Pilot Report: Flying the KC-135A Stratotanker

Water Injected Takeoff

I graduated from the Air Force's Undergraduate Pilot Training (UPT) program in December of 1982 at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas. Pinning on my silver wings was one of the proudest moments of my life. My parents, siblings and grandfather all flew out for the event. At that point I already knew that my next assignment was going to be a KC-135 tanker based in Okinawa, Japan.

Getting assigned to the KC-135 was slightly bittersweet as I, like all 22 year old aspiring military pilots, wanted to fly a fighter. Actually, not everyone wanted fighters, but at the time, such a desire seemed downright odd. Why wouldn't you? Afterburners, Ray Ban glasses, girls, G-suits, Corvettes, girls, big watches, girls, etc.

Well as it turned out, in my class of thirty or so students, there were only five fighter assignments available. And while I was good and had never "hooked" or failed a ride, I wasn't in the top five so my destiny was to fly a "heavy".

Armed with the knowledge that flying a heavy lay in my future, I decided to at least have an adventure at whatever base I was to be assigned and checked the box marked "overseas volunteer" on my dream sheet. A dream sheet was the form where you'd list your preferences for aircraft and base.

Normally I suppose the drones moling about at the personnel assignment command would get a good chuckle out of those dream sheets as they were tossed into the trash and your all expense paid trip to Minot, North Dakota was arranged. The assignment gods, however, took pity on me and I got my posting to Okinawa, a smallish island in the Ryukyu chain about 1300 miles south of Tokyo. There was once a battle there you may have heard about.

My next stop was Castle AFB, in Merced, California where I would spend three months checking out on the KC-135 as a new copilot. This was followed by a week or so in Spokane for survival and resistance training before catching the Flying Tiger 747 "Freedom Bird" from Oakland to Okinawa.

The First All Jet Tanker

The KC-135 Stratotanker, produced between the years of 1956 and 1965, was a derivative of Boeing's test bed aircraft, the 367-80. From this early test aircraft, both the KC-135 and 707 were derived which is why the KC-135 has a strong resemblance to the 707, though the tanker was smaller and lighter. Still, the tanker could carry 135,000 lbs of fuel and weighed in at just under 300,000 lbs fully loaded.

Part of the impetus for the Air Force to acquire this aircraft was the cold war. The nuclear arms race was in full swing in the late '50s and the Air Force wanted to have a tanker which could refuel its new intercontinental bomber, the B-52, to allow it to reach Russia. The old KC-97, a derivative of the WWII era B-29, just wasn't up to the task.

In fact, because the angst of quickly fielding a nuclear deterrent was so high during that time, several compromises and shortcuts were made in the design of the KC-135 to get it operational faster. These were compromises which I came to despise acutely nearly thirty years later.

The first compromise was the engines. Engine manufacturer Pratt and Whitney was working on a new engine design at the time known as the bypass fan engine. This new engine was to become the basis for all modern engines and was eventually used on the 707, but it just wasn't going to be ready in time for the tanker. So the KC-135 was outfitted with older engines which incorporated a technology known as water injection to produce enough thrust. Yes, you heard that right...they pumped water into the engine.

Without getting too detailed, high pressure pumps injected water into the engines during takeoff which increased thrust by means of an increased mass flow rate. Still, the airplane was grossly underpowered. While the airplane did usually get airborne, it would take most of the runway to do so when heavy. I have seen the departure end of the runway coming under the nose during rotation more times than I care to remember.

To give you an idea of how puny the engines were, the CFM-56 engines fitted on a 737 today produce about 34,000 lbs of thrust while the tanker's original P&W J-57s produced a mere 12,000 lbs. Due to it's underpowered nature, the aircraft gathered unflattering monikers such as "The Silver Sow" or "The Steam Jet". My personal favorite was "Strato-Bladder" for the bladder type fuel cells in the body tanks.

The KC-135A was eventually re-engined in the 1980s with those same CFM engines and was redesignated the KC-135R. The new "R" models are quite sporty now and even hold some time to climb records for transport category aircraft.

This first compromise of using water injected engines led to the compromise which I came to hate the most. To feed the water injection system, a water tank was needed. Since most of the body of the aircraft where cargo bins are on a normal plane were taken up with fuel tanks, a decision was made to remove one of the two air conditioning units, or packs. This meant that the airplane was hot, and I don't mean hot as in cool, but rather hot as in fetid.

