freelance writers unite!
Naval Veteran and Opera Singer Bill Dyszel sums it up in song.
Remember — If you don’t have a job — you can call it “freelance!”
Airline Brats
I’ve heard more complaints from business travelers about child passengers
than any other gripe. The kids are too loud, too free to run about the
cabin or too energetic when they kick the back of your seat. They make
lots of noise, upchuck a lot and smell bad from time to time. But business
travelers could learn a lot from children when it comes to proper behavior
on a jet. For starters, kids have never hassled me when there’s a delay,
while some businesspeople become absolute spoiled brats over a flat tire
or if a thunderstorm moves in.
Although it is true that a screaming kid on a plane can really ruin your
concentration, the same is also true of loud martini-slurpers and sales
reps who hound you about why whole-life insurance is such a good
investment. Obnoxious travelers tend to fall into one of three categories,
regardless of age: Baby Blobs, Aisle Runners and Kids in Migration.
The Screaming Mewling Baby Blobs are little collections of human
protoplasm that evidently skidded right out of the birth canal into an
airline seat, howling in protest. Their adult counterparts are people who,
like infants, have no apparent awareness of the world–feeling perfectly
free, for example, to slam me with their over-the-shoulder carry-on as
they flounce aboard the plane.
The adult versions of Baby Blobs have an
infantlike sense that the universe revolves around them. This is why they
feel that it is OK to shout, tell jokes to someone six rows back or, in
extreme cases, pee on the beverage cart.
Aisle-Running Pains in the Ass are kids who don’t appear to have parents
on board even though they really do. Their folks think that once the
family is on the airplane, it is the crew’s job to play nanny. Their
little delinquents run up and down the aisles, creating havoc and beating
on people with whatever obnoxious spit-covered toy they brought along.
(No, I do not want to kiss Grover.)
Grown-up aisle runners are much worse. It was especially bad when
the planes had smoking and nonsmoking sections, since all the puffers
“stuck”in clean air would run back to the smoking section right after
takeoff and light up. Now we only have to deal with the rum-soaked coach
potatoes that sneak into first class during the movie and try to score
free drinks. I’ll take a smooch with Grover any day over an encounter with
an aisle-weaving drunk.
Members of the Divorced Kid Migration travel at least twice a year,
usually during summer and the holiday season. They are being shuttled
unaccompanied all over the world because their parents never grew up.
These kids are seasoned travelers and know more about flying than the
average flight-crew member. So if you need to know how to use a dial or a
switch on your arm rest, just ask a Kid in Migration. Plus, they’re so
darn cute.
The adult counterpart to the experienced Kid in Migration is, of course,
the Million Miler. For some reason, they feel it is important to tell me
how many miles a year they fly–usually followed by a childish request for
some sort of freebie, like booze or an upgrade. People like that weird me
out. I probably fly two or three times as far as they do, and it has
never, ever occurred to me to add up all those miles. That’s kind of like
keeping pictures of every one of your high school dates in a scrapbook or
following around a movie star who once smiled at you from the screen. I
may have had to travel more than a Million Miler, but at least I got to fly
the jet.
The only thing separating the adults from the children on a flight is
time, not behavior. So the real trouble with kids on a plane isn’t the
fact that you can’t get away from them or that they are too loud, even if
it’s true. The real problem is they aren’t your kids. Your kids are home
looking at a picture of you and trying to find out when you are coming
home again. You’ve got to spend more time at home with the yard apes,
Bubba
the traveling air safety show
Day three of a three day AOPA Air Safety Foundation road show is underway. I have good material to work with, good people to present it to and the ASF is a very kind place to work for this, shall we say, “seasoned” CFI.
The whole thing feels like an airline trip and I thought I had flown my last airline trip. There is some value in getting away for a while and believe it or not, I was in sort of a rythm during my flying airline trip days. A few days away a month now is just fine.
Good people in the audiences too. I had forgotten how many great pilots there are out there in the world. Most are smarter than me and I literally learn two or three things every time I run the seminar.
I feel like the Elmer Gantry of aviation safety right now but without the big sweaty tent.
http://www.kevincreates.com
We All Know One…
This sort of video makes me proud that I work with the AOPA Air Safety Foundation as one of their seminar and FIRC instructors. “Can’t have fun with flight safety training? Then you shouldn’t be in flight safety training” is what my old instructor, Jesse Hinson, always said. He also said: “Kevin, you have no future in aviation.” What a visionary!
