Wet laptops & reflective thoughts

(This post was originally started about nine days ago)


I just finished a five day sequence and am flying home on United in economy plus, fighting the urge to take a nap. I’m pleased because my new laptop isn’t dead after all. Last night in Syracuse, New York, I was trying to finish my schedule bid for June, talking to my Mother on the phone (Mother’s day you know) when I accidentally splashed water on this keyboard I’m typing on. Doh!

I dried it off immediately with towels but there were droplets in between the keys. Not thinking, and especially not googling, I dried the keyboard further using the hotel hair drier and my breath to blow the droplets away from the keyboard.

It worked, for a while. Soon the number 8 key starting ghosting and repeating, and after a lengthy, second hair drying, the 0 key did too, and many keys didn’t work at all. Panicked and anxious, I finished my schedule bid on the hotel computer, worried that I had ruined my laptop by blowing the water drops into the keys and driving moisture into the keyboard using the hair dryer.

After bidding, ‘google’ said in one entry to never use a hair dryer to dry off your keyboard, as it will drive moisture further into it, and the heat and static can cause electrical problems with a laptop as well. But there were many other sites which mistakenly, in my opinion, suggested using a hair drier. The advice I now trust after a liquid spill on a laptop is not to use a hair drier, but to turn your laptop off immediately, dry it off with towels, turn it upside down to let liquid drain, and put it in the sun or warm, dry air for a while, remove the battery, and leave it off for 24 hours. I removed the battery, let it air dry overnight, then put it out in the sun during all five of our flights today (with it off, lest you‘re thinking about that NW crew). The air is pretty dry in an airliner, and the sunlight coming through the flight deck windows can bring in a fair amount of warmth. That combination draws the moisture out of a laptop fairly well, because after finishing scheduled day of six hours of flying, it works again, and every key is fine.

We had a ‘nice’ 4:45 AM show time at the airport, so considering I had this secondary problem to contend with, in addition to the one of getting a good amount and good quality of rest, I slept for five hours relatively soundly. Giving your worries up to God in prayer does help, and I did the best I could doing that before lights out last night.

I am tired with a capital T at the end of this five day sequence of flying. Today we flew from Syracuse to Philadelphia to Detroit to Washington to Norfolk to Washington, and were on duty for nine hours and fifty minutes, from 4:45 AM till 2:35 PM. This was the fourth early showtime I’ve had this sequence, and the second one at 4:45 AM in a row. And the best part of it is it’s all legal per the FAA’s rest rules and our labor contract. But is it safe?  It could be even safter.

I don't want to scare you, but this is the reality that many flight crews face.  However, it's much easier on pilots than in the early air-mail and airline days, when airplanes were unreliable, the navigation technology and avionics were crude, weather forecasting was more like weather guessing, the working rules were scarce, and the accident record was reflected in all these shortcomings.  It is relatively safe, in that there are two pilots (better than one), our aircraft is highly automated (hand flying five legs would be exhausting), and our work is highly standardized and routine.  The US does have the safest transportation system in the world.

On another note, I haven’t posted for a while, and don’t have a concise and readily available reason as to why. I have a couple ideas I’m working on, and a new phone which will enable me to do better and more frequent twitter (I’m “crossky” on twitter) updates, with pictures, on the fly, so to speak (literally). Technology and social networking, a’la ‘community’ is a subject I’ve been pondering. Because of social networking, the way we have community with each other in this era is changing, and sometimes I wonder if it’s for the better or not. I’m still trying to correlate it to flying somehow, but it will come.

Community with God, and better community with each other, is one of the main reasons the Son of God came to earth in human form. I’m not the best at fostering and keeping community with others in a loving Christian manner (as Christ teaches), but I kind of think that concern has been on my heart and mind lately. There are other signs I’ve seen that God is still working in my life, and when I get to a quiet place to reflect on that, it feels good. God is good, all the time! All the time, God is good! Thanks again for reading the blog.

Gut Check

He is risen, He is risen indeed! I say it to others and others say it to me. In my past life, in the next few days and weeks after Easter I typically would slowly revert to living like I did before, only feeling the literal meaning of Jesus’ resurrection every so often, instead of every glorious day. I wish we could celebrate our Lord’s resurrection every week. Wait a minute, we do: Sunday is the day of the Lord, the risen Lord. Christians (except for Seventh Day Adventists) observe the Sabbath day as Sunday instead of Saturday, honoring the fact that Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday morning, after the Jewish Sabbath (Friday night to Saturday night). Realizing that I’m still human helps me to understand how rediscovering ‘the joy of my salvation’ keeps it fresh in my heart.

Luke, a gentile (non-Jewish person) and physician, and close friend of the apostle Paul, wrote the gospel of Luke and the sequel to it, the book of Acts, during A.D. 61-64. Acts picks up where the gospels left off, and documents the rapid growth and events of the early Christian church after the resurrected Jesus Christ, in bodily and glorified form, appeared to many disciples and followers.

What occurs in the book of Acts is exactly what one would expect from resurrection witnesses empowered with a conviction of the mind and the presence of the Holy Spirit (which Jesus promised them). The apostles act boldly, teaching, preaching, performing miracles, and endure much persecution, suffering, and dying for God‘s glory. The church grows rapidly as a result.

Here are just a few events in the book of Acts: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost; the gospel is preached to the Jews and the Gentiles; the church grows rapidly in spite of resistance and persecution of it; Saul (a zealous Jew who persecutes Christians) is met by a blinding Jesus on the road to Damascus, believes, and is renamed Paul; and Paul and others go on missionary journeys as far as Greece and Rome.

Acts is certainly a book of action, and a perfect sequel to the gospels. It’s an historical ‘gut-check’: it’s stories and history are evidence for an affirmative answer to the question ‘did Jesus really rise from the dead?‘ Instinctively, it makes sense. The followers of ‘The Way’ wouldn’t have been willing to endure the persecution and suffering they did if the resurrection wasn’t true.