I was stationed in Okinawa, remember, which is in a subtropical climate zone. This means warm and damp winters followed by hot and damp summers. The lack of A/C on the aircraft was most pronounced when flying hour after hour of "transition" training, or touch and go practice. It wasn't uncommon to get off the airplane soaking wet. Boeing didn't even have the courtesy to install an air vent to blow on the pilots' faces. The air outlets were under the seat where what little cool air that did emanate did no one any good at all.

Old Technology

As I flew the airplane in the early 80s, it had undergone a number of technology updates to its original systems but many vestiges of older technology were still on board. We still had a navigator assigned to the crew, but she had at her disposal an inertial navigation system, or INS which made her job more or less obsolete. Airliners were crossing oceans then with similar systems which had their accuracy measured in yards while GPS was still on the design table.

The aircraft also had, however, a sextant and an overhead port with which to view the stars. Celestial navigation dates back to the time of Magellan and was the reason the navigators were still on board. Remember, this aircraft was designed to fight a nuclear war and at the time it was thought that a nuclear detonation might render all electronics useless. Therefore, the navigator was trained to use the ancient technology of celestial navigation with a sextant to determine our course while flying to nuclear armageddon. My one regret is never having had our nav teach me how to shoot the stars with the sextant.

Over-water communications were also rather dated. While we had a high frequency or HF radio which could bounce signals long distances, ours was an old tube-type radio requiring a warmup and without a squelch control. This meant maintaining a "listening watch" on air traffic control frequencies which were always full of static, whistles and pops. Of course this was a copilot duty. When the air traffic frequencies became too unusable, I might have inadvertently tuned the radio to an awesome rock station beamed out of Saipan.

The standard for overseas communications is through the use of satellites today.

Flying the Beast

As I mentioned above, the airplane was underpowered. This meant that it had to be flown very smoothly and deliberately when it was heavy, which was most of the time. There were restrictions on the angle of bank that one could use after takeoff for instance, and multiple warnings concerning what to do or not do should an engine fail on takeoff.

There were so many red warnings on the engine failure pages that I think most of us flying the beast were convinced that an engine failure was pretty much game over. Thankfully I never got the opportunity to test out that proposition.

Once you got the airplane away from the ground and up to altitude, it really flew quite nicely. The autopilot was primitive and rudimentary by today's standards but it did its job well enough. We'd use standard airways navigation when in range of land or the navigator would feed us headings to fly when out over the water.

The actual aerial refueling process could get quite busy. Getting two airplanes together could be a challenge, especially in the weather. F-15s were easy as they had such a good radar that they always found us (and we had the gas). F-4s were hopeless, and Marine F-4s were a disaster. My job as copilot was to talk to air traffic control while operating the pumps to offload fuel to the receiver aircraft. I was also in charge of keeping our own weight and balance within limits by moving fuel around with pumps and valves. 

Refueling large aircraft such as the C-5 took special care. That aircraft had such a large bow wave that it would actually push the tail of the tanker around. On occasion, the forces might be too much for the autopilot which might click off without warning. One of us always had to be ready to grab the controls in that event.

Sushi for the inflight meal?

In the Pattern

Once we got back from a refueling mission, we might spend some time in the pattern or there might be times when we just launched a sortie with the express purpose of only flying practice approaches. There was a simulator on Okinawa but it was a sad affair with no motion or visuals and wasn't suited for actual flight training as are modern sims.

The tanker behaved reasonably well in the pattern when the weather was not very gusty. In gusty conditions, however, she became quite a handful. The reason for this is the aircraft had some very rudimentary flight controls. If you've ever wondered why fighters have a "stick", and large aircraft have a "yoke" or two handled control wheel, it's because two hands were needed to control large airplanes.

Nearly all modern large airplanes are now equipped with hydraulic flight controls. That means hydraulically powered actuators move the flight controls which control the airplane in flight. Think of the power steering on your car. The KC-135, however, had only cable and pulley flight controls. Moving the control wheel physically pulled cables running directly to the wings. This made the controls less effective and at times sluggish, especially in gusty conditions. We joked that it was a true "fly by wire" flight control system.

One of our pilots had a bad experience with this facet of the airplane. I just remember being out windsurfing that day in some truly righteous surf and north winds. Unfortunately, one of our pilots did not negotiate the crosswind landing and allowed her upwind wing to rise causing the downwind engine to strike the runway and catch fire. They landed safely, but I don't think she flew again, at least on Okinawa.

All Things Strato

As I look back on my time flying the KC-135, I don't think I appreciated what a piece of history it represented in its technology as part of the vanguard of the jet age, or its role in both the cold war and Vietnam. It has been said that during the Vietnam era, a tanker "driver" could not buy a drink in the bar as appreciative fighter pilots returning on fumes from the North would want to thank them for them being there with some gas to get them home. The motto of my squadron, the 909th AREFS, was in fact "Always There". 

