May 2012
Nothing jogs my memory about stories from the old days like getting a thoughtful letter from a copilot that I had once shared the cockpit with. While I’ve had a good number of really great copilots during my 36-plus-year airline flying career (and a scattering of not so good copilots too, but I’ll save those stories for another time), one of the all-time best to sit to my right was a prince of an aviator named Scott Reynolds. As another example of the journey of “time’s winged chariot,” Scott then went on to become a captain at U.S. Airways not long after this particular flight. After a number of years of running his own show, he has since retired from the airline.
In his fledgling days, Scott had come up through the ranks of several small and nonscheduled airlines, flying as copilot on a cross section of big equipment before he found himself in the International Division of U.S. Airways. The letter he recently sent to me was actually a copy of a letter to another fellow in answer to a particular question: did you ever do any real zero/zero landings?
First, the definition: a zero/zero landing would literally mean to land an airplane while the ceiling was absolutely zero and the visibility was absolutely zero, too—a condition we don’t hardly ever see. In practice, zero/zero means “hardly any” ceiling or visibility to work with.
Modern jetliners can do autolands regardless of what the cloud ceiling and the forward visibility might be, but the rules still require that the captain and crew have a slight chance of verifying that there really is a runway beneath them at least a few heartbeats before the wheels actually touch.
For that reason, most full autolands require a few hundred feet of forward visibility so that the glow from the runway and centerline lights can be briefly seen by the flight crew before the rubber meets the concrete. In the vernacular it’s called “decision height,” and the pilot has a microsecond or two to decide to either keep things going just as they are, or to make an autopilot missed approach.
But that’s the legal and techo-manual stuff. Here’s what happens when a crew unexpectedly finds themselves between a rock and a hard place—the hard place being a destination that’s suddenly shrouded in far more clouds, rain and fog than they normally deal with. For this part of the story, I’ll quote Scott’s letter directly:
“My first zero/zero landing was on a DC-8-61 into Frankfurt, Germany, many years ago. I was the first officer on a non-sked airline, and I was flying this particular trip with a captain I had worked with at another airline that had since gone bankrupt. The entire flight over the Atlantic was with me getting updates on the Frankfurt weather—which was lousy and getting worse by the hour. Even worse than that, our legal alternate airports were going down faster than our destination’s weather!
“As we began the descent into Frankfurt, approach control suddenly announced that the weather had just gone below normal landing minimums. Only Category III certified aircraft (which was a brand-new procedure, and something that we didn’t particularly know anything about) were able to continue the approach; otherwise, the expected holding time would be indefinite.
“When the controller got around to asking us if we were CAT III certified, I glanced over at the captain. He looked at me for a moment, then slowly nodded affirmatively. I transmitted ‘Yes.’
“So we began the ILS approach. With the captain and me working as a team, that long runway appeared right on schedule, just a few moments before the tires touched the blacktop.”
That was a flight that occurred for Scott long before I knew him. Now, here is his story about the two of us in a Boeing 767, years later. Since I was sitting beside him for this experience, I’ll take the liberty to add a few parenthetical notes as Scott’s story progresses:
“My best story about the need to make a demanding and precise instrument approach OR ELSE occurred with Capt. Thomas Block. We were flying the Boeing 767, which he referred to as the ‘Queen Mary.’ We were on a flight from Rome, Italy to Philadelphia, with me doing the flying and making the decisions—under the captain’s direct supervision, of course.
(Note: Scott didn’t need much ongoing supervision.)
“En route I managed to save 1,500 pounds of fuel compared to the predicted flight plan, and when Capt. Block returned from his cabin rest break he was pleased to see that we now had a little additional alternate airport fuel ‘in our pocket’—which was a great thing to know. Even though the weather was scratchy at Philadelphia, I wasn’t the least bit concerned at that point. I was the hot rod copilot who had things totally under control, yet the captain just nodded his head a few times while he kept checking the weather at all the alternates we could get into.”
“When we got into Moncton (Canada) control area, they immediately surprised me with off-course radar vectors for what they said was sequencing into the northeast corridor. In the blink of an eye my +1,500 pounds went to –2,400 pounds and I had managed to do the unthinkable: I had eaten into the captain’s fuel reserve.”
(Note: I could hear from the radio chatter that traffic was backing up considerably and the weather, while still legal and workable, was quickly getting worse than forecast. Those were bad trends that would require a close eye.)
“Soon after we began our descent into Philadelphia, we were given our first hold—with an expect-further-clearance time nearly four hours away! Impossible!
“The captain announced first to me and then to ATC that we’d have to immediately divert. They cleared us direct to Baltimore, which had slightly better weather. The captain told me to turn the ship direct toward Baltimore, but to keep our airspeed low while he tried to work things out.”
(Note: I contacted our dispatch department via data link and told them we were currently diverting to Baltimore unless they could do something for us right now. Within a couple of minutes, dispatch had swapped our delay with a local domestic flight that was next up for the approach, so that our jammed-full flight from Rome wouldn’t need to go elsewhere.)
“We were already thin on fuel when Philadelphia approach control turned us north again and said we were now next for the approach. The weather was barely at ILS minimums for that runway.
“I kept the airplane clean for as long as I could, and as I set up for the approach we only had 500 pounds more than what we needed to get to Baltimore, plus our minimum reserve. When I called for the gear, the captain looked at me and said, ‘There will be NO go-arounds; is that understood? Keep those needles dead-centered and take us right down to the runway.’
(Note: I told the controller that we were thin on fuel and not to space us too tightly on the airplane in front of us. He said that he understood. Unless that airplane ahead crashed on the runway, I had no intention of going around and heading for Baltimore to face God knows what situation and with hardly any extra fuel in the tanks. The weather be damned, we would land from this approach.)
“I split those ILS crosshairs like it was a CAT III procedure! We broke out at minimums—not that the weather mattered at that point—and I made a smooth touchdown. Braking carefully, I brought the aircraft to taxi speed and made the high-speed turnoff as if we were a butterfly with burnt toes!
“The captain looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Good job, kid. You put this airplane where it needed to be—right between those rows of white lights.’ You could say that I learned about flying from that.”
(Note: Scott, many thanks for reminding me of this story. Now that you’ve jogged my memory, I think it’s only proper that my next column will tell more tales about zero/zero landings that I’ve either seen for myself or heard about.)
Editor-at-large Thomas Block has flown nearly 30,000 hours since his first hour of dual in 1959. In addition to his 36-year career as a U.S. Airways pilot, he has been an aviation magazine writer since 1969, and a best-selling novelist. Over the past 30 years he has owned more than a dozen personal airplanes of varying types. Send questions or comments to editor@www.piperflyer.com.
