Three Holer Part 1: Wrench

By Tony Vallillo (19 May 2013)

In the early spring of 1976 rumors abounded about the possible resumption of airline hiring. An old friend who had been furloughed from Eastern in 1973 suddenly found himself recalled to duty in early 1976, and it was he who gave me perhaps the best single bit of advice I have ever received. "Tony", he told me, "don't wait for the hiring to actually begin before leaving active duty. Put in your papers now". This was something of a daunting prospect for me, because I had been continuously employed since the day I graduated from college some 5 years earlier. The thought of jumping into the void without a job offer in hand was not a comfortable one, but the logic of his advice was undeniable.

Fortunately for yours truly, the Air Force had not been keeping track of the airline recalls and was still offering early release from active duty for those pilots who would commit to the AF Reserve for a time period equal to twice their remaining active duty service commitment. So I held my breath and immediately applied for a transfer to the Air Force Reserves. My application was accepted (this was hardly news to my squadron superiors, since I had, perhaps foolishly, never made a secret of my airline ambitions). And so it was that I crossed the line from active duty to reserve duty; which in practice meant crossing the street to the 707th Military Airlift Squadron, USAF Reserve, Charleston AFB, South Carolina. Since both my old and new squadrons flew the C-141, it was largely a paperwork exercise, and I was off flying my first line mission for the reserves within the week.

Thus freed from any encumbrance to immediate airline employment, I set about sending applications and/or letters to every airline that I had ever heard of. This included all of the major and local service airlines, and as many non-skeds as I could find (picture below). I had to organize a file system to keep all of the applications straight - there were over 20 of them! Every airline wanted a resume of qualifications, of course, and this brought the Flight Engineer Certificate issue to the fore.

This is what started it all - my original application as a pilot for American Airlines. Note that they put the biggest and best on the cover!

I had already completed the FE written exam earlier in the year, so the remaining decision was whether or not to go the whole nine yards and train for the actual certificate. And if I decided to get the ticket, where should I train? At that time Braniff Airlines, while not the only entity offering training for the Flight Engineer certificate, was certainly the most desirable place to get it, if for no other reason than that they showed a strong inclination to hire the graduates of their own school. None of the other schools were affiliated with airlines in 1976 - it was another year or two before American and one or two others got into the game. Then again, Braniff was a highly desirable potential employer in its own right, what with their enticing collection of domestic and international routes, to say nothing of their rainbow colored "jellybean" fleet of jets (pictures below)! So it was to Braniff that I applied to take the Boeing 727 Flight Engineer course. Shortly after I was accepted , I also signed up for their 727 type rating course, figuring that if an FE ticket looked good on the resume, a Captain rating would look even better!

Braniff operated the most colorful fleet of airplanes in its day, such as this 727-227 approaching ORD.

Perhaps the same 727 at DFW. Braniff's extensive route network made it an appealing employment choice in 1976, before the evil gleam of deregulation entered the dark and tortured mind of Alfred Kahn!

The total cost of this educational experience was around 10 large, as Tony Soprano would say several decades later! That would be $10,000 for those of you who are not "made men"! (Closer to 100K in today's dollars) Although I had managed to save a few bucks over the course of my 4 year active duty career, I had nothing like 10K hanging around. In fact, 10K was very close to my annual salary in the early part of my Air Force career. Fortunately for me and my airline ambitions, my then-rich Uncle Sam had long ago provided for my education after military service through a piece of post WWII legislation known as the GI Bill. My parents had, around the time I was born, used their GI bill benefits to go to college - the first in their families to do so. I had already been to college, of course, and so instead of using my benefits for grad school or law school or something along those lines, I used them to pay for the Braniff school. The GI bill covered 90% of the cost, leaving only a manageable 1K or so to emerge from my savings account.

Braniff's headquarters and training center was located at Love Field in Dallas Texas. So it was that I found myself headed west in my Fiat convertible in early June, bound for what I hoped would be the promised land. After two days of driving I arrived at what would be my digs for the next two and a half months. This was an establishment known as the Marquis North, a small apartment complex across Lemmon Avenue from Love field. It had been recommended highly by several previous BESI grads of my acquaintance (BESI was the name of the training subsidiary of Braniff - Braniff Education Systems Incorporated) as being the best place to stay; in part because BESI also featured a school for reservationists and these students, mostly young women, were known to favor the Marquis. In the event, the scouting reports turned out to be accurate, and the swimming pool at the Marquis proved to be a Garden of Earthly Delights for the entire duration of both courses, a situation which had the potential of considerable interference with the constant study that the school demanded. Fortunately I was young then (!) and my memory still sharp; indeed, sharp enough to absorb the airplane knowledge quickly and still leave at least some time for flirtation!

