Jump to content

Search the Community

Showing results for tags 'final argosy'.

  • Search By Tags

    Type tags separated by commas.
  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • New Forum Software - Suggestions
    • New Forum Software
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 - Early Discussion
    • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 - Early Discussion
  • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
    • Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 General Discussion
    • MSFS 2020 Aircraft and Helicopters Discussion
    • MSFS Navigation - FMC Systems and Avionics
    • MSFS Screenshots and Videos Forum
    • MSFS 2020 News
    • News from Commercial Developers
  • Microsoft FSX
    • FSX General Discussion
    • FSX Aircraft
    • FSX Scenery
    • FSX Screenshots
  • Microsoft Flight Simulators FS2004 - 2002 - Flight
    • FS2004
    • FS2002
    • Microsoft Flight
  • General Interest
    • Newcomer Services
    • The Outer Marker
    • Comments
    • Group Flights & Events
    • Swap Meet
    • Virtual Airlines
    • RSS Feeds
  • X-Plane
    • X-Plane
    • X-Plane Screen Shots And Videos
    • News, Pre-Releases & Releases
    • Developers Corner
    • X-Plane Shoutbox Forum
  • Prepar3D
    • Prepar3D
    • Prepar3D Screen Shots And Videos
    • Prepar3D Shoutbox Forum
  • Mobile Apps
    • RORTOS
    • SkyFox Games
    • Mobile Apps - General
  • Auto Sports Simulations
    • General Support
  • Other Sims
    • Military Flight Sims
    • CFS3
    • PRE-Flight
    • FlightGear Flight Simulator
    • Dovetail Games
  • Technical Forums
    • PC Hardware, Video And Audio Help
    • PC Software Tech
    • Cockpit Builders
  • Designer Forums
    • Aircraft Design
    • Painter's Workshop
    • Panel & Gauge Design
    • Scenery Design
  • Real World Aviation
    • Real Aviation General Discussion
    • Real Aviation Profiles
    • Real Aviation Photos & Videos
    • Real Aviation Favorite Headline News
    • Real Aviation Tutorials & FAQs
  • Support Forums
    • pizzagalli.ch Support
    • Airport for Windows Support
    • DreamFleet
    • Quality Wings
    • Air Manager Support
    • FS-AOM Support
    • SGA Support
  • Archive
    • FS2000
    • FS98
    • FS5
    • FS4
    • CFS
    • Scenery Design Archive
    • Aircraft Design Archive
  • Nels Corner
    • Nels Corner - News
    • Nels Corner - Articles
    • Featured Articles and Tutorials
  • Aviation Enthusiasts's Aviation Enthusiasts Topics
  • CFS3 Freaks's CFS3 Freaks Topics
  • Friends Of The fsOC 727-200's Friends Of The fsOC 727-200 Topics
  • FS9 Users's FS9 Users Topics
  • 737-200 Lovers's 737-200 Lovers Topics
  • FS9 Mulitplayer Group's FS9 Mulitplayer Group Topics
  • The Dirty Old Mens Flying Circus's The Dirty Old Mens Flying Circus Topics
  • Old lovers of old Flight Simulator versions.'s Old lovers of old Flight Simulator versions. Topics
  • All about Boeing!!!'s All about Boeing!!! Topics
  • Singapore Airlines's Singapore Airlines Topics
  • The Fokker Club's The Fokker Club Topics
  • 777's!'s 777's! Topics
  • Military aviation enthusiasts's Military aviation enthusiasts Topics
  • Aerobatics club's Aerobatics club Topics
  • In Loving Memory Of All Defunct Airlines's In Loving Memory Of All Defunct Airlines Topics
  • Chuck Norris Appreciation Group's Chuck Norris Appreciation Group Topics
  • The PMDG MD-11 Club's The PMDG MD-11 Club Topics
  • The Turboprop fan club's The Turboprop fan club Topics
  • RTW Race Team's RTW Race Team Topics
  • Dornier Group's Dornier Group Topics
  • NZCDI (New Zealand Cargo Domestic International)'s NZCDI (New Zealand Cargo Domestic International) Topics
  • Dash-8 Fans's Dash-8 Fans Topics
  • FSX lover and fans Razek's SCENERY's FSX lover and fans Razek's SCENERY Topics
  • Vatsim Users's Vatsim Users Topics
  • Icelandair Group's Icelandair Group Topics
  • Airbus Group's Airbus Group Topics
  • Southwest Airlines Fans's Southwest Airlines Fans Topics
  • DC-3 Lovers's DC-3 Lovers Topics
  • general aviation club's general aviation club Topics
  • FSX/FS9 Boeing NewAirplane Group's FSX/FS9 Boeing NewAirplane Group Topics
  • Planespotters Group's Planespotters Group Topics
  • world war 2 aircraft's world war 2 aircraft Topics
  • Project Guppy's Project Guppy Topics
  • Historic aircraft's Historic aircraft Topics
  • PNW flight group's PNW flight group Topics
  • westjet fans's westjet fans Topics
  • AI AIRCRAFT GROUP's AI AIRCRAFT GROUP Topics
  • iFly 737 NG Lovers's iFly 737 NG Lovers Topics
  • Indonesia Flight Simmer's Indonesia Flight Simmer Topics
  • Air Crash SA 252's Air Crash SA 252 Topics
  • WeFly FSX Community & Works Team's WeFly FSX Community & Works Team Topics
  • REPAINTERS CLUB's REPAINTERS CLUB Topics
  • Satellite Airways Fans and Staff's Satellite Airways Fans and Staff Topics
  • FSX Sussex Flyers's FSX Sussex Flyers Topics
  • DC-10 lovers's DC-10 lovers Topics
  • PAINTING LIVERIES FOR AIRCRAFT's I need help on painting!
  • PAINTING LIVERIES FOR AIRCRAFT's REQUEST LIVERY

