By Tony Vallillo
29 October 2009

"American One Heavy cleared for takeoff"! With that clearance ringing in my ears, I push the throttles forward and call for the autothrottles. My first command of the Mercury (and my last domestic trip) is underway.

Up and Away!

I have made many a takeoff on runway 31L over the course of my career, and this will turn out to be the last. It is, of course, the preferred runway when the winds are out of the northwest, which they are a goodly bit of the time, especially after a spell of bad weather has moved on through. In order to avoid the airspace around LGA, a turn to the west is begun at 400 feet above the ground, toward the Canarsie VOR, which is located on a small spit of land just northeast of Floyd Bennett field. As I lift the ship into the air and reach 400 feet on the radar altimeter, I start a gentle left turn toward CRI, which I can see both on the moving map and out the window. It doesn't take much of a bank angle to make this turn; around 10-15 degrees will do nicely. And since we are still flying at V2+15 with the flaps extended, we don't want to be doing any yanking with our banking!

The SID from JFK. The Breezy point climb is almost a straight shot to RBV.

Once pointed toward Canarsie, we can accelerate and clean up, since the flight path beyond CRI is essentially straight, and does not involve the turn to 170 degrees that the normal Canarsie and Bridge climbs entail. So I lower the nose a bit to pick up speed and call for flap retraction on the numbers. As always, care must be taken not to overspeed the flaps. This had, for a time, become an item of attention after flight data recorder readings in the Flight Operations Quality Assurance Program (a recently instituted program at the airlines) had indicated that the speed margins were occasionally too slim on flap retractions. This is an example of the kind of progressive safety-oriented thinking that has been going on for some time in the world of aviation. It took a good deal of negotiation between the airlines, the FAA, and the crewmember unions to establish the protocols of the FOQA, principally the notion of flight data recorder readouts on a routine basis. But the results have already proven to be beneficial and the potential for improvements in safety are significant.

Out of 10,000 feet already, Staten Island, otherwise known as the borough of Richmond, slides by to the north.

Staten Island - about as rural as the 5 boroughs get!

Having ensured that the flaps are safely retracted prior to our speed getting beyond the flap limit, we cross Canarsie and point the ship out the 223 degree radial toward RBV. This flight path likely approximates the route of the first Boeing 707's when the jet age came to the Mercury.

The Ford Trimotor in the days when it did duty on what eventually became the Mercury. American Airlines photo

A Stinson "A" trimotor at Oshkosh. The Stinsons were used extensively on the old American Airways routes in the late 1920's and early 1930's.

The history of the Mercury is, in a real sense, the history of the technological progress of commercial airliners in the period from the early 1930's until the 1980's. In the earliest days of a so-called transcontinental service at AA, the aircraft involved were a mixed bag of Ford and Stinson tri-motors (photos above), with perhaps the opportunity at some point in the journey to sample the questionable delights of the Vultee V-1A as well. There was, of course, no non-stop service nor was there even a through-plane service. A transcontinental journey was an almost coincidental series of connecting flights and enroute stops; as I indicated in part one of this series, it was a 30+ hour journey that meandered around the eastern half of the United States before eventually turning westbound for good at Fort Worth. By the time CR Smith took over the reins at American, the route system had been rationalized a bit, and some new pieces added. Nonetheless, the first really big improvement to the transcon had come in the form of a new airplane.

The Curtiss Condor, the sleeper plane used on the western portion of the transcon until the advent of the DST. American Airlines photo

The Curtis Condor (above) was a large airplane for its time, and by comparison with the tri-motors that preceded it the twin engine configuration was an improvement. Engine technology was already improving to the point that two engines were adequate to achieve the desired performance; and, as Ernie Gann put it, everyone was delighted to be rid of the noise, vibration and smell of the nose-mounted third engine! The Condor was introduced between New York and Chicago as a regular day plane in 1933, but in 1934 the real innovation, a sleeper version, made its debut on the transcontinental service, initially on the legs between Dallas and Los Angeles. This airplane had seats that made up into upper and lower berths, like the older Pullman sleeper cars on the railroads, and it offered the passengers a chance to lie down, an attraction that would reappear half a century later in the form of the first class sleeper seat.

Sleeper comfort notwithstanding, the Condor was slow even by the standards of the early 1930's. United Airlines was in the process of setting the commercial aviation world on its ear by sponsoring (and monopolizing the production of) the Boeing 247, the first really "modern" twin engine airliner. Stung by the incestuous UAL-Boeing monopoly, TWA initiated the development of what became the Douglas DC-2. AA got in line behind TWA and acquired a number of these state-of-the-art airplanes, which duly made their debut in the NY-Chicago market in December 1934. Shortly thereafter they picked up the eastern portions of the transcontinental service, which by now had straightened itself out to a routing from Newark through Nashville and Memphis to Dallas. At Dallas, however, the Condor sleepers still held down the western part of the run.

The DC-2's reign as the latest and greatest did not last long. CR Smith, dismayed by the inability of the 14 passenger capacity of the DC-2 to turn a profit on passengers alone, made Donald Douglas an offer he couldn't refuse (although by all accounts Douglas tried hard to refuse it, having an order book chock-a-block full of DC-2 orders!). Thus was begotten the legendary DC-3, although the actual airplane that Smith instigated was a sleeper version called the Douglas Sleeper Transport, or DST. American took 20 of these sight unseen, and although it was, as usual, introduced on the EWR-Chicago run as a day plane, subsequent deliveries of the real day plane version, the DC-3 itself, soon freed the sleepers for the first transcontinental through-plane service on 18 September 1936. The poets in the marketing department promptly christened this new service The American Mercury.

A pair of DST's await their next flight assignment, which most likely was The Mercury. American Airlines photo

A map of the Low Frequency airway system around 1940. The probable route of a Mercury flight is highlighted, and the three enroute stops are also indicated. By 1940 the Mercury stopped only in Memphis, Dallas, and Tucson.

The Flagship Detroit at Oshkosh. This airplane actually was an AA DC-3 pre-war, and quite possibly did a turn on the Mercury.

The term Mercury originally applied to a specific flight, which soon evolved into a four leg affair with stops at Memphis, Dallas and Tucson. A second transcon with a few extra stops was soon introduced and named The Southerner. Two additional daily services were added as time went by, for a total of four transcontinental flights, each with its own name. After WWII, the term Mercury evolved into a service label, and many of the transcons were identified as featuring Mercury service.