Nonetheless, being stationed overseas flying some real world contingency missions in your early 20s is an experience that I'll never forget. It was an awesome time.

I'll finish this post with a bit of guitar lore as playing guitar is another hobby of mine. As the '50s were a heady time in the post war era, Boeing came to put the prefix "strato" in front of many of its airplanes as they would cruise in the stratosphere. There was the Stratoliner (model 307), the Stratobomber (B-47), and the Stratotanker.

In 1954, a guitar builder named Leo Fender introduced a revolutionary new guitar featuring many new design elements. Having already produced guitars named the Broadcaster and the Telecaster, Fender added the strato prefix to his creation and the Stratocaster, one of the most iconic guitars ever built, went on to make rock and roll history.

The Airlines are Colluding to Raise Ticket Prices...or Are They?

The US Justice Department recently announced a probe of the four largest US airlines alleging that these airlines have illegally colluded to restrain capacity and to thereby keep fares high. While the airlines deny any wrongdoing, Justice is requesting internal documents and communications from the big four airlines concerning capacity plans.

Whatever else you may think of them, CEOs in competing companies are certainly not stupid enough to be caught calling one another on the phone to coordinate their efforts. It seems more likely that this "investigation" is a political fishing expedition which will likely come to naught. Even so, let's take a look at how we got here.

A Brief History of Airline Industry Economics

The great investor Warren Buffett once quipped that as far as airline investors were concerned, they'd have been better off if the Wright Flyer had been shot down. There's much truth in that statement. Buffett further observed back in 1992 that the net profit since the dawn of commercial aviation up until that time was zero. This was also true.

For various reasons, the airline industry has defied all efforts to make itself consistently profitable, at least in the years since deregulation. The industry has always appeared to have only two modes of operation: either wildly profitable or bankrupt. These two states have often been experienced by the same airline over very short periods of time.

Economists have gone on at length to explain the reasons for this boom and bust cycle. Some point to the cost inputs that rely on very expensive capital goods such as jet aircraft, and a dependence on a commodity, oil, which comes from an unstable part of the world and is subject to whipsaw pricing, geopolitics, and currency manipulation.

Others point to overreaching labor unions, or the nature of network organization which rewards the larger network with ever more traffic. Think of cell phone coverage here and the advantages a larger network confers when trying to sell phone plans. People want options when redeeming their frequent flier miles, and they also want the ability to stay with one carrier to build those miles.

Still others point to the low marginal cost of producing the product, which is known as a seat-mile. When an airplane departs with empty seats, the revenue from those seats is zero. So like a supermarket trying to clear out day old bread before spoilage, any revenue gained by putting another passenger aboard the airplane goes almost entirely to the bottom line. This is because the marginal cost of carrying one extra person on the airplane is nearly nil. Airlines are therefore incentivized to lower fares below their average cost to fill empty seats.

In the wake of deregulation, airlines realized that because of the network dynamics mentioned above, growth was the key to market success. These two forces, a need for growth and the low marginal cost of production, often saw airlines pouring capacity into the market and then attempting to undercut competitors to fill their seats. Hence the birth of the airline fare wars.

It was the ensuing fare wars that caused the post deregulation economic carnage among airlines. In the period since airline deregulation in 1978, 55 airlines have declared bankruptcy in the US. While many of these airlines were smaller or regional carriers, nearly all major US carriers have also reorganized under bankruptcy law.

Airline managers eventually came to realize that beating each other over the head by throwing capacity at the market has been a failing strategy. They knew that growth was key but as with a crab trying to escape a bucket, those remaining would always pull the leaders back down. The problem was that there was no way out of the trap.

Multiple trips into bankruptcy transformed some carriers into so-called "zombie" airlines. They could never prosper but they wouldn't die. Bankruptcy allowed the zombies to shed high labor costs and debt and to continue operations, but they still couldn't grow. Attempts to merge were turned back by government antitrust watchdogs. United's attempted merger with USAir back in 2000 was denied on antitrust grounds for instance.

Merger Mania

All that changed in the later 2000s. After a string of bankruptcies in the wake of 9/11, the Bush and then the Obama administrations approved a long sought after series of mergers and acquisitions by the largest US carriers. From the approved consolidations emerged four large airlines which now represent nearly 90% of all airline capacity in the US.

In the time since the approval of the last round of mergers, and assisted by a drop in fuel prices, airlines have been making money hand over fist. The latest round of earnings saw the big four airlines hauling in billions of dollars of revenue while 2nd quarter return on investment for the sector was an extremely healthy 34%.