Blogs

  • pedro21nn's Blog
  • Lenedog's Blog
  • pawneepilots's Blog
  • HawkOne1946's Blog
  • troygauthier71's Blog
  • michael641's Blog
  • rzdukez's Blog
  • wismor's Blog
  • UdoOertel's Blog
  • Sugus1942's Blog
  • scheffer73's Blog
  • Skinnyb8's Blog
  • KdubTheTomatoGamer's Blog
  • Garciamk3g's Blog
  • bobby25's Blog
  • Gerardo Santiago's Blog
  • kiyasuriin's Blog
  • lryrob's Blog
  • soaringeagle's Blog
  • Tytusiks's Blog
  • 22 Yankee's Blog
  • eVInteractive's Blog
  • morty1959's Blog
  • retbxdet's Blog
  • Catalin's Blog
  • chobers's Blog
  • pedroviveiros's Blog
  • RobertsDale's Blog
  • Jumpseater's Blog
  • feribambu's Blog
  • ELHOIM's Blog
  • Flatpack39's Blog
  • ThorstenRenk's Blog
  • George Smith's Blog
  • Terry12's Blog
  • Woodsie.010's Blog
  • alanmimmack's Blog
  • TraeStorm's Blog
  • bismark787's Blog
  • Edward Chudy's Blog
  • H3AZ's Blog
  • Mochafd's Blog
  • coltondou's Blog
  • congtyteambuilding's Blog
  • ron2910's Blog
  • Blondi's Blog
  • steelman78's Blog
  • dp509's Blog
  • tristan2212's Blog
  • izhar's Blog
  • trueshopee's Blog
  • aircavguy's Blog
  • DamienTan's Blog
  • simonernd's Blog
  • denzo737's Blog
  • gisbertmaurer's Blog
  • Baywoof's Blog
  • mirahu92's Blog
  • titanmoon's Blog
  • Gallo's Blog
  • Zon's Blog
  • Kreisel4's Blog
  • Dakrskythe's Blog
  • mmurphy77's Blog
  • soulmax's Blog
  • richavery's Blog
  • RichardDavis's Blog
  • Coyote Old Man's Blog
  • OscarJ1337's Blog
  • Tina_MWD's Blog
  • ginni's Blog
  • AviatorD777's Blog
  • Ferike's Blog
  • jimcarroll's Blog
  • RichAdair's Blog
  • punder's Blog
  • jmshald's Blog
  • tj4hjono's Blog
  • christian2018's Blog
  • knowlesp's Blog
  • Flug2308's Blog
  • jlbflyboy182's Blog
  • peewee's Blog
  • bhf1950's Blog
  • RonSpain's Blog
  • Harold909's Blog
  • Cmte Watts's Blog
  • hassan aldahshan's Blog
  • Jett's Blog
  • PBassMan's Blog
  • Harry Davis's Blog
  • Quackarov's Blog
  • mike_forr@hotmail.com's Blog
  • Slickrock's Blog
  • Flightsimhero's Blog
  • BrownBee89's Blog
  • GunnerOIF2003's Blog
  • Mal's Blog
  • walterpha's Blog
  • MikeUlm's Blog
  • Challengerman2016's Blog
  • takahashi kunio's Blog
  • Cesar A Sampaio's Blog
  • vicdel's Blog
  • Prospero246's Blog
  • BD018's Blog
  • eprkeeper's Blog
  • Skyflyer4's Blog
  • zxspectrum's Blog
  • Rainer Juenger's Blog
  • aussi's Blog
  • dutchvan831's Blog
  • jachor's Blog
  • PauloDuarte1981's Blog
  • Sania's Blog
  • TOCALLO's Blog
  • hippiezahn's Blog
  • Ian61's Blog
  • raz_65's Blog
  • nerotuga's Blog
  • cdavis360's Blog
  • clankilp's Blog
  • Udoudo's Blog
  • barosqueen's Blog
  • Lasamlandings's Blog
  • Jarmo's Blog
  • iloveass's Blog
  • danny_mullins's Blog
  • meinit4's Blog
  • Hobbsie71's Blog
  • Cotangens's Blog
  • Flyguy1998's Blog
  • Henry21's Blog
  • MooseGB's Blog
  • X-Octavia-X's Blog
  • LesAD10's Blog
  • chadgeezee's Blog
  • whiterock-flyboy's Blog
  • cencio's Blog
  • Edson Dias's Blog
  • LIPAO's Blog
  • robertsjohn878@gmail.com's Blog
  • Skymccloud 1's Blog
  • medic597's Blog
  • trakadasantonios's Blog
  • Albercik's Blog
  • mdamstel's Blog
  • DrMAJ's Blog
  • Marconev's Blog
  • Joemed725's Blog
  • EspanaPete's Blog
  • AviatorEevees's Blog
  • ARMY 342's Blog
  • Kahu_Helo's Blog
  • WonkaVSN02's Blog
  • NICK121's Blog
  • iaintw1's Blog
  • A319_Lica's Blog
  • TheAviationEnthusiast's Blog
  • attackace's Blog
  • Fuelin's Blog
  • topgun2369's Blog
  • hud5455's Blog
  • w1ngnut's Blog
  • cessna 150's Blog
  • Alex Dickinson's Blog
  • RayH's Blog
  • Carl Porter's Blog
  • rickkanjurmarg's Blog
  • wfrayer's Blog
  • helmis's Blog
  • caroldixen's Blog
  • digitalpilot's Blog
  • saptarshim2000's Blog
  • ATCLONDRINA's Blog
  • EmoJim's Blog
  • ZeNNeC's Blog
  • vrpilot's Blog
  • Adesoji's Blog
  • chserrano's Blog
  • koord's Blog
  • hardyje1915's Blog
  • jrcooper7's Blog
  • whiteknightz28's Blog
  • Alanalborn's Blog
  • ray56707's Blog
  • Lutz_Fl's Blog
  • dirts32's Blog
  • johnmartin1101's Blog
  • golson33's Blog
  • mrfilbert's Blog
  • pilot omar's Blog
  • koch44's Blog
  • Saaarge's Blog
  • Norman Smith's Blog
  • sheilamorse's Blog
  • animore's Blog
  • debarshiduttagupta's Blog
  • gordonrd45's Blog
  • D.Michael's Blog
  • JackRidle's Blog
  • Ted P's Blog
  • mwauge's Blog
  • DarrellWayne's Blog
  • Scimiter's Blog
  • dasher's Blog
  • breeboone's Blog
  • RobbyDark's Blog
  • George Carter's Blog
  • TAC's Blog
  • uahostee's Blog
  • NoFlyZone's Blog
  • Greyman's Blog
  • RTaylor's Blog
  • StarFlyer's Blog
  • Edmilson Honorio's Blog
  • Ictus's Blog
  • antonin.peniska's Blog
  • fabionba's Blog
  • Sierpe's Blog
  • Shami's Blog
  • luistashburner's Blog
  • Meir's Blog
  • Keith South's Blog
  • Steelersfan71bs's Blog
  • PHILIP WALKER's Blog
  • 139738's Blog
  • Gordon147's Blog
  • Mikeswa66's Blog
  • mitolima's Blog
  • Batfink's Blog
  • HolmesK's Blog
  • dlfrese's Blog
  • Jklindy16's Blog
  • gb_40_au's Blog
  • sweetness's Blog
  • von Trippenhoff's Blog
  • vmrooze's Blog
  • rdkyle43's Blog
  • bareaud's Blog
  • Bammis's Blog
  • Ramflt's Blog
  • Gabos73's Blog
  • Boyblunder's Blog
  • Tandym's Blog
  • Romeo Delta Victor's Blog
  • GhostTown's Blog
  • Christopher Shaw's Blog
  • kevgardner83's Blog
  • tonyemm's Blog
  • P Thompson's Blog
  • caj's Blog
  • David Carrancio's Blog
  • Lona's Blog
  • Jack06's Blog
  • macsmotoblog's Blog
  • klwilliams's Blog
  • SHARMAAYUSH's Blog
  • pmrose's Blog
  • knfulcrum's Blog
  • gipsymoth236k's Blog
  • Kurtn's Blog
  • Malcolm's Blog
  • Ingardy's Blog
  • david_UK's Blog
  • simonwhite1984's Blog
  • lhops's Blog
  • energy74's Blog
  • ant12's Blog
  • Skeeter_Jawn's Blog
  • cessna182@gmail.com's Blog
  • Michel Alpha's Blog
  • CAG0001's Blog
  • Viloria's Blog
  • cabofrio's Blog
  • O r t i s MCC Los key's Blog
  • Petter1's Blog
  • Jumag43's Blog
  • x 737 Pilot's Blog
  • misgav's Blog
  • Zinc22's Blog
  • assaad's's Blog
  • wdworker51's Blog
  • GIANNI.NASAZZI's Blog
  • Flighthawk's Blog
  • goggi's Blog
  • mchristens's Blog
  • VFRguy's Blog
  • vatin's Blog
  • seinogonzou's Blog
  • MLS53's Blog
  • MyiFlyUsername's Blog
  • Sgt_Tailor01's Blog
  • Roger Studer's Blog
  • rms46's Blog
  • peteralberti's Blog
  • jim@civilwar1861.com's Blog
  • Monarch1958's Blog
  • Tbolt65's Blog
  • mattbrown's Blog
  • cleme's Blog
  • phint's Blog
  • Grange Hermit's Blog
  • Cienfuego's Blog
  • pzl 104's Blog
  • yassinyoussef's Blog
  • jim8beaton's Blog
  • NDGraham's Blog
  • Roger Buckley's Blog
  • FamilyWeb's Blog
  • Hugh_Jasole's Blog
  • Thpmas397's Blog
  • Waldojr's Blog
  • Allan Rodrigues 10's Blog
  • bimbi's Blog
  • rosch's Blog
  • 1c2a3r4v5s's Blog
  • tucker935's Blog
  • HAP2's Blog
  • pierluigi's Blog
  • Vigileitor's Blog
  • jamesdcosta's Blog
  • osbo1's Blog
  • chuckiii3's Blog
  • MartinKv's Blog
  • johnbizjak's Blog
  • AndreChambers's Blog
  • Sterk03's Blog
  • Floats's Blog
  • skip1940's Blog
  • mdsbarc1's Blog
  • Digital2k20's Blog
  • Marie Nieves's Blog
  • tiger5's Blog
  • Jubiaba's Blog
  • edsmit's Blog
  • Ancient One's Blog
  • pilotbeni2's Blog
  • pikeriverman's Blog
  • qroquess's Blog
  • airlinesmain's Blog
  • brgauges's Blog
  • Willy3's Blog
  • B777200DAL's Blog
  • OpenSky's Blog
  • BillCalvert's Blog
  • soprisbp's Blog
  • JBorba's Blog
  • testacleez's Blog
  • Gugisa's Blog
  • K5083's Blog
  • mccfran's Blog
  • amiale's Blog
  • Terry628's Blog
  • jomimarpe's Blog
  • RobbAir's Blog
  • SolomonShawn's Blog
  • Araxxos's Blog
  • Moussa3105X's Blog
  • delunderpar's Blog
  • Dog#108's Blog
  • Chrisflyer's Blog
  • 2CharlieMike's Blog
  • A359-1000's Blog
  • silvano's Blog
  • james37611's Blog
  • truemetrofs's Blog
  • mabrodb's Blog
  • w. Rabello's Blog
  • aussielad's Blog
  • flyski's Blog
  • Pilotmatteo's Blog
  • Giloudu974's Blog
  • Space Cowboy's Blog
  • Theo Evers's Blog
  • carlosarruda29's Blog
  • mgscott's Blog
  • aikenscribe's Blog
  • jimmydayle's Blog
  • Larry Jay's Blog
  • LewisRobinson's Blog
  • gillesbo1@hotmail.com's Blog
  • chargr's Blog
  • BarryDon's Blog
  • Squadron350's Blog
  • salamoon2's Blog
  • filidog59's Blog
  • rgarber's Blog
  • richardhudson's Blog
  • delmac2's Blog
  • hade251's Blog
  • lindaween's Blog
  • hawky007's Blog
  • alphacrux's Blog
  • joegracia's Blog
  • Fjalar's Blog
  • Mondo70m's Blog
  • wasteram's Blog
  • eagle97233's Blog
  • DavuReuret's Blog
  • williegjohnson's Blog
  • anmolgarg123's Blog
  • IcelandicWarrior`'s Blog
  • aviator49's Blog
  • BobbyG550's Blog
  • rkv.spotter's Blog
  • VRdude's Blog
  • Brett22's Blog
  • vaca braba's Blog
  • virginlucas's Blog
  • nicolhill's Blog
  • Humbler05's Blog
  • GiveMeRoom's Blog
  • Samuel W. F. Farias's Blog
  • EDDIE53's Blog
  • pmplayer's Blog
  • C/M_Mid's Blog
  • Bossen's Blog
  • r7b's Blog
  • arosenberg's Blog
  • L Johnson's Blog
  • jwbednarz's Blog
  • Angelofly26's Blog
  • Balotta's Blog
  • Hawker77's Blog
  • Kapteinole's Blog
  • mknight1944's Blog
  • Seabreeze's Blog
  • RichSheffield's Blog
  • Kimberly_Love90's Blog
  • Patricia_Sexy22's Blog
  • Stitch-Up's Blog
  • Bgreene1's Blog
  • LeonZitron's Blog
  • Stevemill's Blog
  • Frits Egelie's Blog
  • kspider1950@outlook.com's Blog
  • supercessna's Blog
  • SeattleGA's Blog
  • Caribbean@01's Blog
  • cessnaguy's Blog
  • Kameraden's Blog
  • windme's Blog
  • milleron's Blog
  • ElwoodB_DK's Blog
  • XPICU's Blog
  • StubbornSwiss's Blog
  • FlightDreamer's Blog
  • purpletechnado's Blog
  • Hans Backstrom's Blog
  • GranddadAviator's Blog
  • OTHflier's Blog
  • jetsetter1k's Blog
  • mdelayncera's Blog
  • Upsidedown1234's Blog
  • Patrickb1973's Blog
  • JohnHump's Blog
  • StringFellow's Blog
  • Peter Rice's Blog
  • Tradingcubes's Blog
  • Xohlon's Blog
  • JohnnyJohnJohn's Blog
  • midcon07's Blog
  • Riddle92's Blog
  • BurkhardRenk's Blog
  • InspectorK's Blog
  • vLegion's Blog
  • fosheem's Blog
  • ztxz's Blog
  • ramstein's Blog
  • Av8rG33k's Blog
  • prof_87's Blog
  • GaryBUK's Blog
  • Basile1p's Blog
  • pthomas74's Blog
  • Bowman Creek's Blog
  • Netherlander's Blog
  • k3ndall's Blog
  • SD_Simpilot's Blog
  • CameraManCarl45's Blog
  • old brave math's Blog
  • Nuttyal's Blog
  • ke8yn's Blog
  • Jambo's Blog
  • Bosfor's Blog
  • Seanmo's Blog
  • rbrust's Blog
  • origincookie122's Blog
  • W1RC's Blog
  • METEOR's Blog
  • blackbearladdie's Blog
  • danaLynn's Blog
  • Jon PB's Blog
  • jeffchrisope's Blog
  • bottinga's Blog
  • corcky37's Blog
  • TBob11's Blog
  • dadsome's Blog
  • J_london's Blog
  • Andrew Herd's Blog
  • Flight Sims World
  • j_willis_jr@msn.com's Blog
  • MAD1's Blog
  • Babar Azam's Blog
  • Edzard2's Blog
  • brubsmc's Blog
  • uggenstu2's Blog
  • sublimeorc3's Blog
  • GeorgiaJedi's Blog
  • A.Bekhuis's Blog
  • learaviator's Blog
  • Bighandal's Blog
  • Steve Marine's Blog
  • ndbroome@hotmail.com's Blog
  • AYS73's Blog
  • lolanickson's Blog
  • BLEK's Blog
  • donald mackinnon's Blog
  • kik707's Blog
  • sereaton737's Blog
  • Simuser Doc's Blog
  • Upgently's Blog
  • acg's Blog
  • Mervi75's Blog
  • steelframer's Blog
  • Gary Moran's Blog
  • Hafiy's Blog
  • flightsimJim's Blog
  • 777-X's Blog
  • avarko's Blog
  • WillyCanuck's Blog
  • SimPilot 81's Blog
  • ummagumma's Blog
  • FlyingGreaseMonkey's Blog
  • Tony Volante's Blog
  • EdWill's Blog
  • TJFLYER's Blog
  • kapenagary's Blog
  • Fsdreaworldmesh's Blog
  • luiz carlos machado leite's Blog
  • cliquelack's Blog
  • Mbaril's Blog
  • Gpurg's Blog
  • squidger's Blog
  • ElderSquid's Blog
  • acflight's Blog
  • DrRimn's Blog
  • John - SAC084's Blog
  • thecorporatepilotdad's Blog
  • simoncb's Blog
  • Pilot_33624's Blog
  • Bosso's Blog
  • H724's Blog
  • isaacessex's Blog
  • jf1450's Blog
  • sethjgreenberg's Blog
  • Eurostar27's Blog
  • Bigfish's Blog
  • FlyingPenguinEDDM's Blog
  • Huddison's Blog
  • PitCom's Blog
  • neilends's Blog
  • Mad3irae's Blog
  • gilmaralmeidailheus's Blog
  • zubairkhan's Blog
  • M1 Garand's Blog
  • Billf's Blog
  • cmat's Blog
  • Philjd's Blog
  • ToMiJo's Blog
  • cartera's Blog
  • Alyssalauren's Blog
  • CLE_GrummanTiger's Blog
  • movierunner's Blog
  • Greg C.'s Blog
  • jefevv69's Blog
  • rittash's Blog
  • ianfisher's Blog
  • EVP001's Blog
  • Brian_90Web's Blog
  • johnfbolton47's Blog
  • Rui Jam's Blog
  • gmvaughan's Blog
  • MichelDR400's Blog
  • Robopil's Blog
  • dfreund@sbcglobal.net's Blog
  • DBoydNL's Blog
  • Zinertek's Blog
  • en7613's Blog
  • Michmich38's Blog
  • virtualgaa's Blog
  • snacey's Blog
  • BigStubby's Blog
  • Ecurb's Blog
  • djtnm's Blog
  • josue9920's Blog
  • Simon Castro's Blog
  • stingraybite's Blog
  • dieferson's Blog
  • Sensei's Blog
  • Bump's Blog
  • simairjfk's Blog
  • kain270's Blog
  • Bayvista170's Blog
  • randythepilot's Blog
  • jennie13's Blog
  • nightrider2861's Blog
  • creeker1's Blog
  • garcidi67's Blog
  • JR-Honeycomb's Blog
  • rhab's Blog
  • Alpeggio's Blog
  • dhammond's Blog
  • TawasAir's Blog
  • MaxwellMiky's Blog
  • 767mani's Blog
  • Sim Picklins's Blog
  • mikey442100's Blog
  • Felp1zZ's Blog
  • Mike M 61's Blog
  • nascarbob52's Blog
  • Professor Solderflux's Blog
  • bravoairspace123's Blog
  • eagleiceqc's Blog
  • EDER's Blog
  • glackey495@aol.com's Blog
  • Philstar's Blog
  • donnabrown2813's Blog
  • James Franklin Davis's Blog
  • hot queens's Blog
  • PhrogPhlyer's Blog
  • petersons's Blog
  • FBM953's Blog
  • mamock's Blog
  • Hbphmi's Blog
  • adeelzaidi's Blog
  • syldair's Blog
  • iloveKLM's Blog
  • bigfg's Blog
  • senna94f1's Blog
  • poulsenar's Blog
  • Bob McFarlane's Blog
  • Breus's Blog
  • Rocky Mountain Aero's Blog
  • mike1642's Blog
  • stussy's Blog
  • tunstell's Blog
  • vlasb's Blog
  • N4BWD's Blog
  • da42's Blog
  • Murf7413's Blog
  • SWV14407's Blog
  • John alex's Blog
  • James_TBS's Blog
  • The One and Only's Blog
  • BRIANWHARRISMD@GMAIL.COM's Blog
  • maxmilianoribeiro's Blog
  • shs918's Blog
  • KRDalton88's Blog
  • JAXflight's Blog
  • Terry_F's Blog
  • Head In The Clouds's Blog
  • SAMEO423's Blog
  • newbert's Blog
  • magenois's Blog
  • watsonwalk's Blog
  • lopça's Blog
  • AdventumSims's Blog
  • amarfly's Blog
  • Conyjohn's Blog
  • Mr. Bill's Blog
  • Andrejkatin's Blog
  • henrynikk07's Blog
  • Zig01's Blog
  • sandyd's Blog
  • gangesboy's Blog
  • ethanmiles's Blog
  • NoFace's Blog
  • David Sellens's Blog
  • ECCP's Blog
  • EJR's Blog
  • willcraft's Blog
  • ccc2's Blog
  • Nativeassignment's Blog
  • ringbaloo's Blog
  • sooner_jack's Blog
  • Zachary J's Blog
  • Luciokessler's Blog
  • muldersj@muldersj.plus.com's Blog
  • JJW 75's Blog
  • flight28042's Blog
  • EnvironmentTalks's Blog
  • hawaalbaher's Blog
  • charlibilson's Blog
  • ZaraBolen's Blog
  • reviewexpressnet's Blog
  • issacmartinus's Blog
  • badacare's Blog
  • 31Foxhound's Blog
  • xxKyle2020xx's Blog
  • jurobo2000's Blog
  • NIregoRedd's Blog
  • zabuza88's Blog
  • john.millbrech@outlook.co's Blog
  • Aviator Dave's Blog
  • PilotWave's Blog
  • asrra's Blog
  • PILOTO GOL's Blog
  • Flyer.Ron's Blog
  • Golgotha's Blog
  • propercharles's Blog
  • Chief Wally's Blog
  • danielflopes's Blog
  • zakariyoung's Blog
  • Smikkelbeer72's Blog
  • Jimfish's Blog
  • molydoly's Blog
  • RolfSt's Blog
  • Skitti400's Blog
  • vpilot666's Blog
  • MichalMyg's Blog
  • HSJB120's Blog
  • phoenix33500's Blog
  • LowOnCash's Blog
  • ohiotitleloans's Blog
  • IndianaTitleLoans626's Blog
  • Crunt's Blog
  • Spammy McSpamface's Blog
  • Lane House 73's Blog
  • arihantenergy's Blog
  • 23savage's Blog
  • grovak's Blog
  • lopeezca's Blog
  • michio42's Blog
  • MD60's Blog
  • hookerjaen's Blog
  • alinanew's Blog
  • carolandken653's Blog
  • ShivakKumar's Blog
  • RAMID's Blog
  • maxt78's Blog
  • chapwa0199's Blog
  • Hyperdark's Blog
  • ceaser333's Blog
  • TheDoctor's Blog
  • steveshead's Blog
  • caroljames972022's Blog
  • shukla's Blog
  • kmmiller12's Blog
  • vandanamanturgekar's Blog
  • grucha87snk's Blog
  • Adrian K's Blog
  • werbemaxe's Blog
  • CWC1960's Blog
  • Spring Fashion Man And Women
  • DCS Helicopter Collective Project
  • emailnphonelist
  • Lassen Sie der Spannung freien Lauf: Eine große Auswahl an Spielautomaten im Vulkan Vegas Online Casino
  • Welding Coolants: Boosting Productivity and Quality
  • Elevate Your Website: Freelance Web Developer and SEO Specialist
  • Let's fly the Latecoere 631 around the world.
  • MSFS SDK: How-To
  • rick's Blog
  • dbcole's Blog
  • kevchris's Blog
  • loup's Blog
  • MaxLegroom990's Blog
  • hastings's Blog
  • tdbscotland's Blog
  • JimM's Blog
  • nightwing36's Blog
  • MaverickScot's Blog
  • gary2's Blog
  • mcarvela's Blog
  • av8tor39's Blog
  • ricka47's Blog
  • cat's Blog
  • DreamFleet1's Blog
  • Nels_Anderson's Blog
  • soyuz's Blog
  • mathurpc's Blog
  • nigelgrant's Blog
  • bertvankampen's Blog
  • eacevedo's Blog
  • Glaudrung's Blog
  • tedpan's Blog
  • FearlessTower's Blog
  • skypod's Blog
  • Steve_FSD's Blog
  • mith's Blog
  • Batman2608's Blog
  • Rockcliffe's Blog
  • btwallis's Blog
  • wyattx2's Blog
  • rankin3's Blog
  • BOHICA's Blog
  • mleuck's Blog
  • paulfar's Blog
  • SteveW2's Blog
  • WingsOverCA's Blog
  • stewstewart's Blog
  • BobChurch's Blog
  • Fltsimguy's Blog
  • jimkanold's Blog
  • cfelix's Blog
  • budreiser's Blog
  • sibs6's Blog
  • doering1's Blog
  • NewtonAir's Blog
  • Malbork's Blog
  • pilotlbs's Blog
  • lplus11's Blog
  • slarente's Blog
  • jedster1's Blog
  • vaseycr's Blog
  • Argenfarkle's Blog
  • Steve Halpern's Blog
  • MikeS's Blog
  • dahawg123's Blog
  • Novatar's Blog
  • Propwash's Blog
  • UPHILL3's Blog
  • AOA_TANGO's Blog
  • flightstrike's Blog
  • cdekeyse's Blog
  • gets's Blog
  • drobson's Blog
  • aspong's Blog
  • rservice's Blog
  • titolopez's Blog
  • skyking258's Blog
  • TornadoWilkes's Blog
  • fsc_BK's Blog
  • tomavis's Blog
  • jbdc9's Blog
  • lnuss's Blog
  • RollerBall's Blog
  • skytrek's Blog
  • vergilm's Blog
  • portree's Blog
  • Matheus's Blog
  • MacKuen's Blog
  • Kurtvw's Blog
  • CaptainTower's Blog
  • happyoldone's Blog
  • Gaz's Blog
  • jwenting's Blog
  • hkpgr's Blog
  • JSkorna's Blog
  • MikePotten's Blog
  • Clarindo's Blog
  • EngEd's Blog
  • 707jet's Blog
  • gwillmot's Blog
  • windqaz's Blog
  • Dewey's Blog
  • rneale's Blog
  • scnrfrq's Blog
  • schachow's Blog
  • raybirch's Blog
  • whoosh's Blog
  • flytv1's Blog
  • bilbo's Blog
  • chapmad1's Blog
  • anscad's Blog
  • TCC's Blog
  • kilmer's Blog
  • lifejogger's Blog
  • mleegard's Blog
  • awheeler's Blog
  • baslar's Blog
  • billvons's Blog
  • Gjet's Blog
  • n4gix's Blog
  • populousste's Blog
  • flyfreedave's Blog
  • andyjohnston's Blog
  • jboweruk's Blog
  • vgbaron's Blog
  • greggerm's Blog
  • salmendra's Blog
  • johnnyb's Blog
  • strikeeagle345's Blog
  • vicknight's Blog
  • elcamino's Blog
  • ejoiner's Blog
  • faamecanic's Blog
  • fbobum's Blog
  • Fred's Blog
  • ChristopherT's Blog
  • Hawkeye's Blog
  • rpike's Blog
  • spoiler5oo's Blog
  • plaincorgi's Blog
  • priorityexpress's Blog
  • gazeb's Blog
  • graaant's Blog
  • dsweiner's Blog
  • rocket308's Blog
  • avjones's Blog
  • police's Blog
  • metro752's Blog
  • CurlSnout's Blog
  • SteveC's Blog
  • jimmydunn's Blog
  • roytc's Blog
  • napamule2's Blog
  • fisheye's Blog
  • Kosta's Blog
  • mark786's Blog
  • tacan_dme's Blog
  • ke4wns's Blog
  • michaeljulian's Blog
  • aarmin's Blog
  • DJP's Blog
  • william1953's Blog
  • knocks's Blog
  • Richie800's Blog
  • elitehow's Blog
  • chief95's Blog
  • cagrims's Blog
  • bully's Blog
  • raynuss's Blog
  • familton's Blog
  • uslacmm's Blog
  • Jungleace's Blog
  • JLambCWU's Blog
  • beanmcgreen's Blog
  • lazyeight's Blog
  • seawing's Blog
  • mdannebaum's Blog
  • Rimshot's Blog
  • robert's Blog
  • menardrs's Blog
  • VFR_Steve's Blog
  • degeus's Blog
  • xaviervdv's Blog
  • md11nlm's Blog
  • ljasmann's Blog
  • velociriptor's Blog
  • maxtedr's Blog
  • stretch's Blog
  • The_Association's Blog
  • Rnglgdj's Blog
  • springbok's Blog
  • sharpeassoc's Blog
  • I3D_Support's Blog
  • SteveLewis's Blog
  • soldano's Blog
  • 35325's Blog
  • gatorgrd's Blog
  • nimrod's Blog
  • FuzzyLogic's Blog
  • apeltier's Blog
  • Spiggy's Blog
  • glenrennie's Blog
  • jimjones's Blog
  • jjbastien's Blog
  • Spac3Rat's Blog
  • simman's Blog
  • Zachiii's Blog
  • Augie's Blog
  • Badger's Blog
  • beana5's Blog
  • gforeman's Blog
  • ninlves's Blog
  • pmgebroff's Blog
  • rookiesimpilot's Blog
  • mtflyer's Blog
  • jimpenn's Blog
  • EagleClaw's Blog
  • falcon6's Blog
  • bbfip's Blog
  • mobbe123's Blog
  • InsyleM's Blog
  • jrmartin's Blog
  • noell's Blog
  • pyates's Blog
  • scruffyduck's Blog
  • kitspackman's Blog
  • marooned's Blog
  • fsman's Blog
  • davidlloydhoare's Blog
  • stusue's Blog
  • Fracair's Blog
  • duckbilled's Blog
  • wcandres's Blog
  • Tonyman's Blog
  • enewbold's Blog
  • BrianCPenrod's Blog
  • m8ack's Blog
  • persself's Blog
  • DanWalloch's Blog
  • mickj's Blog
  • david roch's Blog
  • skylab's Blog
  • flightsimmer747's Blog
  • jpinard's Blog
  • getstill's Blog
  • hendo's Blog
  • Cecil's Blog
  • johng's Blog
  • RDeal's Blog
  • ahlan's Blog
  • johanfrc's Blog
  • jmagyar's Blog
  • ChrisD's Blog
  • jochensachs's Blog
  • burge's Blog
  • BrianLund's Blog
  • newe's Blog
  • sascholz's Blog
  • Heather's Blog
  • Eskimo's Blog
  • IanH's Blog
  • simgammer's Blog
  • judge's Blog
  • thedude's Blog
  • adrianclerical's Blog
  • John65's Blog
  • meach's Blog
  • av8ber's Blog
  • boxjockey99's Blog
  • Wolf's Blog
  • johnclift's Blog
  • bgm1961's Blog
  • Schafdx's Blog
  • madPILOT's Blog
  • Erich65's Blog
  • mabe5454's Blog
  • selorme's Blog
  • alexdan's Blog
  • jlaurie's Blog
  • jafred's Blog
  • flyboy208's Blog
  • TKessel's Blog
  • rwolfe03's Blog
  • Concorde_fan's Blog
  • Kimber's Blog
  • Brushstrokes's Blog
  • jdoehlert's Blog
  • girardet's Blog
  • av8tor98's Blog
  • Merv's Blog
  • quantel_1's Blog
  • bstikkel's Blog
  • John_c's Blog
  • lasherid's Blog
  • wwhiteside's Blog
  • IanF's Blog
  • bft's Blog
  • netman's Blog
  • houting's Blog
  • GGFCA's Blog
  • stuart's Blog
  • VegasGeorge's Blog
  • Joker's Blog
  • Danbo020759's Blog
  • Ragtopjohnny's Blog
  • J_Stewart's Blog
  • algay's Blog
  • alain's Blog
  • davestan_ksan's Blog
  • gusifer's Blog
  • lionheart's Blog
  • dworjan's Blog
  • KCD's Blog
  • vortiz56's Blog
  • gsedge's Blog
  • kmgould's Blog
  • sandman's Blog
  • cattz's Blog
  • eagle1's Blog
  • algoguen's Blog
  • jimcraig's Blog
  • kickerpicker's Blog
  • starraker's Blog
  • flotocki's Blog
  • Earthrounder in a Bonanza V35B
  • largo222's Blog
  • GL_FS2002's Blog
  • pilgrim2's Blog
  • bmw1984's Blog
  • oldun's Blog
  • rwooton's Blog
  • Garrett67's Blog
  • AlienA51's Blog
  • MikeH's Blog
  • Dr Bob's Blog
  • wormdirt's Blog
  • mokkum01's Blog
  • Amtran618's Blog
  • bojote's Blog
  • skypilot's Blog
  • silverfox's Blog
  • Strecker64's Blog
  • Navman Francois's Blog
  • drive's Blog
  • briansommers's Blog
  • cloudflyer's Blog
  • 1466721's Blog
  • Full's Blog
  • KChapman's Blog
  • chris18p's Blog
  • jarod99's Blog
  • tomcatguy74's Blog
  • mongoose44's Blog
  • werner's Blog
  • N2056's Blog
  • artiguf's Blog
  • arno's Blog
  • schofi's Blog
  • oldfunflyer's Blog
  • jonjoe's Blog
  • eray9s's Blog
  • johnfromoz's Blog
  • Dan Ellis's Blog
  • bbaird's Blog
  • RobertK's Blog
  • johndaph's Blog
  • Roger Wensley's Blog
  • tompablo's Blog
  • hjwalter's Blog
  • MikeM's Blog
  • Leanne's Blog
  • neinnunb's Blog
  • repaid22's Blog
  • watles's Blog
  • GKKnupper's Blog
  • fireboss's Blog
  • Merv0728's Blog
  • darrenvox's Blog
  • dprosser's Blog
  • LJ922's Blog
  • capn_sonic's Blog
  • AVermeire's Blog
  • vanmulken's Blog
  • lintie's Blog
  • gusmer's Blog
  • Sentry's Blog
  • galeatbroadmead's Blog
  • Aarinu's Blog
  • burtyboy's Blog
  • andyb's Blog
  • rjdahlen's Blog
  • shivendra's Blog
  • copperpen's Blog
  • TX_3306's Blog
  • salt_air's Blog
  • dsarthur's Blog
  • Jive1's Blog
  • harold's Blog
  • loki's Blog
  • danny55's Blog
  • rdaniel's Blog
  • clipperone's Blog
  • ednixon's Blog
  • avallillo's Blog
  • bushp04's Blog
  • flyinggoldfish's Blog
  • adamb's Blog
  • snuggs28's Blog
  • edryan's Blog
  • samsulli's Blog
  • Pabra's Blog
  • neilfb's Blog
  • FATHERTIME's Blog
  • jaguars's Blog
  • mbalvetti's Blog
  • BOF's Blog
  • Gonzo's Blog
  • Icelander's Blog
  • fbfb's Blog
  • inca's Blog
  • neillydun1's Blog
  • Dunross's Blog
  • fsafranek's Blog
  • mike281's Blog
  • Sierra9093's Blog
  • Views From The Canyon
  • clarkg's Blog
  • mcgoldri's Blog
  • colmoore's Blog
  • siXpak's Cockpit
  • wes452's Blog
  • VERT002's Blog
  • cchaserr's Blog
  • hhasty's Blog
  • Big AL's Blog
  • metzgergva's Blog
  • VRobidas's Blog
  • Davejey's Blog
  • ilovetofly's Blog
  • seehunt's Blog
  • JSMR's Blog
  • swjg's Blog
  • dfle44's Blog
  • pipelighter's Blog
  • Jim Robinson's Blog
  • vegasjon's Blog
  • cfijack's Blog
  • RobertO1035's Blog
  • Nick's Blog
  • timest's Blog
  • dunix's Blog
  • mole_man99's Blog
  • kjbs's Blog
  • jcomm's Blog
  • Choljah's Blog
  • Whip's Blog
  • mgh's Blog
  • rhagen11's Blog
  • LuckyBlundy's Blog
  • Bushi's Blog
  • Monument Bob 2's Blog
  • mnpilot's Blog
  • carl092's Blog
  • zoomzoooie's Blog
  • wray's Blog
  • fnerg's Blog
  • wigerup's Blog
  • SideSlip's Blog
  • Gridley's Blog
  • ravenzyrst1's Blog
  • Al737's Blog
  • band_flight's Blog
  • gsnde's Blog
  • shuband's Blog
  • B42L8's Blog
  • helldiver's Blog
  • Kaloha's Blog
  • ozute's Blog
  • jadutton's Blog
  • JPL19's Blog
  • leen de jager's Blog
  • Sidney Schwartz's Blog
  • dlusty's Blog
  • firepanzer's Blog
  • danl's Blog
  • Harlan's Blog
  • noel56z's Blog
  • beryl7's Blog
  • nanar's Blog
  • owend's Blog
  • nevd's Blog
  • odaat's Blog
  • Caveman's Blog
  • Alyot's Blog
  • kittyhawk63's Blog
  • bct's Blog
  • lforgard's Blog
  • x24's Blog
  • DCA996's Blog
  • explorer's Blog
  • xxmikexx's Blog
  • MrLT52's Blog
  • Honus's Blog
  • ACMatrix's Blog
  • stasher's Blog
  • mercohaulic's Blog
  • mjrhealth's Blog
  • ek1's Blog
  • A3330's Blog
  • Finnflyer's Blog
  • ecamara's Blog
  • kingnorris's Blog
  • rwremote's Blog
  • gpry's Blog
  • BEWARRE's Blog
  • FSAOM's Blog
  • yamazaki's Blog
  • yubi's Blog
  • bugdozer's Blog
  • G7USL's Blog
  • tomkk's Blog
  • Carob's Blog
  • Lee's Blog
  • bigmack's Blog
  • N509BY's Blog
  • JoeD's Blog
  • blkmajesty's Blog
  • tnyland's Blog
  • ac103010's Blog
  • Bozo's Blog
  • oglitsch's Blog
  • Denny's Blog
  • minimender's Blog
  • goldhawk's Blog
  • NeverBoring's Blog
  • bobdawkins's Blog
  • SKAir's Blog
  • pdjong's Blog
  • kennyhall's Blog
  • ltyndall's Blog
  • sapphire's Blog
  • PabloJM's Blog
  • normandh's Blog
  • FLYBYKNIGHT's Blog
  • g3laser's Blog
  • pbt63's Blog
  • casarticus's Blog
  • Eric's Blog
  • krisburn's Blog
  • cesarnc's Blog
  • MCSim's Blog
  • DPS's Blog
  • dijkgraaf's Blog
  • mav39's Blog
  • Rantings of a Radio Operator
  • dbrd's Blog
  • JayLink's Blog
  • NEBOJSA's Blog
  • littletiger's Blog
  • josutton's Blog
  • malmac's Blog
  • FrankR's Blog
  • firecracker's Blog
  • Kapitan Aviation Stories
  • jrog's Blog
  • cbyrd1950's Blog
  • Brian_Neuman's Blog
  • mcleod3302's Blog
  • airfrance's Blog
  • Combat144's Blog
  • jdwgraf's Blog
  • fsfilmworks's Blog
  • rthrosby's Blog
  • Danparis's Blog
  • smaill's Blog
  • Charley_Lima's Blog
  • asimmd's Blog
  • aws1953's Blog
  • KPenn5's Blog
  • ukboy's Blog
  • dorianr's Blog
  • schwartzi's Blog
  • pvarn's Blog
  • worldsfair's Blog
  • pgcliffe's Blog
  • Bizub4's Blog
  • plainsman's Blog
  • johnost's Blog
  • BLewis2795's Blog
  • barrington's Blog
  • victorrpeters's Blog
  • hesynergy's Blog
  • zswobbie1's Blog
  • perrycooke's Blog
  • bulpup's Blog
  • unique's Blog
  • arclight's Blog
  • hamiltonman's Blog
  • tinman's Blog
  • cavaricooper's Blog
  • Jackflyer's Blog
  • biggestal's Blog
  • ytrepanier's Blog
  • thepatriot76's Blog
  • whiskey's Blog
  • heyford's Blog
  • jhmidwood's Blog
  • ScatterbrainKid's Blog
  • Smutley's Blog
  • eric_marciano's Blog
  • sky44's Blog
  • deltaleader's Blog
  • Jacbert's Blog
  • billsimm's Blog
  • kd4dra's Blog
  • mondeomangolf's Blog
  • katie88's Blog
  • agrees's Blog
  • HaveBlue's Blog
  • surfrider's Blog
  • milusos's Blog
  • CZW's Blog
  • ecorry's Blog
  • PhilTaylor's Blog
  • frog3764's Blog
  • KrazyKyle's Blog
  • tsteen's Blog
  • rwcatherall's Blog
  • tham's Blog
  • CARex's Blog
  • BigBravo21's Blog
  • GarethW's Blog
  • Firefalcon's Blog
  • WildBlue's Blog
  • jrhunter's Blog
  • raptorairlines's Blog
  • LKLACY55304's Blog
  • w2pzp's Blog
  • caddie's Blog
  • gliderpilot's Blog
  • tacomasailor's Blog
  • American's Blog
  • donatogeraldi's Blog
  • sacb52man's Blog
  • Doods's Blog
  • abz's Blog
  • thomaspattison's Blog
  • Syracuse_Jim's Blog
  • Lowbeam's Blog
  • sirbruchie's Blog
  • rotorguy's Blog
  • capndon's Blog
  • Habu1967's Blog
  • 11269706's Blog
  • commercialcobb's Blog
  • fredmond4's Blog
  • phl's Blog
  • airboatr's Blog
  • peer01's Blog
  • estei2123's Blog
  • hjeck's Blog
  • airbrakes's Blog
  • mvg3d's Blog
  • n452mk's Blog
  • collltip's Blog
  • hyperope's Blog
  • mvjoshi's Blog
  • vanhorst's Blog
  • kenu's Blog
  • murted's Blog
  • adamjosiah's Blog
  • joemckay's Blog
  • ofcbill's Blog
  • wichner2's Blog
  • safari456's Blog
  • humusic2's Blog
  • Deeboe's Blog
  • tigisfat's Blog
  • alfredodedarc's Blog
  • Woodmouse's Blog
  • mcelmes's Blog
  • turbofire's Blog
  • ldlcholester's Blog
  • Jako's Blog
  • jmuzzy's Blog
  • xmitr's Blog
  • mqytn's Blog
  • dcquest's Blog
  • Giarc's Blog
  • SeanG's Blog
  • FO Jevans and his "blog"
  • rbrown's Blog
  • Plane2's Blog
  • tmo1's Blog
  • josh's Blog
  • craigewan's Blog
  • Marblehead's Blog
  • Happnin's Blog
  • HardCub's Blog
  • pablo30's Blog
  • Smiffy's Blog
  • RTod's Blog
  • wannapilot's Blog
  • Craig's Blog
  • csefton's Blog
  • ccwilber's Blog
  • kenmc's Blog
  • jmargot's Blog
  • lgross's Blog
  • flsms's Blog
  • stevepilot's Blog
  • spirit316's Blog
  • fairlane63's Blog
  • f15sim's Blog
  • BillTheSlink's Blog
  • jimginn's Blog
  • Jessew's Blog
  • ldk2002's Blog
  • GreasyBob's Blog
  • warden1974's Blog
  • DrFlightTalk's Blog
  • denvervirtualceo's Blog
  • jamesdeanoo7's Blog
  • patrickvdbemt's Blog
  • Asad Khawer's Blog
  • Star56's Blog
  • kin3's Blog
  • ozinoz's Blog
  • Christoph4445's Blog
  • Problems with flight controls (Flight Sim X)
  • airwolfe's Blog
  • 4449daylight's Blog
  • Autopilot_Abuser's Blog
  • bugdriver's Blog
  • saddles's Blog
  • lansman1's Blog
  • johnellis75's Blog
  • Aviator0327's Blog
  • Alexander's Blog
  • bgets's Blog
  • rgriffi163's Blog
  • hooless's Blog
  • gdr1944's Blog
  • meltsner's Blog
  • dimimiras's Blog
  • shannei's Blog
  • Laurie 1's Blog
  • smallcone's Blog
  • BarryNieuwoudt's Blog
  • jhancoc's Blog
  • wpiner88's Blog
  • mibo's Blog
  • peter58's Blog
  • Xptical's Blog
  • icarusgold's Blog
  • fsxflyerofa380's Blog
  • JeremyFromTexas's Blog
  • fxsttcb's Blog
  • hanss's Blog
  • pegsim's Blog
  • HoratioWondersocks's Blog
  • DJC-kMYR's Blog
  • tommyfl's Blog
  • Plus24's Blog
  • dredgy's Blog
  • fragmentum's Blog
  • LEM's Blog
  • dareman's Blog
  • northeastair's Blog
  • saturno_v's Blog
  • chris.edde's Blog
  • TrafficPilot's Blog
  • Jaywindstreams's Blog
  • Flegmatica's Blog
  • peetey's Blog
  • rcmonster99's Blog
  • sbieg's Blog
  • MOONDOG187's Blog
  • tskillman89's Blog
  • Dangerousdave26's Blog
  • gdr54's Blog
  • CotterNWA's Blog
  • big-mike's Blog
  • martyb2's Blog
  • arcueil's Blog
  • PilotBrad's Blog
  • XML code for Model Match in FsPilot?
  • cardinal21's Blog
  • JonBuck's Blog
  • Mogget's Blog
  • meyerm's Blog
  • GordonR's Blog
  • Bush's Blog
  • wjwoodward's Blog
  • EugeneBancroft's Blog
  • CBris's Blog
  • flyingcoon's Blog
  • Legin3020's Blog
  • PetrSvoboda's Blog
  • nemo1945's Blog
  • maxfs's Blog
  • Dave Hayes's Blog
  • marcori's Blog
  • =Hollywood='s Blog
  • royal's Blog
  • Bobr21's Blog
  • kel0858's Blog
  • FDC001's Blog
  • CessnaFlyer's Blog
  • ricardo_NY1's Blog
  • bbqsteve's Blog
  • M31's Blog
  • r3dt4g's Blog
  • declarke's Blog
  • ronzo155's Blog
  • ssowry's Blog
  • donsor's Blog
  • LOBSTABOAT's Blog
  • bumpkin's Blog
  • aldwick's Blog
  • yanfeng12342000's Blog
  • crl's Blog
  • babyboeing's Blog
  • bumper5895's Blog
  • Algoz66's Blog
  • ytzpilot's Blog
  • readflightsim's Blog
  • Benny's Blog
  • Mav92's Blog
  • rpdonahue's Blog
  • Jimmy_S's Blog
  • Mosha's Blog
  • eytan's Blog
  • HALIMAN's Blog
  • Loke's Blog
  • LandonZ's Blog
  • iluvairplanes's Blog
  • Big777jet's Blog
  • Imtijac's Blog
  • flightluuvr's Blog
  • Boeing 767's Blog
  • jrazz's Blog
  • Orion1969's Blog
  • flightsim2000's Blog
  • vinow's Blog
  • shess57's Blog
  • irishsooner's Blog
  • jazz's Blog
  • Flytsimmer's Blog
  • jeroen79's Blog
  • johnrgby's Blog
  • Canberra Man's Blog
  • brarsj's Blog
  • HAWKEYE784NG's Blog
  • garrytheskate's Blog
  • pjtmcclure's Blog
  • HerkEngineer's Blog
  • hammer_hand's Blog
  • Shimmy's Blog
  • Goupin's Blog
  • cnj's Blog
  • robertwilliams's Blog
  • bd515's Blog
  • Smilin74's Blog
  • Pierre Paquet's Blog
  • Bark0's Blog
  • TCX559K's Blog
  • IOGEAR's Blog
  • airfree's Blog
  • PeterRodwell's Blog
  • mrt12345's Blog
  • kbcadnz's Blog
  • Cessna185's Blog
  • lild20's Blog
  • oskarfourzero's Blog
  • pivirtual's Blog
  • 817's Blog
  • gazzaro's Blog
  • Colk's Blog
  • Laatab's Blog
  • kostas's Blog
  • captainakba's Blog
  • DK-NIK's Blog
  • Constinator25's Blog
  • ryan78's Blog
  • johnfugl's Blog
  • Frisky57's Blog
  • arnaud's Blog
  • DLR_41's Blog
  • FlightArcher's Blog
  • Ed Moore's Blog
  • Flyhigher's Blog
  • adybear's Blog
  • pmkaiser's Blog
  • alitalia2010's Blog
  • lvflyer's Blog
  • declanSw's Blog
  • highlandhippie's Blog
  • The Pilot1's Blog
  • AAVN60's Blog
  • Dean Talbot's Blog
  • dickbutz's Blog
  • tatisop's Blog
  • Krajo's Blog
  • tvieno's Blog
  • francisetti's Blog
  • MarkGilmore's Blog
  • RB211's Blog
  • skywalker73's Blog
  • annber's Blog
  • pollito's Blog
  • bbb's Blog
  • dmartin1957's Blog
  • jrdale210's Blog
  • rambowski's Blog
  • Willyaj's Blog
  • SamIsAHusky's Blog
  • fsfred's Blog
  • davesjamtrax's Blog
  • Jetlantic's Blog
  • franz21943's Blog
  • zapilot's Blog
  • littlewing's Blog
  • thunter's Blog
  • SikStik954's Blog
  • dx5517's Blog
  • RRN1988's Blog
  • ViperPilot2's Blog
  • gandy's Blog
  • marbasan's Blog
  • AJp34's Blog
  • EdmundV's Blog
  • Skyknight_TN's Blog
  • Vandevelde's Blog
  • leeski09's Blog
  • Whales in Russell Ford/Glacier Bay
  • EricASA100's Blog
  • Red15's Blog
  • SkyStryder's Blog
  • sahir bassam's Blog
  • ddd777's Blog
  • fllebrez's Blog
  • Antares's Blog
  • hfkwong's Blog
  • monkeypup's Blog
  • kidkrats's Blog
  • b108's Blog
  • grumpy214's Blog
  • kenwig0556's Blog
  • 1franciscodep's Blog
  • dbourke's Blog
  • ejguil2's Blog
  • FlyerFSX-2004's Blog
  • maximus92's Blog
  • molly89's Blog
  • gaosys's Blog
  • aviat fast's Blog
  • wltaylor's Blog
  • transcontinental's Blog
  • tomvandermeulen's Blog
  • fridtjof's Blog
  • patcox's Blog
  • willpa's Blog
  • davidjones's Blog
  • navigatre's Blog
  • loubensdorp's Blog
  • allanj's Blog
  • jackryan's Blog
  • steveh01's Blog
  • bdouglas's Blog
  • dgrindele's Blog
  • dallison's Blog
  • pwafer's Blog
  • awalkera's Blog
  • alverthein's Blog
  • mahalo's Blog
  • leeholdridge's Blog
  • wingsgary's Blog
  • michaelvader's Blog
  • fssarno's Blog
  • brina's Blog
  • phyl's Blog
  • wyjchen's Blog
  • ronthenupe's Blog
  • larryp35's Blog
  • rockinrobin's Blog
  • ptsmith's Blog
  • karreman's Blog
  • jimatt's Blog
  • shalako's Blog
  • peterquin's Blog
  • optim's Blog
  • mononk's Blog
  • trad's Blog
  • megabriel's Blog
  • zworski's Blog
  • kizer's Blog
  • samra's Blog
  • chrisa1's Blog
  • feichi's Blog
  • maddogken's Blog
  • claudy's Blog
  • rogerdenkler's Blog
  • hencho's Blog
  • dicknebr's Blog
  • phiferwt's Blog
  • maxifer's Blog
  • arthurwilson's Blog
  • parsonsw's Blog
  • Joe's Blog
  • 2107al's Blog
  • tcreagh's Blog
  • vonernsk's Blog
  • test's Blog
  • molniya's Blog
  • cgtjs's Blog
  • pniel's Blog
  • esboz's Blog
  • dotcomet's Blog
  • eyzargrn's Blog
  • polarleif's Blog
  • bearracing's Blog
  • robinmaclaurin's Blog
  • tnutkins's Blog
  • desenne's Blog
  • swanny's Blog
  • iamgen's Blog
  • dingram's Blog
  • tigercub's Blog
  • rwa's Blog
  • tonyevans's Blog
  • knudkurt's Blog
  • swgold's Blog
  • dirkschellaars's Blog
  • jvburden's Blog
  • kittyfish2's Blog
  • gnou's Blog
  • jgardene's Blog
  • nahrgang's Blog
  • johnmur's Blog
  • sanrik's Blog
  • bmartin47's Blog
  • patrickbreack's Blog
  • huberma's Blog
  • elbowsandy's Blog
  • irscds's Blog
  • mb680's Blog
  • jdaigneau's Blog
  • pmcgough's Blog
  • budfay's Blog
  • gerbar's Blog
  • jenpan's Blog
  • brianjoverton's Blog
  • gjwpocock's Blog
  • lloydo's Blog
  • blockhead's Blog
  • bardal2's Blog
  • led4blue's Blog
  • pierreanthony's Blog
  • pjump1's Blog
  • pebbles65's Blog
  • bertnm's Blog
  • smokywash's Blog
  • harryknox's Blog
  • j25wolf's Blog
  • ggeraci's Blog
  • dwain7's Blog
  • billkillen's Blog
  • HELP in Victoria BC
  • clintonfan's Blog
  • oldtimepilot's Blog
  • johngooch's Blog
  • grahamspicer's Blog
  • haroun's Blog
  • dearing's Blog
  • urigor's Blog
  • brucedouglas's Blog
  • obmuz's Blog
  • osval's Blog
  • tomzimmerman's Blog
  • exwcirep's Blog
  • skipjack's Blog
  • coxje's Blog
  • gdebiscop's Blog
  • controller5's Blog
  • bousquet's Blog
  • fpfly's Blog
  • jsaviano's Blog
  • wollie12's Blog
  • alanmerry's Blog
  • wattyville's Blog
  • skyhipete's Blog
  • heikheiksen's Blog
  • beech699's Blog
  • hhvoje's Blog
  • pdxfrederick's Blog
  • bobp38's Blog
  • hondo55's Blog
  • 19kazoo38's Blog
  • andreasprotzen's Blog
  • ggaulin's Blog
  • ggw's Blog
  • donaltman's Blog
  • atlantathrashers's Blog
  • ramair's Blog
  • mdeoliveira's Blog
  • gbarns07's Blog
  • calama's Blog
  • mendell's Blog
  • scoop72's Blog
  • zipper1's Blog
  • mdcude's Blog
  • baardlovaas's Blog
  • jofernandez's Blog
  • electra's Blog
  • grizli's Blog
  • mhhamer's Blog
  • watsonhb's Blog
  • stewartrushton's Blog
  • Cricket29's Blog
  • westway's Blog
  • peterthorp's Blog
  • utf's Blog
  • garrett100's Blog
  • jben120631's Blog
  • kathryn's Blog
  • jbawilliams's Blog
  • jonblu's Blog
  • pboggs's Blog
  • torbenj's Blog
  • douga66's Blog
  • atcogl's Blog
  • simmerdr's Blog
  • allanshaw66's Blog
  • uptownsmoker's Blog
  • wrk218's Blog
  • john62's Blog
  • jimbt's Blog
  • quokka38's Blog
  • eagle22449's Blog
  • wildman06's Blog
  • hoplop's Blog
  • croudson's Blog
  • a320driver's Blog
  • luckydog's Blog
  • bonesfisher's Blog
  • ronaldfalzon's Blog
  • nadina's Blog
  • chewfly's Blog
  • yvesthiebaut's Blog
  • cwo4den's Blog
  • winkebob's Blog
  • spike9's Blog
  • pnel88's Blog
  • green198's Blog
  • KWBAlaska10's Blog
  • moneta's Blog
  • bbuckley's Blog
  • richb's Blog
  • wreck's Blog
  • garry's Blog
  • lacasse's Blog
  • billolga's Blog
  • lexus's Blog
  • cobalt's Blog
  • bmz's Blog
  • wernery's Blog
  • acourt's Blog
  • jlbelard's Blog
  • kasey's Blog
  • rcogg's Blog
  • chicago's Blog
  • jrwentz's Blog
  • KennethKerr's Blog
  • dsansome's Blog
  • roymar's Blog
  • scottm's Blog
  • blondie's Blog
  • torbenja's Blog
  • jwvdhurk's Blog
  • jdlinn's Blog
  • caflyt's Blog
  • heronjr's Blog
  • aler's Blog
  • conair's Blog
  • demerse's Blog
  • luth's Blog
  • searfoss's Blog
  • azzaro's Blog
  • nicked's Blog
  • goldust's Blog
  • leuen's Blog
  • Ambeat07's Blog
  • gmbyrne's Blog
  • hayashi7's Blog
  • jfallcock's Blog
  • tayrona's Blog
  • leester's Blog
  • joancampos's Blog
  • airbus320's Blog
  • leehall's Blog
  • rdrumm26's Blog
  • cheetah621's Blog
  • darim's Blog
  • ramcry's Blog
  • swedeflight's Blog
  • cdome's Blog
  • culturama's Blog
  • oxo's Blog
  • songbyrd's Blog
  • knorring's Blog
  • theyorks's Blog
  • colmedad's Blog
  • mverlin's Blog
  • delhomme's Blog
  • groupwise's Blog
  • juergenmartens's Blog
  • marcas's Blog
  • mshields's Blog
  • acsoft's Blog
  • andrewwebb's Blog
  • wrohrbeck's Blog
  • Cougarnaut's Blog
  • slyf's Blog
  • stinkysock's Blog
  • tietze's Blog
  • stevehg's Blog
  • sroblits's Blog
  • hapadaca's Blog
  • trevg's Blog
  • mrlogic's Blog
  • cmdl1650's Blog
  • kjcollins's Blog
  • tres2's Blog
  • signon's Blog
  • rog3er's Blog
  • mortenthede's Blog
  • ltbulb's Blog
  • rtorres's Blog
  • abbashnaby's Blog
  • hanswerner's Blog
  • jeffhow's Blog
  • haraldh's Blog
  • bucksnort's Blog
  • schu's Blog
  • jtflight's Blog

Categories

  • Featured
  • HN
  • 2018
  • 2019
  • 2020
  • 2021
  • 2022
  • 2023
  • Special Interest
  • Developer Awards
  • Excellence Awards
  • Aircraft Design
  • CFS
  • FS2000
  • FS2002
  • Other
  • X-Plane
  • FSX
  • Aviation
  • FS2004
  • Prepar3D
  • Flight Sim World
  • MSFS_old
  • vBulletin Articles

Categories

  • MSFS
    • MSFS Aircraft
    • MSFS Liveries
    • MSFS Scenery
    • MSFS AI Traffic
    • MSFS Misc.
  • FSX
    • FSX Misc.
    • FSX Scenery
    • FSX Business Jets
    • FSX General Aviation
    • FSX Jetliners
    • FSX Modern Military
    • FSX Propliners
    • FSX Helicopters
    • FSX Missions
    • FSX Turboprops
    • FSX Panels
    • FSX Splash Screens
    • FSX Warbirds
    • FSX Early Aircraft
    • FSX Utilities
    • FSX Sound
    • FSX Other Aircraft
    • FSX Scenery Objects
    • FSX AI Flight Plans
    • FSX AFCAD Files
  • Prepar3D
    • Prepar3D Aircraft
    • Prepar3D Scenery
    • Prepar3D Miscellaneous
    • rick test
  • X-Plane
    • X-Plane Jet Airliners
    • X-Plane Liveries
    • X-Plane Prop Airliners
    • X-Plane General Aviation
    • X-Plane Military Aircraft
    • X-Plane Warbirds
    • X-Plane Early Aircraft
    • X-Plane Other Aircraft
    • X-Plane Scenery
    • X-Plane Scenery Libraries
    • X-Plane Scenery Objects
    • X-Plane Misc.
  • FS2004 (ACOF)
    • FS2004 Scenery
    • FS2004 Liveries
    • FS2004 General Aviation
    • FS2004 Business Jets
    • FS2004 Propliners
    • FS2004 Turboprops
    • FS2004 Modern Military
    • FS2004 Helicopters
    • FS2004 Jetliners
    • FS2004 Sound
    • FS2004 Panels
    • FS2004 Warbirds
    • FS2004 Early Aircraft
    • FS2004 Splash Screens
    • FS2004 Other Aircraft
    • FS2004 AFCAD Files
    • FS2004 AI Flight Plans
    • FS2004 Flights/Adventures
    • FS2004 Scenery Objects
    • Misc.
  • FS2002
    • FS2002 Misc.
    • FS2002 Aircraft
    • FS2002 Panels
    • FS2002 Scenery
    • FS2002 Sound
    • FS2002 AI Flight Plans
    • FS2002 Gates & Taxiways
    • FS2002 Splash Screens
    • FS2002 Scenery Design Macros
  • FS2000
    • FS2000 Aircraft
    • FS2000 Liveries
    • FS2000 Misc.
    • FS2000 Panels
    • FS2000 Scenery
    • FS2000 Sound
    • FS2000 Adventures
    • FS2000 Flight Plans
    • FSTraffic Tracks
  • FS98
    • FS98 Misc.
    • FS98 Aircraft
    • FS98 Scenery
    • FS98 Adventures
    • FS98 Panels
    • FS98 Sound
    • FS98 Gauges
    • FS98 Flight Plans
  • FSFW95
    • FSFW95 Misc.
    • FSFW95 Aircraft
    • FSFW95 Scenery
    • FSFW95 Adventures
    • FSFW95 Panels
  • FS5
    • FS5/FSFS Aircraft
    • FS5 Scenery
    • FS5 Panels
    • FS5 Non-Flight Shop Aircraft
    • FS5 Adventures
  • FS4
    • FS4 Aircraft
    • FS4 Scenery
  • Combat Flight Simulator
    • CFS Aircraft
    • CFS Misc.
    • CFS Scenery
    • CFS Missions
    • CFS Panels
    • CFS2 Aircraft
    • CFS2 Misc.
    • CFS2 Scenery
    • CFS2 Missions
    • CFS2 Panels
    • CFS3 Misc.
    • CFS3 Aircraft
    • CFS3 Missions
  • Aviation
    • Aviation
  • Flight Simulation
    • Utilities and Miscellaneous
    • Uploads
    • Maps And Charts
    • Hangsim
  • Military
    • Military
    • Pacific Fighters
  • PAI
    • PAI Aircraft
    • PAI Aircraft Support Files
  • Looking Glass
    • Flight Unlimited II
    • Flight Unlimited III
  • PAINTING LIVERIES FOR AIRCRAFT's SHARE YOUR LIVERY

Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start

    End


Last Updated

  • Start

    End


Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


Location


About Me


Occupation


Interests


Homepage


ICQ


AIM


Yahoo


MSN


Skype


User Title

Found 14 results

  1. Final Argosy Four - Fini Flight By Tony Vallillo (10 June 2010) Author's Note: Upon proofreading this final episode, I found, somewhat to my chagrin, that I had meandered from past tense to present tense and back again on a number of occasions! I relize that this demonstrates a lack of grammatical discipline that might well reflect poorly on the Good Sisters who had charge of my primary education, but I have decided to leave things as they are. These events, even today, are somehow still very much in the present for me, and perhaps subconsciously this narrative reflects that. So as Pharoah was once heard to say: So let it be written, so let it be done! "Brakes...Parked. Seat Belt Sign...Off. APU...Available. Cut 'Em!" It took me nearly 38 years to get to this moment, or perhaps 53 years if you count from the time I first aspired to become an airline pilot! But however and whenever it began, my professional flying career has just ended. The big CF6's are winding down for the last time under my command. I sit for a few seconds and savor the sound, and then, as the FO takes up the litany of the checklist, I rise from my seat to say a last goodbye to some of the people who made it all possible. The party in operations before the flight Cutting the cake My tie goes on the wall of honor! But we are getting ahead of ourselves! Flash back three days to my last "day off" prior to an American Airlines trip. By now it has finally sunk in that the next trip is really the last one! I just got back from Los Angeles, and with only one day off there is much to do to prepare for the next trip. For one thing, I will have a companion on the upcoming odyssey - She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, known to me also as Virginia, will be along for the ride and the layover. So we are packing not just for one, but for two! Actually, this is not the first of my trips that She has shared. On several other occasions, including one of my early Rome layovers, She experienced the joys and tribulations of airline crew travel. In earlier times bringing the spouse along on a trip was somewhat more common and considerably easier, since the availability of seats for non-rev travel was much better prior to deregulation, and especially prior to around 9-11. These days seats in the back, especially First or Business Class seats, are very hard to come by, and Virginia's eagerness to endure a long flight in coach has waned, to no one's surprise! Over the course of my career I have often wished She were with me as I was treated to some of the world's greatest sights, sounds and tastes, and it is one of my very few regrets that She would not fit into my suitcase on occasion! For a Final Argosy, however, things are different. For one thing, the company graciously provides a very high priority pass for the retiring pilot's family, so the chances of Virginia spending more time in Rome than I will on the last trip are very slim! In addition, she certainly doesn't want to miss the retirement party in operations, to say nothing of the one in Rome! So, two suitcases are being packed on Thursday as my career heads for the final stretch. Save for the double packing, however, there is nothing to differentiate this day off from the thousands of others that preceded it over the years. It is too early in the year to have to worry about yard work (and in any event I am rarely inclined to do much of it no matter what the weather!) so I amuse myself with a bit of flight simulation (!) and attend to the matter of getting a final official haircut. I certainly want to look the "right out of central casting" part for this last foray in the suit-of-lights! And speaking of the suit-of-lights, a side trip to the cleaners will be required in order to pick up the freshly laundered official last flight uniform shirts chosen specially for the occasion. Everything must be perfect! On Friday morning I sleep late, as is often my wont when flying the all-nighters to Europe. Around 1pm we saddle up and head for the airport. I certainly don't want to be late for my last trip! An early arrival will also be in order since the company "party" will be today, before the trip begins. I had selected this month's schedule, with the Friday-Saturday-Sunday trips, largely in order to set up my final goodbye to Paris, as I related earlier in this series. The result is that my last arrival will be early Sunday afternoon. Now in the normal order of things the company arranges for the retiring pilot to be met in operations, after the final flight ends, by one or more of his Chief Pilots, as well as such various and sundry other pilots who might be inclined to pay tribute to the one from whom they are about to receive a number! I myself was a Chief Pilot for a number of years right here at JFK, and I officiated in this manner on many occasions, to present the official final handshake to a departing airman. And yes, on occasion I had to drag myself out to the airport on a Saturday or Sunday to perform the rites. So I well understood the demands I was potentially making on the current incumbents of the office, and I proposed an alternative that the chiefs eagerly embraced - that the party be held on Friday afternoon, during their normal office hours, before the flight departed. I was aware that I might be incurring a Karma debt of sorts, but such has always been my confidence in my abilities that I put such thoughts aside and gave the chiefs a break! After all they had, only a few days ago, been so kind as to arrange my command of the Mercury! How could I do less than repay them with a Sunday off! Our ship awaits us at the gate Much to my surprise I am actually eager to go to work, exactly as I have been thousands of times before! The fact that this will be the last time has apparently not changed that and I am pleased that this is so, because the trip might otherwise become funereal, and I certainly don't want my last flights to be marred with regret. It is a great day, my bride accompanies me, and there is the chance to fly a big jet airplane once again! And so, after a quick and uneventful drive to the airport, I entered operations with She-Who-Must in tow. To my delight I found the crew lounge festooned with the usual banners bearing the usual congratulatory sentiments! The chiefs arrived and after introductions (Virginia had never met the new crew!) they commenced the rites of retirement by reading a list of my achievements with the airline, the most significant of which, I have always felt, was that I survived to this point over the course of 31 years of fun! There is a joke in the industry that is as old as the open cockpit airmail, that you have had the perfect career if the Chief Pilot doesn't know your name when he greets you for your final flight! This had actually happened to me a few times - on one occasion in particular the pilot told me that he did not know me (this was shortly after I assumed the duties of Chief). I immediately replied "Well, Captain, I don't know you either, and I'm happy to say that you've just had the perfect career!" Tonight, however, the Chiefs know me all too well, and having completed that somewhat tongue-in-cheek look at my career, they introduced a "mystery guest", which to my complete surprise turned out to be my brother and his wife, come all the way from Arizona where he is a Managing Director for USAir! Never underestimate the potential of pass travel! Virginia and I were delighted to see them, and after exchanging the usual labor vs. management barbs, we proceeded to cut the cake and invite my fellow crewmembers to consume vast quantities! Having done this, the younger of the two chiefs (they are both younger than yours truly!) approached bearing something in his hand that cast a dangerous gleam under the fluorescent lights of ops! This turned out to be a large and sharp-looking pair of scissors, to be used in the final element of ritual for the occasion. Sometime in the early 1990's a tradition began that involved cutting off most of the necktie of a retiring pilot after his arrival and cake. This remnant (the lower portion of the tie) was then tacked up on a special bulletin board established for that purpose, there to remain forever like those prayer flags up on Mt. Everest. The original batch is still there to this day, along with all of the additions over the years. The collection now covers most of a wall in operations and after a quick snip the lower two thirds of my tie joined the distinguished group. Having anticipated this I had packed another tie to wear on the actual trip, since it would look more than a bit foolish to actually go out and fly a plane full of passengers in this sartorially circumcised condition! But I dutifully wore the stub until it was actually time to go to the airplane. There were, gathered there in operations, around 20 or so people: a portion of the office staff that could be spared from their duties, my own contingent (now numbering four), and the usual suspects - that group of pilots who were tooling up for their own trips and who, attracted by the smell of the coffee or the thought of gaining a seniority number, dropped by to join the merriment. Among these are my two FO's for tonight's Final Argosy, and I introduced them to She since we would, in all likelihood, be partying together in Rome the next evening! Somewhere during this time I was called upon by the chiefs to pronounce a benediction upon the assembled multitude, and I did so; telling them that this moment had come more quickly than I ever thought it would, and urging them to enjoy every minute of every flight along the way, to say nothing of the people they would share the flight deck with. The camaraderie turns out to have been the best part of the job. All too soon it's time to go to work. This may be a big deal for me, but for nearly two hundred people who are already checking in two floors below us it is just another flight to Rome. This group will be spared involvement in the festivities, but the passengers on the flight back on Sunday may not be so fortunate! More on that later! I have already described the planning and execution of a flight from JFK to Rome in excruciating detail in a previous volume, available here on FlightSim.Com under the series title Golden Argosy. So I will pass lightly over many of the technical aspects of this Final Argosy in an effort to convey what makes a fini flight like this different from the run of the mill trip! Oddly enough it turns out that, at least for me, there isn't that much that is different. The flight plan is waiting for us in the cyberspace of the computer, and it takes but a few keystrokes for me to call it forth, like some modern-day necromancer. It is of its usual length, somewhere around 10 feet long in its entirety. We, of course, don't leave it like that - for one thing, it consists of several more or less independent sections, and these we separate for easier handling. The flight plan portion shows an enroute time of only 7 hours 24 minutes, the result of tailwinds of around 100 knots all the way from Nantucket to just shy of 40 West. Along with these winds will come the possibility of a bit of light turbulence in the first few hours, but nothing that should rattle the china or spill the coffee! Waiting for takeoff, runway 04L The route for this second-to-last adventure is: BETTE3 ACK DCT KANNI N43A COLOR NATX KENUK UN501 TAKAS UN490 TERPO UM616 LERGA UM728 BTA UL146 ELKAP LIRF NAT X tonight is: COLOR/RONPO/4750N/4840N/4930N/5020N/SOMAX/KENUK Our enroute alternates are Gander, Lajes and Manchester. Gander will be VFR when we need it, as will the other two, but Lajes and Manchester will feature strong and gusty winds out of the west. Rome itself will start out partly cloudy (2000 scattered) but will clear up in time for sightseeing in the afternoon. The long range forecast for the flight back on Sunday is perfect! The fuel burn for the flight itself is calculated to be 80,800 lb; which, added to the other required extras like fuel to the destination alternate airport (Ciampino) and various reserves, plus the dispatcher's own added fuel (around 5200 lb for the wife and kids, which is appropriate considering that "the wife" is actually on the flight tonight!) works out to a total fuel load of 96,100 lb. with a minimum takeoff amount of 91,000, which leaves some wiggle room for delays. At this point in the corporate life of American Airlines, we are engaged in a life-and-death struggle for cost savings; an effort that has resulted in a microscopically detailed analysis of every pound of weight (most definitely including fuel) that is aboard the airplane tonight and every night. Truth is, this effort is nothing new - I have seen fuel savings pogroms in every decade of my career; and it can truly be said that no airline, especially American, ever intentionally wasted fuel! But subsequent to 9-11 we had to go back to the drawing board and extract even more fuel savings from an already miserly usage, an effort that has, almost unbelievably, netted significant further reductions! The passenger load looks to be 203 all told, which compared to our configuration of 225 seats means that She need not stay at home and miss the festivities tomorrow!! These 203 people will add a corpulent 39,000 pounds to our weight tonight, which works out to almost 200 pounds per person! As usual, we are also carrying some cargo and this brings another 15,000 pounds to the table, a number which includes the passenger luggage. All told, we will weigh 356,200 pounds at the gate, and a shade over 354,000 at takeoff, depending of course upon the delays. This is nowhere near the 767-300's maximum takeoff weight of 408,000 pounds, so our performance on takeoff should be reasonably sprightly! Everything being in order, as it has always been, I gather up paperwork, kitbag and wife in that order and head out to the gate. If there is a bit of a spring to my step, it is because this will be the last time I will walk through this part of the JFK terminal in the suit of lights, and I am taking full advantage of the opportunity to "strut my stuff" before She-Who-Must! Truthfully though, if that were indeed the motivation it would be a wasted effort, for She has been entirely too privy to my human failings over the years to fall for the high and mighty act. In reality it all comes down to this: I have always enjoyed every aspect of this job, and I am going to enjoy every bit of it for these final three days! When we arrive at the gate, I discover to my delight that the agents have been able to secure a seat up front in Business Class for Virginia. As I said earlier, the Company provides a positive space pass for the spouse, but it is positive space only in coach. Since the seats up front are considerably more comfortable than those in the steerage, She will arrive in Rome in a much better humor - all the better for the layover! After introducing myself to the Purser and the cabin crew, and briefing them on the details of our flight, I settle in up front and get the nest made. Tim will be sitting in the FO seat tonight, while the FB, John, holds down the fort on the jump seat. It has been my intention for as long as I have contemplated this final flight (a good long time, as it happens) to fly it exactly as I have flown every other flight in my career. And so with that in mind I brief the batting order, with Tim doing the flying on the way over so that the final final flight will be mine. Tim, however, protests sincerely that both legs should be mine, which is usually what the typical retiring Captain wishes! After assuring him that the leg is his if he wants it, I accept his largesse, grateful for the opportunity to do all of the flying. The appointed time comes, and with it the call from the ground man. We complete the checklist and begin my last pushback at JFK. As we leave the gate, I take the opportunity to thank the ground man and, through him, all of the men and women who have supported me on the JFK ramp over the 31 years I have flown there. They have toiled in all sorts of weather at all times of the day and night to get the flights loaded and away safely and on time, and I have always been appreciative of their efforts. He in turn expresses his best wishes and indicates that he, too, will be heading into retirement shortly. As I return the last salute that I will get from a fellow AA'er (British Airways provides our ground handling in Rome), I realize that the "last's" are going to be coming hot and heavy from now on! Better not to dwell upon it, because the work at hand will require all of my attention, as it always does. Flight log, flight 236 Oceanic Clearance You would think that a nearly final flight would merit some special treatment, like going to the head of the departure lineup, but not so! Not to worry, though, for the lineup today is not long at all, and we make our way to the runway in the relatively short time of 30 minutes. My last takeoff from JFK will be made on runway 04L, and as I taxi into position I once again rehearse in my head the procedures for an engine failure on takeoff (Beyond V1 continue the takeoff, climb at V2-V2+15 to engine out acceleration altitude, clean up, climb power and checklists. Somewhere in there declare an emergency and ask ATC for a straight out climb). I have never had to use these procedures elsewhere than in a simulator, and if my luck holds for another two takeoffs I can release them from memory and free up some neurons for other important information like Virginia's birthday! Now the tower controller, in the accent of deepest Flatbush, clears us for takeoff. Once again the engines let out that snarling roar as they come to takeoff power and the airplane charges off down the runway. It has always been amazing that this much power and momentum is actually under my control at these times! It takes only the slightest of nudges on the rudder pedal steering to keep the nosewheel a fraction of a foot to one side of the centerline lights. When the ship wanders a few inches, I am alerted by the thump..thump..thump of the nosewheel banging over the supposedly flush-mounted lights, and another ounce or two of pressure on the appropriate pedal cures the problem and removes the banging. V1 arrives and I remove my hand from the throttle, lest there be any temptation to abort the takeoff beyond this limit speed. The FO assumes throttle guard, lifting his hand from its previous position just behind and below the throttles. At V Rotate I pull back on the wheel and the nose starts coming up at just the stately pace I expect. Once the nose is up and coming I release just a bit of the pull, lest it keep on going and scrape the tailskid, a fate I have avoided thus far and fully intend to avoid for this takeoff and the next. The ship gathers itself up and bounds free from the earth once again, and I take a special delight in the feel of it, for I will have but one more opportunity to experience it. Once the gear is retracted tower calls the turn to the normal 100 degree heading and sends us off to departure control. When we have checked in with departure and finished the flap retraction sequence a subtle relaxation occurs. We now have both altitude and airspeed to play with if things were to go wrong. Things, however, stay firmly right, and as we turn eastbound again we climb through a scattered cloud layer and join the westering sun which greets us from over my left shoulder. It is a moment of such sublime beauty that I am, for a moment, one with both the sky and the airplane itself! How fitting that such a moment should occur on this flight. I shall savor it for a long time to come! It takes but a short time to climb to our cruising altitude of 33,000 feet, and once the passengers are made welcome I tilt the seatback slightly and settle into cruise mode. When the Flight Attendant brings up the sodas and nuts I inquire about the welfare of She. My bride, I am assured, is enjoying herself immensely and apparently is getting along quite well without my company. As the FB heads back to the cabin I ask him to relay my compliments to Virginia, and tell her that I will join her in a while when the second break begins. Now that things have settled down, it is exactly like every other Rome flight I have made. Nothing special about it at all! Of course, as I remind myself mentally, there is still one more flight to go! But actually there is something a bit different, because the meals make their appearance quickly. The Purser, apparently, doesn't want this old geezer to get all woozy from lack of nourishment! That's OK - this is one mouth she won't have to feed anymore after tomorrow! As I savor the salmon, a perennial favorite of mine, I think back over the thousands of other crew meals I have consumed over 31 years, enough to keep a normal family in the pink for quite some time! Truth is, I have enjoyed every one of them, and tonight I indulge myself in a sundae to top things off. The oceanic clearance comes slithering out of the ACARS printer right on time, and it is exactly what we filed. Approaching Ronpo we climb to our crossing altitude of 34,000 feet, where, just as forecast, we start picking up some turbulence. It's not enough to really worry about, but I do put the Seat Belt sign on, just to be on the safe side. After we bid goodbye to Gander Center and hello to Gander Radio, I switch over to the frequency for the big oil platform out here for a last chat. As usual, they answer quickly, apparently eager to break the monotony of the Grand Banks with a radio contact. After getting a short weather and sea report, I wish them well and thank them for the occasional chats over the years. I doubt that I will ever get to visit the thing, but I wouldn't turn down the opportunity if it ever arose! The Pantheon Retirement party in Rome All too soon it is time to take my break, and after briefing the FB on our situation I head back to the cabin where I find She fast asleep. Just as well, for she will have a busy day tomorrow and she is not accustomed to the physiological demands of these Atlantic schedules. I also settle down for as much of a nap as I can get at this hour (it is only around 8pm tummy time!). But before I do, I perform a ritual that I have been doing as long as I have been flying these long trips. I take a stroll through the cabin to the aft galley, to see how things are going for the crew, and update them on anything new from up front. But aside from the contact with the majority of the cabin crew who usually don't make it up to the flight deck, I enjoy just seeing an airplane full of people, most of whom are sleeping as soundly as a person can in such an environment. This, I think, is the ultimate expression of trust - they feel confident enough to sleep through at least the wee hours of the flight. It is, and has always been, one of the great rewards of the career, and I will always be grateful to have had the privilege of their trust. I am awakened as we are about to coast in over the region of France known as Pays de la Loire, crossing directly over Nantes. From here we slice southeastward in the general direction of Nice, where the Alpes Maritimes loom out of the mist on our left. This is a part of the Alps I have never seen from the ground, and like much of Europe it is on the list of places I might someday like to go, if the Euro ever again gets close to par with the greenback! By now we are cruising at the giddy height of 39,000 feet, and as we approach the island of Corsica Marseille Control starts us down. As we turn toward Elba I brief the approach - the usual morning approach, the ILS to 16R. The weather is great - just a bit of morning mist about, but good visibility and light winds. I ask for and receive clearance for a "high speed" descent below 10,000 feet. This is feasible over here in Europe, since there is very little small plane traffic at the lower altitudes, and even less at this early hour. A speed of 300 knots is impressive below 5,000 feet, and the hills and villages zip right along below us. I take over from Otto shortly after we start down, and hand fly all the way down the coast of Italy from Grosseto past Civitavecchia where the cruise ships are already docked. More than a few of our passengers will be sailing this evening on one of those ships. I've done that myself and a Mediterranean cruise is a marvelous experience. Past the docks, we head straight for the runway, and I ease in a bit of speedbrakes to rein in the beast and get configured for the final approach. Approach speed, flaps and glide slope all arrive more or less simultaneously, and I guide the bird gently down the approach path. A slight flare over the runway end and she touches down smoothly, which is satisfying after a nice hand flown approach! The old guy hasn't lost his touch, at least not yet! The drill is idle reverse only for noise abatement, and the bird slows down without the usual commotion of the reversers, which is also satisfying. I steer for the second high speed turnoff and head for the gate. The automatic parking system does its thing perfectly and now it is one down and just one to go. But there is no need to dwell on that, because there is going to be a party tonight! The weather is perfect as we are whisked through the streets of an awakening Rome toward our hotel, which lies close by the Pantheon. Virginia takes in the sights as we dart through the incredibly narrow streets of the district and emerge at last into the Piazza in front of the hotel. The early risers from the outbound crew are sitting in the sun awaiting our arrival, and we exchange the usual pleasantries with them as we unload our bags. Bearing the extra burden of the luggage of She, I enter the hotel and begin the negotiations with the clerks at the front desk whereby I hope to be spared the ridiculously expensive surcharge that is usually levied upon significant others sharing rooms with the crew! Alas, although I bring my best Don Corleone impression to bear, the minor functionaries manning the desk today are unmoved, and I must fork over approximately $80 to put a roof over the head of my bride for this evening! This is one of the great downsides of European hotels, this sordid business of overcharging for companions in rooms paid for under a corporate contract. But at least it is only for this one night! Any future trips over here will be as a tourist, and it is highly unlikely that we will be staying in such relatively palatial digs on my own dime!! After a brief wait for the rooms to be made up (the outbound crew has just vacated them) we stuff ourselves into an elevator about the size of a telephone booth and are borne jerkily upwards to the fourth floor, the location of the Captain's suite. Well, it is not a suite, per se, but it is a large and delightful room; and Virginia, casting her professional decorator's eye about, pronounces it eminently acceptable for my last layover. After a brief flurry of unpacking, we both dive into the large duvet-covered bed, the better to grab a few winks before setting out on my last walkabout in the Eternal City. (The rigors of command and overnight flight allow for little in the way of "extracurricular" activities on this or any other layover, at my age!!) The uniform awaits its last call Ready for the passengers to board my last flight Several hours later the automatic wake-up call rouses us from our slumbers to undertake a final exploration of the city, to say nothing of our planned party this evening. A month or so ago, a friend of mine in Rome, whose acquaintance I had made over the internet of all things, had offered to host my retirement party in her home, from the front window of which a well thrown stone would hit St. Peter's Basilica. I, of course, immediately accepted and so Virginia and I will meet my friend, several of the AA Rome employees from the airport, and such sundry members of my crew as may be at loose ends this evening for some retirement merriment and what promises to be a wonderful dinner at an establishment that, my host assured me, enjoys the patronage of some of the more senior churchmen in Rome! Unfortunately, the most senior of all of Rome's churchmen is unavailable for our shindig! (My host had actually met Cardinal Ratzinger on several occasions before his "promotion" to his present job!) After an initial and obligatory stop at what may well be Rome's finest gelato establishment, Giolitti, Virginia and I enjoy a wonderful afternoon wandering around town, poking our heads into churches that are like jewel boxes on the inside, and browsing historical sites 20 centuries old. As the day fades into evening we turn our steps toward Vatican City, and the apartment of my friend Joan Lewis, who serves as Rome Bureau Chief for EWTN, the Catholic cable channel. A merry group has already gathered there, including both copilots and several of the station personnel, with whom I had long ago become friends. After a delightful hour or two at Joan's we betake ourselves to the Ristorante La Vittoria, several blocks away, where we all enjoy a real Italian feast! Toasts are made and I pronounced benediction on the assembly with the added attraction of a few well worn anecdotes from my long career. Finally, after the last course is consumed, Virginia and I bid Joan and the FCO personnel arrivederci and headed back to the hotel. There is, after all, still one more flight to go in my career, and it would not do to approach it lacking the proper rest! At 7 the next morning, after a layover spent as I wish they all could have been, which is to say in the company of She, we arise to the strains of the telephone wake-up service and prepare for the last flight I will make on behalf of American Airlines. As is my usual habit I take breakfast, this time not alone, in the restaurant of the hotel, for which I have developed a fondness due to their excellent omelets. After eating, we drag our bags outside to await the van in the bright sunshine of a Rome morning. All too soon it arrives, and the entire crew settles in for the ride to the airport, which, like so many other things large and small today, will be my last. At Fiumicino we are met by the same folks who partied with us the night before. None the worse for that experience, they proceed to brief the crew and deliver the flight plan and the rest of the paperwork. After the usual transit of security (another last time, at least in the blue suit) I humor She-Who-Must as she indulges in her favorite pastime, shopping. The duty free stores at Rome airport are a magnet for such as She, and it will be a good many minutes before I can get her pointed in the direction of the airplane! Since we are already bearing a home baked cake, courtesy of one of the agents, we have little capability to replenish the wine cellar. So, having browsed like the pro that She is, the two of us ride the train out to the international terminal, where our airplane is already being serviced for the flight back home. My first task, upon arriving at the gate, is to see to Virginia's accommodations. The flight is going to be full, and in order to get my bride aboard, the agents are contemplating drastic measures. I assure them that although I don't plan to seat Virginia on the flight deck (by no means an unknown practice on retirement flights, but against the rules and thus off limits according to my own standards) I also want to make sure that no passenger gets left behind. After a brief consultation with the two FO's, I arrange for Virginia to occupy the spare crew rest seat, next to our break seat in business class. Normally this seat is empty so as not to disturb the sleeping pilot, but the FO's consent to having the pleasure of the company of She! Straight away I get down to work. Although this is the real Fini, it is still a regular American Airlines flight, and nothing must be allowed to interfere with the safe conduct thereof. So I take great pains to go over my last flight plan in depth, checking it as I always do to ensure that all is in order. The route chosen by our dispatcher today is: GISPA 5A GISPA, UP77 ELB, UM616 PIGOS, UM733 BRY, UM729 RESMI, UL851 LGL, UM502 JSY, UN160 SHA, UN542 BABAN, UN544 DOGAL, NATF REDBY, N200B ALLEX, ENE, ENE4 NAT Foxtrot today is: 55N020W, 56N030W, 56N040W, 54N050W, CARPE, REDBY Flight plan, flight 235 30 March 2008, signed by crew The last Atlantic weather I will need to concern myself with Noo thanks! It was a wonderful gesture, though! My last guests arrive Our planned altitude initially is FL 280, climbing to 350 for the crossing. The flight should take 9 hours and 2 minutes from takeoff. The fuel plan calls for a total of 125,000 lb, of which 108,100 is for the flight itself, and the remainder for various reserves. The destination alternate is, as usual, Newark, and the enroute alternates are Glasgow, Keflavik and Goose Bay. N399AN, our bird today, is one of the newer ones, and all things considered, will weigh 397,000 lb at takeoff. This, of course, is fairly close to the 408,000 lb maximum takeoff weight of a 767-300, but well within the limits for our usual takeoff runway in Rome, runway 25 The weather is excellent everywhere. Here in Rome it is clear with light winds and a temp of 6 degrees Celsius. GLA has a few showers about, not atypical for this time of year, but will be well above alternate minimums. KEF and YYR are partly cloudy and JFK is forecast to be essentially clear. The winds aloft chart indicates a strong jet stream running across the middle of the NAT area, which is why we are flying a bit north today, to avoid the strongest winds. And avoid them we will, with an average wind component of a mere 18 knots headwind! I have prepared some special decorations for this final flight, and these I now put in place just aft of the cockpit door, in view of the soon-to-be boarding passengers. I have made a large color copy of a photo of an American 767 in mid-flight, and in honor of the role that She has played over the course of my career I have included on it the legend "Flagship Virginia", in token of the names that once were bestowed upon American Airlines airplanes. In further homage to that era I have placed, just above the Flagship Virginia picture, a real Flagship flag, a historical relic that I acquired many years ago from an old pilot who had picked it up in the 1940's from the runway at Louisville Kentucky, after some forgetful copilot failed to douse the colors before takeoff! The DC-3's of American were known collectively as the Flagship Fleet, and they all sported this red and blue pennant above the copilot's window when on the ground. Although I can't fly this flag out the window, I will display it in the entryway, and later inside the front window as we depart. Having attended to all of these preparations, I greet the boarding passengers while the FO's complete the cockpit preparations. Normally I would not be doing the meet-and-greet prior to the flight, but this trip is special, and I take a few minutes to pay my respects to those who make this career possible, and along the way answer a few questions about the strange symbology adorning the entry passage. I can't stay to greet them all, since there are over 200 passengers on flight 235 today, but I stay as long as I can, until the demands of the job up front become pressing. As I settle into the left seat for my final trip, I notice that the station personnel have concocted a humorous way to pay tribute to our friendship. Then have prepared a large banner that reads "Tony for President"! This is, of course, just about the time of the early primary contests in the USA's 2008 election season, and I am flattered. But No Thanks, all the same -- I wouldn't want the job! Not even if I got to fly Air Force One, which I certainly would if I were Commander in Chief!! (I can only imagine the situation if the President, in addition to all of the other criticism that comes his way daily, were to be judged on the quality of his landings!!) Right on time, the door closes and I have the satisfaction of beginning my Final Argosy on schedule. Considering the important part that an on-time departure plays in the airline industry (notwithstanding what it must occasionally look like to a passenger!) I am pleased that my last labors for American Airlines have commenced on a positive note. The British Airways ground man checks in and, after getting clearance from ramp control, the tug emits a belch of black smoke as it digs in for my final pushback. As heavy as we are, I hold off on engine start until we have completed the rearward portion of the maneuver, and engage the starter for number one engine as we are being pulled forward to the release point. Both engines start with no fuss whatsoever, and the ground man is cleared off headset. Just before he goes, I thank him and all of his fellow BA'ers here in Rome for the excellent service over the years. This is something I will be doing a good bit of today on the radio as well. Ground control clears us to runway 25 via the usual convoluted route. This is necessary due to construction that has been going on for over a year and involves the normal taxi route. We proceed at a stately pace, since at the higher weights we would heat up the brakes if we were going faster and had to slow down or stop. Brake temperatures used to be a big problem on the larger widebodies, especially the 747, but better brakes (some are made of carbon now, instead of steel) and different pilot techniques have had a big influence over the last few decades. Some of the airplanes have brake cooling fans built into the wheel hubs, but these add hundreds of pounds to the weight of the ship, and our 767's and 757's don't have them. Oh well, we have no brake temperature indications up front either, and out of sight is out of mind! The Flagship flag in the front window as we push back from the gate The island of Elba Continental 767-400, our obliging photographer today! As we approach the runway I make the "prepare for takeoff" announcement over the PA. Just the normal version, at this point. A bit later the passengers will be enlightened as to the festivities and decorations, but not just yet. Cleared into position after a landing airplane, the FO asks me if I have any words of historical significance to pronounce at this moment! As I line the bird up with the runway, I recall and paraphrase the words of Allan Sheppard, America's first astronaut, in a similar circumstance: "I hope I don't screw up!" The FO's remark reminds me that this is the last time I will go charging down the runway. After thanking the ground man I had pretty much gotten into the routine of the flight, and I actually forgot all about the Fini part! Hopefully it will be like that all day. As tower clears us for takeoff I thank him and his fellow controllers at Rome for the excellent service, and then advance the throttles and call for the autothrottle. The ship is a bit slower to accelerate at this weight, but the nearly 125,000 pounds of thrust eventually wins out over weight and inertia and we hit 159 knots (V1) about halfway down the runway. I raise the nose at VR and 399AN gracefully leaves the runway behind and heads for the sky. A slight right turn puts us on the Gispa 5 and we change over to departure control, which in short order free us from the 250 knot speed limit, and clear us direct to Elba. Now that we have the ship cleaned up and everything is in order, we can indulge in a little sightseeing as we pass Elba, the erstwhile prison of Napoleon (for a while, at least!). It's a beautiful looking island from above, and I imagine it is much more so from sea level. There is an airport situated in a valley between the several mountains that form the bulk of the island, and it would probably be a great destination in a small plane, perhaps like a mountainous version of Nantucket. When we level off we call up the flight logs from the ACARS printer. Thus armed with the updated arrival time at JFK, I pick up the PA microphone to deliver a speech that I have had in mind for years. My typical welcome aboard oration is relatively short and sweet, since years of flying in the back have made me realize that a great many pilots are in love with the sound of their own voice! This is, to be sure, a nearly universal condition among new Captains, but as time goes by some pilots still go on and on about things that the average passenger of today has no interest in. These days I usually confine myself to thanking them for flying with American, telling them about the arrival time and weather, and putting in a good word about the cabin crew. Beyond this I may or may not say anything about the route, since only a few passengers have window seats and the shades are most likely drawn. On a last flight, however, the retiree pretty much has the option of seizing the bully pulpit, and delivering a last soliloquy along whatever lines he or she thinks appropriate. I've never been a crewmember or a passenger on anyone's last flight, so I can only rely on second hand reports, but such reports indicate that the spectrum of last flight pronouncements is wide indeed. I myself have always felt that this last PA should be an opportunity to convey my thanks to those present on the airplane who have made my career possible. After much thought, and considering that I want to keep my remarks to just a couple of minutes because the audience is indeed a captive one, I have decided to publicly thank two groups and one individual. And so, as I begin the valedictory with the usual welcome aboard and ETA, I first explain that this is a special flight for me - my last in command of an American Airlines jet. I go on to tell them about the significance of the Flagship Flag they may have noticed upon boarding, and that the "Flagship Virginia" refers to my bride, written thus because there was not room on the picture for "Flagship She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed"! I explain that no pilot can have a successful career in this business solely on his own merits; rather, it is through the support received from many other people, both in and out of American, that I have reached this point. First of all, I salute and thank my fellow pilots, especially those Captains who indoctrinated me by their example, and those First Officers and Flight Engineers who supported me in my own Captaincy and helped keep me out of trouble! I pay tribute also to the Flight Attendants of American past and present who, over the years, have done so well in that all important task of keeping the customers coming back! And finally, I pay tribute to my good wife, who kept things on such an even keel at home all these years that never once did I report for duty burdened by troubles on the home front. The net effect of this speech was reportedly such as to make stones weep, or at least She, which may or may not be equivalent! I am told immediately thereafter that there was applause, but whether that was due to the content of the speech or the fact that it had ended is uncertain! Nonetheless, my swan song is delivered - the one part of this flight that I had thought a great deal about over the years. I am pleased that it seemed to go well. Flight 235, from the Continental flight deck Message from Dispatch As the FB goes back for the first break we settle in for the long haul. From here (approaching Nice on the Cote de Azur) we have over an hour to go to get to the North Atlantic. I had actually hoped that the route today would be over the Swiss Alps, and I suppose that had I dug my heels in I could have demanded and gotten it. But that would have added a not inconsiderable cost to our journey, and I have no wish to make my last flight a financial burden upon my employer. Throughout my entire career I have felt very fortunate to have been employed at this company, and I always strived to make it a better place for my having been here, to give as well as to take. So I will fly the least cost flight plan that the computer has concocted, and finish on the same note as I started. There is one thing that I had hoped against hope would happen on this flight, and that is to run across another airplane 1000 feet above or below on the track, with a pilot onboard who has a decent digital camera! On one previous occasion in all of my flying I had someone email me a picture they had snapped of us, although it was of relatively low resolution and not at all suitable for enlargement to the grand proportions I had in mind for my office wall! But now, shortly after we step out over the ocean, what do I see but a Continental 767-400 overtaking us below. And wonder of wonders, he is equipped for picture taking! I get some shots of him and he of us and we exchange emails. A few days later the picture you see here arrives, and it is indeed capable of being enlarged. It couldn't have happened on a better occasion! As we continue westward the flight is as routine as it could be. Exactly like all the others before. The various chores and cockpit discussions are keeping me occupied and indeed I have to stop and think to realize that this is the last