January 2015-
My notes include observations on piloting in general, with lots about airline flying and the types of people involved in airline flying 50-plus years ago.
Like an archeological dig, I’ve recently come across some very old boxes of mine that were hidden away in a deep—but thankfully, climate controlled—corner of a storage area in our home.
These notes hadn’t been looked at for so long that at first I didn’t know where they’d come from or why I had them. They were written with either a manual typewriter (remember those?) or handwritten in my own nearly illegible scrawl.
They are, literally, some fragmented creations from decades ago when I was flying the original airliners I had the opportunity to lay my hands on—notes I made for a possible future use which I never got around to.
I’ve taken these piles of observations from my earliest years and put them into a semblance of order to provide a sense of what I was seeing and hearing and thinking in those days.
The notes include observations on piloting in general, with lots about airline flying and the types of people involved in airline flying 50-plus years ago. Only the names, locations, spelling and punctuation have been changed in order to protect the innocent and the guilty alike, although many of the real folks behind these observations have already passed on to that great airport in the sky.
“More coffee?” the flight attendant asked. She stood at the rear of the cockpit. The captain had heard her when she first pushed the key in the lock and had already leaned back in his seat, anticipating her arrival.
Except for the dull humming of the radios in the background, the flight deck was completely, hauntingly quiet. Rain in small, wandering lines moved downward on the windshield and cockpit’s side windows.
“No,” the captain said. “Still got some.”
“That coffee is cold. I’ll get you a warm cup. It’ll taste better.”
The captain nodded slowly. “O.K.”
He handed her the half-empty cup from the holder beside him; it was just above the ground steering tiller on the captain’s side of the cockpit. She took it and headed for airplane’s galley, closing the cockpit door silently behind her.
Trip 137. The crew names were on the teletype printout that hung on the scheduling board in the operations office, and this was the second month that the new-hire copilot’s name had appeared.
The flight was departing LaGuardia as an early March rain lay a calming hand across the airport and, for that matter, across much of the eastern United States. It was a Sunday morning and activities were particularly low-keyed, and expectant passengers were few.
The departure time was 8:30. The copilot had walked into the operations office at 6:40, and he knew it would be 30 or more minutes before either of the two other members of his flight crew would arrive. He poured himself a coffee from the ever-present pot on the counter’s hot plate, then studied the sheets of teletype weather messages.
He peeked into the mailbox that carried his name. Empty. No news, he imagined, was good news. He glanced again at the bulletins on the wall: most were directives from the chief pilot. All old. The material was yellowed from having hung on the board for so long.
They departed New York on schedule, headed to Syracuse. Then Buffalo, Erie, Detroit. Then eastbound toward Boston with two en route stops. A total of 7 hours and 50 minutes of flight time. Arrival at Boston was scheduled for 9:05 p.m. A long day—beginning before sunrise and finishing well after dark.
The cockpit of the old Convair was heavy with odors. The seats, the leather armrests, the racks of instruments and radios melded together to produce a faint musty smell. The airplane had spent years sitting out in the rain.
Since there was no air conditioning airflow while the engines were shut down at the en route stops, those long periods of inactivity had no way to sweep away the lingering odors of the passengers, the crews, the traces of hydraulic fluid, the residual drops of fuel, the various smudges of lubricants. It had all, slowly, become part of the insides of the machine and had mingled into an unmistakable aroma that could only be called “old airliner.”
The flight attendant came back to the cockpit carrying two cups of coffee. Her hair was combed, and she wore a refreshed smile.
She handed one cup to the captain, then one to the copilot. “Where’d you come from?” the flight attendant asked. “Military?”
“No. General Aviation. Flew a light twin for a small company.”
“What kind of plane? A little one?”
“Yes. Little one.” In the past two months the copilot had discovered how little some flight attendants knew about aviation. Until getting this airline job, he had never met a flight attendant.
Now he was around them constantly. He repeatedly cautioned himself against appearing foolish. There were stories around—unconfirmed, but believable—of how new copilots would get into quick and deep trouble if they appeared to care too much about the women in the cabin. They were attractive, but certainly not worth losing the job over.
“Piper Aztec. Know what it is?”
She paused, then said, “No. How many people can it fit?