Christians pronounce that Jesus is risen: we say it and believe it, but do we keep it hidden? Do we act like we really believe it so others can see our faith? The stories in Acts can be used as evidence of the new church’s knowledge of the truth, resulting in the bolstering of one’s faith in Jesus.

I’m reading through Acts this month, and am behind the reading schedule in my Bible. So often it seems things don’t happen on my schedule, they happen on God’s schedule. But that’s the way it should be. After a week of good vacation and getting the taxes done, I’m having an enjoyable three day trip in sunny weather. It’s the third morning in Jacksonville, North Carolina, and I’ll be flying OAJ-CLT-LEX-CLT-DCA today (Charlotte, Lexington, and Washington).

We had an overnight in Lexington the first night of this trip. I liked it there, it was lushly green, with absolutely beautiful tree lined, hilly horse farms and meadows, complete with painted wooden fences. The folks are friendly there with true southern hospitality, and I had a good jog over to the nearby ‘UK’ (University of Kentucky).

However, in spite of the niceness of Lexington, I can’t go there without thinking of the tragedy of Comair 5191, on August 27, 2006.

The Delta Connection flight to Atlanta attempted to takeoff on 3,500 foot long runway 26, instead of 7,003 foot long runway 22. Forty-nine out of fifty souls on board died after the jet struck a fence and trees while struggling to get airborne beyond the short runway.

They attempted takeoff on the wrong runway because the Captain steered the jet onto it by mistake. The taxiway route to the runway offered the crew an opportunity to take a left turn at two locations. The first left turn was onto the ill fated short runway, the second left turn, a little further down the taxiway, was onto the correct runway.

It can be argued that there were many contributing factors for this accident. The control tower controller didn’t watch their takeoff attempt, information about the airport wasn’t supplied appropriately to the crew, the layout of the taxiways and runways could potentially trick pilots into using the wrong runway, the Captain didn’t get good rest the night before, and the crew engaged in non-essential conversation while the plane was taxiing. However, in spite of all these factors, in the end it was the pilots responsibility to make sure they were taking off on a runway that had adequate length.

What prevented either pilot from noticing they were on the wrong runway? Apparently, they didn’t check that the magnetic direction the plane indicated while on the runway was the same direction of their intended runway for takeoff (260 degrees instead of 220 degrees).  More fundamentally and less technically, apparently they didn't do a gut check: they didn’t ask internally or to the other pilot ‘does this feel right, is everything OK?’  Professionals in all fields of work perform ‘gut-checks’ routinely. ’ Experience is the best teacher’, and it teaches them to safeguard their work just by being aware and sensing when something is amiss and out of the ordinary. Gut checks are vitally important when operating at less than full mental capacity, as when fatigued, distracted, or both.

The paradox is that at the very time when it’s most critical to maintain a good situational awareness, when fatigued or distracted, is the very time when it’s most difficult to do so. I know this from experience.

The two most humbling mistakes (and they were very humbling) I’ve made in my airline career have occurred while I was taxiing the plane on the ground, and I believe they happened in part because I didn’t perform a gut-check. I wasn’t able to because I was tired and fatigued, rushed, and too distracted in non-essential (to the flight) conversation with my Co-Pilot on the ground. In the industry this is known as ‘violating sterile cockpit’, and it is big on the FAA’s hit list. Airline pilots are to observe a sterile cockpit - no conversation that doesn’t pertain to the safe operation of the flight - anytime the plane is moving on the ground or anytime below 10,000 feet in flight.

Applying this line of thought to this accident, I believe that short term fatigue and distraction from violating sterile cockpit helped to prevent this crew from taxiing to the correct runway, and to prevent them from aborting the takeoff before it was too late.

I examined the cockpit voice recording transcript briefly, and the crew (mainly the First Officer) did ‘violate sterile cockpit‘, but not to a gross extent, in my opinion. However, lack of focus is possible when distracted by emotion or thought about a non-essential conversation, even if its a short one. I have seen this occur to me numerous times, and I believe it is one of the main considerations for the sterile cockpit rule. What I mean is that’s how I think the mechanism works: while a mistake can occur during the moment sterile cockpit is violated, it can also occur afterwards. Non-essential conversation can induce a type of lingering distraction to pilots during a period of flight operations that is critical to the safety of flight.

I mentioned fatigue as another characteristic which reduces the ability to maintain situational awareness. Unfortunately, the Captain of the accident flight didn’t get good rest the night before, due to his wife and two infants spending the night in the hotel with him. He complained on the CVR about his lack of sleep to his Co-Pilot. I was fatigued when I had both of my problems aforementioned on the ground, the first after a short night of sleep after commuting in to my base for an early showtime, and the second after a long duty day full of schedule changes. When fatigued, one simply doesn’t have the ability to perform to the same level as when not. Slowing down the pace at which one completes tasks and adhering to SOP’s (standard operating procedures) are two ways to counteract the effects of fatigue.

This accident, like other airline accidents and incidents recently, exhibit symptoms of a lack of flight discipline, which stems from a lack of professionalism. Frankly, others I've talked to are like me, we never expected Comair, a regional airline whose pilots always had a reputation for being true professionals, to have an accident like this.  If Comair could have this accident, any regional airline could.  This problem of a lack of professionalism is endemic in our industry, and it seems to be difficult to get across to all pilots the insidiousness of it. The negative reaction seen at times involves an impulse to blame airline management for poor schedules and reduced pay, instead of examining their own personal standards of professionalism and flight discipline. Poor schedules and reduced pay are problems the pilot unions continue to battle to win improvements on, but these issues are no excuse to absolve pilots from their duty and responsibility to safely transport the flying public with the highest standards possible.

OK, short rant over. In review, fatigue and distraction both reduce pilots ability to ‘trap errors’ and perform a gut-check. Performing a gut-check is good thing to do in aviation or any industry:

- be in tune to your instincts, trust them, and follow them

- when fatigued and/or distracted, the ability to perform a gut-check is diminished

- when fatigued and distracted is the time when SOP’s are the most important to follow to the letter. Adhering to a checklist, callout, or procedure when fatigued and/or distracted makes it more likely than otherwise that a critical item won’t be missed.

