Another world for pilots
The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the stars.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Wind, Sand, and Stars,’ 1939.
I have seen things when flying that ground-bound people can’t imagine. The inside of purple storm clouds, the St. Elmo’s fire against the windshield of my 727 as it bounced through heavy precip. Sunrises over the Atlantic, Pacific, and even Lake Michigan.
How many people get to begin their day in Kentucky and after flying themselves to Europe lay their head on a pillow in Paris and get paid for it? How often did I fly over sleeping cities in the pre-dawn, bemoaning my fate to be awake yet not envying for a single second the people below who faced another day of boringly predictable days?
Today I still court and play with clouds that others see as sun blockers and annoyances. Snow on the ground evokes thoughts in my head of braking action reports and de-icing fluid types. Pilots see the world in a totally different way than ground-bound people. We notice clouds and automatically and without thought catagorize them according to the smoothness or roughness we would encounter when flying through them.
Student pilots learning about aviation are privy to this new world from the first time they try to taxi with their feet. They fly the shallows of the pond like guppies but they are still part of the larger aviation lake.
Airline passengers pull down their shades in order to see their airborne TV’s. We open the shades wide to see the ground and the sky. To them airplanes are a fancy kind of train or car. To we pilots, an airplane, even an airliner, is a friend and the revealer of magic and freedom.
A time before pilots were made to pee on command
back when there was no such thing as "alternate power"
Pilots back then were men that didn’t want to be women or metrosexuals or “get in touch with their feelings.”
Pilots all knew who Jimmy Doolittle was.
Pilots drank black coffee, straight whiskey, smoked un-filtered cigarettes and cigars.
Pilots didn’t wear digital watches or wussy plastic bands on their wrists to “raise awareness” of anything
They carried their own suitcases and brain bags like the real men that they were.
Pilots didn’t bend over into the crash position multiple times each day in front of the passengers at security so that some TSA moron could feel them up and probe for tweezers or fingernail clippers or too much toothpaste.
Pilots did not go through the terminal impersonating a caddy, pulling a bunch of golf clubs, computers, guitars, and feed bags full of tofu and granola on a sissy-trailer, wearing no hat and sporting granny glasses hanging on a pink string around their skinny neck while talking to their personal trainer on their iPhone.
Being an Airline Captain was as good as being the King in a Mel Brooks movie.
All the Stewardesses (aka.flight Attendants) were young, attractive, single women that were proud to be combatants in the sexual revolution. They didn’t need to turn sideways, grease up and suck it in to get through the cockpit door.
They would blush and say thank you when told that they looked good, instead of filing a sexual harassment claim.
Junior Stewardesses shared a room and talked about men…. with no thoughts of substitution.
Passengers wore nice clothes and were polite; they could speak AND understand English. They didn’t speak gibberish or listen to loud gangsta rap on their IPods. They bathed and didn’t smell like a rotting pile of garbage in a jogging suit and flip-flops. Children didn’t travel alone, commuting between trailer parks. There were no obese clueless hordes asking for a seatbelt extension or a Scotch and grapefruit juice cocktail with a twist.
If the Captain wanted to throw some offensive, ranting jerk off the airplane, it was done without any worries of a lawsuit or getting fired.
Axial flow jet engines crackled with the sound of freedom and left an impressive black smoke trail like a locomotive burning soft coal. Jet fuel was cheap and once the throttles were pushed up, they were left there, because, after all, it was the jet age and the idea was to go fast (run like a lizard on a hardwood floor).
Economy cruise was something in the performance book, but no one knew why it existed or where to find the chart.
When the over-speed clacker went off, no one got all uptight and scared because they knew Boeing built the jet out of iron; nothing was going to fall off.
There was very little plastic and no composites on the airplanes or in the Stewardesses. Airplanes and women had eye pleasing symmetrical curves, not a bunch of ugly vortex generators, ventral fins, winglets, flow diverters, tattoos, rings in their noses, tongues and eyebrows.
Airlines were run by men like C.R. “Snake” Smith and Juan Tripp who had built their companies virtually from scratch; they knew their employees by name and were lifetime airline employees themselves…not pseudo financiers, bean counters and self-appointed “perfumed princes”. The good old days are over now and airline pilots live in fear. They pee on command like little puppies and work like sled dogs for little pay.