If you don’t think pilots like the one in this video exist, think again. Just last week I saw a guy in a Christian Eagle, who was showing off, fly into a farm silo. He wasn’t killed, but the plane was.
Visit my site at: http://www.kevincreates.com
what the end of a four day airline rotation feels like
All professional pilots have been there. A time during a long trip when your brain turns to porridge. http://www.kevincreates.com
A Land Without VORs – and Decent Bombing Targets
take me to your men's room.. it's been a thousand years
They are coming.
I am talking about the day when VORs will no longer dot our countryside looking like giant orange white and red mechanical nipples. We more experienced older pilots will then tell the youngsters coming up about a time when we navigated using fixed stations on the ground. They will be amazed and aghast at stories of left-right needles, increased sensitivity near the stations, the “to-from” dead zone where the flags flip as you passed over the station.
Space-based navigation is okay I guess, but my question is: how will we navigate when the aliens invade from behind the moon? If you remember from the movie “Independence Day” that if it wasn’t for Jeff Goldblum we would all be dead by now. He was the one that discovered that the invaders were using OUR OWN SATELLITES to attack us! All I can say is thank gawd he had an Apple Computer!
So, what are we going to do when all of our GPS satellites are taken over by slimy gooey space aliens? How are we going to effectively bomb Afghanis and Iraqis if we can’t triangulate their position from outer space? How can grandma hope to find the podiatrist if she can’t use her car-based GPS? It will be bedlam and the world as we know it will end!
I have two suggestions to solve this problem. First, everywhere of consequence that we fly to should have large arrows that we have painted on the ground pointed at them. For example, pilots trying to find Atlanta could follow red “Atlanta” arrows laid out all over the country pointing in the direction of that city. Want to fly to Minneapolis? Just look for and follow the arrows! They do this sort of thing all the time in hospitals and doctor’s offices. It can’t fail for air navigation.
Targeting people in Afghanistan and Iraq is a little harder without GPS coverage. I suggest that we offer free “American Sucks” bracelets to all people in both countries that want them. We can then track everybody individually and if we later decide to bomb them we can just dial-up and track their bracelets.
Meanwhile, keep you eyes to the skies and don’t trust your GPS. It may be trying to lead you into intergalactic slavery!
Fly Hollis
a great writer, humorist and a person who would occasionally have a beer with the pilots on a layover
Go to Hollis Gillispie’s website right now:http://www.hollisgillespie.com/index.htm
She was a flight attendant at Delta Airlines for a while, but I am glad that like me, she escaped the corporate world and expanded her creative empire. Of course, her creative empire is successful and makes money while mine is kind of a Third World creative empire, but I think that it is only a matter of time until I can pull my creative kingdom up from Haiti status. Perhaps, someday if I work very hard, I can mold my creative empire into a sort of upscale Honduras.
Her creative empire? Most likely a Monaco, or a Tahiti.
Buy her books. Buy many copies of her books and give them to everybody you know. She has the flight attendant personality that every sane pilot wanted to fly with. I imagine that she would bring you up a half coffee – half hot chocolate with whipped cream and two sweet and lows if you asked and would be nice enough to keep the Visine out of the drink and would refrain from the urge to spit in it.
Start off by purchasing multiple copies of these three books:
Trailer Trashed
Confessions of a Traveling Slut
Bleachy-Haired Honkey Bitch.
They are a mandatory part of any pilot or aviation enthusiast’s library. You say they aren’t about flying? Neither was “The Little Prince” you effete aviation snob, but you bought and read it anyway even though you didn’t understand it. (I don’t think anybody understood it)
History will never know what would have happened if Hollis and I had flown a trip together and maybe even had a Shreveport Layover at the Sherveport Holiday Inn (right next to the “Wines of the World” bar). Nothing romantic to be sure, but I bet we would have had a few drinks at that bar, maybe smoked a Winston or two and would have won, quite handily, the nightly bar fight.
Now — immediately — click:http://www.hollisgillespie.com/index.htm
to go to Kevin’s site: http://www.kevincreates.com
Sleeping Pilots? Let’s all take a Deep Breath…
Just five more minutes, Mom!
Okay, I’ve finally heard enough crap on the radio about what people THINK happened to the North West (aka: Delta) flight that missed MSP the other day. I have thirty five years flying, twenty seven of them as an airline pilot (including around 20,000 hours in transport jets) and will try to help you out with some opinionated facts.
