poles, and the difference between 40 north and 60 north is significant. This southerly track makes for another unusual factoid tonight - our first oceanic position report will be made to New York, not to Gander.

Radio telephony in aviation has come a very long way from the days when Captain Keim and his band of brothers sat with old bakelite headphones clamped over their hats and growled position reports into those ancient round bakelite microphones. And over low frequency radios to boot! The only things that have survived the intervening 7 decades of aviation progress are the round microphones (a few of which, AWOL from the Smithsonian no doubt, still creep into our cockpits these days, albeit mostly in domestic 757's), and the static of low frequency radio. Except that the radio with the static these

Traffic passing 1000 feet below. The 777 cruises at Mach .84.

days is a high frequency (HF) radio. Tales, no doubt apocryphal, abound about the old timers failing the hearing portion of their physicals because of hearing loss brought on not by engine or slipstream noise, but by the static in the headphones! Of course, these old bird dogs had to listen through the static not only for communication, but also for navigation, and it was this latter task that delivered the aural punishment. A full description of the old 4-course aural range is beyond even this meandering missive. Perhaps another time. The reason that we can still pass our physicals today is found in the acronym "SELCAL". This is like a private phone line over the radio. If someone on the ground wants to talk to us, they cause two pairs of usually discordant tones to be broadcast over the frequency that we are monitoring (with the volume off). When the system hears this siren song, it alerts us with...yes (!) another chime. By the way, these are all sonically the same chime, so when it goes off there commences a flurry of checking this way and that to see for just which of the several causes the bell has tolled!

Thus spared the torment of listening to the ridiculous static and high speed Morse and other (possibly alien!) transmissions on the HF, we can pass the hours listening instead to the emergency frequency and "common". "Common" is a VHF frequency set aside for plane-to-plane communications in remote areas such as the North Atlantic. It is intended for such uses as weather and turbulence warnings from the weather scouts (lead planes in the pack, such as us, tonight), and other operational issues. In reality, there are some occasions when such important operational data as sports scores have been known to be passed on this frequency! Especially during the World Series or the World Cup. The best sport available on the Atlantic, however, is the game of "waiting for the position report on Guard (the emergency frequency)". We have all done it at one time or another! The communications radio panel has a number of small push buttons, pushed to select the transmitting radio. Separate buttons or levers control the volume, and you can listen to radios that are not selected for transmitting. The stage thus set, some poor soul will attempt to transmit his position report on guard or common, thinking that because he can hear the static of his HF radio, he must be transmitting on it! Of course, there is always a prankster who will answer on the VHF, impersonating a control center (an exceptionally felonious offence!) and the entertainment value is directly proportional to how far along he can string the poor soul! On a good night this will happen more than once, and the resulting comic relief will provide a good counterpoint to the otherwise routine small talk in the cockpit.

It has been dark for some time now, the last glow of sunset having faded behind us. In this southerly latitude, it will get completely dark on these flights almost the entire year. On the other hand, farther north it will stay light much longer, and I have flown flights in June at high latitudes during which it never got dark at all - the sunset glow moved from west to north and then east, where it got recycled as the sunrise! In the stilly watches of the night, there are two schools of pilot thought about cockpit lights. One school swears by keeping them on full bright, even the "thunderstorm" lights, a very bright set of overall floods that serve to minimize the temporary blinding effect of lightning at night. (Read "Fate is the Hunter", by Ernest K. Gann) The other school, to which I belong, keeps the lights down low, in my case as low as I can have them and still see the instruments clearly. Either way is acceptable procedurally, and the full-bright method is even held up as a weapon in the arsenal against fatigue. My thinking is twofold. First, especially on the Atlantic, you will have airplanes within 1000 vertical feet of you at times, and I like to be able to see the target, TCAS notwithstanding. The second reason I like the lights low is that the view out the window has always been one of my favorite things about flying! At night, even with a full moon, you need a dim cockpit to see and appreciate it! So off we go, lights turned low!

Gander Center takes our Bobtu position report and turns us over to New York Oceanic Control for our first HF report, at 50 degrees west. Oceanic airspace is divided into control areas, just like the domestic centers. The oceanic areas are quite a bit larger, though. New York Oceanic, for example, controls everything west of 40 west from 45 north down to as low as 18 north bordering Piarco Control. It covers the entire western Atlantic, down to just north of Puerto Rico. And, since our next position is 44 north 50 west, we are now under their control. Typically, though, the tracks run higher than 45 north, which means that our first oceanic contact eastbound is with Gander Oceanic. They own the airspace north of 45 north all the way out to 30 west, where Shanwick Oceanic takes over the rest of the way to Ireland. "Shanwick" is a composite word, formed from two towns, Shannon, Ireland and Prestwick, Scotland. The oceanic control center is apparently spread between two facilities, one in each of the towns. Shanwick owns the ocean down to 45 north, south of which control passes to Santa Maria, the airport in the Azores that we are using as an enroute alternate tonight. These four oceanic control centers handle over 2000 flights a day in both directions across the "pond". Since there is no radar coverage, or at least no civilian radar coverage, beyond about 200 miles from the coast, these areas are among the few left in the world in which non-radar separation and position reporting come into play.