At the appointed time we gathered in a classroom in Braniff's training center, which was on the east side of Love Field. Braniff no longer flew into Love Field in 1976, except for airplanes that were bound for their maintenance complex adjacent to the school, but they had not yet undertaken to relocate the school over to the larger DFW airport. Braniff's training center was carved out of a portion of one of the hangars, and was nowhere near as attractive or as large as the American Airlines Flight Academy, which was 15 or so miles farther west. Nonetheless, its classrooms and two simulators were adequate for both Braniff's and our own purposes. After introductions and an overview of the next few weeks' activities, we jumped without further ado into a series of lessons on the systems of the 727, starting with the APU, or auxiliary power unit.

Airline and military training in those days was oriented around classroom instruction on airplane systems, followed by simulator training on procedures and often topped off by flight training in the airplane itself. Such was the case at BESI, since the Braniff 727 simulators were not approved by the FAA for rating rides for pilots or flight engineers. We would spend the first 2 weeks in the classroom, then progress to the simulator for a week or so, followed by a flight in a real 727 for the check ride. That was for the FE program. The type rating program that followed was more simulator intensive, since a great deal of time would need to be spent on such things as flying approaches and engine out takeoffs and landings. Again, as in the FE program, the cherry on the sundae was a pair of flights in the airplane - left seat, of course!

In that era, the classroom training was accomplished through the use of large and often complex systems trainer units. These were about the size of a big billiard table turned on its side; and, judging from the industrial strength wheelsets they rode around on, just as heavy (picture below)! They typically featured a complete flow-chart type diagram of the applicable system which would be festooned with animated widgets representing pumps, relays and so on. As often as not, the applicable portion of the FE panel was also depicted, at several times life size to ensure good visibility from the back of the room. Portions of the diagram would light up according to the configuration of the controls on the FE panel: pump widgets would spin, and relay widgets would open and close. All of this animation served not only to educate us but also to keep us awake, since operation of the thing entailed a noisy collection of real relays and switches within the bowels of the machine! But noisy or not, they served their purpose well. Today's computer based programs, replete with similar animations, grew out of this tradition.

In the days before computer based instruction burst upon the aeronautical scene, big airplane systems were taught using large mechanically animated units such as these. This batch, which were located at the FAA Academy circa 1984, are systems trainer boards for the 727, and were similar to units in use in the 1970's at Braniff and American, among other airlines.

We were each issued a Braniff Boeing 727 Operating Manual, the same tome that the line pilots used in daily operations. This was my first exposure to airline operating manuals, and I was underwhelmed. These books, while certainly hefty enough, were only around half as thick as our C-141 operating manuals. Furthermore, while a reasonably adept mechanic had a decent shot at actually building a C-141 using only the operating manual (well, not really, but they were very comprehensive!), the airline books were merely descriptive, not unlike a Readers Digest condensed version of a novel. This, we were to learn, grew from the airline philosophy of training; namely, that a pilot (or FE) did not need to be able to build or even repair an airplane. He or she only had to fly it, and systems knowledge beyond that needed for actual operation was unnecessary, to say nothing of unnecessarily expensive.

Our instructors were men of long tenure at Braniff, specialists in ground instruction who taught both pilots and mechanics and were thus in a position to impart far more information than was to be found in the manuals. And so they did, offering lucid explanations for the whys and wherefores of the 727. These pearls of wisdom we copied down in notebooks that we quickly procured for this purpose. Mine was particularly festooned with illustrations of my own making, for I was, even then, a visual learner! And since I had managed to lay hands on a pack of colored markers, I embellished these illustrations with color codings similar to those on the systems trainer diagrams. By the end of the course, my notebooks were in some demand as loaner items to the other students, and afterward I bequeathed them to another C-141 pilot who took the course later in the year. I would come to regret that magnanimous gesture later, when those gems of system knowledge might have come in handy, but c'est la vie!

Each day we tackled another system, and as the fuel system, electrical system and hydraulic systems passed in review before us the notebooks filled up with the trivia of the 727. Even things that the instructors told us we did not need to retain were scarfed up greedily and consigned to our notes. There was a reason, of course, for all of this fact hoarding - we all knew that Braniff hired many of the graduates of this very school. We came to assume that our every move was being watched and evaluated, and so we sought to impress our invisible evaluators by trying to memorize one more factoid than the next guy. Even the smallest bit of information was pounced upon. I'm not sure if Braniff was really watching us closely, but I have never in my life seen another group so intent upon mastering a subject. A few months later, when I was actually teaching 727 ground school at American to real new-hires, I was taken aback by the relative lack of intensity of those students compared to our class (and I assume all classes) at BESI. Perhaps the difference can be attributed to the fact that the American students were already hired, and not in some real or imaginary competition to be hired.