The DC-4 arrived after WWII. It was capable of doing the transcon with but a single enroute stop. American Airlines photo

The DC-4, almost all of which were actually ex-Army C-54's demobilized after the war, was the next step upward in speed and size on the Mercury, although at a shade over 200 mph it had but a slight speed advantage over the DC-3. It carried, however, better than double the passenger load of the now-venerable Gooney Bird. It was also possessed of considerable range, although not enough to make the coast-to-coast trip non-stop in either direction with any load at all. Nevertheless, the DC-4 was one of the world's greatest airplanes, and might have held sway on the Mercury far longer than it did but for one factor - the pressurized Lockheed Constellation.

The Connie, as it was known to all airmen, had been introduced just before the end of the war, as a really fast (well over 250 mph) pressurized transport. It had almost an 80 mph advantage over the DC-4 and could fly over at least some of the weather much of the time, resulting in a faster and often smoother trip. TWA, by now under the financial influence of Howard Hughes, wasted no time in putting the Connie on its own central transcontinental route, via Kansas City. Although the Connie could only make the trip non-stop in the eastbound direction with the winds, and not all the time at that, it was a competitive winner against the Douglas airplane. Something, according to CR Smith of AA and Pat Patterson of UAL, had to be done!

The elegant DC-6 held down the Mercury in the early 1950's. American Airlines photo

That something was a stretched, pressurized version of the DC-4 that had been initiated, like the Connie, in the last days of WWII. It was not until 1947 that it entered airline service as the DC-6; and, like the Connie, its early service was marred by accidents caused by design problems. Once those were straightened out, the DC-6 and its very slightly larger sibling the DC-6B became the kings of the hill on the AA and UAL transcons. These fine airplanes, which actually remained in service with both airlines until the late 1960's, could compete head to head with the new stretched versions of the Constellation, which TWA wasted no time in putting in service by the late 40's. Competition, in those days, was a matter of equipment and service, not price - the airlines were strictly regulated in terms of the fares they could charge, and all had to charge the exact same fare between any two points, no more and most certainly no less.

If service, rather than price, was the competitive edge, then non-stop service would certainly be the ne-plus-ultra. Although the Martin and Boeing flying boats of the pre-war era certainly had the range, no land planes in the early 1950's possessed the capability to make reliable scheduled non-stop service a reality on the Mercury. So both Lockheed and Douglas went back to the drawing boards and stretched their respective airplanes yet again, a process we know well in the jet age! The Connie became the Super-G Constellation, and the DC-6 morphed into the DC-7. But especially in the case of the DC-7, there were as many problems created as problems solved.

The DC-7 brought non-stop coast to coast service to the Mercury. American Airlines photo

A luggage sticker from the DC-7 era.

Both airplanes had the advertised capability of non-stop coast to coast service in both directions, and both boasted speeds somewhat higher than the previous versions. But the extra size and fuel load required more powerful engines, and therein lay some of the problems that were soon encountered. Both airplanes took advantage of the latest Turbo Compound engines, huge many-cylindered radial engines that incorporated power recovery turbines that received a hellacious spin from the hot exhaust gases and imparted some of that energy directly to the prop shaft via a fluid drive. This was an extremely complex affair, and the engines needed very tender handling. Temperatures and rpm's needed to be monitored continually, and the flight engineer, who had been added to the original Connies and DC-6's, was the busiest man on the flight deck. Then too, these engines drank oil at a prodigious rate, so much so that despite 30-50 gallon reservoirs behind each engine, as many enroute stops were made because of oil consumption as were made for fuel!

Another problem that cropped up was time. Despite speeds of over 300 mph the trip westbound, although scheduled for exactly 8 hours and thus within the limits of pilot duty, often exceeded 8 hours due to winds. It began to look like an enroute stop for a crew change would be needed, which would, of course, completely cancel out the competitive advantage of speed and range. The senior pilots who held these otherwise comfortable bids were all in favor of getting a CAA (the predecessor of the FAA) approved exemption to allow crews on those runs to exceed 8 hours in actual practice. The pilots' union, however, was not so sanguine, and a strike took place, which fortunately was soon settled to everyone's satisfaction, and the appropriate exemptions secured. The non-stops were back in business!

Up through the mid 1950's when the DC-7 held down the now non-stop transcons, the increments of improvement in speed, size and service were not quantum leaps. Each airplane in the Douglas series was more or less identical in diameter. The cabin amenities were similar, although for a time some of the early DC-6's at American featured a small number of sleeper berths. Even the cockpits were quite similar -- dimensionally identical and differing only in the additional engine instruments required for the newer and more complicated engines, as well as the addition of new equipment such as radar. Each model offered an incremental speed advantage over the previous version, but at most only around 50 knots or so. Over the course of the several models in the line it all added up, but there was no one point at which the size or speed essentially doubled. That was about to change.

N7501A, the very first B-707 American got. Here it is shown in a publicity photo at Boeing Field. The red carpet up front says "Mercury". American Airlines photo

A Mercury flight at Idlewild, preparing for a run to the west coast. American Airlines photo

Boeing, which despite their impressive Stratocruiser had been more or less odd-man-out in the postwar airliner competition with Douglas and Lockheed, had been doing a land office business selling advanced swept-wing jet bombers to the Air Force. All too soon it became apparent that these fast, high flying jet bombers would need a fast, high flying jet tanker plane with which to perform aerial refueling. Boeing decided that they were just the folks to sell Uncle Sam such a jet tanker; and perhaps, by the by, to sell a passenger version of it to the airlines, who were already beguiled by the British Comet to the point of placing tentative orders for that graceful yet under-built pioneer. What came of all this was the Boeing model 367-80, and on that fabled day of August 7th 1955 test pilot Tex Johnston jump-started the jet age by putting on an aerial demonstration of the Dash-80 in front of a select group of airline executives. There at Boeing's invitation to see the jet prototype (and, by the way, to enjoy the Seattle hydroplane races) were Patterson, Smith, Trippe, and just about every other airline president in the country. They had all been a bit reticent to jump in and place orders, no doubt sobered by the travails of the Comet. But when Tex barrel-rolled the Dash 80 twice in full view of all of the spectators, every man knew that the airplane was built hell-for-stout, and that there would be none of these coming apart in mid-air in a clear smooth sky! Orders flooded into Seattle, and CR Smith wasted no time in putting the 707, as it was now called in passenger service, onto the Mercury; beaten by only a few days for the honor of first jet service in domestic operations by the crafty Ted Baker of National Airlines, who leased a 707 from Juan Trippe of Pan American and started Miami-Idlewild service shortly before American got their own jets.

