How Fast are We Really Going?

Airspeed is Life!

One of the most common questions we get asked by passengers is how fast we're going. Usually it is asked about takeoff or landing as it is easy to find out how fast we're going at cruise. For that, simply look at the inflight entertainment system which gives a readout from the onboard GPS system. When I give an answer to the takeoff or landing speed, I'll say it depends. On what you may ask? It depends on many factors, to include the weight of the aircraft, the wind, the airport elevation, the runway conditions (wet or dry) and even the terrain surrounding the airport.

Even after explaining all that, I have to give an approximate answer because our airspeed up front is given to us in knots and not the more familiar miles or kilometers per hour. A "knot" is a nautical measure of speed which means nautical miles per hour. A nautical mile is 6076 feet as opposed to a statute or "normal" mile which is 5280 feet. In ancient days, sailors would feed a rope over the side of their ship for a specified amount of time and then measure the number of knots (which had been tied into the rope at regular intervals) that had been pulled overboard. The number of knots pulled over was proportional to the speed of the ship.

Later on, a nautical mile was defined as one minute of arc along a meridian (north-south line) on a nautical chart. This made chart reading easier and was picked up by aviation as a standard navigation protocol since early overwater aviators would have to use the same charts as used for surface navigation.

That all sounds very interesting, but are we really using the GPS readout to determine our takeoff and landing speeds? No. We are not. Airplanes stay in the air by virtue of the wind moving over the wings. Not enough wind, the wing stalls and it drops like a rock. The question is how do we know how much wind is moving over the wing?

Wind Over the Wings

To determine how much wind is flowing over the wings we use an airspeed indicator which is simply a sensor connected by plastic tubing to those odd shaped pointy things you see attached to the fuselage near the front of any airliner. Those are called pitot tubes. The tip of a pitot tube has a small opening which is connected by tubing to a pressure sensor. A measure of the air pressure from the pitot tube when compared to the ambient pressure is proportional to the speed of the aircraft through the air.

Pitot tubes, in combination with static ports (which measure ambient pressure) and their related indicators, are collectively known as the pitot-static system, and constitute one of the most vital systems on any airplane. This is why you usually see so many pitot tubes on the front of airliners. They provide redundancy.

At this point you may be raising an objection: But isn't air a compressible fluid, and wouldn't this compressibility skew the results as, say, temperature changed or other conditions changed? Why yes, yes they would Poindexter. Move to the front row and give yourself a star.

ICE-T (Not a drink from Long Island)

Pilots of a certain age will remember the torture inflicted by their instructors by being required to perform the dreaded "ICE-T" problem using the E6B government issue "whizz wheel" circular slide rule. This usually occurred as they were struggling to realize their dream of being a jet pilot while attempting to not throw up in the flying sterno can known as the T-37 in the west Texas summer heat. ICE-T was not an exotic drink from Long Island, but rather an acronym which stood for Indicated Calibrated Equivalent True airspeed. These terms referred to an airspeed conversion from the indicated speed shown on your panel to your actual velocity through the air known as "true" airspeed.

Performing this calculation was a drawn out process using inputs such as your pressure altitude and  temperature deviation (from a standard day). It was necessary because your "true" airspeed was used in navigation calculations such as time-distance-fuel determinations.

Today, of course, those calculations are all automated by an onboard computer known as the air data inertial reference unit or ADIRU.  This system takes all the pitot static input data and combines it with attitude and position data from the inertial reference units (IRUs) to provide one stop shopping data supply to the pilots' displays, the autopilot, and even the engines which use the data to optimize things like fuel burn.

Do We Have Enough Gas?

Once you know your "true" airspeed or actual velocity through the air, you need to apply your known wind correction to determine your actual velocity across the ground. This is important, because if the headwind is, say, 30 knots stronger than what you planned for, you might not have enough fuel to reach your destination. This can ruin your day on a long overwater leg.

In years gone by, flight plans would be "winded" with the latest forecast from aviation meteorologists. The plan was only as good as the forecast, and fuel needed to be closely monitored to determine if actual headwinds were greater than forecast. INS (inertial navigation) and GPS systems have greatly increased the accuracy of fuel planning as they give real time wind readouts. You instantly know if your plan was accurate.

Wind correction data input, as you might imagine, is also automated on modern transport aircraft and fed into the aircraft's flight management system (FMS) through an automatic data upload.  This system will give you a helpful INSUFFICIENT FUEL warning if it thinks you're not going to make it. Usually this warning means that you fat-fingered your flight plan input and told the airplane that you're going back to your origination as your destination or some similar easily rectified mistake.

In Conclusion

Airspeed is important for reasons beyond satisfying the curiosity of aviation fans. In the immediate short term, it keeps airplanes aloft by informing pilots when they are getting slow, which is an unforgivable sin in aviation. In the long term, knowing ground speed, which is derived from airspeed plus wind inputs, lets pilots know that they will arrive at their destination with enough fuel.

Boeing 737 MAX 8 Pilot Report

The Boeing 737 first flew in 1967 and since then has become the world's best selling airliner with Boeing just recently delivering the 10,000th 737 to Southwest Airlines. Major updates and enhancements over the decades mean that the newest generation of 737s, the MAX series, while bearing a family resemblance to the earliest models, is packed with the latest technology in avionics and propulsion.

I recently had the opportunity to fly a 737 MAX 8 for the first time. We had been scheduled to fly a 737-800 for the sequence, so when a MAX 8 showed up I was quite pleasantly surprised. My next concern was whether I'd remember anything about the new features of the airplane. Our differences training had been accomplished months earlier through an online course. As it turned out, there was little to be concerned about as the cockpit displays, while larger, incorporate all of the familiar elements from the NexGen series with a few welcome additions. (The NexGen 737s consist of the 600-900 series first introduced in the late 90s) I felt at home in the MAX cockpit right away.

