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The Mercury Part 3 - Big Bear And Beyond By Tony Vallillo (16 December 2009) The trek through the terminal at LAX is a long one - all the better to obtain a little bit of exercise after sitting for nearly 6 hours. This is one terminal at AA that really hasn't changed all that much during the 31 years of my career. Oh, it has been redecorated a time or two, but the essential layout is the same. I am reminded of the trips I flew here in the first year of my employment, on the Boeing 707 and, occasionally, the 727. LAX was a glamorous destination in those days, at least to me, and it was quite a thrill to be walking through this terminal back then, in the suit of lights! Come to think of it, it still is! We hop aboard the limo for the short ride to the hotel, which lies a few miles south of the airport. The layover hotels at LAX have been many and varied, depending upon the era, and the length of the layover. When I first started flying out here, in 1977, we stayed at the Miramar, at least for the long layovers. This was a really first class hotel in Santa Monica, close by the famous pier, and for me, being used to the officers quarters of various military installations around the world, it was a big step up in luxury! A few years later we changed hotels, and have done so with regularity ever since. Some of the properties have been as far away as Long Beach, or as close (for really short layovers) as Century Boulevard. Today's hotel is in the middle of the quality scale - a major chain of quasi-suites, and it will do nicely, especially considering that I have no intention of spending the day there! The "Casablanca" hangar on the south side of LAX On the way to Big Bear - Interstate 210 Up the hill we go - the last but longest 30 miles The drive over to the hotel takes us along the south side of the airport, and there is a semi-historical building over there to which Pam directs my attention. One of the original hangars at Mines Field (the original name of what became LAX), it sits across from the FedEx cargo ramp. If you saw the movie Casablanca (and who hasn't?) you will recognize it, for it was used as the inspiration for the terminal building constructed on the Warner lot for the final climactic scene. Opinions apparently differ as to whether or not that finale was actually filmed at Mines Field, but the Wikipedia entry for the movie indicates that the only off-lot shooting took place at Van Nuys airport for a scene at the beginning of the film. Whether or not it was an actual shooting location, the building looks just like the one in the film, and it is easy to imagine Rick and Louis walking off into the fog from that exact place! There was certainly enough fog here this morning to create the same effect. After leaving the airport itself, we turn south on I-405. This freeway attained fame of a sort not too long ago when it was used as the locale for an ingenious short video that was widely viewed on the web. You probably saw it - a crippled DC-10 lands on the evacuated lanes of the 405, touching down atop a lone auto driven by a hapless fellow whose eyes get really wide when he looks in his rearview mirror and sees a jumbo jet bearing down on him! The original video featured an American Airlines DC-10, but that was short-lived, and I imagine that the airline had a few words with the creators (!) who then changed the name on the fuselage, but not the trademark stripes! It was a perfect little tour-de-force of video virtuosity on the part of the creators, who apparently wanted to showcase their talents. I hope they succeeded - they certainly did a great job on this one! After we check in at the hotel, I arrange for a set of wheels for my sojourn to Big Bear Lake. It is just the F/O and I now, for the cabin crew was all LAX based, and they are headed home for a day or two of R&R before they do it again later in the week. Pam, as it happens, has places of her own to visit on this trip, which is not at all uncommon when you are going to the same place week after week. I am thus on my own, a situation I have grown somewhat accustomed to over the years, since my relentless pursuit of sightseeing and tourism on layovers has always been a bit anachronistic in this latter day industry! (Even in Rome, quite a few of the regular crewmembers simply relax on the layovers, rather than try to take in every sight in town, as has always been my wont. It is often the first timers who are eager to wear out the shoe leather seeing the sights that they may not see again for awhile, and I have spent many a layover conducting my patented Nugget Tours, which take in all of the major sights in but a single afternoon! It is much easier to see the sights on a one time basis in the company of an experienced traveler, and I have always been enthusiastic about introducing the uninitiated to my favorite cities, like Rome.) Wheels secured, I plan my journey with the rent-a-car map, being too penurious to spring for a few extra bucks for the GPS! After all, there are standards to uphold, even for just two more trips! The drive will not be a short one - it is around 112 miles each way. I-105 to I-805 to I-210, and then the drive up into the mountains on 330 and 18 to the lake. The first hour or so is through a never-ending suburban sprawl, uninspiring for the most part until I turn east on I-210, which runs fairly close to the San Bernardino Mountains. The visibility improves to excellent once inland a bit and the mountains look inviting. Soon enough I depart the freeways and begin the long, twisting climb up toward my destination. It takes almost as long to cover these last 20 or so miles (probably more like 30 as the road goes!) as it did to do the first 90 or so. The reward, however, is spectacular! I now understand why this area has long been a favorite destination for the denizens of this region, because the contrast between Big Bear Lake and its environs and the LA basin could not be more pronounced. The lake sits over 6700 feet above sea level, and the surrounding mountains are thousands of feet higher, creating a magnificent bowl surrounding the azure waters. There is an airport here, just beside the lake itself, and the flight in and out would be spectacular, albeit fraught with certain risks that I usually don't encounter in a 767. In light airplanes, density altitude can be a major concern, since piston engines give up a considerable percentage of their available power at higher altitudes unless they are turbocharged. A non-turbocharged single engine airplane could well be near or even above its performance ceiling at Big Bear on a hot day, a day on which the density altitude (pressure altitude corrected for temperature) might be close to 9000 feet, or even higher. A certain percentage of small plane pilots just can't seem to understand that although their Cherokee made it off Burbank airport just fine with four aboard, it will probably not be able to do that at Big Bear, at least not until dusk or later. Then too, the terrain for at least 20 miles around the lake is not amenable to forced landings, which are always a consideration when there is only one power plant. Once beyond the highest peaks, of course, it is all downhill, and there are a great many airports from which to choose from an altitude of over 9000 feet, which would be the minimum altitude (VFR) needed to clear even the lower terrain around the lake toward San Bernardino. All things considered, though, this is a great destination, provided that you have a turbocharged airplane at your disposal! I spend the late afternoon and early evening driving all the way around the lake, enjoying the magnificent sunset and looking for an enticing place to eat. Alas, it is pretty much between seasons up here, with a good bit of snow still about, although not enough to do much skiing. Most of the area restaurants appear to be closed, and it is all I can do to find a Wendy's! I grab a quick meal-on-the-go and head back down the long and winding road to the big city. The view of the valley from more than a mile up is spectacular once I have crested the ring of mountains that guards the lake, and from there practically the entire run to Berdoo is made without touching the gas pedal! Once back on the freeway (which is what they call an expressway out here!) it is just a matter of getting off at the correct exits as I retrace my route back to the coast and our hotel. As I traverse this enormous valley I wonder why it took me until my very last trip to explore Big Bear. Of course I haven't had too many LAX layovers in the last few decades, and those few that I had were extremely short - just enough time for a bite to eat and a good night's sleep. Still, I'm glad I took advantage of this opportunity, for it has made my last transcontinental trip one to remember - a fitting finale indeed to my domestic career. The original schedules when I first came aboard in 1977 had Flight One paired with Flight Two as the trip back home. This pairing has not existed for a number of years now, and indeed I already flew Flight Two several years ago on another sequence, a trip that did not involve Flight One on the front side. Today we are scheduled to return to New York on Flight 40, which departs at 11:00 Pacific Time and arrives in New York at 19:20. This is still a daylight trip the whole way at this time of year, since sunset will occur just about the time we are on final approach, which should make for a spectacular view out the window on landing. And it is a view I will be able to enjoy fully, since Pam will be doing all the actual work on this leg, including the takeoff and landing! Sunset over Big Bear Lake. What a difference 30 miles makes! My wakeup call comes right on the dot at 8am, which is actually 11am tummy time. This is a remarkably civilized hour, and I enjoy a leisurely breakfast at the hotel before taking a few minutes to turn in the rental car and preparing for pickup. The van is waiting for us right at the appointed time and we are off through another morning fog, this one not as dense as yesterday's and already fast-disappearing. As we make our way through the terminal I contemplate for a moment the possibility of revisiting flight operations, which used to be on the ramp level and was famous for its numerous walls completely covered with pictures of pilots past. But Ops has apparently changed its location, and the fate of the hundreds of historical pictures is unclear to me at this point, so I deem it best to head for the airplane and get the flight plan at the gate. Looking over the LA basin on the way back down the hill - still almost a mile above the valley floor The dispatcher has chosen route 34 for us this morning, and it looks to be a good one: LOOP4 DAG, J100 LAS, HVE, KD63U, KD72A, FOD, J94 PMM, J70 LVZ, LENDY5 JFK This route promises to be another visually spectacular one, starting with the departure. The LOOP4 is pretty much what its name implies, a wide sweeping half loop to the left and back over the LAX VOR, at which point the magenta line will head off to the northeast - a little north of Big Bear, as a matter of fact. After crossing the southern reaches of the Mojave Desert, our course proceeds to Las Vegas, then off to Bryce Canyon and Zion National Parks, two sights I am eager to see, since I plan to visit them on the ground sometime after I retire. (At this point I have yet to do so, but it is on the short list!) Beyond the so-called Basin and Range country of Utah we will cross the Rockies a bit north of Denver and then on across the plains and north of Chicago to Pullman VOR, southwest of Grand Rapids. Detroit will slide by below as we cross Lakes Michigan and Erie, going feet dry again just northeast of Erie Pennsylvania. After slicing across the northeast corner of Pennsylvania to Wilkes Barre, we pick up the LENDY arrival into JFK. The route of Flight 40 today plotted on AOPA's Flight Planner The Loop departure out of LAX All told, this should take us a mere four hours and forty three minutes, according to the computer - a far cry from the original record set on the Flight Two inaugural by Captain Macatee over 50 years ago, but still very respectable! Fuel-wise, the actual fuel burn for the flight is 45,106 pounds, with just shy of 14,000 pounds extra for reserve and alternate, and yet another 7000 pounds or so that the dispatcher has added based upon his long-held knowledge of the route, for a total release fuel of 66,572. The fuel required at brake release for takeoff is 63,987. The flight time of 4:43 is relatively short compared to the schedule block time of 5:20, so we have a cost index for the FMS of 12, which tells the computer to put fuel savings ahead of time considerations. That results in a cruise speed schedule that starts out at Mach .78 and progressively slows to mimic long range cruise - we will be cruising at .76 as we approach top-of-descent. The FO's "nest" just before departure - everything organized and ready to go! Sitting at the gate, the EGPWS shows us that we are certainly not in Kansas anymore! The lowest terrain displayed (yellow) starts at 500msl, and the highest terrain in the area depicted on the map is 9000msl, in the red area somewhere A "Mad Dog", as the MD-80's are sometimes known, taxis into the gate from which we just departed The weather here is 1200 scattered with visibility of 4 miles in haze. Enroute should be mostly clear and smooth, with just a single indication of potential turbulence west of FOD. JFK will be beautiful - the forecast calls for 25,000 scattered and winds out of the west at around 10 knots. The alternate, chosen largely as a formality, is BWI, and their weather will be pretty much the same as it will be at JFK. All in all, it looks like another great day for sightseeing! Since it is Pam's turn to fly today, I will again do the walkaround inspection, and it will turn out to be my last on anything larger than a Cessna. For over 31 years I have been performing this ritual, and I take some extra time today to savor the last one. I am, for a few moments, brought back in time to the regulated era, when my suit-of-lights had only three stripes, and I circumambulated the airplane before every takeoff, often in weather conditions much less delightful than this morning's 61 degrees. After 15 minutes or so savoring the sights sounds and smells of the intimate parts of a 767 and finding nothing amiss, I head back, somewhat reluctantly, to the flight deck. Another major milestone has come and gone, and there are only a few left now. But there is no time for maudlin sentimentality, because we have a job to do and it will require all of my attention, which is just as well. Waiting in the line for takeoff on 24L Airborne and out of 10,000 feet heading back toward LAX Looking beyond the marine fog layer across the Santa Monica Mountains to "the Valley" Three minutes before eleven o'clock we release the brakes and call for pushback. Once in the alley, we find ourselves face-to-face with an MD-80 inbound to the very gate we just vacated! Gates, like airplanes, are too valuable to sit around idle, and they are utilized to the max, especially here at LAX, where several of them are hors-de-combat due to facility maintenance. Once the little Doug scoots by and parks we push up the power and start over the runway 24L, on the other side of the airport. This will take awhile, but that will allow the cabin crew, who are LAX based once again and whom we just met a few minutes ago, to do their briefings at a normal pace. Hollywood Park racetrack approaching downtown LA "This is the City, Los Angeles California..." Sure has changed since Jack Webb intoned those lines decades ago! Johnny Carson made "Beautiful Downtown Burbank" famous - here it is beyond the Hollywood Hiils in the foreground After a few minutes wait for several airplanes ahead of us to get airborne, we are cleared into position on 24L. The sea fog clings to the other end of the airport, hiding from our view the low bluffs off the end of the runway. This is no concern of ours, since we will be airborne long before then. And, of course, our takeoff performance is calculated with the bluffs in mind, so we are assured of clearing them even were an engine to fail at rotation. Confident in all of this preparation, I acknowledge our takeoff clearance and Pam calls for the autothrottles. In less than a minute our 294,000 plus pounds accelerates to 136 knots and the nose comes up. In another second or so the ship bids the ground good bye and we are up and away for the right coast. Burbank airport Altadena, tucked against the San Gabriel Mountains A little