Showtime! Part One

By Tony Vallillo (22 July 2007)

Flight simulation is by no means the only hobby spawned by aviation. A trip to any of the various "Airliners" style conventions held around the world each year will reveal a rich heritage of airplane spotting, photography, collection of just about every physical object associated with airplanes and airlines, scale model building, and numerous other avocations.

One of the most fascinating of these ancillary pursuits, from the perspective of an airline pilot, is the hobby of airliner photography. Several outstanding web sites have arisen over the years to support and popularize this hobby, just as FlightSim.Com has done for the FS community. You probably already know some of the most popular of these aviation photography sites - sites such as www.Airliners.net and www.JetPhotos.net, to name just two. With upwards of a million pictures uploaded and on display on these and other sites, it is actually possible for a pilot like me to find that he has been on candid camera on occasion!

Although nearly every airport in the airline world is represented in the databases of sites like Airliners.net, it quickly becomes apparent that certain airports attract a disproportionate share of the photographers. Perhaps this relates to the ease of gaining access to a favorable shooting location, or maybe the airport in question is simply close to an especially prolific photographer's home. Whatever the reason, it is obvious that flights into and out of ZRH, MAN, LHR, and to a slightly lesser degree LAX, JFK, and DFW are more likely to appear on the web. And there is one more place that seems to be very well represented, especially considering its location - SXM!

Saint Maartin, of course, is a beautiful Caribbean paradise, popular with sun seekers from all over the world. Among aviation enthusiasts, however, it is most famous for that picture from a national magazine showing a Boeing 747 taking, as a Navy pilot would say, the "1" wire! A trip to airliners.net for a search on SXM will quickly reveal that this was not a one-time event! Although most of the arrivals there are considerably closer to a normal glide path, there are some pictures where the wheels seem to be only scant feet above the perimeter road!

Maho beach is the local name for the small strip of sand just off the approach end of runway 09. In any other circumstances, this would probably be just a deserted mini-strand, but Maho has two especially appealing characteristics - it directly faces the setting sun, and it is literally a few yards from the end of the main (indeed the only) runway at an international airport!

Each afternoon, as the big jets arrive from afar to disgorge hordes of sun worshipers, a crowd gathers at Maho for one of life's special thrills - the thrill of having an 800,000 lb airplane part your hair at nearly 200 miles per hour! Of course, this being the Antilles, there is usually a topless girl or two attending the spectacular; but, at least for a while, all eyes are on the skies as 747 follows 757 and 737, not to mention the odd Airbus or two! All in all, around 8-10 large jets arrive over the course of an hour or so. After refueling and reloading, they each depart in a sirocco of exhaust and sand, buffeting the occasional foolhardy souls who, in defiance of prominent signs, bravely hang onto the perimeter fence in an insane parody of the movie "Pushing Tin"!

Ever since I stumbled, some years back, upon the first of my several known portraits on airliners.net, I have fallen victim to a mild sort of aeronautical Narcissus complex! And so, not too long ago, it seemed advantageous to put myself once again before the hoped for crowd of airline paparazzi - which is to say that I bid a St. Maartin layover!

SXM can be experienced in two ways at the New York base at our airline. All year 'round we have at least one SXM turnaround per day. A "turnaround" is what we call a trip that lasts only a single duty period, usually within the span of a calendar day. The turnaround in question leaves JFK in the morning, arrives at SXM in the early afternoon, and departs an hour or two later for an early evening arrival back at JFK. This trip runs just over 8 flying hours these days, and so qualifies for the FB -- that is, the second F/O. That is a decent amount of flying to stuff into a single day, and a monthly schedule made up exclusively of this trip will entail around 9 such turns, with perhaps another short turn such as JFK-BDA-JFK thrown in to fill the monthly coffers. The bid line usually looks like 1 day on and two days off.