I got a little academic, but this is the way I see it, and I make no apologies for it. The opportunity to learn and lessen the likelihood of more tragedy and loss of life makes it worthwhile. Thanks again for reading my blog.

PS: In case you're curious, I continue to battle against fatigue and distraction I encounter on the flight deck.  After I've made mistakes of the type which in the past I would point to others and say quietly "I could never do something that silly", I operate more conservatively and with better flight discipline than I ever have as a pilot.  I still learn new things about the airplane and how to better perform my job, and I hope I always will.

Good Friday sense

It’s day five of flying for me, tonight will be night number six away from home. I’m spending the day in a Hampton Inn in Greenville, SC, where everything is green, or greening up in the early spring. Tonight I’ll fly from GSP to Charlotte, only about a twenty minute flight maximum, then deadhead back to DC for the night. I miss my wife and girls, and will be home tomorrow afternoon, for a week of vacation and four days extra scheduled off, away from the skies. So, two days before our Easter holiday, it’s a good Friday, in fact it is THE Good Friday, and I’ll be writing about that subject in a paragraph or two.

The first couple of days of this trip we endured a lot of turbulence in the clouds, immersed and enveloped ‘inside the lampshade‘, in white and gray. Climbing and descending to find a smoother altitude for our ‘peeps’ didn’t help much, so we usually just slowed down the plane and endured it. My Co-Pilots and I had to fight gusty crosswinds on takeoff and landing. We airline pilots generally like the challenge of a crosswind, passengers generally don’t. Not seeing the blue sky or sun for entire flights is strange at times. It still intrigues me to navigate using only our instruments on the flight display screens in front of us, then pop out of ragged clouds and mist with the runway right in front of us, canted at an angle, due to our ‘crab angle’ into the wind.

On the second day we were flying north over western New York, destination Toronto, Ontario, Canada, when we seemed to reach the end of the endless clouds. It started clearing over Buffalo, New York, as center had us descend to 10,000 feet. I got out my camera because I knew Niagara Falls was coming up, and it looked as if we would get a chance to photograph it. This is from two miles above the ground with a zoomed lens, but it’s still very impressive.

I think it’s only fitting that I quote Jesus’ from John 7:37 (ESV) here: “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Wow, what a river of living water, indeed. I will see it up close in person, someday.

Below is a picture of the river and lakes of the Niagara Falls region, this was taken while we were headed south, from Toronto back to Philadelphia. In the foreground is Lake Ontario, in the background is Lake Erie. That little puff of white is the mist rising from the Canadian, Horseshoe falls side. The river is the Niagara river, and it flows from south to north, background to foreground, from Lake Erie towards Lake Ontario. Unless you’re geography limited, like I was about this area until a few years ago, it doesn’t make sense without an explanation. Here's a google map of the same area.  It’s still tricky for me to make sense of it, of a river that flows from south to north, and not only that but a humongous waterfall over seemingly flat country. But with a little knowledge and explanation, it does make sense. Rivers all over the earth flow from a higher elevation to a lower elevation.

It can be hard to make sense of Jesus’ sacrifice of his life on the cross too. With a little knowledge and explanation it begins to make sense too. God loves you! God loves us, every one of us, and He wants to have relationship with us, now and for eternity. Our sin (which is turning away from God by our thoughts, words, actions, and deeds) separates us from God, because God is Holy and perfect, and cannot and will not tolerate sin in his presence. As a matter of fact, God will destroy whatever is sinful in his pure presence. But God made a way, from the beginning, to ‘fix’ our imperfectedness and restore our relationship with him. Jesus. He said in John 16:13 “there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Many skeptics of Christianity accept that a man named Jesus Christ of Nazareth was crucified on a cross, but they draw the line there. But without Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, his crucifixion doesn’t make sense at all. The resurrection is absolutely essential to Christianity. But don’t just take my word for it, feel free to check out these three links, by others much smarter than me about the subject: No Christianity with the Resurrection, Christianity is Resurrection, and Resurrection essential to Christianity.

Without Jesus rising from the dead:

-His death on the cross was in vain, and unable to defeat sin; in other words the pain and suffering of crucifixion, ‘bearing the guilt for the sins of many’, was unable to overcome death.


-He was just a man, and not God.


-He was a liar, and so were his disciples. All the times in four gospels where Jesus promised that ‘whosoever believes in me shall not die, but have everlasting life’ make him and the gospel writers out to be liars.


-God has permitted all true Christians out to be liars as well. I can’t, don’t, and won’t believe that the nature of God is like that, the Bible says otherwise in plenty of places.

The proof that Jesus’ perfect sacrifice was sufficient enough to make us sinners right with God (“by grace through faith” - Ephesians 2:8) is in the fact of his resurrection itself, and gives all believers confidence that at some point after we die in this life we will have resurrected bodies and eternal life, just as our Savior promised multiple times in the gospels, and as the New Testament authors espoused on.

Perhaps the most memorable New Testament passage regarding the essentialness of the doctrine of the resurrection was by the apostle Paul, in I Corinthians 15:12-19 (Amplified): "12But now if Christ (the Messiah) is preached as raised from the dead, how is it that some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen; 14And if Christ has not risen, then our preaching is in vain [it amounts to nothing] and your faith is devoid of truth and is fruitless (without effect, empty, imaginary, and unfounded).  15We are even discovered to be misrepresenting God, for we testified of Him that He raised Christ, Whom He did not raise in case it is true that the dead are not raised.  16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised; 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is mere delusion [futile, fruitless], and you are still in your sins [under the control and penalty of sin]; 18And further, those who have died in [spiritual fellowship and union with] Christ have perished (are lost)! 19If we who are [abiding] in Christ have hope only in this life and that is all, then we are of all people most miserable and to be pitied."
 
Wow, what a statement and declaration of truth by Paul.  If we have no resurrection from the dead then Jesus doesn't either, and we are to be pitied by others, and we are, because they don't believe it (the resurrection).  But we brothers and sisters in Christ know otherwise, for we have experienced the prescence of Christ in our lives, and the peace, joy, fellowship, love, and purpose that comes along with it. 
 