Pilot's primary NAV display with terrain mode selected

The MAX 8 in our configuration has a 175 seat single class capacity with a standard crew complement of four flight attendants and two pilots. The layout and galleys are very similar to our -800s. There are two lavs aft and one forward. The MAX comes equipped with Boeing's new Sky Interior which features programmable LED lighting and mood music for boarding and deplaning. The seats themselves have adjustable headrests and a generous 32" seat pitch and 17.6" width, the widest of any 737 variant.

Boeing Sky Interior with programmable LED lighting

Moving back up front, the most dramatic feature of the MAX is the cockpit displays. The six 7 inch square display units in the NexGen (NG) aircraft have been replaced by four 15 inch wide display units. Separate mechanical features of the NG such as the flap indicators and clock are now displayed on these larger units. The gear handle and standby flight instruments have been relocated between the center displays and are now equidistant from both pilots.

Preflight, Engine Start, and Taxi Out

We were scheduled to operate as WN 5599 from DCA (Washington Reagan) to MCO (Orlando). The enroute burn was planned at 1+59 and 9000 lbs at an altitude of FL400 or 40,000 ft. The aircraft was carrying two deferred maintenance items, the onboard network system, and the first officer's ILS system resulting in a downgrade to CAT I ILS status. As the weather was VMC at both our departure and destination, this was not a concern.

Our takeoff weight was planned at 144,400 lbs, well below our max allowable of 159,800 lbs departing from runway 1 in DCA. Our maximum takeoff weight was determined by the maximum allowable structural landing weight of 150,800 lbs plus our planned burn of 9000 lbs. The planned fuel was 14,900 lbs which included 2000 lbs of contingency fuel in addition to the standard 45 minutes of  FAR reserve or 3200 lbs. I was immediately impressed in how little fuel it was going to take us to get to Florida.

The LEAP-1B engines deployed on the MAX are 15% more fuel efficient than the CFM56 series engines on the NG aircraft. These efficiencies are the result of an increase in the bypass ratio from five on the CFM56 to nine on the LEAP-1B and an internal pressure ratio increase from 11:1 to 22:1. A significant weight reduction in the rotor of the LEAP-1B adds to the fuel efficiency of the engine but also adds some restrictions on start and shutdown which I'll address later.

Fan blades of the LEAP-1B

Our preflight checks and flows were nearly identical to our NG aircraft. Our clearance from DCA was on the Boock2 RNAV departure. Departing to the north from DC always requires extra vigilance due to the proximity of the prohibited areas around the White House and the Naval Observatory where the vice president's residence is located. The authorities have an extreme lack of understanding and humor should an airliner even brush into one of these areas. The departure requires an immediate left turn after liftoff to track the Potomac. As the wind was gusting out of the northwest, I elected to engage LNAV lateral navigation on the ground to have lateral guidance immediately after takeoff.

Once we were loaded and had clearance from ground control, we started the pushback and start sequence. The restrictions on starting which I noted above now came into play. The rotor, or the spinning center shaft of the engine, had so much weight shaved off that it could have a tendency to bow when hot after shutdown. This bowing could cause the compressor blades to rub against the engine housing resulting in excess wear and possible compressor stalls on start due to air leaking around the gaps.

A view from the wheel well

To mitigate against this thermal bow effect, the computer will motor the engine before introducing fuel during the start sequence. The amount of anti-bow motoring is determined by the computer but can be up to several minutes before the fuel lever can be raised to start each engine. Once started, there is an additional three minute warm up period before takeoff thrust can be applied. This restriction is five minutes when the engine is started cold. There is also a firm three minute cool down period required before shut down as well. These restrictions will most likely not pose a problem except perhaps when you've pushed back onto a taxiway where other aircraft have to wait for you.

The quietness of the aircraft became immediately apparent as soon as the engines were started. It is truly a quiet airplane. I fly with a Bose noise cancelling headset and didn't notice until we were nearly level at 40,000 ft that I hadn't turned on the noise cancelling feature. It was that quiet. The LEAP-1B engine employs the same scalloped or saw tooth pattern on the trailing edge of the cowling that is evident on the 787. This design smooths the mixing of the core and fan airflows, significantly reducing turbulent flow and noise.

Scalloped cowling decreases engine noise (and looks cool)

The aircraft steering had a nice tight feel to it, but any new aircraft should. I won't miss the wobbly shopping-cart nosewheel steering of our old -300s, which were retired last year. We were cleared for takeoff with little delay and were on our way.

Takeoff and Climbout

The takeoff roll was unremarkable save for the quietness of the engines. We had calculated a reduced thrust takeoff power setting, but the aircraft accelerated and lifted off smartly. The LNAV course became active almost immediately and we started our left turnout on the departure. I hand flew the aircraft up to about 18,000 ft before engaging the autopilot. I thought the aircraft responded to manual controls similarly to our 800 series aircraft.

Pilot's inboard display with vertical situation and enhanced engine instrument display

The Boock2 departure tracks north and then makes a right turn for a nice view of the city...from the right seat! We quickly arrived at our cruise altitude of 40,000 ft, turned off the seat belt sign, and had some time to look at the new features on the displays. Other than being nearly twice as large as the NG displays, some new features such as a vertical situation display are included. When activated, this feature displays a side view of the aircraft's altitude and planned vertical navigation. It should come in handy for keeping situational awareness during complicated arrivals or when given a "descend via" clearance.

Descent and Approach

Our flight plan had us flying the Cwrld4 arrival from over Ormond Beach. This arrival set us up nicely for a VFR downwind arrival to Orlando's Rwy 35R. The arrival went smoothly with the autopilot easily staying on path in VNAV. Our arrival weight was very close to the planned 135,400 lbs and we had planned for a flaps 30 visual approach. We were just about abeam the field at perhaps 3000 ft when we got the clearance for a visual approach, my favorite kind of clearance.