of the once famous LA smog, out toward San Bernardino and the San Gorgonio pass The LOOP departure has an at-or-below 3000 foot restriction a few miles off the end of the runway, at the SMO 150 radial, but this is not difficult to comply with and we don't even have to level off. After a few minutes of flying what is essentially runway heading, SOCAL departure control clears us for the sweeping left turn back to the VOR. By the time we are headed east we are out of 10,000 feet and out comes my camera, the better to memorialize my final departure from the left coast! The day is beautiful, if not crystal clear, and we get a great view of downtown and the Hollywood/Bel-Aire area, as well as the San Fernando Valley and Johnny Carson's favorite spot - "Beautiful Downtown Burbank"! We are heading toward DAG, the Daggett VOR, which lies north of Twenty Nine Palms, our inbound route yesterday. As SOCAL hands us off to Los Angeles Center for the last time in my career, I take a moment to thank them and all of their predecessors over the last 31 years for the outstanding service, a brief ritual that I will repeat with every last center contact as we head east. Cajon pass, with the swirling paths of an Interstate and two railroad lines heading north to Victorville The San Bernardino Mountains, and possibly the road that I took to Big Bear - it certainly resembles it in twists and turns! El Mirage California, in the lower Mojave Desert It takes just 120 miles or so to reach 37,000 feet, our cruising altitude. After completing the checklists and welcoming the passengers aboard, we can relax a bit and enjoy the spectacular views. Aside from some smog in the eastern LA basin over toward San Bernardino and the San Gorgonio pass, the skies are now crystal clear. As we vault the San Bernardino Mountains we can see Edwards Air Force Base and Rodgers Dry Lake in the distance off to the north. These desert sands were witness to the first intentional sonic boom back when Chuck Yeager, the original high priest of the Right Stuff, flew the X-1 to the sound barrier and beyond. I remind Pam that there was once a resort of sorts just off the end of the main runway at Edwards, which was known as Muroc AFB in those days. This resort was known to the test pilots as the Happy Bottom Riding Club, and was run by one of the most colorful aviatrixes ever to slip the surly bonds - Pancho Barnes. Pancho, who was a race pilot and movie stunt pilot in the 1930's, befriended just about all of the original "right stuff" test pilots of the 1940's, and every major breakthrough in flight test was celebrated at her club, the remains of which (it burned down in the 1950's) still remain, the site of an annual celebration in her honor. The Mojave River at Hellandale California This strange strip is actually a test installation for determining the radar cross section of airframes both real and proposed The Nav Display shows us approaching Las Vegas. The areas in green represent terrain between elevations of 7000msl and 13,200msl, which is the highest elevation in the area shown on the display at the 320 mile setting shown here In a very real sense, Pam is an heir to Pancho and all of the other female early-birds of the 1920's and 30's. Women, of course, took to the skies almost as soon as the men did, and pretty well matched them feat for feat, including flying all of the combat aircraft of WWII as the WASP's. Not in combat itself, perhaps, but in ferry, instructional and test flying dangerous enough to claim the lives of many of the sisterhood. A grateful nation said "Thank You" and then more or less sent them back to the kitchen - not a single female was hired as an airline or military pilot until the 1970's, when Emily Howell Warner became the first woman to fly a commercial airliner in the USA, for Frontier Airlines. American Airlines hired Bonnie Tiburzi shortly thereafter, who was and is a great pilot and a wonderful person. She was joined by several other women before I was hired and many hundreds more later on. Bonnie retired early a few years ago, to pursue other challenges, and she is still missed at AA! But her sisters fly on, and have become captains, check pilots and chief pilots, as well as Union representatives. Pam's lineage is long and distinguished! A sharp escarpment guards the western edge of the Las Vegas basin. The Red Rock Canyon recreation area is just to the east of the ridge Glitter Gulch itself! The Strip now runs all the way to the airport Nellis Air Force Base, just north of Las Vegas and home of the USAF Thunderbirds As we fly over a small airport in the desert southeast of Edwards, known somewhat incongruously as Apple Valley, we are crossing the path of the delivery flight in my Thorp SkySkooter from Oregon to Connecticut. The trip was a leisurely one, given the not-quite-blistering speed of 100 knots that the Skooter is capable of when pressed! It took 8 days to cover the 4000 or so miles of the "long 'way round" route I chose, and we stopped for fuel at that little airport at Apple Valley. I never did find out if they grow apples down there, but the people were quite friendly, and the food was good! Lake Mead Hoover Dam, just visible to the left of the new highway bridge under construction in the middle of the picture. For a time this was the largest hydroelectric project in the world The Valley of Fire state park in Nevada, at the northern tip of Lake Mead Beyond Apple Valley we look down on a desert landscape, with the meager trickle of the Mojave River meandering through it. Victorville sits in the middle of this rather sparse landscape, along with George AFB and, just to the north of it, a strange looking site that resembles an airport laid out by Salvador Dali. The "runway" is not straight, but expands from one end to the other, and there are strange bunkers and buildings at each end, along with what appear to be structures of some sort in the middle of it. A search of the internet after the flight reveals that this is a Lockheed test facility, used to determine and measure the radar cross section of test articles, from models up to full sized airplanes. It is amusing to read some of the internet scuttlebutt about this site, which according to some accounts has something to do with UFO's and extraterrestrials! I'm fairly confident that nothing could be farther from the truth! The Arizona/Utah border, approaching St. George Utah Hurricane Mesa airport on the western edge of Zion National Park Cruising serenely at our assigned 37,000 feet, we head across another impressive desert toward Sin City itself, Las Vegas. What goes on there stays there, so they say, but in any event we are too high to see much of what is going on at the moment! It lacks a few minutes of high noon, so I imagine that what is going on there is mostly golf, but in truth the casinos are patronized around the clock, at least by the hard core! After a fine view of the entire area from McCarran airport to Nellis AFB we leave glitter gulch behind and, after passing Lake Mead and Hoover Dam, we head for an even more awe-inspiring sight - Zion National Park. Zion National Park, Utah. Zion Canyon cuts through the plateau in the middle of the picture The centerpiece of the park is the magnificent Zion Canyon, which although much smaller than the Grand Canyon a hundred or so miles to the south is perhaps more visually impressive. That's because unlike the Grand Canyon, where you look upon it from its rim, its highest point (unless you possess a true death wish and take the mule-back journey down into it, along a narrow trail barely wide enough for the mule to traverse!), you explore the Zion Canyon from its floor. All canyons are more impressive from within, and Zion is said to be no exception. Unfortunately, we look upon it not from its rim, but from around 6 miles higher than that! Even so, it is a marvelous sight, and I resolve to visit it at ground level some day. Zion Canyon in the center of the park The Nav Display shows us approaching Bryce Canyon VOR and airport, the gateway to Bryce Canyon National Park The western edge of Bryce Canyon National Park Bryce Canyon is next on the flight plan and it is equally impressive. This entire part of the world was once an ocean floor, and these rocks that the latter day waters have so creatively eroded were once the sediments on that floor, complete with marine fossils embedded thousands of feet below what would eventually be the surface of the uplifted land. At Bryce, the winds and waters have carved an incredible landscape of multicolored stalagmites, a kind of open-air giant's cavern that somehow had the top removed! I'll have to stretch that Zion trip to include this area as well. The red sandstone cliffs of Bryce Canyon We pass a westbound flight in the vicinity of Mount Hillers, near Canyonlands National Park Capital Reef National Park, Utah Beyond Bryce the National Parks rush by like ties on a railroad track. Capitol Reef National Park centers on a geological fault known as a monocline, a tectonic fold in the earth's crust that looks like a huge dry riverbed. Canyonlands National Park looks from the air like a smaller version of Grand Canyon, and in a sense it is, having been cut by the same Colorado River upstream from its bigger brother. From this point we will be more or less following the Colorado, until it cuts off to the north between Glenwood Springs and Eagle. North Cainville Mesa Utah Labyrith Canyon on the Green River near Canyonlands National Park Canyonlands National Park, Utah As we take in these awesome sights, the intercom bell sounds the dinner chime, and another pair of first class meals makes an appearance on our laps! Talk about a restaurant with a view! As we savor the cuisine the canyon country gives way to the mountains of western Colorado, as we parallel Interstate 70 past Grand Junction (GJT) and the colorfully named towns of Rifle and Parachute. We are entering ski country, and a parade of world class ski resorts passes in review off to the right - Avon, Vail, Breckenridge, to name but a few. As I mentioned in part two of this series, I have always preferred to remain at the base of the mountain, and if I ever get out here again that will still be the case! However, I have no aversion to riding the gondola to the top of the hill, as I have done many times at resorts as far apart as British Columbia and Santiago Chile! A view from any vantage point above the ground will always be my favorite, be it from an airplane or from the top of a mountain that I didn't have to climb or descend under my own steam! Colorado high country northwest of Parachute Colorado The interior Rockies north of Grand Junction Interstate 70 cuts through a long valley east of Grand Junction As I savor the dessert course of my last domestic crew meal we cross the dramatic escarpment of the Front Range of the Rockies, a little north of Denver, which we can see off to the right. From here our course continues to arc northeastward, crossing Nebraska and Iowa on the way to Northbrook VOR (OBK) just north of Chicago. From there we will turn eastward toward Erie Pennsylvania. This somewhat circuitous routing has been selected to take maximum advantage of the winds up here at 37,000 feet. The ski area of Avon Colorado, western gateway of the Vail complex The upper air chart for the day of this flight, from the National Severe Storms Laboratory Historical Weather Data Archives It was during WWII that the oceans were first flown on a regular basis, and it quickly became obvious to the more thoughtful of those pilots and navigators (the first of whom, by the way, were borrowed from the airlines) that the shortest time between two points is often not a straight line (or perhaps more correctly not a great circle line!). Strong high and low pressure weather systems lurked almost continuously in the North Atlantic and the pinwheel spin of the airflow around these systems might result in a constant and strong headwind if a direct flight path was chosen. Counter-intuitive though it first must have seemed, it was usually better to detour around the weather systems in the direction of the prevailing winds, so as to take advantage of the tailwinds that could be harnessed. The resulting often S-shaped flight path might well be up to a third longer in distance than the great circle route but would be shorter in time, often by an hour or more! This became known as "pressure pattern flying" and the introduction of the radio altimeter (known today as the radar altimeter) made it possible for a navigator to always know the sea level barometric pressure at the airplane's exact position. With this information at hand, the crew simply flew a constant pressure line (along a particular isobar on the weather depiction chart, one that had been roughly chosen during the flight planning process), correcting their heading as necessary to remain on the line. It was even possible to utilize this system as a means of navigation, based upon the assumption that a certain isobar would lie over the destination at the desired time. You could actually fly that isobar and, if the forecasts were accurate, come very close to the destination - certainly close enough for land based means of navigation to become effective. This system was used well into the 1950's, albeit only rarely as a primary means of navigation. The principal benefit was and is a shorter flight time. The ACARS printed flight log General Motors test track west of Detroit Michigan Plenty of ice still on Lake Erie northeast of Cleveland In time the present NAT track system evolved, and the burden of calculating the least-time route was lifted from the aircrew and taken up by the planners at the Oceanic Centers at Gander and Shannon. Today's NAT tracks are calculated each day using essentially the same philosophy as the pressure pattern flyers used. And we do very much the same thing on long domestic flights as well. No doubt a high pressure area lies to the south of our track, and the dispatcher has selected the preplanned route that best fits into the upper level wind patterns. Computers, of course, do all of this quickly and accurately. As we flash across the Great Plains at a groundspeed of around 530 knots, the sun is hastening along its path in the opposite direction and is now in a race with us to get below the horizon before we land at JFK! Eastbound flights are always like this - both the dawn and the sunset are accelerated like a time-lapse movie sequence. Out ahead we can begin to make out the slight darkening along the horizon that is the precursor of the terminator. No, not the Governor of California, but the line of demarcation between day and night. On the moon this line is razor sharp, but fortunately here on earth we have a broad diffuse zone hundreds of miles long where the evening twilight reigns. By the time we reach Wilkes Barre Pennsylvania the shadows on the ground are growing long. The LENDY arrival into JFK Scranton Pennsylvania with KLVZ at the lower right Approaching LENDY The Lendy arrival begins at LVZ, and this is also a good time to make a final check of the JFK weather. It turns out to be a delightful day in New York, with west winds and scattered clouds and the temperature a mild 60 degrees. Runway 22L looks like the runway of choice, and the ATIS is calling for the ILS 22L, which is a bit of a surprise since the preferred noise-abatement approach is the VOR/DME due to its slightly offset approach course. We hit LVZ 5 minutes ahead of the flight plan estimate and receive clearance to start down. Pam has programmed the FMC with the vertical constraints of the arrival, and soon enough the VNAV engages and starts us on the downward slide toward the Big Apple. I give the passengers the good news about our early arrival and the beautiful weather and advise the cabin crew of our estimated landing time. This is something of a guess, of course, since we will be flying a good bit beyond JFK in the process of landing on 22L, but it is an educated guess based upon long experience. The very low cost index number we put into the FMC at LAX would have us descending at 250 knots from shortly after top of descent. Normally we do not actually do this, since loafing along at such an absurdly low speed (for a 767, at any rate!) might well jam the gears of the entire ATC system. But today, lo and behold, ATC itself soon constrains us to 250 knots, tipping its hand that the skies over Gotham might be a bit busy this early evening! So we comply, and the FMC is forced to do an electronic scramble to recalculate the descent so as to cross LENDY at FL190. But OTTO wasn't born yesterday (actually this particular Otto was