Compared to the sophisticated systems of the Lockheed I had been flying, the 727 was actually a fairly simple airplane, and thus I had little difficulty mastering it. The electrical system was an entire order of magnitude less complex than the C-141, and instead of three hydraulic systems the Boeing had only two. The fuel system and pneumatic system were essentially similar to those on the 141, or any large jet for that matter. The anti-ice system was considerably simpler - the C-141 had some kind of de-ice or anti-ice on just about every surface save for the fuselage itself, whereas the 727 had only engine and wing anti-ice. We learned a great many mnemonic devices to cement the trivia of various systems firmly in place - ditties like "break in up stairs" for the B hydraulic system (main wheel brakes, inboard spoilers, upper rudder and airstairs), a few of which, like this one, remain lodged in my memory to this very day!

A page from the American Airlines Boeing 727 Operating Manual, showing the -100 series air conditioning sytem schematic. These diagrams were extensively watered down for pilot consumption. The actual maintenance manuals had the drawings showing what the real piping and gadgetry looked like; these were, for the most part, incomprehensible to pilots!

Although it looks like a simulator, and I'm sure most of us flight sim hobbyists would kill for one, this is actually a fixed base procedures trainer, known in the trade as a CPT. Again, this is an FAA unit at Oke City. Braniff did not have anything like this, but American had two of them, both essentially identical to this one. They were used for cockpit familiarization and procedures drill for both pilots and engineers. I would end up spending considerable time teaching American new hires in just such trainers a few months later!

There were two flavors of 727 - the series 100, or shortie version which was the first to emerge from Boeing, and the series 200 or stretch version, which came along a few years later. Aside from a different version of the JT-8D engine, and an electronic pressurization system that was one of the first set-and-forget devices I had seen on an airplane, the -200 was essentially the same save for the length of the fuselage. Since Braniff flew both varieties, and our rating rides might be on either one, we had to master both, and this provided yet another opportunity to memorize stuff!

In addition to the airplane's systems, we had to master the performance charts. The FE was the keeper of the performance keys at Braniff, as at all airlines, and any questions about field length or weight limits were addressed to him (picture below). This meant that we had to become familiar with dozens of charts and tables. I immediately noticed a significant difference between airline performance charts and the ones that I, as a C-141 pilot, had been exposed to. The Air Force charts were all what we today would call "raw data" charts - graphs covered with curved lines, or sometimes multiple iterations of curved lines. They were entered at the side or bottom with a particular value and the intersections of lines and curves led to the desired result. It was complex, and fraught with the potential for misinterpretation, which was why on the C-141 both flight engineers (a 141 crew consisted of two FE's, who were charged with these calculations) often did a particularly critical calculation independently to ensure that their answers were in close agreement.

Performance charts resided not only in the manuals, but also at the engineer's fingertips. The most commonly used charts were laminated to the FE table under an acryllic sheet, and could be easily consulted on the fly!

By this time in history the commercial airlines had changed over to the relatively simpler paradigm of tabulated data. Instead of each FE making a single calculation of, say, required runway length based upon the conditions of a particular flight, the airline had loosed their computers on the problem of calculating runway lengths and weight limits for every single combination of conditions (runway lengths, winds, temperatures, surface condition, etc.) that might reasonably exist. These numbers were then arranged not as graphs but as tables of data, not unlike a fully loaded spreadsheet. If you wanted to know your max takeoff weight, you could first dig out the tables for the airport you were departing, and then find the combination of runway, flap setting and temperature that matched the current conditions. At the intersection of those particulars, you would find a number which would be the maximum takeoff weight.

This tabulated data added up to considerably more pages than the graphical charts we had in the Air Force, since a separate set of tables was required for every airport the airline flew from. The book that contained all of these tables was called the Airport Analysis, and it was the lot of the flight engineer to carry this, as well as the entire operating manual and yet another book called the Minimum Equipment List, or MEL. This was the document that laid out, in painstaking detail, just which of the myriad of bells, whistles and geegaws installed on the airplane could be inoperative for flight. Since there were at least two of just about anything on a 727, this book was not a small one. Indeed, in those halcyon days of 3 person crews the pilot and copilot often carried their small allotment of manuals (essentially just enroute charts and approach plates) in normal sized brief cases - Halliburton's were in vogue among the Captains when I was hired! The engineer, on the other hand, toted his load in a large catalog case known in the trade as a "kit bag" or, sometimes, "brain bag". These often weighed in excess of 20 pounds, especially when the required toolkit was thrown in.

The study of performance and tab data took up several days of the ground school class, and was the finale of that part of the program. Once we had passed the required written examinations on systems and performance, we were scheduled into the simulator for the second phase of training. For this and the final airplane phase we were paired up in twos. I drew another C-141 pilot from Charleston, whom I had known casually back at the squadron. Joe and I became joined at the hip, and spent a great deal of time together studying the normal procedures, checklist responses and emergency and abnormal procedures. For this we utilized a crude but effective "simulator" of our own making. Braniff had, at the beginning of the course, issued each of us with a set of color drawings of each instrument panel in the cockpit. At my suggestion, we arranged these on the wall in a corner of my living room, in an approximation of the layout on the real airplane. Although these were only about quarter scale, they were quite effective as a practice aid, and we spent many hours running checklists, starting imaginary engines, and eventually making complete imaginary flights in our "simulator". Other students emulated the concept, and soon the corridors of the Marquis North echoed with the arcane incantations of the 727 litanies. (I occasionally wonder how the course would have gone had we had MSFS and one of the good 727 add-ons available to us back then! Much better, I certainly imagine!)