Depending on controller preferences and traffic load, some controllers will call your every turn around the pattern. This type of hand holding can be annoying, especially if there is no other traffic in the pattern. Other controllers will just let you go to turn your own base and final. This was one of the other guys and he cut us loose. The key is to not screw it up and fly a bomber (wide) pattern or to cut in so tight that you end up going around.  I disengaged the autopilot and autothrottles, and proceeded to fly the pattern by hand to get a feel for how the MAX flew in the slow speed regime.

The engine instruments display can be selected for either side 

Flying a visual approach cross cockpit can have its own challenges as you can't readily see the runway, which is the primary reference in any visual pattern. Inside cockpit references can be used such as the FMC glidepath, wind arrow, runway DME (distance), and of course the best resource, the guy or gal sitting on that side of the airplane.

I'd been descending on downwind with flaps at position 1 for extra drag. While I'll use the speedbrakes if I need them, my preference is to avoid using them if possible. Pulling the nose up, dropping the gear and extending flaps on schedule is my preferred technique for getting configured quickly. The MAX went through her paces brilliantly and we were lined up on glidepath about three miles out when I brought the power up. While I had to take a second look or two to see the electronic flap gauge and newly positioned gear indicator lights, I quickly adjusted to their new locations.

Landing and Taxi In

The landing was uneventful and rather smooth if I do say so myself. The aircraft decelerated smoothly with the reversers and auto-brakes while the quietness of the engines again made itself apparent. We exited on the high speed and taxied to our gate. We had to start the timer after leaving the runway to ensure that we complied with the mandatory three minute cool down period before shutting down the engines. It wasn't a factor in this case as the taxi time was longer than three minutes.

The LEAP-1B engines are eight inches in diameter larger than the CFM engines on the NG, so in order to maintain the same ground clearance, the nose gear was lengthened about eight inches. This gives a slightly different picture while taxiing, but I found the landing picture to be very similar to the -800. The longer nose strut becomes apparent after lowering the nose to the runway but it was not disconcerting.

APU fairing

After shut down, we had a 45 or so minute turn at the gate before our next leg which was to Philadelphia. I took this time to walk outside and take a few photos of the jet. The most obvious difference in the MAX is the larger engines and slightly different looking winglets than those installed on our -800s. Also different is the APU fairing which resembles that of the 767 or 787 more so than earlier model 737s. Other than that, there are not a lot of obvious tells to set a MAX apart from its NG sistren.

The Mighty MAX Strikes Out

Our flight to Philly was completely full at 175 passengers plus crew. Once loaded and ready to go, we pushed back and went through the lengthened start up process. It was on taxi out to the runway that the MAX let us down. Shortly after leaving the ramp and joining the parallel taxiway to Rwy 35L, the Master Caution and the L Elev Pitot heat light came on. This meant that a fault had occurred in the heating element for the elevator pitot tube which provides airspeed inputs to the elevator feel system.

As Orlando is a maintenance base for us, I made the decision to return to the gate and have our mechanics look at the problem. As it turns out, this malfunction can be deferred through the use of the minimum equipment list (MEL). There are two of these systems installed and only one is required for flight with some restrictions. It was this restriction that sank us.

The mechanics noted that this tail number had a history of this particular malfunction, but they had the deferral paperwork done very quickly and we were ready to go...or so I thought. The next thing we heard over the gate agent's radio was that the airplane was being taken out of service. I quickly called dispatch and our dispatcher didn't even know what was happening. A phone call to the supervisor of dispatch revealed that while the flight to Philly was fine, it was the subsequent flight to Chicago that was the problem.

The restriction for this maintenance deferral was that the aircraft couldn't be operated in forecast or actual icing conditions. And it turns out that the forecast for Chicago was a broken cloud layer with temperatures below freezing. The supervisor of dispatch didn't want the airplane stuck in Philly, so we lost our beautiful MAX. Luckily for us (and 175 passengers), another airplane was available. Tail swapping a full airplane took about an hour, but we were glad to be going again, only this time in an 800 series.

The author in the corner office

In Conclusion

The 737 MAX is loaded with new technology which makes it a pleasure to fly and saves a bunch of money in fuel costs which should make airline managements happy. But even with all the new technology, the airplane is still a 737 at heart and was quite easy to fly. The LEAP-1B engines are whisper quiet and the large displays present data in an elegant and easy to understand format. Of course, as we discovered, there will always be some bugs that need to be squashed in a new system, but I am quite confident that the MAX has a long and productive future in front of her.



Captain Rob Graves is a veteran airline pilot and retired Air Force officer. He currently flies a Boeing 737 for a major American airline where he has over 25 years of experience. His Air Force career included instructing future USAF pilots in the T-37 primary jet trainer, aerial refueling in the KC-135 Stratotanker, and conducting worldwide logistics in the C-5 Galaxy cargo aircraft. He is the author of This is Your Captain Speaking, an aviation blog. It can be found at robertgraves.com. He also writes for Avgeekery.com. All photos by Robert Graves.

KLM Video Demonstrates the Hazards of Crosswind Landings

A very dramatic video of a KLM B-777 landing at Schiphol in strong crosswinds has been recently going viral on the interwebs. While the video is certainly hair-raising to most casual viewers, there are a number of things going on here that can help to explain events that can go wrong during a crosswind landing.

The aircraft in the video is a Boeing 777-300 which is the stretched version of the older 777-200. This model aircraft weighs in at 370,000 lbs empty and has a max landing weight of 554,000 lbs, so we know that this particular airplane weighed in somewhere between these two numbers, more likely towards the higher number. This means that there's a lot of weight being thrown around.