born around 1985 and has way more flying hours than I do, having been at it roughly 12 hours a day for all of these 23 years!) and he handles the curve-ball with the ease of a Derek Jeter in a clutch situation! LENDY and FL190 arrive just about simultaneously and we head over toward the LGA VOR. By now, the Big Apple is clearly visible, laid out from end to end in all of its not inconsiderable glory. Approach turns us just short of the Hudson and we fly south, parallel to Manhattan, which stands out like a city of gold in the early sunset. And wonder of wonders - we are still well above 10,000 feet and I am thus free to capture this Kodak moment to share with you! The sun and the moon are on opposite sides of the sky! The Big Apple! After we pass south of JFK we are vectored around to the east, and given clearance to descend to 3000 feet. As we turn back toward the west to begin the approach, we are presented with one of the most spectacular sunsets that I have ever encountered in over 38 years of flying. Even better than the one on the way back from Paris earlier in the week. There have been many occasions when I have been tempted to overlook the discipline of the sterile cockpit procedure and take a picture below 10,000 feet, but this is the greatest temptation of them all. What I would not give for a picture of this moment! But I've made it this far in compliance with the FAR's (Federal Aviation Regulations), or at least the ones I am aware of, and the time to start violating them intentionally will be after I put down the flight bag for the last time, not before. Pam calls for flaps and gear, and hand flies the airplane down the glide path. Despite the distraction of that unbelievable sunset she greases it on perfectly, and we turn off at the Juliet semi-high speed. As we hold in position awaiting clearance to cross runway 22R I am finally able to get a picture of the post-sunset western sky; but as you can see, it's all over but the shouting. As I taxi the jet to the gate I realize that the sunset we just enjoyed was, in a sense, a metaphor for this final week of my airline career. The best has, indeed, been saved for last! Lower Manhattan and Ground Zero Our destination - JFK airport - limned by the setting sun What is left of the spectacular sunset as we hold short of 22R After the passengers depart, I thank Pam for seeing to it that this old dog got his day on the Mercury without embarrassment! As we part, I remind her that a few short days hence she will get my number! Actually, every pilot on the list will get my number, for they will all advance by one on the first of April. (Actually, most of them will advance by nearly one hundred numbers, since I am not alone in declaring my intent to retire at the end of the month!) That puts a smile on her face; one of many as it turns out, for Pam is a pilot out of much the same mold as I - always smiling when aloft. Some things, fortunately, never change. And now, at long last, it is down to one. Not Flight One, but the last one - the Final Argosy, the Fini flight. I'll see you in operations the day after tomorrow! Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net The Mercury Series The Mercury Part 1 The Mercury Part 2 The Mercury Part 3 -
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The Mercury Part 2 By Tony Vallillo (29 October 2009) "American One Heavy cleared for takeoff"! With that clearance ringing in my ears, I push the throttles forward and call for the autothrottles. My first command of the Mercury (and my last domestic trip) is underway. Up and Away! I have made many a takeoff on runway 31L over the course of my career, and this will turn out to be the last. It is, of course, the preferred runway when the winds are out of the northwest, which they are a goodly bit of the time, especially after a spell of bad weather has moved on through. In order to avoid the airspace around LGA, a turn to the west is begun at 400 feet above the ground, toward the Canarsie VOR, which is located on a small spit of land just northeast of Floyd Bennett field. As I lift the ship into the air and reach 400 feet on the radar altimeter, I start a gentle left turn toward CRI, which I can see both on the moving map and out the window. It doesn't take much of a bank angle to make this turn; around 10-15 degrees will do nicely. And since we are still flying at V2+15 with the flaps extended, we don't want to be doing any yanking with our banking! The SID from JFK. The Breezy point climb is almost a straight shot to RBV. Once pointed toward Canarsie, we can accelerate and clean up, since the flight path beyond CRI is essentially straight, and does not involve the turn to 170 degrees that the normal Canarsie and Bridge climbs entail. So I lower the nose a bit to pick up speed and call for flap retraction on the numbers. As always, care must be taken not to overspeed the flaps. This had, for a time, become an item of attention after flight data recorder readings in the Flight Operations Quality Assurance Program (a recently instituted program at the airlines) had indicated that the speed margins were occasionally too slim on flap retractions. This is an example of the kind of progressive safety-oriented thinking that has been going on for some time in the world of aviation. It took a good deal of negotiation between the airlines, the FAA, and the crewmember unions to establish the protocols of the FOQA, principally the notion of flight data recorder readouts on a routine basis. But the results have already proven to be beneficial and the potential for improvements in safety are significant. Out of 10,000 feet already, Staten Island, otherwise known as the borough of Richmond, slides by to the north. Staten Island - about as rural as the 5 boroughs get! Having ensured that the flaps are safely retracted prior to our speed getting beyond the flap limit, we cross Canarsie and point the ship out the 223 degree radial toward RBV. This flight path likely approximates the route of the first Boeing 707's when the jet age came to the Mercury. The Ford Trimotor in the days when it did duty on what eventually became the Mercury. American Airlines photo A Stinson "A" trimotor at Oshkosh. The Stinsons were used extensively on the old American Airways routes in the late 1920's and early 1930's. The history of the Mercury is, in a real sense, the history of the technological progress of commercial airliners in the period from the early 1930's until the 1980's. In the earliest days of a so-called transcontinental service at AA, the aircraft involved were a mixed bag of Ford and Stinson tri-motors (photos above), with perhaps the opportunity at some point in the journey to sample the questionable delights of the Vultee V-1A as well. There was, of course, no non-stop service nor was there even a through-plane service. A transcontinental journey was an almost coincidental series of connecting flights and enroute stops; as I indicated in part one of this series, it was a 30+ hour journey that meandered around the eastern half of the United States before eventually turning westbound for good at Fort Worth. By the time CR Smith took over the reins at American, the route system had been rationalized a bit, and some new pieces added. Nonetheless, the first really big improvement to the transcon had come in the form of a new airplane. The Curtiss Condor, the sleeper plane used on the western portion of the transcon until the advent of the DST. American Airlines photo The Curtis Condor (above) was a large airplane for its time, and by comparison with the tri-motors that preceded it the twin engine configuration was an improvement. Engine technology was already improving to the point that two engines were adequate to achieve the desired performance; and, as Ernie Gann put it, everyone was delighted to be rid of the noise, vibration and smell of the nose-mounted third engine! The Condor was introduced between New York and Chicago as a regular day plane in 1933, but in 1934 the real innovation, a sleeper version, made its debut on the transcontinental service, initially on the legs between Dallas and Los Angeles. This airplane had seats that made up into upper and lower berths, like the older Pullman sleeper cars on the railroads, and it offered the passengers a chance to lie down, an attraction that would reappear half a century later in the form of the first class sleeper seat. Sleeper comfort notwithstanding, the Condor was slow even by the standards of the early 1930's. United Airlines was in the process of setting the commercial aviation world on its ear by sponsoring (and monopolizing the production of) the Boeing 247, the first really "modern" twin engine airliner. Stung by the incestuous UAL-Boeing monopoly, TWA initiated the development of what became the Douglas DC-2. AA got in line behind TWA and acquired a number of these state-of-the-art airplanes, which duly made their debut in the NY-Chicago market in December 1934. Shortly thereafter they picked up the eastern portions of the transcontinental service, which by now had straightened itself out to a routing from Newark through Nashville and Memphis to Dallas. At Dallas, however, the Condor sleepers still held down the western part of the run. The DC-2's reign as the latest and greatest did not last long. CR Smith, dismayed by the inability of the 14 passenger capacity of the DC-2 to turn a profit on passengers alone, made Donald Douglas an offer he couldn't refuse (although by all accounts Douglas tried hard to refuse it, having an order book chock-a-block full of DC-2 orders!). Thus was begotten the legendary DC-3, although the actual airplane that Smith instigated was a sleeper version called the Douglas Sleeper Transport, or DST. American took 20 of these sight unseen, and although it was, as usual, introduced on the EWR-Chicago run as a day plane, subsequent deliveries of the real day plane version, the DC-3 itself, soon freed the sleepers for the first transcontinental through-plane service on 18 September 1936. The poets in the marketing department promptly christened this new service The American Mercury. A pair of DST's await their next flight assignment, which most likely was The Mercury. American Airlines photo A map of the Low Frequency airway system around 1940. The probable route of a Mercury flight is highlighted, and the three enroute stops are also indicated. By 1940 the Mercury stopped only in Memphis, Dallas, and Tucson. The Flagship Detroit at Oshkosh. This airplane actually was an AA DC-3 pre-war, and quite possibly did a turn on the Mercury. The term Mercury originally applied to a specific flight, which soon evolved into a four leg affair with stops at Memphis, Dallas and Tucson. A second transcon with a few extra stops was soon introduced and named The Southerner. Two additional daily services were added as time went by, for a total of four transcontinental flights, each with its own name. After WWII, the term Mercury evolved into a service label, and many of the transcons were identified as featuring Mercury service. The DC-4 arrived after WWII. It was capable of doing the transcon with but a single enroute stop. American Airlines photo The DC-4, almost all of which were actually ex-Army C-54's demobilized after the war, was the next step upward in speed and size on the Mercury, although at a shade over 200 mph it had but a slight speed advantage over the DC-3. It carried, however, better than double the passenger load of the now-venerable Gooney Bird. It was also possessed of considerable range, although not enough to make the coast-to-coast trip non-stop in either direction with any load at all. Nevertheless, the DC-4 was one of the world's greatest airplanes, and might have held sway on the Mercury far longer than it did but for one factor - the pressurized Lockheed Constellation. The Connie, as it was known to all airmen, had been introduced just before the end of the war, as a really fast (well over 250 mph) pressurized transport. It had almost an 80 mph advantage over the DC-4 and could fly over at least some of the weather much of the time, resulting in a faster and often smoother trip. TWA, by now under the financial influence of Howard Hughes, wasted no time in putting the Connie on its own central transcontinental route, via Kansas City. Although the Connie could only make the trip non-stop in the eastbound direction with the winds, and not all the time at that, it was a competitive winner against the Douglas airplane. Something, according to CR Smith of AA and Pat Patterson of UAL, had to be done! The elegant DC-6 held down the Mercury in the early 1950's. American Airlines photo That something was a stretched, pressurized version of the DC-4 that had been initiated, like the Connie, in the last days of WWII. It was not until 1947 that it entered airline service as the DC-6; and, like the Connie, its early service was marred by accidents caused by design problems. Once those were straightened out, the DC-6 and its very slightly larger sibling the DC-6B became the kings of the hill on the AA and UAL transcons. These fine airplanes, which actually remained in service with both airlines until the late 1960's, could compete head to head with the new stretched versions of the Constellation, which TWA wasted no time in putting in service by the late 40's. Competition, in those days, was a matter of equipment and service, not price - the airlines were strictly regulated in terms of the fares they could charge, and all had to charge the exact same fare between any two points, no more and most certainly no less. If service, rather than price, was the competitive edge, then non-stop service would certainly be the ne-plus-ultra. Although the Martin and Boeing flying boats of the pre-war era certainly had the range, no land planes in the early 1950's possessed the capability to make reliable scheduled non-stop service a reality on the Mercury. So both Lockheed and Douglas went back to the drawing boards and stretched their respective airplanes yet again, a process we know well in the jet age! The Connie became the Super-G Constellation, and the DC-6 morphed into the DC-7. But especially in the case of the DC-7, there were as many problems created as problems solved. The DC-7 brought non-stop coast to coast service to the Mercury. American Airlines photo A luggage sticker from the DC-7 era. Both airplanes had the advertised capability of non-stop coast to coast service in both directions, and both boasted speeds somewhat higher than the previous versions. But the extra size and fuel load required more powerful engines, and therein lay some of the problems that were soon encountered. Both airplanes took advantage of the latest Turbo Compound engines, huge many-cylindered radial engines that incorporated power recovery turbines that received a hellacious spin from the hot exhaust gases and imparted some of that energy directly to the prop shaft via a fluid drive. This was an extremely complex affair, and the engines needed very tender handling. Temperatures and rpm's needed to be monitored continually, and the flight engineer, who had been added to the original Connies and DC-6's, was the busiest man on the flight deck. Then too, these engines drank oil at a prodigious rate, so much so that despite 30-50 gallon reservoirs behind each engine, as many enroute stops were made because of oil consumption as were made for fuel! Another problem that cropped up was time. Despite speeds of over 300 mph the trip westbound, although scheduled for exactly 8 hours and thus within the limits of pilot duty, often exceeded 8 hours due to winds. It began to look like an enroute stop for a crew change would be needed, which would, of course, completely cancel out the competitive advantage of speed and range. The senior pilots who held these otherwise comfortable bids were all in favor of getting a CAA (the predecessor of the FAA) approved exemption to allow crews on those runs to exceed 8 hours in actual practice. The pilots' union, however, was not so sanguine, and a strike took place, which fortunately was soon settled to everyone's satisfaction, and the appropriate exemptions secured. The non-stops were back in business! Up through the mid 1950's when the DC-7 held down the now non-stop transcons, the increments of improvement in speed, size and service were not quantum leaps. Each airplane in the Douglas series was more or less identical in diameter. The cabin amenities were similar, although for a time some of the early DC-6's at American featured a small number of sleeper berths. Even the cockpits were quite similar -- dimensionally identical and differing