We're From the Government and We're Here to Help

It's been said that anyone who works for the Justice department's antitrust division operates under a sneaking suspicion that someone somewhere might be making a profit (or too much of one). That may or may not be true, but in the case of US airlines, making a ton of money immediately following a wave of mergers may have been the triggering event for this investigation (never mind that Justice itself approved the mergers).

Airlines were also quick to add fuel surcharges when oil prices spiked to over $100 but have been reluctant to repeal those charges now that fuel prices have retreated to below $50 per bbl. Adding to the suspicion among the flying public that something is amiss is the sardine like conditions that exist on most domestic flights as they all seem to be completely full. It wasn't too far in the past that one might occasionally have an empty middle seat. Now they're quite rare.

And as anything that the federal government does is informed by the current political winds, it probably was seen as prudent by Justice department lawyers to be seen doing something to address this issue if for no other reason than to stave off inconvenient questions to the boss in press briefings or congressional hearings.

Yes, But Have the Airlines Really Been Misbehaving?

As I mentioned above, for CEOs in competing companies to even talk to one another is extremely unwise and simply not done. This also goes for the whole corporate structure, so it seems unlikely that any "smoking gun" indicating collusion will be found. It seems that Justice will have the daunting task of "proving" that airlines are voluntarily growing more slowly than they would otherwise. This will be an exceedingly difficult task as there is no way to prove what a "proper" growth rate should be.

The Wall Street Journal even noted that over the last year airlines added an additional 859 million seats or 3% to the US market. Airlines may well be constraining growth over previous decades, but this seems more of a realization that past practices were disastrous for the industry as a whole rather than evidence of malfeasance. Southwest's stock price was clobbered earlier this year after it made public plans to accelerate growth. The airline later offered a "clarification" to walk back its growth estimates.

What's more likely happening concerning airline growth plans is that discipline is being imposed on airline managements by stockholders with memories of the bad old days. Bad old days for investors, that is. The flying public, and their public servants, on the other hand, miss the $49 fare war days.

So Who Flies Into a Hail Storm?

The short answer is nobody does this on purpose. This past Friday, a Delta A320 with 125 passengers and five crew was enroute from Boston to Salt Lake when it ran into some hail near Denver. The aircraft was heavily damaged and diverted into Denver. There were no injuries other than some passenger anxiety.

The problem is, hail is more or less invisible until you run into it. Being dark at the time of the incident didn't help either. The other problem is that hail doesn't just come out of the bottom of clouds but can be ejected from the top of some larger storms. Large thunderstorms are maelstroms of updrafts and downdrafts. When hail is caught in an updraft, it can be thrown out the top of the storm for dozens of miles. The airplane was cruising at 34,000 ft and likely well clear of the storm when it was hit.

I'm amazed every time I see a photo like this that the hail damage isn't much worse. The airplane, after all, is traveling close to 500 miles per hour. Anyone who's ever ridden a motorcycle can attest that simple rain drops at 60 mph are painful. Imagine chunks of ice at 500. The fact that the windows were cracked but structurally intact is a testament to the engineering which goes into their design. A complete windscreen failure would mean a high probability for loss of the aircraft.

Rest assured, dear reader, that those windscreens are designed to take a lot more abuse than some hail can dish up. Their design specifications include hitting a large bird such as a goose at a very high speed. Special cannons are employed to shoot bird carcasses at windscreens during certification. The windscreens are a multilayered laminate which includes a heating layer embedded in the glass to keep it from becoming brittle. Even if one of the layers appears shattered, the load bearing layer most likely is not.

I even had a windshield shatter about a year ago for no reason at all. We were at 41,000 ft minding our own business when the windscreen just spiderwebbed with a resounding crack. After a few tense moments, we determined that it was not the load bearing layer that had cracked. We landed at our original destination (it was the closest airport) and I doubt the passengers knew a thing because we didn't tell them. There's no reason to unnecessarily scare anyone.

The bashed in radome on this jet also looks alarming, but it really isn't. The radome is plastic and is designed to be transparent to radar signals. The airplane will actually fly just fine even if the radome is knocked completely off. The noise level up front may increase and the radar antenna itself may be somewhat worse for the wear, but it isn't any super big deal.

Hail going into the engines, though, can be a potential problem. If the hail is severe enough it may bend or break some of the inlet guide vanes or compressor blades. Again, this is unlikely, but possible. Those engines are also tested by having birds and hail fired into them while running at full power. The cowling of the engine is also designed to contain any flying parts from hitting the fuselage.