Occasionally, though, we see a trip on the bidsheet that actually lays over at SXM. Such layovers in the Caribbean often turn out to be around 24 hours in length, which is certainly enough time to get some sun and a good meal or two, to say nothing of a round of golf, for those so inclined. I personally avoid golf, having convinced myself, after the one and only time I tried it, that I really didn't need to put several chiropractors' children through Harvard! But that still leaves sun, food, and, of course, the occasional review of the beachside chorus-line of feminine beauty that often exists in Paradise! This scrutiny must, of course, be carried out discretely, lest word of it reach the ears of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed!

On this trip, however, I will forgo the beauty pageant. After having performed on the SXM stage during our approach and landing, I plan to turn the tables and take my place alongside the other Maho Beach tourist/photographers in an attempt to get a Life Magazine picture of my own!

Unlike most trans-Atlantic flights, Caribbean flights usually begin in the morning, often in what I consider the wee hours. (These days, anything that signs in earlier than 10 am is the middle of the night to me!) The trip in question is no exception, originating at EWR at the wee hour of 07:10! This means a wake-up time of around 02:30, which should illustrate why so few of these articles have been about Caribbean trips! Furthermore, the drive to EWR crosses the Romulan Neutral Zone - the Hudson River! Pilots like me, from the east side of the Hudson, rarely cross over to fly EWR trips, doing so only when the convenience of the schedule or the delights of the layover outweigh the expense and frequent delays of crossing the George Washington or Tappan Zee bridges!

Today, though, lured by the smell of the greasepaint, I stumble out of bed at the appointed hour and get "...ready for my close-up..."! Actually, the close-up will not take place for a while, because the flight does not go directly from EWR to SXM. The trip looks like this:

SEQ 493 ORIG DAILY 

49 687 EWR*0710 B MIA 1020 
49 687 MIA 1125 L SXM*1512 
layover
49 2160 SXM*1624 D MIA 1844 
49 2160 MIA   2007   EWR*2300 

This arcane jargon tells the initiated that the trip (sequence 493 on the bidsheet) flies from EWR to MIA as flight 687, using a 757 (equipment code 49), before proceeding with the same flight number from MIA to SXM. This is good, because the same flight number usually means keeping the same airplane, thus avoiding a potentially long sprint through the MIA terminal! And it does the same thing the next day going home.

The drive to EWR is uneventful at 3 am, and after driving down the New Jersey Turnpike for a dozen or so miles, I come to the exit for the employee parking lot, which is hard to miss since it is also the exit for what may well be the world's largest IKEA store! The employee lot at EWR serves all of the airlines, and thus has busses leaving frequently for each of the three main terminals. Long experience keeps me from boarding the wrong bus, and soon I enter the operations office, a place familiar to me since it has been in the same spot for over 15 years. Newark is not our principal base of operations in the New York area, and our operations office here is much smaller than JFK's new ops area. However, it has everything we need including, sadly enough, the Jepp revisions. After once again paying an enforced homage to the adage that "The more things change the more they stay the same", it is time to retrieve the flight plan from the computer.

The dispatcher, of course, has already examined the proposed flight from a perspective quite similar to mine, and his conclusions appear to be just what the doctor ordered! I didn't save this particular flight plan, but a typical route from EWR to MIA is:

EWR..WHITE.J209.SBY..KEMPR..DIW.AR22.JORAY.HILEY2.MIA

Our chariot awaits.

This is a partly overwater route (AR22 goes from DIW out over the water east of the South Carolina and Georgia coastline), and almost a straight line from Norfolk to the MIA area. Thus our steed, a 757 as is typical of most Caribbean and domestic trips, is what we refer to as a "limited overwater" bird. This means that, while it is not an Extended Range (ER) airplane, nor completely equipped for long oceanic flights, it at least has a modicum of flotation gear aboard, such as life vests, and we would not have to rely upon the seat cushions alone if, God forbid, we had to go for a swim! So outfitted, we are allowed to venture beyond the 50 nm offshore limit that applies to purely overland airplanes, and utilize routes that lie as much as 162 nm from the beach. Since all 757's and 767's have the worldwide FMC/IRU navigation systems, keeping to course will not be a problem, even in the absence of ground based aids.

