This is a quick and dirty Starbucks post. There is something about the combination of a dangerous motorcycle, a day off the Line, hot Starbucks coffee, and a newspaper that makes me confrontational. Please excuse my rant...
Another "expert's" opinion on the 737 that ran off the runway in Jamaica has my blood hotter than the coolant in my JDM (Japanese Death Missile). I know a thing or two, maybe three, about landing a large jet on wet and/or ice covered runways and I do not consider myself an expert. I know better... This life of an airline pilot can bite you on the butt very, very quickly.
An airline like this airline, with more than 700 aircraft (think about what 700 aircraft parked wing-tip to wing-tip would look like; it is mind boggling) that flies thousands of flights per day is going to have a few accidents. It is amazing to me (amazing... I use that word a lot, I know, but it is a power word) that so many "experts" think a government agency can help this airline teach its pilots to land aircraft safely.
This will probably get me in trouble, but I stand by my earlier assertion that this airline is the premier airline of our great country. OK, I know they are having some management problems and losing a few bags, but that has nothing to do with the quality of pilots that fly their aircraft.
These boys and girls are the best in the world... Period. There is a good chance that both of the pilots in the Jamaica incident are former or current military pilots trained to the highest standards.
Any pilot that flies the Line knows what it is like to arrive at the destination with minimum fuel and unforecast bad weather. Now what? Do you try for an alternate that is not supported by fuel-in-tanks? If you hold a little bit, the weather may intensify. Decision time... This is where the captain earns his or her nickel, and also, where the talking heads are full of bravo sierra.
I would love to look over at one of these experts in the dark of the night, their incredulous faces illuminated by lightning flashes, and ask them, "OK, what do we do?"
Touchdown at 160 mph on a slick runway with a forty degree crosswind is not for the faint of heart. Trust me on this one. Most Line pilots fly their whole career without a Jamaica event happening. All Line pilots, I repeat, all Line pilots are this far away (hold fingers this far apart... [---]) from an event like this happening to them and their passengers on a few occasions during a 23,000 flight-hour career. Is pilot skill or airmanship the difference? More than a few arrogant left seaters would say "yes" to that, but I am here to tell you that is not the case. I would have to agree with E. Gann, one of my favorite aviation writers, and say that Fate is the Hunter. Indeed, it is...
Oh, Lord, please do not let it happen to me and my passengers.
OK, I feel better now.
Life on the Line continues...
30 comments:
I'm always amazed at how my next door neighbors (generic, non flying, not informed, loud mouthed) always have an opinion on flying when things have gone wrong.
Hours of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer terror.
I suppose the FAA needs to find somebody accountable - the (near) catch all - pilot error.
Capt., I curb my blood pressure spikes down by NOT drinking a Venti.
Captain
it may have been a rant but it was a good rant, from one entitled to to a rant now and again, and a more eloquent rant would be hard to find. I do find piloting my JDM a therapeutic activity that in no way prevents my ranting! Please keep writing about your extraordinary experiences way up there and down here.
Is it conceivable that there would not be enough fuel left to go to Montego Bay, or even to Cancun..assuming they had better conditions?
I dont know what the margins are. Your insight on this subject would be very interesting.
I had heard that many intra-europe flights were now departing with only 30 minutes of extra fuel. This worried me a bit while we were circling through some bumps waiting for a large thunderstorm to clear the Warsaw airport a couple of summers ago.
I used to fly for American as a Commuter Captain and actually had this happen to me. Level 5 thunderstorm, brand new runway (very slick) and torrential rain. No where to go but down (at minimums already and no chance of a divert because of the nature of the storm system). I hit the runway (but not hard enough) and slid a mile sideways before I got it under control, only to slide off the end. A truly harrowing experience that I have never forgotten. There for the grace of God go I. I can't imagine what it would be like in a big jet, hopefully I never find out
Nice one Cptn Dave. Keep up the great work. FYI Croppy - I don't think JAA regs allow flights to depart w/o the required hold/missed/alternate plus 45 minutes - even Ryanair flies safe.
peter j. cranstone- nor will I, knock on wood.
wxman- yes, in a perfect world, that is true. I never begin a leg without the proper amount of fuel, but arrive with less than optimum a lot. En route winds are stronger than forecast; drop the holding fuel. Gotta go around that line of storms; well, we don't really need that alternate, so drop the alternate fuel. Now you arrive with a little over 45 minutes of fuel and, uh-oh, now what?
I trust my pilots especially the mainlines!