Probably the largest challenge these pilots faced other than cleaning out their britches after the hail first hit, was landing the airplane with an obscured view through the damaged windscreen. The truth is, even that could be mitigated by using the airplane's instruments. Aircraft instruments, after all, are designed to allow pilots to land in low or no visibility. They might even have used the airplane's autoland capability.

Can't Pilots Just Steer Clear of Storms?

Well, they can and do. The FAA publishes guidelines for the avoidance of thunderstorms to which all airlines must adhere. The guidelines state that above 23,000 ft, all radar echos must be avoided by more than 20 miles. Pilots also know to avoid detouring around a storm on the downwind side because if hail is thrown out the top, the wind is likely to carry the hail to the downwind side. 

But even with all those safeguards, occasionally an airplane will run into some hail. Thankfully it doesn't happen too often, and when it does, the professionals up front know how to get the damaged beast safely on the ground.

Screenshot of Delta flight path

Pilot Shortage Hits the Bottom Line

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (gated) made the claim that the ongoing pilot shortage is responsible for a drop of 50% in the value of Republic Airways stock. This is an unprecedented claim.

What this means in less technical terms is that "this s#!t be getting real!"

Republic Airways Holdings is a regional airline holding company based in Indianapolis. Through its subsidiaries Republic Airlines, Chautauqua Airlines and Shuttle America, the company operates regional feeds for its major airline partners branded as American Eagle, United Express, Delta Connection and US Airways Express.

Republic maintained that their inability to reach an agreement with their pilot union coupled with an ongoing pilot shortage resulted in a reduction of about 4% of their flying and causing 2nd quarter results to come in well under analyst expectations. Last year Republic parked 27 of its 243 aircraft due to a lack of pilots according to the carrier.

An irony here is that while dragging out labor negotiations is a tactic often employed to avoid raises for unionized employees, the current stall in talks is now hurting Republic's ability to attract new hires and to fulfill contractual commitments.

The Government Accounting Office, coming a little late to the party, said they had "found mixed evidence" regarding the extent of a pilot shortage. Being astute as ever, what they've discovered is that the major airlines are as yet having little trouble attracting aviators away from the regional airlines. The real difficulty is being felt by the regional carriers in replacing those disappearing pilots.

New government experience requirements have effectively closed the door to all but the most committed of new pilots. Only those who are willing to spend the better part of $100k dollars for a career which starts at about $20k and takes decades to reach the top tier are applying. New rest regulations are also reducing pilot productivity by 5 to 7% which increases the numbers of pilots the majors need to hire.

The regional airlines themselves have little ability to increase revenue to cover the needed increase in salaries to attract new aviators. This is due to the long term fixed fee service agreements they have with their major airline partners. They have in effect wet leased their aircraft for a fixed rate and can only increase profit through cost cuts.

It is this financial arrangement which allows the regionals very little wiggle room. There may not be a way out of this maze other than reductions in service. Republic Chief Bryan Bedford is even on record saying that the airline business will necessarily get smaller.

What he actually meant by that statement is that the regional airline business will have to get smaller. As the economics of regional feeders evaporate, the majors may take some of this flying on themselves as I mentioned in a recent post.

In the short term, look for 90 seat or larger regional airliners to become more prevalent as they have more advantageous economics. This trend may, however, leave smaller cities without service entirely.

A Summer of Profits for Airlines but of Discontent for Labor

Second quarter earnings reports are out and there's quite a bit of good news for airlines. This latest earnings season has the big four airlines swimming in black ink. On the other hand, airline labor groups are not quite feeling the love they feel they deserve. Delta's pilots just voted down a tentative agreement for a new contract while Southwest's flight attendants also voted down their recently reached tentative agreement. So what's going on?

Well, lets first take a look at the haul that the airlines brought in this past quarter. United weighed in with an all time record profit of $1.2 billion and this was on reduced revenue. Southwest, the smallest of the "big four", increased their profit 31% to a record $608 million. American Airlines pocketed a record $1.7 billion, while Delta brought home a healthy $1.49 billion on $10.71 billion of revenue.

These airlines are so hip deep in cash that they don't know what to do with it all. The airlines have been under the gun to not flood the market with capacity which in the past has always ended up in brutal fare wars and bankruptcies. Since expansion is mostly off the table, returning the loot to investors through stock buybacks is the order of the day.

American bought back over $700 million last quarter and has announced further buybacks of  $2 billion through 2016. United is just finishing a $1 billion buyback ahead of schedule and is embarking on a further $3 billion buyback through 2017. Southwest recently completed a $430 million buyback and is accelerating plans to buy $500 million more.