“Six with the pilot.”
“Small.”
“Bigger than some. Smaller than others.” The copilot turned toward the windshield and drank a sip of his lukewarm coffee.
He was really tired now. Seven landings today, and he had made four of them. He had made the landing at Syracuse soon after sunset, so the captain would be at the controls for the final leg to Boston.
They would depart in 15 minutes. The copilot would be working the radios and reading the checklists. He intended to look at the departure charts very soon.
The routing was directly toward Albany, then a victor airway—what was that number? He would need to look it up again. He had looked it up that morning, to get the feel for the route. But now, the memory of that particular routing had faded.
All the routes were new, and so were the procedures and paperwork. It all had to be thought about, concentrated on and dealt with.
All three of them were tired. Dead tired. Too many instrument approaches and landings for the pilots, too many empty cups and sullen passengers for the flight attendant. The copilot twisted in his seat and faced the dark airliner’s windshield.
The cold rain had begun again, but at least it wasn’t snowing. Outside air temperature was hovering at 43 degrees. He knew there would be some ice buildup on the climbout, until they topped the lower cloud levels and reached their cruise altitude of 9,000 feet. At cruise they should be up in the moonlight and above the rain, ice and thick clouds.
The glow of the ramp lights played visual tricks through the airliner’s wet window. Each drop of rain would slowly grow as it inched along the airplane, then it would give up its grip and slide off the glass. After that, another drop would start the process. The rain was coming down heavier, and the drops would soon become a nearly solid stream.
“Looks like they’re ready,” the captain said. He reached for the starter switches. “Clear right?”
The copilot threw a glance at the right engine. “Clear.”
The captain squeezed two of the overhead panel switches together. The Convair’s circuits engaged. The airplane gave off a low, rumbling groan. The propeller on the right side began to swing slowly.
“Six blades,” the copilot announced.
The captain used two of his free fingers to play against the last switches in the sequence. He had been flying for the airline for 18 years, most of it in DC-3s, the last five years in the Convairs. His ability to sense the correct proportion of priming fuel and breathing time to get the engines to start up and run was nearly uncanny, yet he gave the process of engine starting no apparent concentration or thought.
Although the copilot had directly asked him earlier in the day, the captain could not really explain how engine starting came to him so easily. Seemingly, the vibrations, lapses and pulses of power from the metal sleeves and valves transmitted themselves through the airframe, into his body, and back out through his fingertips. He played with the starter switches as if he were playing the keys of the piano—more of an art than a science.
“Just don’t think about it,” was the only advice the captain could give on
the process of giving life to the big
radial powerplants.
But the copilot had thought about it when it was his turn to try engine starting earlier in the day, and he’d made all the classic errors: first, too much prime. Then, when the engine galloped to life for a brief moment, the copilot had allowed the engine to plead too long for additional fuel as it began to whimper down.
Realizing his error, the copilot gorged the engine with too much priming at too many of the wrong intervals. The engine coughed, wheezed and backfired in response to his insults.
“You’re putting your brain in the way,” the captain had said. “Just let your fingers do it.” The copilot nodded, but didn’t understand. Not at all.
Both engines were running now. The captain sat silently, waiting for the ramp workers to finish their final tasks.
The copilot announced, “Cart’s unplugged,” as they had taught him in ground school. His eyes had been fixed on the voltage needle and, when it momentarily dropped, he announced that the outside electrical source had been disconnected.
The captain did not answer; his ears had already told him that the electrical relays had cycled off and then back on with an audible click.
“Wave off,” the captain mumbled. With his left hand on the ground steering wheel, he turned the airliner away from the boarding gate and through the puddles that would lead to the end of the runway.
The rain-drenched tarmac was reflecting the brightness from inside the terminal building across the ramp. Several people stood at the windows of the terminal, looking out toward the departing Convair.
For those looking out, the interior of the cockpit was easy enough to see. The two pilots seemed to sit absolutely motionless, as if they were hardly more than statues.
Then the cockpit’s white light was switched off and the two pilots became nothing but the barest hint of inconsequential silhouettes as the engines first came to life. The passenger airliner began to taxi away into the darkness and wetness of the enveloping night sky.
(Next time: Trip 137 continues.)
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.