When a consortium of airlines opened the first air traffic control system around Chicago in the early era of commercial flight, control of air traffic was based loosely upon the systems that the railroads had perfected - each airplane got to occupy its own block of airspace, a certain thickness (altitude) and a certain length. No other airplanes were cleared into this airspace. Coordination of all this was facilitated by making voice radio reports over established positions, generally radio stations like the 4 course ranges, or marker beacons. At the centers, controllers moved little plastic "shrimp boats", with the flight ID's on them, from point to point as

This is about as dark as it gets in the summer, especially at higher latitudes.

reports were received. Every filed flight plan included careful estimates of time over each of these points, so even in the absence of radio reports (a not uncommon event in those Pleistocene days of poor radios and monstrous static) the little shrimp boat would continue its regular progress along its filed route, protected from all the other little shrimp boats by the attentions of the controllers! The advent of radar after WWII gave controllers the ability to actually see aircraft enroute, and radar was rapidly incorporated into the ATC structure; offering, as it did, a real time capability to accommodate much more air traffic, which the Jet Age was already busy producing! As we approach 50 west, however, the invisible radar signals fade behind us, and control of this enormous flock of airplanes reverts to the shrimp boat era!

Approaching 50 west, we now accomplish the second of three checks designed to ensure that we fly precisely the path along which we are cleared. We already checked every single oceanic position from the clearance against the positions in the FMC. To make things a little easier (for the machines as well as for us!) the cardinal waypoints in the North Atlantic have all been "named". So, for example, 44 degrees north 50 degrees west, which would have been entered into the older INS units as N4400.0W05000.0 is now called simply 4450N. These, as I said, have all been checked. Now, we check the track and distance for the next leg against the information on the flight plan. This ensures that the FMC is at least in calculational agreement with the computers on the ground. Trigonometry should be the same, even up here!

The autopilot smoothly flies the turn and we have set our course toward 4540N. When in the navigational mode, the angle of bank used by the autopilot is a function of speed and altitude, and up here, near the performance ceiling, you don't want a large bank angle. The wing loses a bit of lift in a bank, or, rather, the lift vector changes from straight up to off-vertical. Since only the vertical component of lift tends to keep us at altitude, the horizontal component created by the bank angle is no longer of use to us, except to pull the airplane through the turn. The Flight Control Computers take all of this into account, and bank angles above around 20,000 feet are reduced. Up here, the FCC's are using less than five degrees of bank to make this 14-degree heading change. No whitecaps in the martinis in the back!

After about 10 minutes have passed on this new course, we conduct the third and final navigation check for this leg. Using a special chart printed for this purpose, we plot the position that the FMC tells us is our present location. Prior to leaving operations, we have carefully drawn the oceanic portion of the route onto this chart. Now we check to see that the crosshair lines of our plot lie directly upon the course line. This check ensures that where the computer thinks it is, is where it is cleared to be. It protects us against an error in loading the route into the computer. Due to the automated loading of the flight plan over ACARS, this is now a rather remote possibility, but it is the only check carried out during the leg itself, and thus still retains value. Notice that we have no ability whatsoever, once beyond range of radio navigation or surveillance radar, to actually verify our present position. We have no navigator, sextant, Loran or, on most of the airplanes GPS that would tell us what our actual position is. The inertial reference units supply the FMC's with a running tally of our calculated position, which they use to further calculate their own version of present position. But the key word is "calculate". Without some external means of verification, such as radio or GPS, it is all theoretical, but nevertheless of great accuracy and dependability. I have never been more than a mile or two off the real course with these units, nor have I ever had one fail. All of the newest airplanes, such as the 777's and a handful of the latest 767 deliveries, have a modified FMS system that has double or triple GPS receivers built in. These systems are not only astonishingly accurate, but are always aware, via the satellite system, of their exact actual position.

In due course, we find ourselves halfway to the next point, 4540N. A check is made, at the halfway point, of the ETA to the next point and the current fuel on board. This is done so that we may forward a revised estimate for the next point if necessary, and to check that the fuel burn is according to plan. These legs are over 400 miles long at these latitudes, and that is around 45 minutes, a bit too long to be ignoring the fuel system. Speaking of fuel, at 40 west we will have burned a total of 30,000 pounds of the costly stuff. The total fuel burn for the flight to Rome is 88,000 pounds. In terms of fuel economy, that works out to just a shade under four gallons per mile for the airplane, which certainly makes an SUV look like an economy vehicle. Ah, but wait! Our BUV (Boeing Utility Vehicle) carries 150 people tonight. Per person, that works out to 38 miles per person per gallon! An SUV would have to get close to 200 mpg to match that seat/gallon economy! If we were full, at over 200 people, the numbers would look even better. And the numbers for the 777 are probably better still! Nevertheless, 88000 pounds, which is almost 15,000 gallons, represents a lot of money at current fuel prices. You and I only wish we could get fuel at the airline's cost, but it still adds up in these quantities.