The 727 simulator at Braniff in those days was similar in realism to the C-141 sims with which I was familiar in the Air Force (picture below). The cab was a completely realistic facsimile of a 727 cockpit, with the addition of a station for the instructor that occupied a position behind the Captain seat. There was a motion system with 3 degrees of freedom, consisting of hydraulic legs attached to the bottom of the cab on the one end, and to pediments in the concrete floor on the other. These would stretch and contract, in unison or one at a time, to the beat of instructions from the motion computer which was one of the several mainframes that made the magic. The motion was occasionally sufficient to induce the queasiness of pre-nausea, a condition that might rear its head in the stressful circumstances of a difficult procedure.

This is what a 727 simulator looked like in 1976. This unit, one of the original 727 sims at American Airlines, is now in the Wings of Eagles Museum in Elmira New York. Eat your hearts out, fellow simmers, because AA essentially gave this and 5 or 6 other first generation simulators away around 10 years ago - they could not find buyers for them! I spent a good deal of time in this very simulator over the years of my 727 career at AA. It is shown here configured with a newer computer generated visual system, with a screen for each front window. Photo courtesy of Bill Maloney.

Interestingly enough, from outside of the sim the motion often correlated not at all with what the simulated airplane was doing at the moment! For example, you might be standing outside a simulator and hear the sound of engines being revved up for takeoff (picture below). This would be followed quickly by a pronounced pitch-up of the simulator cab, as from an over rotation. But the pitch-up actually created the sensation of gathering speed on the takeoff roll, by creating a situation where you were pressed into the seatback, just like acceleration. The actual rotation, when it came, was accompanied by an additional pitch up movement of the motion system, although not so pronounced as the initial movement.

This is what a modern FAA Level - D simulator looks like in "flight". The motion system occasionally puts the cockpit in some interesting pitch positions to create a sensation of motion. This unit is equipped with a modern, fully enclosed wrap-around visual system, and as you see can be utilized in a normally lit environment. Ironically, a large piece of one of the old model boards for the original visual systems in use decades before lies along the wall in front of the sim! This piece was probably on its way to the CR Smith Museum.

Likewise, to create the sensation of a turn, the motion would first tip the cab a bit in the direction of the turn, and then almost immediately roll it back level very slowly. Inside, the "airplane" was still in a steady bank, but of course in such a coordinated turn the sensation of bank soon disappears, thus the movement of the motion system back to level. When the pilots on the inside began to roll out of the turn back to simulated level flight, the motion would tip the cab over in the other direction briefly, and again level it out slowly. There was a lot more to it than to simply have the sim duplicate the attitude of the airplane!

This picture, which shows the oirignal Boeing 747 simulator at the American Airlines Flight Academy in the late 1970's, depicts the original setup of the visual system for all of the sims. One large screen was located in front of both pilot windows, with a video projector on top of the cab aimed forward and down. Since the system was not enclosed, the entire simulator bay had to be kept in near total darkness during the time the sim was in use.

The simulator also had a visual system, although this would not really be a factor in our training until the type rating program later on (picture above). Visual systems were only about a decade or so old at that time, and the Air Force simulators I had worked in lacked them altogether. Braniff's system was a second generation model board system, in which a tiny television camera with an even smaller optical probe "flew" over a large board that was decorated to look like an airport and the surrounding terrain. Similar to a model railroad layout, but to a much smaller scale, this model board was complete with roads, towns, buildings, trees and bushes, and all manner of lights including all of the lighting associated with a large commercial airport (pictures below). The camera picked up the scene it was maneuvered around, guided by a complex mechanical tracking system driven by another one of the mainframe computers. The "view from the front office" was projected onto a screen that sat about 10 feet in front of the pilot. It was in full color and was surprisingly realistic. The instructor could set things up for "day" or "night" conditions, as well as low visibility and ceilings. We typically used it for the portions of a flight below 1000 feet or so "agl". At other times, the screen showed a featureless grey that was typical of the view from inside a cloud.

A close up view of the camera probe being "flown" over one of the large model boards that formed the basis of the first generation visual systems at most airlines. Tiny fiber optic lights comprise the runway and approach lights.

In reality, these boards were mounted vertically, and lit from a large bank of lights at the side. Each board and its system were shared by two simulators, but both sims could not use the visual at the same time. This necessitated careful coordination between the instructors in the two sims, by phone from cab to cab.

And this is what it looked like from within. This is a Citation simulator at the American Flight Academy using one of the model board visuals. American had replaced the cockpit of one of their four 707 simulators with a Citation, and had the exclusive contract with Cessna for many years for Citation training.