The video starts with the aircraft perhaps a mile or so from the runway established in what's known as a "crab". In this scenario, the fuselage of the aircraft is "windmilled" into the wind. What this means is that the heading of the aircraft is not the same as the ground track the aircraft is following. 

The easiest way to understand this might be to think of paddling across a moving river in a canoe. In order to reach a point directly across the river, one must "aim" the canoe at a point upstream to counter the current. Where the canoe is pointed is its "heading" and where it is actually going is its ground track. The two are not the same in a cross current (or wind).

To you math geeks (and you know who you are) this is simply the sum of the two velocity vectors of the aircraft and the wind. 

Flying an aircraft in a crab is a standard and routine method of counteracting a crosswind on final. The problem that arises is that the aircraft cannot be landed while it is in a crab. The reason for this is that the landing gear are by design aligned with the aircraft fuselage. This means that when the wheels touch down in a crab, there will be instant skidding and dragging of the wheels across the pavement.

To use another analogy, think of a stunt car doing a jump but while airborne twisting sideways. When it touches down, there will be a huge lateral force on the tires as they'd rather roll straight and not sideways. The car may even roll over. The same forces work on the airplane and put tremendous side loads on the landing gear. The landing gear for nearly all airliners are not built for such loads and could potentially collapse if landed in too much of a crab.

Wing Low

The proper technique to land an airliner in a crosswind, then, is to make sure that the aircraft heading and hence the landing gear are aligned in the same direction as the runway before touchdown. This is done with the rudder. As the aircraft will be naturally windmilled into the wind and not aligned with the runway, downwind rudder must be applied to align the two.

That means that if the crosswind is from the right, as in this video, left rudder must be applied. When this is done, however, the aircraft will then begin to be blown downwind. To counteract this tendency, aileron is then used to lower a wing into the wind which keeps the drift at bay. This technique, known as "wing low", is how most airliners must land in a crosswind.

In this video, you'll see a number of airplanes landing at Dusseldorf in a strong crosswind. Some do a better job than others of both killing the drift and aligning the aircraft with the runway at touchdown.

Ok, getting back to the KLM video, we can see that starting at about 13 seconds in, the pilot starts to apply left rudder to align the aircraft heading with the runway. It is especially pronounced at about 28 seconds that the rudder has almost full deflection to the left.

As the aircraft continues into the flare, we see lateral rolling which becomes more pronounced until just before touchdown when a large wing drop occurs. What is happening here is that as the aircraft gets down to tree and building level, the wind becomes very unpredictable. Trees and buildings can cause a significant amount of gusting which must be quickly countered. Unfortunately, there is really no way to predict where and when the gusts will occur.

Beware the PIO

While the pilot is making a heroic effort to counter each gust, there are circumstances where the situation can be made inadvertently worse by the pilot himself. This is what's known as a "pilot induced oscillation" or PIO, and it can cause real trouble if it's not recognized and corrected.

The pilot-airplane unit is together what is known as a feedback control loop or system. In such a system, an initial input is made, the results are observed or "fed back", and from those results further inputs can be made. Again for you geeks out there (and you still know who you are) the system might be depicted as such:

where the controller and measurement boxes are the pilot, the system is the aircraft and the disturbances are the wind gusts.

Such a system should be stable with the feedback serving to dampen out the effects of the disturbances (or gusts in this case). In certain circumstances, however, this is not what happens. A pilot may "over control" when making a correction causing a deviation in the opposite direction. The tendency after that is to put in an even larger correction back the other way causing an even larger deviation again. The root cause of these oscillations is the delay between the control input and the reaction of the airplane. 

If not caught and corrected, a PIO can and has resulted in aircraft damage and crashes. This video shows a PIO in an F-16 flown by a test pilot so you can see that it can happen to nearly anyone.

In geek speak, what has happened is the "gain" is too high on the feedback loop and the system becomes unstable. The solution? In most cases, just letting go of the stick will allow the airplane's natural stability to reassert itself.

Rockin' and a Rollin'

So again getting back to the video, what appears to me to be happening is that the aircraft is hit with several gusts resulting in a PIO around the longitudinal axis, or the axis running from the nose to the tail. The pilot appears to be overcorrecting to each wing dip by making successively larger aileron inputs resulting in the rockin' and rollin' on short final.

The largest danger inherent in lateral excursions or wing dips near the ground is the possibility of dragging an engine pod or wingtip. This is obviously a less than optimum outcome and could result in aircraft damage ranging from scraped metal as a minimum all the way up to a cartwheel and hull loss otherwise known as a crash.

In this case, the dampening force that eventually quelled the PIO was the runway itself. It is difficult to determine if a go-around would have been the best course of action as a video can exaggerate the actual attitude of the aircraft. Apparently KLM management, to their credit, are backing up their pilots in this event.

Landing in strong weather always entails a measure of risk above a calm and clear day. The particular challenge for pilots in such weather is not so much knowing how to fly in it as much as knowing when to abandon an approach that has gone south.

Boeing 787 Takeoff? Meh.

Hey, don't get me wrong, the 787 is one beautiful machine and I'm sure the takeoff was very very impressive, but it's really nothing too special. Pretty much any airliner flying today could make a similar display.

One reason that this takeoff video looked impressive is that it was shot from a helicopter with a telephoto lens. The lens makes everything in the distance appear to be foreshortened, which means that the vertical aspect in the shot is emphasized by the magnification of the lens.

The other reason is that the airplane is doing something that is normally never done. It's what pilots call a maximum performance takeoff. And other than places like Orange County, California, it's never seen. Even the takeoffs from Orange County will be less dramatic because those planes have people, luggage and fuel aboard and the pilots are still limited to 20° climb angle. The 787 demo had no passengers, no luggage, and very little fuel. And it was flown by Boeing test pilots.

Judging by how many shares of this video are showing up on Twitter and Facebook, people must be thinking that the 787 is one badass airplane: the airline equivalent of a '69 GTO with the 428 under the hood. That would be a misperception.