First Time Rejection for Delta's Pilots

Yes, times are flush for airlines but airline labor groups are now angling for a larger piece of that pie. As mentioned above, Delta's pilots recently voted down their tentative agreement with the carrier. This was the first time that the pilots at Delta had ever defeated a proposed contract. Chief among the complaints were reductions in profit sharing, changes in sick leave policy and a wish to be made whole after a decade of stagnation at the carrier, especially in light of record profits.

Southwest's flight attendants also voted down their tentative agreement in a lopsided 87% negative vote. The issues centered mostly around work rules which would increase the maximum duty day to 12 hours and minimum work rules which would affect vacation pay. Southwest is still in negotiations with its pilots who recently formed a strike committee and also its baggage loaders.

The pilots at American and USAir voted last January to approve their new contract with the newly combined carrier. This agreement included hefty pay raises over and above post 9/11 concession wages, but they are still looking for improvements. From the APA website:

APA will now focus on further engagement with American Airlines management to address ongoing shortcomings in our contract. Our total compensation will still trail industry-leader Delta, while work rules affecting our pilots’ quality of life need meaningful improvement. There’s a lot of work remaining to achieve the industry-leading contract our pilots deserve.

United's pilots likewise approved their merger contract back in 2013 which included pay increases over bankruptcy contract wages dating from the early 2000's. While the United pilot's contract doesn't become amendable until 2017, rest assured that they will be targeting "industry leading" wages.

Will There Be a Strike?

Unlike most unionized labor forces in the country, airline labor groups and their collective bargaining agreements are regulated under a very old law known as the Railway Labor Act (RLA). The RLA, passed in 1926, doesn't allow for labor contracts to "expire" but for them to become "amendable". This means that on the amendable date, the labor agreement in force just continues until a new agreement is reached. The animus behind this law is that it was viewed that a shutdown of the railways was too economically harmful and therefore work stoppages must be avoided at all cost.

There is a very specific series of events that must occur before any strike can occur under the RLA. The first step is mediation followed by a declared impasse. Once an impasse is declared, a 30 day cooling off period must be observed and only then may a labor group or company engage in "self help" which means a lockout or a strike. No current disputes are even close to any of this happening. So no, it is highly unlikely that there will be any airline strike. Keep in mind that there is always quite a bit of posturing by both labor groups and management in these affairs.

What Next?

The Kabuki dance between labor unions and management will continue. Agreements will eventually be reached and everyone will get on with their jobs. It's Great Circle of Life stuff.

As far as the specific pilot contracts are concerned, my belief is that airline managements will eventually have to open their checkbooks to attract a dwindling number of new pilots to replace the tsunami of retiring pilots. Regional pilots looking for their first major carrier jobs are in the catbird seat, and have the luxury of choosing the major airline with the best pay and best prospects for a quick upgrade to captain. 

As captain upgrade is driven by retirements (and growth, which is not happening), looking for the airline with the best upgrade prospects means finding the airline with the most retirements. Currently all three of the largest major airlines, American, United and Delta have huge numbers of upcoming retirements. Replacing these pilots will drive wage demands. Southwest, which has a relatively young pilot force, and hence upgrade times topping 15 years, may have a specific challenge attracting new talent.

I don't personally get too excited about union politics as things always seem to have a way of sorting themselves out.

MH370 Found?

MH370 found?

No, but an airplane part and a suitcase have washed up near Madagascar. The part will be tested to determine if it came from the Malaysian jet. If it's determined that the part is from MH370 it won't be of much help finding the rest of the wreckage. Ocean currents are quite random and will provide little help as to where to look other than the places already being searched.

The theories that will be put to rest if the part is genuine are the conspiracy theories positing that the aircraft was hijacked and flown to a secret base somewhere. My opinion is that the captain committed murder-suicide with his own airplane for political and other reasons.

Stay tuned.

Airline Laser Attacks Spike

In a series of incidents last week, twelve aircraft, 11 airliners and a Coast Guard aircraft were hit with lasers in the New York area. Furthermore, 23 other aircraft across the nation on the same night reported laser attacks.

While there were no injuries, as I detailed in a post a few weeks ago, commercially available lasers have the ability to injure and completely blind humans in less time than it takes to blink or to look away from the laser.

My personal feeling is that it is simply a matter of time until the laser attackers up their game to some industrial strength lasers to cause some real mayhem.

Airliner With Only Three Minutes of Fuel Told It Can't Land!

A breathlessly told story in the Daily Mail screamed the above headline to tell of an airliner nearly running out of fuel while being told tough beans by the controller. It's dramatic and scary and also has the added benefit of having very little in common with reality. (More on that later). The one thing it does do, and probably quite well, is to gather clicks. And that means eyeballs and ad revenue. So I naturally chose the same title for this post while also calling them out.