one! It really doesn't seem that way. Of course my situation is a bit different from the typical retiree, for I have the option, embarrassing though it might be, to change my mind when we get to New York and un-retire myself; an option that I possess for the simple reason that I lack a good many years of the new mandatory retirement age of 65! So all in all, I suppose that lurking in the back of my mind might be the thought that there just might maybe possibly be another trip to Rome after this one! But for that to happen, the stock market would have to experience a record uptick tomorrow, Monday the 31st of March. Small chance of that! In time I take my turn in the cabin for my break. Virginia is fast asleep in the seat next to me and I do not disturb her, sleep on an airplane being hard to come by and precious to enjoy. I pull the blanket over my head and nod off myself, and surprisingly I actually sleep until I am summoned 2 hours later. My last crew break has gone off without a hitch! Virginia still sleeps soundly, so I leave her to her dreams and take my last cabin stroll. Most of the passengers are asleep or deeply engrossed in the movie, and few pay any attention to the man with the four stripes as he makes his way to the aft galley for a brief confab with those few flight attendants who are not also on break. It turns out that one of the flight attendants is the older brother of someone I went to high school with! It certainly is a small world. After a quick visit to the galley for an infusion of caffeine, I return to my place of work at the pointy end of the jet. This is another "last" - my last cup of airline coffee, or at least my last working cup! Hopefully I will enjoy the brew in the back as a passenger on many occasions, but this will be the last time I "need it"! I was not a coffee drinker until late in my airline career, but eventually I came to find it useful, and less invasive than an intravenous caffeine drip! On occasion the flight attendants would be startled to hear medical terminology over the interphone, as when I made a request for a cup of Java "stat"! Too many doctor shows on TV I suppose. I had intended to grab a photo of the FMC showing my last 1000 miles to go, but lo and behold, it has slipped my mind in the midst of the many small but important tasks of cruise, and I have to content myself with a shot showing an undistinguished number in the mid 700's. No matter, for now each mile that clicks off is special in its own way. The FO and I keep up the usual conversational banter, more out of habit than for any other reason, and the miles go flying by. All too soon we are coasting in over the ice floes of northeastern Canada, and I remind myself to look into spending a small portion of my lump sum on some land up here, just in case the environmental types are right and the world will heat up!! Who knows, perhaps someday Goose Bay may be the new Miami! A quick check of the METARS reveals that the weather in New York is beautiful, and the winds appear to favor the 22's. As we streak southwestward over the Gulf of St. Lawrence I reach into the depths of the kit bag and extract the approach charts for New York. It's never too early to start going over the arrival and approach, no matter how often I have done them before! There are, in fact, two approaches to runway 22L, which is the preferred landing runway. One is an ILS approach, which has recently been upgraded to a CAT III. This was a timely upgrade, since it was here, some years ago, that I encountered the lowest CAT I visibility I have ever seen in my career. We were ferrying an empty Airbus back from Paris after a days-long mechanical delay, and the copilot was doing the flying. As we were being vectored for the other approach to 22L (which is a VOR/DME approach with the final course situated at a slight angle to the runway to keep the airplane over less noise sensitive areas) it was already apparent that a solid deck of marine clouds was forming quickly below us. We asked for the ILS to 22L (at that time a CAT I approach with a decision altitude of 200 feet) at just about the same time that approach control realized that is would be necessary. Coast in near Saint Anthony It's still winter up here in northeast Canada Missed 1000 to go! Once established on the ILS, we slid down the glide slope into the fog. This was the pea soup variety of the sort they have so frequently in England, and we were both prepared for a missed approach. At exactly two hundred feet, as the words "go around" were already forming on my lips, I spotted the strobe lights and managed to change my announcement to "continue". With nothing but the strobe lights in sight on a CAT I approach, further descent is permitted to 100 feet above the ground. This next 100 feet seemed to take as long as the entire approach (!) and we were rewarded, at around 125 feet with the sight of the remaining elements of the approach light system along with the runway threshold lights, sufficient visual reference to continue to a landing. The FO, as is always prudent in these circumstances, kept the autopilot engaged until the minimum altitude of 50 feet, from whence it is merely a matter of retarding the throttles and initiating a slight flare. Nowadays, of course, Otto would take it all the way to the landing roll. Interestingly, the flight that followed us went around - apparently the weather was on its way to W0X0F! (Indefinite, ceiling Zero, Obscured, Visibility Zero, Fog, in the older lexicon of aviation weather reporting.) The VOR/DME approach has much higher minimums, and is generally used only in marginal VFR or better conditions as a noise abatement tool. The course line for this approach is offset 10 or so degrees to the left of a straight-in final, and leads the airplane over a narrow area devoid of houses. This is the approach I expect, since the weather is good, and this is the approach I will brief and plan for. The course is defined by the 052 radial of the JFK VOR, which is on the airport between the 22's. At some point, usually a couple of miles out, we slide right and transition to a straight in approach. Although the approach, like most of the so-called non precision approaches, has minimum altitude limits along the course that form a sort of step down instead of a continuous glide path, the FMC is fully capable of calculating a continuous descent path that will meet all of the minimums along the way and preclude the need to add power to level off at any of the intermediate steps, thus saving some fuel. We can also tune the ILS and use its glide slope, while flying the offset course using the pink line put in place by the FMC. As we enter US airspace I bid the Canadian controllers adieu, along with that message of thanks to them and all of their colleagues and predecessors. I have been doing that every time we leave a center, all the way across, including the Oceanic centers Shanwick and Gander. Air Traffic Control is of great importance to the safety of all flights, and all of these men and women throughout the world have been helping keep me safe for over 38 years. A final thank you is the least I can do to express my appreciation! Once again I am treated to an aerial tour of the northeast coast of the United States, which is one of the most beautiful places in the country. We fly over Providence, and just to the north of Newport, where the great barons of the early industrial age vied with one another to build the most ostentatious oceanfront mansions. And we fly right past Block Island, a favorite destination in a small plane. By this time I am busy with the preparations for the approach and landing, and so I am spared the thought that but a few minutes hence Block Island will be about as far east as I will be flying! At 10,000 feet over eastern Long Island (sometimes pronounced "Lonk Oiland" or Lon-Giland" by the natives!) I slow for the last time to 250 knots. It is quite likely that I will never again exceed that speed (or even come close to it!) in an airplane that I am flying. Fortunately, as before, this does not occur to me in the moment. From now on the demands of everyday flying will take over and all other musings will be shut off. One thing does, however, draw my attention as we check in with approach control. In my day in the office, the chiefs would usually make it known to the Tracon that a particular flight was a fini flight. Armed with this knowledge, the controllers would usually make some congratulatory greeting when the flight checked in. For whatever reason, that is not happening with us, and as far as Tracon seems to be concerned we are just another flight on just another day. Well, actually, we are! And the lack of reminders helps me to keep my mental energies on the combination of the demands of the moment! Adding to those demands is a continuous light turbulence in the lower reaches of the atmosphere which, while not enough to be a real bother even to the passengers, is enough to keep me working a bit at the controls. I have, as you might imagine, bid my last farewell to Otto a good while back, the better to savor the delightful flying characteristic of the 767 one more time. And so I gently herd the bird along the south shore of the Island, past the various Hamptons and Jones Beach as we coast toward the Big Apple. Approach slows us to 220 knots and I call for the first notch of flaps, which as most of you know results in only the leading edge devices extending on this 767. In due time approach turns us to the north to intercept the 052 radial (232 course) of the JFK VOR which forms the final approach course, and reins us in to 180 knots, which we will maintain until the final approach fix at RUSHY. Long Island - the last few miles I am now working just a bit in this light turbulence to keep everything right on the numbers, as befits a swan song! Gear and more flaps, and then we start the final glide toward runway 22L. As we sweep over Rockaway Boulevard I am using a combination of the VASI's and the ILS glide slope to keep the ship right on the proper descent. As usual, the two do not quite agree, especially close-in, but I'm used to that. The final 50 feet or so is all done by eyeball. For the last time the speakers come alive with the metallic voice intoning "50....40...30...20...10". I hold the descent until around 20 feet is called, and then start a flare, still working a bit to keep the wings level in the bumps. It looks good as we level off somewhere at or just below 10 feet, but as the lift pays off the bird sinks the final few feet and settles itself onto the runway with a light thump, not unlike a generously proportioned matron plopping into an overstuffed chair! Oh well, the perfect grease job I was looking for is not to be mine! No time to worry about that now, because we still have to get the beast stopped before the other end of JFK's shortest runway. The autobrakes take care of that with their usual smooth efficiency, and in just a few seconds we are turning off at taxiway Juliet, our gateway to JFK. It is only now that it hits me - I have just completed my last big-jet landing. I am grateful for the bit of turbulence today, for it kept me working and kept my mind off morbid thoughts and entirely occupied with the demands of the job. Now the job is just about over, although we must still be vigilant because, as they say, the job isn't really over until the paperwork is done! After holding for the takeoffs on 22R, we are cleared to the terminal. As I bring the ship across the bridges over the Van Wyck Expressway, I express my thanks to JFK Tower for all of the years of safe operations. It is at this point that the controllers realize that a fini flight has just arrived! They acknowledge my tribute, and express their best wishes for my retirement. This exchange has also alerted me to the fact, soon confirmed out the window, that our arrival is going to be a dry one. I don't know how or when or where it started, but for many years now it has been traditional all over the world that a retirement flight is given a wash down by the fire trucks after landing. This honorific even extends to some of the military services. As chief pilot I had often made the arrangements for these ablutions - all it takes is a call from someone in authority to the fire station, and if the crews are not otherwise engaged the incoming flight gets to drive under an arch of high pressure water thrown a hundred feet or so into the air by these powerful trucks. The passengers get as much of a kick out of it as the pilots do, at least those seated by a window! Today, though, there are no fire trucks anywhere in sight. This is actually not as disappointing as you might think, because two years ago I myself had arranged the water cannon salute for a retiring flight attendant on one of my trips. This may have been the only time that this tribute was paid to someone other than a pilot, at least at American, but the lady in question was one of our very best and quite deserving of the honor! Knowing the protocols, as I did, it was easy to make the arrangements! And so it was that I did get to drive under the water cannon salute, even though it will not happen today. A good deed is indeed often its own reward! As the FO gets clearance from ramp control to proceed the final few hundred yards to the gate, he motions to me to listen in on the number two radio, which I do by flipping a switch. It seems that an old friend of mine from chief pilot days, now one of the four Ramp Managers at JFK, has come in on his day off to be the one to issue me my final clearance to a gate! He recites a heartwarming panegyric over the radio, and it is worth all of the water cannon salutes in the world! It does take a minute or so to complete, which apparently irritates an Eagle Captain who is awaiting clearance to push. My friend silences him summarily, and I smile with the realization that even this impatient Eagle Captain will likely benefit from my imminent departure! I am also at this point informed that the reason we are dry at this moment is that it is shift change time at the fire house (wouldn't you know it!). Oh well! They were there if we needed them, and that is all that counts! The gate we get is one of the best, for once, with but a short walk to customs, and I swing the bird around and ease it forward to the final stop. "Brakes Parked...Seat Belt Sign OFF...APU Available...Cut 'Em!" And just like that it is all over. 38 years of flying jets winds down to a close as the big GE's spin down to a slow roll in the wind. Normally I would be involved in the remainder of the checklist, but this time I ask the FB to take over the left seat for that litany, while I make my way immediately to the door. One of the rituals of a fini flight is the good bye to the passengers. I have seen this occasionally from the jetbridge in other times, and now I get to experience it for myself. My Bride joins me at the cockpit door and we greet each passenger in turn - they all want to shake hands and express some good wish for my golden years. There are over two hundred of them, and it takes many minutes, but after the last of the farewells have been made there is time for a quick picture of the crew, or almost all of it at any rate - one of the flight attendants is a commuter and made a quick dash for her flight, with my blessing! The VOR/DME to 22L A last look at my office for over 38 years The cake that the Rome agent's wife baked for us And then there were none. Virginia and I collect my bags and hers, and after I pen a final tribute to our maintenance organization in the airplane's logbook along with the official "no items" entry, I take a last picture of my office as I leave and we head down the corridor for the statutory encounter with the Customs Service. The crew is long gone, and as I hand the officer my declaration I thank him and all of his colleagues for their courtesy and cooperation over the years. And then we go to await the crew bus for the trip back to the Honda in the parking lot. As I drive off into the sunset there is one more thank you to be given, this one over the phone since I was otherwise occupied with flying as we made our approach. I call the Tracon and express my gratitude to the shift supervisor for 31 years of safe flying, a sentiment which he promises to pass on to the troops. It takes but a mere two hours to drive home and I am amused to see that our daughter has festooned the entry to our driveway with a sign advertising frequent flights from our garage! I greet the grandbaby and retrieve our bags from the car. I don't rush to get out of the uniform, though, as I usually do. I want to wear it for real for just a few minutes longer. I have worn it but once since then, to a career day at a local high school. And after that, never. It still sits in my closet, for all the world as though it was waiting its next call to duty, as does my kit bag, still filled with all of the charts and accoutrements that I used on that final flight. This is probably foolishness of the highest order, but it pleases me to have it so. And after I finish writing this the flight plan and all of the paperwork will go into a file, perhaps never again to see the light of day, but never to be discarded. It is now over two years since that day. It took quite a while to write this series, partly because writing is not as easy as bestselling authors make it appear. I want to thank Nels and FlightSim.Com for "publishing" these over the years - especially in this instance, the writing has been cathartic and, if nothing else, will cement these memories in place beyond the point where senility can one day steal them from me! The most interesting thing about my life in retirement is that, as strange as it may seem considering how I loved the job every minute, I really don't miss it. This is all to the good, for my biggest fear had always been that I would end up like a beached sailor sitting on the dock of the bay. Not so. I left at just the right time for me, which is the best way to end any career. I have kept my hand in, so to speak, with MSFS and Level D, and I suppose that I could still fly a 767 if push ever came to shove. I sincerely hope that it doesn't, because for anything like that to happen, some real bad juju would have come down the pipe. I still fly a good bit these days, mostly for the Civil Air Patrol, the civilian auxiliary of the US Air Force, my original Alma Mater. I fly Cessnas now, instead of Boeings, but two of our birds have the new Garmin G-1000 glass cockpits, which are just as complex as the stuff up front in the 767! I serve as a check pilot in CAP; and indeed, as I write these words, I am about to depart for a national search and rescue school out in the wilds of Indiana, where I will indoctrinate CAP pilots into the mysteries of visual and ELT searches. I still wear the same kind of green flight suit that I started out in back in the summer of 1971 in Selma Alabama in Air Force Pilot Training. The circle is complete. Happy Landings! Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Final Argosy Series Final Argosy Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court Final Argosy Part Three - Viva Tango! Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos Final Argosy - Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy - Fini Flight
  2. Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy 2 By Tony Vallillo (30 June 2009) And so begins the final month of my airline pilot career, as I now know it to be! At the time there was still a possibility that the financial markets might recover sufficiently by the last day of March 2008 to enable me to fly longer. As I hinted in the prelude to this series, my early retirement was entirely a financial decision. Our pension plan, the last one intact among the so-called legacy airlines, was very much stock market influenced, and by taking early retirement we (there were over 500 of us that retired early at AA last year) were able to cash out, so to speak, at a fairly good value. To say nothing of enabling AA to avoid another round of painful furloughs! As March of 2008 came in like a lion, I was possessed of my last awarded bid line of flying. It was my first (and, since I was now number one in the bid status, my only!) choice for the month, and it featured four trips to the Eternal City, which of course was my favorite layover of them all! I had, however, long since decided that it would be proper to pay my friends in Paris a last visit; and so it was that I enticed two junior Captains into trading their mid-month Paris trips for the middle two of my Rome layovers. This was mutually beneficial, since neither of them had ever been able to hold the Rome schedule. I have had an affair with the City of Light for many years. My first Tango in Paris was in 1979 when, as a fairly new airline pilot, I made the pilgrimage to the Salon International de l'Aeronautique et de l'Espace, otherwise known simply as the Paris Air Show. Several more visits to the show followed, each a week-long affair that included considerable sightseeing around the major tourist venues, as well as several days at Le Bourget. Paris was thus the second European capital with which I became well acquainted, the first being Madrid from my Air Force days. My first actual trip to Paris as a crewmember came in July of 1980. American didn't fly to Paris in those days on a scheduled basis, but a small number of the Boeing 707 fleet (4 or 5) were kept in an all-coach charter configuration, and we did a brisk business with them. That summer we had apparently done a major deal with a tour consolidator that involved 100 round trips to the City of Light, all of which originated from JFK on the 707. There were so many of these trips that they actually made bid lines out of them! In those days I was a flight engineer check airman, engaged in instructing and supervising new flight engineers on the line. I could not, of course, come close to holding one of those bid lines, but I did manage to cadge a trip from crew schedule, one that apparently fell through the cracks and had not appeared on the bid sheet! In 1980 at American Airlines, "international" meant the Caribbean and a few trips into Mexico and Canada. No AA airplanes had flown any ocean other than the western Atlantic since the late 1960's and the South Pacific and Vietnam military charter operations. As it happened, many of the Captains on the 707 in New York did have that earlier oceanic experience, which was advantageous since no special training was provided for the Paris bound pilots! The trip I flew was piloted by two check Captains; and because I was a check FE we all anticipated an interesting flight, since the usual joke on the line about a crew composed entirely of instructors involved a monkey and a football! It was, in fact, true that I knew more about flying the NAT tracks than both of my Captains put together, having had 8 years of Military Airlift Command experience under my belt and a flight across the Atlantic the previous month in the Air Force Reserves. Between the three of us, we made it over and back in good order, and I also played tour guide to my compatriots, neither of whom had ever set foot in Paris. It was not until the latter part of 1984, in the beginning of the Great Expansion, that American started regular scheduled trips to Paris. Initially we served Orly airport, on the southwest side of town, and over the years we carved out a good business there. So good, in fact, that we were later moved (not exactly voluntarily) over to De Gaulle-- according to rumor at the behest of Air France who envied our solo tenancy on the ORY-JFK run! I myself never flew any of these trips, being in those days far too junior to entertain the notion of the Captaincy. In the normal course of events I might well have flown them as a copilot, but mine was not an entirely normal career! My tenure as a First Officer lasted only about 8 months, so rapid was the progression through the ranks in those heady days. For the majority of the time that I would otherwise have spent as a copilot I was busy in the office as the Manager Flying Technical for the New York base, a sort of Chief Flight Engineer, responsible for managing the probationary program. And in those days, at New York, the probationary program was a full time endeavor! Almost all of the several thousand new hire pilots in the years between 1984, when the hiring started, and 1986, when I returned to the line, were sent initially to New York. Each required check rides, review boards, and ongoing evaluations. The story of how I wound up in that job is a tale unto itself, and one that may be told someday! Suffice to say that I came to enjoy the work, and so ended up flying a desk when I might have been enjoying layovers in Paris in the 1980's! And when the Captaincy arrived, sooner than anyone expected, it was, of course, on the 727. So much for Paris! By the mid 1990's I had once again returned to the line after another hiatus in the office, this time as Chief Pilot at JFK. Never one to exert a major effort when a minor one will do just as well, I chose to remain flying the A-300, on which I had qualified while I was a chief. Although in theory I could, upon my return to the line, have chosen just about any airplane AA had at that time, certain truths were already becoming evident: the handwriting was on the wall for the DC-10's, to say nothing of the MD-11's; the 777 had not yet arrived, and would in any event be a poor choice seniority-wise when they did; and the 767... Well, there was always the 767. And the destinations it served were a rich smorgasbord of international delights. Paris, Zurich, Geneva, Lyon, Frankfurt, London, Copenhagen, Brussels, and a few other places that now escape the memory. But all was not sweetness and light in Boeing Land! Some of those trips involved tag-legs at the European end. Tag legs are an infernal device to serve additional destinations on the cheap - fly from New York to, say, Zurich, and then after refueling and offloading on to Geneva for the layover, repeating the process in reverse the next day. I already knew, from years of all-night Atlantic flying in the Air Force, that a tag-leg was an open invitation to every sort of trouble that sleep deprivation can bring about, and I determined to avoid that sort of flying altogether. I had become much too lazy flying the easy Caribbean schedules! There were other thorns as well, in the 767 bouquet. From the beginning it had been something of a "you-bet-your-license" school, which was a bit unusual at American. It was the first of the new generation of airliners, but it was taught more like the original 707 school - every nut and bolt. And things got really complicated when the 757 and the 767-300 came on line, because you now had to retain not one but three airplanes worth of knowledge. Now this may not seem like much of a challenge, but believe me the older you get the harder it is! Things got so bad that when a new man took over the school and trimmed the memory work in favor of more practical exercises he scored such a big plus that he ended up Vice President of Flight. And one of the better ones, at that! The Airbus, on the other hand, was one single airplane, with no variations among the 35 we had laying around at that time, so it was fairly simple to stick with what I knew well. And indeed, in those days, the A-300 had a few Europe trips on the bidsheet. We used it from New York and Boston to London, on at least a few of the daily trips, and especially from EWR. So Europe, after a fashion, was sitting out there waiting for me if I ever got around to wanting a reunion. This took several years, because I knew full well the rigors of all night flying. But it finally dawned upon me that, hey, I can get really well acquainted with at least one of the world's great Capitals at company expense! Why not indeed? So I started flying to London regularly, and I instantly became aware of a great truth: there is no similarity between an airline flight and an Air Force trip! In the Air Force we flew into bases that were, at best, only in proximity to major cities, and the layover was usually on the base in the transient quarters. These varied, to be sure, but on the whole the best of them approximated a Motel 6. The airline trip, on the other hand, went to the major city itself, and we were invariably billeted in one of the finest hotels in town, courtesy of the company-union hotel committee! We didn't need to take a bus or a train into town, we were there! And so it was that I became intimately familiar with London, including such delights as the "Jack the Ripper" walking tour of Whitechapel on a really foggy evening, Harrods, the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, and the other big churches such as St. Paul's and Westminster Cathedral. Now it so happens that if you spend more than a few minutes in any of the big churches in London you will be exposed to the music of the original heavy metal instrument - the pipe organ. The pipes, you see, are made of alloys composed chiefly of lead, and some of the larger instruments are capable of putting out as much sound as a rock band, albeit of a much more pleasant and musical nature! At this point I must digress a bit in order to make things clearer as the narrative progresses. As a youth I was much impressed by pipe organs, to the point of actually aspiring to a career as an organist. Sadly, in those days anyone wanting to learn to play the organ was taken firmly by the ears and thumped down onto a piano bench for a number of years to learn keyboard basics. This, I suppose, might be necessary; after all, I didn't climb right into a 767 when I entered pilot training! But the piano bench in question was that of the good nuns in the Catholic school I attended, and their methods of musical pedagogy differed little from the ruler-across-the-knuckles approach they favored for all instruction! (Make no mistake, I now think that this is far more effective than the current politically correct nonsense that passes for education in many places today, but that is another story, one not for this forum!) Suffice to say that no matter how hard I pressed the keys, the wrong sounds came out, and there were no cheap keyboards back then that made presentable organ noises, such as anyone can possess today. So it was that the world lost a potential organist and gained an airline pilot in his stead! But the love of the music never left me, and now the long-dormant flame was fueled by an almost unlimited exposure to some really great music in London. So much so that I began to study again the history of this instrument, a study that pointed inevitably to France, and a gentleman with the unwieldy name of Aristede Cavaille-Coll. Cavaille-Coll was, perhaps, the greatest organ builder of all time, the Donald Douglas of the pipe organ world in the mid-1800's, which was a particularly fertile time in the history of the instrument. He operated out of Paris, and ended up building or rebuilding the organs in just about every major church in town. At the same time, a new crop of French organists was blooming, men such as Cesar Franck, Charles-Marie Widor, and Louis Vierne who took these instruments of Cavaille-Coll, with their new sonorities, and created organ music that surpassed almost anything that had come before. The more I read of these instruments and this music, and the more I heard on recordings, the more interested I became in seeing and hearing them for myself! Now for a relatively senior pilot in the employ of an airline that flies to Paris, to wish is to do. So Paris lay within reach, although initially not from New York. The Airbus was being used for the Boston-Paris trip, and so I bid a transfer to the Boston crew base in 1998, in order to fly to the City of Light once again. On 3 July of that year, I commanded my first flight to Orly airport and began a musical argosy that endures to this day. (A year later, the BOS-ORY flight switched to a 767, and so it was that I found my roundabout way back to Mr. Boeing, to say nothing of the New York base!) The grand Organ of St. Sulpice. This monumental case was built in the mid 1700's by the architect Chalgrin. Pilots fly to particular places for different reasons. Some favor the food, others the culture, or perhaps the beaches or the bordellos - no two pilots are motivated by the same things! But I think I am safe in saying that there may never have been, in the history of the airline industry, another pilot motivated to bid trips by the love of organ music! I was already fully acquainted with the various other delights of Paris from my earlier pilgrimages to the air show, so it was not a matter of discovering the city; but rather the discovery of a particular jewel in the cultural crown, a jewel of which I had previously been unaware. If all the roads of the ancient world led to Rome, then all of the roads of the organ world lead to one particular church in Paris. No, not the one you are thinking of - Notre Dame - although that church has one of Cavaille-Coll's larger instruments. The organ purist heads instead for an even larger church on the left bank, one made famous in a recent novel (The DaVinci Code) - the Church of St. Sulpice. Perched high above the west end of the nave of this great and acoustically perfect pile of stone is one of Cavaille-Coll's masterpieces. It is perhaps the most perfect fusion of instrument and space in the entire organ world. When I first began frequenting St. Sulpice in the fall of 1998 it was off the tourist beaten path, as it had been for decades. After The DaVinci Code hit the bookshelves things changed; and today, although still not the major attraction that Notre Dame is, it sees tourists by the hundreds trooping through to gawk at the so-called Rose Line (actually, just an astronomical device set into the floor to determine the change of certain seasons) and the obelisk, both of which are plot elements in the book. You will not, of course, find the broken floor where the mad monk dug up the first clue, nor the abode of the nun who guarded it - these are purely fictional elements. But you will find at the west end of the nave, just adjacent to a side chapel featuring two frescoes by Delacroix, a small wooden door. This door opens to a medieval-looking set of circular stone stairs that lead to the organ loft high above - the cockpit from which the sound resources of nearly 10,000 pipes are commanded. The Captain of this musical ship is the Organiste Titulaire de St. Sulpice, a position equivalent in the organ world to that of Chuck Yeager, or perhaps Neal Armstrong. In other words, a True Possessor of the Right Stuff. So exalted is this post that in the 390 years that an organ has existed here there have been only 12 Organistes Titulaire! That represents an average tenure of over 30 years! Several have exceeded 50. Since 1985, the Titulaire is M. Daniel Roth, one of the finest organists in the world, and an outstanding advocate for the instrument and its music. Under his tenure a century-old tradition has been kept alive at St. Sulpice - the opening of the organ loft for the noon mass on Sundays. Anyone who wishes to climb the stairs may visit the loft and see the maestro play, to say nothing of meeting the man and enjoying his marvelous hospitality and enthusiasm. This ritual is well known in the organ world, and when I learned of it I immediately set my sights on Paris and the church of St. Sulpice. The obelisk, starting point of the "Rose Line". Although made out in the novel to be something sinister and mysterious, it is a simple strip of brass used in earlier times to observe the change of season. A very distinguished list indeed - the organistes titulaire of St. Sulpice The cockpit of a 150 year old musical instrument Over the next few years I frequented M. Roth's abode so often that I was granted the privilege of personal friendship with himself and his lovely wife, to say nothing of a wonderful group of people that form a sort of family around the organ. I was always welcome there, and I even got to "play" the organ a few times late at night, when no one was in the church. In that loft, over the course of many Sundays, I met men and women from all over the world, all devotees of the organ and many, surprisingly, also fascinated by flight. There were even several organist-pilots among the growing group of friends I was making there. I would bid my schedules based on such considerations as who might be visiting Paris on what day, or perhaps upon what musical selections M. Roth intended to play on a given Sunday. Arcane criteria, to be sure, but certainly as good as most other motivations to fly! And so it is that now, as my career winds down to a close, I pay my respects to my good friends in Paris. For many years we have had two trips a day from JFK to Paris. Flight 44 leaves around 18:00, give or take a few minutes as the schedules change. This was the original JFK-Paris flight and has been operated continuously since the late 1980's. By the late 1990's we had picked up a second flight, flight 120, which left several hours later, around 21:45 or so. This flight had a longer layover in Paris, since the return trip, flight 121, did not leave until nearly 18:00 Paris time. This left the entire day free for sleeping, in the not unusual event that sleep might be hard to come by the night before. Since that was often the case for me, the more so as I aged, flight 120 became my preferred choice of Paris trips. And it is my final trip to Paris tonight. The airplane waits patiently to take us to Paris Operationally a flight to Paris is pretty much the same as any European flight. The elements of flight planning are identical, save only for the weather and notams at destination. Tonight the forecasts are good at both ends. At JFK the winds favor the 13's, as they often do. In Paris the expectation is for a high overcast and good visibility with winds from the west. The routing, chosen as always for favorable winds enroute, is typical: HAPIE3 HAPIE YAHOO DOVEY NATX BEDRA NATX GUNSO UN487 RATKA UN502 JSY UY111 INGOR UM25DVL (I did not retain the flight plan for this trip, and so I cannot provide you with the coordinates of NAT Xray that night, but if you draw a line from DOVEY to BEDRA and "rubber band" it so that it crosses the closest whole number latitude at each 10 degrees of longitude, you will be "close enough for government work", as they say in the Air Force!!) Once again I go over the flight plan in all of its detail. Planning, you see, is not only the hallmark of the professional, but the best possible preparation for even the most routine of flights. Considering the number of trips I have made to Paris in the last ten years, this flight certainly qualifies as routine. But we still look over every scrap of available information. As I do so I cannot help but think back to another flight to Paris, a flight that represented perhaps the epitome of careful planning - the flight of Charles Lindberg in the Spirit of St. Louis. The story of Lindberg's flight is well known, told best in his own words and recreated superbly in the James Stewart film "Spirit of St. Louis". To most laymen Lindberg's flight represented a triumph of human will and endurance, and it certainly was. As for the quickly bestowed nickname Lucky Lindy (perhaps a welcome change from the very briefly used Flying Fool, which was bandied about in some press accounts before the flight!), well there certainly was at least a bit of good luck involved. But the real accomplishment of Lindberg, in my mind, has always been the meticulous way in which he planned and prepared for the flight, calculating every aspect and eventuality and measuring every risk he took against possible mitigating strategies. He was, at least before the flight, widely thought to have taken leave of his senses for choosing a single engine airplane. Yet Lindberg's hands-on knowledge of the state of the art of engine design at the time, as well as his research, had given him confidence that the new engines could in fact run for the 35 hours or so that he calculated it would take to reach Paris. He further calculated that the weight of a second engine, together with the weight of the fuel it would consume, would actually increase the risk of the flight out of all proportion to any benefit it might bring. He was also castigated for attempting the flight solo, since the rules of the Orteig prize competition did not require a solo flight. But again his careful calculations showed him that a copilot's weight in fuel would be worth much more than the man himself, and as a seasoned airmail pilot (Lindberg would have been number ONE on the original American Airlines seniority list had he returned to Robertson Airlines after the Paris flight!) he knew full well the capabilities of the human body in terms of staying awake. He was also confident, again from experience flying the mail, that dead reckoning navigation could be accurate enough to allow him to complete the flight successfully, thus freeing him from the need to carry a navigator and the associated equipment. As I check the route in the FMC, after arriving at the airplane, I ponder the fact that we too have freed ourselves from the need for a human navigator, although the equipment that replaced him no doubt exceeds the weight of all but the most corpulent practitioners of that ancient profession! Whereas Lindberg tediously plotted his course and calculated his headings and distances against what little was known about the winds and weather of the North Atlantic, the computers, both on the ground and in the airplane, have done all of this for us with accuracy that is little short of miraculous. I do check over, at least casually, the fixes, courses and times on the flight plan. (Indeed, on two or three occasions out of many thousands of flights I have discovered small discrepancies in the plan, usually the presence of a seemingly spurious waypoint or the absence of one that would be expected. But nothing, ever, that would actually compromise the flight in any material way.) And we will, as part of the NAT track discipline, check each leg's course and distance prior to passing each waypoint passage on the oceanic portion of the flight, to ensure that we are in fact following the cleared track. But these are merely cross checks, important though they are. It has been literally decades since I have had to actually do the calculations for a flight plan like this. Modern student pilots learn using electronic calculators or computers, and may well have never spun a whiz wheel in their aeronautical lives! Such is progress! The pre-departure ritual for this Paris flight is the same as for any Atlantic crossing, and soon enough we are on our way to the runway. Tonight the delays are not excessive, which is something of a surprise considering how bad the situation had become a few months ago. It is the F/O's leg, so that the last flight out of Paris will be mine. Clearance received, he throttles up and calls for autothrottle and we are off to the races once again. This departure is from runway 13R, the long runway, and involves only a simple turn to a heading of 150 degrees after becoming airborne. This done, tower sends us over to departure control, and we check in. In due course, a slight turn to the left points us directly to HAPIE, from whence we proceed to YAHOO, just a bit south and east of Nantucket Island. From the point where we crossed Rockaway Beach just after takeoff we are feet wet. Moonrise over who-knows-where! Our course will keep us over water for most of the flight, passing to the south of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. This gets us lined up for the NAT track we will fly tonight. There are a number of available routes from JFK to the northeast Canadian coast-out points, and this one is one of the most southerly. Lindberg chose a true great circle route all the way from Roosevelt Field to Paris. His course took him over Long Island sound, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Cape Cod before going feet wet for a while on the way to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. He coasted out once and for all over St John's Newfoundland, site of a modern day VOR called Torbay. (Torbay is still used as a coast out point from time to time, depending upon the lay of the NAT routes, and I have occasionally looked down upon it and contemplated the flight of the Spirit of St. Louis.) We could, of course, set a direct great circle course ourselves - the FMC operates entirely upon great circle navigation. All we would have to do, to more or less imitate Lindberg's routing, would be to enter direct LFPG into the FMC while we were on the ground at JFK. If we wanted to be exact about it, we could enter as our first waypoint after JFK the coordinates for Roosevelt Shopping Center, which now occupies the ground that was once the airport from which Lindberg departed. The next waypoint would be Le Bourget, since that was his destination. (LFPG, Paris De Gaulle airport, did not exist then!) It is, of course, impossible to actually fly this route in the real world, because the NAT tracks and the North American Routes don't line up that way. There may have been, of course, at least one night when the eastbound NAT routes might have included a track that was very close to the overwater portion of Lindberg's flight. But I have never knowingly flown a track like that. Lindberg initially plotted his course on a special chart that allowed a great circle route to approximate a straight line, as it would on a globe. He then took the coordinates of this track and transferred them to a regular chart, using intervals of 100 miles as course change points. He figured that he would be making good a ground speed of around 100 mph, and hourly checks seemed like an efficient way to track the progress of the flight. In his book "The Spirit of St. Louis" he explains that it seemed too simple to lay out a course that way; and so, concerned about the accuracy of the method, he painstakingly calculated a true great circle course by mathematical means, a process which took several days to compute just the first half of the flight. Fortunately, the numbers precisely matched his plotted course, so he quit at that point! In the days before computers that must have been more trouble than it seemed worth. We are travelling at a clip six times Lindberg's speed, and we use 10 degrees of longitude as our intervals for crosschecks and position reports. After passing abeam of St. John's we say goodbye to Gander Center at 50 degrees west and switch the radios over to 123.45 and 121.5. 