The 787, like all airliners, was designed to make money. The engines that Boeing hangs under their airplanes' wings are only big enough to be able to do two things. One is to be able to lift a full plane, carrying enough fuel to cross an ocean off the ground in less than about a mile of takeoff roll. The other is to keep the beast airborne for a few hours with only one engine working should the other one quit.

Any thrust in excess of the amount needed for the above jobs would mean excess weight, and be a waste of fuel and of course money. Remember, this thing has to make money. In fact the whole reason for the existence of this video is to stir up interest for a huge sales event, the Paris Airshow.

One of the largest aerospace trade shows in the world, the Paris Airshow is where corporate poobahs meet to show off their wares and to sign sales orders for billions of dollars on everything aviation related. Who would like to guess how many cases of Dom will be on hand?

And for anyone who has any experience with trade shows or sales and marketing, you know that the decision making depends on way more than mere green eyeshade concerns like acquisition or operating costs. There's also that certain je ne sais quoi which will add just the right amount of pizazz to close the sale. At aviation trade shows, that means airborne displays. Hence the Paris Airshow.

Of course the ne plus ultra of airshow extravaganzas was way back in 1955 when Tex Johnston rolled the prototype 707 at an airshow in front of the world's aviation executives. When called into the office by CEO Bill Allen and asked what he was doing, Johnston simply replied "selling airplanes".

I will bid adieu to this post with a pointer to an equally dramatic takeoff video of a 70s era military DC-10 at an airshow.

Would You Get on a Plane With No Pilots?

Or how about one with only one pilot? Sooner or later, you may not have the choice. In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, (subscription required) it was revealed that NASA has commissioned a study to be conducted by Rockwell Collins to explore the feasibility of single pilot airliners:

Facing potential shortages of airline pilots and dramatic advances in automation, industry and government researchers have begun the most serious look yet at the idea of enabling jetliners to be flown by a single pilot. 

All large commercial jets for passenger and cargo service world-wide now fly with at least two pilots in the cockpit. A new study by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Rockwell Collins Inc. will focus on the provocative idea that co-pilots could remain on the ground, remotely assisting solo aviators on the flight deck during the busiest parts of flights, said John Borghese, Rockwell’s vice president of its Advanced Technology Center.

Actually, it wouldn't be quite fair to call the remaining human being on a single place airliner a pilot at all, for his required skill set would almost certainly not include the "stick and rudder" skills of today's pilots. The remaining person would be a systems manager, overseeing the computers which would do the actual flying.

There are actually very good reasons why you would not want a very bored and very rusty pilot just sitting up in the cockpit waiting for something to go wrong so he could grab the controls to save the day.

For starters, humans are uniquely unqualified and unsuited to sit around to watch and monitor machines. Most humans have an attention span of perhaps 20 minutes before the mind starts to wander. This type of arrangement is quite nearly the reverse of the ideal human-machine interface.

If you'd like to try this out for yourself, simply sit in the laundry room and watch your clothes washer closely to make sure it doesn't skip a cycle. It's not likely to happen, but if it does and you miss it, you and all your passengers die. No falling asleep! (Washers are probably slightly more reliable than current aircraft automation, but the analogy holds.)

Secondly, piloting, or "stick and rudder" skills take years to acquire and need to be maintained with routine practice. Neither of these conditions will be available in the cockpits of the future. Heck, they are hardly even available today! We are currently coasting on a slowly draining reservoir of pilot skills attained in the years before automation became pervasive.

Children of the Magenta Line

Pilots entering the profession today get rudimentary training before graduating to their first commuter airline job which will be in a glass cockpit with automation. These "children of the magenta line" (a reference to the electronic magenta line on the course display) will never develop the piloting skills their forbears recognized as their stock and trade.

This concept of in-flight computer system operators was demonstrated succinctly last year by the crash in San Francisco of an Asiana 777 on a clear and calm day. The "pilots" aboard that aircraft had many thousands of hours of flight time safely operating jumbo aircraft across the ocean with many hundreds of passengers. Unfortunately, they didn't know how to actually "fly" the plane when they needed to and they'd been doing it that way for years.

The big mistake made by the managers at Asiana was of getting ahead of the current state of the art. The automation deployed on the current generation of commercial aircraft is good, but it was never designed to be all encompassing. That is, on occasion a pilot may actually still be needed to fly the airplane the way the Wright brothers did.

Crossing the Bridge Safely

Now please don't misunderstand me. I am no Luddite arguing against the eventual denouement of my profession. The piloting profession as it been constituted since Kitty Hawk is in decline and no amount of feather-bedding will change that. And this is most likely a good thing.

Commercial air travel is now safer than it has ever been and has levels of safety which are probably rivalled only by the elevator. Automation has played a large part in this. But like the elevator, the nature of commercial aviation is going to change and drastically so.

The question is not where the profession is headed, but rather how to safely get there. As automation becomes more robust, the need for piloting skills will diminish on a gradual level. The challenge will be how to bridge this ebbing of piloting skills with the gradual increase in the capabilities of automation until such time that pilots are not needed nor desired. 

The proposed study by Rockwell Collins is much less ambitious in its objectives seeking only to explore the feasibility of single pilot operations while a second pilot would be at the ready on the ground to assist if needed:

Under the concept the researchers are studying, aviators on the ground could be assigned to assist solo cockpit pilots on multiple flights, virtually co-piloting during the busiest times through crowded airspace, approach-and-landing maneuvers, or if something goes wrong. “It’s a reasonably new area” to study how the notion may apply to large jets, according to Parimal Kopardekar, the program’s manager based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in northern California. When pilots need a midair rest or bathroom break, those on the ground even may “need to baby-sit the vehicle,” he said. 