FWIW we have had to divert and land on a trip from KCLT to KSNA when we ran way low on fuel due to brutal headwinds. The trip also took a couple of hours longer than normal.
I hate armchair investigators, especially the ones that the talking heads love to quote. An expert is usually anybody NOT INVOLVED in the incident.
Aaron
Thanks for this one, I think your readers really appreciate it when you comment on incidents and accidents. Your insights are more valuable than the armchair pilots the major networks bring in to explain the cause of these things within hours after they happen. Pure hogwash!
Since you brought this up, I do have a question about the landing if I may. Before the flight was on final approach, the tower offered an approach to runway 30 so they would be landing into a headwind ( I believe 14 knots). The Captain elected to land runway 12 with the 14 kt tailwind. How do you decide as Captain when the tailwind is too much to land and change the approach. Here in KCMH, I've been on a number of flights where we take off or land with tailwind and I've always wondered who decides when to change the approach/takeoffs.
Hi from ZLC Dave. I'm with your opinion 100 percent. I have always observed line pilots to be professional, even the grumpy ones.
20/20 hindsight is...20/20,always remember that after the fact folks.
Well said that man!
I'm currently in flight school and it's like my human factors instructor always said, " things have to go perfectly right to go so perfectly wrong." and with a lot of accidents in aviation I believe that is the case. Good post, I never get tired of reading them and am glad to see that you've been posting more often. Thanks for providing such entertainment.
Although KLAS normally has moderate weather, I'll head over in storms and watch ILS arrivals on 19R with crosswinds that have the planes coming in (what looks like) sideways and extreme variations in wind speed.
I always marvel at the skill it takes to touch down correctly and safely in touch conditions. And understand that a rare variable is going to happen to the best of Captains.
I have learnt to disregard media looks on incidents and accidents (it is ALWAYS accident in the news, and it is ALWAYS emergency landing, even if it were just diversion for fuel) after, almost exactly 4 years ago, come to think of it, they "explained" that ILS meant, well,
Engeneer Aviation System. Just because it fits I,L and S letters in local language. Screw it being an English acronym, eh? Not that I thought much of them before.
Now try to explain something about aviation to someone of the general public when they have this kind of Bravo Sierra in their heads. And it was not even a tabloid, but well respected local paper.
Dave- Excellent, thank you. Your longstanding policy of not commenting on the bs has made this post outstanding in its vehemence. I think that you would find that the captain of BAW038 ex Beijing would join you most heartily in your sentiments. I flew American first flight in 1954- no doubts then, most certainly no doubts now! LSP
Everybody knows TV experts are the ultimate badasses. State of the badass art.
D
Great post Dave. Honest, thoughtful and straight to the point. I hope you are the pilot of my flight on that dark and stormy night with minimum fuel!
Dave, great post. I'm flying to Chicago over Halloween for my grandsons graduation from Navy basic training at Great Lakes Naval station. I hope you are the Captain it would help me lose my aversion for O'Hare.
paul- I do not know why they landed with a 14 kt tailwind. That is doable but it increases your landing roll geometrically. The captain always decides on things like this.... I have been in their situation a 100 times or so; uasually it is thunderstorm related, moving over the field, gotta get it on the ground now, etc. Not good...
michael- well, I seem to attract dark and stormy nights like a fly to honey, so I might be your pilot.
flying kites mom- thanks. There is an art form in not commenting on the bravo sierra...
marquinius- luckily, my neighbors are not like that...
Captain, I like your stories, your style too (even the "death missles" and "mighty iphone" and such...) but please indulge me in one bit of grammar policing.
This just drives me crazy:
its = possessive
it's = "it is"
Thank you
If, as you seem to suggest, it really is a matter of HAVING to land because there's insufficient fuel for go-rounds or alternatives, thenI'm sorry but the answer is put more fuel in...stuff the airlines operating margins...stuff all the jobs...it's safer for passengers if all the damned worlds airlines go out of business than if one plane, avoidably, can't make a reasonable alternative...
And that surely is implicit in much of Gann's superb work...
cogidubnus- oh, come on... Surely you are not serious. You are missing the point here... I do not know any Line pilot who would start a leg without sufficient fuel.
DaninSoCo- OK, but please don't tell my wife (a college dean) that you had to correct my grammer, I mean, grammar. Seriously, thank you...
Hey Captain Dave,
No matter to me if you *are* grammatically unsound, but for the sake of all your (P)ax (...of whom I am not one!) please dont ever become mathematically un-wound !
Much fun on your JDM !