American Airlines Photos

Late one summer night Joe and I trooped across Lemmon Avenue to the big Braniff hangar on the east side of Love Field to begin the simulator portion of our training. All of the BESI schedules were in the wee hours, since this same school served the entire Braniff 727 pilot population, which at that time probably numbered upwards of 500. Naturally, the line pilots got the daytime schedules! This was less of a problem than it might seem, since even in those early days I had become a confirmed night owl, partly the result of years of all night flying over one pond or another!

After stumbling around a bit in the unfamiliar surroundings, we came upon the correct briefing room, where sat a young man not terribly much older than our late-twenties selves. This would be another Joe, Joe F, who was a Braniff line FE who alternated flights in the airplane in the real world with stints teaching FE students in the simulator. We would be under his tutelage for the remainder of the program, and we were fortunate that this was so, for he was an excellent teacher! (I would also like to think that he had some good material to work with in our case, but that is an assessment which must be made by others!) Joe quickly introduced himself and ran us through the schedule of our training, which had come down from on high in the Braniff training department earlier that day. We would spend each of the next six nights with Joe in the 727 simulator, followed by a day off and then the airplane check ride.

With the administrative matters dealt with, Joe F led us into the arcane rituals of preflight and inflight systems operation through which we would translate our ground school knowledge into operation of the airplane itself. We, of course, had spent the last several days since the completion of the ground school in intensive self instruction and drill on these very procedures, and we intended to put on for Joe a show that would rival the best that John Ringling North (The Greatest Show on Earth) had ever offered! So after the two hour briefing we mounted the metal steps to the simulator cab and entered what, for us, was a world of airline pilot fantasy. We were also dimly aware that, with a bit of luck, it might one day become a torture chamber to be experienced again and again!

Inside the last remaining 727 sim at American. On the inside, all of the 727 sims, regardless of generation, were essentially identical save for the instructor's console, just to the left of the black IP seat at lower left.

The last and most sophisticated 727 sim at American, which is still in use today for contract operations. The lighted office on the ground level is the lair of the simulator technicians, and of the several mainframe computers which animate the beast.

The seats were still warm from the last occupants, a Braniff crew engaged in their annual recurrent training, known around the trade as the "sheep dip" (pictures above). Joe F wasted no time in setting up the instructor's station, and we immediately began to display our newfound procedural knowledge. First on the agenda - the preflight inspection (picture below, left). Scores of items - switch positions, fluid quantities, electrical voltages and the like were examined according to flow patterns that had been carefully worked out at Boeing during the flight test phase and perpetuated ever since at the airline training schools. Satisfied at last that all was in order, I began the litany for the start of the APU, the auxiliary power unit, a fourth jet engine on the 727 that played no part in propulsion, but rather sat between the wheel wells below the main deck and occupied itself with the generation of electrical and pneumatic power for the airplane on the ground (picture below, right) The APU start sequence took nearly a minute and had to be carefully monitored on a small panel located on the rear wall of the cockpit immediately adjacent to the cockpit door. This first start was without abnormality, thanks to Joe's sense of fair play, but it would be the last freebie! All remaining APU starts featured some kind of abnormality - either a fire or overtemp, or perhaps a failure of the APU generator or pneumatics. These situations had to be dealt with according to the procedures in the operating manual, and we kept the unwieldy thing handy on the small table that was provided for the FE immediately below his panel.

This is what we were here to learn to master - the FE panel of the Boeing 727, the last such on a narrow body aircraft. It was actually fairly simple compared to any of the big recips or the widebodies. And it was child's play compared to the FE panel on the Concorde!

The controls for the APU, as well as a few other ancillary functions, were located on the rear wall of the cockpit adjacent to the cockpit door. What look like myriad buttons are actually circuit breakers for the many and sundry electrical components of the airplane. APU starts and operation are monitored on this panel.

Joe F then hopped into the left seat, where he could play the part of Captain and also, by looking over his shoulder, keep an eye on what I was doing on the panel. In this manner we worked our way through engine start, as I brought each engine driven generator on line in sequence and synchronized them to each other so that they could operate in "parallel" (Later jets, like the 767, dispensed with the synchronization process: each generator works on its own to power its part of the system in perfect isolation. When one fails, the other takes over the entire system after a brief nanosecond of interruption). When all three engines were started and all systems brought online, I checked everything on the panel using a scan pattern that we referred to as the "little u Big U" scan (picture below). This started in the middle of the upper panel, went down then left and up to the top of the electrical panel, then down the left side of both upper and lower panels and finally up the right side of both to end with the pneumatic system. It was there that the air conditioning "packs" had to be brought back online after they were shut off to allow all of the high pressure air to be directed to the engine starter motors. In the torrid temperatures of a Dallas summer, the FE must not delay reinstating the air conditioning in the real airplane, lest the wrath of both flight attendant and Captain fall upon his head!