Such a dramatic shift won’t happen any time soon, and there is virtual consensus that reduced crews for passenger planes won’t be considered until they are introduced first in the cargo arena. That is unlikely to gain traction much before the end of the next decade, according to experts and airline officials. 

Jets today are designed to have two pilots behind the controls, and retrofitting existing aircraft “may be too expensive and may be too difficult” to obtain regulatory approval, according to NASA’s Mr. Kopardekar. Industry officials say all-new aircraft would be needed with cockpits designed from the start with a single pilot in mind.

It is an open secret that Fred Smith, FedEx founder and CEO has at the top of his bucket list the firing of at least half, if not all his pilots. And there is little doubt that the first single piloted commercial aircraft will be a freighter. Other than that, it is highly unlikely that there will be any single piloted commercial aircraft for at least the next few decades.

Boeing's latest generation technology, the 787 Dreamliner and the forthcoming 737 Max aircraft have all been designed for two pilots as have the latest offerings from Airbus. Given the average technology cycle of about 20 years between major upgrades, only the aircraft introduced to replace these new generation aircraft are likely to be designed for single pilot operations. So while the change may take a few decades, most experts view it as inevitable.

Also necessary for this change will be a wholesale cultural shift in public opinion towards automation. This shift is already underway. A century ago, it might have been unthinkable for any man on the street to consider getting on a train that didn't have an engineer. Now we routinely board completely automated trains taking us to our airline gates.

Likewise, luxury cars are already coming equipped with automatic lane-keeping alert and sudden stop warning systems. Google's driverless cars are already combing the countryside, recording all they see for Google maps. When cars which can parallel park themselves become ubiquitous, a skill many drivers never master, highly automated aircraft overseen by a systems engineer will not seem so far fetched.

The Aviation Adventures of Flat Mae

Checking which gate we're going to!

Hi there. My name is Flat Mae, and I'm a two dimensional projection of a REAL seven year old girl. I look just like her. Well almost. She's actually a bit bigger but I'm just as smart. Real Mae has to go to school, but I get to go everywhere!

As it turns out, I have an auntie and uncle who are real live airline pilots! My auntie flies for Gigantor Consolidated Airways and took me on a trip to Germany last week on a 777. Gosh, that's a BIG plane. That was a lot of fun.

This week my uncle who works for Air Eponymous Airlines, took me along for his trip all around the states. Boy, that was a lot of fun too! Here's how my trip with my uncle went!

Well first of all, we had a really good deal and didn't have to fly up to Chicago Sunday night to stay in his stinky old crash pad. That's because his trip had a late morning start and he got to sleep at home and fly up Monday morning in time to check in. It's the little things that count he said.

Well we flew up and checked in and then walked over to our gate. My but Chicago has a big airport and even has another one that's even bigger! They even have an airplane inside the airport which seems really weird. The sign says they found it at the bottom of a lake or something.

Walking to our gate

Today we're flying two flights to Orange County after first stopping in Denver. I do so love oranges. This is going to be great!

We get to our gate and there's no airplane! My uncle says it's ok because it hasn't arrived yet and we're early. I hope he's right because I am so excited!

It eventually shows up and we get started on all our preflight checks. We meet our copilot whose name is Chris. He seems nice. There sure are a lot of buttons up there. I hope they know what they all do!

The takeoff was the most fun ever. We got going really fast and then just wooshed up into the air! All the houses got really small and I could even see cars driving around on the street and people walking around from way up high. We eventually go so high that I couldn't see any people any more. The next thing I know, we're inside a CLOUD! They're all white inside, just like the outside.

It was fun looking out the window. You can see everything. I waved at all the other airplanes going by but they went so fast I don't think they saw me.

We landed in Denver but they unloaded and loaded the plane so fast we didn't even have a chance to get off! And then just like that we're taking off again to Orange County.

Well we landed in Orange County and there were more pilots there waiting to take our airplane somewhere else. Bye, plane!

Now we have to wait for the hotel van to pick us up. The hotel is very nice and we have our own room. We meet Chris for dinner and order the seared ahi salad for dinner with a nice glass of Merlot. Yuck. Who can drink that stuff?

After dinner we relax a little bit and then it's time to brush our teeth, set two alarms and hit the sack. This part is a little bit tricky. The schedule that we printed out says our flight leaves at 0915 tomorrow morning but that is in central time zone. That makes it 0715 here in California. Our van time is an hour before that and we have to get up an hour before van time. I have to wash my hair and put on makeup. Just kidding...I don't wear makeup, silly.  So that makes the alarm time 0515. Ughh!

The alarm comes way too early! We get ready and head down to the lobby.

The kitchen hasn't opened yet but they do have some yummy muffins for us. I like this hotel. They have neat model ships everywhere and a Christmas tree in the lobby.

Well we get to the airplane and my uncle tells me I have to do the walkaround today. He tells me that we have to inspect the airplane to make sure it will fly. I sure hope it does fly.

We look at the engines and the tires. They look ok to me. I guess.

Next we have to go into the wheel well. It's very dirty in there. I don't think I'd like to have to do that every day.

My uncle says I'd only have to do it for about 12 years. I'm only seven. That's forever!

Ok, we got that done and get started. We're flying back to Denver today but it's supposed to be bumpy. My uncle says that there are mountain waves we have to cross. I don't know if I like the sound of that but he tells me it'll be fine.

Well, it's not fine. It's not fine at all. It's great! We go up and then we go down and then we go up again. This is fun!

My uncle doesn't look like he's having fun. He keeps talking to a man on the radio and the stewardesses in the back telling them to sit down. The wings look like they're flapping like a bird's. No one wants to have fun anymore.

We land back in Denver and this time we get to stay for a little while. We have to give this plane to other pilots and wait a few hours. I hope there's something good to eat here. The muffin wasn't much.

Denver is a really big airport and they even have a plane inside here too.