123.45 is the air-to-air frequency, and it often offers entertainment as we eavesdrop upon conversations between other airliners and the occasional bizjet or military aircraft. The chatter varies depending on the goings-on in the world of aviation. There is often talk of contracts, especially when one is being negotiated somewhere. To escape from some of this prattle, I change one of the radios over to a frequency that I know to be used by a large oil platform in the area, near the edge of the Grand Banks. A call brings forth an immediate reply from the rig, and we spend a few minutes chatting about the sea conditions and life on a rig in general. I discover that the thing is built to allow the largest known North Atlantic waves to pass below the superstructure, which means that there must be at least 100 feet of clearance between it and the surface of the sea, and likely a good bit more! Helicopters are the usual means of transit between the rig and the shore, and I don't envy those pilots their work. Although things are idyllic tonight, weather wise, it can get pretty rough down there. Shortly after we contact them, we can see the flare from the rig, lighting up the ocean for miles around. Ships passing in the night Knowledge of the sea state and winds is, today, pretty much superfluous to our needs. But it was not always so. In the old days, during and immediately after WWII, long overwater flights were issued plans that included recommended ditching headings every few hundred miles. These were, of course, based upon sparse data and questionable forecasts, yet it was the best information known and it was carefully considered. Ditching a land plane has always been an emergency procedure of last resort, and continues to be so today. Of course we now have the outstanding performance of Sullenberger and Skiles to ponder, a performance all the more remarkable since so few jet aircraft have ever been ditched at all, let alone so successfully. But in the days of propeller driven aircraft, ditchings were nowhere near as rare. Few people today recall the name of Captain Richard Ogg. On October 16, 1956, he was in command of Pan American flight 943 from Honolulu to San Francisco, a Boeing 377 Stratocruiser. The Stratocruiser was to the immediate post-war era what the 747 has been to the modern era - the largest and most luxurious airliner of its time. It was, however, a mechanical Pandora's Box, and a number of them were lost at sea or over the jungle, mostly because of problems with the engines and propellers. Flight 943 lost two of its four engines just about at the so-called "point of no return", midway between Honolulu and San Francisco. There was insufficient fuel to reach land in this configuration, so Ogg was faced with the need to ditch. Fortunately there was a Coast Guard cutter in the area, stationed along the route to serve as a radio communications relay and a search and rescue platform if needed. Ogg circled the cutter until dawn, at which time he executed the most successful ditching ever accomplished at that time. All 31 people on board were rescued by the cutter Ponchartrain, but the aircraft had split in two after touching down in the water and it sank within 20 minutes. Ogg's water landing was in the middle of the ocean, of course, and although the seas were fairly calm they were not completely smooth despite the lane of foam that the cutter had laid down in preparation for the landing. Water landings are always tricky, since the "runway" is moving in many directions at once and touchdown must needs be made in a perfectly symmetrical attitude. (Symmetrical with the surface of the water, that is, whatever the state of the surface may be.) The first bit of airplane structure that touches the water will exert enormous drag forces on the ship, forces far more powerful than any remaining aerodynamic force that may be available to the pilot to control the plane. Thus it is that the prevailing wisdom on ditching has always been to land parallel to the swells if the swells are significant and into the wind only if the sea is calm or the wind is really strong, on the order of 50 knots or more. The wings should be perfectly parallel to the surface, which might require a bank angle relative to the horizon if the swells are more than a few feet high, which they often are in mid ocean even in the best of weather, as any cruise ship passenger can confirm! Captain Ogg's ditching was not, of course, the only one in a recip airliner, merely the most successful. In the jet age, on the other hand, ditching is almost unheard of. Jet engines are far more reliable than the complex recip engines of the 1940's and 1950's, and multiple failures for reasons other than fuel starvation are practically unknown. So my conversation with the oil rig about the condition of the sea is more a matter of idle curiosity than important information. In any event, unless something catastrophic were to happen very soon, we will be completely out of the area in a matter of minutes and the sea may well present a totally different aspect farther on down the road. The FO takes a picture of the moon Soon 40 West slides by, and with it a position report transmitted by yours truly. Handling the radio communications is typically the chore of the pilot not flying, especially the HF communications. It is a poor Captain indeed who would stiff the copilot by opting out of the joys of HF position reporting! There have been rumors of such Captains, but I certainly don't have the chutzpah to carry off a Captain Bligh act like that! And in a matter of weeks it will all be a memory, so I may as well immerse myself in the totality of the flying experience, HF and all! Actually, the reporting is much easier these days, since a great percentage of the airline fleet is now equipped with some sort of datalink capability that renders voice radio reports unnecessary on the Atlantic. Automatic Dependent Surveillance is a system that uses satellite communications to transmit aircraft position information to ATC automatically. It can be set to send this data fairly often, on the order of once a minute or even more frequently. It is already in use on the Atlantic by a growing number of airplanes, including just about all of the newer Boeings and Airbuses. Even a few of our 767's have a poor man's version of it, operating through the newer FMC's. Sometimes I wind up flying one of these birds, and the only voice report we need make over the pond is at the 30 West changeover point from Gander to Shanwick. Tonight, though, we have the older FMC and I am making all of the reports by voice. At least the frequency is not as congested as it used to be. With hundreds of flights airborne across the pond at the same time, and often the same frequency in use by both Gander and Shanwick, it might have taken 15 minutes to get a word in edgewise back in the day. All of that is behind us now, and those few of us who still use voice HF pretty much have the frequency to ourselves. Dawn breaks, somewhere east of 30W Time to start adjusting the sun shades! Since this is the late flight, the dawn greets us much sooner than it does on the early trip. On flight 44, at this time of year, we might not see the dawn until we are on vectors at CDG. In December we wouldn't see daylight until we got to the hotel! But on flight 120 this morning the sun greets us around 20 West, and we will get to see something of the land beneath us, once we go feet dry over the Normandy coast. As we pass just south of Ireland I think again of Lindberg and his epic flight, for it took him 29 1/2 hours to reach Dingle Bay. Only once have I had a duty day that long - during Desert Storm in a C-5 on a round trip between Europe and the Gulf. And on that occasion we had three pilots and took plenty of breaks. Lindy took no breaks, save for a few instances of involuntary dozing off. It was here that luck was truly with him, since he always woke up before the unstable airplane got out of control. The Spirit of St. Louis was at best only marginally stable, and had to be flown every minute. No autopilot or autothrottle for the Lone Eagle. And although he could certainly afford to be casual about his altitude, there being no other airplane in the sky between the U.S. and at least Ireland, he most certainly could not afford to be so casual about his heading. Triple 7, probaably bound for LHR The southwest Irish Coast The nav display shows us passing just south of Ireland Lindberg himself thought that an accuracy of 50 miles laterally at the Irish coast would be acceptable navigation, but he tried hard to keep the Spirit on the calculated headings. This was not always easy, since he had to deviate around storms at one point, and during the times that the sea surface was not visible he had no way of knowing how the wind was affecting his course. As it happened, it all averaged out, for he coasted in within 5 miles of his calculated track, which is a remarkable feat for almost 1700nm of dead reckoning! In the days of navigators on the C-141's, I considered 5 miles to be darn good. Even the early INS units could easily drift that much on a leg that long. On some routings you get to see the White Cliffs of Dover On other routings the great port of Le Havre is close by to the north Rouen seen on the early trip, at 0'dark thirty Rouen as we see it today on the later trip These days, of course, we are usually within a few feet of our desired location and this morning is no different. As we approach the island of Jersey we see it ahead and below, a striking visual confirmation of the quality of our automatic navigation. And soon thereafter, the west coast of Normandy greets us. From here we will follow the Seine river much of the way, passing close by the ancient city of Rouen, which we get a good view of along the way. I had always intended to visit this town, with its ancient cathedral, but it looks like that will have to wait for a vacation. There will be no time for side trips today. Just about every flight I have ever flown into Paris has used an arrival that transits a waypoint called MERUE, about 30 miles northwest of De Gaulle. This morning is no exception. From MERUE the arrival takes us to the Creil VOR (CRL) if landing to the west, and down south toward the Pontoise (PON) VOR if landing to the east. This morning the arrival is to the east, and we have loaded and briefed the ILS 08R, the approach to the outside runway. As we pass MERUE and turn south I remember a trip some years ago, a flight on which I took the last break. Normally, the pilot taking the last break is awakened around 30 minutes prior to landing, the better to clear the cobwebs out of the brain before handling complex fast moving machinery in close proximity to the ground! On the day in question, however, I returned to the flight deck to find the airplane passing MERUE, which can be as little as 10 minutes from touchdown in conditions of light air traffic!! Fortunately for all concerned I was already quite familiar with Paris and its procedures and environs, so I was able to spin up in less than a minute and assume command. I did, however, "counsel" the copilots about the virtues of a timely wake-up call! The expression "Wake me when the gear goes down", I assured them, was meant only in jest! Different day - just landed on 26L, waiting to cross 26R The early Paris flight (45) approaches terminal 2 as dawn breaks over CDG The French controllers are among the best in the world, and we are smoothly spliced into the flow of traffic approaching 08R. In due course the FO calls for the gear and final flaps, and we slide down the glideslope just north of Lindberg's landing place, Le Bourget. He arrived at night, of course, and initially had trouble finding the field - it turned out to be the only dark part of Paris. When he touched down he was actually surprised, nay shocked, that hundreds of thousands of people were joyously celebrating his arrival. At that point he had no idea of the impact his flight was having on the world psyche. He would soon realize just what the impact would be on himself; and although he would have little privacy in many of the years to come, he would bear the burden well. He became perhaps the greatest advocate aviation ever had, and spent much of the rest of his life advancing the state of the art in aviation. We too are eagerly welcomed, if not by hundreds of thousands at least by a few hundred loved ones, associates, and at least a few limo drivers, who patiently await the arrival of our charges as they stream out of the customs area after we arrive at the gate. We of the crew have a different protocol, and are met in due course by the bus that will take us into town. Formalities completed, we are whisked along the autoroute towards Paris, which is lightly travelled since it is nearly noon on a Saturday. Although this ride can take over an hour in the early morning rush (which is the time the crew from the earlier trip is being taken to the hotel), our transit time today is under 30 minutes. Just over an hour after landing, I am between the sheets! The street outside our hotel in the 14th district The Paris Metro, one of the best subways in the world~ In the heart of the Rive Gauche There is always music somewhere in Paris! A bit of cross-cultural pollution, which now appears all over the world, sad to say I take a brief break for an afternoon snack -- the view from a Parisien sidewalk cafe on the Boulevard St Germaine I allow myself only a short nap, because Paris is one of the world's great walking towns! Since this is my last tango in this wonderful city, I intend to spend it wandering around seeing once again the sights that have delighted so many so often. Our hotel is located in the 14th arrondisement (district), which is in the southwestern part of Paris, and is close to an hour's walk to the center of town, at least at the leisurely pace I set these days! So I take advantage of what may well be the world's greatest subway system, known over here as Le Metro. The closest station is but a short stroll from the hotel, and soon I am whisked smoothly (this line rides on rubber tires instead of steel wheels) to the Boulevard St Michel. Here, at the intersection of St. Michel and St. Germaine, we are in the heart of the Rive Gauche, the left bank, otherwise known as the Latin Quarter. I wander again through the crooked streets past eateries of every conceivable variety (but not all of good quality - I had the worst chicken curry I have ever had in my life here!) and make my way through the sights and smells to the banks of the Seine. There, rising above the Isle de la Cite, are the twin towers of one of the world's architectural and religious masterpieces, Notre Dame. La Notre Dame towers over the Isle de la Cite The delightful plaza in front of Notre Dame The great Western Facade of Notre Dame. The tower to the left would have been home to Quasimodo One of the great Rose Windows of the transept Although at this hour on Saturday there is no organ music, I pay a visit to the great church to see once again the wonderful stained glass and the incredible stonework. It is hard to believe that all of this was built using only simple tools and instruments. It is even harder to imagine what it would cost to build it today! The church is crowded with tourists, as is always the case, and it takes a while to circumambulate the interior, the better to admire the great Rose Windows that crown the transepts. These and the other stained glass windows were prudently removed and safely stored during WWII to avoid potential damage. They were restored to their places at the end of the war. Bocce Ball is an ever popular passtime, especially among men of my own vintage! The Rick Steves Paris video was, for a time, one of the selections on board AA in business class! Here, shown on the airplane DVD, you can see the author peeking over the top of the console as M. Roth plays! The Rue Cler I take the long way back toward the hotel, so as to stroll along another wonderful Parisian street - the Rue Cler. I first discovered Rue Cler through a Rick Steves travel video (a video in which I unwittingly play a bit part - a portion of it was filmed in the organ loft at St. Sulpice one Sunday when I was there!). Rue Cler is a market street, with more groceries and bakeries than you can count, alive with sights and smells to stimulate the palate and whet the appetite. It is all I can do to wait until I get back to the 14th district again before I sit down to dinner! For me, French cuisine is a mixed blessing. I cannot get enough of crepes, omelets and the like, but the French have a habit of devouring animals that, for me, represent something other than food! I do not, for example, eat duck (a target), or horse (transportation) or ostrich (something to see in a zoo)! Strangely, I do eat escargot, so I guess there is no accounting for taste! Fortunately, the omelet is one of the great contributions of France to the cuisine of the world, and I have eaten hundreds of them in Paris, all of them outstanding! Tonight is no exception. Throw in some pommes frites and a liter of eau minerale and life is good! The organ loft at St Sulpice, with the maestro at the controls Although the crew pickup for the return flight is not until around 4pm, I am up and at 'em by nine. Today happens to be Easter Sunday, and I have arranged my last visit to the organ loft at St. Sulpice especially for this occasion. In the late 1800's, the heyday of this part of Paris and of the musical life of St. Sulpice, the great church would have been packed to the rafters on Easter, filled with the higher socio-economic strata of Parisian society all decked out to the nines, and moved to exultation by the music of the great organist Widor, backed up by a choir of several hundred voices. These days the crowd is much smaller, although still enthusiastic, and the choir is only several dozen voices in compass. However, the organ is still the same majestic instrument, and the organist, M. Roth, is fully the equal of Widor or any of his other illustrious predecessors on the bench. True to my expectations, the day is a musical and spiritual delight, and a fitting coda, at least for now, to my Parisian organ odyssey. The High Altar of the great church of St Sulpice Medieval Stair Master! Three men, and two more on another unit one floor above, were needed to pump the bellows (before electric blowers took over in the 1930's) to provide air to the 10,000 pipes, all of which could be playing at the same time if the music demanded it! After the service I bid Monsieur & Madame Roth a fond farewell (we had a retirement dinner party on the previous trip last week, with the entire St. Sulpice "family"), and turn my steps for the last time toward the hotel and pickup. As I check out, I thank the staff for the many enjoyable visits I have experienced since we started using this hotel. This has truly been one of the best aspects of working for an airline like American - the hotels we used for layovers, at least in the international division, were for the most part top notch. Nothing makes a long-haul flight more difficult than lack of proper rest, and although it may sound self serving, a good hotel is more conducive to rest than a flop-house! At 4pm on Sunday afternoon the traffic is again light, and we arrive at the airport in plenty of time to start planning the return trip. Rather than simply await the paperwork at the airplane, I make the trek to operations, the better to say my goodbyes to the ground staff, a wonderful group of men and women who have taken very good care of us over the years. I have always enjoyed the interaction with the operations and passenger service staffs, especially at the overseas locations, since they are usually native to the country in question and have always been a font of information and folklore! My last au revoirs said, I turn to the flight plan. Departures from Paris can follow several routes, depending, as always, on the lay of the NAT tracks. The usual departure is out over the Normandy peninsula, via either the Evreux or L'Aigle departures. If the NAT tracks commence off the Scottish coast we depart via the ATREX, NURMO or OPALE, which route us across the channel and up north over England, often close enough to London to enjoy a good view of the city. Tonight, we are headed for Evreux, since the course lies across the middle of the NAT area. This flight plan, again not ours since I did not keep the paperwork from this trip, is typical and represents a likely routing for a Paris-JFK trip: EVX UT300 SENLO UN502 JSY UN160 INSUN UM142 DOLIP UN523 LIMRI 5300N 02000W 5400N 03000W 5500N 04000W 5400N 05000W CARPE REDBY N202B TOPPS ENE ENE4 Notice that this flight plan does not contain a NAT track -- every waypoint is listed instead. This is because flight 121 operates outside of the time frame of the westbound tracks. The NAT tracks are a one-way system, and the bulk of the westbound traffic is already in the chocks in North America when we take off from Paris. In fact, by the time we will arrive over the Canadian coast, we will already be going head to head with the lead elements of the nightly eastbound rush. The east tracks, as always, are laid out with the winds in mind, and take maximum advantage of such tailwinds as may exist. To us, those winds are headwinds, and we obviously avoid them as much as we can, so there is no real worry about actually butting heads with an eastbound flight - they will be far to the north or south, depending upon the lay of the winds. Lined up and waiting for takeoff. The Airbus is using the full length, but we can make do with a bit less. CDG as we pass over it upon completing the departure turn -- already above 10,000 feet, such is the performance of the 767-300! Today the winds in Paris favor an east departure, and we plan our takeoff from runway 09R. This is a long taxi, and a hilly one as well. De Gaulle airport has some considerable grades on a number of its taxiways, although fortunately the runways are fairly level. From our gates on the south side of terminal two we have to negotiate what the English would call a roundabout, a sort of traffic circle of taxiways, and then head up taxiway November to the north side of the field. The north side is around 50 feet higher in elevation than the south side, so November has a bit of a grade, which requires some power to climb. Once on the north side we join the short line for takeoff on 09R. When CDG was opened, in 1974, this was the one and only runway, complete with the Turbo-Clair fog removal system. Now it is one of four, and Turbo-Clair is long gone, replaced by CATIIIB operations which preclude the necessity for dissipating fog. Nothing remains of it these days but the concrete bunkers on the side of the runway, bunkers that once each held an underground jet engine that blew its hot exhaust across the toughdown zone of 09R. Another thing that has remained since the beginning, and no doubt from long before that, is the population of large hares, which we sometimes call jackalopes due to their size and gait. These creatures inhabit sizeable burrows around the non-paved areas of the airport (I can only hope they eschew the runway areas!) and are often to be seen loping about. I have even seen a red fox on a taxiway here, although it was unclear whether it was also a denizen of the airport, or merely a vulpine agent of the French animal control bureau! Often the departure takes us right over the city itself, as on this day One of the many chateaux in the countryside. This was taken not from a 767 (I hope that is obvious!) but from the light plane of a French attorney, a friend of mine from our local airport in Connecticut After having run the gamut of fox and hare, we are cleared for takeoff. The Evreux departure from 09R requires a climb straight ahead on the CGN 086 radial for about 6 miles until passing the RSY NDB, which is also annotated as RNAV waypoint PG092. From that point we start a sweeping left turn to pass over the airport and fly out the 272 radial of the CGN VOR.. As we climb straight ahead initially, I bid the tower controllers farewell and a sincere Merci for many years of safe flying. Shortly thereafter it is time to turn. These departures were, at the time of this flight, flown on what we call raw data (the actual VOR radial) until the so-called RNAV waypoint, around 8-10 miles from the airport. Prior to this waypoint, PG092 on this procedure, the navigation is up to me and the pink line is only for reference - we have to have the Nav display set to show the VOR radial. This is old hat for me, and we trace a perfect line on the controller's scope. It is fascinating to consider that someday, perhaps fairly soon, this type of navigating may well be as obsolete as a four-course radio range is today! I think I'll save some of these charts! (Note: I did. My kitbag sits in my office essentially untouched since I put it down after my fini flight! Just call me sentimental!) As we reach cruise altitude, we pass just to the south of the storied beaches of Normandy, places like Omaha, Utah, Sword, Gold and Juno. In all my years of Paris layovers I have never made the pilgrimage out here, although I did take a tour to Mont St. Michel on a two-day layover some years back. Some day in my retirement I will return to France and spend a month or so seeing the rest of the country, and when I do, Normandy will be high on the list of places to go. We are chasing the sun, which is a delightful perk on a westbound flight at dusk. The only downside is the ongoing need to reposition the sun shade every time we turn! Flight 121 varies considerably through the seasons - in summer it is entirely a daylight flight, arriving at JFK well before dark. In the dead of winter it is a night flight all the way, from taxi-out to taxi-in. Now, but a day removed from the vernal equinox, we will probably not see the sun set completely until we approach Long Island! This is one of the parts I will miss. The Atlantic looking remarkably pacific today! In late March it is still winter up here in Newfoundland, and there is plenty of ice on the sea. One minor difference on a so-called "random routing" (a flight planned on a course not aligned with one of the NAT tracks) is that we must append a MET report to each position report. This is a report of the wind, turbulence (if any) and temperature at each reporting point and at the midpoints in between. Collecting data for this report takes all of about 30 seconds, but we occasionally grouse about it anyway! At one time, of course, such reports were a part of every position report over the oceans, since the airplanes aloft were the only source of information. Nowadays, the ADS-B equipped airplanes are sending this information almost every minute, and the requirement may go by the wayside soon. Not soon enough for me, however, since I will retire before the reporting requirements will! The coastline itself, surrounded by ice on all sides! Halifax, Nova Scotia The remainder of the flight is routine, so much so that I am lulled into the normal routine and the fact that this is my last flight out of Paris doesn't really sink in. I wonder if it will be this way on the real fini flight! It is perhaps symbolic then, that as we approach Boston we are treated to one of the most magnificent sunsets I have ever seen. Now it dawns on me (no pun intended!) that this is the beginning of the final week of my airline career, the sunset of an era for me. Still, the thought is more pleasing than distressing, and for this I am grateful. Perhaps I will fare better, when I set the kitbag down for good, than some pilots I have known. These poor souls never got over the change in their lives that retirement wrought, and always reminded me of sailors at the dock, forever looking longingly out to sea. The sun finally sets, after we have chased it all the way across the Atlantic! Long Island Sound Mid Long Island, as we approach 10,000 feet in the descent, a few minutes from landing The sun sets as we cross Long Island sound, and I hear once again in my earpiece the dulcet tones of deepest Flatbush clearing us to descend. Back home again, no doubt about it! The landing on 31R is quite satisfying, as much so as I hope the last one will be. As I park the jet, I think ahead...my last week beckons, and my last two trips. But I am very much looking forward to the next one, for it will also be a first - my first trip on the Mercury! So join me in operations, the day after tomorrow! Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Final Argosy Series Final Argosy Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court Final Argosy Part Three - Viva Tango! Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos Final Argosy - Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy - Fini Flight
  3. Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos By Tony Vallillo (9 April 2009) A nap and a late wake-up are as good a preparation for an all-nighter as can be had. Thus, when the phone rings at 6pm I am inclined to answer the call, rather than go AWOL in the interest of a few more hours of sleep! Up and at 'em, as the saying goes! And so, for the final time in these southern latitudes, I gird myself for the task at hand - a farewell to the skies of South America. In reality, a week has passed since the Montevideo trip I described for you in the last installment. The flight I am now preparing for is the second leg of the short layover version of the BA trip, one of which cropped up at the end of my monthly schedule, the better to put the final significant figures on the monthly paycheck, or rather, as is now the case, on the monthly direct deposit! Perhaps it is fitting that my very last South America trip is the same as my first - just down and back! As we gather for pickup, the daily pour-out is once again in full swing in the crew room, and we can avail ourselves of the opportunity for some cheese and crackers (wine, of course, is off the menu tonight!!) and a reunion with yet another group of our friends and fellow crewmembers. After sharing a few pleasantries, and confirming for a few hopeful copilots and less senior captains that yes, this probably will be my last BA trip (thereby making their day, as Clint Eastwood might have put it!) I board the bus and we are whisked away through the early evening's pink glow to the airport, some 45 minutes away. We arrive at Ezieza at the busiest time of the day. The terminal is overflowing with passengers all of whom will depart between now and midnight on flights that are headed north. The cabin crew heads directly to the gates, but the F/O's and I have to pick our way carefully through the crowd to get behind the ticket counters and into the operations office. This small complex of offices serves not only as flight ops but also as the back office for the entire ticket counter operation. Once again it is manned, in this busiest of times, exclusively by young men and women. I am the only greybeard in sight as I take off the jacket-of-lights and prepare to examine the voluminous documentation for flight 956, the flip-side of the flight that brought us down yesterday. A section of the flight plan, with the terrain enroute alternate section highlighted. The No-Fly area on the Jepp chart. Weather satellite image for the evening, with the route overlaid in yellow. Right away I am pleased. The dispatcher has chosen a different route than the usual one, which more or less reverses the route we took on the way down here. Tonight he has chosen instead a route that takes us up just east of the Andes, crossing the mountains in Columbia and going feet-wet near Barranquilla, an old colonial town in the heart of the Spanish Main. From Barranquilla we will head almost straight north over Jamaica, Cuba and Nassau, joining the Atlantic Routes (AR routes) as if this were a flight from MIA to JFK. This is different enough from the norm, at least south of Jamaica, to be worth looking forward to! You may wonder why such a small thing as a different route adds interest to a flight, at least for me. Well, after flying the same routes many times over the years, it is always good to have a change of scenery, even if you can't see what lies below, as will be the case this evening. The mind is challenged with the occasional new consideration, such as the terrain awareness issues we will bear in mind tonight, and even the communications with different ATC facilities makes for a wee spark of interest! Not that flying can ever be truly boring you understand; but it can acquire a sameness that, at an extreme, can have a soporific effect on certain mental processes best kept sharp. So I am indeed pleased to find that my last traverse of these skies will be via the route less traveled. As is usually the case for a flight of this duration, the plan is lengthy and will probably choke the FMC as we try to load it! The route is as follows: BIVA 2 A BIVAM, UW8 ERE, UL417 UMZ, UB503 ENAMO, B503 ZQA, BARTS, AR3 OLDEY, DIW, WETRO, CEBEE, SWL, J121 SIE, CAMRN 4 JFK Because we will actually cross some significant mountains on this flight, terrain clearance becomes an issue both in terms of planning, and in terms of the actual operation of the trip. There is an additional notation on this flight plan, about halfway down the list of waypoints, called "Enroute Alternate Information". No, we won't be over long stretches of water on this flight, and ETOPS will not be a consideration. But some of the terrain we are proposing to fly over exceeds the single engine ceiling of the airplane at the estimated weights that would prevail at that moment in the flight. If we were to suffer an engine failure over terrain like that we would be faced with an immediate need to maneuver toward lower ground. Such potential events are worth pre-planning for, and so it is that the flight planning system has calculated a decision point for us - a point at which we would be more or less equidistant from lower terrain in either the direction we are headed or the direction from which we came. Awaiting the last pushback from Buenos Aires. The terminal in twilight, shortly after the last salute. Over the years this part of the planning system has undergone a few changes, as refinements have been incorporated. Originally there was no special plan included with the flight plan, and terrain avoidance was simply the responsibility of the Captain. While this is still true, it became clear over time that certain tools could make the decision process more effective. Decision points began to appear on flight plans about a decade ago, and on some flights that spent considerable time over high terrain there appeared more than one such point, occasionally three or four. Between each pair of decision points there was an enroute alternate selected, the direct route to which was determined to be within single engine glide distance of suitably lower terrain. In other words, if you lost an engine at any moment between a pair of decision points, you were assured of terrain clearance provided you turned immediately to a direct course to the applicable enroute alternate and flew the single engine drift-down speed profile. (This is a different, and much slower, speed than we would use after an engine failure on the ETOPS flights, where time to alternate is the important consideration, not altitude. The non-ETOPS drift down speed is very close to VRef plus 100 knots, and would be somewhere around 250 knots for most of our flight tonight.) At this point it may be worth revisiting an important performance consideration. Any multi-engine airplane will have an engine-out performance ceiling which is a function of weight and the air temperature that exists at altitude. The higher the weight, and/or the higher the temperature, the lower the altitude that can be maintained with one engine inoperative. In the 767, the difference between the normal cruise altitude and the engine out maximum altitude can be considerable - often over 10,000 feet, and the terrain in areas like the Andes can easily reach higher than the altitude the airplane can maintain on one engine! Fortunately, the Andes are, in most places, a relatively narrow mountain chain and can be traversed within the span of distance that would encompass a single engine descent to the maximum single engine altitude. This drift-down distance can be 100 miles or more, and we can use this period of time to turn toward the lowest terrain. The flight plan locates the critical points for us and shows the path of least terrain resistance, as it were. Since we will be skirting the edge of the Andes tonight, we will only need to concern ourselves with one decision point a bit south of La Paz, in Bolivia. Here, between the points ASUVO and DELMA, we will overfly terrain in excess of 18,000 feet, and a simple straight-ahead-or-return plan with no enroute alternate will suffice to keep us clear of the terrain if we had to descend. Later, far to the north, we will actually cross the mountains in northern Columbia, but by that time our single engine maximum altitude will be comfortably above the 16,000 foot terrain in the area, and no special plan or decision points are needed. The fuel plan is typical for a long flight. The total release fuel here at EZE is 145,811 lb, of which 118,455 lb will be consumed in the flight to JFK itself, and the remainder will provide our reserves and fuel to the alternate, which is KIAD. The dispatcher has thoughtfully provided fuel for holding at JFK before diverting to IAD, although at 711 lb this is only worth about 5 minutes, just about 1 circuit of the holding pattern! Hardly enough to do more than arrange for the clearance to Dulles! The TPS shows a planned takeoff weight very close to the maximum: 406,300 lb. The flight is nearly full - only nine seats are expected to remain empty, all in coach. These 216 passengers weigh, according to the FAA, 42,012 lb, which works out to around 195 lb each; a number which I'm sure is not too flattering to the female passengers! Of course this includes clothing and carry-on items as well; which can, as you all know, amount to a good chunk of weight. In the old days, the airlines got an individual weight for each passenger, but over time the regulations changed and incorporated an average weight, one for men and another for women, that increased during specified winter months. For some unusual passenger groups, like sports teams, real weights are sometimes used, but this is not something the average line pilot sees often. The weather is a mixed bag tonight. Here in Argentina, of course, it is summer, and a beautiful summer evening at that! Scattered clouds, excellent visibility, the wind right down runway 11 and a temperature of 80 degrees will make for a comfortable walk-around for the FB, if nothing else. JFK, at this moment, is almost identical, except for the temperature - a chilly 29 degrees F. But the forecast is a different story, for a fast moving low pressure system has the New York area in its sights. By the time we get there tomorrow morning, things may deteriorate to a visibility of 1.5 miles in rain and fog under a 900 foot overcast sky. Dulles, our alternate, will get the precipitation as a mix of snow and rain, but will clear up by the time we would need to go there, and is forecast to have a ceiling of around 3500 feet, with visibility around 5 miles - more than enough for our purposes. Buenos Aires, 10,000 feet below. The satellite picture shows why the dispatcher chose the western route - unstable air over the Brazilian jungles is setting off thunderstorms throughout the Amazon basin, with another cluster around the Columbia-Peru border. Only the latter will concern us this evening, and there is a good chance that activity will have petered out by the time we get there. From Barranquilla northward, things look to be good Mechanically the airplane is sound, and only an inoperative galley oven appears on the flight plan summary of deferred items. There is a note about doing an autoland on this leg, and since the leg is indeed mine, being my last traverse of southern skies, I may be able to accommodate the powers that be on arrival at JFK, depending upon the runway in use. In order for the autoland system to remain certified, an actual automatic landing must be performed and logged every few months. If this is not done, the airplane is restricted to higher landing minimums, and a maintenance inspection of the autopilot system must be performed to return the ship to CAT IIIB status. Since this is an extra bit of work for the already busy maintenance troops, and can be avoided simply by using the autoland system in good or bad weather on occasion, I try to perform and log an autoland whenever the note appears on the flight plan. The note makes its appearance a couple of weeks ahead of the actual deadline, the better to ensure an opportunity to exercise the system. Since I still have a number of opportunities ahead in the next month to indulge myself in the search for the perfect manual landing, I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to perform what may well be my last automatic one. We shall see what we shall see! After checking all of this, we gather the paperwork and head back through the crowd to the security area for inspection. Once clear of security and passport control, we find ourselves in one of the best stocked duty-free areas in the world! The first item in this delightful gauntlet, and from my point of view the most marvelous, is the perfume area! Fear not, for I am not about to buy anything, even for She-Who-Must, who avoids most fragrances due to various sensitivities. Rather it is the perfume sample girls who always attract my attention! These beauties, chosen from among the bumper crop in BA, one of the world's greatest concentrations of beautiful women, have always ensured that I arrived at the aircraft wide awake, if perhaps a bit breathless on occasion! Tonight, as if it were common knowledge that this is my final trip, there are on duty four of the most beautiful girls I have ever been this close to, and I indulge myself in the fantasy that they are here, as worthy representatives of all of their fellow perfume girls, solely to bid me farewell! Arriving at the airplane, I find the usual flurry of activity. Since this trip is the short layover version, we are going back with the same cabin crew we brought down yesterday. Thus no introductions are needed, and only a briefing on the expected conditions enroute is in order, a duty quickly tended to prior to the boarding of the passengers. The flight attendants have everything in hand in the cabin, which is often no easy task, since their checklist of things to attend to is as long as ours is up front. One of the advantages of flying with senior cabin crew is that you have the benefit of considerable experience - decades in some cases, and it pays off in many ways! I also make a point of seeking out several of the station personnel that I have come to know over the years and thanking them for the outstanding support they have provided. They are kind enough to express similar sentiments and to assure me that She and I will be welcome if our travels bring us back this way, something I sincerely hope will be the case. Once the passengers start boarding, things happen quickly, and we are soon buttoned up and ready to go. Ground clears us for push and the tug digs in and starts shoving. Again I hold off on engine start until the pushback is complete. After the ground man's final salute, the last I will receive down here, we start the relatively short taxi over to runway 11. Before I have time to brood upon the fact that this is the last adios, it is time to advance the throttles and roll. Once we are airborne, tower clears us for a left turn direct on course. I bid them farewell and add a sincere gracias amigos for their great work over the years, and then we are over to departure and cleaning the airplane up as we cross over downtown BA on the way north. I spare a single moment for what I hope will not be a last look at one of my favorite places, now alive with activity in the early evening. No more than a glance, though, because the flap retraction speed is once again very close to the flap limit speed and we don't want to overspeed the slats! BA as we head up the Plate - the final farewell! The Andes appear on the terrain display to the west of our route. The highest terrain depicted on the screen is around 21,000 feet. When the airplane is cleaned up and we have accelerated to climb speed we can settle back and enjoy the view. This is surely the greatest "corner office" view in the world, and it has always been one of my favorite things about the job. North of BA itself, the ground lights become sparse compared to the USA, and there are times when the number of lights on the ground just about matches the number of visible stars; creating a fascinating illusion that you are suspended in space, with stars both above and below! Astronauts have a better view, but they only get to enjoy it a few times in a long career. We, on the other hand, can indulge ourselves several times a week. The next order of business is the break plan. This leg, of course, leaves much earlier in the evening than the flight down, and so we are all much better rested. That means that single breaks are the order of the day, and I choose the last one so as to enjoy any scenery that may be on order. Our meals are not long in arriving either, since this cabin crew is one of the best! So for the first few hours we enjoy la cuisine de l'air, keep the carrot in front of the mule just so, and make such ATC reports as are required. As we depart each country's airspace, I again express my gratitude for their contributions to many years of safe flying in these skies. Safe flying in these skies is not a given. It has always been a major challenge to keep some altitude between the airplane and the mountains, especially back in the days before moving maps and EGPWS. It actually amazes me, as I read books like Flying the Andes (William A. Krusen, University of Tampa Press 1997), that the pilots of Panagra, to say nothing of the other early South American airlines, established such an outstanding safety record in the really old days, before WWII. The performance of the airplanes in that era was just barely adequate to struggle through the passes, well below the actual mountaintops. They managed to do this in all kinds of weather, with no real navigation aids other than an acute sense of pilotage, and they usually made it through unless the airplane itself failed them. Today the airplanes almost never fail. The big challenge is situational awareness. Since we no longer fly between the mountains but rather over them, we do not have that intuitive sense of precise location that the pioneers had to cultivate. Instead, we have modern navigation aids that provide the precise location without our having to sense it for ourselves. This is both good and bad. It is good in the sense that all it takes is a glance at the Nav Display to assimilate everything that we need to know to keep ourselves separated from the granite. But it is bad in the sense that if, for whatever reason, the systems fail us, we may have little to fall back on in the first few seconds. Were that to happen in an environment where terrain clearance was already critical, such as during an arrival into an airport in a mountainous area, our luck might run out very quickly. Twice during my career crews from the organization I was flying for found themselves in this situation. A C-141 from my unit at Charleston lost track of their exact position in the days before INS, and flew into a mountain on arrival into La Paz. Lack of navaids (no DME) and stronger than forecast headwinds fooled the navigator into thinking they were beyond the peaks. 