The famous "little u BIG U" scan! Mention that phrase to any pilot who flew as an FE on the 727 and you will get a reaction!

This first session in the sim was limited to ground operations, so after we had everything running and ready for takeoff, we jumped ahead to the checklists and operations that would follow a landing and lead to the final shutdown at the gate. When this was completed, half of the four hour sim period had passed and, after a short break for coffee and a snack, it was student Joe's turn to shine! And shine he did, just as I had. In truth, both of us were "loaded for bear" for these simulator sessions. As I said, they were keeping score, or so we thought. We worked hard to put on a perfect performance, night after night. And since we each had over 4 years of large transport jet experience under our belts (and little else, unlike later years when I would have not only flying experience but a great many over-large layover dinners under my belt!) we were already quite well prepared.

The next night's entertainment involved an actual "flight" in the sim, piloted by Joe F in his leading-man role as the Captain! This was even more fun than the ground operations, since Joe knew the line well, and was able to spice up our training with simulated calls from the flight attendants for more or less heat or cold in the cabin; a situation with which we would both become well acquainted when we started our line careers a few months down the road. Of course, all of that was in the mists of the future at this point, but the interaction with "the girls" was great fun and served to refine our knowledge of the minutiae of the 727 systems.

Student Joe and I were doing so well after the second session that I was able to talk Joe F into letting me "fly" the sim when I was not actually working the panel (picture below). He knew that I had enrolled in the Type Rating program later in the summer, and he agreed with me that I might profit from a little extra stick time at this point. So for the next several sessions, I was able to play "Captain" when Student Joe was doing his thing in the back. This experience turned out to be useful, if for no other reason than I was able to get a feel for the simulator itself. No simulator, of course, flies exactly like the airplane, and often no two of them fly exactly like each other. This was not a real problem here since Braniff had only a single 727 sim at that point, but it was useful to have a good idea of how the sim "flew" when I matriculated into the rating program.

The seats I really hoped to occupy! Flying the sim when I was not on the panel during the FE program was to be a big help later in the Rating program.

The week went by all too quickly, what with studying at the pool during the day (about half the time studying the airplane and the other half studying the often gorgeous bikini clad reservation students!) and flying the sim at night. In the fullness of time the night arrived when we would demonstrate these skills not in the artificial environment of the simulator, but in a real Braniff 727 over at DFW airport. Joe and I and the other students in our class drove over to the big airport and found our way to Braniff operations, where we stood out like a gaggle of sore thumbs in our civvies! The only other similarly dressed folks turned out to be our crew for the evening. The Captain and the FO were just there to be our chauffeurs, but Mike, the chief check engineer for the 727 at Braniff, was to be our Chief Inquisitor. As an FAA designee for the FE rating, Mike would be signing the temporary certificates that we all hoped to have in hand by night's end.

The Captain and Mike held a short briefing, which covered the ground rules for the flight and also the batting order. Since the airplane would not actually land for seat swaps, the first and last slots would be more interesting since they involved the engine start and shutdown procedures. The guys in the middle slots merely had to watch the panel for 40 minutes or so and answer a few questions! I was confident in my abilities, so I decided to go for one of the more interesting slots and wound up with the last one that covered the landing and shutdown. While the rest of the examinees were doing their turn in the barrel, I would be in the back in first class, enjoying a soda and some nuts courtesy of Braniff. Sadly, there were to be no flight attendants aboard, since we were all crewmembers, or at least hopefully soon to be!

But before we actually boarded the airplane, we each had to demonstrate that we could perform the exterior visual inspection, known as the walk-around. This is a ritual that every conscientious pilot performs before any flight, be it in a Cessna or a 747, and it was the one part of the program for which there was no real simulation. We had learned the walk-around by watching slides showing all of the steps of the procedure and the details that we should look for. Now we had to do it on the airplane itself, and at night to boot (the slides had all been shot during the day). Out came our flashlights and each of us had a go at it, starting at the nosewheel and proceeding clockwise around the airplane. Mike peppered us with questions and required us to explain what we were looking for at each step of the inspection. It took around 10 minutes for each of us to go through this drill, and the better part of an hour passed before we at last mounted the jetway stairs and entered what we hoped would someday be the promised land!

Our steed for the rite of passage was N7278, which at that time was adorned with the two-tone green version of the color scheme of that era. I suppose one of the more interesting facets of flying for Braniff was the issue of which color airplane you would get on any given trip. (Only one group of pilots at Braniff could always know for sure, and that was the 747 group. This was no doubt a very small and very high seniority fraternity, for Braniff in those days had but a single example of Boeing's biggest. It was the only orange airplane in the fleet, and it flew but one route - that between DFW and HNL. Six days shalt it labor, and do all it is able, and the seventh a DC-8 takes over while the Great Pumpkin, as it was often called, is undergoing its weekly inspection!) The first initiate turned left at the main door, along with the flight crew, while the rest of us turned right, to disport ourselves in the unaccustomed comforts of first class; which, on Braniff, featured leather covered seats, the first such on any domestic airline! We had already heard the anecdotal tales of how this came about - supposedly Braniff had made a great deal of money in South America on those routes it had acquired when it merged with Panagra. So much money, in fact, that one or more of the governments down there had balked at the notion of the northward flow of all that cash, and had demanded that Braniff spend the money locally. This, legend had it, they accomplished by buying up several herds worth of local leather, and it was with this that they festooned the first class cabins of their fleet.