I'm beginning to see a pattern.


We hang out in the pilot lounge for a little while and watch some TV. Then we go and get a bowl of chile. It's six bucks. That's crazy!

My uncle spends time on the telephone talking to a car mechanic back where he lives. He says my cousins are too rough on their car and now it needs brakes. And a timing belt. And a power steering pump. And new motor mounts. He doesn't seem happy.

Soon enough we have to go to a new gate and get a new plane. I don't have to go into that nasty wheel well but he lets me drive the pushback tug.

That is tons of fun and I didn't even hit any other airplanes!

Ok, we're off. This time to Detroit.

By the time we get to Detroit, it's dark. And a lot colder than California. Lucky for us the hotel van comes right away. This hotel is not as nice as the one in California but it's still ok. 

We meet Chris for dinner and have the open face turkey sandwich. My uncle has been really wanting a turkey sandwich since all the ones from Thanksgiving were accidentally left on Grandma's kitchen table when he drove home. It's yummy.

After trying to read but falling asleep we set two alarms again only this time it's even earlier. Our schedule says we leave at 0505 which means we should get up at 0305. That's three in the morning! But it's still tricky as Detroit is in eastern time so we set the alarm for 0405.

The kitchen is also closed here when we leave the hotel but they have a bag with a pastry and an apple for us. It's still dark when we get up and even still dark when we take off, this time for Baltimore. The sun doesn't even begin to rise until we start to descend.

It's pretty when it starts to come up though.

We only had 40 people on the first leg but now in Baltimore they're filling us up to over 140 people. We're flying back to Detroit and then to Chicago and we'll be done.

Detroit looks just like we left it a few hours earlier but some ice clung to the wings as we came through the clouds so a truck has to squirt us with stuff to melt the ice. 

We sure don't want to waste any time now because we all want to get home. Chris has only an hour before his commuter flight leaves for Cleveland, and Steve, one of the flight attendants, is running for a plane to Florida.

It all goes pretty smoothly and we land on time even with 80 or so knots of headwind. I don't even know what a knot of wind is but it sounds important.

More pilots meet us to take our plane back to California and we're free to go. Our commuter flight doesn't leave for three hours so we go to the lounge to do some online training. Boy is that boring!

Maybe the real Mae has a better deal.

After getting up so early, it is tough to stay awake while learning about new checklists.

The apple didn't last very long and we're hungry but we have to decide where to eat. There are so many good choices here in Chicago!

There's McDonalds which is ok but also Potbelly's. Their sandwiches are great but the line is out the door. We decide to wait in line at Potbelly's and it was great.

Soon enough though it's time to go. We go to our gate and luckily there are seats available on our plane. We get to go home!

We get on board and settle in for the ride. Our only concern now is that the Kindle doesn't die. We forgot to charge it last night.

A short hour and 20 minutes later and we are back home. Since I'm actually a princess, I get princess parking and my chariot (actually a pickup truck) is waiting for us.

It's been a fun trip but boy am I tired! My uncle says it still beats working for a living, though. I'm not so sure.

I've Sat on a $600 Toilet Seat

The $600 toilet seat. More than just a cliche, over the years it's become an icon and a convenient shorthand for government waste. But does anyone really know the true story behind the famous $600 toilet seat?

I do.

I've even sat on one.

It's an airplane toilet seat. And more. Specifically, the famous $600 toilet seat was actually a fiberglass structure used in the restrooms of the Lockheed P-3C Orion sub chaser aircraft flown by the Navy. In a mini-scandal, it was determined that the fiberglass shroud structure that covered the toilet needed to be replaced. Since the aircraft was long out of production, new parts were needed to be tooled and constructed.

Once all the costs of production were rolled into the final product, the cost was about $600, probably a deal for a custom part long out of production. This will be no mystery to anyone who works on antique autos. One-off or limited production of complex parts and machinery is expensive. It also defines the crazy economics of military equipment procurement.

Politics Drives the Process

One might be forgiven for thinking that tactics, strategy, or mission needs drive the military equipment procurement process. To the extent that those concerns drive the process at all, the relation is only tangential. The driving force behind most military procurement is politics. And money. Lots of money.

Let's start with the politics. Every dime of military spending has to be authorized by Congress in a spending bill and signed into law as a budget by the President. In the classic American sausage making and log rolling traditions which define our politics, coalitions need to be formed, foes placated with spending in their districts and allies need to be enlisted to get military programs shepherded through the process to be funded.

The Senator from Lockheed may ally with the Senator from Boeing to get an airplane built if the engines are built in this state and the wings are built in that one. The process is such that new military aircraft need to have parts from nearly all 50 states in order to see the light of day. This isn't the unalloyed evil that some pacifists on the left make it out to be, but rather the process that needs to be accomplished to get things done in a representative democracy. But care must be taken.

In his famous 1961 farewell speech, President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the undue influence on our politics of the military-industrial complex. While military spending has proved a durable reality in the post-war years, it may finally be reaching a denouement as social and welfare spending eclipses military budgets.

The Europeans found out early on that in the contest between a social welfare state and military budgets, the military eventually loses. Having the Americans pick up the tab for your defense spending also helps but that topic is for another time.

In an unattributed quote, it was once said that as military aircraft became more expensive and fewer were bought, eventually all that could be afforded would be one aircraft which pilots would take turns flying. It was an eerily prescient quote. In World War II, American industrial might produced about 97,000 bomber aircraft. Fast forward 40 years and only 20 B-2s, the last manned bomber to be built in this country were produced. And that was at $2 billion per.

Now about the money. The simple fact of the matter is that military hardware is really expensive. Whenever the military procures an item from a civilian source it must be built to what is called "mil-spec" or military specifications. This means it has to be tough. Usually a lot tougher than a similar item sold on the commercial market if it's available at all.