Hallelujah, for He is risen!  He is risen indeed!

Happy Easter everyone, whether you observe and believe the resurrection of our Lord or not.  Thanks for reading my blog.

Geese!

It's Tuesday, mid morning on day three of my current trip, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Under a white but clear sky the sun is getting rid of the dew on the grass and surfaces.  From my hotel window I can see the airport only a quarter mile away, and a jet on final.  It's going to be a great day, it seems.

Our first day had us flying six legs on a Sunday, in and out of New York LaGaurdia and Philadelphia, mostly.  We arrived in New York on the second flight of the day, then saw it again after stopping in Philly once.  After seeing Philly twice we were to make our way up to Allentown, Pennsylvania for the night.  Allentown is pretty close to Philly so it would be a busy, short flight.

On our third flight, LGA-PHL, we had a jumpseating pilot up front.  He was a Captain for a large regional airline which has a good prescence at LaGaurdia, but not ours.  He seemed like a sharp fellow, and proved it before the flight was over.  Our First Officer was flying the plane with the autopilot engaged in the Philadelphia terminal area, and I was handling the radios and checklists while we were getting vectors for the visual approach to runway 35 (landing towards the north).  Philly sometimes gives us delay vectors for 35 because they have to coordinate the proper spacing for the landing runways.  Runway 35 and runway '27 right' physically cross each other, like a street intersection, so it's critical that we have safe spacing when they are landing jets on both of these runways.  After zig zagging per ATC's instructions for a few minutes it looked as if we would be cleared for the visual approach at any second.  We could easily see Philadelphia International through the afternoon haze, in a very pleasant appearing sky, about ten miles away.  We were about 2,000 feet above the ground, pointed toward the airport, when a voice shouted, loudly, GEESE!!  It was our jumpseater, looking out for us.  The fact that I nor my FO hadn't seen them didn't bother me, I was glad that 'Dan' our jumpseating pilot in the extra seat, did.

Upon all of us looking up, there they were, at our altitude, almost right in front of us.  Actually, they were from our center position in front of us off to our right.  It was two large flocks of big honkers, Canadian Geese, the kind that brought down US Airways 1549.  Just as my brain thought that we needed to disconnect the autopilot and manuever to avoid these birds, and I may need to ask my FO to do just that, he did.  "Blink blink blink blink" (a poor imitation) the sound came as he disconnected the autopilot and smoothly but quickly banked the plane to the left to avoid the flock, and the birds nearest to our flight path banked away from us as well.  We had other options if the birds had been right in front of us, on both sides, but thankfully they weren't, and we didn't have to consider them.  If that had been the case, whomever was flying the plane could have disconnected the autopilot and started a sudden climb or dive to avoid the birds. 

But that would have been a tall order, at the range we can identify birds in our way, there just isn't enough time to be that clever, it's a matter of three to five seconds before they're there and past you, it happens quickly.  We aren't given specific training or advise on how to avoid flocks of big, aiplane damaging birds, besides the simple but sage advice of "see and avoid". 

I reported a large flock of geese at our altitude about two miles behind us to approach control, right after they cleared us for the viusual approach to runway 35, shortly after our encounter with them.  They appreciated it, and had already been busy advising other aircraft on final approach for runway 27 right of other flocks of geese in the final approach path for that runway.  It was a certain afternoon of risk for a large bird strike at Philly.

After ten years of airline flying, this was the second closest I've come to a large bird strike incident, and the largest flock I've seen up close.  The closest were 'six flashes above out heads at night',  while descending into a prarie airport.  See my original posting here for that one.

I hear these beautiful birds outside my open window now, landing in the courtyard of the hotel here.  I like these honkers, like watching them fly and hang out; they are certainly majestic and beautiful.  And dangerous.  I have three more days of flying and avoiding flocks of birds, before this bird writing this heads 'north', to migrate back home.

Post-PC ramblings on love

(I wrote the first part of this about a week ago, but am just getting around to finishing it now)

I’ve just enjoyed, or 'loved' two days off at home, or two half days and one full day at home, or, best expressed, forty-eight straight hours at home. I had a PC (proficiency check or check ride) again in Charlotte, with a relatively good time slot of four PM to ten PM, plus a debrief. Spending another night in Charlotte meant my first day off from flying or training duty was actually a travel day (still a working day) I get paid for, to travel back to my domicile of Washington, DC. Instead of going home through Washington, I got up early on just a few hours sleep and jump-seated to the Twin Cities of Minnesota and then home, to big slushy snowflakes falling at the airport, but a cold rain falling on the other side of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the city I commute out of. The seasonal change to spring is almost upon us, and the first day of spring is one week from now, excellent.

About my PC: it went fairly well, after I spent most of a long overnight in Charlotte preparing for it the day before. There’s always so much to study for, and as usual, at some point I felt like I studied a few of the wrong things I hope to study earlier and smarter next time.  I even made a simple sixth month studying checklist after this one: if I study such and such each month I won’t have to cram as much for it next time. But I made no serious mistakes, no retraining was done, and best of all, I didn’t crash! With simulated engine failures on takeoff and realistic wind shear encounters, it’s a possibility. Also, It’s considered a good sign if the Instructor is nitpicking your technique, which he was, honestly.

I don't love PC's, but I don't loathe them either.  It’s always good to have a review of our jet’s systems and procedures, backed up by a demonstration of my capability to actually fly and perform those procedures in the simulator. We know what’s going to happen, pretty much, the instructor is mainly the facilitator of that during the flying portion, and the quizzer during the oral portion.

The ‘box’ (the simulator) has a delay, a lag, however, between the time you apply the controls till when the ‘airplane’ reacts. This is due to the time it takes for the host computer to realize you want a greater bank angle or lower pitch attitude, for example, and then to calculate the change and transmit the response to the simulator itself. The advice to overcome this tendency is to make a control change and wait a moment longer for it to happen than you would in the airplane. But it takes discipline to not over control the simulator, it does for me at least. I remind myself to wait and not over control, and to breathe, as strange as it may sound. Breathing well helps you to think, not surprisingly.