The inaugural jet powered Mercury took place on 25 January 1959, when Captain Charlie Macatee took N7503A, the Flagship California, operating as Flight Two, from LAX to Idlewild in a record time of 4 hours and 3 minutes. This was truly a quantum leap in all respects! The 707 was nearly twice as fast as the DC-7, and held twice as many people even in the early half coach-half first class configurations. It flew 15,000 feet higher than the props, and that turned out to be enough to fly over almost all of the weather almost all of the time. Gone was the constant enervating vibration of the mighty recips and their four huge sometimes-synchronized propellers. Passengers were delighted by the speed of the trip, and the concept of the "Jet Set" appeared, with the rich and famous adding "bi-coastal" to the lexicon. It was also at this time, due to the foresight of earlier pilot union leaders in tying pilot pay to both the weight and speed of the airplanes they flew, that pilot pay really took off, reaching stratospheric heights not unlike those at which the airplanes themselves cruised! (A Captain flying the 707 in the early 60's generally earned around $35,000 per year, a number identical to the altitude in feet at which the airplanes most commonly flew! This was a considerable sum in those days, and would translate into more than $300,000 in today's dollars. Oh, for the good old days!)

N7503A, the airplane that flew the inaugural jet flight from coast to coast in 1959. This photo was taken around the time that I joined AA, in 1977. I never flew 7503A, according to my logbooks, but I did fly 7501A, the first 707 we got. Photo courtesy Frank Duarte via Airliners.net.

The jets, of course, could not operate out of LaGuardia, which since the late 1930's had been New York's air terminus. (Neither, for that matter, could the DC-7 and the later Constellation models.) Idlewild airport, near Rockaway on Jamaica bay, was the international airport for New York and it became the permanent home of the transcontinental flights as well. In fact, the very runway I used just minutes ago is a direct legacy of the 707 (and the DC-8, Douglas' always-a-bridesmaid entry in the race to build jet airliners). The first jets had relatively low powered turbo-jet engines, which needed water injection on takeoff to seriously contemplate flight. Naturally, given this and the fact that really high-lift wing devices had yet to be applied to airliners, the first jets needed enormously long runways, especially for flights like transcons and trans-Atlantic journeys. And so runway 31L was duly lengthened to its current dimension of 14,572 feet, which at that time made it the longest civil runway in the world. And the early 707's, especially on the Atlantic flights, used nearly every inch of that length!

An early 707 loaded up for the Mercury (this was the 707-123, which topped out at around 250,000 lb max takeoff weight) accelerated verrrrryyyy slowly compared to modern jets. (I have flown in heavily loaded KC-135 tankers, which until the mid 1980's had small engines much like those in the early 707's. The -135's could take a good 9000-10,000 feet to accelerate to rotation speed, and there was often an uncomfortable period in the middle of the run during which the ability to continue with an engine failure was nil, and the ability to stop under any condition was questionable!) The Mercury, spewing black smoke like a railroad steam locomotive, would get a nearly complete tour of runway 31L before becoming airborne. Then, still decorating the atmosphere with smoke noir, to say nothing of a great deal of noise, it would commence that famous left turn, after which the Captain would level off (hardly a noticeable maneuver in those days, considering the anemic climb rates!) and retract the flaps, and then accelerate to red-line speed, somewhere around 350 knots or so down low, and close to .9 Mach higher up. It was only then that the straight turbojet airplanes began to dig in and hustle, for the engines were most efficient at high airspeeds and high altitudes.

We, of course, have an assigned level of 38,000 feet today, and thanks to the healthy climb rate of a 767-200 we will reach it fairly quickly, although it will take 3 or 4 sequential ATC clearances to get the final altitude. The early jets, however, seldom flew at a constant altitude, at least not until the level of jet traffic increased. The most efficient way to fly a jet airplane, especially a straight turbo-jet airplane, is the so-called cruise climb. After clean-up and acceleration to the desired climb speed, which in those days was more or less at the barber pole, that speed was maintained by regulating the pitch attitude. At some point the airplane's climb rate would peter out to nearly nothing, but maximum continuous power was maintained and the airspeed still held constant with pitch. This would result in a miniscule climb all the way across the country, as the airplane burned fuel and became lighter. Since in the earliest days there were only a handful of airplanes at those altitudes anyway, usually one or two other airline jets and a few military airplanes, the Mercury could be assigned a "block altitude" several thousand feet in depth in which it could continue to climb without any further clearance from ATC. This is exactly what Concorde did decades later when it flew across the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have welcomed the passengers aboard. My announcements tend to be minimalist these days, since I know only too well from my experiences as a passenger the grating torment of being subjected to PA's from a pilot who is in love with the sound of his or her own voice! Of course we were all guilty of that in the beginning, myself included. Indeed in the early days of my Captaincy, when more emphasis was placed on pointing out sights of interest (before the days of in-flight entertainment, at least on narrow bodies) I was one day waxing poetic about a certain rock formation out west known as Ship Rock. I had, apparently, unconsciously acquired some of the vocal mannerisms of the then recently retired Walter Cronkite, because just after I completed the announcement the chime rang, and the flight attendant informed me that there were two CBS executives in first class who had commented to her that "we thought we had retired that guy"!

Philadelphia in the morning. Philly International is visible at upper right.

The Junior Pilot Certificate that I got from Allegheny Airlines in the summer of 1958. That trip cemented my desire to become an airline pilot, and the certificate has been on my wall ever since!

Tony Vallillo and Jack Robinson meet for a second time at Oshkosh in 1993

By now we can see Philadelphia clearly, conveniently off to my side of the airplane. This is going to be a great sightseeing trip, since there is little cloud cover across the entire USA. A fine retirement gift indeed! We overfly the "main line", as the northwest suburbs of Philly are known, and as we do it dawns on me that we are very close to the route of my very first flight in an airplane, back in 1958. In the summer of that year I flew from Pittsburgh to Wilmington Delaware unescorted on an Allegheny DC-3, a trip that involved 3 intermediate stops and was, for all intents and purposes, identical to a typical airline flight in the 1930's! At that time I was 10 years old, and had been keen on a career as an airline pilot for at least 5 years. Naturally, I didn't keep this ambition a secret from the crew; and, lo and behold, the Captain himself invited me to join him and the copilot in the inner sanctum shortly after takeoff! I would have been up there for the entire trip but for the fact that the DC-3 had no jumpseat. As it was, Captain Jack Robinson, whom I met for the second time 45 or so years later at Oshkosh, renewed the invitation on each leg, so that save for the actual takeoffs and landings, I spent the entire time on the flight deck. The Junior Pilot Certificate I received on that flight has been on my wall ever since, and still is! (Captain Robinson wound up accumulating over 40,000 flying hours before he set down the flight bag for the last time! Only a few pilots are in that exclusive club. We still keep in loose touch through the magazine of a pilot club we both belong to, the QB's)

Still skiing in late March in in eastern Pennsylvania.