We had already been shown, earlier in our training, how to operate the cabin doors, and so one of our number closed and armed the L1 door. Within minutes, our classmate up front had successfully assisted the pilots in starting the engines, and before we knew it we were on our way to what at that time was called runway 17R, the only 17 on the west side of the airport back then. Clearance received, we started our roll, and very shortly thereafter (we were empty, after all!) we felt the Captain rotate and lift the bird off the runway. For the next few hours one after another of the brethren was summoned to the bridge to demonstrate his ability to keep things under control. As though to enter into the spirit of the event, we started sending requests for heat or cooling up front via the intercom, but desisted when one of our number, spurred on by the check engineer, retaliated by sending a sirocco our way, leaving us begging for some cool air, and amusing the check engineer no end! That put paid to any more torments from the rear!

Finally it was my turn in the barrel (picture below). I entered the cockpit and took my place at the panel. The first thing I noticed was that the visual system on this thing was worlds better than the one in the sim! We were heading from Waco, where the pilots had been dallying about and doing a few touch and go landings, back to DFW, and the myriad lights of the metroplex glowed ahead. I checked the panel, made sure that the pressurization system was set for landing, calculated the landing speeds, and with a bit of assistance from the check FE called Braniff operations and reported inbound. They came back with a gate assignment which I shared with the Captain. These tasks completed, I busied myself with the little u Big U scan.

A moment of whimsy from later in my career! In truth, there were "dog days" for engineers, especially in the dead of winter or the heat of summer.

As we neared the airport, I swung my seat to face nearly forward. The FE seat on the 727 has several degrees of freedom, as it were. It can move toward and away from the FE panel, and it can move diagonally toward the throttle console (picture below). In addition, in any position the seat can be rotated to face the front of the cockpit, which is the position most FE's tend to use for takeoff and landing. Facing forward, the FE seat was positioned similar to the jump seat in the C-141, a seat in which I had spent considerable time over the years. So I felt right at home in the three-holer.

When the FE seat was rotated forward and moved to the front end of its diagonal track, this is where he ended up - right between the pilots just aft of the console. He could reach the throttles from here, and indeed in cruise served as a human autothrottle!

I was, of course, merely a spectator for the approach and landing, albeit an interested one. After the before landing checklist was completed, I had nothing to do but monitor the approach and cast an occasional backward glance at "my" panel. The Captain greased it on, which I would eventually learn is by no means easy in the 727, and then I was back on stage again as I ran the after landing checklist and, for the first time for real, started the APU. The taxi-in was short, but I had everything set up for arrival, so that when we came to a stop at the gate the Captain was able to shut down the engines immediately. Since we had in fact returned the airplane in the same condition we got it, I was hopeful that my performance would yield that precious white slip of paper that represented 5 large of Uncle Sam's money. I was not disappointed, as Mike congratulated me for passing my checkride (picture below). The other candidates, as it turned out, had all passed as well, and it was a happy group that drove back to the Marquis at O-Dark Thirty to celebrate.

This is what 5 grand bought back in 1976. My original temporary FE certificate, issued the night I passed my airplane check ride. I haven't weighed that little since those days!

Thus began my career as a flight engineer, a career that would not really end until I upgraded to Captain at American a decade later (picture below, left). In addition to the 727, I would turn the wrench on the 707 as well. Indeed, I would find the bigger airplane to be more interesting over the years that I flew it, both for the longer flights to more interesting destinations that were a feature of the 707 selections at the NY crew base, and because there was a bit more for a 707 engineer to do (picture below, right).

I have piloted all three of these particular airplanes! The Ford, N414H which is shown here dolled up in American Airways markings for a publicity tour around the time of the introduction of the -200 series, later served as a sightseeing plane at Las Vegas, where I logged 0.5 hours at the controls in the right seat during a flight over Hoover Dam courtesy of the pilot. The two American three holers, of course, figured in my airline career.

The legendary Boeing 707. I have always been grateful to have had the opportunity to fly this magnificent airplane, which is still one of my favorites.