only in the additional engine instruments required for the newer and more complicated engines, as well as the addition of new equipment such as radar. Each model offered an incremental speed advantage over the previous version, but at most only around 50 knots or so. Over the course of the several models in the line it all added up, but there was no one point at which the size or speed essentially doubled. That was about to change. N7501A, the very first B-707 American got. Here it is shown in a publicity photo at Boeing Field. The red carpet up front says "Mercury". American Airlines photo A Mercury flight at Idlewild, preparing for a run to the west coast. American Airlines photo Boeing, which despite their impressive Stratocruiser had been more or less odd-man-out in the postwar airliner competition with Douglas and Lockheed, had been doing a land office business selling advanced swept-wing jet bombers to the Air Force. All too soon it became apparent that these fast, high flying jet bombers would need a fast, high flying jet tanker plane with which to perform aerial refueling. Boeing decided that they were just the folks to sell Uncle Sam such a jet tanker; and perhaps, by the by, to sell a passenger version of it to the airlines, who were already beguiled by the British Comet to the point of placing tentative orders for that graceful yet under-built pioneer. What came of all this was the Boeing model 367-80, and on that fabled day of August 7th 1955 test pilot Tex Johnston jump-started the jet age by putting on an aerial demonstration of the Dash-80 in front of a select group of airline executives. There at Boeing's invitation to see the jet prototype (and, by the way, to enjoy the Seattle hydroplane races) were Patterson, Smith, Trippe, and just about every other airline president in the country. They had all been a bit reticent to jump in and place orders, no doubt sobered by the travails of the Comet. But when Tex barrel-rolled the Dash 80 twice in full view of all of the spectators, every man knew that the airplane was built hell-for-stout, and that there would be none of these coming apart in mid-air in a clear smooth sky! Orders flooded into Seattle, and CR Smith wasted no time in putting the 707, as it was now called in passenger service, onto the Mercury; beaten by only a few days for the honor of first jet service in domestic operations by the crafty Ted Baker of National Airlines, who leased a 707 from Juan Trippe of Pan American and started Miami-Idlewild service shortly before American got their own jets. The inaugural jet powered Mercury took place on 25 January 1959, when Captain Charlie Macatee took N7503A, the Flagship California, operating as Flight Two, from LAX to Idlewild in a record time of 4 hours and 3 minutes. This was truly a quantum leap in all respects! The 707 was nearly twice as fast as the DC-7, and held twice as many people even in the early half coach-half first class configurations. It flew 15,000 feet higher than the props, and that turned out to be enough to fly over almost all of the weather almost all of the time. Gone was the constant enervating vibration of the mighty recips and their four huge sometimes-synchronized propellers. Passengers were delighted by the speed of the trip, and the concept of the "Jet Set" appeared, with the rich and famous adding "bi-coastal" to the lexicon. It was also at this time, due to the foresight of earlier pilot union leaders in tying pilot pay to both the weight and speed of the airplanes they flew, that pilot pay really took off, reaching stratospheric heights not unlike those at which the airplanes themselves cruised! (A Captain flying the 707 in the early 60's generally earned around $35,000 per year, a number identical to the altitude in feet at which the airplanes most commonly flew! This was a considerable sum in those days, and would translate into more than $300,000 in today's dollars. Oh, for the good old days!) N7503A, the airplane that flew the inaugural jet flight from coast to coast in 1959. This photo was taken around the time that I joined AA, in 1977. I never flew 7503A, according to my logbooks, but I did fly 7501A, the first 707 we got. Photo courtesy Frank Duarte via Airliners.net. The jets, of course, could not operate out of LaGuardia, which since the late 1930's had been New York's air terminus. (Neither, for that matter, could the DC-7 and the later Constellation models.) Idlewild airport, near Rockaway on Jamaica bay, was the international airport for New York and it became the permanent home of the transcontinental flights as well. In fact, the very runway I used just minutes ago is a direct legacy of the 707 (and the DC-8, Douglas' always-a-bridesmaid entry in the race to build jet airliners). The first jets had relatively low powered turbo-jet engines, which needed water injection on takeoff to seriously contemplate flight. Naturally, given this and the fact that really high-lift wing devices had yet to be applied to airliners, the first jets needed enormously long runways, especially for flights like transcons and trans-Atlantic journeys. And so runway 31L was duly lengthened to its current dimension of 14,572 feet, which at that time made it the longest civil runway in the world. And the early 707's, especially on the Atlantic flights, used nearly every inch of that length! An early 707 loaded up for the Mercury (this was the 707-123, which topped out at around 250,000 lb max takeoff weight) accelerated verrrrryyyy slowly compared to modern jets. (I have flown in heavily loaded KC-135 tankers, which until the mid 1980's had small engines much like those in the early 707's. The -135's could take a good 9000-10,000 feet to accelerate to rotation speed, and there was often an uncomfortable period in the middle of the run during which the ability to continue with an engine failure was nil, and the ability to stop under any condition was questionable!) The Mercury, spewing black smoke like a railroad steam locomotive, would get a nearly complete tour of runway 31L before becoming airborne. Then, still decorating the atmosphere with smoke noir, to say nothing of a great deal of noise, it would commence that famous left turn, after which the Captain would level off (hardly a noticeable maneuver in those days, considering the anemic climb rates!) and retract the flaps, and then accelerate to red-line speed, somewhere around 350 knots or so down low, and close to .9 Mach higher up. It was only then that the straight turbojet airplanes began to dig in and hustle, for the engines were most efficient at high airspeeds and high altitudes. We, of course, have an assigned level of 38,000 feet today, and thanks to the healthy climb rate of a 767-200 we will reach it fairly quickly, although it will take 3 or 4 sequential ATC clearances to get the final altitude. The early jets, however, seldom flew at a constant altitude, at least not until the level of jet traffic increased. The most efficient way to fly a jet airplane, especially a straight turbo-jet airplane, is the so-called cruise climb. After clean-up and acceleration to the desired climb speed, which in those days was more or less at the barber pole, that speed was maintained by regulating the pitch attitude. At some point the airplane's climb rate would peter out to nearly nothing, but maximum continuous power was maintained and the airspeed still held constant with pitch. This would result in a miniscule climb all the way across the country, as the airplane burned fuel and became lighter. Since in the earliest days there were only a handful of airplanes at those altitudes anyway, usually one or two other airline jets and a few military airplanes, the Mercury could be assigned a "block altitude" several thousand feet in depth in which it could continue to climb without any further clearance from ATC. This is exactly what Concorde did decades later when it flew across the Atlantic. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have welcomed the passengers aboard. My announcements tend to be minimalist these days, since I know only too well from my experiences as a passenger the grating torment of being subjected to PA's from a pilot who is in love with the sound of his or her own voice! Of course we were all guilty of that in the beginning, myself included. Indeed in the early days of my Captaincy, when more emphasis was placed on pointing out sights of interest (before the days of in-flight entertainment, at least on narrow bodies) I was one day waxing poetic about a certain rock formation out west known as Ship Rock. I had, apparently, unconsciously acquired some of the vocal mannerisms of the then recently retired Walter Cronkite, because just after I completed the announcement the chime rang, and the flight attendant informed me that there were two CBS executives in first class who had commented to her that "we thought we had retired that guy"! Philadelphia in the morning. Philly International is visible at upper right. The Junior Pilot Certificate that I got from Allegheny Airlines in the summer of 1958. That trip cemented my desire to become an airline pilot, and the certificate has been on my wall ever since! Tony Vallillo and Jack Robinson meet for a second time at Oshkosh in 1993 By now we can see Philadelphia clearly, conveniently off to my side of the airplane. This is going to be a great sightseeing trip, since there is little cloud cover across the entire USA. A fine retirement gift indeed! We overfly the "main line", as the northwest suburbs of Philly are known, and as we do it dawns on me that we are very close to the route of my very first flight in an airplane, back in 1958. In the summer of that year I flew from Pittsburgh to Wilmington Delaware unescorted on an Allegheny DC-3, a trip that involved 3 intermediate stops and was, for all intents and purposes, identical to a typical airline flight in the 1930's! At that time I was 10 years old, and had been keen on a career as an airline pilot for at least 5 years. Naturally, I didn't keep this ambition a secret from the crew; and, lo and behold, the Captain himself invited me to join him and the copilot in the inner sanctum shortly after takeoff! I would have been up there for the entire trip but for the fact that the DC-3 had no jumpseat. As it was, Captain Jack Robinson, whom I met for the second time 45 or so years later at Oshkosh, renewed the invitation on each leg, so that save for the actual takeoffs and landings, I spent the entire time on the flight deck. The Junior Pilot Certificate I received on that flight has been on my wall ever since, and still is! (Captain Robinson wound up accumulating over 40,000 flying hours before he set down the flight bag for the last time! Only a few pilots are in that exclusive club. We still keep in loose touch through the magazine of a pilot club we both belong to, the QB's) Still skiing in late March in in eastern Pennsylvania. Today we are more or less running that original trip in reverse. Wilmington is just south of Philadelphia, and we now overfly the prior stop, Lancaster Pennsylvania, and will pass just to the south of the other ones - Harrisburg, Johnstown and the point of origin, Pittsburgh. Soon the undulating ridgelines of the Allegheny Mountains appear, out the window and on the nav display, one of which is now set up on the EGPWS system. The Alleghenies are part of the much larger Appalachian mountain chain, which stretches, on this continent at least, from northeastern Canada to northern Georgia. It is one of the oldest mountain chains on earth, at least above sea level, and predates the current geological division between the Americas and Europe/Africa. Depending upon your source of information, the Appalachians are said to have once been contiguous with the Anti-Atlas Mountains in North Africa and/or the Urals in Russia. Either way, what we see below is what is left after half a billion years of uplifting, erosion, subduction, and just about every other geological process that can be imagined! The Allegheny Mountains as seen on the Nav Display. Chambersburg Pennsylvania, on the threshold of the Alleghenies. From the air, this part of the country looks like row after row of speed bumps, aligned roughly northeast-southwest across our path. They lay right across the path of the early settlers as well, which resulted in the early settlements lying mostly along the coastal plain. Indeed, the history of the first 50 years or so of the United States is very much the story of the many attempts to find or to create cheap and relatively easy passages across this mighty barrier. Eventually the rampart fell, first to the Erie Canal and then to the early railroads. Today we vault it as though it were not even there, although I still keep an eye on it with radar and EGPWS. The terrain here is merely a visual attraction and not a hazard to flight, at least in a jet airliner. But it was not always so, for this general area was once the graveyard of the early airmail service. South-central Pennsylvania. A portion of an original Air Mail pilot's map of the route from Belmont Park NY to Belefonte Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy Nancy Wright, Air Mail Pioneers It was all the way back in 1918 that the first air-mail service was inaugurated in America, between New York (actually northern New Jersey) and Washington DC. A year later plans were in the works for a transcontinental mail relay between New York and San Francisco. The service between New York and Chicago was set up in 1919 and in 1920 the remainder of the route west was in operation. These were both the golden years of aviation and the deadly years. By the time the service was running from coast to coast, 16 airmen had lost their lives. The airplanes were, for the most part, cast-off WWI trainers like the Curtiss Jenny; slow, uncomfortable and fragile. The engines, usually in-line water cooled Liberty's, again from WWI, were of dubious reliability. Forced landings were frequent, and occasionally fatal. There were no flight instruments to speak of, save for airspeed and an early altimeter that read in thousands of feet and could be in error by at least one of those! All navigation was visual, by landmark and compass. The amazing thing is that these pioneer pilots managed to do this in conditions that would today be called CAT III! Hair raising accounts of flights at altitudes of 100 feet in visibilities not much greater than that can be found in Dick Merrill's biography "The Wings of Man", and also in an account written by Jack Knight, one of the early birds who, like Merrill, survived to write about it and fly a long and distinguished career for a major airline: http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Crossing_the_Alleghenies_in_1919.html There is also an excellent web site, http://www.airmailpioneers.org, that is devoted to the history of the early airmail service and is a trove of fascinating pictures and artifacts. The Hell Stretch, viewed from the cockpit of a Mail Plane around 1919. Photo courtesy Nancy Wright, Airmail Pioneers Bellefonte Pennsylvania air field, the first refueling point west of New York. Photo courtesy Nancy Wright, Air Mail Pioneers The most hazardous leg of the entire transcontinental service was the leg between New York and Cleveland, which crossed the Allegheny Mountains in north central Pennsylvania. The first refueling stop after leaving New York was Bellefonte Pa., just a bit north of State College. The flyers followed a route that was not too far from the modern-day route of Interstate 80, and anyone who has driven that road between the Delaware Water Gap and the Ohio state line can understand what a tough stretch of flying it was in those days. Subject to every manifestation of bad weather that nature can cook up, from fog to thunderstorms to blizzards, this region quickly became know to the airmen as the "Hell Stretch". Those of you who have spent any time with FS2004 are undoubtedly familiar with that name. We are flying about 100 miles south of the old airmail route, but the terrain here is similar to that which lay along the Hell Stretch, with parallel ridgelines that look for all the world like heavily wooded breakers in a green surf. Aside from the more recently added roads, there are still few places to set a ship down safely today, even a small plane like my Sky Skooter. Small wonder, then, that a goodly number of pilots failed to survive to the late 1920's, when the airmail was contracted out to private operators. Those who did survive all admitted that luck played an inordinate part! The Pennsylvania Turnpike slices through the mountains between