*this was given to me by another retired pilot.
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Doom and Gloom or just Doom sans the Gloom?
“There is no Earthly way of knowing… which direction we are going. There is no knowing where we’re rowing, or which way the river’s flowing. Is it raining? Is it snowing? Is a hurricane a’blowing? Not a speck of light is showing so the danger must be growing. Are the fires of hell a’glowing? Is the grisley reaper mowing? YES! The danger must be growing for the rowers keep on rowing AND THEY’RE CERTAINLY NOT SHOWING ANY SIGNS THAT THEY ARE SLOWING!!”
Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
It is not my job to cheer you up. My writing career goal is not to make you feel better, happier or even smarter. I write this column to entertain and occasionally, very occasionally, it happens. More often than not, it falls short, and more often than that, it falls on its face.
It is hard to function in our society without being overwhelmed with gloom, doom, envious thoughts and compulsive thoughts about the sex lives of celebrity golf players.
If you want a single example of how far down the rabbit-hole out civilization has gone you only have to look at the Tiger Woods brouhaha. On one hand, who cares who he is dating other than his wife and family? On the other hand, what the heck is wrong with this guy? On the third hand, why are we even concerned with him and spending so much of our media time on his turbo-charged libido and lack of judgment?
I think the main problem with our current preoccupation with gloom and doom is that we all seem to pay attention to the talking heads of the media way too much. They are mostly under-educated people who majored in communications or journalism in college because they made D’s in science in high school. I feel superior to them because I made C’s in high school science.
The bottom line (as journalist majors like to say) is that they are Silly People. They stand out in the rain during Hurricanes to tell us it is raining. They stand out in snow to get on TV and tell us it is snowing and god forbid there be an armed riot somewhere, because you just know they will be out in the middle of the gunfire telling us that there is gunfire.
Like I said, Silly People.
The problem with never watching them on TV or listening to sweaty angry and stupid men on AM radio ranting is that we might find a little peace in our little, local worlds. For example, things around my place today are pretty good. The heater is still working and I had some nice toast for breakfast. If I can keep myself from turning the TV news or the radio on to those dunderheads my day will continue to go fairly well.
I know there was an earthquake in California yesterday and that is kind of scary but even if I listen to every sorry, scary story coming from the west coast how am I going to be able to play “tennis ball” with my dog with the requisite amount of joy later today. Besides, even if I eat a total diet of bad feelings off of CNN, what good will that do for Californians who have just had the guacamole knocked out of them?
The world may be and probably is going to Hell but for me, not today.
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I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things . . .
| This is a short collection of serious quotes about flying. Add more in the comments section if you have some. Stand by for less serious flying quotes soon. ksg
The natural function of the wing is to soar upwards and carry that which is heavy up to the place where dwells the race of gods. More than any other thing that pertains to the body it partakes of the nature of the divine. — Plato, ‘Phaedrus.’ Man must rise above the Earth—to the top of the atmosphere and beyond—for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives. — Socrates A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them. — Seneca, Book 7, first century AD Limited in his nature, infinite in his desires, — Alphonse de Lamertine, ‘L’Homme,’ addressed to Byron in 1819. Sometimes, flying feels too godlike to be attained by man. Sometimes, the world from above seems too beautiful, too wonderful, too distant for human eyes to see . . . — Charles A. Lindbergh, ‘The Spirit of St. Louis,’ 1953.’ You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky. — Amelia Earhart |
| My soul is in the sky.— William Shakespeare, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Act V. Scene I.All agreed that the sensation of coasting on the air was delightful.