Today we are more or less running that original trip in reverse. Wilmington is just south of Philadelphia, and we now overfly the prior stop, Lancaster Pennsylvania, and will pass just to the south of the other ones - Harrisburg, Johnstown and the point of origin, Pittsburgh. Soon the undulating ridgelines of the Allegheny Mountains appear, out the window and on the nav display, one of which is now set up on the EGPWS system. The Alleghenies are part of the much larger Appalachian mountain chain, which stretches, on this continent at least, from northeastern Canada to northern Georgia. It is one of the oldest mountain chains on earth, at least above sea level, and predates the current geological division between the Americas and Europe/Africa. Depending upon your source of information, the Appalachians are said to have once been contiguous with the Anti-Atlas Mountains in North Africa and/or the Urals in Russia. Either way, what we see below is what is left after half a billion years of uplifting, erosion, subduction, and just about every other geological process that can be imagined!

The Allegheny Mountains as seen on the Nav Display.

Chambersburg Pennsylvania, on the threshold of the Alleghenies.

From the air, this part of the country looks like row after row of speed bumps, aligned roughly northeast-southwest across our path. They lay right across the path of the early settlers as well, which resulted in the early settlements lying mostly along the coastal plain. Indeed, the history of the first 50 years or so of the United States is very much the story of the many attempts to find or to create cheap and relatively easy passages across this mighty barrier. Eventually the rampart fell, first to the Erie Canal and then to the early railroads. Today we vault it as though it were not even there, although I still keep an eye on it with radar and EGPWS. The terrain here is merely a visual attraction and not a hazard to flight, at least in a jet airliner. But it was not always so, for this general area was once the graveyard of the early airmail service.

South-central Pennsylvania.

A portion of an original Air Mail pilot's map of the route from Belmont Park NY to Belefonte Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy Nancy Wright, Air Mail Pioneers

It was all the way back in 1918 that the first air-mail service was inaugurated in America, between New York (actually northern New Jersey) and Washington DC. A year later plans were in the works for a transcontinental mail relay between New York and San Francisco. The service between New York and Chicago was set up in 1919 and in 1920 the remainder of the route west was in operation.

These were both the golden years of aviation and the deadly years. By the time the service was running from coast to coast, 16 airmen had lost their lives. The airplanes were, for the most part, cast-off WWI trainers like the Curtiss Jenny; slow, uncomfortable and fragile. The engines, usually in-line water cooled Liberty's, again from WWI, were of dubious reliability. Forced landings were frequent, and occasionally fatal. There were no flight instruments to speak of, save for airspeed and an early altimeter that read in thousands of feet and could be in error by at least one of those! All navigation was visual, by landmark and compass. The amazing thing is that these pioneer pilots managed to do this in conditions that would today be called CAT III! Hair raising accounts of flights at altitudes of 100 feet in visibilities not much greater than that can be found in Dick Merrill's biography "The Wings of Man", and also in an account written by Jack Knight, one of the early birds who, like Merrill, survived to write about it and fly a long and distinguished career for a major airline:

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Crossing_the_Alleghenies_in_1919.html

There is also an excellent web site, http://www.airmailpioneers.org, that is devoted to the history of the early airmail service and is a trove of fascinating pictures and artifacts.

The Hell Stretch, viewed from the cockpit of a Mail Plane around 1919. Photo courtesy Nancy Wright, Airmail Pioneers

Bellefonte Pennsylvania air field, the first refueling point west of New York. Photo courtesy Nancy Wright, Air Mail Pioneers

The most hazardous leg of the entire transcontinental service was the leg between New York and Cleveland, which crossed the Allegheny Mountains in north central Pennsylvania. The first refueling stop after leaving New York was Bellefonte Pa., just a bit north of State College. The flyers followed a route that was not too far from the modern-day route of Interstate 80, and anyone who has driven that road between the Delaware Water Gap and the Ohio state line can understand what a tough stretch of flying it was in those days. Subject to every manifestation of bad weather that nature can cook up, from fog to thunderstorms to blizzards, this region quickly became know to the airmen as the "Hell Stretch". Those of you who have spent any time with FS2004 are undoubtedly familiar with that name.

We are flying about 100 miles south of the old airmail route, but the terrain here is similar to that which lay along the Hell Stretch, with parallel ridgelines that look for all the world like heavily wooded breakers in a green surf. Aside from the more recently added roads, there are still few places to set a ship down safely today, even a small plane like my Sky Skooter. Small wonder, then, that a goodly number of pilots failed to survive to the late 1920's, when the airmail was contracted out to private operators. Those who did survive all admitted that luck played an inordinate part!

The Pennsylvania Turnpike slices through the mountains between Everett PA and Bedford PA in the distance.

Wind farm near Meyersdale PA.

The transcontinental airmail service was a Pony Express style relay, with the mail handed off from one airplane and pilot to another at changeover points. After Bellefonte Pennsylvania the mail proceeded to Cleveland, Bryan Ohio and Chicago. Originally the entire route was flown only by day, but that service took over 70 hours coast to coast, and the mail had to be put on trains at night to keep even that schedule! It was not much of an improvement over the all rail service that already existed. The Post Office was eager to show that airplanes could carry the mail significantly faster than trains; and so, in February 1921, night operations were demonstrated in a dramatic experiment between Chicago and Cheyenne Wyoming, across the flattest segment of the route. By flying these legs at night, the total transcontinental transit time was cut to around 30 hours. This one-night series of flights, although it cost the life of one of the pilots, was successful enough to spur the installation of beacon lights every 10 miles between Chicago and Cheyenne. By the late 1920's, this system had been enlarged to over 18,000 miles of lighted airways, and 24 hour air service had become a reality.

In those "good old days" the U.S. government, far from wanting to operate everything itself, as it seems to be inclined to do these days (!), was eager to turn the carriage of air mail over to private contractors just as soon as any willing and able private contractors could be found. By the late 1920's this had been accomplished, and the Post Office Air Mail service was ended, replaced by operators that, as time went by, became the airlines; including my own alma mater, American. Charles Lindbergh flew the inaugural flight of the third contract air mail route, from St. Louis to Chicago, on April 15th 1926, which AA recons as its "birthday" to this day. The rest, as we are so fond of saying, is history - a history in which I am now playing my own last small part. What a privilege it has been!

The Ohio River at Moundsville WVA, just south of Wheeling.