Everett PA and Bedford PA in the distance. Wind farm near Meyersdale PA. The transcontinental airmail service was a Pony Express style relay, with the mail handed off from one airplane and pilot to another at changeover points. After Bellefonte Pennsylvania the mail proceeded to Cleveland, Bryan Ohio and Chicago. Originally the entire route was flown only by day, but that service took over 70 hours coast to coast, and the mail had to be put on trains at night to keep even that schedule! It was not much of an improvement over the all rail service that already existed. The Post Office was eager to show that airplanes could carry the mail significantly faster than trains; and so, in February 1921, night operations were demonstrated in a dramatic experiment between Chicago and Cheyenne Wyoming, across the flattest segment of the route. By flying these legs at night, the total transcontinental transit time was cut to around 30 hours. This one-night series of flights, although it cost the life of one of the pilots, was successful enough to spur the installation of beacon lights every 10 miles between Chicago and Cheyenne. By the late 1920's, this system had been enlarged to over 18,000 miles of lighted airways, and 24 hour air service had become a reality. In those "good old days" the U.S. government, far from wanting to operate everything itself, as it seems to be inclined to do these days (!), was eager to turn the carriage of air mail over to private contractors just as soon as any willing and able private contractors could be found. By the late 1920's this had been accomplished, and the Post Office Air Mail service was ended, replaced by operators that, as time went by, became the airlines; including my own alma mater, American. Charles Lindbergh flew the inaugural flight of the third contract air mail route, from St. Louis to Chicago, on April 15th 1926, which AA recons as its "birthday" to this day. The rest, as we are so fond of saying, is history - a history in which I am now playing my own last small part. What a privilege it has been! The Ohio River at Moundsville WVA, just south of Wheeling. The Ohio winds its way toward Parkersburg WVA What took the early daredevils of the Air Mail service the better part of a day to do, we do in a matter of minutes. Less than an hour after takeoff we fly over AIR, the Bellaire VOR, in eastern Ohio across the river from Wheeling West Virginia. By now the terrain below has become less formidable, although the Ohio River has managed to cut a considerable gorge all the way to Louisville! As the ground settles itself down into rolling hills we fly almost directly over yet another reminder of aviation's rich history here in America, as the Columbus Ohio airport (KCMH) passes below. This was the changeover point from rail to air on the original Transcontinental Air Transport service. One of these days I must make a pilgrimage here, because the original TAT terminal still exists, clearly visible in the "bird's eye view" oblique shots on Microsoft Live Search. Lindbergh himself laid out this airport, as he did the entire TAT aerial route, and he piloted the first flight eastbound out of Glendale California. Plenty of traffic even in the midwest, near Columbus Phio. The original TAT air-rail terminal at Columbus. The passengers arrive by train on those very tracks, and walked a short ramp directly to the terminal, and the awaiting Ford Trimotors. Bing Maps oblique view. Today's route has yet another reminder of Lindbergh, as we cross the STL VOR just a few miles north of Lambert Field. It was from St. Louis that he flew the airmail to and from Chicago in the year prior to the Paris flight; and in the Spirit of St. Louis he made a stopover in that city on the way to New York to begin the epic journey that would change his life and the future of aviation. With the American Airlines acquisition of TWA in 2001, the Lindbergh legacy came full circle, for it united the two airlines that he had been instrumental in starting nearly 80 years before. Sadly, we are unable to gaze upon St. Louis, because an undercast has formed and looks to be with us for a short while. We are right on the estimated time and the estimated fuel as the FMS switches to KK51I, the next waypoint after STL. An undercast, just about the only cloud cover on our route today, blocks our view of St. Louis and the Mississippi. The flight log. Passing TILMN waypoint, between Terre Haute Indiana and Matoon Illinois. One of our pilots, Jim Tillman, was a well known TV weatherman in his spare time on a Chicago station. I wonder... Since we passed Indianapolis (VHP) the ground below has been as flat as a billiard table, although now that we have crossed the Mississippi the imperceptible incline changes from down to up. From here on west to the Rockies, the terrain, though appearing flat, will actually climb steadily. By the time we get to LBL (Liberal Kansas) the elevation is nearly 3000 feet MSL and it will reach 6000 feet even before we get to the actual mountains. By now, of course, we have had our lunch. The service on flight One is still the best that the domestic system has to offer, as it has always been. This 767-200 is a three class airplane, which is something of a novelty to me these days, since the -300's were reconfigured to a two class layout some years ago. On all but the really long international flights (and, for some reason, the London trips) first class didn't sell well, and the front cabin was usually a dark quiet cavern, occupied by only a handful of people, mostly non-revs. Although this was very convenient for crew rest during breaks it was not the most financially effective use of the space, so first class was eliminated on the 767-300; and the 777, which was always a three class airplane, was deployed on the London and Asian routes where it was still possible to induce a passenger to part with upwards of $4000 to ride up front. One way! Nonetheless, the JFK-LAX transcons do sell well in first class, and so the 767-200's were configured in a first/business/coach layout to serve this market. We do use them elsewhere on occasion, even on flights as short as JFK-BDA, but their true home is the Mercury. The service is pretty much the same as it has always been, which is to say as luxurious as the airline can afford to make it, at least in First Class, which is the cuisine we partake of in the cockpit. When I was hired in 1977, the transcon flights featured such epicurean delights as caviar and the so called transcon roast. This latter viand was a real roast of beef, cooked onboard. This was possible because the 707's had radiant ovens in the First Class galley. I suppose the 747 also had them, since the roast was rumored to be a feature on the big dog too! There were no extra portions of the roast earmarked for the crew on any of those flights, but on days when the passenger load was light, or when the passengers themselves favored entrees other than the roast, portions of the beef found their way up front; invariably to the Captain, and perhaps to the FO as well. As I recall there were few complaints from any of those airmen! The F/E, of course, got the chicken! The modern airliner does not have radiant ovens, at least at American, and so the meals, even in First Class, are more or less pre-cooked and put aboard chilled, to be brought to the appropriate temperature in the hot-air ovens of the current galleys. Gone are the tins of caviar, and so too the Chicken Kiev, which was a culinary delight bursting with molten butter - one that could get out of hand if you were not careful how you cut it! The Kiev was probably a casualty of modern health concerns, but the caviar was simply too expensive and, apparently, too little appreciated. The folks in America who really crave caviar can apparently afford to fly in their own jets! This is all in stark contrast to the original fare on the Mercury - a fried chicken box lunch served cold along with coffee that was, hopefully, served hot! Simple stuff, to be sure, but undoubtedly such a novelty, given the location and the view, that it seemed like gourmet fare in those days! Then again, that was at the height of the great depression, and fried chicken may well have been a real treat, even for those fortunate few who could afford air travel in those tough times. Today, of course, even the most frugal passengers, who no doubt satisfy their hunger beneath the golden arches when they have both feet on the ground, and who delight in paying fares that would not cover the cost of the trip by bicycle let alone by airplane, expect to be fed onboard by Oscar of the Ritz in person! This is likely one bit of the cultural fallout from programs such as "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", which expose the rest of us to lifestyles and menus that we would never experience in real life! Having sated my appetite, I now fire up the number two comm radio and engage in a bit of banter with a dispatcher I have known for many years. On my usual flights across the pond this would be done using the ACARS and Satcom, but we have had a voice radio system in the CONUS for as long as I have been here, and I am able to converse directly with my friend. I thank him and all of his colleagues over the years for the outstanding support they have provided, and he is kind enough to opine that I might possibly be missed after I am gone. This is the highest sort of compliment, and I am flattered. I hadn't given much thought to how American Airlines will survive without me! Quite well, I'm sure, and indeed that has proven to be the case! Ever since ACARS made its entry into commercial aviation a few decades ago, we have been able to do for ourselves a certain amount of what the dispatchers and weather people had been doing for us since the advent of airborne radio in the 1930's - obtain information about the state of the weather environment along the route and at destination. But I have always valued the opinions of the dispatchers, and I have often consulted them directly either via the ground-based radio network I am now using, or the satellite network overseas. Of course the satcom system is somewhat costly, and my use of it is limited to situations where it is the only viable method. But it certainly is good to be able to coordinate information directly, even when over some remote corner of the world. Those are the places where you really need it! Near Wichita Kansas. As we approach the halfway point of the journey, the LAX weather is still a small concern, although hardly a deal-breaker. Shortly before we took off, a check of the ATIS out there indicated that the fog had worsened, and the weather was 100 overcast with a visibility of 1/16th of a mile. This was acceptable, since the airplane is in CAT IIIB status, and everything we would need to autoland in LAX is working. Now, several hours later, things are a bit better, with 200 overcast and a mile visibility, but the temperature/dew point spread is still only 1 degree, and things will not improve much until the sun has had a chance to warm things up later on. This is one of the reasons I decided to talk to the dispatcher directly - he has been working flight One for years and I am a newcomer, not truly wise to the ways of the Pacific fogs. He assures me that this sort of thing has been going on for several mornings now, and it has always cleared up by our arrival time to at least marginal VFR conditions. The Gypsum Hills, near Medicine Lodge Kansas. Southwestern Kansas. As I put down the microphone I am pleased to see that the undercast that blotted out a view of St. Louis has disappeared, and it looks like we will be treated to some more sightseeing as we continue west. Up to now we have been looking at the Great Plains, but that view changes as we cross the panhandle of Oklahoma. The land below is looking progressively more arid, and cultivation appears to be sparser, with patchwork areas of croplands dropped almost randomly into the scrub. Not far from here, at Altus AFB Oklahoma, I encountered the first big transport jet that I would have the good fortune to fly - the C-141A Starlifter. Newly graduated from USAF pilot training and, strange as it may seem, eager to trade the supersonic T-38 for something that had a bunk and a toilet (!), I was in hog heaven for three whole months. The Air Force chose well when they selected Altus for this training, because the place is out in the middle of nowhere, with absolutely no distractions from the main task of learning to fly the heavies. This was graduate school for me, the aeronautical equivalent of an MBA, and I threw myself into it eagerly. Perhaps someday that story will be told, who can say. But the memories are vivid, and I take a moment to remember what it was like to begin this lifelong Argosy. I take another moment to remember my roommate at Altus, a fellow C-141 fledgling whose career was cut very short by a fatal crash near Madrid, Spain a year and a half later. We all take that final flight west, as the WWI aviators used to say; sadly, Bill just made the trip much sooner than most of us. Smooth skies and tailwinds to you, old buddy. Keep the runway lights up there on full bright for the rest of us! The mighty ramparts of the Rocky Mountains come into view in the distance. When I was a student at Altus the first time, in 1972, my ignorance of geography was so great that I actually thought that it might be possible to see the tops of the Rockies on a clear day from atop a small mountain that lay just east of the field! Imagine my surprise when, a month or so later, we flew our first cross-country mission from Altus to Tacoma Washington. We flew for an hour at jet speeds before the Rockies came into view, and from 35,000 feet at that! But soon enough now that great rampart comes into view in the distance (above). It will still be a few minutes before we cross the Front Range, but the splendor of the great mountain chain is already apparent, and I sit up straighter in my seat, the better to take in the spectacle. The far western panhandle of Oklahoma. The Canadian River near the old Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico. The Sangre de Christo range near Cimarron New Mexico. We are approaching the southern portion of the Rockies, the Sangre de Cristo range. To the north lie Pikes Peak and the Air Force Academy. Beneath us lies the old-west town of Cimarron, New Mexico, and just to the west of Cimarron is the enormous Philmont Boy Scout Ranch, one of the highlights of any scout's career. In 17 years of interviewing candidates for the Air Force Academy, I have met more than one graduate of Philmont and they all spoke of the challenges and the scenic grandeur of the place. Looking at it now, from 38,000 feet, I can understand their enthusiasm. We see these guys everywhere these days, but we really are in their territory! Behind Southwest is the Philmont Boy Scout ranch - just about everything in the picture below and to the right of the jet! Angel Fire New Mexico, with Taos just across the mountains in the middle distance. Just to the west of Philmont lie Taos and Angel Fire, two of the dozens of major ski resorts in the eastern Rockies. There is still snow on the ground here in March, of course, and no doubt many enthusiasts are enjoying a nerve-wracking run down the side of a mountain! Early in my airline career I made the acquaintance of several flight attendants who liked to ski and were, in fact, members of the airline ski team. Lured by the thought of amorous encounters apres-ski (this was before She!), I ventured forth to several of the airline ski meets in Utah and California, even taking a lesson or two on the bunny slopes. Alas, I proved no more adept at skiing than I would, years later, at Tango, and since the risk of sudden death was much greater on the slopes than on a dance floor I decided to remain at the base of the mountains, a position from which I have yet to budge! Later on Sonny Bono would succumb to just the sort of accident I visualized myself being involved in, and so my decision may well have been a good one. The northwest New Mexico desert. Cabezon Peak, southwest of Taos NM. Interstate 40 cuts through Red Rock State Park and Fort Wingate, with Gallup New Mexico at upper right. Beyond the mountains the terrain settles down into desert as we head for a meeting with a very historic road at Gallup New Mexico. Famous in song and story, Route 66 was the first modern highway between Chicago and the west coast. Until Gallup we have been flying well to the north of its old alignment, although we crossed it at St. Louis. Now we meet up with it again, and follow it until Flagstaff Arizona. Known to some as "The Mother Road", a name bestowed upon it in the John Steinbeck novel Grapes of Wrath, the road, or what is left of it, meanders back and forth around Interstate 40, right through the towns it originally nurtured; towns which the Interstate bypassed and consigned to oblivion. It is still possible to travel much of the original road, although you have to refer to special maps since "US Highway 66" was officially decommissioned several decades ago. One day, perhaps, I will explore this part of the country at ground level, and when I do, I'll "...get my kicks on Route 66"! Navaho reservation, northeast Arizona. Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona. Winslow, Arizona on the old Route 66. As we roll along west of Gallup headed toward Winslow Arizona, Pam alerts me to the next upcoming "must see" sight - Meteor Crater! (Pam, of course, has been flying the Mercury for several years an average of twice a week, and she is a font of knowledge about the sights along the way. I still do remember the major ones from my days on domestic in my aviation youth, and fortunately they have not moved or disappeared!!) Meteor Crater, so called because of its creation as the result of a large meteor impacting the surface, is said to have been formed around 50,000 years ago - a mere blink in geological time. The crater, which stands out even from our altitude, is almost a mile across, and some 500 feet deep. It sits a bit west and south of Winslow, just off the old Route 66. There was a sort of tragic-comic mishap here several decades ago, in which two pilots in a small Cessna flew down into the crater itself. After gadding about for awhile, they discovered, no doubt to their consternation, that wind currents prevented the modestly powered Cessna from topping the crater walls, thus condemning them to a forced landing on the crater floor a few hours later when they ran out of gas. The pilots survived, sadder and wiser, but the airplane did not. Meteor Crater Arizona Mormon Lake, Arizona, with Sedona in the distance. The red rock formations of Sedona. A few minutes farther down the road we overfly an especially stunning area that I have seen from the ground - Sedona Arizona. The red rock formations around Sedona are justifiably famous for their stark beauty, particularly near sunset. As is often the case, some of the drama of the view is lost from 38,000 feet, but it is still a sight worth seeing. As usual, though, the passengers are probably lost in the so-called entertainment, and all of the window shades are most likely down. I was actually a bit surprised when the A-380 and the 787 were designed with passenger windows! A great deal of weight could have been saved by eliminating them, and for most of the passengers the view would probably not be missed. Of course the psychological effect of having no windows probably drove the fenestrated design, and it may be some time yet before a windowless passenger airplane would be a hit among the consumers of air travel. But it will come someday, I very much suspect. Cockpit windows may also disappear, and I am glad I won't be around to experience that! Not from a sense of claustrophobia, mind you, nor from a feeling that the windows would be needed, given the technology that already exists that would obviate the need for them. No, the reason I am glad that we still have windows up front is the view, such as we have now as we pass over Sedona. This has been and will always be one of the greatest perks of the job! But enough of this sightseeing, for it is now time to begin planning the arrival into LAX. Our arrival today, the Seavu1, starts at Twenty Nine Palms (TNP), which is out in the desert some 133 miles from the airport. LAX was one of the first airports to have arrivals that contained a descent profile, and this one is no exception. There are four altitude constraints on the Seavu, the first of which is both a hard altitude (17,000) and a hard speed (280 kts). The remainder are less stringent - several "at or above's" and a final block altitude two thousand feet thick. The arrival drops you off at Seavu intersection, from whence the ILS to runway 25L, the preferred arrival runway from this direction, commences. The ILS procedure contains 6 more "at or above" constraints until glideslope intercept. In the days before VNAV this could be something of a mental challenge, especially for the uninitiated, although those with long experience usually found the secret handshake rate-of-descent that would solve the puzzle and allow for a more or less continuous descent, rather than a "dive and drive" series of letdowns and level flight segments between the waypoints. The SEAVU arrival. Journey's end. The waypoints come fast and furious on the arrival. VNAV, of course, takes all of the guesswork out of a procedure like this; or rather it might be best to say that it takes over the guesswork from the pilot! Provided that the altitude and speed constraints are accurately programmed into the FMC prior to descent, which they are since they are all part and parcel of the procedures themselves and they live permanently within the database, VNAV can usually handle things flawlessly. However, note carefully my use of the word "usually"! The FMC on the 767 is not without its limitations, and one of these is that unless some winds at lower altitudes are inserted into it somehow, it will base all of its descent planning on the current groundspeed. The newer software in the so-called Pegasus FMC's (standard equipment on the later -300's and making their way via retrofit to the rest of the fleet at this point) allows for a descent wind update via ACARS, but this airplane has the older software, and any forecast winds we might lay our hands on will have to be entered manually on the descent forecast page. This I do, however unenthusiastic I may normally be for manual labor (!), because if the VNAV is to be entrusted with the management of this arrival, as indeed it will be, it will need the best information I can give it! KLAX ATIS Delta. Even with the forecast winds however, the FMC must be watched very carefully when VNAV is handling things. VNAV computes and flies an actual vertical path, a sort of down-ramp in the sky, and it has the use of both autopilot and autothrottles to perform its task. It will attempt to maintain both the path and the desired speed, but it lacks authority over a critical element of control in the descent - the speed brakes. If it cannot maintain the path and the speed, all it can do is put up a message on the scratch-pad line of the FMC: "DRAG REQUIRED". At that point it is up to us -- first of all to see the message and second to apply the needed drag, which we would do by extending the speed brakes. It is easy to miss the FMC message, but if I keep an eye on the altitude, speed and vertical deviation from the path I can pretty much tell when Otto is going to start demanding some help! If, on the other hand, we do not respond to Otto's demands, he will, in essence, give up. The FMC mode will silently change from VNAV PATH, which is what we want, to VNAV SPEED, which means that the autopilot will maintain the speed with pitch, but give up trying to maintain the path. On numerous occasions pilots have failed to notice that this has occurred until constraints are missed and a blast of invective from ATC roused them from their torpor! Inbound to Twenty Nine Palms we pass just to the south of Lake Havasu City, on the Arizona side of the Colorado River. Havasu is perhaps best known today as the location of the old London Bridge, which was shipped here stone by stone and rebuilt as a tourist attraction in the early 1970's. Actually, only the stone cladding of the original is here, draped onto a new structure, but the appearance is identical save for the surroundings! Initially some of the tourists who trekked into the desert to see it were disappointed - they were expecting the bridge that most Americans think of when they think "London Bridge", that is to say the Tower Bridge. Naturally, the British weren't selling that one for any price, although the one we got was a relative bargain - only around 2.5 million. It cost more than that to ship and reassemble it! Twenty Nine Palms on the lower right, with the San Gorgonio Pass in the distance, guarded by San Jacinto Peak on the left and San Gorgonio Mountain on the right, both in excess of 10,000 feet in height. Now Twenty Nine Palms (TNP) slides beneath the airplane symbol on the Nav display and the SEAVU arrival begins. There were once actually twenty nine palms standing in an oasis here, which just goes to show that you cannot make this stuff up! Today the area is home to the US Marine Corps' largest base, a vast desert compound devoted to air-ground and ground-ground live fire training. Not the sort of place I would want to fly my SkySkooter through at low altitudes, but of no concern to us up here in the higher reaches of the blue. Actually, the entire western third of the USA is mottled with military restricted areas, the most famous of which is a good bit north of our current course - Area 51. Most of this verboten airspace is over country you wouldn't want to be flying over anyway, at least in a single engine airplane - very little civilization and few roads would make for an inhospitable area in which to suffer a forced landing. When I brought the Skooter back east in the fall of 1996, I made sure to stay within gliding distance of the Interstate highways for much of the trip through this area! The VNAV begins to indicate that we are approaching the optimum top-of-descent point, and sure enough ATC comes through with a clearance. Now, as we begin our descent, the magnificent gateway to the golden west appears - San Gorgonio Pass, which sits astride the gap between the San Bernardino Mountains to the north and the San Jacinto Mountains to the south. The pass is a natural transportation route, first utilized by the railroads in the latter decades of the 19th century, and later by the automobile, now served by Interstate 10. It is also a natural venturi, funneling the winds from the Pacific through its narrow and steep confines (the pass is guarded by mountains that tower nearly 9000 feet above the floor) and out onto the broad desert plain beyond. This is one of the windiest places in America, and naturally this fact has not escaped the attention of the green energy industry - San Gorgonio Pass is the site of an enormous wind farm that generates hundreds of megawatts of electricity as long as the wind blows. Nor is it the only one - there are several other major wind farms in the passes that lead out of the Los Angeles basin, one of which, the Tehachapi, I overflew on my way east with the Skooter on its mini-argosy back home after I bought it in Oregon. All of this wind can make for a rough ride down low, but we have sufficient altitude to be serenely untroubled by turbulence. Palm Springs Californa, tucked close aginast the San Jacinto Mountains. Hard by the mountains just on the eastern portal of the pass lies a modern desert oasis - Palm Springs. Famous for its celebrity residents, the town is dominated by the enormous mansion of the most famous of them all - the late great Bob Hope. This structure, which from a distance resembles nothing more than a large alien spacecraft that had to make a forced landing on the side of the hill, is a sight that I remember all the way back to the beginning of my airline career, when I was occasionally able to bid Palm Springs layovers on the 707 in the late 1970's. The view from here extends almost all the way to the Pacific Ocean, so clear is the atmosphere. This is not always the case, of course, and the entire basin west of the mountains is often filled with a vile brew of smog and haze, restricting visibilities to three or four miles even on cloudless days. This is yet another small gift for my last flight into this area, for on only a few other days in my entire career was the sight as spectacular as it is today. Way over to the west, at land's end, we can see the marine layer lapping against the coastline, but by now even that is beginning to break up and the visibility at the airport has improved considerably. No need for an ILS to minimums this morning! Oh, and by the way, it is still morning here! We, of course, are still operating on New York tummy time, which now approximates two-ish. But one of the beauties of a trip like this is that it is not yet noon in LA, which means that the entire afternoon and evening are ours for whatever various and sundry diversions we may seek. Up to this point I had no firm plans for the layover, although several pilgrimages to locations better known in my early career are possibilities. But now, as we soar high above the San Bernardino Mountains a magnificent sight comes into view - one that I had heard of but never really noticed or explored in prior visits. Tucked high in the mountains just west of the San Gorgonio pass is a large blue lake, surrounded by the higher peaks in the center of the massif. Pam informs me that this is Big Bear Lake, a favorite destination for Angelinos in all seasons, and not too difficult to get to from the coast. In an instant I decide that it will be to this place that I will turn my steps when we arrive at our layover digs in an hour or so! Big Bear Lake, high up in the San Bernardino Mountains. San Gorgonio Mountain, with Big Bear in the distance. Interstate 10 cuts through Banning and Beaumont California, just west of the San Gorgonio Pass. But now we are all business, for the sterile cockpit period is at hand. We have, of course, already loaded the ILS 25L approach into the FMC's, and briefed ourselves as to its various intricacies. Otto is handling the descent nicely, and the vertical deviation from the intended path is less than 50 feet, which for all intents is right on. As we slide down the invisible banister toward the runway, still many miles distant, we pass over the eastern reaches of the Los Angeles basin, and from here to the threshold the landscape is one gigantic suburb, hundreds of thousands of cookie-cutter houses and condos with malls both mini and maxi plunked down here and there in the midst. This whole fabric of suburbia is stitched together by freeways, eight-laned affairs that are comfortably free of traffic at this late hour, but which will be packed solid later this afternoon. ILS 25L approach plate. Diamond Valley Lake, Hemet California. Santiago Peak, in the Cleveland National Forest. The SEAVU arrival brings us in just to the south of the extended centerlines of all four runways, and at CATAW we turn slightly to the right toward SEAVU and the runways. We are still 70 miles from LAX at this point, but things will happen fast from here on in. As we cross SEAVU we are now a bit over 8 miles from the centerline of 25L, the southern-most of the 4 parallel runways. In days gone by the charts for these arrivals were not drawn to scale, and all four runways were depicted on, say, the DOWNE arrival page. The localizers were spread out, no doubt for clarity, but the result was to suggest that LAX's four runways were scattered from Santa Monica to Palos Verdes! In reality they all lay within the space of a single mile, north to south, and an unsuspecting pilot can shoot across all four of them in a heartbeat. Occasionally, someone did, and kept on going toward the Santa Monica Mountains which squat a mere 10 miles or so to the north, reaching heights well above the vectoring altitude. The depictions have been improved, and the advent of the FMC and GPS have made it possible to track the course all the way to localizer intercept, which occurs at the LUVYN intersection some 41 miles from the threshold. Once beyond LUVYN, we can switch from LNAV to LOC, although we must continue to ignore the glideslope this far out. We start configuring somewhat earlier than normal, to accommodate the speed ATC has assigned us - around 220 kts if memory serves. Approaching GAATE and 5000 feet altitude, ATC clears us for the ILS approach, and we can arm the glideslope, which is captured almost immediately. I hold off on the gear until we are passing LIMMA, and then take over from Otto for my third-to-last approach and landing. You may wonder why I let the machine fly itself even this long, but there is a last time for everything, and that includes a VNAV descent! Final flaps at 1200 feet or so, and the Mercury slides down the last mile to the runway. Over the threshold, ease the nose up just a bit, idle on the throttles, and she touches down smoothly, as these -200's tend to do if handled well. A satisfying end to a truly enjoyable flight, at least as far as the flying is concerned! Having just cleared runway 25R, we are advised of a delay awaiting the gate. Holding on Charlie facing west, toward the sea. The marine fog layer has yet to retreat from this end of the airport. Clearing the runways, we call our ramp control on the second radio, only to discover that an MD-80 is overstaying its welcome and has broken down on the very gate we were planning to occupy. Oh well, I suppose there is a last time for that sort of thing as well! We turn north onto taxiway Charlie and await the disposition of our case. Off to the right we can see the carcass of one of our 767's that suffered an uncontained engine failure, fortunately on the ground with none but the maintenance crew aboard. Engine failures that are this spectacular are not supposed to occur, and the investigation of this incident was still ongoing at that time, but the airplane is a write-off. I wonder if I can somehow get my hands on the nose section for a simulator! Cathay Pacific heads for Hong Kong. The logbook entry for my modern-day Mercury! After spending a half hour or so watching a series of 747's heave themselves into the air bound for points west, we are summoned to the gate. The MD-80 has been fixed and has departed, and so, after a short pause to get the attention of ground control and their blessing, we trundle on over and park the beast. Engine Shutdown checklist please, for the fourth-to-last time. As I bid the passengers goodbye from the flight deck door, I think back to the first Mercury - only 21 passengers at best made for short good byes! Today the farewells take a bit longer than that, but our journey was much shorter, probably a good bit smoother, and certainly a lot quieter. All in all it is still the premier flight at American Airlines, and I am delighted beyond measure that I have been able to place the flight number "1" in my logbook. I only wish that they still called it The Mercury! Continued in The Mercury Part Three - Big Bear and Beyond. Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net The Mercury Series The Mercury Part 1 The Mercury Part 2 The Mercury Part 3 -