— Octave Chanute, regards people who tried his gliders, 1894. The exhilaration of flying is too keen, the pleasure too great, for it to be neglected as a sport. — Orville Wright No one can realize how substantial the air is, until he feels its supporting power beneath him. It inspires confidence at once. — Otto Lilienthal The air to a glider pilot is a reality. . . . He is trying to understand it in all its moods; to learn its flow, its laws, and to try and use this knowledge to his own ends. — Philip Wills My airplane is quiet, and for a moment still an alien, still a stranger to the ground, I am home. — Richard Bach, ‘Stranger to the Ground,‘ 1963. The airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Those things aren’t destructable. — Richard Bach, ‘Nothing by Chance,’ 1963. Can the magic of flight ever be carried by words? I think not. — Michael Parfit, ‘Smithsonian’ magazine, May 2000 Lovers of air travel find it exhilarating to hang poised between the illusion of immortality and the fact of death. — Alexander Chase, ‘Perspectives,’ 1966 It is as though we have grown wings, which thanks to Providence, we have learnt to control. — Louis Blériot, ‘Atlantic Monoplanes of tomorrow.’ Flying was a very tangible freedom. In those days, it was beauty, adventure, discovery — the epitome of breaking into new worlds. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh, introduction to ‘Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead,’ 1929. I fly because it releases my mind from the tyranny of petty things . . . — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry To put your life in danger from time to time… breeds a saneness in dealing with day-to-day trivialities. — Nevil Shute, ‘Slide Rule: The Autobiography of an Engineer.’ [I'm] getting housemaid’s knee kneeling here gulping beauty. — Amelia Earhart, comment in logbook, 1928. Ours is the commencement of a flying age, and I am happy to have popped into existence at a period so interesting. — Amelia Earhart, ‘20 Hrs 40 Mins,‘ 1928. The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Wind, Sand, and Stars,’ 1939. The magic of the craft has opened for me a world in which I shall confront, within two hours, the black dragons and the crowned crests of a coma of blue lightnings, and when night has fallen I, delivered, shall read my course in the starts. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Wind, Sand, and Stars,’ 1939. I’ve never known an industry that can get into people’s blood the way aviation does. — Robert Six, founder of Continental Airlines. Maybe it’s sex appeal, but there’s something about an airplane that drives investors crazy. — Alfred Kahn, the ‘father of airline deregulation.’ Dad, I left my heart up there. — Francis Gary Powers, CIA U-2 pilot shot down over the Soviet Union, describing his first flight at age 14. As soon as we left the ground I knew I myself had to fly! — Amelia Earhart, after her first flight in an airplane, a ten minute sight-seeing trip over Los Angeles, 1920. Even before [we] . . . had reached 300 feet, I recognized that the sky would be my home. I tumbled out of the airplane with stars in my eyes. — Geraldyn Cobb, regards her first flight, piloted by her father when she was 12 years old. I might have been born in a hovel, but I determined to travel with the wind and stars. — Jacqueline Cochran, ‘The Stars at Noon,‘ 1954. I’ve had a ball. — Charles ‘Chuck’ Yeager, describing his 30 year Air Force career. To invent an airplane is nothing. To build one is something. To fly is everything. — Otto Lilienthal Aeronautics was neither an industry nor a science. It was a miracle. — Igor Sikorsky There is no excuse for an airplane unless it will fly fast! — Roscoe Turner The engine is the heart of an aeroplane, but the pilot is its soul. — Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh. This is not that other Sir Walter Raleigh, who was beheaded nearly three hundred years earlier. This Sir Walter became the official historian of the RAF. High sprits they had: gravity they flouted. — Cecil Day Lewis The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings. — Sir James Matthew Barrie Real flight and dreams of flight go together. Both are part of the same movement. Not A before B, but all together. — Thomas Pynchon, ‘Gravity’s Rainbow.’ I ask people who don’t fly, “How can you not fly when you live in a time in history when you can fly?” — William Langewische, 2001 I cannot imaging anyone looking at the sky and denying God. — Abraham Lincoln. No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings. — William Blake |
| Flying is within our grasp. We have naught to do but take it.— Charles F. Duryea, ‘Learning How to Fly,’ Procedings of the Third International Conference on Aeronautics, 1894.