And when I have two days off at home, like I do every time I have three days off while commuting on two of them, two subjects enter my mind: I must make the best use of my precious time at home, and I ponder why I’m doing this: why do I continue to sacrifice time with my wife and girls, and time at home?

Besides my religious and spiritual motivation which helps me to justify being away, and upon which I've expressed at length before, there are a couple other prime reasons I've neglected to mention. I need a job to pay the bills and the mortgage, and support my family with, that's the simple one.

The other one, and I'm surprised that I've never come outright and wrote it here, is that I love flying. I Love flying! I've always been fascinated by airplanes, long before I was a pilot, since I was a boy on our driveway, craning my neck to watch Cessna's and 727's pass across the sky.

Here are just a few things I attach the L-word to in flying: punching through an overcast layer of clouds into the burning blue sky, and surfing them for a moment while still enveloped; dodging puffy stray cumulus clouds, using these giant punchy cauliflower growths as pylons in the spring and summer; the challenge of hand flying a final approach, still mystified at the runway enlarging at us in a 700 foot per minute descent and at a speed of two and three-quarters a mile per minute; takeoffs are fun but landings are better, a tailor made return to terra firma satisfies my passengers and myself, sometimes I say “lucky again” out loud to avoid grandstanding (and to keep the "luck" going).

I wouldn’t exactly say “I love being a Captain” and having all the responsibilities and leadership role that comes with it, but ‘its good to be the king’, as Mel Brooks says. Some of you youngsters might have to Google that to get the reference. I would much rather be a Captain than the First Officer, but I'd rather be in a secure sport at a major airline than at a regional.  I’m always my favorite Captain: I get to run the show the way I want to, within reason and our SOP’s, of course.

It bears worth writing again that the hardest part of this job is dealing, in a healthy way, with the emotional and physical toll due to not being home. Again, I’m blessed and lucky to be doing something for a living that I love to do. Not everyone gets that opportunity. Too many pilots lose sight of their love for flying, they let the demands of the job overshadow their passion for it.

Life is meant to be lived in balance, it is demanding when getting the most out of it, whether you’re a free spirit or a devoted religious person. My personal experience has been that a life lived “in Christ” brings balance, peace, and an eternal perspective that re-orients one’s eyes and heart anew. Want to be in better balance on the see-saw of life? Put Jesus on the other end!

This is some of what I’ve learned, and keep re-learning, with Jesus Christ in my life: God loves me, not because of anything I’ve done or will do, He just does. God’s will for me is to know him, and to make him known, and to glorify him, whether I‘m flying planes or fixing drains.

He wants to be lived out in me! May I be so presumptuous to say exactly this? Yes, the following Bible passages quote Jesus implicating it to be so in John 14:23 (his home with us), John 15:4-5 (the vine and the branches), and John 17:21-23 (Jesus prays for his disciples).  Galatians 2:20 is one of my favorite verses in the New Testament.  Galatians was written by the apostle Paul, whom Jesus, in glorified form, met and temporarily blinded him on the road to Damascus, while Paul was named Saul, a zealous Jew, and actively persecuting Christians.  Paul teaches clearly in this verse that Jesus lives in us: Galatians 2:20 (ESV): "I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Love is an interesting thing, it asks you to do things you might not want to do otherwise. Love asks you to sacrifice. My wife and I have sacrificed a lot for each other, and will continue to do so, out of love for each other and to enable me to do what I love. “God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” - John 3:16. The proof of the love God has for all of us is in Jesus Christ, my friends.

Thanks for reading my blog, and God bless you today.

Toronto, pronto

This image of the weather map for the northeastern US last night essentially shows the conditions we experienced yesterday, while trying to fly seven legs.  Bands of snow rotating counter-clockwise around a low pressure center between Boston and New York City made it interesting for the second day in a row for everyone in this area. 

My FO and I agreed both that the safety of flying seven flights and seven hours in a day is questionable, and it definitely isn't doable on a day like this.  DC to PIT to Philly to Toronto to Philly to Allentown to Philly to Binghamton was our itinerary.  Regardless, off we went.

Very gusty winds got my attention taking off on the short runway from DC.  Our CRJ juked and jived in the gusts as I turned away from the Pentagon to follow the Potomac river to the northwest, climbing out steeply while wondering how long the constant turbulence would last.  It wasn't long; we cruised over to Pittsburgh at 20,000 feet above the clouds, enjoying the sunshine with the familiar blue backdrop.

In about a mile of visibility because of snow falling, I landed on an all white runway, one with a thin snow cover, highlighted by wavily shaped snow drifts.  After deploying the thrust reversers to full, I applied the wheelbrakes smoothly but surely, increasing the pressure as I stowed our thrust reversers below 80 knots indicated airspeed.  The 'braking action' was there, somewhat more than barely, you could say.  The anti-skid was now cycling constantly, but we were slowing down, slowly, on this 11,500 foot runway in Pittsburgh.  The control tower told us other pilots had reported the braking action as fair, but I though it was closer to poor, and my FO told them so.  Braking action is subjective, and in my opinion this same braking action in DC on the 6,870 foot runway there would definitely been called 'poor'.  I used about 6,000 feet of runway in landing and slowing down.  After waiting for and watching an efficient bulldozer driven snow scooper plow our ramp area, we parked and boarded up quickly for Philadelphia.

Out EDCT (pronounced 'edict') time (Expect Departure Clearance Time) for PHL was 12:15 PM, but on our taxi out we learned they had extended it to 1:15 PM.  Our Dispatcher hadn't sent us an ACARS message to 'hold our push' for some reason.  We taxied to a spot on a taxiway between the snow drifts, and I elected to shut down the engines to conserve fuel.  We actually didn't have much left before we would burn down to our takeoff fuel, and then we would have to either reduce our takeoff fuel by decreasing our holding fuel or go back to the gate to get more gas.  We had an hour to wait as it turned out; they decreased our takeoff delay a little.  I briefed the pax, and after a short wait we started up and got deiced quickly by PIT's excellent deice crew.  Their setup looks like this, using enclosed control cabs on the end of booms connected to ground structures, instead of trucks.