After reviewing and approving the flight plan, the FO and I head out to the airplane. We are at some pains to get out there as early as possible, because without the third pilot (unlike the long turnaround, this flight has no FB) we must do the preflight ourselves! And since at this early hour it is likely to be the first flight of the day for the airplane, we have quite a bit of work to do.

In principle, the preflight is the job of the FO. On an originating preflight, however, one person would be hard pressed to get everything done in the time available, and so it is generally accepted as good practice for the Captain to get his or her hands dirty with at least a bit of the inspection. Many Captains content themselves with doing the inside portion of the preflight, but I often take the outside walk-around, especially in good weather! Today the weather is great, albeit quite cold, and I bundle up for the stroll around the airplane, a rite I have been performing for 30 years!

After a bracing constitutional, I return to the cabin to meet and greet the flight attendants. This first leg is purely domestic, and there is little to discuss, since there is no forecast for turbulence and only a simple breakfast to serve. Indeed, it is likely that, barring some unforeseen need for coffee in large amounts, once the cockpit door is closed they will not see us until we get to Miami.

Dawn patrol...sunrise at Newark.

By now the sun is just creeping above the horizon across the river, silhouetting the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty in a brazen nimbus. The view of New York from here is certainly spectacular. Newark, by the way, is the senior of the three New York airports. It was the original commercial airport for New York, predating LGA by a good number of years. For a time, from the 1940's through the 60's, it was less busy than the kin across the Hudson, but deregulation, and more specifically a low cost airline called PeopleExpress, put it back on the map again. PeopleExpress was the Jet Blue of the 1980's, and when it eventually was hoist on its own petard, so to speak, it was absorbed into Continental Airlines, thus begetting a major hub.

It would be difficult to find a large airport less suited to be an airline hub. With its two closely spaced parallel runways, and only a short third strip facing the often brisk westerly winds, it suffers from capacity constraints in all areas - arrival, departure, and real estate. Hemmed in on every side, it simply cannot be enlarged any further, although some modest extensions were recently added to the two longer runways, the better to accommodate Continental's increasing appetite for long international flights. All of the airline activity is on one side of the airport, which makes for extreme congestion as everybody gets in everybody's way both inbound and outbound! It is much to Continental's credit that they can operate with any sort of reliability in this environment, as indeed they do.

EWR is also the poor stepchild in terms of airspace, with long and meandering arrival and departure paths at low altitudes, which does nothing for fuel efficiency. Today's flight will be no exception, with a low altitude level off until we are beyond the Amboys, and little chance for any kind of direct routing to smooth off the awkward corners of the route.

Departure time comes, and we push out on time. EWR is somewhat unique in that we really need no clearance from anybody to start our push - ground control takes no notice of the doings on the ramp, and, at least at the terminal we operate from, there is no ramp control either. One last tiny bit of autonomy, a relic of the far distant past!

Engine start on a 757 is much like that on a 767, except that on our birds, with the Rolls Royce engines, there are two extra engine instruments to monitor - EPR and N3. The fuel control switches on these airplanes have a third position, in addition to cutoff and run, a position called "rich". As much as we might like to leave them in this position to see if some wealth rubs off on us, the rich position is only for cold starts, like this morning. After ensuring that we have N3 rotation, as well as N2 rotation, N1 rotation, an EGT prior to fuel of less than 100 degrees (no problem today!) and oil pressure, we can move the fuel control switch to rich and wait for light off. After the engine accelerates to idle, we then move the switch to "run", confident that the engine will do precisely that! These things also smoke like demons when started in cold temperatures, such as we have this morning, and it is probably just as well that we cannot see, from the flight deck, the clouds of white smoke that belch forth from the tailpipes!