25 years later one of our 757's didn't make it into Cali Columbia. Confusion over two navaids with the same identifier in the middle of an enroute descent put them below the level of the surrounding terrain. They recognized the peril of their situation seconds too late; after initiating a climb they failed to clear the terrain by a mere 100 feet. As we come upon our closest proximity to the mountains I cannot help but think back on these two mishaps. One of them (the C-141) involved a pilot training classmate of mine, and it is easy to imagine myself in that cockpit. Would I have continued a descent based on what was undoubtedly only a best estimate of position, or would I have opted for the more conservative choice - remaining at an altitude higher than any terrain within 100 miles or so and commencing descent in a holding pattern at the La Paz VOR. All navigation charts have had minimum altitudes printed on them since long before I learned to fly and, in theory at least, one can avoid hitting the ground by maintaining the appropriate minimum altitude at all times. But years of radar service in the USA and Europe, with the controllers applying radar minimum altitudes and pilots accepting the assigned altitudes more or less without question, can dull the senses. Of course I know what I would do now, after the fact. But these men were just as good as I consider myself to be, and if it could happen to them... The FO's have altered the nomenclature on the progress page!! After the Cali accident, the industry quickly adopted the latest improvement in the GPWS line - the Enhanced GPWS, or EGPWS for short. This is what we fly with today, and it has made situational awareness and terrain avoidance much more intuitive. In essence, an accurate worldwide terrain elevation database, derived mostly from various Space Shuttle radar imaging missions and essentially similar to the terrain database in MSFS, resides within some computer or other on the airplane. It gets the airplane position from the FMC and passes info to it for display on the nav display, if the pilot chooses to select terrain data in lieu of radar. If the airplane gets into a dangerous situation vis-a-vis terrain, the EGPWS overrides the radar, if necessary, and puts up a graphic display of the terrain, accompanied by the usual audio warnings like "Whoop Whoop Pull Up". This warning comes much sooner than the original GPWS warning, which was triggered only by the radar altimeter registering minimum clearance more or less below the aircraft - the system was unaware of what lay ahead along the flight path. Our charts have improved as well. There is, nowadays, a large red-bordered area encompassing the highest terrain levels in the Andes into which AA airplanes will not be dispatched, except for the 757 on flights to airports such as La Paz, which lie within the mountains. The 757 is used for flights into the higher elevation airports for two reasons - superior performance, and a passenger oxygen system that has been designed to allow for a level-off at 25,000 feet for a certain amount of time, rather than an immediate descent to 10,000 feet. This is actually an important consideration in places like South America, where in some locations descent below 20,000 feet or so may not be possible for many minutes. All is well for us, however, as we fly just to the east of the main cordillera, which is now visible by moonlight to our left. Unfortunately, the moonlight is not bright enough to get a picture. The mountains, while still many miles off to the side, are close enough that the movement of the airplane would blur them during the long time exposure that would be necessary in these conditions. Some sights are eyes only! The first break comes and goes, and I step back to the cabin for a brief visit to the privy during the "shift change". Things are quiet in the back, as you might expect at Oh-dark-thirty. It is on these flights, the red-eyes, that a deeper sense of the responsibility of the job tends to sink in. The passengers are all asleep, or trying to be, at any rate. They trust us completely with their continued well being, even to the point of dozing off, oblivious to considerations like terrain clearance or alternate airports or weather or all of the other things we must keep track of up front. That is our job, and the fact that they count on us to do it is perhaps the greatest of all of the wonderful aspects of this career. This is something I will miss, when the day comes. Before too long we come upon the area, in southern Columbia, where thunderstorms were forecast. The forecasts appear to be accurate, although there is plenty of room to stay clear of the cells themselves. This is just as well, since we have entered a high cirrus layer and are now flying on instruments. In the old days, pilots used their intuition and/or experience to pick their way through what they hoped would be the soft spots in lines of thunderstorms, guided by lightning flashes (to be avoided) and perhaps the ADF, which when tuned to any part of the frequency band with no broadcast signal would usually point erratically toward the area of greatest electrical activity (also to be avoided). Neither method worked all that well; and perhaps the principal reason why more aluminum was not scattered across the landscape was that the early transports, like the DC-3 and the DC-4, were built hell-for-stout and were actually capable of penetrating at least the lesser thunderstorms and emerging in one piece. Most of the time, at any rate. The advent of weather radar, in the late 1950's, brought a great deal of relief to the passengers of that and all subsequent eras - relief from the truly frightening turbulence and rain and hail of a thunderstorm penetration. Today radar is pretty much a no-go item when planning a flight through an area where storms are forecast or reported. Ours is working perfectly tonight, and we can see the actual storm cells clearly. They are widely scattered, and no real deviation is required to avoid them by 20 or more miles. Even so, due to the static buildup from flying through the ice-crystal-laden cirrus layer, we are treated to a display of the aeronautical version of St. Elmo's fire. The first manifestation of this phenomenon is a dancing display of miniature lightning in the electrically heated front windshields. This might be a bit alarming to the novice, but it is harmless, and this is as much of it as we encounter tonight. At a lower altitude, the nose and windshield wiper bolts, to say nothing of the wingtips and tail might pick up an eerie glow, as did the masts and rigging of the sailing ships of an earlier time. The airplane might even trigger a static discharge, which sounds like it has been hit by a thunderbolt, and can occasionally send the electronics into a trance. Modern fly-by-wire airplanes are supposedly hardened against any ill effects from this sort of thing, but we need not concern ourselves now because the 767 is comfortably old technology. Actual control of the airplane is not dependent upon electricity. St. Elmo's fire, aeronautical version - time exposure over 15 seconds. Soon enough we are beyond the weather and into the clear once again, just in time to see Barranquilla and Cartagena pass beneath us as we go feet-wet for the first time tonight. As we head out over the Spanish Main toward Jamaica and Cuba I bid a last farewell to a great continent, a magnificent corner of this earth that has been a part of my career almost from the beginning. Adios, Amigos! I hope to visit again! From here on north the run is essentially similar to a trip from Aruba to JFK. We fly over Kingston Jamaica, now sleeping in the wee hours of the morning, and head north for Cuba. For many years, until after 9-11, we carried special charts in our flight manuals for planning in the event that we might have to actually go to Havana uninvited. In the old days that was the only way we would have ever entered Cuban airspace, but things have changed very much for the better in the ensuing years and the airways of Cuba are now open to us. The controllers there are among the best in the area, with good radar and a superb command of English, which is just as well for me, since my command of Spanish goes but little beyond Adios Amigos! Soon enough we will probably be flying scheduled trips to places in Cuba other than Guantanamo, but my involvement in that will be only as a passenger! We enter Miami Center airspace at ENAMO, and with a bit less than 3 hours remaining it is time for me to hit the sack. But first, I take a quick look at the JFK weather. Things are holding up for the moment, with good visibility and a mid-level overcast. They are currently using runway 22L, which works for me because it is a CAT III runway now, and perfectly suited to host an automatic landing, which, as I mentioned, the airplane is in need of. In fact, with lower ceilings and visibilities to the west, we may well be flying an ILS approach for real by the time we get there. There is yet another factor that we must consider, one which we do not encounter often. Normally, an early arrival is a good thing, within the limits of gate availability. Gate availability is no problem this morning since we will arrive long before much else gets going at JFK. But Customs availability is another matter. The Customs area at our terminal does not open until 0600, which is only 5 minutes prior to our scheduled arrival time of 0605. If we arrive earlier than 0600 everyone will have to remain on the airplane until Customs gets ready to receive the throng downstairs. So this is one time when we most assuredly do not want to arrive early! It is good to start checking this closely around 3 hours out, and at this point it looks like we may have to slow down a tad, since we are running about 20 minutes ahead of the schedule. Therefore, just before retiring to the crew rest seat, I order a change of speed. We have actually been flying at Mach .78 all night, as per the flight plan, a target which I now reduce to Mach .77. This should be enough for now, and any further reduction can be made during the descent and arrival. My break passes quickly and all too soon I am back on the flight deck, trying to get my brain in sync with the airplane for the final lap of the trip. We are passing Sea Isle, on the Delmarva Peninsula, and will start descending shortly. I note that we are still running close to 15 minutes ahead of schedule, which would put us on the gate before 0600. I decide to conduct the descent at the FMC economy speed, around 250 knots indicated, which is much slower than our normal enroute descent speed of around 300 knots. The FMC uses a cost index to compute its "economy" speed schedule, and tonight the index the company provided us was 11. A number that low essentially biases the computer in the direction of fuel savings, and results in a very slow descent speed, to say nothing of a cruise speed down around Mach .78, which we had been maintaining until I started my break. We are able to use this low number because the overall wind situation was favorable and the flight plan time less than the scheduled time. Had there been more of a headwind, the dispatcher would have provided a higher cost index, perhaps over 100, to bias the FMC toward thinking that time is more valuable than fuel. This would result in higher speeds all around, instead of the slower profile we are using now. A descent from 37,000 feet at 250 knots indicated is a prolonged affair, but that is exactly what we want now. That should add around 5-7 minutes to our flight, and any additional foot-dragging can be done on the taxi-in. So let it be written, so let it be done! By the time we are cleared for the ILS 22L approach, we are estimating touchdown at 0555, and that should put us at the gate comfortably after 0600. The arcing is actually within or on the outside of the window - you can touch the inside of the panel and feel nothing! 7 hours into the flight the FO once again finds self expression on the FMC! The weather is still VMC, but I plan, brief and fly an automatic landing on 22L, as requested. Otto does his usual fine job, and before I know it the flight is over. As I taxi to the terminal the thought crosses my mind that I have now entered what is likely to be the final month of my AA career, for it is the morning of the 1st of March. Up to this point, there have always been other bid sheets to come, and additional months of flying to do. Now we are down to one. And the first of my significant final argosies is in the log book. But this probably final month still has within it a number of flights, to a number of wonderful places, so I am not burdened by sadness. There is much to look forward to, and much yet to enjoy. See you in Ops for the next installment! Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Final Argosy Series Final Argosy Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court Final Argosy Part Three - Viva Tango! Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos Final Argosy - Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy - Fini Flight
  4. Final Argosy - Viva Tango! By Tony Vallillo (12 February 2009) Part Three: Viva Tango! Some places don't grab you right away. The first layover I had in Buenos Aires was what I would come to think of as a short layover - arrive a bit before noon one day, and depart around 8 in the evening on the next. On that trip there was little time for anything other than a nap, a short stroll around the center of town and a steak dinner that night. The steak dinner turned out to be the best I had ever had in my life, as has every subsequent steak dinner in BA, but the upshot of it all was that it seemed to be waaay too long of a flight just to get a great steak! So for almost another year I returned to my usual stomping grounds in Europe. Porta Madera, the tony refurbished dockyards where a great many of BA's best restaurants are located. The San Telmo district by night Plaza Dorrega from the balcony of La Pergola de San Telmo -- fine dining indoors or out! Things always change, though, and the change in question was the appearance, on the November bid sheet some 5 years ago, of a number of BA trips with really long layovers; 4 day layovers, in point of fact. This was a rarity, at least at American Airlines, and I was intrigued. Here was the opportunity to experience more than a single steak dinner! So I bid one of them. In those 4 days I was able to explore just about every interesting corner of Buenos Aires, take in a number of Tango shows, stuff myself with Bife de Lomo (the steak in question), and generally have one hell of a good time. Thus it was that BA became, and remains to this day, one of my favorite places on earth! I just had to give it time. There were no more of those long trips, sad to say, but shortly afterwards a pattern of flying developed that resulted in layovers, at least for the Captain and FO, which were a day longer than the regular "short" ones. These trips resulted from the elimination of the Miami to Montevideo flight on several days of the week. On days when there was no MIA-MVD flight, one of the BA flights continued on to MVD and back, and it turned out to be the New York crew that flew the turnaround. That happened three days of the week. On the other 4 days, the New York Captain and FO had an extra day off in BA, since it was apparently easier to keep the operational tempo going at the same pace than to deadhead crews back and forth. Whatever the reason, I took to bidding those trips with the extra day off in BA, although I did a number of the Montevideo trips as well, just to have a look at the place. In February 2008 all of the trips had the MVD turn, which was just as well, since it would be my last chance to see that delightful city, at least as a crewmember. And so here we are on what will be the first of my goodbye flights - the last trip to Montevideo. On Sundays, plalza Dorrega has a fascinating flea market. Tango! You can see Tango everywhere in BA! In Europe, I generally allow myself a mere 3 hours or so for a nap upon arrival in the morning. If I fail to force myself out of bed at that point, I am in for a 10 or 11 hour "nap", and I would be up all night, ready to flop back into bed precisely at pick-up time! Since it is considered bad form to spend any time sleeping on the flight deck, this sort of time management scheme is typically avoided in favor of the short nap and the afternoon stroll, followed by dinner and, hopefully, a reasonable night's rest. Not that it always worked out that way, of course, but that was and is the standard plan, at least for me. The BA trip, on the other hand, is so long that a 3 hour nap is simply not enough to recover, even for dinner. Fortunately, one can sleep a full 6 or 7 hours after check-in (unlike Europe, the rooms are usually available immediately upon arrival at the hotel, around 11am) and still have the full evening for dinner and other merriment. The return trip to JFK doesn't pick up until 7pm or so, so the entire next day can be spent sleeping, if necessary. Even the pickup for the Montevideo turnaround occurs at a reasonable hour, around 11am, so one is typically in better shape the day after arrival than one would be on a Europe trip, even though the flight itself is longer and more debilitating. Our hotel in Buenos Aires is one of the best in the city, and the beds feature the latest in mattress technology, combined with luxurious duvets and enough pillows to outfit a Hollywood mansion! Sleep is not hard to come by under these circumstances, and my 6pm wake up rolls around all too soon. The hotel sets aside a room as a crew lounge, and it is here that members of the 5 or so crews that layover each day gather for preliminary conviviality and strategic planning. There is an air of reunion about the place, as I greet pilots and flight attendants that I have not seen in a while, and since someone has always procured a bottle or three of the local vintage and a hunk of cheese, we get an early start on the evening's entertainment. And yes, the women tend to be beautiful! Plaza de Mayo The Casa Rosada, sometimes called the Pink Palace The "strategic" planning revolves around which of the many outstanding restaurants is to be patronized tonight, and the list, as they say, is long and distinguished. Perhaps it will be Nes Nevel, a crew favorite, known to us also as "Lurch's" due to the resemblance of the proprietor to the character from "The Adams Family". There is also Don Ernesto's, owned by the brother of Lurch, and a tad more upscale in appearance. My own favorite is the Pergola de San Telmo, over on the Plaza Dorrega, which features Tango and Folk dancing almost every night, to say nothing of outstanding food. But there is always a contingent headed over to Porta Madiera, the restored dockyards, where the restaurants are all very tony and the food is exquisite. It may strike you as odd that I tell of flight attendants and especially pilots going to fancy expensive restaurants, given the natural proclivity toward penury that has existed in the pilot profession since the days of the Wright brothers! But Argentina is one of the few places in the world where the US dollar is still strong; and, when I was last there on this very trip, the price in dollars of a really fine dinner was around 25 or so at most! Certainly this makes BA a Captain's delight! Tonight we decide upon La Pergola, and our small group (several flight attendants and another pilot) hails a cab in front of the hotel. There was a time, not too long ago, when we would have made this trip on foot - it is only a 20 or so minute walk over to the San Telmo district and it is summer down here! But more recently there have been rumors of an incident or two of petty larceny perpetrated upon our brethren in these parts, and so we avail ourselves of the security of a taxi. Like everything else in BA, taxis are quite affordable, at least if you have changed dollars into Pesos. Teatro Colon, the largest opera house in South America Florida Street, the pedestrian mall in downtown BA Gallerias Pacifica, perhaps the finest indoor mall in town Plaza Dorrega is alive with people tonight, many of them dining al fresco in the square. We could do that, but the dancing will be inside the restaurant itself, so we take a table on the first floor well situated to view the entertainment later. The menu at La Pergola is excellent, featuring a wide variety of entree choices, but for me there is only one thing on the menu - Bife de Lomo, which is the local term for what we would call a filet mignon. Argentine beef is justly world famous, and indulging in it is one of the principal reasons I fly this trip! In several dozen trips down here over the last 5 years I have never had a bad steak. And tonight is no exception! After dinner, we are treated to an exposition of both Tango and Argentinean folk dancing. Throughout most of my life prior to discovering BA, I was not much of a fan of the dance. Oh, I could appreciate the skill, the athleticism and the dedication that dancing demands at the professional level, but I must confess that neither ballet nor River Dance really aroused in me any but the most fleeting interest. All of that changed, however, when I started flying to Buenos Aires. The dance known as Tango originated here in the late nineteenth century, down on the waterfront around the area known as La Boca, if the legends are to be believed. Immigrant sailors, lacking women partners, often danced with each other, but it was not long before the local prostitutes gravitated to the scene and that is, perhaps, why to this day the female dancers often dress like turn-of-the-century ladies of the evening! However earthy its origins may have been, the dance is often ethereal in its beauty. It is, by turns, both pure and frankly sexual, and it lays out for us in stylized steps the duality of human attraction, a conundrum with which the world has struggled since Adam and Eve. Belgrano Park - near the north end of Florida Street One of the many beautiful fountains in the city -- with the blooms of summer everywhere! For whatever reason, (in all honesty most likely the beautiful women, but this must never be known to She-Who-Must!) I became a Tango aficionado from the first time I saw it, and remain one to this very day. So much so that I began taking Tango lessons on layovers a few years ago, studying with a couple who danced at my other favorite Buenos Aires hangout, La Barrica. These two, who are among the very best Tango dancers in all BA, have become my good friends over the last few years. However, despite their amazing expertise and their outstanding teaching ability, I am possessed of two left feet, and Tango requires a right foot in the mix somewhere! To this day, I am only a struggling beginner. Another view of Belgrano park The Botanical gardens and park This modern bridge is one of several that link downtown with Porta Madera The best way to introduce yourself to Tango if you are down here would be to take in one of the major Tango shows. These are full blown stage productions, and most of them are put on as dinner shows, in large halls dedicated to that single purpose. The first one I saw was perhaps the most famous - a show named after the man who, although a singer rather than a dancer, became Tango's most recognizable celebrity - Carlos Gardel. The show at Esquina Carlos Gardel is dedicated to the memory of the man who popularized Tango all over the world in the 1920's and 30's, releasing hundreds of recordings of often doleful Tango ballads, and starring in many major motion pictures on both sides of the Atlantic. The show is expensive - over $100 US at the present time - but well worth it, for the dancing at least. The food is not the best in BA, but you aren't there for the food! Aside from the major shows, exhibitions of Tango are to be found in many bars and restaurants, to say nothing of parks and streets, especially in the tourist and shopping areas. These dancers are the more recent graduates of the several serious schools of Tango that have been operating in BA since the revival of the dance in the Peron years. Although less flashy and opulent than the major productions, the dancing is often just as good, with excellent young men and women such as my instructors Omar Ponti and Milagros Suarez. The "Libertad", a training ship for Argentinean naval cadets Our steed awaits us for the short trip to Montevideo United's Montevideo flight at BA, prior to departure. He is usually the weather scout! Tonight the dancers are not my teachers, since those two will join me for a farewell (for the moment, at any rate) dinner tomorrow evening. But the two who entertain us are excellent indeed, and when the hat is passed I am generous, all the while hoping that word of this free-spending will not reach the professional standards committee of the union! We do, after all, have traditions of our own to uphold! The dance show lasts over an hour, and when we have thrilled to the last dip and whirl, it is time to return to the comforts of the hotel, the better to prepare ourselves for the duties of the 'morrow. If this were the layover with the extra day off, I would be heading out in the morning for some sightseeing and perhaps a Tango lesson from Omar and Milagros. The delight of having an entire day off in a city like Buenos Aires cannot be overstated! A typical day might include a leisurely breakfast at the outstanding buffet at the hotel, followed by a stroll down to the Plaza de Mayo, the site of the Casa Rosada, the pink palace from the balcony of which Juan Peron mesmerized the crowds. Nearby is the beginning of the pedestrian mall on Florida Street, the center of shopping in the downtown area, which features shops of every kind imaginable from leather to jewelry to music. The Gallerias Pacificas is the highlight of Florida Street - a beautiful two level indoor mall that was one of the favorites of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed when I took her on vacation here a few years back! The Peron-era main terminal building at Ezieza The canine gauchos roust an interloper! Central BA as we climb out of 10,000 feet. Florida Street is close to the studio where I would meet Milagros and Omar for my Tango lessons, and after an hour or so of flawless demonstrations followed by clumsy attempts at imitation on my part, we might repair to the nearby Recolleta district for a late lunch. Recolleta is also home to the cemetery that is the final resting place for the charismatic Eva Peron, wife of the former dictator and made famous yet again by a Broadway show some years back. Evita's grave is one of the major tourist sites in BA, especially among the Argentineans from out of town. But all of this sightseeing is out of the question today, for the FO and I must saddle up once again and undertake one of the shortest flights in the AA schedule. The distance from Ezeiza Airport to Carrasco Airport in Montevideo is around 125 nautical miles as the crow flies. The flight plan distance is a bit longer - 140nm, since the route along the airways is not quite direct. Even with the extra distance and the approach, the flight plan time is 29 minutes, and that is based upon 250 knots below 10,000 feet. Here, as in many places in the world where the traffic is lighter and the FAA is conspicuous by its absence, we can be cleared for higher speeds almost as soon as the flaps are retracted. We will take advantage of this today. The Rio de la Plata Ships at anchor in the Plate, aligned with the current. The town of La Plata Pickup, as I mentioned, is around 11 am, and the ride to the airport is a bit quicker at this hour than it will be tomorrow evening. A quick visit to the operations office finds the flight plan packet prepared and ready for my signature. Once we check it over and gather it up, we proceed to the gate, where we find the newly arrived airplane waiting for us, just in from Miami. A flight from Miami to Buenos Aires is considerably shorter than the JFK marathon - "only" a bit over 8 hours, but even so it is not a good idea to have the crew that brought this flight in take it over to Montevideo in the same duty period. This would be known as a "tag leg" if it were done that way, and these were once more common than they are now. We had them on a number of Europe trips in the 1990's, such as JFK-ZRH-GVA. The European tags were dropped when it became obvious that 1) the crews were absolute zombies on the short second leg, and quite possibly a hazard to themselves and all of the birds in the air, and 2) the economics of the operation, what with only 20 or so passengers going through to the second destination, were abominable. Better to either serve the second city non-stop as well, or simply drop the service altogether. Such were the lessons learned in the early days of deregulation and the great expansion. Down here, however, we can gather Montevideo passengers from all five of our inbound trips, which often makes for a nearly full airplane, to say nothing of better economics! And so it is that we will fly these two short flights today, and reap the added benefit of another night, and another steak, in Buenos Aires! Montevideo Uruguay /21a.jpg Carrasco Airport At the next gate a United 767 is also loading up for a flight to...Montevideo! Apparently a similar situation obtains over at UAL. They usually leave a few minutes ahead of us, and so I have never undertaken to learn if they, too, are doing a turnaround or are instead cursed with a tag leg. True to form, United pushes out just as we are boarding the last few passengers. We'll see him again on the other side of the world's widest river, the Rio de la Plata! Meanwhile, as he lifts off from runway 11, we push back and begin our mini-odyssey. Our flight plan today is simple - The PTA 6 B departure to Dorvo, followed by A305 to CRR, the VOR at Montevideo. The departure involves a slight right turn after takeoff to pick up the 126 radial of the EZE VOR out to the 4 DME fix, after which a left turn is made to intercept the 290 radial inbound to PTA. A dogleg turn takes us to the DORVO intersection, from whence A305 is a straight shot over to Carrasco, the airport for Montevideo. Fuel load today is a whopping 31,300 lb, of which around 10,000 lb is ferry fuel. Apparently fuel is cheaper here in Buenos Aires! A 5 minute taxi brings us to the end of the runway, where we wait a few moments while the Argentinean version of animal control shoos a stray dog from the vicinity of runway 11! After the beast has been corralled, and the canine gauchos have headed back to the estancia, we receive clearance for takeoff. This leg belongs to the FO, so that the final good-bye leg will be mine. He calls for autothrottles and N1, and we are off, rotating in an absurdly short distance to a remarkably nose high attitude, to keep the speed from getting out of hand. We catch up with United at Carrasco Our hotel for the short "layover" in Montevideo The Rambla, the long beachfront boulevard Immediately upon contacting departure control, we ask for and are granted the high speed climb. With that clearance in hand we quickly accelerate to 330 knots, which will cut a few minutes off the flight! We also get clearance direct to DORVO, which is the FIR boundary in this area. Further clearances will come from Montevideo, and we are switched over to them in no time. Meanwhile, we have leveled off at FL170, our planned cruise altitude for the few minutes we will be in level flight. There is no point in turning off the seatbelt sign for such a short time, so we leave it on, and I make a very brief welcome aboard announcement. Most of the passengers on this flight are through passengers from Miami and points north, so they have been living on the airplane for the last 10 hours or so, with only the brief deplaning at EZE to allow them to stretch their legs. There are few originating passengers, since there is service from the other BA airport, the Aeroparque Jorge Newberry, which is right downtown, to say nothing of high speed ferry service that takes only a couple of hours dock to dock. It's hard to compete with that, even with a widebody! After but a few minutes of cruise it is time to descend. Once again we have in hand a clearance for "high speed", and we will take advantage of it by maintaining a speed of 330 knots or so until 15 miles from the airport. There is virtually no general aviation down here, so there is little risk of getting too close to another airplane. Nonetheless, we still check the TCAS frequently, and I spend most of my time looking out the window in case there is another airplane around that slipped under the radar, so to speak! Downtown Montevideo The setting sun leads us back to BA BA twinkles in the twilight as we approach Ezieza The weather in MVD is the same as it was at BA - beautiful! The winds are out of the east at 10 knots, which suggests that runway 06 may be on order. I have never landed on this runway, having used runway 19 in my previous visits. The VOR/DME approach to 06, which we are instructed to join, takes you right past the downtown area of Montevideo. By this time we have slowed to a speed conducive to extension of flaps and landing gear, and the FO has the approach well in hand. The VNAV feature of the FMC backed up by the PAPI light system keeps us right on a comfortable glide path, and the resulting landing is a smooth one. A short taxi brings us to the ramp and we shut down on the hardstand in front of the terminal, which looks like a U.S airport of the 1950's. All of that will have changed by the time you read this, since a new terminal has been under construction at MVD for a while and is likely in service by now. But this one has considerable charm, at least to an old timer like me who, as a child, flew out of a terminal or two that looked just like this! The post-flight duties attended to, we board the bus along with the last of the passengers. The terminal and the customs formalities are a hundred yard drive away, and when we have run the gauntlet we stroll on out to the landside to board another bus. Most turnaround trips involve very little time on the ground, hardly enough to do some duty free shopping in the terminal. But our return flight to BA does not leave until 19:20 this evening, which leaves us with around 5 hours or so in Montevideo. The company provides us with hotel accommodations near the airport in these circumstances, and it is to this delightful hideaway that we now proceed, a journey of only around 5 minutes or so door to door! Block party in San Telmo Milagros and Omar, my Tango instructors and good friends! Milagros and Omar in action For the entire duration of my employment at American, over 31 years all told, the provision of accommodations for these short layovers has been a standard feature of the contract. In the mid 1980's the required layover length changed from 4 to 5 hours, but that has been the only alteration. In the earliest years of my career I had flights like this, B-707 trips that left JFK late in the evening and flew up to Syracuse or Rochester, arriving around midnight, and departing at 5 or 6 in the morning back to JFK, to continue on to the Caribbean an hour or so later with another, more senior, crew at the helm This sort of trip has become much less common at American since the 80's, but it is standard fare at the regional airlines, where it is referred to as a "stand up overnight", a reference to the lack of accommodations provided to regional crews, at least in the early days of that part of the industry. Often a regional crew would have to "layover" on the airplane, since nothing more appealing was available in the terminal or the operations office, which were probably closed and locked in any event! It was a trying existence, to be sure, which is one reason why so many regional airline pilots jumped ship to the majors at the first opportunity, despite the fact that for many it was a pay cut to do so. Our hotel is a charming small property on a large pond, complete with a swimming pool and also a restaurant, which is my first destination after getting my room key. The beef is just as good on this side of the river, and the hamburger is considerably better than most offerings north of the equator. Several of the cabin crew join me and I avail myself of the opportunity to get to know the locals, since the flight attendants for this turnaround are based in Buenos Aires and are all native to South America. This was part of the complete package we acquired from Eastern - several flight attendant crew bases in South America, along with all of the station personnel and, of course, Flight Support Lima. These flight attendants are an outstanding group, and the job has much higher status down here than it tends to have in the USA and Europe. They also seem to be quite respectful of pilots, or at least of El Capitan, which probably reflects the culture of this area. Whatever the reason, I have always looked forward to the opportunity to work with these fine folks! Time for breakfast! Caminito as you step out of the taxi I have arranged for a quick tour of Montevideo with the driver of the bus that brought us from the airport. After lunch I hop aboard, the only crewmember to do so today, since the FO has declared the intention of taking a nap, and the flight attendants have all visited Montevideo many times. So I have an entire bus and guide to myself as we head out along the Rambla, the boulevard that skirts the ocean and the Rio de la Plate. I had always thought that the name Montevideo alluded to the view from some mountain or other, but the actual history is more interesting. The word derives from an entry on a navigation chart made by one of the first European explorers to lay eyes on the area. The entry was roughly Monte VI de Este a Oest, literally the "sixth mountain (counting) from east to west". This was shortened to Montevideo and the name apparently stuck! After an hour or so exploring a city of considerable charm and beauty, we return to the hotel, where I find the usual complementary dessert set up for our departure. This little feast features two of my favorite dishes - Flan custard and Dulce de Leche, which is similar to caramel and just as fattening! (These trips are a good part of the reason that I started a diet shortly after retiring!) After sampling these culinary delights we all pile into the bus for the 5 minute drive back to the airport. The flight plan for the first leg of AA 900 (the flight continues to Miami after the stop in BA) shows a flight time of 31 minutes. The filed route is direct DAGUS, A306 EZE. We will likely fly the DAGUS 1 M departure to SARGO, which is a point on A306. The filed altitude is FL180. Our fuel load is what was left over from the first flight - "as aboard", which is 23,000 lb. I also note that while I was wandering around Montevideo the wind shifted, and it now favors runway 24. This will be our plan for tonight. The most colorful part of town -- Caminito The Boca residents are fiercely proud of their neighborhood When we arrive at the airplane I meet with the ground staff, which, as is often the case, is comprised mostly of young (and attractive) women! It never ceases to amaze me how the fortunes of world-wide enterprises are, at the local level, in the hands of relative youngsters! Capable hands too, I must say, since they do an outstanding job with both the passenger and operational sides of our presence here. I take the small group aside to reveal to them the secret of my impending departure from the American Airlines scene, and they kindly consent to a group picture, the first of several that will be taken over the next month or so. Having thus made the first of my premeditated farewells, I saddle up and prepare to take the silver steed across the big river for the last time! Actually, I have already made a great many "last flights" into various places, some of them now years in the past, and all of them final argosies only in retrospect. It has been decades, for example, since I flew into Indianapolis, and if I troubled to examine my logbooks I could indeed find the last flight. But at the time I flew that trip I had no idea that it would be a finale. Nor was I aware a few months ago that a certain ZRH trip would be the last one, nor BRU, nor much of the Caribbean. Since I had been flying to Rome in the previous months, and will do so again in the final month to come, there have been no known last trips for me until today. This is the first of the final argosies. It is not, however, a major emotional event, since it is neither the last leg of this trip nor the last trip to South America. But it is something special nonetheless. A beautiful tourist hams it up with the male dancer while his partner looks on! The flea market at Caminito These large figures beckon from many an upper window, as no doubt did the agreeable ladies of an earlier era We push back right on the advertised, at 19:20 local time, which is only early evening in these summertime latitudes. By the time we taxi past the new terminal construction on the way to runway 24 the sun is just hanging low on the horizon ahead of us. The thought strikes me, as I taxi onto the runway, that this same sun is beginning to set on my career; and indeed an inordinate number of my subsequent flights will feature spectacular sunsets. This thought, though, is fleeting, because regardless of the sentiments that may attach to a flight, concentration is still required, especially on takeoff roll. As we climb out, a slight left turn puts us on course for DAGUS and I bid a last farewell to the controllers in the tower. This will be a ritual I will follow on all of my last flights - a Thank You to all of the men and women of Air Traffic Control, past and present, who have guided and protected my flights over the years from towers and radar scopes around the world. Freed once again from the speed limit, we step on out to around 330 knots and turn towards SARGO and La Plata, a large town just inland from the river. The sky is gorgeous this evening and I contrive to hand fly the entire leg to savor the sensations of handling this wonderful machine. Too bad I can't have one of my own to play with after I retire! Oh well, LDS will have to do! Music and dancing go hand in hand with fine food All too soon it is time to descend and slow down. We manage to talk the controllers at Ezeiza into allowing us to join a right hand downwind pattern for a visual approach to runway 11. Visual patterns like this are infrequent in an airliner, at least a big one like the 767. Most airports just have too much traffic to allow for approaches like this, but this evening, coming from the east as we are, it is the most expeditious way to land, since we can stay closer to the airport than would be the case if we flew the entire teardrop pattern for the ILS approach from overhead, which we have had to do on occasion when another airplane was arriving straight-in from the west. The pattern is flown just like you would fly it in a Cherokee or Cessna, except that we usually fly around 1500 feet above the ground instead of 1000, and the pattern is a good bit wider than the one a small plane would fly. As we pass abeam the terminal on the downwind leg, I start extending flaps, and the gear comes down as we turn onto the base leg, on a heading 90 degrees from the runway heading. Final flaps are set in the turn to final approach, and we use the ILS and PAPI for vertical guidance as we approach the threshold. A bit of a flare and we are down smoothly, which is always satisfying, to the ego if to nothing else! Mosey on over to the terminal, and shut 'er down, and it is time to head to the hotel once again. I have a dinner date tonight with my Tango instructors! By the time we return to the hotel, the nightly pour-out in the crew room is in full swing. It takes but a short time to shed the suit-of-lights, shower and shave, and join the party for a few minutes. But I don't tarry long, because I am meeting my friends at another restaurant in San Telmo, one that I have not previously visited. This place, the name of which unfortunately escapes me now, is apparently associated with a famous soccer player for the Boca Juniors, one of the better of the local teams, and is festooned with sports memorabilia. The food turns out to be excellent, which is certainly no surprise in Buenos Aires. My friends arrive right on time, borne on a small motorcycle since the weather is fine. We have a delightful evening on the town, and all too soon it is time to call an end to the festivities - we all work tomorrow, but they must begin their day much earlier than I will. So we say our goodbyes, which are hopefully not final, since I plan to return here on vacation after I retire. It has been a real pleasure knowing Milagros and Omar, and you can see a bit of their outstanding Tango dancing here. "La Barrica", my favorite place in all BA! Outdoor Tango and dining at La Barrica Senor Alfredo Molina, the finest bandoneon player in BA, chats with one of the dancers during a break Next morning I awaken at my leisure from a truly restful sleep, something of an oddity on a layover in the international division! Of course, the duty day will not begin until this evening, so there is still time for some additional entertainment in BA. My day of departure ritual has been fixed for some years now - breakfast at the hotel and sightseeing followed by lunch at La Barrica, my favorite place in Buenos Aires. La Barrica is right in the middle of Caminito, the colorful center of the old harbor quarter of the city which is known as La Boca. Here amid the gaily painted corrugated tin buildings are a plethora of shops and restaurants that are a magnet for tourists from all over the world, at least at lunchtime. I have never been there any later than around 4pm, and apparently it really swings, so to speak, only in the middle of the day. For lunch it can't be beat, because just about every restaurant features Tango! This is where I met Milagros and Omar - they were regular dancers here when I began to frequent the place. La Barrica is owned by a retired AA'er, Senor Bringas. He spent a career working at Ezeiza, a career which spanned AA, Eastern, and Braniff. He has always made us feel right at home, and the place is as charming as the food is outstanding! Life holds few greater pleasures than this: to enjoy a beautiful day, an excellent meal and some superb dancing. I even get to try a few of my hesitant Tango steps with the female of the pair, a bit of fun that has been captured for all to see by one of the several members of the crew who have joined me today at La Barrica! The only thing missing is a bit of vino to top it off; but, since we go on duty in less than 8 hours, that is, of course, out of the question! Several of my crew look on as the Tango show goes on El Capitan showing off his steps with the female dancer at La Barrica! She Who Must has approved this picture! After an absolutely superb afternoon, it is time to head back to the hotel. A good nap will fortify body and soul for the long night's labors to come, so I bid you adieu until pick up time some 5 hours hence! Continued in Under the Southern Cross 4 - Adios Amigos! Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Final Argosy Series Final Argosy Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court Final Argosy Part Three - Viva Tango! Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos Final Argosy - Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy - Fini Flight