As an example of mil-spec, consider the original Humvee or rather the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV). Built by AM General a subsidiary of American Motors as a replacement for the Jeep (from GP, or general purpose), a civilian variant was offered to the public in 1992. 

Coming equipped with many of the military upgrades such as automatic tire inflation, waist deep water capability and a 6.2L turbo diesel engine, the vehicle retailed at over $40,000 or over $65,000 today. And this was for a basic, spartan ride with few if any creature comforts.

Another factor which drives cost in the procurement of military hardware is limited production runs. Regardless of how many new fighters or bombers are bought, the cost of R&D is the same and is usually accounted for in a per unit cost. This results in the perverse result that a buy of fewer overall units results in a higher per unit cost as the R&D costs are spread over those fewer units.

In a similar civilian production run, the units produced are so great that the cost of R&D becomes vanishingly small. The H2 Hummer originally mass produced for the civilian market was a fraction of the cost of the mil-spec H1. But the same principle applies to things as mundane as a mil-spec flashlight all the way up to jet fighters.

A Perverse Process Produces Perverse Results

In my 21 year career in the military, I saw the above mentioned process at work time and again in the aircraft I flew and others. Here are a few of my favorites:

The KC-135

As I mentioned recently in my post about the Boeing 367-80, the KC-135 was saddled with inferior engines and an antique water-injection system because the commander of SAC, Gen. Curtis LeMay didn't want to wait for new technology Pratt & Whitney engines to be provided literally months later. This decision, driven by perceived military necessity in the 1950s has probably cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars but was at least sincerely made in light of the perceived threat the USSR provided.

Now nearly 55 years old, the aircraft is still flying and was scheduled for replacement a decade ago. The reason it hasn't been is a true comedy of malfeasance and incompetence. Back in the 1990s a tremendous effort was made to procure a replacement aircraft based on the Boeing 767 airframe. Amid allegations of illegal kickbacks among industry and military insiders, several people involved went to jail and the contract was thrown open again to bid.

When the European based Airbus won the contract, politics again reasserted itself and declared the contest invalid followed by yet another round of bidding going to the better correct airplane, the Boeing. The Boeing KC-46A Pegasus fleet should cost perhaps $100 billion when finally delivered.

The C-5B

The Air Force's original fleet of C-5A aircraft were built by Lockheed in the early 1970s. Boeing, which lost the competition for this contract, was the real winner by then diverting the resources it had gathered to build the 747. While over 1500 747s have since been built by the Boeing corporation, the Lockheed corporation only built 131 C-5 aircraft and doesn't even build transport category aircraft anymore.

The interesting part of the story is in the procurement of the C-5B aircraft. Due to structural problems in the original C-5A aircraft stemming from a gauge of aluminum which was too thin, the aircraft needed to have new wing skin applied. During this process, Lockheed offered additional C-5 aircraft to the military at a cut rate as most of the production tools were already in place.

Boeing again entered and lost this contest but probably for a good reason that with the Air Force's already existing fleet of C-5s the new Boeings would have been an additional parts and training burden. It was however the engines that are of interest.

The original GE TF-39 engines offered for the C-5B were woefully inadequate to existing technology available in the early '80s. The TF-39 produced about 39,000 lbs of thrust while new technology GE engines could produce thrust into the 50,000 lb range. While the C-5 could barely climb through 30,000 ft with a full cabin load, a 747-200 could go much higher and thereby save more fuel with the same weight.

In an interesting twist, GE was commissioned to complete a study as to which engine should power the new C-5Bs. Miraculously, they came to the conclusion that GE engines would be best. In fact, the same old technology TF-39s was their recommendation.

There was a certain method in this madness. Had GE recommended newer high thrust engines, the likely result would have been to throw the entire question open to another bidding contest with Rolls Royce and Pratt & Whitney being able to compete. Better to sell a mature product with an established profit margin than to risk a competition which might be lost.

The C-17

It was becoming apparent throughout the '80s that the military's aging fleet of transport aircraft would need to be replaced. The C-17, built by McDonnell Douglas and later the Boeing company was chosen as the replacement aircraft.

Having been designed to be all things to all people in the airlift world, the final product ended up not doing any of those things particularly well. The problem is that an aircraft designed to be a strategic lifter, that is to take stuff across oceans at high altitude, makes for a lousy forward operating location aircraft capable of landing in a war zone on an unimproved runway.

In fact the aircraft had originally been designed to replace aging C-130 aircraft which are excellent intra-theatre aircraft. It was later decided that the C-141 would also need replacing which was a strategic inter-theater airlifter. The C-17 became a sort of Frankenstein to do both of these things previously done by two separate aircraft. 

The aircraft was outfitted with Pratt & Whitney F117 engines which is a military variant of the commercial PW2000 engine used on airliners like the 757. In a unique and custom modification, the C-17 engines employ a directed flow thrust reverser to assist with short field landings. Again, this type of custom modification, not found on commercial aircraft, greatly increases the cost, reliability and weight of the engine. But that's not the interesting part.

The interesting part is that after the aircraft was delivered, the engines did not produce the required specific fuel consumption that had been promised. It was a gas hog. In fact, it was determined that the C-17 was not able to fly from California to Hawaii with a full cabin load because of the extra fuel needed.

This was eventually fixed, but at some cost. Extended range fuel tanks were fitted inside the cargo compartment at the wing root to add about 60,000 lbs of fuel capacity. If you see one at an airshow, walk inside and check it out. The tank hangs from the ceiling between the wings.

I could go on with additional stories about the B-1, B-2, and T-46 trainer aircraft but this post would never end. Suffice it to say that while the military procurement process resembles the legislative process in it's sausage making similarities, the military generally ends up with products that eventually are fixed to become quite useful.

Of course if you've really got to go, a $600 toilet seat is better than none at all.