The Ohio winds its way toward Parkersburg WVA

What took the early daredevils of the Air Mail service the better part of a day to do, we do in a matter of minutes. Less than an hour after takeoff we fly over AIR, the Bellaire VOR, in eastern Ohio across the river from Wheeling West Virginia. By now the terrain below has become less formidable, although the Ohio River has managed to cut a considerable gorge all the way to Louisville! As the ground settles itself down into rolling hills we fly almost directly over yet another reminder of aviation's rich history here in America, as the Columbus Ohio airport (KCMH) passes below. This was the changeover point from rail to air on the original Transcontinental Air Transport service. One of these days I must make a pilgrimage here, because the original TAT terminal still exists, clearly visible in the "bird's eye view" oblique shots on Microsoft Live Search. Lindbergh himself laid out this airport, as he did the entire TAT aerial route, and he piloted the first flight eastbound out of Glendale California.

Plenty of traffic even in the midwest, near Columbus Phio.

The original TAT air-rail terminal at Columbus. The passengers arrive by train on those very tracks, and walked a short ramp directly to the terminal, and the awaiting Ford Trimotors. Bing Maps oblique view.

Today's route has yet another reminder of Lindbergh, as we cross the STL VOR just a few miles north of Lambert Field. It was from St. Louis that he flew the airmail to and from Chicago in the year prior to the Paris flight; and in the Spirit of St. Louis he made a stopover in that city on the way to New York to begin the epic journey that would change his life and the future of aviation. With the American Airlines acquisition of TWA in 2001, the Lindbergh legacy came full circle, for it united the two airlines that he had been instrumental in starting nearly 80 years before. Sadly, we are unable to gaze upon St. Louis, because an undercast has formed and looks to be with us for a short while. We are right on the estimated time and the estimated fuel as the FMS switches to KK51I, the next waypoint after STL.

An undercast, just about the only cloud cover on our route today, blocks our view of St. Louis and the Mississippi.

The flight log.

Passing TILMN waypoint, between Terre Haute Indiana and Matoon Illinois. One of our pilots, Jim Tillman, was a well known TV weatherman in his spare time on a Chicago station. I wonder...

Since we passed Indianapolis (VHP) the ground below has been as flat as a billiard table, although now that we have crossed the Mississippi the imperceptible incline changes from down to up. From here on west to the Rockies, the terrain, though appearing flat, will actually climb steadily. By the time we get to LBL (Liberal Kansas) the elevation is nearly 3000 feet MSL and it will reach 6000 feet even before we get to the actual mountains.

By now, of course, we have had our lunch. The service on flight One is still the best that the domestic system has to offer, as it has always been. This 767-200 is a three class airplane, which is something of a novelty to me these days, since the -300's were reconfigured to a two class layout some years ago. On all but the really long international flights (and, for some reason, the London trips) first class didn't sell well, and the front cabin was usually a dark quiet cavern, occupied by only a handful of people, mostly non-revs. Although this was very convenient for crew rest during breaks it was not the most financially effective use of the space, so first class was eliminated on the 767-300; and the 777, which was always a three class airplane, was deployed on the London and Asian routes where it was still possible to induce a passenger to part with upwards of $4000 to ride up front. One way!

Nonetheless, the JFK-LAX transcons do sell well in first class, and so the 767-200's were configured in a first/business/coach layout to serve this market. We do use them elsewhere on occasion, even on flights as short as JFK-BDA, but their true home is the Mercury. The service is pretty much the same as it has always been, which is to say as luxurious as the airline can afford to make it, at least in First Class, which is the cuisine we partake of in the cockpit. When I was hired in 1977, the transcon flights featured such epicurean delights as caviar and the so called transcon roast. This latter viand was a real roast of beef, cooked onboard. This was possible because the 707's had radiant ovens in the First Class galley. I suppose the 747 also had them, since the roast was rumored to be a feature on the big dog too! There were no extra portions of the roast earmarked for the crew on any of those flights, but on days when the passenger load was light, or when the passengers themselves favored entrees other than the roast, portions of the beef found their way up front; invariably to the Captain, and perhaps to the FO as well. As I recall there were few complaints from any of those airmen! The F/E, of course, got the chicken!

The modern airliner does not have radiant ovens, at least at American, and so the meals, even in First Class, are more or less pre-cooked and put aboard chilled, to be brought to the appropriate temperature in the hot-air ovens of the current galleys. Gone are the tins of caviar, and so too the Chicken Kiev, which was a culinary delight bursting with molten butter - one that could get out of hand if you were not careful how you cut it! The Kiev was probably a casualty of modern health concerns, but the caviar was simply too expensive and, apparently, too little appreciated. The folks in America who really crave caviar can apparently afford to fly in their own jets!

This is all in stark contrast to the original fare on the Mercury - a fried chicken box lunch served cold along with coffee that was, hopefully, served hot! Simple stuff, to be sure, but undoubtedly such a novelty, given the location and the view, that it seemed like gourmet fare in those days! Then again, that was at the height of the great depression, and fried chicken may well have been a real treat, even for those fortunate few who could afford air travel in those tough times. Today, of course, even the most frugal passengers, who no doubt satisfy their hunger beneath the golden arches when they have both feet on the ground, and who delight in paying fares that would not cover the cost of the trip by bicycle let alone by airplane, expect to be fed onboard by Oscar of the Ritz in person! This is likely one bit of the cultural fallout from programs such as "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", which expose the rest of us to lifestyles and menus that we would never experience in real life!

Having sated my appetite, I now fire up the number two comm radio and engage in a bit of banter with a dispatcher I have known for many years. On my usual flights across the pond this would be done using the ACARS and Satcom, but we have had a voice radio system in the CONUS for as long as I have been here, and I am able to converse directly with my friend. I thank him and all of his colleagues over the years for the outstanding support they have provided, and he is kind enough to opine that I might possibly be missed after I am gone. This is the highest sort of compliment, and I am flattered. I hadn't given much thought to how American Airlines will survive without me! Quite well, I'm sure, and indeed that has proven to be the case!

Ever since ACARS made its entry into commercial aviation a few decades ago, we have been able to do for ourselves a certain amount of what the dispatchers and weather people had been doing for us since the advent of airborne radio in the 1930's - obtain information about the state of the weather environment along the route and at destination. But I have always valued the opinions of the dispatchers, and I have often consulted them directly either via the ground-based radio network I am now using, or the satellite network overseas. Of course the satcom system is somewhat costly, and my use of it is limited to situations where it is the only viable method. But it certainly is good to be able to coordinate information directly, even when over some remote corner of the world. Those are the places where you really need it!

Near Wichita Kansas.

As we approach the halfway point of the journey, the LAX weather is still a small concern, although hardly a deal-breaker. Shortly before we took off, a check of the ATIS out there indicated that the fog had worsened, and the weather was 100 overcast with a visibility of 1/16th of a mile. This was acceptable, since the airplane is in CAT IIIB status, and everything we would need to autoland in LAX is working. Now, several hours later, things are a bit better, with 200 overcast and a mile visibility, but the temperature/dew point spread is still only 1 degree, and things will not improve much until the sun has had a chance to warm things up later on. This is one of the reasons I decided to talk to the dispatcher directly - he has been working flight One for years and I am a newcomer, not truly wise to the ways of the Pacific fogs. He assures me that this sort of thing has been going on for several mornings now, and it has always cleared up by our arrival time to at least marginal VFR conditions.