You might think that most people involved with aviation would have an interest in demystifying the subject to help calm the nerves of the flying public. That of course could not be further from the truth, with the above mentioned story as prima facie evidence. We pilots, I must admit, also like to be associated with a frisson of danger and a whiff of derring-do. It assuages our fragile egos and also doesn't hurt during contract negotiations, but we certainly don't go out of our way to scare folks.

Your 'umble narrator has even been accused of spreading discomfort towards flying though this blog. (Thanks, Mom!) (jk) My aim in writing about flying is to merely throw open the hood to explain some of the workings not seen by the public and to thereby hopefully soothe the savage flying beast. As with any human endeavour, there is perhaps some inevitable sausage making going on in aviation that reluctant flyers may not care to see. But rest assured dear reader, commercial aviation is an extremely safe and robust mode of travel. If my scribblings convey the opposite, I apologize.

Though the topic has been covered ad infinitum to ad nauseum, flying in a commercial airliner is probably second only to travelling in an elevator in terms of safety. And of course we all climb willingly into our automobiles which kill tens of thousands annually, but at least we're in control! Quoting safety statistics, though, seems to have little effect on the visceral fear felt by some. John Madden, the NFL broadcaster, famously refused to fly and instead rode his bus all over the country to call games.

For those without million dollar contracts and custom buses who still need to travel, there are plenty of programs aimed at helping scared flyers. (Programs, by the way, which probably provide a decent paycheck for the proprietors). And though most pilots are gracious and understanding when fearful customers stop by to say hello (as they're encouraged to do), I am personally perplexed as to how allegedly functioning adults can allow their feelings to gain such purchase so as to refute overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary regarding airline safety. That one I leave to the shrinks.

Bingo Fuel

Ok, as promised, back to the story. An Allegiant MD-80 was delayed for about an hour before departing Vegas for Fargo, ND. The delay put the aircraft in conflict with a Blue Angels practice which had been previously scheduled. Being a clear day, the Allegiant plane probably had only it's required reserve fuel on board which contrary to the article was not 3 minutes but rather 45.

The term bingo is used to denote a decision point. In this context the pilot meant that he had three minutes of loiter time before diverting, not running out of fuel. Of course the tower would absolutely let the plane land for a declared fuel emergency. That's a legal definition. Declaring an emergency will always get an aircraft priority. The controller simply needed to hear that declaration before interrupting a scheduled event.

Who screwed up here? The pilot for being unaware of the field closure which would have been listed in the "notices to airmen" or "Notams" which every pilot is required to reference before departure.

The morons who write these stories as clickbait may (but probably don't) know better, but writing what really happened would spoil a great headline.

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.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Have you ever been on a flight where everything just seems to be going wrong before takeoff? You think you’re going and then you’re not. There’s a problem. Then the problem is fixed and you're going again. Then there’s another problem and you’re not going. And it goes on like this for a while until either you end up finally going hours late or the flight is cancelled.

As frustrating as such a scenario is for you, it’s equally if not more so for the crew. Even though it may not always seem that way, no one wants to get you where you are going more than the crew on your airplane. In most cases, the cause for the problem is out of their hands but they are the ones left trying to make it all come together while not running afoul of the myriad rules thrown in the way.

Let me tell you a story about what happened recently to a friend of mine at another airline while trying to get the job done amidst a raft of problems. He’d like to stay anonymous for obvious reasons so let’s just call him Rob Joe. The trip started out somewhere in the Midwest and was scheduled to pass through LaGuardia and then Atlanta before finishing in Chicago. Both LaGuardia and Atlanta are known for delays so Joe was hopeful that the day would go smoothly, but realistic in his expectation that it would not. He was not disappointed.

La Guardia is Another Word for Hell

LaGuardia is a hopelessly congested airport.  Even though it is slot controlled, meaning that there are restrictions on how many airplanes are allowed to land, someone must have paid someone off so that on any given day a line of 30 or more airplanes waiting to take off is the usual order of business. This day was no different. A departure rate of one takeoff every two minutes meant an hour delay from pushback to takeoff.

Well there was no worry because such delays have already been baked into the cake with a padded schedule and extra fuel on board for the wait. But, as the company had planned the flight for only a 30 minute delay, the actual hour that it took put them 30 minutes behind.

