Flight Level 390

Position: 80 miles north of Pittsburgh
Altitude: 39,000 feet
Groundspeed: 570 m.p.h.



There are three types of twilight; astronomical, nautical, and civil. Each type is, basically, a measurement in degrees of the sun's angle below the horizon. Astronomical is the first twilight that we see, in the sky or on the ground. It is when the eastern sky begins to lighten from the darkest part of the night. It is when the sleepy flight crew realizes that they have made it through the night.

And so it is this morning as I see a silver strand of cosmic light prying the night sky open. I vaguely remember a road trip with the wife of my youth hanging on to my waist as we lean the iron horse through curving mountain roads. Or am I experiencing oxygen starved fantasies eight miles above the Earth? Crew scheduling is known to have unspoken methods, other than normal airline SOPs, to keep pilots in the flight deck.

My co-pilot is a young, single, female whom I have never seen before this flight. She has eighteen months in the seat and is still on reserve status. That means crew scheduling is her mommy and daddy. She is beautiful, intelligent, and possesses excellent airmanship skills. The pilot hiring board had their, uh, stuff together when they hired this young lady. Earlier, she was talking about her Dad and I just had to ask "How old is your Dad?" Of course, he is my age.

The number one engine (on the left wing) is burning more fuel than number two. This is not that unusual, as engines have individual personalities. The fuel tank in the left wing is 1,200 pounds lighter than the right wing because of the higher burn rate. Before we begin our arrival procedure, I will feed both engines from the right tank to equalize the weight. In a modern airliner, the flight controls are boosted hydraulically and are very powerful, so that any weight difference in wing tanks is handled with ease. The potential problem is that fuel is so costly, that the guy who signs my paycheck has asked me to limit the extra fuel I carry (fuel weight costs fuel to carry), so arriving with 2,500 pounds per wing is not unusual in today's environment. If one wing tank is 1,200 pounds lighter than the other... Well, you can see where this is going.

Forty minutes later...

We are feet wet over the Atlantic as JFK air traffic control sequences us for the visual approach. The view from the flightdeck is awesome, as the sun's golden light illuminates our faces. Air traffic control decides to vector us to a closer runway and they ask "Can you guys get down from there?" The co-pilot, who is handling the radios, looks at me with an inquisitive grin... I reply, "Absolutely."

The hydraulic rams push their respective spoiler panel into the slipstream increasing our descent rate from cool to way cool, as the co-pilot would say...