After lining our chariot up on the centerline of this runway (yep, it really is one, see the runway edge lights?), I gave the reins to my FO, who did a great job of keeping us straight on the takeoff roll.  We knew this due to the increasing frequency 'thump thump thump thump' sound the nosewheel tires made in rolling over the runway centerline lights.  Ah, the neat, challenging, and sometimes a little perplexing things you get to see as an airline pilot.  When some visual clues are lost it forces you to use what clues you have left.

In the clear again cruising over to Philadelphia, valleys of smooth and fluffy clouds below us hid the reality of a serious winter storm giving it's best blows on the ground.  Much of the time when the weather gets rotten in winter, with high, gusty winds and snow, the wind blows straight down the runway, and that's what it was doing on the ground in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  When a pilot has to deal with a low visibility approach with snow, reduced braking action on the runway, and then a healthy crosswind on top of it, that tends to up the ante and the heartrate.  The weather report for Philadelphia was considerably better than the delays imposed on us indicated earlier.  The snow was gone, the runways were dry, and they even offered us a short runway, after clearing us for a visual approach to the long 27 Right.  'No thanks'.   

Gold star time!  By the time we parked at the gate in Philly, we were about an hour behind schedule.  Cause I'm a team player (and because I packed my lunch), I offered to our Flight Attendant that I would say goodbye to the passengers and clean the cabin for her.  She'd already asked for a food run in Philly, and she took me up on this time saving offer too.  I'd never actually done this before, and I'll try to make it a habit when I can.  (Passengers, at the regionals don't get our cabins cleaned by cleaners like at the majors; our flight attendants (and pilots sometimes) do it ourselves.) 

PHL-YYZ, our third out of seven flights was next.  Toronto's ATIS was interesting.  Toronto was only landing on one of it's five runways, and wasn't using the runways which faced into the wind at all. For my FO, the pilot flying, it was going to be a 10-15 knot crosswind landing on a snow covered runway with fair or worse braking action, in falling light snow. What more can you ask for?  How about not having to divert to our alternate airport.  After just passing Buffalo, NY, we heard Toronto Center (ATC) give a holding clearance to two aircraft in front of us.  Holding at a fix name 'Linng' southeast of Toronto, soon became our fate as well.  We had a lot on our plate to think about, in quick order.

Here's the rundown: After conferring with out dispatcher with messages sent and recieved using our ACARS unit in the flight deck, our bingo fuel was 3,200 lbs.  Entering the hold we had 4,200 lbs, and each engine was burning about 1,000 lbs per hour of jet fuel.  Pilot mental math converts that to 30 minutes holding time.  If we weren't released from the holding pattern to continue to YYZ before we our fuel remaining reached 3,200 lbs, we were diverting to Buffalo.  And the weather at Buffalo, called up on ACARS, sucked, frankly.  Any pilot would agree that 1/2 mile visibility in moderate snowfall, freezing fog, and a healthy crosswind is not the best weather to have at your alternate airport that you could very possibly divert to. 

Toronto ATC never offered a clear reason why we were holding, I think the one runway they were landing planes on was full of traffic.  My FO offered that we should consider other options than Buffalo, and we did call up weather from other suitable airports.  None were as close as Buffalo, and if we were to divert, I preferred to land in the US, at an airport which was served by the airline we fly for, to make handling our pasengers of various nationalities easier.  Elmira and Syracuse were bad, and too far away by this time, because of our fuel.  Hamilton, in Canada, was ok, and Erie, PA, was not too great, but doable, fuel wise.  Fortunately, with the next hour's weather report, at 4 PM, Buffalo reported much improved weather, two miles visibility in light snow with better winds.

By this time we had been holding for about fifteen minutes, had a solid plan to divert to Buffalo if we bingoed on our fuel, and were hoping Toronto would open the additional runway soon.  Two other airliners holding in front of us were having fuel issues too.  One gave up and proceeded to their alternate.  Our fuel situation by now: together with the two engines we were using 2,000 lbs an hour, or 200 lbs each tenth of an hour, or 200 lbs every six minutes.  We now had 3,600 lbs, or twelve minutes left.  I asked Toronto how long till the runway is open, notifying them also that we have ten minutes of fuel left before diverting.  'Oh about fifteen minutes they say' in a polite canadian accent came the reply. 

I had briefed the passengers three times, the first being routine, the second being a little concerned and sharing the possibilityof diverting, and the third with the likelyhood of diverting.  I don't like diverting, but I'll do it if I have to.  Tick, tock, tick, tock.  "___  ____ you are now cleared out of the hold, fly heading 180 after Linng"", he told us.  They were clearing us out of the hold with a turn to the south, before having us continue on the arrival northbound.  Good news.  We had about 3,500 lbs, about nine minutes more of holding fuel left.  It looked like the other airliner bugging our had worked in our favor. 

On approach the changing weather had gotten a bit better, the cloud ceiling was higher, about 3,500 feet above the ground, and the crosswind was about half of what it had been before, about seven knots now. 

The control tower reported that the braking action reported by pilots was fair on the runway, and poor on the runway turnoff.  But like I experienced in Pittsburgh, my FO rated it as poor, and told the tower so.  We took the slippery turnoff about two-thirds down the 11,200 foot runway, and taxied in slowly on one inch of fresh snow.  Then we saw and appreciated this:

This behemoth, seen through the falling snow, is the new largest airliner in the world, the Airbus A380.  Those are two passenger decks you see, the entire length of the fuselage.  It flys all the way from Dubai, UAE to Toronto, a world away in culture, geography, religion, government, and weather.

"Hast thou seen the white whale?" Captain Ahab asks.  Well, I have now.  As an aside, I just finished reading, for the first time, Moby-Dick.  It was hard,  took me six months.  It's about much more than an egomaniacal Captain seeking vengeance on a whale.  I could wax on about it, but I can't do it justice.  Maybe just a little.  I highly recommend it. 