  5. Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court By Tony Vallillo (26 December 2008) Every max weight takeoff is interesting. In the C-5 or C-141, with four engines, such an affair was always good for a lengthy tour of the runway, to say nothing of an intimate view of the over run and the real estate just beyond the over run! Two engine airplanes have better performance; but even so, a max weight takeoff in the 767 can be a prolonged affair, and always stands in contrast to the performance at the normal lighter weights. Fortunately, runway 31L is one of the longest civil runways in the world, and more than 14,000 feet separate us from the opposite end as we commence our takeoff roll. Needless to say, I have selected max power tonight, even though there is, surprisingly enough, a reduced power setting available for this takeoff. The difference between the two is small, and I prefer to avail myself of the drop or two of extra power we can squeeze out of the CF-6's tonight. If we lose an engine we will need every pound of thrust we can get, and there is always the chance, in that event, that I might be so distracted by inhaling the seat cushion that advancing the throttle on the good engine could well slip my mind! Fortunately, my Irish half still revels in the traditional luck and both engines keep pounding out a steady roar as we proceed down the runway, slowly at first, then faster and faster. Rotation speed is a whopping 167 knots tonight, and we don't reach it well past the halfway point of the concrete, which is also well past the tower. The controllers get a great view from up there, nearly 300 feet in the air, and almost 15 seconds will pass after we begin rotation before we climb above their vantage point! When rotation speed finally does arrive, I raise the nose carefully, lest I drag my first tail skid, something that I certainly want to avoid doing this close to the probable end of my career! After rolling for what seems like another mile with the mains still firmly on the ground (but in reality only around another 1000 feet or so!) the ship finally shakes itself loose of the runway and starts to climb, albeit at a more stately pace than usual. On all takeoffs from 31L at JFK, a left turn is begun at 400 feet above the runway, the better to avoid mixing it up with the LaGuardia traffic a few miles to the north. At this late hour (it is now past midnight) there is little chance of that, but turn we must and turn we do. I ease the yoke left and let the ship lean over to around a 15 degree bank, and we gracefully wheel toward Canarsie, several miles away over in Brooklyn. There is a line defined by a radial of Canarsie VOR that we are supposed to remain south of, and another, a few miles further on down the line, that we are supposed to cross above 2500 feet. In order to achieve both of these objectives, I will leave the flaps at the takeoff setting of 5 degrees a bit longer than normal, since the process of accellerating while retracting the flaps will slow the climb to a crawl, and the higher speeds after the flaps are up (tonight over 250 knots!) will increase the turn radius. Time enough to retract the flaps after we reach Canarsie. Tower bids us adios, and sends us over to departure control, whereupon we are immediately given a left turn direct to SHIPP, our first fix tonight. The departure thus simplified, I lower the nose a bit to accellerate and call for flap retraction as the minimum speeds appear on the instruments. We must be particularly careful tonight, because the min speed for going from flaps 1 to flaps up is very close to the flaps 1 speed limit - 250 knots. It can be tricky to keep the speed below the limit until the flaps (actually, the leading edge slats) are completely retracted, but it must be done, since an overspeed would require an inspection after landing down south. After things are cleaned up, we can relax a bit. Since I already anticipate the possible end of my airline career in a few months, I will hand fly tonight longer than I otherwise might, the better to firmly fix the flying qualities of the 767 in my now-volatile memory! Indeed, I wish that I had a better recollection of how some of my earlier airplanes handled, particularly the supersonic T-38 trainer in Air Force Pilot Training. I flew the "White Rocket" for 6 months, but I have little recollection, after nearly 37 years, of its handling qualities, other than that it flew like a fighter! I did get to try my hand at the T-38 Link trainer about a decade ago, the same Link trainers that we used back in 1972. I was surprised at what a handful the airplane was - nothing at all like the fingertip pressures on the stick that I thought I recalled. Of course, the Links themselves may well have deteriorated over the years, and for that matter I have no idea, at this stage of life, just how faithfully the Links reproduced the control forces of the T-38 even back then. All the more reason, therefore, to hand fly as much as I can over the next two months, the better to remember the last Boeings that I will likely have the privilege of flying! It is now well past midnight, and the first order of business, after the navigation chores are in hand, is to plan the break schedule. It may seem that airline pilots are merely creatures of luxury, seeking comfort to the exclusion of other concerns, but the reality is that we are still almost 11 hours away from Buenos Aires, and we have already been up for at least 7 hours. As I mentioned in the first installment, the last break (if we were to go with a single break plan) would not begin for another 7 hours or so! Since none of us are in a physiological position to go that long without at least a short nap, we come to quick agreement on a split break plan. The splits work out to around 1:45 each, which means that no one need stay awake longer than around 3 1/2 hours. This should make things manageable. The bane of the existence of the FB, the third pilot, is to take whichever break the other two pilots don't choose. So our FB now heads for the cabin, to avail himself of the first break. The Purser has, by now, provisioned the cockpit with a tray of assorted sodas, juices and the all-important mixed nuts, so we will not starve while waiting for the main course, which usually comes an hour or two later, after the paying customers have been fed and watered. This is as it should be, and we don't complain unless things are going really slow in the cabin. There has been a time or two in my career when the meals have not made their appearance until nearly three hours into the flight, but fortunately in each instance I had coincidentally seen fit to provision myself with a sandwich from the terminal. The FO, on the other hand, had not been so prescient, and the growls from his mid-section occasionally drowned out the ATC communications on the overhead speaker! Approaching SHIPP we are cleared direct to WAYDE, on Amber 300. This cuts a bit off a corner and saves a mile or two. From WAYDE we will be flying on Amber 300 for several thousand miles! A-300 is the Interstate 95 of the aviation world - the main airway from north to south in the western Atlantic. There are several essentially parallel routes on either side of A-300, but for some reason it seems to be the preferred route, at least for us. A-300 has been around for most of my AA career, although not always in the form it has tonight. Sometime around the late '80's or early '90's the airway was changed, and wound up with a kink in it abeam Bermuda. Prior to that time, it was a straight shot from CHAMP, the fix at the New York Center boundary, all the way to Dorado NDB. I still have one of the high altitude charts that shows A-300 as a straight line. Going back farther in time, the airway was called A-20, and the waypoints were different, although the route was the same straight shot. I found an old LORAN chart of the western Atlantic at Oshkosh last summer, dating from 1975 when I was flying the C-141, that shows A-20 with the northern waypoint named TUNNA. That brought back a few memories, because I dimly recall flying over TUNNA in those days. TUNNA was not at the same coordinates as CHAMP - it was closer to what is now BERGH intersection. (And just to confuse matters further, there was another fairly extensive reorganization of the WATRS [Western Atlantic Route System] area just after I retired in April 2008, and apparently even A-300 is now either changed or gone altogether. Que Sera! So the next edition of MSFS may well not support flights down A-300!) The full moon on the clouds below The northbound flight, flight 956, passes overhead on its way to JFK San Juan peeks through the clouds The part of A-300 that I am most familiar with, of course, is the Champ-DDP segment, which is the principal route between the New York area and San Juan Puerto Rico. NY-SJU has been one of the world's major air bridges since the end of World War II, when a migration of sorts took place that seeded the major cities of the northeast, particularly New York, with people from the greater Antilles. These new residents, and their descendants, have long been among the "flying-est" folks in the world, and many of them make one or more pilgrimages yearly to the home island, often on American Airlines. It has been my pleasure over the years to have played a minor role in the journey of more than a few of them! Gracias, amigos, for the privilege! After plodding along for three hours or so, and making a few HF position reports to keep ourselves and the controllers in the New York Oceanic center occupied, the lights of San Juan begin to peep over the horizon ahead, playing hide and seek with the always-present cumulus buildups. At this time of year, and at this time of night, the buildups are benign, and pose no threat of thunderstorms that must be avoided. It is, of course, a different story in the summertime! Deviations nearly the length of the island are not unknown in thunderstorm season! Fortunately, at least at the lower altitudes on the approach, tropical thunderstorms are nowhere near as violent as the sort that spawn in the midwest of the United States. Although they all must be avoided, the tropical variety can at least be approached a bit more closely down low, which is just as well, since weather deviations down here can involve crossing a national border! Closer, now, to San Juan, with a cruise ship heading that way too Thunderstorms as they should be viewed - from a distance This one is a bit closer, but still over 10 miles away! On occasion, a time exposure catches something good As we check in with San Juan center , just south of KRAFT, we are cleared direct to the opposite boundary, an intersection called KIKER. This shifts our route enough to the east that we will pass almost directly over San Juan itself. Many a delightful layover I have spent on the beach in San Juan! And then there was the time when we had a layover during a hurricane. This storm, forecast to pass somewhat north of the island itself and thus not be a risk to life and limb, nonetheless impelled AA to move all aircraft off of the island, taking with them the crews that had been on layovers the day before. Those of us who came in on the day in question were told that the hotel was prepared for the blow, and we were needed to recommence operations the following day, after passage of the storm. With a few misgivings, we obediently trooped out to the crew van and were regaled, on the way to the hotel, with the driver's memories of hurricanes from his youth, all of which were considerably more violent than we hoped the current model would be! Suffice to say that the storm did indeed pass a bit north of the island, and we were spared the worst effects of the inner bands of wind. But what hit San Juan was no slouch either - winds of around 60 knots or so were enough to drive the rain horizontally, and power at the hotel was lost within an hour, not to be regained until morning. It was amusing to see the winds shift as the storm passed - originally around 60 knots out of the north, and then, an hour or so later, 60 knots from the south! I'm glad I wasn't flying in that mess! One perennial feature of the San Juan center that we will miss tonight is the unmistakeable voice of the controller we know as "Clay". I can only presume that is his real name, because sadly I have never met the man. Clay apparently hails from somewhere well south of the Mason-Dixon line, and has perhaps the most recognizeable voice in all of air traffic control worldwide. A few pilots have querried Clay over the years as to why he is not directing traffic at, say, ATL. His reply, apparently, has always involved a love of the ocean and the tropical lifestyle. The latest rumor is that he has retired. Too bad, because he had become an integral part of a trip to San Juan. The skies of Puerto Rico won't be the same without him! Just north of the island we meet our opposite number, flight 956 bound for New York from Buenos Aires. Normally this meet occurs near Margarita, just offshore from Venezuela, but we are late tonight, and 956 was on time. We exchange pleasantries and a bit of info about the weather before passing in the night. Other than 956 and a few other deep-south flights, as well as a few freighters from Fedex and UPS, there is little traffic at this time of night. As we fly over the south shore of Puerto Rico, we enter upon the Caribbean Sea itself. In our less geographically literate era (although perhaps Google Earth may change that!) there are those who think that any island from Bermuda on southward is in the "Caribbean". Not so. The north shore of Puerto Rico is actually caressed by the waters of the North Atlantic. Only the south shore looks out upon the Caribbean. These waters and the shores that faced them were once known as the Spanish Main, when the treasure ships of the Conquistadores brought back the loot of two continents to the mother land in Europe. And where treasure was, so also were those who sought to relieve the Spaniards of the burden of it! Pirates and privateers lurked in these waters, and a portion of the loot never made it back to El Escorial. In the 20th Century, this area became one of the cradles of early civil aviation. By 1920 airplanes were being used in Colombia to carry the mail, landing on lakes and rivers for lack of actual airfields. In 1927 the nascent Pan American Airways began its long trek to global service with a route from Key West to Havana, using a borrowed seaplane for the inaugural flight. Juan Trippe, the visionary president of Pan Am, had his sights set from the very beginning on a route system that would stretch from the United States nearly to Patagonia, and over the next decade he achieved that goal, partly by internal expansion, and partly by acquisition. By the late 1920's Trippe had managed to set up a route system throughout the Caribbean region and the Gulf of Mexico, roughly along the lines of Charles Lindbergh's historical goodwill flight in the Spirit of St. Louis in late 1927. Trippe then expanded the Pan Am route system along both coasts of South America. He pushed the line all the way to Buenos Aires along the east coast, with frequent stops to accommodate the modest range of the small early seaplanes. But soon enough, Trippe was faced with serious competition here, when Ralph O'Neill's New York, Rio and Buenos Aires Airline started flights from Miami to Buenos Aires with the superior Consolidated Commodore seaplane. Trippe fought back using his considerable influence at the Post Office Department, and eventually a shotgun wedding was arranged by which Pan American took over the assets of NYRBA, and the Commodores underwent a change of livery. Along the west coast, Trippe ran up against the formidable presence of the W.R. Grace shipping line, at that time the principal surface transportation entity in the region. Grace had already begun to take an interest in the new dimension of aviation, and through political connections had undertaken to block Pan Am's moves south from Colombia. Both companies, however, accepted the reality that cut-throat competition could be detrimental to profitability, which was a tenuous thing at best in the infant airline industry. And so it was that in early 1929 Pan Am and the Grace Company created a joint entity - Pan American-Grace Airways, known also as Panagra. This line would eventually reach all the way to Santiago Chile, and across the Andes to Buenos Aires, and serve all points between, including some stations in the high Andes. The pilots were a colorful lot indeed, but the safety record they would eventually chalk up is impressive, especially considering the primitive facilities available until after WWII. In 1967 Panagra would be acquired by Braniff Airways, which would then change its name to Braniff International. Braniff would operate an extensive South American network based upon the original Panagra routes until just prior to its bankruptcy, when the package of routes and an extensive infrastructure in South America would be sold to Eastern Airlines. Eastern, of course, also fell on hard times, and Bob Crandall, the hard driving president of American, would purchase the entire package in 1990, thus bringing the eagle logo to the South American continent and setting the stage for my own Latin odysseys! Such as we are embarked upon tonight! A few minutes prior to KIKER intersection, we call ahead to Maiquetia, the Venezuelan center responsible for ATC services in the southeastern Caribbean and eastern Venezuela. At once the journey acquires a Latin flavor - for until this moment we have been chatting with American controllers (notwithstanding a few controllers in the SJU center who are obviously native to that island!). And for some reason the radio transmissions themselves change - more metallic sounding and seemingly more distant, but still eminently serviceable. From now on we must take pains to ensure that our own transmissions reflect a strict adherence to standard ICAO verbiage, because English can no longer be taken for granted as the first language from here on down. After WWII the countries of the world formed the International Civil Aviation Organization, ICAO, which is now an arm of the UN. One of the early actions taken was to establish an international language of aviation; and, perhaps not surprisingly, English got the nod. In practice what this means is that at any international airport in the world, as well as all ATC enroute facilities, some level of English is available, specifically a more or less standardized vocabulary of words and phrases covering the needs of aviation. So, for example, a Russian pilot flying for Aeroflot into South America could communicate with ATC in English, since it is highly unlikely that any controllers in South America are fluent in Russian! This, of course, works very much to the advantage of those such as myself, for whom English is a first, second and third language! (Midwest, Southern and New York varieties!!) Pilots in other parts of the world whose native language is other than English have an extra subject to master in pilot training. In reality, the level of knowledge required is not the same as conversational fluency, but rather the mastery of that standard catalog of phrases and words - words such as takeoff, landing, lineup and wait, and so on. Although most international pilots around the world are in fact fairly fluent in English, the controllers may not be - after all, they do not travel the world daily, and they may have little use for conversational English fluency at home. Interestingly, this also imposes a burden upon the native English speaking aviator. Not only must he learn to identify the ATC version of English when transmitted through occasionally poor reception conditions in many colorful accents, but he must be on guard to use only the correct phraseology in his queries and replies. In the USA, we often grow accustomed to speaking the vernacular in our exchanges with ATC, and they always understand a transmission like"...we'd like to run around that weather to the west, if you can approve that.." Try that on a controller in Brazil, however, and you will likely get a request for a repeat! Or the Portuguese equivalent of "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Over?!" Indeed, the language issue is one of the most important elements of international training, and for the most part it is all carried out on the line. It takes a newbie several trips before he or she can really understand many of the controllers outside of the good ol' US of A. Sunrise Surreal cloudscape on a different flight Auarada in eastern Venezuela By now the east is beginning to show evidence that yet another day may be in the offing. Normally, dawn does not break on these trips until we are south of the Amazon river, but we are running so late this morning that we will get an extra treat - the Amazon by day! But first, we must traverse the mountains of eastern Venezuela. These are nothing at all like the Andes, of course, but they must be reckoned with, and so one of us switches his radar display over to the terrain mode, the better to examine the lay of the land below. By the time we actually get to these mountains, in the Canalma National Park, the sun is up. I have never seen this area before by day, and the landscape is ruggedly beautiful indeed. And apparently sparsely populated. The mountains in Canalma park Approaching PAKON, on the Venezuela-Brazil border Boa Vista, in northern Brazil Approaching PAKON intersection we call ahead to the Brazilian center, known as Amazonica. We will be talking to them for well over an hour, and the signals must travel through repeater stations, which occasionally creates a strange echo effect on the radio, as more than one repeater transmits the same signal at slightly different times. The terrain below flattens out, and the ground cover, which was more like eastern Colorado back in Venezuela, is now becoming jungle. The jungle looks for all the world like a textured green carpet, the only variations being created by the shadows cast by the many clouds down low. I begin to wonder if we will actually be able to see the Amazon river when we reach it, or will it all be obscured by an undercast. Time will tell! There are more important things to attend to at the moment than the clouds below, for we are now fast approaching the Equator. Our only notification of equatorial passage will, of course, be the digital readout on the IRU panel over our heads, and the passage of the waypoint EDRIP on the nav display. EDRIP sits directly on the 0 degree latitude line, and I count down the distance to go, the better to grab a picture with the IRS coordinates showing the exact moment of passage. Tonight the two of us now on duty have both crossed the line many times, but I imagine there are at least a few Pollywogs in the back. They, of course, are fast asleep, or else they surely wish they were. In any event, neither ceremony nor announcement serves as their initiation into the court of King Neptune. More's the pity. The Equator The jungle - a featureless green carpet Manaus at the usual time of passing, on a northbound flight From the days of sail to the present day, an elaborate ritual marks the first equatorial passage of a newbie, known in the maritime world as a Pollywog. A rite of passage not unlike a fraternity initiation takes place on the deck, with the Shellbacks on the crew (those sailors who had already crossed the equator) serving up the trials and torments! Even the ship's Captain, if it be his first crossing, must needs submit to the ceremonies, which culminate in the presentation of the initiates to "King Neptune" and his "court" (a coterie of Shellbacks dressed outlandishly for the part!). These festivities were typically more physical on military ships than on liners, where things were considerably watered down (no pun intended!) for the benefit of the more fragile passengers. At the end of the ceremonies, the initiates are presented with a certificate identifying them as Shellbacks and attesting to their crossing. There are two special orders of Shellback, as it happens - the Golden Shellback who crossed the equator at the 180th parallel of longitude, and the Emerald Shellback who crossed at the prime meridian (0 degrees longitude). The Golden position is just west of Howland Island in the Pacific, and the Emerald lies in the Gulf of Guinea, close by the African coast, so neither of these locations is in what would be considered the shipping lanes, no doubt accounting for the rarity of those two certificates among the world's mariners. All airways in this northern part of Brazil converge at Manaus, the old rubber-barrons' city on the Amazon. There is a modern airport at Manaus, and indeed this is one of only a few enroute alternates between Venezuela and Bolivia. This is not an ETOPS flight, but in some respects it is similar, because with so few alternates careful consideration must be given to the notion of where to go if a mechanical or medical problem became acute. There are, in fact, only three really preferred places to go along the northern two thirds of Upper Amber 300 (UA300) - Margarita, an island just off the Venezuelan coast east of Caracas, Manaus itself on the Amazon, and Santa Cruz, in eastern Bolivia. The airports at Boa Vista, just inside the Brazilian border, and Tefe, west of Manaus, are emergency only, meaning that there may be little more there than a runway. A large airliner once diverted into Rio Branco, another emergency-only field, and found that there were no stairs tall enough to reach the aircraft doors! Manaus comes and goes beneath a solid undercast, and with it goes our daylight photo op of the Amazon. Oh well! I have seen both Manaus and the Amazon by night many times, with the moon reflecting off the wide river giving the appearance of a river of silver. Actually, the wide part of the river that reflected all of that moonlight was the Rio Negro, which joins the Amazon at Manaus. Be that as it may, it was a beautiful sight indeed, and Manaus looked like a golden medallion on a silver chain. The Rio Negro and the Amazon reflecting the moon Non aeronautical maps show numerous small towns and villages along just about every tributary of the river. The river must surely be the highway in this part of the world, because there appears to be but one road into Manaus, coming down from Boa Vista in the north. Other than that one road, and the river itself, there is only the air bridge from this city in the middle of the jungle to the rest of Brazil. Which is perhaps why Brazil had some of the earliest airlines, including the colorful Panair do Brasil, which became a subsidiary of Pan American after the NYRBA acquisition. As we forge ahead south of the Amazon, we have been aloft now for nearly 6 hours. Each of us has already had one of our two breaks, and it will soon be time for my second attempt at a bit of sleep. Actually, sleep has not been hard to come by tonight, and the first break passed quickly in complete oblivion. And the short break is not really a problem, because I have always found it nearly impossible to get more than a couple of hours of sleep at a time on airplanes. It has always been something of a mystery to me how the crews of Northwest, when they split the oriental flights into two equal parts, could make much use of the 7 hour breaks that resulted! The big problem for me, as I'm sure it is for you, is the lack of humidity on an airplane. The air in the cabin has been taken from the compressor section of the engines - squeezed to very high temperatures (around 300 or more degrees C) by the compression process. In that process, much of the moisture has been driven out of the air, and what little remains is further purged in water separators in the compressor-turbine cooling units (the so-called air conditioning "packs"). If much moisture remained in the air going through these packs, the cooling process would result in it freezing and icing up the works, so it is virtually all removed. The humidity level in a pressurized airliner cabin is less than 5%. Compare that to the levels in deserts - typically around 20-30%. Sleeping in an environment like that dries out every membrane in the body, and before long the feeling of daggers in the nose and throat stabs you awake! In my Air Force days, I found that wearing a cotton surgical mask would allow re-breathing enough moisture to enable sleeping for 3-4 hours at a stretch, but that solution is not viable when taking a break in full view of the passengers! (I'm not a doctor but I play one on my breaks!) So I just pull the blanket over my head and hope that the tent effect works half as well. There is talk of humidifiers on the newer 787's, but they won't be here in time to do me any good, other than as a passenger! The simplified orientation chart of our South American stations and alternates In southern Brazil the jungle gives way to farmland The Jeppesen HI 4 chart for South America - highlighted by yours truly We are still in the Amazonica Center's airspace, and will be for a total of over two hours! That's one big center. In contrast, some U.S. centers can be traversed, in some areas, in as little as 15 minutes or so! Of course we have had a frequency change or two along the say, but the sectors at Amazonica are as large as entire centers elsewhere in the world. And even by day there is little traffic, although it is still fairly early in the morning. Things may liven up a bit later in the day. As we approach the boundary between Amazonica and LaPaz, the next center, I reach for the Jeppesen enroute chart once again. Some may think that, with all of the moving map displays, we never touch a paper chart. But there is a wealth of information on the chart that we can avail ourselves of, and it is a good idea to maintain at least a general sense of where we are relative to something other than the glass screen. Failure of the nav systems, or of the electronic instrumentation is only a remote possibility, but it has happened. In this part of the world, it makes sense to have your backup plan readily available. Actually, come to think of it, that makes sense anywhere in the world! The charts for South America have changed a great deal since I started flying down here in the mid 1970's. For one thing, there are now a great many more airways than there were way back then, as well as a few more VOR's and other navaids. Communications has come a long way as well. It was not uncommon to talk to some of the controllling agencies down here via HF radio. Fortunately, things have improved, and VHF is available along our entire route structure. Radar control was unknown in the '70's, save for terminal facilities at a few of the biggest airline airports like Rio and BA. Today, though, there is radar coverage over much of South America. Amazonica, for example, has had radar contact with us since we passed PAKON, and we have made not a single position report to them. That is about to change. My South American enroute charts are the only ones I still highlight in any way - elsewhere, since they are just a backup, that sort of attention to detail is no longer required. But here it pleases me to highlight the FIR (Flight Information Region) boundaries, as well as the airway we are travelling. In addition, I color the FIR boundary reporting points. All of this serves to remind me where we must get in touch with another center, since on occasion we lose radio contact just around the boundary. Fotunately, the Jepps have convenient boxes with the appropriate frequencies, so we are usually always in contact with who we need to be talking to. A USAF chart of more or less the same area in 1974 The Rio Parana, with Resistencia on this side and Corientes on the far bank Looking at a chart from the 1970's, we see a much different picture. There is actually very little controlled airspace - the white areas on this chart are controlled. This is an Air Force chart, and the symbology is different from the Jepps, and I'm not sure whether the fact that both the high and the low Jepp charts of today are entirely white is indicative of the extent of controlled airspace. Still, note how few airways there were back then. Most of them were based upon NDB's (non-directional beacons). There were only a tiny handful of VOR's in all of South America in those days - today there are many more, and only a relatively few NDB's defining airways. Actually, most of the high altitude airways we are using are more or less RNAV airways - the VOR's are often much farther apart then would be practical if actual VOR navigation was relied upon. Athough the communications frequency listings showed VHF availability back then, those frequencies were only useable for a short distance from the station. HF frequencies were the order of the day, and almost all of the communications enroute was handled that way, static and all. I can dimly recall what a goat rope it often was trying to understand the controllers (which is sometimes difficult even on VHF) through the static and distortion of HF, especially at night and with thunderstorms in all quadrants! Sometimes you just had to soldier on, hoping that ATC was moving the little plastic shrimp boat with your number on it along your route in accordance with the last estimate you were able to pass. This last estimate was occasionally hours old. It was always a relief when voice communications of any sort were restored on nights like that. In those days, the navigators were quite busy keeping us headed in the right direction. Although we did use the NDB's and the occasional VOR, the navs could refine the course with data from the Doppler computers, which worked fairly well over the jungle as I recall. With the Doppler giving us speed and track, the Nav could get an update from bearings on radio stations (NDB, VOR) and even celestial shots if the sky conditions were right. All in all, I never got lost down here. Perhaps I was lucky. It really wouldn't have mattered, in this neck of the woods, since terrain is not a factor. Over to the west a ways, things are different, but we'll talk about that on the way back! For tonight, we can just see the edges of the Andes on the terrain display at max range, and we will be well clear of them. Entering Bolivian airspace, we revert to making position reports. Some centers want reports at every compulsory point, others do not. After a few trips, you get a sense of who wants what. Pilots have always been creatures of sloth, and are averse to rousing themselves to make position reports, now that they have gotten spoiled by years of radar contact! It is occasionally possible to avoid reporting certain waypoints by estimating others farther down line in the last report. Occasionally ATC, no doubt moved by the same proclivities, will simply say "Roger, report such and such". It is always worth a try, and if they want something different they will tell us! As I said, you quickly develop a sense of who wants what! La Paz wants just one report prior to the opposite boundary, which suits us just fine. The opposite boundary separates Bolivian airspace from that of Paraguay, the Asuncion Center. At night, Asuncion is easy to spot - it is perhaps the only sizeable town in the world still lit largely with mercury vapor lamps, which are a bluish-white, as opposed to today's sodium vapor lamps, which are the familiar amber-yellow color. I once had a layover in Asuncion many years ago, one of the very few in South America in my Air Force career. I remember little about the place - we weren't there very long, only a few hours, and we did little more than eat and sleep. Well, maybe a bit more than that...but my lips are sealed! In addition to the good VHF communications that now prevails under the Southern Cross, we now have the added benefits of ACARS, the VHF data link service. This is not universally available down here, but coverage is effective over roughly a third of the route. This means that we can monitor the weather at destination, or anyplace else that reports. When we first bought the South America route package from Eastern, along with all of the infrastructure there was a facility that was known as Flight Support Lima. Located, as its name implies, in Lima Peru this was a private, mostly HF, radio communications facility the origins of which went all the way back to the Panagra days. The operators, so we were told, were mostly retired Captains, and thus had considerable aeronautical experience beyond merely talking on the radio. Prior to SATCOM and ACARS, we made position reports every few hours to this facility, which relayed them by land line to dispatch. They were also able to get weather for us, often augmented by their own not inconsiderable local knowledge of the continent! The HF radios they used were old, and not overly strong, and Flight Support Lima was often difficult to contact, but by and large the system worked reasonably well, and they were a familiar voice in the night. With the arrival of ACARS and SATCOM, however, they were redundant, and a few years ago the station was closed and the last of the operators retired. In their place was SATCOM, a feature of most all of our international airplanes these days. SATCOM resembles a telephone more than it does a radio, and it is operated just like a phone - you dial numbers with it and you can connect to any phone anywhere in the world! It is the same system that the passengers in the back use whenever they feel burdened by an intolerable excess of money! (The rates to use it are as astronomical as the satellites it relays signals to!) In fact, if enough passengers were using it at the same time (imagine a charter flight full of software billionaires, as an example - albeit not FS add-on software billionaires, since there are no known entities in that category!!) we would have to override at least one of them in order to acquire some essential bit of weather or operational data! It has been done. For some unfathomable (at least to the non-astrophysicists among the pilot ranks!) reason, both ACARS and SATCOM are often unavailable in the area we are now transiting - Bolivia, Paraguay and northern Argentina. This has nothing to do with the people or governments of these fine countries, but probably is the result of both ACARS ground station geometry and satellite geometry. Whatever the reason, it is precisely here that we need to start paying attention to the destination weather, and we sommetimes cannot do so. The weather in BA has been known to be below even CAT III minimums on occasion, especially around our arrival time. Indeed, it was at BA that I had occasion to fly the second, and now of course the last, real CAT III autoland approach in my long and distinguished career! On that occasion we were also unable to update the weather in the last three hours of the flight, until the ACARS came alive again around an hour out. It was, perhaps, just as well, since by the time we got a weather report the visibility was up to around 1000 feet. As much of a shock as this was (the forecast had been for essentially VFR!) the reports from the previous two hours would have really floored us - visibilities of around 100 