The arrival into Atlanta was busy but uneventful. Rain showers had been predicted but held off. The flight to Chicago was the last leg of the day and so far it looked like the flight might be only slightly delayed due to LaGuardia. Pushing back with a full airplane,  Joe elected to taxi out on one engine to save some fuel. The second one would be started a few minutes prior to takeoff.

Here’s where it started getting weird. There is an uphill grade on the taxiway leading to Atlanta’s runway 26 Left, the takeoff runway that day. There’s also a restriction on the maximum thrust allowed during single engine taxi so as not to blow anything over with jet blast. Unfortunately, that setting was too low to get the full airplane up the slope so Joe directed his copilot to start the other engine.

Just then, another airplane reported that they had hit a bird on takeoff, suspected some engine damage, and were returning to the airport. This meant that the runway was shut down until ground operations could send someone out in a truck to inspect the runway for bird or airplane parts. This meant more delay and with two engines now running it might mean a return to the gate to get more fuel if the delay was extensive. So Joe shut an engine down again to wait.

It Won't Start

After about a half hour and the removal of bird remains, the runway was opened and the conga line started moving again. As he approached the runway, Joe again asked for the second engine to be started. His copilot dutifully turned the switch…and nothing happened. The engine wouldn’t start. It wouldn’t even turn over. They checked for popped circuit breakers and rechecked that the engine was receiving starter air which it was. Everything was in order but it just wasn’t happening.

This meant a gate return. On the taxi trip back in they tried it one more time and of course it turned right over, but after any anomaly like that, a mechanic needs to inspect the engine. The mechanic was waiting at the gate and had a good idea that the pneumatic start valve was sticking, which it was. When Joe asked how long for the repair, to his surprise the mechanic said 10 or 15 minutes.

And he was right. It only took a very short time to fix the motor. In the meantime, though, the air-conditioning had to be off while the mechanics worked on the air system. The poor passengers were cooking in the Georgia summer heat. Ground air was hooked up but it was no match for the Southern cooking they were experiencing.

A New Problem

Soon enough, though, the plane was fixed and they were ready to go. Except for one new problem. The pilots were about to go illegal. With their original day scheduled at about 8 hours of flying, the delays had taken them close to going over 9 hours of actual flying or “block” time.

New rest regulations passed by Congress in the wake of a regional airline crash a few years ago now mandated maximum flight hours regardless of either how the pilots felt or any delay status. Under the old rules, pilots could finish a trip if the trip had been planned to be under the limit but exceeded them due to delays. Legal to start meant legal to finish. The new rules now allowed for no exceptions regardless of how the pilots felt. And they felt fine but it didn't matter.

Given the amount of time they already had on the clock, they were allowed exactly 19 minutes to get airborne or by law they'd have to taxi back to the gate. A truly tall order in Atlanta. Well they pushed back and taxied out to find only a few airplanes in front of them. But as luck would have it, another airplane had a problem and needed to go back to the gate. This caused more delay. As the clock clicked through 17 and then 18 minutes, the other plane cleared the runway. As Joe taxied over the runway threshold, the clock showed 19 minutes. It looked like they'd make it. Or so they thought.

You Are in Violation

Well they did take off and flew uneventfully up to Chicago. Upon landing, though, there was a phone message waiting for Joe to call scheduling. The scheduler informed him that he had taken 20 and not 19 minutes to takeoff and was therefore in violation of Federal Aviation Regulations. A criminal. This made him subject to enforcement action by the FAA, and the airline. That meant potential investigations, lawyers, and fines.

See, the onboard clock doesn't log the airplane airborne until the wheels leave the ground and the weight on wheels switch is triggered. It must've clicked over to 20 minutes sometime during the takeoff roll.

The scheduler advised Joe and his copilot to fill out a special safety form which under certain circumstances can provide immunity from punitive actions. The idea is that people won't be forthcoming with safety information if they are under threat of prosecution. So that's what they did. As of this writing, they haven't heard anything back and may be in the clear, but won't be sure for some time. The wheels of justice turn slowly but inevitably.

A Cynic is Born

If you've ever wondered why airline employees might seem just a bit grumpy at times, perhaps this little tale will help you to understand. Those who lean forward to make it all work can at times end up walking into a propeller as reward for their efforts. Should that happen too many times, you might find people who don't lean so far the next time around.

Joe and his copilot discussed calling it quits before going but just thought that the poor folks in back had had enough. The copilot even lived in Atlanta and therefore had extra incentive to call it a day. Heck, Atlanta is a crew base for Joe's airline so they would've been easily replaced...after another two hour delay getting reserves to the airport.

Well it all ended happily (I think), and 139 good folks got to their homes and/or meetings or weddings, or wherever they were going albeit a few hours late. That's what it's really all about.