The FE job proved, over the course of my career, to be one of the best ones I had. Although I did not actually handle the flight controls, I had plenty to occupy my attention at the panel (picture below, left). Especially on the 707, the air conditioning system required near-constant attention to strike a balance between the comfort of the passengers and the desires of the flight attendants, many of whom were literally slaving over a hot stove in the galley! It took a while for a new FE to become attuned to the difference between what the stews perceived as comfortable and what was, in fact, comfortable for the passengers. Then again, each type of airplane had system quirks that either worked for you or against you, especially when trying to cool the cabin on a hot day (picture below, right). The 707 had an air conditioning system that used Freon heat exchangers to cool the air, not unlike your average window air conditioner. These worked reasonably well in all weather, but needed ground high pressure air to operate on the ramp - the 707's did not have APU's and always needed ground air for conditioning and engine start. The 727, on the other hand, had been designed to be more or less self sufficient at the smaller airports it was intended to serve, and was equipped with the APU and also the rear stair for boarding when no jetbridge or ground stairs was available (I had never seen that happen with passengers at AA - in fact, our airplanes had the sidewall panels of the aft stairs removed). The APU, if it was working well (and occasionally one wasn't!), could provide enough air to keep the cabin cool on all but the hottest days of summer. Unfortunately, quite a bit of our flying was done in climates like the DFW area, which in summer would give Dante's Inferno a run for its money!

The flight deck of the 707 was dimensionally identical to the 727, and differed mainly in the extra throttle and set of engine instruments.

The 707 FE panel was also quite similar to the 727, although the fuel and pneumatic systems were a bit more complex, as you can see. But both airplanes had the FE panel laid out in essentially the same way, which was a big help since I spent 5 years qualified on both at the same time!

The 727 manufactured cold air not with Freon or some other exotic gas, but rather with what was called an "air cycle machine". This lash-up of a compressor and a turbine cooled the air by expansion, while at the same time stealing most of the moisture out of it, which resulted in the typical bone-dry environment that has been the hallmark of the jetliner cabin. Unfortunately, part of the cooling process involved passing the air-in-treatment across a pair of heat exchangers, like a car's radiator. These, located on the underside of the airplane just at the juncture of the wing leading edge, were less than effective in the dog days of a Texas summer, so the air cycle machines were often unable to produce air much cooler than 40 degrees or so. To cool the cabin of an airplane not painted white in those conditions would have required, at least initially, air of a temperature well below freezing! So the drill was to have the passengers or FA's close at least the window shades on the sunny side prior to arrival at the gate. Thus and only thus would the outbound FE have a prayer in hell of providing a cool cabin for the outbound passengers.

These travails, and others as well, provided ample opportunity for the dedicated FE to hone his professional skills and come up with clever and inventive techniques to overcome the challenges of both summer and winter. A good FE, as I would rediscover later when I became a Captain, was a keeper! In periods of seniority stagnation, of which there were a few during my career, guys and gals would end up staying longer on the panel, and acquiring more experience. Of course the best of the best were the professional, or two-stripe, flight engineers. When I arrived at American we had over 500 of these fine gents (they were, of course, all men; for they had originally been mechanics in the 1940's and '50's) and they held down the bids on the FE panel on all of the widebody airplanes. We pilot type FE's, an animal that made its original appearance in the early 1960's around the time that the American pilots left ALPA and struck out on their own, had to content ourselves with the narrow bodies like the 727 and the less senior bids on the 707. The two-stripers had been offered the opportunity to take pilot training and move up to the front seats back in the early '60's, and a few of them did indeed make the jump, but most of them remained at the panel and there were a handful still flying right up until the retirement of the last airplane that had an FE panel, the 727 in the early 2000's.

Some pilots chafed at the panel, unsatisfied since they were not doing the flying. But most of us rose to the occasion and tried hard to do the job as well as the older two stripe guys. One aspect of the job was quite appealing to me. With my seat rotated forward between the pilots, I could and did take in just about everything that went on up front (picture below). In addition to being a terrific way to learn the airline flying business once removed, I found that I could provide back-up to the pilots in all phases of flight, the more so since I was a pilot myself, and aware of what was going on. I considered myself as something of an engineering consultant to the Captain, not unlike Scotty on Star Trek! Once I had acquired enough experience for my input to be taken seriously, the Captains often did just that, which was a source of great satisfaction!

Looking ahead, the FE had quite the "big picture" view of things, and could be very much in the operational loop, especially on the ground. It is my personal theory that one of the root causes of the proliferation of runway incursion incidents and accidents that has occurred since the 1980's is the lack of the third set of eyes on the flight decks of most airliners these days. Two pilots in a large airliner are extremely busy on the ground much of the time. The FE freed the FO up to concern him or her self entirely with location and navigation.

In addition to my line flying duties, I would also become a Flight Engineer Check Airman at American, as well as Chief Flight Engineer at New York for several heady years in the beginning of the Great Expansion early in the Crandall era. All of this, however, was still in the future as I sat by the pool that night at the Marquis, savoring the sweet smell of initial success, along with a cold Lone Star, and eager to begin the next phase of my training - the 727 type rating!

Continued in the next installment - Left Seat

Anthony Vallillo
avallillo767@gmail.com