Taxiing a 757 is also a bit different than driving the bigger bird around. For starters, with the RR engines it takes a goodly handful of thrust to get the beast moving, unless it is nearly empty. Apparently the ground idle thrust on the RR engines is less than it is on the Pratt & Whitney version, which is the engine on the former TWA airplanes that have found their way into the fleet. Those TWA airplanes really scoot on the ground, even at idle, but the Rolls version often takes large bursts of thrust every minute or so to keep it in motion!

Another minor difference is the location of the nose wheel, which is behind my seat by around 10 feet or so. The 767 nose wheel is just about under my seat, and little or no over-steer is needed. On the 757, though, I must be mindful of the location of the nose wheel, and allow for that in turns, which generally means waiting a second or so longer before starting a turn, especially one of 90 degrees or more.

Conga line! Lots of departures at this early hour.

This is a view from the side window -- fortunately!

Once beyond the confines of the ramp, we join the morning conga line of departures, which, at this hour, is considerable. Since Continental owns the major bragging rights to EWR, most of the aircraft belong to them. Judging from the number of blue globes on tails this morning, things are hopping over at CO! Continental has one of today's most diverse stables, and at least one of just about every type they fly (which means one of just about every type recently built!) is represented in this morning's gaggle.

Someone left the aft lav service door open!

Immediately ahead of us, however, is a UAL 757, and we slowly trundle along behind him as we make our way over to runway 22R. After the usual litany of checklist items has run its course, we are possessed of some "spare time"; and, thus freed of things that need attention within the cockpit, I notice an unusual protuberance below the tail cone of our UAL friend ahead. From this angle it is not clear just what it is, and neither I nor the F/O are certain enough to make note of it on the air. But regardless of tribe, the brethren do look out for one another and when a turn toward the runway places the 757 at a more favorable angle to us, we can clearly see that some groundling has forgotten to close what turns out to be (when we check it on our own airplane some time later) the aft lavatory service panel door. Now certain of what we see, we call Ground Control and advise them, and our friend ahead, of the discrepancy. He, of course, prudently chooses to return to the ramp for some additional attention, thanking us as he does so. Prego, signore! Some day, and that day may never come, you can do us a service!

On occasion, a good deed brings its own reward, and now ours is that we move up one notch in the lineup. This is not, of course, why we performed this Good Samaritan act, but merely a serendipitous result! And so, in the fullness of time, we take position on runway 22R and hold for a few of the landings from the left side to cross over to the terminals.

"Position and hold", or as it is known elsewhere in the aviation world "Lineup and Wait", is a useful arrow in the Air Traffic Control quiver. It allows us to be ready in position to start our takeoff roll the very second that it is possible for tower to clear us to do so. This saves the not inconsiderable time spent taxiing onto the runway, which can be done while the deck is fouled, to once again borrow from the language of the old salt! In some places, Europe for one, we can even be cleared to "Lineup after..." a landing or departing airplane, thus freeing the controller to issue our clearance somewhat earlier. Of course, this demands that we exercise considerable vigilance, especially when lining up after a landing airplane. The key word in that clearance is "after"! Any movement onto the runway sooner than that would be problematic, to say the least.

When the landing gaggle is clear of 22R, we receive our takeoff clearance. Once again, into the breach! The 757 at these weights is a sprightly beast, and this one charges ahead like the proverbial bat out of Hell, reaching V1 only a few thousand feet down the runway. For some reason, which has not been fully explained to us mere crewmembers, the takeoff stab trim setting on 757's these days often results in a nose heavy airplane. This, in turn, means that it takes a not inconsiderable heave-ho on the control column to get the nose up! Forewarned is forearmed, and the FO (whose leg this first flight happens to be - so that I can do the "star turn" into SXM!) has already noted the lower than usual trim number. He thus inputs just the right amount of heave, and we rise smoothly from the pavement and point our nose skyward. Off to the races once again!

Continued in "Showtime" Part Two - The Golden Route.

Anthony Vallillo
avallillo@charter.net

Showtime Series

Showtime! Part One - Dawn Patrol

Showtime! Part Two - Golden Route

Showtime! Part Three - I'm Ready For My Close-up

Showtime! Part Four - Maho Madness!