feet, which is below even our autoland minimums of 300 feet. Several of our flights to BA (American has had as many as five flights a day into BA from El Norte) had diverted, and at least one crew had gone illegal at the alternate, a fate worse than death for both crew and passengers! When we made our approach, fully coupled, it was merely a rehash of many an old simulator ride, and the landing was uneventful. As I return from my second break, a little over an hour north of BA, the weather has just come across the printer after the usual communications blackout. It is of some concern, since there appear to be thunderstorms in the area - in fact, more or less over the field. We must now consider our plan of action. We have two alternates this morning, because one of them is Montivideo Uruguay, which is so close to BA as to be affected by the same weather, including thunderstorms. The other is Cordoba, which is located around 360 nm northwest of BA. It will be easier and quicker to divert to Cordoba from where we are now than to proceed all the way to BA and retract our steps. This we would do if the weather at BA was certain to remain unfavorable. Thunderstorms, however, are a fast moving and/or shortlived phenomenon, and the place would have to be literally besieged by storms in all quadrants before it would make much sense to divert from here. Fuel, of course, is always an issue, but we have enough to make the long version of the divert, and there is another closer alternate - Rosario- that we can avail ourselves of, since the weather there is adequate. So we press on southward, with options in hand and the back door firmly open, so to speak! Resistencia on the nav display Corientes, on the banks of the Rio Parana Almost there - the arrival and approach clutter the middle of the screen on the long range At Resistencia, a VOR located at the airport of a city in northern Argentina, we come across the second of the great South American rivers we will encounter on this trip - the Rio Parana. This river would actually lead us to the third great river, the Rio de la Plate, and thus to BA eventually, but we will not follow the Parana, which curves around to the west and eventually swings back east to join the Rio Uruguay and form the Plate just north of BA. Instead we will follow the airway more or less due south from SIS, and head for the cluster of close-together waypoints that always announces the imminent end of a journey. When we see this cluster of white characters appear at the top of the nav display, we know we're almost there! Somewhere south of Resistencia, breakfast makes its way to my lap. On these flights, omelets are on the menu, and I dig in with gusto! We don't see omelets on the Atlantic anymore, and I miss them, since they are one of my favorite breakfast entrees. I enjoy this one as I review the arrival and approach to the Ezieza airport at Buenos Aires. From the north, we almost always use the PAGON arrival - PAGON 6A is the variant that was in effect in February 2008 - and since the wind most often favors runway 11, we transition seamlessly onto the No. 1 VOR DME/ILS approach from ARSOT. This approach has a CAT IIIA variant, with a minimum visibility of 200 meters (roughly 600 feet), but I very much doubt we will need to go that low. The latest report now indicates that the thunderstorms are moving off to the northeast, and it appears that we will have little difficulty landing. This is just as well, because although we do indeed have fuel to get back over to Cordoba and land there, what we have little of on a flight of this length is fuel for holding here in the vicinity of BA. This is often the case on really long flights, and on occasion diversions have resulted when even a 20 minute hold might have allowed a flight to land. The Rio Uruguay, joined by the Rio Parana on the right, form the massive Rio de la Plata The area of Tigre, north of BA on the Rio Parana Buenos Aires as we approach from the north on a different trip. Today we see a good sized thunderstorm in the distance looking in this direction A decision to burn some or all of the diversion fuel holding at destination is a dicey proposition, to say the least. A pilot who does this is putting all of his or her aeronautical eggs in but a single basket, and is possible to paint yourself into a very uncomfortable corner. I have never done it myself, always preferring the better part of valor. The only circumstance when it might make even the slightest amount of sense to stick around would be when the field was under the influence of a very transient condition, like a small thunderstorm, that was clearly going to vacate the premises quickly. Fortunately, most places have closer alternates available, like Rosario, and we can easily manufacture some holding fuel by calling dispatch and changing the alternate. Although in the strictest technical sense alternate fuel is purely a preflight planning function, and it is entirely the Captain's judgement as to fuel management once underway, all of us stick to the same guidelines, and I would never consider approaching a weathered-in terminal area without enough fuel actually onboard to hold and then divert. There are advantages to being the first one at the alternate, among them first crack at the fuel truck! Today, though, all of this is academic, because as we make our descent over the city itself we can see, by eyeball and radar, that the rain has moved away to the east. The path to the airport is clear, and we have only a few airplanes ahead of us, meaning that little or no delay is to be expected. And indeed, no delays are encountered. Turning the corner at ARSOT, I begin to configure the airplane for the approach and landing. By now we are considerably lighter than we were almost 11 hours ago, around 280,000 lb now, and the approach speed is in the normal range - around 137 knots Vref. At this weight and speed, the 767-300 is a real pleasure to land - stable and yet responsive. A closer view of BA, again on a different trip On the ground, you can see the storm which passed a short time ago off to the east The old terminal at Ezieza We slide down the glide slope and cross the threshold. The runway is still wet, which might just smooth things out even more. And indeed it does - the landing is one to be savored! They aren't all like that, of course, but it is always rewarding to get one. The smoothest landing I ever made in my life was one night on a wet runway at Frankfurt, in a C-141A. The 141 was an easy airplane to land well, because it flew like a giant Cessna 172 and you had to actually flare it and hold it off for a bit. On the rainy night in question I just kept holding it off, and the pitch attitude got to be 5 or so degrees nose up, which was a bit more than the normal landing attitude of the Starlifter. At that point I got to wondering if we were actually on the ground (!) and, thinking that at the speed we were making, less than 100 knots, we had by God better be, I called for the spoilers to be extended. Normallly this call is made as a command, but on this night it was more like a question - "Spoilers?" As the spoilers deployed, I was mentally prepared for the airplane to drop like a stone to the runway, but nothing happened, other than an increase in the rate of decelleration. We had been on the ground for several seconds before I called for the spoilers, and nobody knew it! Every pilot should get at least one like that in a career! And yes, that was the only one! As we taxi in to a terminal that looks, in parts, like a set from the movie Evita, we are all ready for this particular oddysey to be over. Just the deplaning, customs, and a 45 minute ride to the city separate us from the comforts of an exceptional bed. The Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Buenos Aires is one of my favorites in the entire world, and soon enough I will bury myself under duvets and crisp sheets and take a long nap until it is time to meet the crew for a night on the town. A night that will feature the best steak in the entire world! See you in a few hours! Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Final Argosy Series Final Argosy Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court Final Argosy Part Three - Viva Tango! Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos Final Argosy - Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy - Fini Flight
  6. Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross By Tony Vallillo (9 October 2008) I have, in the course of a long career, traveled both East and West; though rarely have the twain ever met! (The only occasion when they did was a flight from Paris to Los Angeles a few years ago...but that, as they say, is another story!) The delights of the 767 International Division at JFK are not limited to these directions, however. Although tales of flying north come mostly from my Air Force days, I need only put the "S" under the lubber line of memory to find a rich assortment of flying. The Caribbean has more or less been American Airlines' happy hunting grounds ever since one O. Roy Chalk decided to sell Trans Caribbean Airlines to us back in the early 1970's. From that day forth, the Eagle logo has roamed far and wide across the Spanish Main. Later, in the course of my own career, we made yet another purchase - this time of a parcel of routes throughout South America that trace their ancestry to Pan American Grace Airways, via Braniff and Eastern. With the routes came a nearly complete airline-within-an-airline: ground staff, facilities, radio stations and flight attendants, and a storied history. C-141A at V.C. Bird airport on the island of Antigua, 1973 The author, as a much younger pilot (!), at the controls of a C-141A in the mid 1970's. That big grin would be a feature for over 38 years whenever I was in the air! My own first exposure to flying with a Latin flair occurred quite early in my career, while I was flying C-141A's out of Charleston AFB in South Carolina. We were occasionally sent south, to places like Antigua and Guantanamo Bay, in the Caribbean, and sometimes further - to places like La Paz, Bolivia, at 11,000 feet elevation, or Lima, Peru, or even Uruguay and Paraguay. These flights served the various diplomatic outposts on that continent, and were referred to as the "embassy runs". I still remember the La Paz layover - even in my youth an elevation of over 11,000 feet was a literally a dizzying height, and it was difficult to sleep because of the continuing need to gasp for breath! We used oxygen, as do all crews today, for at least 30 minutes before engine start, and made the entire taxi out, takeoff, and initial climb with the mask on. Not until the cabin altitude got below 9000 feet or so were we freed from the encumbrance of the mask assembly! La Paz, Bolivia in 1974, on a MAC Embassy Run trip. These South American jaunts were few and far between in my Air Force days, since there was no real seniority system in place at the squadron, and these were considered plum assignments! Naturally, they rarely percolated beyond the scheduling officers - pilots who, on what would otherwise have been their days off, worked the schedules in the squadron offices. These worthies considered it their rightful due to have their pick of the trips as the taskings came off the teletypes. So those of us who would rather be at the pool on our days off usually wound up flying the less desirable assignments. At the time it mattered little to me, since my main goal was simply to log as much flying time as I could, the better to impress my future potential airline employers! When at last I managed to cross the threshold of American Airlines, I found that even my own humble seniority level (originally number 3698 out of 3714!) carried, at least occasionally, the ability to fly south instead of west. Both of the airplanes upon which I started my career, the Boeing 727 and the venerable Boeing 707, were big players in the Caribbean. Places like San Juan, St. Croix, Aruba, Curacao, Barbados, Santo Domingo and Port Au Prince found their way into my logbooks during those halcyon flight engineer days. There were good layovers in those days, since the round trip was often over 8 hours and we rarely used relief pilots in that era. Anything south of San Juan usually involved a 24 hour layover, and many a delightful afternoon was spent on the beach after we arrived, to be followed by dinner under the stars. On passenger runs, we would have the company of the flight attendants on the layover, and this often made the beachside afternoon even more enjoyable - for the conversation, if for no other reason! American goes to most of the same places today, but more often than not both flight attendants and pilots simply make the round trip in a single duty period, a trip known in the trade as a "turn around". Many of the 707 runs were pure freighter trips, using one of the 15 or so of our seven O's that were either built as freighters or converted to that status in the late 1960's. In those days, and indeed until the mid 1980's, American operated a considerable fleet of freighter airplanes, both the 707 and the larger 747. It was not until the 1980's that the 707's and 747's went to the boneyard, and with them the pure freighter concept. The cargo, which was and still is a robust market, went into the bellies of the other widebodies, particularly the Airbus A300-600R, which was deployed almost exclusively in the Caribbean, and eventually became known around JFK as the Caribbean Cruiser! More's the pity, because the freighters had plenty of room to bring back the larger trophies of the Caribbean, things like wicker chairs and carved wood tables, all of which had to be tied into the back seat of the Fiat convertible I contrived to drive in those days! Navigation in those early days of my career was primitive, by today's standards. The 707's had by that time been equipped with inertial navigation - although most of them had but a single unit, which was sufficient unto the simple task of getting to and from San Juan. The 727, on the other hand, still had the old "Chinese Television" LORAN sets, which looked like relics from the 1950's. This set featured a three inch CRT, thus the "television" part of the moniker. The oriental aspersion arose from the fact that the entertainment consisted of nothing but sine wave patterns dancing across the green screen. The copilot applied himself to the matching and interpretation of these waves, and when correctly set up, the matched patterns revealed numbers that could be used, on a special chart of unbelievable complexity, to determine the position of the airplane. A Loran chart from the mid 1970's. The elliptical lines are the lines of position from a given Loran chain, and each is identified by a number. Careful manipulation of the controls of the loran set would yield numbers which could be identified as lines of position from the chart. Meanwhile, as all of this navigational mumbo jumbo being handled by the FO, the Captain was, like as not, flying by the ADF needle. Tuned to either WCBS in New York, or the Dorado (DDP) radio beacon on Puerto Rico, the needle would provide reasonably good course guidance for just about the entire flight, especially at night! And with no prying radar eyes keeping track, we were assumed to be where we said we were. None of this, of course, troubled me. Sitting at the FE panel, I was absorbed in the temperatures, pressures and flows of fuel, hydraulic fluid and electrons, to say nothing of the consumption of a great deal of chicken! In the opening years of my career, there were always two steaks and one chicken provided for the crew, and the FE always got the chicken! Fortunately for me, I have always preferred chicken to steak. When at last I ascended the heights and assumed the lofty perch of the left seat, things had changed considerably in the Caribbean. The 707 was long gone, of course; the fuselages to the boneyard and thence to the Alcoa smelters, and the engines to the Air Force, where they replaced the truly obsolete water injected motors on the KC-135's. The 727 was now fitted with Omega, a radio navigation system considerably more sophisticated than the LORAN sets it replaced. In fact, it resembled the early non-mapping GPS units both in function and, much of the time, in accuracy. And the new A300's were a real marvel - FMC's and triple IRU's with moving maps and sophisticated auto-flight systems kept the darn things within feet of the centerline of the airway! Where previously we had looked to one side or the other to wave to the opposite direction traffic, we now looked directly up or down! Such is the state of affairs nowadays, as I contemplate flying the 767-300 to the other other side of the world. For some unfathomable reason, all of the South American flights, at least from New York, are all-nighters. I suppose this makes a certain convoluted sense to a business traveler, since nothing of a business day is wasted. However, after a flight of nearly 11 hours, especially in coach, no important business should be conducted for at least 24 hours, until the traveler resumes a state of rationality! Even business class leaves a good bit of meaningful rest to be desired. But, as in so many things in life, Vox Populi Vox Dei (The voice of the people is the voice of God). And so it is that I point the Honda in the direction of JFK airport in the late afternoon. At least I got to sleep really late that morning! Long haul flying like this demands careful physiological preparation starting at least a day in advance. I am lucky in a way; because, left to my own devices, I am a night owl, and would prefer to sleep until noon every day. This actually works fairly well on overnight flights like the Buenos Aires trip that I am now about to embark upon. The poor soul who arises bright and early every morning will be absolutely devastated by a trip like this. A strategic nap in the early afternoon would be a must for him, and I have also availed myself of it, because the most useless things in aviation are the runway behind you, the altitude above you, and the nap you didn't take! The work/rest planning for a BA trip is almost as important as the fuel planning. Of course we have three pilots, and thus we'll be taking breaks. In fact, this flight is long enough that the breaks are in excess of 3 hours each, leaving open the possibility of splitting them into two 1:45 or so segments. There are times when this is desirable, such as a delayed departure, when the last break might begin 12 hours after the last nap ended. And that is if you actually took the nap! If your last sleep ended in the morning, you would be in real trouble if you got stuck with the last break. With a split break plan, each of us would have a sleep opportunity within the first 5 hours of the flight. All of this must be considered, along with the relative rest states of each crewmember, as part of the overall plan. The good thing about a 22:10 departure is that there is little road traffic in the early evening, and the commute is painless. Operations is also nearly deserted at this hour, with only a few crews milling about, bound for Paris or London on the late flights, or Sao Paolo, Brazil. The chief pilots and the other denizens of the flight office have long departed for hearth and home! So we can and do avail ourselves of an extra bit of informality at this hour, and ties are removed and collars loosed, the better to engage in revisions and flight planning more comfortably! Planning a really long trip like this BA flight is a bit more involved than a flight to Paris or Los Angeles. For one thing, the distance, roughly 4800 miles, is very near the range limit of a 767-300 with a full load. So we will be filling the tanks nearly to the tops, and our weight is occasionally right at the ramp limit, 409,000 pounds. This must be monitored carefully at the gate, and we will not be able to push back until we have confirmed that the actual weight is indeed at or below this limit. The takeoff limit is 1000 pounds less, 408,000 but that should be no problem since we will burn at least 1000 pounds of fuel and probably much more on taxi-out. That leads to another consideration - the fuel for taxi. In olden times, prior to the big expansion of operations at JFK a few years ago, there were no delays out-to-off after around 21:00 unless the weather was bad. Nowadays, for a variety of reasons, the late evening delays are often mind boggling, with over 80 jets in the conga line and delays in excess of two hours. This calls for careful planning indeed, because the FAA recently changed the law regarding fuel on board. Prior to the change the legal fuel was that required at the gate prior to departure, and, although anticipated takeoff delays were, of course, accounted for, there was no legal requirement to have a specific amount of fuel in the tanks as the takeoff roll began. It was up to the Captain. Nowadays, the legal specification is for a certain amount in the tanks as the throttles are advanced for takeoff. It now makes no legal difference how much fuel we have when we leave the gate, so long as we can take off with the Min Takeoff Fuel onboard. Generally, on the 767-300, the "spread" between the dispatch release fuel at the gate and the min takeoff fuel is around 1500-2000 pounds. But, since the beast burns around 2500-3000 lb/hour on the ground with both engines running, and since we cannot even think about taxiing around on one engine at weights above 310,000 pounds, it is obvious that a potential 2 hour delay would require at least 5000 pounds of taxi fuel. Or more. And that much extra fuel, over and above that needed for the flight itself, is not always possible on this flight, due to the max takeoff weight already mentioned. You can easily get caught between the rock of fuel and the hard place of weight! This has been on my mind since before I arrived at the airport. Tonight I actually called dispatch from the car on the way in, to get an idea of what the departure delays might be. My thinking was that if we wound up in the situation where only around 2000 pounds of fuel could be allotted to taxi-out, and the delays were in excess of around 30 minutes, we might consider delaying the departure from the gate until the out-to-off times were more reasonable. We'd still get airborne about the same time, give or take 30 minutes or so, but we would avoid the ultimate Bad-Day-at-Black-Rock scenario: burning all of the taxi fuel and having to return to the gate to get more. This would mean losing our place in the line, but that would be a moot point - we would also be illegal to fly the trip. This flight is fairly close to the limit of a duty day, which is 14 hours from sign-in to debrief. A delay anywhere near two hours would make us illegal if we had to return to the gate. It has happened, and it's not a pretty sight! Dispatch had determined that the delays are not likely to be a problem tonight. Well, we'll just have to see about that, but for now there is nothing more that I can do about it. I must turn my attention to the flight plan itself. A JFK-EZE (the IATA identifier for Ezieza Airport in Buenos Aires; the ICAO identifier is SAEZ) flight plan is actually long enough to choke the onboard flight management computer on occasion. The physical flight plan that emerges from the computer is around 10 feet long! More than a few forest giants bit the dust so that I could make this flight tonight! There are 55 waypoints just to get to the initial approach fix. Total time from takeoff to landing is estimated to be 9:59, which is interesting since the scheduled block to block time is 10:45. The historical taxi times, out and in, come to 47 minutes, which means that there is really no way we will arrive on schedule tomorrow morning! Especially if the out to off delays end up being as long as they have been running lately! The log for an earlier BA flight - same route, different day and load! Still 55 waypoints, though! One of the weather depiction charts for South America Our route tonight is one of the several possible routes between these cities. The departure will take us over SHIPP and then to LINND, DIDLE, WAYDE, A300 KIKER, UA300 MAN, UA316 VALLE, UL793 GUA, UW65 PAGON and the PAGON 6A arrival, probably to runway 11. This is not too far from a direct great circle route, diverging a bit to the east between Puerto Rico and southern Brazil. From JFK to DDP this is just like a flight to San Juan. Beyond Puerto Rico, we will continue southward to Margarita, about 200 miles east of Caracas. From there the route takes us down across the eastern part of Venezuela to Boa Vista, just inside Brazil, where we hang a bit of a right turn and head to Manaus, the old rubber baron capital on the Amazon. 182 miles north of Manaus we will cross the Equator, and the water in the toilet bowls will reverse its rotation! From Manaus we head southwest to the border with Bolivia, passing just to the east of Santa Cruz and a bit west of Asuncion Paraguay on the way to Resistencia, in the north of Argentina. From there it's a straight run down to BA. If we get airborne anywhere near 23:00 tonight, which is pretty much the normal time, dawn should catch us somewhere south of Manaus, probably between there and Santa Cruz. Of course, if we are very late, we may actually get a daytime view of the Amazon and the jungle! We shall see what we shall see. The fuel load is just shy of 153,000 pounds, just about full (max fuel is about 160,000). That and the passengers and cargo put us right on 409,000 pounds planned at the ramp. The fuel planned for the taxi out is only around 2000 pounds, and obviously there is no room (weight wise) for more, so we'll have to see about those delays. A quick phone call to JFK tower brings forth the assurance that delays are running only around 30 minutes at the moment. So far so good. The airplane waits for us at the gate, taking a short breather between the Paris trip it came in on a couple of hours ago and our own marathon voyage. These things never seem to tire, which is often more than can be said of the crew! Snow often lies in great piles at this time of year, shoved up by the ramp plows. It may not melt until April! The weather forecast for Buenos Aires is good, with light winds and visibilities at arrival time of around 3000 meters (approximately 2 miles) but forecast to improve to essentially clear later in the afternoon. Montevideo and Cordoba are the alternates, and there are plenty of CAVOK's in the forecasts for those airports. Enroute, we should see mostly crosswinds from the west, strong just north of Puerto Rico and again in southern Brazil, so we can anticipate a bit of turbulence, but not for any length of time. There are a few areas of thunderstorms indicated over central Brazil, not uncommon for this or any time of year. These will probably be dissipated by the time we pass through the area. The Notam section of the plan is a mile long, as might be expected for a flight halfway down the Western hemisphere! After checking them, and printing out a few charts of the enroute weather, we pack the paperwork up in a green folder and get ready to head out to the plane. This being February, the snow lies heavy on the ground, although fortunately none of it is falling tonight. Deicing would add to the delay factor, and there have been trips where the glycol bath alone took over an hour, by the time all was said and done! But that will not be the case tonight. Often in winter, the departure festivities are enlivened by a session with the deicers. This is what it looks like from the cockpit! The passengers are already boarding when we arrive at the gate, and after a quick word to the agent that the cockpit crew is present and accounted for we board the plane and greet the flight attendants, or at least those of them that are in the forward galley at the moment. Several of my favorite flight attendants are with us tonight, so this should be a good trip. All we have to do is depart JFK in good order! The FB (third pilot) now returns from his exterior inspection and pronounces the airplane fit for flight. I am happy to leave the walkaround to him tonight, since the temperature is such as to discourage lingering out on the ramp! Ah, such are the fruits of seniority! I myself made many a sub-zero walkaround in my days as a flight engineer, and I am glad to be rid of the task today. As the FB revitalizes himself with a quick cup of hot Java, the FO and I start preparing the FMC for its evening's work. Fortunately the ARINC upload works tonight and much of the flight plan is already in residence deep within the rather limited memory banks of the computer. I say much of it because the plan is so long that the ARINC upload fails to get it all, and we have to put the last few airway segments in manually, a frequent task on this flight. I remember the earlier days of my A300-600R flying, before the FMC could be loaded by airways. That must have been some task - loading 55 waypoints manually! Fortunately, at least at the airline, those days are long gone. Garmin GPS's used in general aviation still work one waypoint at a time, but I doubt if anyone is planning a trip from New York to Buenos Aires in a Cessna 182! The moment of truth - the FMC after the closeout is loaded! Right on schedule the door closes, and we are ready to go. Well, not just yet, of course; we now have to wait for the load closeout to find out exactly what the airplane weighs. Normally, we get those numbers on taxi-out, but tonight we cannot even move the airplane until we determine that we are OK weight-wise. Moving an airplane above the max ramp weight brings on the need for an extensive inspection, hardly the way to start a 10-plus hour trip! So we cast an impatient eye on the ACARS printer, trying to will it to spit out a favorable closeout. As always, in these situations, the wait is not a short one! In due course the printer spits out a short stream of numbers, and we find that our weight is 408,900 pounds, just below the max ramp weight and acceptable for movement. After a brief exchange with the ground man, who has been doing a little dance outside to keep warm, the tug belches out a cloud of black smoke and, with a throaty roar, digs in and starts pushing. It is a slow go, as heavy as we are, and it is obvious that the tug is throwing all of itself into the struggle, like the little engine that could! In order not to add to the difficulty of the tug's task, we hold off starting the engines until the pushback is complete. Then, having saluted the ground man and freed him to seek warmer climes, we taxi up to the end of the ramp and contact ground control. Ground issues us taxi instructions, and they are not what I would expect for a runway 04R operation. This is a bad sign, and sure enough, as we clear the ramp area and move onto the field itself, we can see that the conga line is almost endless tonight. We are, in fact, headed not for 04R but for 13R, and the line of airplanes goes all the way around the end of 13R, down the length of 13R and the parallel taxiway, and then out Kilo to 04R. As we turn onto the outer perimeter, taxiway Bravo, I hear another airplane, one obviously ahead of us and probably by a good bit, being told that he is around number 80 for departure! Darn!! In the hour or so since I talked to tower on the phone, it seems that every airplane east of the Mississippi has developed the immediate need to take off from JFK! This puts us in a real bind, because, as I indicated earlier, we do not have the fuel for a delay of anywhere near this magnitude. And the entire line is moving, albeit at the pace of an arthritic snail, which eliminates the possibility of shutting down both engines for awhile. But we very much need to be able to do just that, or face a return to the ramp, and, for us, a return home. Ground control at JFK is best dealt with delicately. Their job is incredibly difficult, especially at night, and often the controllers are not in the best of humor. Such is the case tonight, but I will have to risk their wrath. Taking advantage of a brief break in the radio traffic, I quickly acquaint ground with our fuel predicament, and suggest that the way is clear to taxi over to the other side of the airport, near the departure end of runway 31L. That is very much out of the way in the current operation, and once relocated we can shut down both engines and run the APU for power. Surprisingly ATC, after a bit of consideration, is agreeable. Perhaps they are motivated by the thought of the goat-rope that would ensue when we requested a return to the gate from the middle of the conga line. (That did happen to me one night, due to maintenance issues, and because of our position in the line it took another hour before we could begin taxiing back.) Whatever the reason, ground agrees with our plan, and clears us over to the other side, adding that they will probably be using 31L for takeoffs by the time our turn would come up. Serendipity rears its pretty little head! Almost immediately, a number of other flights chime in and allow as to how they, too, would like to save some fuel! Ground makes short shrift of most of these requests, apparently on the grounds that mere fuel savings not complicated by an imminent need to return to a gate are insufficient grounds for special treatment. I'm glad that I seem to have dreamed this up first, since the ploy seems to be less successful for imitators! I will remember to debrief this with dispatch after the trip, so that some kind of accommodation can be arranged here for this flight on a regular basis. So we taxi over, shut down and wait it out. The good news is that we are all on the clock, so to speak. While we wait, the flight attendants improvise a beverage service, and we turn the seat belt sign off to let people stretch their legs. This will be important; because once the flight starts they will have little opportunity to do so, especially in coach. We certainly want to avoid anyone coming down with DVT, or any other diseases for that matter! There will be plenty of time to get them seated before we have to get moving again. Anyway, to make an already long story a bit shorter, we wait with the engines shut down for nearly two hours until the call comes to crank them up. The APU only burns around 800 pounds per hour, so we have more than we need when the moment of takeoff arrives. Advancing the throttles on 31L, I prepare for a lengthy tour of one of the longest runways in the world. The bird does not disappoint me - our takeoff run is long but distinguished, and as we finally break ground just after midnight we are up and away on what I hope will be another exciting Argentinean odyssey! Left turn to Canarsie and straight on until morning, and with any luck at least a few Pollywogs will have become Shellbacks by then! Continued in Under the Southern Cross part two - King Neptune's Court Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Final Argosy Series Final Argosy Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court Final Argosy Part Three - Viva Tango! Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos Final Argosy - Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy - Fini Flight
  7. Final Argosy By Tony Vallillo (7 August 2008) Retirement! The word means different things to different people. For many, retirement is akin to parole from prison after a lengthy sentence - a freedom from an incarceration of sorts, ensnared in a job that they never enjoyed. For a fortunate few, however, retirement is a bittersweet leave-taking from a pursuit that has brought delight and fulfillment over the course of many years. These few are fortunate, of course, because the job itself was something they would gladly have paid for the privilege of doing, would it have been possible to do so. Many airline pilots fall into the category of those fortunate few - they have been able to make a lifetime career out of a childhood dream. The dream, however, has a limit. An airline pilot is perhaps the only professional who knows with certainty, to the exact minute, when he or she must retire. In fact, I knew the exact moment of my retirement long before I was hired! You could even say that my retirement was written in the stars the moment I was born. In the beginning, airline pilots retired when they or their chief pilot decided that they ought to. Usually this was a matter of no longer wanting to fly, or of having aged, mentally or physically, to the point where one could no longer safely do so. But in the late 1950's, prompted by a complicated set of events and circumstances, not the least of which was the advent of the jets, the head of the new FAA decreed that no person could fly as a pilot in scheduled airline operations after reaching their 60th birthday. Thus was begotten the so-called age 60 rule; and so it was that the day I was born my retirement date was fixed: 9 September 2009 would be the first day of the rest of my life. Or so I had always thought. For some time, beginning in the 1980's, there had been a very small but inordinately vocal minority of airline pilots who, for one reason or another, bemoaned their mandatory retirement. Their lamentations had little effect, since the overwhelming majority of pilots at the airlines were nowhere near the end of their careers, and had no interest whatsoever in prolonging their own apprenticeships in the right seat just so that some old guy (or, these days, old gal!) could prolong his or her already successful career! The pilot unions, always influential in such affairs, took heed of this prevailing wind and lobbied for no change in the regulations - effectively, as it turned out. But everything changed dramatically after 2003. In the wake of 9-11 just about every airline in America went through the car-wash of chapter 11 bankruptcy; and, along with the debt and a good portion of pilot salaries, so also went the pensions. With somewhere near 8 out of every 10 airline pilots facing retirement on only the financial orts and droppings of the PBGC, the tune changed overnight; and following the lead of the Europeans, the U.S. Congress eventually prodded the FAA into raising the mandatory retirement age to 65, thus giving every airline pilot who was on the payroll on the day the law was signed an extra 5 years to live in a style above that which Social Security would allow! This was not, of course, universally appreciated. The pilots at American Airlines, my own alma mater, were very much opposed to the idea of raising the mandatory age. Beholden of the last intact pension in the industry, at least among the majors, AA's pilots were not facing subsistence-level income in retirement, and the FO's were in no mood to wait another 5 years to achieve the Captaincy. Our in-house union, the Allied Pilots' Association, fought the age increase tooth and nail, much as the larger ALPA had done in previous years, but without success. Thus far, at least, age 65 stands. I myself never had any intention of flying beyond age 60. My own feeling was that age 60 had been my original goal, and it would serve little purpose to hang around longer, a monkey wrench in the gears of advancement for others! Then too, the old kit bag was getting considerably heavier, for no apparent reason! Perhaps most importantly, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed had input into this decision as well, and had already decreed that she intended to wait no longer than my 60th to begin a life of leisure and travel! Since the word of She is usually law around here, I had little choice but to comply!! September 9th, 2009 loomed large, albeit still out there in the mists of future time! But suddenly, like a hurricane in the days before weather forecasting, came the late 2007 tanking of the equity markets around the world! By early January '08 it had become evident that, unless the financial markets recovered dramatically by the end of March, it would make a great deal of financial sense to retire on 1 April, which would be a year and a half "early" (or 6 1/2, depending upon whose notion of retirement you consider!). The actual financial reasons for this decision are arcane, have nothing to do with flight simulation, and thus can be ignored here. Suffice to say that the markets did not recover; and, as I write this, I am now a retired airline pilot! So, like all of you, the only 767 I can get near these days, other than as a passenger, is the Level D version that resides within my FS2004 and FSX! An airline pilot's final flight is a special event, and often an emotional one. Depending upon the pilot's outlook, there may be nostalgic regret or an eagerness to get the thing over with and start playing golf full time! Some pilots have even been given to grand gestures, such as the Captain who, rumor has it, tossed his full kitbag off a large bridge on his way home from the fini flight! Others can barely make it through the water cannon salute without the eyeballs becoming unusually well lubricated! As a chief pilot back in the 1990's, I officiated at a great many last flight ceremonies, and I observed the gamut of these reactions. Yet little of that extensive experience prepared me for my own final argosy! But we are getting ahead of ourselves here, because I really didn't have just one final flight, but many! Thanks to the one Captain ahead of me on the New York 767 roster retiring in December, I had several months in the exalted position of Number One in the bid status, thus ensuring that I could arrange things entirely to my own satisfaction, at least as far as my schedules were concerned. And so it was that, as it became apparent that I might indeed have to retire on 1 April, I began to schedule myself for "last flights" into a good many places that I had frequented and enjoyed in the course of my career. It is upon this series of flights that I now invite you to embark, and experience with me the sunset of an airline career! For many years now, one of my favorite places in the entire world has been Buenos Aires, Argentina. I first became acquainted with the delights of BA, as we call it, in 1999, the first year that I flew the 767. We had been flying the JFK-EZE run ever since we took over the South American routes of Eastern Airlines, back in the early '90's. In those days, of course, I was qualified on the Airbus, which lacked the range for such a long flight. Thus, almost a decade would pass before I would fly under the Southern Cross. Once I began flying there, though, I began a love affair with that wonderful city that will outlast my flying career, probably by a considerable margin considering that She-Who-Must and I will probably be spending our winters down there, basking in the South American summer! Once it became apparent that the past winter might be my last as an AA pilot, it was obvious that a month of BA was in order, so in February I selected a schedule that featured three trips to BA, with two of them including a mid sequence turn to Montevideo, Uruguay. We will explore the realm of South American flying in the next installments, "Under the Southern Cross". The final month of March 2008 was my last chance to say goodbye to Paris, to say nothing of Rome. I had long ago decided that the actual fini flight, the final Argosy, would indeed be a Rome trip; and so for the last month I selected a Rome schedule. But Paris has been a favorite destination of mine for more years than I have been flying as a Captain, so several trips to the City of Lights would be in order. This was easy to accomplish - the pilots flying the Paris runs, especially the ones that layover on the weekend, are far below my lofty status of number one on the NY 767 list. These men and women rarely get to Rome, and so a trade is easy to arrange. Since my purpose in Paris would be to bid farewell to my musical friends, who for the most part ply their trade on Sundays, I ended up with two Paris trips over the two middle weekends of the month. We will explore the City of Light in the subsequent chapters, "Last Tango in Paris". But there was one more entry I had always wanted to make in my logbook. Over the course of my career, I had never commanded Flight One, our premier JFK-LAX transcon. This is an historical flight at AA, and it has been around since the 1930's, flown by just about every major aircraft that we have had on the property. For the last couple of decades, the 767-200 has held the assignment, and it was available to me if I ever got around to choosing it. In the last week of my career, I did indeed choose it, and we will take a look at the flight and its' long and storied history in "The Mercury". And then, as time marched inevitably on, came the fini flight - my final flight as an AA pilot. Did he make it without tears, and without putting a scratch on the airplane? Did She-Who-Must get a seat on the flight? Did the Chief Pilot know his name? In "Fini Flight" you'll find the answers to these and other questions that inquiring minds want to know! Next stop - Buenos Aires! Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net Final Argosy Series Final Argosy Final Argosy - Under The Southern Cross Final Argosy - King Neptune's Court Final Argosy Part Three - Viva Tango! Final Argosy Part Four - Adios Amigos Final Argosy - Last Tango In Paris! Final Argosy - Fini Flight
×
×
  • Create New...