First, given their work hours and life styles, it should come as a shock to nobody that airline pilots take naps while flying. They just aren’t supposed to do it at the same time. The way you do it is ask the other guy or girl if they mind you taking a little snooze. After you make sure that they are going to watch things and stay awake, you push your seat back (so you won’t inadvertently kick a rudder pedal) put your head back and cut zees. There is no federal aviation regulation saying the “pilot not sleeping” must put on an oxygen mask. That would be stupid, because having a reg like that would mean that the FAA admits we take naps.
Second, there is no alarm that tells you the plane missed its destination. That would also be stupid because having an alarm like that presupposes that all pilots in a crew would be asleep. Having said that, new generation, long-range jets like the Boeing 777 do have a crew alert system. If the crew doesn’t move any switch in the cockpit for a pre-determined amount of time the airplane starts giving them louder and louder “crew alerts” until they key a mike or push a button. This was designed into very long range airliners.
The aircraft radios would only be heard if you had the volume up, so ATC calling every ten seconds does you no good if everything is muted. Ditto for other aircraft trying to call you. There is an ACARS system (automatic crew alert) that is designed to transfer data, but the alert for that is a very quiet “ding-dong”. This is because you get so many ACARS messages during a normal flight that if it were noisy it would drive you nuts. There is a printer but it runs fairly silently and is out of direct view of the pilots. So, a WAKE UP sign would be pointless.
Airliner crews are required to maintain contact with their airline via a radio and to keep them from having to listen all the time there is a system called SELCAL. (pronounced “cell-call”). It flashes a light and has a slightly louder chime to alert the crew. In noisy cockpits, this is also pretty hard to hear.
It is very unusual that the crew was out of contact with ATC for over an hour. Normally, if things are quiet for more than a few minutes, pilots get on the frequency and ask ATC: “still there?” to make sure they haven’t missed a frequency change. Personally, I think these guys either really were arguing or both were asleep. Even without communication with ATC they normally would have noticed they hadn’t started down yet for MSP.
The Flight Attendants? Should they have called? Nope.
The flight was only 150 miles past MSP when ATC finally got its attention. That translates into 15 to 18 minutes assuming a normal cruise of around 485 knots. A delay that short would not even get the FA’s attention unless the pilots had forgotten to turn on the fasten seatbelt light.
Here is what would happen with the automation if both pilots were asleep or arguing or just clueless. When programming the FMS (flight management system) prior to flight many pilots don’t put in the arrival procedure, they just put in the destination airport and plan to program the arrival and approach later when they get closer. If the jet flew in cruise with the autopilot on past MSP the FMS would have dropped out of VNAV/LNAV (vertical nav/lateral nav) into Altitude Hold and Heading Hold. The plane would simply keep flying straight and level off of the last heading the FMS gave it until the fuel ran out.
Basically, the pilots probably had the volume down and were either asleep, arguing really loudly or very very stupid.
Given our history with 911 and such I am surprised that the didn’t scramble the fighters sooner, assuming they ever did. You can bet your ass that if they were anywhere near a politician (ie: Washington) they would have been shot down. www.kevincreates.com
Another Day Ends at my Imaginary Airfield
It has been a nice day for hanging out at the grass strip — even if it is an imaginary one. We got our last cutting of hay off of the runway a few weeks ago and the cool weather has made the grass go dormant for another winter. No more mowing.
My dog is laying up against the side of the hangar, soaking up what sun there is to soak while anticipating her upcoming dinner that is always served in a 1986 dodge D150 hubcap under the Waco which is right next to the Tiger Moth.
The sun is setting behind red and orange hued trees that only have a week or two left to hang onto their leaves. They too will become dormant as will most of my fair-weather flying for another year. The time is coming when the days get shorter, nights get colder and my aviation time will be made up mostly of repairing RC models, giving safety seminars and FIRCS and trading lies with old co-pilots.
Good winter flying is great but rare and the clear snow-covered days are paid for by the dark, wet and dreary ones.
Oh well — if I still smoked, or for that matter, drank, I would be enjoying a Winston and a bourbon before pushing my chair back into the hangar and closing the doors for the night.
Now that my only vices are sloth, ignorance and television I shuffle back into the hangar’s office and wonder what is on the tube tonight. http://www.kevincreates.com http://www.cessnaflyer.org