The Gypsum Hills, near Medicine Lodge Kansas.

Southwestern Kansas.

As I put down the microphone I am pleased to see that the undercast that blotted out a view of St. Louis has disappeared, and it looks like we will be treated to some more sightseeing as we continue west. Up to now we have been looking at the Great Plains, but that view changes as we cross the panhandle of Oklahoma. The land below is looking progressively more arid, and cultivation appears to be sparser, with patchwork areas of croplands dropped almost randomly into the scrub. Not far from here, at Altus AFB Oklahoma, I encountered the first big transport jet that I would have the good fortune to fly - the C-141A Starlifter. Newly graduated from USAF pilot training and, strange as it may seem, eager to trade the supersonic T-38 for something that had a bunk and a toilet (!), I was in hog heaven for three whole months. The Air Force chose well when they selected Altus for this training, because the place is out in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no distractions from the main task of learning to fly the heavies. This was graduate school for me, the aeronautical equivalent of an MBA, and I threw myself into it eagerly. Perhaps someday that story will be told, who can say. But the memories are vivid, and I take a moment to remember what it was like to begin this lifelong Argosy. I take another moment to remember my roommate at Altus, a fellow C-141 fledgling whose career was cut very short by a fatal crash near Madrid, Spain a year and a half later. We all take that final flight west, as the WWI aviators used to say; sadly, Bill just made the trip much sooner than most of us. Smooth skies and tailwinds to you, old buddy. Keep the runway lights up there on full bright for the rest of us!

The mighty ramparts of the Rocky Mountains come into view in the distance.

When I was a student at Altus the first time, in 1972, my ignorance of geography was so great that I actually thought that it might be possible to see the tops of the Rockies on a clear day from atop a small mountain that lay just east of the field! Imagine my surprise when, a month or so later, we flew our first cross-country mission from Altus to Tacoma Washington. We flew for an hour at jet speeds before the Rockies came into view, and from 35,000 feet at that! But soon enough now that great rampart comes into view in the distance (above). It will still be a few minutes before we cross the Front Range, but the splendor of the great mountain chain is already apparent, and I sit up straighter in my seat, the better to take in the spectacle.

The far western panhandle of Oklahoma.

The Canadian River near the old Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico.

The Sangre de Christo range near Cimarron New Mexico.

We are approaching the southern portion of the Rockies, the Sangre de Cristo range. To the north lie Pikes Peak and the Air Force Academy. Beneath us lies the old-west town of Cimarron, New Mexico, and just to the west of Cimarron is the enormous Philmont Boy Scout Ranch, one of the highlights of any scout's career. In 17 years of interviewing candidates for the Air Force Academy, I have met more than one graduate of Philmont and they all spoke of the challenges and the scenic grandeur of the place. Looking at it now, from 38,000 feet, I can understand their enthusiasm.

We see these guys everywhere these days, but we really are in their territory! Behind Southwest is the Philmont Boy Scout ranch - just about everything in the picture below and to the right of the jet!

Angel Fire New Mexico, with Taos just across the mountains in the middle distance.

Just to the west of Philmont lie Taos and Angel Fire, two of the dozens of major ski resorts in the eastern Rockies. There is still snow on the ground here in March, of course, and no doubt many enthusiasts are enjoying a nerve-wracking run down the side of a mountain! Early in my airline career I made the acquaintance of several flight attendants who liked to ski and were, in fact, members of the airline ski team. Lured by the thought of amorous encounters apres-ski (this was before She!), I ventured forth to several of the airline ski meets in Utah and California, even taking a lesson or two on the bunny slopes. Alas, I proved no more adept at skiing than I would, years later, at Tango, and since the risk of sudden death was much greater on the slopes than on a dance floor I decided to remain at the base of the mountains, a position from which I have yet to budge! Later on Sonny Bono would succumb to just the sort of accident I visualized myself being involved in, and so my decision may well have been a good one.

The northwest New Mexico desert.

Cabezon Peak, southwest of Taos NM.

Interstate 40 cuts through Red Rock State Park and Fort Wingate, with Gallup New Mexico at upper right.

Beyond the mountains the terrain settles down into desert as we head for a meeting with a very historic road at Gallup New Mexico. Famous in song and story, Route 66 was the first modern highway between Chicago and the west coast. Until Gallup we have been flying well to the north of its old alignment, although we crossed it at St. Louis. Now we meet up with it again, and follow it until Flagstaff Arizona. Known to some as "The Mother Road", a name bestowed upon it in the John Steinbeck novel Grapes of Wrath, the road, or what is left of it, meanders back and forth around Interstate 40, right through the towns it originally nurtured; towns which the Interstate bypassed and consigned to oblivion. It is still possible to travel much of the original road, although you have to refer to special maps since "US Highway 66" was officially decommissioned several decades ago. One day, perhaps, I will explore this part of the country at ground level, and when I do, I'll "...get my kicks on Route 66"!

Navaho reservation, northeast Arizona.

Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona.

Winslow, Arizona on the old Route 66.

As we roll along west of Gallup headed toward Winslow Arizona, Pam alerts me to the next upcoming "must see" sight - Meteor Crater! (Pam, of course, has been flying the Mercury for several years an average of twice a week, and she is a font of knowledge about the sights along the way. I still do remember the major ones from my days on domestic in my aviation youth, and fortunately they have not moved or disappeared!!) Meteor Crater, so called because of its creation as the result of a large meteor impacting the surface, is said to have been formed around 50,000 years ago - a mere blink in geological time. The crater, which stands out even from our altitude, is almost a mile across, and some 500 feet deep. It sits a bit west and south of Winslow, just off the old Route 66. There was a sort of tragic-comic mishap here several decades ago, in which two pilots in a small Cessna flew down into the crater itself. After gadding about for awhile, they discovered, no doubt to their consternation, that wind currents prevented the modestly powered Cessna from topping the crater walls, thus condemning them to a forced landing on the crater floor a few hours later when they ran out of gas. The pilots survived, sadder and wiser, but the airplane did not.

Meteor Crater Arizona

Mormon Lake, Arizona, with Sedona in the distance.

The red rock formations of Sedona.

