The Canyon

Position: Eastern New Mexico

Altitude: 30,000 feet

Groundspeed: 488 mph (425 kts)

Pax on board: 183

Crew on board: 9

Destination: KLAX (City of Angels)

Equipment: A321

I guess this is the Summer of Storms; sounds like a long running soap opera.

Ahead, less than 100 miles, is a huge line of thunderstorms. The scale of this line is, more or less, planetary. It starts in Wyoming and extends to (according to my dispatcher) a point south of El Paso. Before we left KJFK (New York), my dispatcher and I had a lengthy conversation about the convective forecast, covering everything available at that time. It was a pretty good forecast for this area, so we decided to route down here. That forecast material was, obviously, weak. The good news is: North of here, the line is solid, too.

OK... We are going to have to fight our way through this mess.

We are flying a new, stretch Fi-Fi. Every seat is full with six working crew and three dead- headers. She is heavy, so that means we cannot fly much above 32,000 feet. We are at 30,000 feet and have plenty of airspeed between overspeed and stall. We will stay at 30,000 and use every available resource to punch the line of weather. Fi-Fi's airborne weather radar is a formidable tool in this venture.

At 50 miles, we have eyeballs on the line. Holy Moly! It is, as my British friend Trevor might say, rather large. ATC has cleared us to deviate left or right, just keep us informed about what you are going to do, please. We take up a southerly heading looking for a soft spot. Our fuel load would allow us to fly around the south end of the line (barely) if there were no delays into KLAX.

Important rule of thumb for Life on the Line:

Anytime you are low fuel, expect storm over the destination or closed runway due to mechanical. If none of the above happens, then expect closed airport due to security breach or loss of radio communication with ATC. You can bet on it.

After flying about fifty miles south, we bank (right) toward the storm line (perpendicular) and start poking at it with the radar. It looks bad... We are getting a radar shadow, i.e., the storms have so much water in them that they are soaking up the microwave energy. We turn toward the south again, paralleling the line. Ahead, maybe 50 miles, we can see sun beams coming through the line. That may be a clue.

The Electric Jet turns toward the storm line, again, as soon as it reaches the sunlit area. The radar shows a gap forty miles ahead. I take the radar out of Fi-Fi's matrix and start looking at slices of the storms on both sides of the gap at different altitudes. Then, I swing the antenna down and have a look underneath the storms, looking for ground returns. Yeah, we can do this... First, I ask the co-pilot what he thinks in case I am having an out-of-body experience and am only imagining a gap. He says he is comfortable with it.

My lead flight attendant (a senior Sky Babe whom I have flown with since before my receding hairline) and I have a quick talk about securing the cabin; already done, she says. Been there, done that... She could tell by the aircraft movement what we are doing. As always, when we are getting ready to punch a storm line, I talk to the pax with my best imitation of John Wayne... Piece of cake, folks.

Belts tightened, slow her down a little more and raise the forward ice shields. We fly through a bright, sunlit veil into a deep, dark canyon of cumulonimbus clouds. Towering storms on both sides give this sight some, for lack of a better word, reinforcement. Twenty miles ahead is a doorway to the west side of this storm line. Underneath us is a canyon floor of clouds between the storms; it almost looks like you could walk around down there.

And then we are through to the west side. Before us stretches hundreds of miles of cloudless blue sky. Looking out my side window, I can see the west wall of the storm line extending to the south as far as the horizon; the same out the co-pilot's window to the north. What an amazing display of power!

My fingers push a few magic buttons and Fi-Fi takes over again. The engines increase thrust until she is flying at her happy airspeed; the right wing lowers as we bank toward the digital course line. The air mass is smooth, the headwinds are light, and the fuel load is adequate for PPOS (present position) to KLAX. The sun is getting low; time to put up our Jeppensen sun shields (high altitude charts 1 & 2).

Life on the Line continues...