Position: Fifty North of KMCI (Kansas City)Destination: KJFK (New York City)
Pax on board: 137
Groundspeed: 645 mph (561 knots)
Altitude: 35,000 feet
She is an old bird with small engines. I have flown her hundreds of hours over the years and have a sweet spot in my heart for her. The company did not update her software to the latest and greatest ones and zeros. Her time flying the Line is coming to an end. She will be replaced with a factory new A321 with big engines and fast computers. I can remember at least three paint schemes on this bird. I wonder what will happen to her...
Her aged flight management computers are showing a maximum altitude of 35,500 feet at out current weight. My #2 pencil stub and hand calculator are showing 35, 300 feet. I am planning 37,000 feet somewhere over Ohio. And so it goes under the star dome. It is an awesome sight through the Plexiglas; a full moon (well, almost... technically, it is tomorrow night), a silver undercast, and a few twinkling strobe lights of other airliners, most of them higher.
The local time is 0230 hrs. It is the deepest, coldest part of the night. Outside, the winds are on our tail at 126 mph; air temperature is sixty below. My co-pilot, thirty-two years old and father of three small children, is looking at the stars, too. His head has not moved in thirty minutes and is resting against the heated Plexiglas for a better view. I guess he is really concentrating.
The flight deck is noisy on these old birds. It sounds like a roaring wind; hard to carry on a conversation, where as a new flight deck is much quieter; a subdued hissing background noise... Very easy to converse, even for old guys with turbine ears. She has character, though. The roaring slipstream makes it easy to think about how much character. Several of my friends who pushed these same buttons have flown West. They are gone but she is still here. Deep thinking underneath the moon...
Time to KJFK: 125 minutes
Life on the Line continues...
31 comments:
A wonderfully written post as ever! It's strange, I know plenty of astronomers with a love of aviation (many of whom have PPLs) but do pilots in general have a love of astronomy? It seems many do.
As a controller at ZID I love reading your stories. This one has a very special feeling cause I find myself standing outside of work at night on breaks watching the planes land and takeoff and wonder what the pilots and passengers are doing and thinking. Nothing more beautiful then a plane landing on a moon lite night. Take care, godspeed and fly safe.
fantastic post as usual, dave! the thumbnail version of the pic does it no favours at all.. the numbers of stars in that night sky.. wow
--aaron
It's official! I am totally addicted to FlightLevel390! It must be so, as it is now my consistent morning routine to check the computer for a new posting or comment before breakfast or even coffee!
Another great post, Dave, and love your sense of humour. But I am a little puzzled - what are 'turbine ears'? I picture them turning like a wind farm...
Turbine ears. Well, old captains spent so much time in older planes - where engines were noisier and cockpits were less isolated - and constant roar of original turbojets left a mark on their hearing abilities.
I too was gazing at the almost full moon that night. It was very bright on a clear night in upstate NY. I pointed it out to my sweetie while piloting my BMW, albeit at much lower altitude and speed.
Just wanted to chime in here and say I love reading your posts. As a CFI who only gets to fly spam cans, it's nice to get a glimpse into the day to day adventures of an airline pilot. Keep up the good writing.
This is the first time I have heard the term turbine ears, I like it. As a freshman in college I had an Aviation History professor who had turbine ears. This guy was old school. An interesting story about him was that he started his flying career sometime after WWII, and he actually was one of the first crew to fly the Berlin Airlift. He continued the flying career, ending up as a international Captain flying B767's. Just before he retired, to top an already successful career, he flew to Berlin just before the fall of the Soviet Union, and took a few whacks at the wall to help end what had started nearly fifty years before.
Beautiful post. We all know that one major reason pilots fly is simply to stare out the window.
Interesting but confusing picture. I thought the haze was an undercast, but there are stars visible through it!
Trying to see it as a windshield reflection doesn't work either. I guess it is a low angle shot of an overcast.
It reminds me of a song in which an elderly airline seat-mate marvels at the view at night, but thinks the lights on the ground are stars, through and past which the airliner travels like a starship.
Sarah
Sarah: those white specs are probably some kind of digital noise in the image rather than stars. The specs are uniformly distributed throughout the frame, and they don't seem to vary in intensity the same way that real stars do.