I will say a couple things.  I identify with Starbuck, the first mate of Captain Ahab, a man of true Christian faith, and one with his head on straight; he tries valiantly to talk Ahab out of attacking Moby-Dick.  A little background on the white whale: Ishmael, the narrator of Moby-Dick, teaches us that all sperm whales are dangerous, but Moby-Dick is a giant who has a fearsome, evil reputation for killing whalers.  Ahab is demented, hell bent on killing Moby-Dick, because of his vengeful pride (Moby-Dick took off half of one of his legs previously), but moreso because he's wrapped up in the 'white whale' his personal bias against the existence of evil and 'fate', (i.e. the unfairness and unapolagetic circumstances of life) in the world.  In demented and megalomanical character, he believes he will rid the world of the problem of evil if he kills the white whale.  It ordinarily sounds strange and implausible for a human to leap to this level of egoism, but in the backdrop of such a grand and mystifying vocation as hunting on the world's oceans (with sailboats and hand thrown harpoons and lances) these huge, majestic, and spiritually associated (by humans) whales, the subject matter and symbolism is easily pulled off by author Herman Mellville, over 150 years ago.  It is an epic and timeless book.

In this picture you can see how big the 'white whale' is compared to the 737 next to it.  We taxiied in and with typical canadian efficiency we boarded up a new batch of passengers for Philadelphia.  I had a message on my phone from crew scheduling, but because I don't get minutes in Canada and it's pretty expensive if I do make a call, I didn't check it.  It was good news (for us), however; we found out after landing in Philly that our Allentown, PA round trip and our Binghampton, NY overnight had been canceled.  We were overnighting in Philly after flying four of seven legs. 

I haven't written too much on spiritual stuff lately, but God is still calling me, and I'm still answering.  Even when I don't answer, he still calls.  What a commitment God has made to all humans through the work of his son, Jesus Christ!  The problem Ahab had with Moby-Dick and evil has been solved by Jesus.  We can fret and philosophize over it, but we're better off examining the life and nature of God's son, who died on the cross for all of our sins, and, well, evil.  The answers to the questions of life and the true life, personal relationship with God, are  found in Jesus. 

What is your white whale?  What is your frustration in life, that has got you in a bind, a bias, against God?  What has been unfair to you in life that has influenced you to think God doesn't care?  God does care.  BTW I'm just assuming these things, my dear reader, I know that not everyone has a grudge against God.  I have had a grudge againtst God before, myself, a few times.  I likely will again in the future, but that won't invalidate my faith.  Recently I flew with a good guy with a poor attitude.  He appeared to have a Christian, but cynical, faith.  His cynicism extended to his personal life and our airline.  To you, my friend, and others, I submit one of my favorite and simple verses: the word of Jesus from Matthew 11:28-30: "Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." 

Until next time, thanks for reading my blog.

PBS Frontline's "Flying Cheap"

I recently watched PBS Frontline's premiere of the episode "Flying Cheap", which questions the safety of the regional airline industry. You can watch it online here. The program highlighted the growth of regional airlines in general, and Colgan Airlines specifically. Frontline focused on the crash of one of Colgan’s Dash-8 Q400 Turboprops a year ago in Buffalo, New York. Colgan was operating the flight as Continental Connection 3407, and fifty people perished, including one on the ground.

The NTSB is establishing that pilot error is the cause of the accident. Both pilots let the plane get too slow while configuring for an instrument approach, and then the Captain, the pilot flying, responded improperly to wing stall warning indications. The First Officer made the situation worse by retracting wing flaps at the wrong time, and without being commanded to do so by the Captain. The plane's wings fully stalled, then the big turboprop started to enter a spin. There wasn't enough altitude above the ground to recover from that and the resulting dive.

This sort of basic airmanship pilot error is unconscionable; it is hard to believe that it occurred. But when the Captain’s and First Officer’s record and relatively low experience levels are taken into account, and added to the fact that they both were very likely affected by short term fatigue, it is conceivable that together they could make this series of errors which added up to this horrific tragedy. Another contributing circumstance to the crash that the NTSB might emphasize is that Colgan had an insufficient training and operating program for the Q400, and consequently both pilots’ limited experience in the airplane exposed them to a higher risk of an accident than otherwise.

The Captain had failed checkrides five times, but had notified Colgan about only one of them. When he was hired he had failed three checkrides, and unfortunately he failed two more at Colgan.  Colgan has stated they would’ve never hired him if they had known he lied about two of them of them. Failing a checkride is common, however. I’ve failed three myself, unfortunately, and consider myself to be a pretty capable and skilled aviator. I know in detail why each one didn't work out, but it comes down to the fact that each time I rushed my training and lacked preparation in exactly where I busted the ride at.  My last one was nine years ago on my Captain upgrade checkride at Great Lakes, a commuter turboprop airline with a reputation for failing many Captain upgrade applicants. I retrained and passed the checkride a few days later.

A failure doesn’t mean you’re an unsafe or bad pilot. Does failing the bar exam mean you’re a bad lawyer? Does failing important medical exams while an intern mean you’re an unsafe doctor? No and no. However, if a pilot has basic airmanship deficiencies, it should show up in the training process as a new hire. I’ve heard of new hires failing in training at my current airline and seen it happen at Great Lakes. Should it have happened in this case at Colgan? I don’t know, it would be unfair for me to say without having specific knowledge, but it’s clear that basic but critical flying mistakes were made.

Furthermore, some pilots just need more experience, then they will be able to successfully complete airline pilot training.  The right stuff is real stuff, but it also depends on experience; experience is important.

Our airline has a probationary period of one year for new hires; it’s a period where a pilot can be terminated without job protection from the union. Some have not made off probation at my airline, for airmanship reasons, but the most common reason is having a bad attitude.