A few minutes farther down the road we overfly an especially stunning area that I have seen from the ground - Sedona Arizona. The red rock formations around Sedona are justifiably famous for their stark beauty, particularly near sunset. As is often the case, some of the drama of the view is lost from 38,000 feet, but it is still a sight worth seeing. As usual, though, the passengers are probably lost in the so-called entertainment, and all of the window shades are most likely down. I was actually a bit surprised when the A-380 and the 787 were designed with passenger windows! A great deal of weight could have been saved by eliminating them, and for most of the passengers the view would probably not be missed. Of course the psychological effect of having no windows probably drove the fenestrated design, and it may be some time yet before a windowless passenger airplane would be a hit among the consumers of air travel. But it will come someday, I very much suspect. Cockpit windows may also disappear, and I am glad I won't be around to experience that! Not from a sense of claustrophobia, mind you, nor from a feeling that the windows would be needed, given the technology that already exists that would obviate the need for them. No, the reason I am glad that we still have windows up front is the view, such as we have now as we pass over Sedona. This has been and will always be one of the greatest perks of the job!

But enough of this sightseeing, for it is now time to begin planning the arrival into LAX. Our arrival today, the Seavu1, starts at Twenty Nine Palms (TNP), which is out in the desert some 133 miles from the airport. LAX was one of the first airports to have arrivals that contained a descent profile, and this one is no exception. There are four altitude constraints on the Seavu, the first of which is both a hard altitude (17,000) and a hard speed (280 kts). The remainder are less stringent - several "at or above's" and a final block altitude two thousand feet thick. The arrival drops you off at Seavu intersection, from whence the ILS to runway 25L, the preferred arrival runway from this direction, commences. The ILS procedure contains 6 more "at or above" constraints until glideslope intercept. In the days before VNAV this could be something of a mental challenge, especially for the uninitiated, although those with long experience usually found the secret handshake rate-of-descent that would solve the puzzle and allow for a more or less continuous descent, rather than a "dive and drive" series of letdowns and level flight segments between the waypoints.

The SEAVU arrival.

Journey's end. The waypoints come fast and furious on the arrival.

VNAV, of course, takes all of the guesswork out of a procedure like this; or rather it might be best to say that it takes over the guesswork from the pilot! Provided that the altitude and speed constraints are accurately programmed into the FMC prior to descent, which they are since they are all part and parcel of the procedures themselves and they live permanently within the database, VNAV can usually handle things flawlessly. However, note carefully my use of the word "usually"! The FMC on the 767 is not without its limitations, and one of these is that unless some winds at lower altitudes are inserted into it somehow, it will base all of its descent planning on the current groundspeed. The newer software in the so-called Pegasus FMC's (standard equipment on the later -300's and making their way via retrofit to the rest of the fleet at this point) allows for a descent wind update via ACARS, but this airplane has the older software, and any forecast winds we might lay our hands on will have to be entered manually on the descent forecast page. This I do, however unenthusiastic I may normally be for manual labor (!), because if the VNAV is to be entrusted with the management of this arrival, as indeed it will be, it will need the best information I can give it!

KLAX ATIS Delta.

Even with the forecast winds however, the FMC must be watched very carefully when VNAV is handling things. VNAV computes and flies an actual vertical path, a sort of down-ramp in the sky, and it has the use of both autopilot and autothrottles to perform its task. It will attempt to maintain both the path and the desired speed, but it lacks authority over a critical element of control in the descent - the speed brakes. If it cannot maintain the path and the speed, all it can do is put up a message on the scratch-pad line of the FMC: "DRAG REQUIRED". At that point it is up to us -- first of all to see the message and second to apply the needed drag, which we would do by extending the speed brakes. It is easy to miss the FMC message, but if I keep an eye on the altitude, speed and vertical deviation from the path I can pretty much tell when Otto is going to start demanding some help! If, on the other hand, we do not respond to Otto's demands, he will, in essence, give up. The FMC mode will silently change from VNAV PATH, which is what we want, to VNAV SPEED, which means that the autopilot will maintain the speed with pitch, but give up trying to maintain the path. On numerous occasions pilots have failed to notice that this has occurred until constraints are missed and a blast of invective from ATC roused them from their torpor!

Inbound to Twenty Nine Palms we pass just to the south of Lake Havasu City, on the Arizona side of the Colorado River. Havasu is perhaps best known today as the location of the old London Bridge, which was shipped here stone by stone and rebuilt as a tourist attraction in the early 1970's. Actually, only the stone cladding of the original is here, draped onto a new structure, but the appearance is identical save for the surroundings! Initially some of the tourists who trekked into the desert to see it were disappointed - they were expecting the bridge that most Americans think of when they think "London Bridge", that is to say the Tower Bridge. Naturally, the British weren't selling that one for any price, although the one we got was a relative bargain - only around 2.5 million. It cost more than that to ship and reassemble it!

Twenty Nine Palms on the lower right, with the San Gorgonio Pass in the distance, guarded by San Jacinto Peak on the left and San Gorgonio Mountain on the right, both in excess of 10,000 feet in height.

Now Twenty Nine Palms (TNP) slides beneath the airplane symbol on the Nav display and the SEAVU arrival begins. There were once actually twenty nine palms standing in an oasis here, which just goes to show that you cannot make this stuff up! Today the area is home to the US Marine Corps' largest base, a vast desert compound devoted to air-ground and ground-ground live fire training. Not the sort of place I would want to fly my SkySkooter through at low altitudes, but of no concern to us up here in the higher reaches of the blue. Actually, the entire western third of the USA is mottled with military restricted areas, the most famous of which is a good bit north of our current course - Area 51. Most of this verboten airspace is over country you wouldn't want to be flying over anyway, at least in a single engine airplane - very little civilization and few roads would make for an inhospitable area in which to suffer a forced landing. When I brought the Skooter back east in the fall of 1996, I made sure to stay within gliding distance of the Interstate highways for much of the trip through this area!

The VNAV begins to indicate that we are approaching the optimum top-of-descent point, and sure enough ATC comes through with a clearance. Now, as we begin our descent, the magnificent gateway to the golden west appears - San Gorgonio Pass, which sits astride the gap between the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south. The pass is a natural transportation route, first utilized by the railroads in the latter decades of the 19th century, and later by the automobile, now served by Interstate 10. It is also a natural venturi, funneling the winds from the Pacific through its narrow and steep confines (the pass is guarded by mountains that tower nearly 9000 feet above the floor) and out onto the broad desert plain beyond. This is one of the windiest places in America, and naturally this fact has not escaped the attention of the green energy industry - San Gorgonio Pass is the site of an enormous wind farm that generates hundreds of megawatts of electricity as long as the wind blows. Nor is it the only one - there are several other major wind farms in the passes that lead out of the Los Angeles basin, one of which, the Tehachapi, I overflew on my way east with the Skooter on its mini-argosy back home after I bought it in Oregon. All of this wind can make for a rough ride down low, but we have sufficient altitude to be serenely untroubled by turbulence.

