Delta Airlines Visit

By Ryan Gaddis

Awesome. Awesome is probably the one word that can describe what I did. What did I do you ask? I was able to spend half a day at the Delta Airlines main offices at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. I went down with a friend who is a Delta employee. When we were there I had to stay with him at all times because I did not have a pass. We did several things when we were there, I will explain each one of them in detail below.

The first thing we did was go into the reservations area. The reservations area or res. is where you call in to purchase or ask questions about tickets. The room I was in did not have very many people working in it. But it was interesting to see how they do things when you call in.

Pilot Training

Ryan seating at the controls of the Boeing 757 sim.

The next area we went to was the Pilot Training and Flight Attendant Training building. When we were in here we went in to the instrument sim. rooms and talked to different people. We then went to another instrument sim. room where there were sevral flights taking place. The first people we watched were flying a Boeing 757-200 into Atlanta. But they were still decending through 23,000 feet so we moved on to the next one. The next one was another 757-200 and this crew was decending into Atlanta and passing through 8,000 feet. So we decided to stay and watch them land.

The Crew went through the normal checks for landing then did the procedure turn for KATL runway 8R. They were on final, the "tower" (which was actually a guy sitting behind them) told them to do a missed approach. So they began the standard missed approach procedure for runway 8R. Then one of the instructors gave them an AC BUS right failure without telling them. At first it just flashed on one of the screens as "AC BUS". After a few seconds, going unnoticed by the crew, systems began to shut down and alarms began to go off. The first officer immediatly took the "plane" off of auto pilot and began flying it manually while the Captain was busy trying to figure out what systems they no longer had use of.

We left that crew and went to watch another crew that was flying a 767-300ER. They were also given an AC BUS failure but this was an AC BUS left failure which took out all the crew's flight systems. This Captain was flying the plane on approach in Atlanta to runway 9L. When the plane got down to about 75 feet the "tower" told them to do a missed approach and the captain got the plane climbing when the were passing through 10 feet!

Full Motion Sims

We then decided we would go and find the full movement simulators. To get to those sims you have to cross a bridge that is part of the building that crosses a street in Atlanta and leads to another building. We saw a crew getting in an L-1011 simulator and asked if we could watch them do the pre-flight and they agreed. We found out that they were a crew that works for a cargo airline based out of Miami and they had just acquired some L-1011s.

After leaving them and looking around we found an MD-88 sim with no one in it so we got in and took a look. We found an MD-11 with no one in it so we got in that one too. The MD-11 seat is very uncomfortable I would not recommend flying one. We left that one and were looking around and found a new MD-90 sim. The MD-90s are only flown out of Delta's Dallas hub but the crews do their training here.

We got in the MD-90 and a technician came to see what we were doing and we told him. The technician let us stay in it, he sat down in the right seat with me in the left and started explaining things to me. My friend told him that I was a student pilot. The technician got up and sat down in front of the computer and turned the view screen on. We were positioned on runway 9R at Atlanta. He then started showing me the different times of day and different visibilities including CAT 1, CAT 2, CAT 3 and the worst one, CAT 4. Then he set it back to CAVU (ceiling and visibility unlimited). He then pushed a button on the computer and put us at gate A 21. He got back in the right seat and we began to pushback from the gate.

Ryan seating at the controls of the MD88 sim.
As we pulled away the scenery was incredible! There were stair trucks moving around us and much more. Then we were positioned on the taxiway center line and the technician did an engine quick start. He told me to taxi straight ahead to runway 8R, so I gave it some throttle to get moving. I got to the hold short line and tapped the brakes and came to a stop. With a little throttle I moved us onto the runway and got us lined up using the stearing wheel to the left of me. Then I tapped the brakes again and brought us to a stop. The technician set the auto-throttle and told me we would begin rolling in a few seconds and to get set.

We started rolling...at 140 knots I pulled back on the yoke a little and the nose jumped off the runway. I then glanced over my left shoulder and looked back on the airport and city. I felt like we were moving but we couldn't be because the bridge was still down and the door was still open. But I looked back just to check anyway.

The technician paused the sim and told the computer to make it night, then he dimmed the lights. Taking it off of pause he showed me where downtown Atlanta was and also where Stone Mountian is. I turned towards the city. As we got closer I stopped my climb and trimmed the aircraft. Then pulled the throttle back a little. I saw Atlanta Fulton County Stadium (the old home of the Braves) I turned and aimed at it. The technician said that we could not crash by hitting a building and said "so have some fun". I pushed throttle to full and dove on the stadium. The scenery was so detailed that on my dive I could see a billboard that said Fly Delta Airlines on it! At about 200 to 300 feet off the ground I pulled the yoke back against me and started a 80 to 90 degree vertical climb. The stall light lit up and then went off, then the stick shaker went off and I reached and passed the maximum G limit. I ripped the wings off. But it was cool. We were all extremely dizzy from the experience!

Tech Ops

We then decided to head over to Tech Ops. or the maintenance hangars. We saw a 757 that was in getting a new interior and some new things added in the cockpit. We left that hangar and went to another where there were two 727s that were being cleaned. We walked through the hangar to the paint hangar where they had just completed painting a MD-88...it looked very good! Another short walk took us to the actual hangar where they do the work on the planes. They had two L-1011s shoved into the side of the hangar, one of which they were completely taking apart. They had a total of 9 aircraft in this hangar and it was not even the largest one! We left that hangar and found ourselves about 150 feet from the edge of runway 9L where we watched a few arrivals and departures, but there were not many of them because it was almost 10:00 PM. Then we decided to leave because it had been a long day and we were both very tired.

I am hoping I will be able to go back down there and see more things. This was truly a dream come true for me.

Ryan Gaddis
Email: FLYER737@aol.com

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