Bev - Cape Town
Dave,
Once again your posts shed light that we'd NOT see in the media. And for that, I’m sure (from the other comments) your readers are always grateful! Thank you for the insight AND exposing the truth about the matter.
What always infuriates me is the way top management puts lives of passengers and crew at risk, in the name of profits. It's one thing to eliminate the 800-lbs of paint on the outside of the plane, because that makes it lighter, and therefore more fuel efficient. It's fine to delete all the on board magazines to eliminate any excess weight of that sort to save fuel... it's fine to take away LOTS of things to curb excess fuel consumption..BRAVO!!! I’m all about not wasting fuel and polluting the planet. BUT in my world of thinking, it's NEVER OK to NOT INCLUDE extra fuel for EXACTLY the once in a career incident like these two pilots faced.
They (you, all crews, and all passengers) should have NEVER been subjected to this decision. (Remember that root word of decide is cide...to kill off one option or the other.. IE: Burn extra fuel to carry extra fuel, or kill a planeload of passengers and crew and folks on the ground too, to make a bonus milestone.)
Now, every company needs to be profitable to stay in business (Unless you are QATAR/Emirates Airways and have unlimited Royal Oil funds) however, you always come back to the big question: How much fuel could be kept on planes whose flight crew may face this decision, if we eliminated executive bonuses.
How much fuel could be bought and still keep the carrier profitable with the bonuses paid to the likes of Gerard Arpey, Rakesh Gangwall, Steven Wolfe, Robert Crandall, Leo Mullin, Richard Anderson, and the seemingly unlimited other upper management collecting BANK!!!
Would these pilots(or any pilot) have reached their destination, known it might be an unsafe landing and shot that doomed approach, if they’d had the fuel to fly to and land safely at the alternate?
It occurs like managing fuel is a MAJOR stress point for pilots like you and your comrades. As a paying customer, it infuriates me that your management adds THAT Stress to you, who controls MY LIFE. I want a pilot to FLY THE GOD DAMN PLANE, not be reduced to the service station attendant figuring out how far a vehicle might go, if he/she doesn’t quite "fill’er up!" (And that’s NOT to insult yours or your comrades incredible abilities.) It’s not right, it’s not moral and it’s not ethical. It’s CORPORATE GREED.
Normally here I’d say.. Hey.. I’ll pay my extra $25.00 or $50.00 bucks per ticket so the plane can carry that extra fuel for more than one storm enroute, one missed approach and one alternate… but oh, wait.. WE ARE ALREADY PAYING FUEL SURCHARGES on nearly EVERY TICKET, even after fuel dropped from +$150-barrell, to -$60-barrell. (At one point the fuel surcharge alone from LAX/HNL was $130.00 per direction, per ticket! INSANE)
It’s very disturbing to me that upper management feels their bonuses are more important than our lives. Maybe if they or their families had been on ONE of those stricken airliners, they’d act differently.
That’s my 2cents worth on the matter.
Fly safely (as I know you always do)
T
Capt Dave, Bravo Zulu sir. Never trusted those desk driving "experts" myself. Very few of them have ever had their Butts on the line. In the bad ol day's the Navy required we be on top Adak with 20,000 lbs of fuel on board out of a 60,000 lb load. Our crew truely were fuel management "experts." (...and I just knew you were an E. Gann fan.)
Capt. Dave, I'm a relative newcomer to Flight Level 390 but wanted to let you know how much I like it so far. My husband is a USMC ex-fighter jock who flies 757 and 767 capt out of BOS for "that airline" and I truly appreciate your irate wisdom on this topic. I linked to this on my own blog today: Slick runways and the real experts. -- Amy (P.S. can't figure out why Typepad scrambles my sign-in name into all those letters and numbers, sorry.)
I like the spontaneity and passion in this post - the topic definitely worthy of a rant.
Wishing you clear skies...
noella- thank you very much!
6P00d- welcome and thank you!
L.Jones- you've been there...
Tim 12 of 13- well, yeah, most of that is true, but...
bev- that is very good!! Showed it to my wife.
Way to go Capt Dave, It annoys me that every day people try really hard to do the best they can do, but life has a way of biting you back and when this happens its the Airlines fault or the crews or the management, but everyday we are faced with these little hassles and in almost every case they are handled with grace and a smile...and a ranting passenger because they are going to be late...or miss Avatar in the cinema?...in this case it was a life and death situation, and the line in between is very very fine.
Exploding Under wear... lol.. I like that.. Thanks Captain for making us giggle..
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