I don’t know how well Colgan taught the following operating procedure, but in my opinion the First Officer should’ve had it down pat. When operating in icing conditions, with the icing speed reference switch selected ‘on’ then the pilot not flying must set higher that normal approach and landing speeds (about 20 knots higher) to compensate for the artificially higher stall warning speed produced because this aforementioned switch selected ‘on’. On the accident flight the Q400 was starting an approach in the clouds, in icing conditions. For an unknown reason the higher speeds had not been set; the normal, slower, non-icing condition speeds had been set instead. This left the Q400 dangerously slow when configuring for approach. Neither pilot voiced concern nor presumably noticed that the plane’s airspeed was too slow. The stick shaker (a device which vibrates the control column and indicates an approaching wing stall) activated and the Captain responded by raising the nose of the plane, not lowering it as he should have.

Then the First Officer made another mistake, in retracting the wing flaps of the plane in the midst of the captain fighting the wing stall with the plane’s bank and pitch angles gyrating wildly. Retracting flaps is part of the recovery from wing stalls practiced in the simulator, but only on command and after control is recovered with an increase in airspeed and performance is observed by the pilot. In real life, retracting flaps after recovering from an approach and landing stall would occur long after the airplane is back under control.

Fatigue reared its ugly head in this one, in a way unlike other accidents recently. Each pilot was under the effects of short term fatigue, from sleeping in the crewroom at the airport after commuting in the night before (the captain) and from commuting through the night on a major cargo airline (the first officer), then napping the morning before their showtime. This accident brings it home to me more than ever before: commuting through the night and/or sleeping in the crewroom will leave you very tired and you will sacrifice alertness and airmanship ability if you do it.  If you’re wondering, I don’t sleep in the crew room; I have a bunk bed with my name on it in an apartment within walking distance of the airport.

Overall, this is a good and balanced program, and a needed notification to the public about the present problems at regional airlines. However, it did at times go too far toward the ‘Nancy Grace Tonight’ style of TV journalism sensationalism. One scene showcased the cynical response of a crash victim’s father, who discounted a regional airline executive’s personal expression of sympathy and promise to him that they corrected the 'safety gaps'.  The executive was one for Pinnacle Airlines Corporation, another regional airline company which bought Colgan in June 2007. 
Host Miles O'Brien, who is a private pilot himself, did good in showing the economic hardships new regional pilots face, making as little as $16,000 the first year employed, while possibly being based in a city which has a high cost of living (Newark, NJ in this case). Regional pilots fly smaller planes, and airline pilot's salaries are based on the number of seats the plane has. Thusly, the average Co-Pilot's annual salary at a regional airline is $32,000, and for a Captain it’s approximately $70,000, according to the Regional Airline Association's President Roger Cohen.

The program questioned the safety that a regional airline has when it pays that little of a starting wage, and when grows rapidly. The idea it expressed is that safety suffers when rapidly growing, low paying regional airlines hire unsuitable and inexperienced pilots as compared to the past. It also showed that when paid at these salary levels, some pilots will choose to commute to their base and forego suitable rest facilities in order to save money.

Colgan did double in size, twice, in 2005 and 2008. One Colgan Pilot testified that he upgraded to Captain in nine months, to O’Brien’s surprise. To anyone who has spent time in the trenches at a regional, this is nothing new, but traditionally the quick upgrades to Captain have happened on a nineteen seat turboprop, not a brand new advanced 74 seat turboprop or 50 seat jet. With the rapid growth of regional airlines in the 2000’s, this was the new norm. One really nice fella from my first crashpad in DC upgraded to captain of a 66 seat jet before he had two years in at his airline. When the major airlines and the better regional airlines are hiring, the worst regional airlines operate like a revolving door. Flights are typically canceled not because a pilot is sick or the airplane is broken, but because the staffing is simply not adequate.

With interviews and commentary, Frontline opined that the FAA didn’t do much to spur Colgan to correct safety problems that pilots reported flying there. Frontline seemed to say that the FAA has been too busy promoting the airlines and defending them to properly regulate them when their safety is out of bounds. However, in their defense (am I really defending the FAA here?) the FAA has shut down unsafe cargo, commuter/regional, and low-cost (ValuJet) airlines in the past.

But more experience and qualifications doesn't necessarily equal safer, meaning that pilots with very high levels of experience and qualifications can make simple but critical mistakes as well. In the nineties two different major airlines attempted takeoff without the flaps set properly, both ending in disaster. A Spanish airline did the same recently. Pilots are human and prone to mistakes, whether they have 6,000 hours or 600.

Experience does count for something though, and it should. The last six fatal airline accidents in the US were regional airline accidents, according to the program.

Frontline also took major issue with the facts that major airlines don’t have direct oversight or safety management ability over the regional airlines that carry their name and logo, and that each regional airline is liable for accidents, not their parent airline. These are facts which shock passengers and politicians, and Frontline posited that this modus operandi should be corrected because it is seemingly false advertising when an airline, because of the ‘seamless’ marketing and ticketing, ‘advertises their level of safety on their regional airline when it isn’t actually as safe’.

I don’t wish to denigrate airline pilots, this airline profiled by Frontline, the FAA, or the airline industry in general. But because of the facts behind recent accidents and incidents, I feel that I should share my views. The FAA is focusing sharply on improving the level of professionalism and flight discipline in the flight decks of all airlines, major and regional alike. Randy Babbitt, the new FAA Administrator, speaks honestly and unapologetically on this issue, and he should.

There are new, good changes in regulations coming down the pike from the FAA. ALPA, the Air Line Pilots Association, is on board with these changes too.  To see ALPA's position on 'producing a professional airline pilot', click here.  In the future the minimum level of pilot experience to be an airline pilot will increase from approximately 250 hours to 1,500 hours minimum. There is a big difference in a pilot between these experience levels. For pilots who’ve been hired under this experience level and/or with limited time in jets, there will be more frequent ‘line checks’, a flight observed and evaluated by an instructor captain. There are other regulations and programs which will be put in place as well.

I still believe that airline travel in the US, even on a regional airline, is safe, in spite of recent events and current issues. I will still travel on regional airlines with my family. I hope that safety, professionalism, and standards of livings of pilots improve in the future. However, with each accident, no matter how decreased the frequency becomes, we’ll be reminded of the great responsibility pilots have, and of the fragility of life we all have in crossing the sky.