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The Mercury Part 1 By Tony Vallillo (28 August 2009) Just two more trips to go - the final week of the American Airlines career of Tony Roma, as I have come to be known on the line! I am still expecting some sort of melancholy to set in, some sense of an end to things, but so far, thank God, that hasn't happened. Life just goes on, and there is always at least one more trip after this one, and so on and so on... Actually, there should only be one trip remaining now, not two -four days off and then the final final flight, the last Rome trip, the really Final Argosy! But there is a certain something that I still want to do in my career, and in order to do it I have to avail myself of an ancient tradition at American. Since time immemorial the last flight of a retiring crewmember (I have to remember to say crewmember, because some pilots are retiring as FO's) has been a festive affair, complete with the wife and family along for the ride and a party in operations upon arrival. I'm not sure if these ceremonials had their origins in the unbridled glee with which all of the junior pilots approach a senior person's retirement or perhaps in an effort on the part of the company to provide recognition and some formal acknowledgement of a remarkable achievement. (Indeed, the completion of an airline career is a remarkable achievement, what with all of the factors that can interfere with the successful conclusion thereof, factors like checkrides, physicals, the continuing existence of the company, and many others!) Whatever the origin of the tradition, the company goes to some lengths to ensure that a pilot's last trip is to his liking. Since not everyone retires from the position of number one in the bid status, it follows that not every pilot can get, as his last trip, one of the plums of the bid sheet. At least not through the bidding process! And so there evolved, over the years, a system by which the chief pilot would "buy" the trip of the pilot's choice in the event he could not bid it and hold it himself. The term "buy" is something of a misnomer, because no money changed hands directly. But the tradition is not without cost to the company, because "buying" a trip means paying the pilot whose trip it is to stay home while the retiree does the flying and, of course, gets paid too; thereby causing the company to incur the not inconsiderable cost of two pilots for one trip. AA has always been very good about this, and it is to their credit that most retiring pilots get to have a trip of their choice as a fini flight, regardless of their seniority. Indeed, in the years I held down the Rome trip I gave up more than one of them to retirees on last flights. Of course I have the seniority to bid and hold exactly what I want, and indeed I have done just that! What changes I needed to make to this final month's schedule, like the Paris trips of the past week, I have arranged myself through trades with other pilots. But this certain something that I want to do is outside the scope of my seniority, for the trip lies in the domestic division, not the international division, and between the two is a gulf that even seniority cannot normally bridge. Therefore I call upon the chief pilot to "do me a service", as Don Corleone would have put it, and "buy" me this certain trip that I cannot arrange on my own. The chief's response is "you got it"! There is an elegant simplicity to the number One. As a seniority number, even just within a bid status, it is the stuff of dreams; something to be coveted, but achieved only by a fortunate few. But there is another number One at American, a very historical number One, and this One has been around almost as long as the company has. This is Flight One, the premier New York to Los Angeles service; a flight which, for much of its tenure at American, had a name - The Mercury. In my entire career, I have never flown it as a crewmember. This is the trip I had the chief pilot buy for me, and this is the extra trip in the schedule this week. It makes for a busy week, what with a Paris trip, one day off, the two-day Mercury, another day off, and then the last flight of them all. But I am willing to bear the burden, since it will be the last I will be called upon to bear! DC-7 era Mercury baggage sticker The 747 was the king of the hill at American when I came aboard in 1977 Long ago, when I was a new-hire and Pontius was still a Pilate, Flight One was the premier trip on the New York bid sheet (which is to say that it was the premier trip in all of American Airlines!). In those days it was operated with the 747-123, the biggest airplane AA has ever flown. The bid sheet for New York contained selections for all four aircraft types the company operated back then - the 747, DC-10, 707 and 727. In keeping with the notion that seniority has its privileges, the 747 selections were found on the first page of the bidsheet package, and the selections that contained Flight One generally were the first of the lot--I suspect so that the arthritic fingers of the single and low-double-digit-seniority pilots who could bid that sort of thing would not suffer too greatly! It was impossible to even peruse the monthly bidsheet without seeing these selections; and, after my own humble bidding was done, I often whiled away the hours imagining what it would be like to fly flight One, and its flip-side flight Two (the return LAX-JFK trip). I tried to picture what the world looked like from the upper deck of a 747 (this was all before I began flying the C-5 in the Air Force Reserves), and I fantasized what amorous opportunities there might be with a crew of 12 flight attendants, most of whom were female and relatively young! It never occurred to me, back then, that a 59 year old Captain might not be terribly attractive to any number of relatively young women! Since the professional flight engineers held the 3rd seat of the 747 firmly in their own grasp (American still had hundreds of the so-called "two stripe" flight engineers in 1977, former mechanics who were grandfathered in the FE position with super-seniority over all pilots), it was useless to aspire to flight One in any crew position. Even the FO's had seniority enough to hold a senior Captain bid on any narrow body. It was not until the 747 was retired, in the mid 1980's, and the DC-10 took over the duties of flight One, that anyone with my middling seniority could do a turn on the Mercury as an FO. And even then, only as a serendipitous consequence of being on reserve! In due course, as the 767 arrived on the scene, and many of the DC-10's were siphoned off to the growing international division, the new twinjet started to appear on the JFK-LAX transcons. It took some time for the 767 to knock the DC-10 off of the Mercury, but eventually flight One became a 767-200 trip, and it remains so to this day. When I eventually checked out on the 767, in 1999, I might have flown it but for a single fly in the ointment - flight One had migrated to the LAX crew base in the early 1990's, the result of a devil's bargain between the LAX Chief Pilot and the System Manager of Planning. Sick leave has always been a bit of a thorn in the side of the company, and when the LAX Chief managed to cajole his pilots into getting the base sick leave usage below that of New York consistently the reward was that flight One was put into the LAX trip selections, where it remained for many years. Indeed it was not until the mid-2000's that it began to creep back onto the New York bid sheet. Just in time for me to do it this once before I head out the door! Flight One leaves JFK at 09:00, which means that my wake-up time is around 04:30! Oh well, just this once more! The traffic is fairly light at that hour, and good time is made to the employee parking lot. Operations is fairly lively at 07:30, what with a great many Caribbean flights on order, as well as the several transcons and the early London trips (there are two flights to LHR in the morning, a bit over an hour apart ). The chief pilots are just arriving for another day of swivel-chair aviating (which I remember well, since I once flew a desk in this very office!), and I make certain to thank in person the fellow who made this domestic Argosy possible. That and the Jepp revisions done, I approach the computer to see what the dispatcher has ordered up for us. Flight One these days is, of course, a non-stop flight, as it has been ever since the mid 1950's. In the beginning, however, the Mercury had a great many stops, most of them necessary for refueling. American route map circa early 1930's. Although it was possible to get from New York to LA on American, it was neither swift nor easy. The flight plan for AAL 1 on 25 March 2008 American Airlines was formed out of a hodge-podge of small early airlines spread almost completely across the country. The genealogical chart of American's ancestry is long and distinguished, including Robertson Airways, founded in 1921 and the earliest predecessor; an early iteration of Braniff Airlines that is unrelated to the later Braniff Airways International that was so famous in the 1960's and 1970's; and Colonial Air Transport, among many others. The territory these airlines covered extended in a great swath from New England and eastern Canada across the southern Midwest and on through the Southwest to southern California. These entities originally had little in common - certainly not airplanes, as the "fleet" of the early American Airways was perhaps the most varied and eclectic that existed in the fledgling airline industry of the late 1920's. Nor did the pilots share a common uniform, or even a common seniority list. (Actually, seniority lists per se did not come into being until the Air Line Pilots Association succeeded in organizing the airlines--American's pilots were among the first to join the new organization in the 1930's.) By 1929, according to George Cearley in his excellent book "American Airlines, America's Leading Airline", all of these companies and more had been gobbled up by a conglomerate called the Aviation Corporation, better known as AVCO. In 1930 the airline arm of this entity, made up of over 30 individual airlines, was unified under the name American Airways. It continued to absorb independent airlines, such as Century Airlines in California and Southwest Air Fast Express in Texas and Oklahoma until, in the aftermath of a major political scandal in 1934 that resulted in the cancellation of all air mail contracts, it was split from AVCO, further unified and renamed - slightly. The new name was American Airlines and new management was brought in, both conditions of the renewal of the airmail contracts in the aftermath of a disastrous attempt by the government to have the Army fly the mail. Amongst the new management was a tall and talented executive from Texas Air Transport named Cyrus Rowlett Smith and the rest, as they say, is history! By the time CR, as he quickly became known, took over the reins at American, there was already a transcontinental service of sorts in operation. But a more circuitous and inconvenient routing could hardly be imagined! Leaving Newark, which was at that time the airline terminal for New York, a passenger would fly north along the Hudson to Albany. Only then would the airplane turn west, toward Buffalo, stopping first at Syracuse and Rochester. Beyond Buffalo, the route followed Lake Erie to Cleveland, then southwestward to Columbus and Cincinnati, with a few intermediate stops thrown in for good measure. Continuing southwest, our passenger would eventually reach Dallas Texas, after first seeing Louisville, Nashville, Memphis and Little Rock. Finally the route bent west once again, stopping in Fort Worth, which was very much a separate city in those days and not part of a metroplex. Beyond Fort Worth the real "West" opened up - Abilene, Big Springs, El Paso, Tucson, Phoenix and finally Los Angeles. A trip like this took over 30 hours, and several different airplanes in the earliest days. Prior to around 1934 it was possible to utilize an air-rail scheme and cut out the shuffle-off-to-Buffalo by taking the Pennsylvania Railroad from Manhattan to Columbus Ohio, where a railroad station was conveniently located right on the airport. This airport had been set up for the original TAT air-rail service in 1929, and it was possible to get off the train and embark upon either a TAT (it was later called Transcontinental and Western Air, or just TWA, after a shotgun marriage with Western Air Express around the time of the airmail scandal) or an American Airways airplane. On American the remaining trip was entirely by air, whereas the original TAT service involved another train ride between Waynoka Oklahoma and Clovis New Mexico. (The TAT service had been set up [by Charles Lindbergh] as a complete transcontinental airline in 1929, somewhat earlier than American had even integrated its own mish-mash of a system. It was originally considered imprudent to fly at night, and the train segments were intended to keep the passengers moving east or west during the wee hours. By the mid 1930's night flying procedures, to say nothing of airplanes, had been improved to the point that both airlines had all-air service coast to coast.) In contrast to this circuitous ordeal, our flight today is a fairly straight shot across the USA. The dispatcher has chosen route 73, a non-FAA preferred route. I have always been at least a bit hazy on the subject of American Airlines route numbers - I don't know for sure, for example, if there actually are 73 (or even more) different possible routes between JFK and LAX. There could be, I suppose, considering all of the different airways and direct segments available in that long stretch. But in any event, my turn commanding the Mercury will proceed like this: JFK, RBV, J230 AIR, J80 VHP, J110 COWES, VLA, PETTI, STL, KK51I, ICT, J134 GUP, KA30O, HIPPI, TNP, SEAVU1.LAX Our route plotted on the online flight planner at AOPA.org The total distance for this domestic Argosy is 2177 nautical miles, and we should cover that today in 5 hours and 48 minutes. There are several waypoints on this route that are new to me (at that time) - KA30O and KK51I. These are part of a new system of waypoints named in a manner so arcane that several readings of the document that announced the system did little to break the code. To the initiated those 5 letters and numbers will disclose the location of the