Great post again! But, yes, the "stars" do seem to be scattered all the way down the picture and on the clouds and window frame too. Might be dead pixels on Dave's camera?
(Don't mind us while we critique your photography Dave, just keep on doing what you do so well...)
Tim G in MN
More and more I thin of Flight Level 390 as "poetry from mid-heaven."
Like, maybe, this one:
Once Only
almost at the equator
almost at the equinox
exactly at midnight
from a ship
the full
moon
in the center of the sky.
Gary Snyder
Sappa Creek near Singapore
March 1958
A Nocturne!
Thanks for taking us along!
yea a wonderful post indeed.
for more on pilots please visit:
http://www.youknowster.com/jokes/view/313-you-know-youre-a-pilot-when
Dave, thanks for the nice post. I share your fascination of things (like planes) and their associated stories while they continue to work. A while ago, I had asked the question whether you ever flew to the storage/graveyard airports like Victorville or Kingman, and you said you did. I know that your posts are mostly about present adventures, but nevertheless, I think that a post about a flight into one of these strange yet magic airports would be something I'm very curious about. I think it must be quite strange to land a plane with the knowledge that it won't leave the airport again in one piece but maybe just as spare parts for sister-ships.
Hi Dave!
My name is Daniel from Guadalajara, Mexico. Some words I must say: Your blog is awesome!! I always check if you write a new post, they are extremely motivating. I'm building flight hours in a little Cessna 152 here at GDL, but sometimes I fly in a faster, heavier 182.
I always think of your blog when I see one of your planes arriving ;). Makes me think you're in one of those flights hehe.
Keep up the good work! and have good flights, Daniel.
Dave, when you say you colouges, have gone west, do you mean they are flying for Cathy/Singapore/Emirates etc.....
Thanks for great reading as always,
Shaun
your co-pilot might be concentrating. but he's probably sleeping. hehe
I think "flown west" might be a euphemism for passed on... I could be wrong..
Yeah pretty sure gone west is a reference to someone passing.
Emirates etc would probably be going east. :)
Not that I want to be disrespectful in any way towards the friends who have passed, but I still feel like posting something humourous in regard to the confusion of 'West'.
I always wonder about 'older' planes and at what age they are put out to pasture...
Rhea: Dave's old lady will be sold on, maybe stored in a desert if no buyer can be found just now. Cut-price airlines are normally the next step down, then third-world ones and northern Canada.
All the detail you could possibly want is on www.airfleets.net
Darkside
The term "flying west" refers to pilots who are no longer with us.
When I shoot a photo at night, like the one on this post, I set the camera on top of the instrument panel. With smooth air and moonlight, I can open the shutter for about 8 seconds on my little point and shoot Nikon and get a photo that I can work with via software. I get those little white spots if I am using the cheaper software on my old laptop. That is the story on the white spots and I am sticking to it...
Turbine ears are old pilot ears damaged from jet engines. The ability to hear high frequencies is, for the most part, lost.
Daniel from GDL- good for you. You are probably getting into this business at the right time. The up swing (which always comes) will require a lot of new pilots.
Gerard- Thanks! Your poem on Lindbergh is one of the most powerful pieces of wordsmithing I have read... Ever.
why why why am I not trying a pilot?
MBA? psh...who needs it : )
cheers!
Dave-
You are the captain I'm trying to become- even while closing in rapidly on the 5 digit mark in the TT column, I have so much to learn. Yawning and blinking at oh-dark-thirty with Johnny Wet Ticket all agape at his first LIFR experience, letting the whole newness of the job keep him rapt and blissfully drifting away from what he should be doing... I just wonder what you'd do to bring him back into the fold without damaging the rest of the four day trip, and it works every time.
You remind me of Rick Heape. ;)
I wish I could've slung gear for you, but damn the wholly owned albatross around my neck...
Happy (early) Thanksgiving, Dave!
I wanted to say thanks for another great year of entertaining posts and for sharing your views from the cockpit (and of life) with us.
I hope the scheduling gods were kind to you and you get to spend the day with the wife of your youth. If not, thanks for taking folks like me to see our family and friends.
Thanks for the great post Dave!
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