If our fuel on board at 40 west were to come up short, we would have a number of options. First, though, we would have to check carefully to see that the problem is simply an over burn and not a leak of some sort. A leak is a serious problem, and more than one airplane has had to shut down an engine to stop a fuel leak that otherwise might leave them dangerously low on fuel. Fortunately, real fuel leaks are

Time exposures at night are tough, especially during light chop!

extremely rare, and an insufficiency of fuel at a waypoint is usually the result of a change in the winds from those forecast, or a temperature at altitude that is warmer than forecast. If this were to be the case, we could attempt to obtain a clearance at a different altitude where conditions were more favorable. Then again, the enroute reserve fuel is on board for precisely this sort of contingency, and represents an amount of around 10% of either the total fuel burn, or the portion of the fuel burn of the oceanic segments, depending upon which of three sets of dispatch rules we have opted to abide by tonight. For us, the 10% is for the entire flight, and so we have 7340 pounds of enroute reserve fuel aboard that we can dedicate to an over burn situation. We rarely ever have to. The wind and temperature forecasts across the Atlantic are remarkably accurate, due largely to the fact that, of the 2000 or so flights a day in both directions, several hundred are tasked to relay meteorological reports at every waypoint, often automatically via a new satellite based system called Automatic Dependent Surveillance.

Between 40 west and 30 west the drill will be exactly the same - same checks, same reports. At 30 west, we will change over to Shanwick and make the position report to them, often on the same frequency Gander is using. This makes for some long waits as many flights try to pass position reports to one or the other center. You can occasionally recognize the voice of an old squadron-mate reporting the position of a rival airline's flight! It really is a small world, when you see it from this perspective.

Now a chime interrupts our 38 west plot. The FB is ready for duty, and it is my turn to take a break. After briefing him on the status of the flight and our enroute alternates, I put on my cap and step into the cabin. By now, the flight attendants are finishing up the service in business class. Coach, with a simpler service has been finished for some time now. I usually stroll through the entire airplane before settling down for a nap, just to see how the F/A's are doing and update them on our ETA in Rome. Occasionally a passenger has a question or comment. They don't see much of us in the back anymore except on these long flights, but it's hard to tell if they miss the interaction, such as it was.

Having returned to the forward cabin, I settle into the crew rest seat. This is a business class seat, like all of the front seats on our 767's. Several years ago, the decision was made to eliminate the full first class section on all of the 767's. Business Class is the front section now. The first class seats were somewhat larger, and reclined somewhat farther toward flat. These seem a bit narrower, but maybe I'm just a bit wider these days! No matter, for I never could sleep longer than about 2 hours on any airplane, even on the C-5, which had real bunks in real rooms. We referred to it as the "Lockheed Hilton"!

As I try to slip into the land of nod, I watch the flight attendants finish the service. Our original flight attendants, starting in 1933, were all registered nurses. This continued until WWII, when the demand for nurses in the war effort precluded their involvement in tasks that did not really require their specialized training. After the war, the airline industry settled into a pattern of hiring young, attractive women with intelligence, charm, and good people skills. These stewardesses, as they were known then, usually flew the line for a couple of years until a sharp businessman or pilot carried them over a different threshold! In those days, the girls had to quit for a bewildering variety of reasons, among them marriage, pregnancy, or failing the frequent weight checks. If they managed to remain single, childless and thin, they were picked off anyway at age 32, the mandatory "retirement" age at nearly all of the airlines.

As anyone who has even been near an airport these days knows, things have changed. The job of flight attendant is now a career. Men have joined women in the march up and down the aisles. The concept of a mandatory age for expulsion is out the window; almost the entire cabin crew tonight boasts greater longevity at AA than I have. A fair number of them are older as well. No matter. These people do a terrific job in what could well be the most challenging customer service career in the world. Consider, for a moment, what they face. They are enclosed in an aluminum tube with no escape for, tonight, over nine hours all told, with 150 people from all walks of life and of all degrees of civility, tact and taste. These people have paid anywhere from a pittance to a kings ransom for the privilege of taking this flight tonight, and to make matters worse, they may possibly know about the disparity in pricing, which does little to soothe their spirits! They may well have had a miserable day, and it is fairly certain that they arrived at the terminal earlier than the crew did, and waited in the lines much longer than we had to. They may, just possibly, not be in the best of spirits, despite the fact that they are going to a place as wonderful as Rome. We have nine F/A's tonight, which means that each one will, theoretically, have to deal with 16 or 17 of the passengers. Then consider that these passengers provide the means by which I can ultimately write these articles! Therefore, we desperately want them happy, and we want them back. I, from the left seat, can do only so much to please them. The real work of making return customers out of each and every one of them is done back here, by the flight attendants. And based upon what I have seen over 27 years, they do a fantastic job!

Meanwhile, slumber is upon me. Listening to the strains of a Widor organ symphony through the noise canceling headphones, I drift at last into the land of nod. For an hour or so!

Author's note: To be continued in Golden Argosy part 2B - Coast In!

Anthony Vallillo
avallillo@charter.net

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