waypoint, similar to the way that 5540N denotes a position in the North Atlantic of 55 degrees North and 40 degrees West. Fortunately, it is of little import whether or not I can tell, just from reading, where KK51I is - these points are now also on the high altitude charts ( and perhaps the low altitude charts as well, for all I know! It has been literally years since I undertook to examine one!), and I could locate KK51I by looking to the west of STL. Just how far west of STL can be ascertained by looking at the mileage on the flight plan - in this case 74 miles. In the future, as the ATC system changes from ground based airways predicated upon VOR and other radio systems to a satellite based system, a grid of waypoints such as this will cover the entire country, and perhaps the entire world. Flight plans will be constructed by stringing together a series of these points, as close as possible to a real great circle route if the winds are light, or perhaps dog-legged if the winds are a factor. In this way, the ATC computers will be able to sort out the traffic flows and prevent collisions. ( As I write this, a year and a half later, we are probably farther down that road, although as I look on FlightAware at today's edition of the Mercury it is flying entirely on the Jet Routes, albeit farther to the north than we went last year - it is at this moment approaching South Bend Indiana and will pass within a few miles of ORD. There appears to be weather along the more direct route.) Our fuel load today is a shade over 75,000 pounds, or around 12,500 gallons. Considering that jet fuel cost a little over $3 per gallon on 25 March 2008, the total fuel bill for this flight amounts to around $38,000. That amount buys us the enroute flight time of 5:48, plus the 45 minute reserve and the trip to the alternate, which today is Ontario (KONT). Just for good measure, the dispatcher has allocated an additional 40 minutes of holding fuel and 23 minutes of additional fuel for possible altitude changes or enroute speed restrictions. The cost of this additional largesse is close to $4000 (it is, of course, included in the 38K mentioned above). Additional fuel requirements like this are considered carefully, as you might imagine, since the entire profit of this flight could amount to a considerably smaller sum than this extra fuel represents. On the other hand, if we should need it and it was not there, the resultant diversion would cost a good deal more. If I decided to save the 4 grand and go without the extra fuel, that decision would be made only after careful consideration of enroute alternatives available if we needed to land and refuel. Safety is never compromised. FlightAware plot of AAL 1 on the day this was written, 11 Aug 2009. The flight is near South Bend Indiana, on what is obviously a more northerly routing, probably due to the weather depicted farther to the south. Left main landing gear on the walkaround. This detailed inspection is a feature of every flight, from ultralight to 747. For as long as I have been around aviation, the price of things, mainly fuel, has been going up faster than an empty 757 departing Santa Ana! Saving fuel is nothing new - indeed, we tried to keep fuel usage within reasonable bounds even in the venerable C-141A back in the mid 1970's. But the incentive has become much greater in the aftermath of the latest round of fuel price increases that began shortly before I retired. It hardly seemed possible that we could reduce our fuel usage very much from the already miserly levels that we had achieved by the millennium, but lo and behold that is exactly what American and every other airline in the world has indeed done. Variable cruise speeds, winglets, better winds-aloft forecasting and route and altitude selection, and a ruthless paring of extra fuel carried for no more quantifiable reason than "for the wife and kids" has resulted in savings that literally kept the airlines alive through 2007 and 2008. The balance that must be achieved is that balance between the savings represented by reducing the fuel carried (which, of course, makes the airplane lighter and thus results in a lower fuel burn for the flight - it takes fuel to carry fuel) versus the additional costs of diversions and enroute refueling stops. It only takes a single enroute refueling to cancel out the savings of a score or more flights with reduced fuel loads, so a mind-boggling statistical analysis is carried out prior to each contemplated fuel reduction regimen. So far the wizards who do this sort of thing have gotten it right - I have never had to land enroute for additional fuel! Nor do I contemplate doing so today, partly because the dispatcher has apparently had some reservations and has already ordered up that extra fuel! At this time of year, of course, all it takes is a bit of sea fog rolling in from the Pacific to make life miserable at LAX, so no doubt the 4 grand will be money well spent! Weather-wise, JFK is beautiful, with winds out of the north at 10 kts and scattered high cirrus at 25000 feet. LAX, where it is still the wee hours of the morning, is under the influence of some fog, with visibilities around 2-3 miles and scattered clouds at 100 feet. The temp/dewpoint spread is only 2 degrees, so the LAX weather will bear watching. Ontario, well inland, is clear and a million. We will, of course, be bucking headwinds all the way, with wind factors ranging from -50 kts to around -80 kts. There are no forecasts of turbulence, although on a trip this long you can usually count on at least a bit of light chop somewhere to put ripples in the first class martinis! Having considered all of this, and the notams as well, and finding the dispatcher's plan to my liking, I sign the flight plan and we gather up the paperwork and our coats and kitbags and head on out to the airplane. Once the FO and I arrive, and I have briefed the cabin crew, I decide to perform the exterior walk-around inspection. It will probably be my last one on an airliner, since the last trip to Rome in three days will have the FB on the crew, and it generally falls to him or her to make the stroll. This is a ritual that I have been performing since 1970 and one which I still perform on the Cessna's, Pipers and Thorps that I fly these days. The 747 was really too big for even the transcons most of the time, and its high operating cost doomed it at AA. It followed the 707 out the door in the mid 1980's. Eagle RJ joins the takeoff lineup. These little jets have become ubiquitous, despite having the highest seat-mile cost in the industry. It is the low plane-mile cost that keeps them in the air. Another reason for my opting to do the walk-around today is that this will be my last opportunity to see a 767-200 up close and personal, so to speak. The 200 series was the original 767, introduced in the early 1980's as a replacement of sorts for the 707. Nowadays, since we are used to the longer 300 version, it tends to look like a small blimp, somewhat chubby and ungainly. But it performs well - in fact our flight plan today calls for an initial level off altitude of FL 380. The 200 seems to handle just a bit differently, with a slightly lighter feel to the controls than either the 300 or the 757. That is most likely a product of the artificial feel system, since all "feel" on large transport airplanes is artificially created, there being no air load feedback of any kind in a hydraulic operated flight control system. By the way, all of the 200's that we operate today are the ER, or extended range version; the earliest handful of domestic-only airplanes having already gone to the boneyard (and at least one of them having been offered on eBay - or its nose section, at any rate--as a shell for someone to build into a flight simulator!). As I inspect the airplane I am struck by the thought of why the B-777 has never made an appearance on flight One. Back in the day, the Mercury always had the latest and greatest (and usually the biggest!) equipment that Boeing or Douglas had on offer. That trend culminated, of course, in the 747, an airplane that was really too big for the transcon market much of the time. The big bird, which was actually a spin-off from Boeing's entry in the Air Force competition for what became the C-5, entered airline service just at the beginning of a major traffic downturn. All of the "big three" airlines (AA, TWA and UAL) used it for the premium transcons, flooding that market with unsold seats to the point that AA actually took out an entire section of coach seats and replaced them with the famous "Piano Bar Lounge". I think it was Wurlitzer who were induced to create a light weight electronic "piano", one of which still exists in the CR Smith Museum at DFW. According to crewmembers who flew in that era flight One was often a lively party, particularly if a passenger happened to have musical talent! The 747's at American went off to NASA (several of ours still ferry the Space Shuttle to Florida when it has to "land out") and a few other operators in the mid 1980's, victims of an exceptionally high plane-mile cost. There are two ways to figure the cost of operating an airplane, at least from an airline perspective - plane-mile or seat-mile. Plane-mile cost is merely the cost of flying the airplane from A to B divided by the distance. Seat-mile cost is, in essence, plane-mile cost further divided by the number of seats. So the 747 actually had a fairly low seat-mile cost, given the large number of seats, especially when the "lounge" was converted back into 50 or so coach seats! But seat-mile calculations are only really meaningful when most or all of the seats are filled with paying posteriors. When load factors are low the plane-mile cost still lingers, eating you alive with the cost of actually flying the big beast from A to B. Ironically, the lowest plane-mile costs in the industry are associated with RJ's, with their low fuel burns and slave-labor pay rates. BUT - the seat-mile cost of that tiny machine is abominably high, because the total cost [albeit low] is divided by so few seats. RJ's are useful as placeholders in a market in which an airline wants to maintain a presence, or in highly fragmented markets where no one can fill a full size airplane. The DC-10 inherited flight One after the 747 was retired The author grins from the cockpit as he prepares to command his one and only Mercury flight! When the DC-10 and, eventually, the 767 took over the JFK-LAX runs in the mid '80's, frequency became a better marketing strategy than sheer size. A 767 cannot, of course, carry 400 people, but two of them can, and at a cost close to the cost of a single 747 flight. The convenience to the passenger of additional departure time choices is now the biggest factor, and we have several additional flights in the schedule these days, compared to the three or four that were scheduled in the heyday of the 747. This practice has led, of course, to congestion and delays as frequency gained the upper hand over airplane size, but the convenience to the customer is so overwhelming that few today would actually argue the merits of, say, one A380 flight instead of three 767 flights! Competition has also helped drive the switch to smaller planes. Prior to deregulation only the so-called "Big Three" could serve JFK-LAX non-stop. There were usually three 747's (or, later, DC-10/L-1011's or 767's) departing JFK more or less at the same time - indeed, that was one reason why the 747's ran half full in the early days! Today any airline can serve those cities, and many do, albeit often to secondary airports like Long Beach. No matter, for if the price is low, as it often is, the passenger will beat feet to Long Beach or anywhere else just to fly on the cheap! So the market is broken up into many smaller shares, and a single airline can't fill a big airplane most of the time. The smaller wide-bodies came on the scene at just the right time. This explains why we have not seen the B-777 on the Mercury, at least at American. Too big most of the time, and better suited to the really long range flights. Completing the walk-around during these musings, I return to the cockpit to find that Pam, the FO has things all set up and ready to go. Pam is a veteran of flight One, although she is obviously a relative newcomer to AA, at least compared to her Captain! I tease her about the heavy burden of responsibility she must now bear - having to ensure that this old codger makes it to LAX and back safely and in time for his retirement trip later in the week! She takes it in good humor, no doubt mentally recalculating what her seniority will be after my departure! The ACARS printer spits out our ATC clearance: Kennedy One Departure, Breezy Point Climb, maintain 5000, expect requested altitude 10 minutes after departure. The same as thousands of others except for one thing - I have rarely ever flown the Breezy Point climb. The last time I flew a transcon out of JFK, we flew the Canarsie climb and continued the long way around the compass to West, circling north of LGA in the process. Today we will fly out the 223 radial of CRI towards RBV, passing just to the south of Staten Island. This routing will eliminate the merry-go-round and save a good 10 minutes at this end. To say nothing of some gas! Pushing back from gate 46 at JFK The new control tower at JFK. The cab is occasionally in the clouds on a really foggy day. Right on the advertised, as they used to say on the railroad, we button up and push back. Pam calls for taxi clearance after the engines are started and off we go to runway 31L. At this hour, the outbound traffic is relatively light, at least compared to the gaggle that forms in the early evening. Westbound flights typically use less than the full 14,000+ feet of runway 31L, since there is a generous 10,700 feet available from the intersection of taxiway KK, considerably more than we need today. The KK operation also permits simultaneous use of runway 04L for takeoff (and 04R for landing) while using 31L for departure. This makes for a more efficient operation. But today the winds favor the 31's, and the 4's are sitting idle, at least for the moment. A view of JFK from around the early 1960's. Runways 07L&R and 36L&R are clearly visible, although it is obvious that 36L has already become the cargo area (taxiways R and S today). Much the same view taken the next day, on the way back from LAX. All that remains of 07L is taxiway V - the new AA terminal more or less sits where 07L used to be. The approach light piers of 07R are still there. You can see this all much more clearly on Google Earth! There was once a time when Idlewild (as JFK was known before 1963) had 8 runways compared to the 4 it has today. The other runways, ghostly remnants of which can still be seen on Google Earth overheads, were 36 L&R and 07L&R (along with their reciprocals, of course!) This original layout was an expression of a postwar airport design philosophy that favored runways oriented every 30-45 degrees or so, forming a sort of pinwheel around a central terminal hub. The widely separated pairs of runways allowed for simultaneous takeoffs and landings into the wind under any and all wind conditions. ORD was originally planned like this, but when it was built only the eventual three pairs were actually constructed. JFK, on the other hand, used the extra 4 runways for some years, until the LGA and EWR traffic levels precluded their regular use in the 1960's and 70's. They eventually became taxiways and ramps, although the original 07R approach light piers are still visible in Jamaica bay. I often play "stump the copilot" and ask what those are - few modern day pilots seem to take much interest in the history of their chosen vocation, judging by the scarcity of correct answers I get! New kid on the block, at least back in March 2008. Virgin Atlantic starts his takeoff roll. Holding for takeoff on 31L at KK. This is the last time I used this runway - the remainder of my career was played out on 04R and 22L! Soon enough our turn arrives and we are cleared into position on the runway. We wait a minute or so for the previous departure to get a head start on us and then tower intones: "American One Heavy, Cleared for Takeoff". As the autothrottles bring the engines up to full power, the ship gathers itself up and shoots down the runway. V1 and Rotate and I ease the ship into the air for the fourth to last time! The Mercury is on its way to LA! Continued in The Mercury, part 2 Anthony Vallillo avallillo@charter.net The Mercury Series The Mercury Part 1 The Mercury Part 2 The Mercury Part 3 -
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