Palm Springs Californa, tucked close aginast the San Jacinto Mountains.

Hard by the mountains just on the eastern portal of the pass lies a modern desert oasis - Palm Springs. Famous for its celebrity residents, the town is dominated by the enormous mansion of the most famous of them all - the late great Bob Hope. This structure, which from a distance resembles nothing more than a large alien spacecraft that had to make a forced landing on the side of the hill, is a sight that I remember all the way back to the beginning of my airline career, when I was occasionally able to bid Palm Springs layovers on the 707 in the late 1970's.

The view from here extends almost all the way to the Pacific Ocean, so clear is the atmosphere. This is not always the case, of course, and the entire basin west of the mountains is often filled with a vile brew of smog and haze, restricting visibilities to three or four miles even on cloudless days. This is yet another small gift for my last flight into this area, for on only a few other days in my entire career was the sight as spectacular as it is today. Way over to the west, at land's end, we can see the marine layer lapping against the coastline, but by now even that is beginning to break up and the visibility at the airport has improved considerably. No need for an ILS to minimums this morning!

Oh, and by the way, it is still morning here! We, of course, are still operating on New York tummy time, which now approximates two-ish. But one of the beauties of a trip like this is that it is not yet noon in LA, which means that the entire afternoon and evening are ours for whatever various and sundry diversions we may seek. Up to this point I had no firm plans for the layover, although several pilgrimages to locations better known in my early career are possibilities. But now, as we soar high above the San Bernardino Mountains a magnificent sight comes into view - one that I had heard of but never really noticed or explored in prior visits. Tucked high in the mountains just west of the San Gorgonio pass is a large blue lake, surrounded by the higher peaks in the center of the massif. Pam informs me that this is Big Bear Lake, a favorite destination for Angelinos in all seasons, and not too difficult to get to from the coast. In an instant I decide that it will be to this place that I will turn my steps when we arrive at our layover digs in an hour or so!

Big Bear Lake, high up in the San Bernardino Mountains.

San Gorgonio Mountain, with Big Bear in the distance.

Interstate 10 cuts through Banning and Beaumont California, just west of the San Gorgonio Pass.

But now we are all business, for the sterile cockpit period is at hand. We have, of course, already loaded the ILS 25L approach into the FMC's, and briefed ourselves as to its various intricacies. Otto is handling the descent nicely, and the vertical deviation from the intended path is less than 50 feet, which for all intents is right on. As we slide down the invisible banister toward the runway, still many miles distant, we pass over the eastern reaches of the Los Angeles basin, and from here to the threshold the landscape is one gigantic suburb, hundreds of thousands of cookie-cutter houses and condos with malls both mini and maxi plunked down here and there in the midst. This whole fabric of suburbia is stitched together by freeways, eight-laned affairs that are comfortably free of traffic at this late hour, but which will be packed solid later this afternoon.

ILS 25L approach plate.

Diamond Valley Lake, Hemet California.

Santiago Peak, in the Cleveland National Forest.

The SEAVU arrival brings us in just to the south of the extended centerlines of all four runways, and at CATAW we turn slightly to the right toward SEAVU and the runways. We are still 70 miles from LAX at this point, but things will happen fast from here on in. As we cross SEAVU we are now a bit over 8 miles from the centerline of 25L, the southern-most of the 4 parallel runways. In days gone by the charts for these arrivals were not drawn to scale, and all four runways were depicted on, say, the DOWNE arrival page. The localizers were spread out, no doubt for clarity, but the result was to suggest that LAX's four runways were scattered from Santa Monica to Palos Verdes! In reality they all lay within the space of a single mile, north to south, and an unsuspecting pilot can shoot across all four of them in a heartbeat. Occasionally, someone did, and kept on going toward the Santa Monica Mountains which squat a mere 10 miles or so to the north, reaching heights well above the vectoring altitude. The depictions have been improved, and the advent of the FMC and GPS have made it possible to track the course all the way to localizer intercept, which occurs at the LUVYN intersection some 41 miles from the threshold.

Once beyond LUVYN, we can switch from LNAV to LOC, although we must continue to ignore the glideslope this far out. We start configuring somewhat earlier than normal, to accommodate the speed ATC has assigned us - around 220 kts if memory serves. Approaching GAATE and 5000 feet altitude, ATC clears us for the ILS approach, and we can arm the glideslope, which is captured almost immediately. I hold off on the gear until we are passing LIMMA, and then take over from Otto for my third-to-last approach and landing. You may wonder why I let the machine fly itself even this long, but there is a last time for everything, and that includes a VNAV descent! Final flaps at 1200 feet or so, and the Mercury slides down the last mile to the runway. Over the threshold, ease the nose up just a bit, idle on the throttles, and she touches down smoothly, as these -200's tend to do if handled well. A satisfying end to a truly enjoyable flight, at least as far as the flying is concerned!

Having just cleared runway 25R, we are advised of a delay awaiting the gate.

Holding on Charlie facing west, toward the sea. The marine fog layer has yet to retreat from this end of the airport.

Clearing the runways, we call our ramp control on the second radio, only to discover that an MD-80 is overstaying its welcome and has broken down on the very gate we were planning to occupy. Oh well, I suppose there is a last time for that sort of thing as well! We turn north onto taxiway Charlie and await the disposition of our case. Off to the right we can see the carcass of one of our 767's that suffered an uncontained engine failure, fortunately on the ground with none but the maintenance crew aboard. Engine failures that are this spectacular are not supposed to occur, and the investigation of this incident was still ongoing at that time, but the airplane is a write-off. I wonder if I can somehow get my hands on the nose section for a simulator!

Cathay Pacific heads for Hong Kong.

The logbook entry for my modern-day Mercury!

After spending a half hour or so watching a series of 747's heave themselves into the air bound for points west, we are summoned to the gate. The MD-80 has been fixed and has departed, and so, after a short pause to get the attention of ground control and their blessing, we trundle on over and park the beast. Engine Shutdown checklist please, for the fourth-to-last time. As I bid the passengers goodbye from the flight deck door, I think back to the first Mercury - only 21 passengers at best made for short good byes! Today the farewells take a bit longer than that, but our journey was much shorter, probably a good bit smoother, and certainly a lot quieter. All in all it is still the premier flight at American Airlines, and I am delighted beyond measure that I have been able to place the flight number "1" in my logbook. I only wish that they still called it The Mercury!

Continued in The Mercury part three - Big Bear and Beyond.

Anthony Vallillo
avallillo@charter.net

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