It was quite a day. I don’t know what you can say about a day when you see four beautiful sunsets. . . . This is a little unusual, I think. — John Glen, in ‘American Chronicle,’ Lois and Alan Gordon, 1962. Father, we thank you, especially for letting me fly this flight … for the privilege of being able to be in this position, to be in this wondrous place, seeing all these many startling, wonderful things that you have created. — L Gordon Cooper Jr, prayer while orbiting the earth, quoted in NY Times, 22 May 1963 There is no flying without wings. — French proverb To fly a kite is to hold God’s hand. — Daniel C. Hawkins Anyone who’s not interested in model airplanes must have a screw loose somewhere. —Paul MacCready But to fly is just like swimming. You do not forget easily. I have been on the ground for more than ten years. If I close my eyes, however, I can again feel the stick in my right hand, the throttle in my left, the rudder bar beneath my feet. I can sense the freedom and the cleanliness and all the things which a pilot knows. — Saburo Sakai, Tokyo, 1956. Japan’s greatest living ace with 64 kills, who was banned from flying at the end of W.W. II. From the foreword to ‘Samurai!‘ They shall mount up with wings as eagles. — Isaiah 40:31. We who fly do so for the love of flying. We are alive in the air with this miracle that lies in our hands and beneath our feet. — Cecil Day Lewis Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over time over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this. — Cecil Day Lewis He did it alone. We had a cast of a million. — Neil Armstrong, regards Charles Lindbergh. I live for that exhilarating moment when I’m in an airplane rushing down the runway and pull on the stick and feel lift under its wings. It’s a magical feeling to climb toward the heavens, seeing objects and people on the ground grow smaller and more insignificant. You have left that world beneath you. You are inside the sky. — Gordon ‘Gordo’ Cooper, ‘Leap of Faith,’ 2000. Ah hell. We had more fun in a week than those weenies had in a lifetime. — Pancho Barnes, quoted in ‘The Happy Bottom Riding Club – The Life and Times of Pancho Barnes,’ by Lauren Kesler. It’s the most exciting thing you have ever done with your pants on! — Stephen Coonts, ‘Flight of the Intruder‘ Air racing may not be better than your wedding night, but it’s better than the second night. — Mickey Rupp, air racer and former Indianapolis 500 driver. Be like the bird in flight . . . pausing a while on boughs too slight, feels them give way beneath her, yet sings knowing yet, that she has wings. — Victor Hugo You can always tell when a man has lost his soul to flying. The poor bastard is hopelessly committed to stopping whatever he is doing long enough to look up and make sure the aircraft purring overhead continues on course and does not suddenly fall out of the sky. It is also his bound duty to watch every aircraft within view take off and land. — Ernest K Gann, ‘Fate is the Hunter.’ I might have been born in a hovel, but I determined to travel with the wind and the stars. — Jackie Cochran Splutter, splutter. Yes – we’re off – we’re rising. But why start off with an engine like that? But it smooths out now, like a long sigh, like a person breathing easily, freely. Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring – sustained note of power and joy. We turn from the lights of the city; we pivot on a dark wing; we roar over the earth. The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We dit it, we did it! We’re up, above you. We were dependant on you just now, prisoners fawning on you for favors, for wind and light. But now, we are free. We are up; we are off. We can toss you aside, for we are above it. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh, ‘Listen! the wind,’ 1938. So the crew fly on with no thought that they are in motion. Like night over the sea, they are very far from the earth, from towns, from trees. The clock ticks on. The dials, the radio lamps, the various hands and needles go though their invisible alchemy. . . . and when the hour is at hand the pilot may glue his forehead to the window with perfect assurance. Out of oblivion the gold has been smelted: there it gleams in the lights of the airport. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Wind, Sand, and Stars,’ 1939. Flying is more than a sport and more than a job; flying is pure passion and desire, which fill a lifetime. — General Adolf Galland, Luftwaffe, ‘The First and the Last,’ 1954. Whether we call it sacrifice, or poetry, or adventure, it is always the same voice that calls. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Birds in flight, claims the architect Vincenzo Volentieri, are not between places — they carry their places with them. We never wonder where they live: they are at home in the sky, in flight. Flight is their way of being in the world. — Geoff Dyer Flying has torn apart the relationship of space and time: it uses our old clock but with new yardsticks. — Charles A. Lindbergh. For pilots sometimes see behind the curtain, behind the veil of gossamer velvet, and find the truth behind man, the force behind a universe. — Richard Bach, ‘Biplane,’ 1966. The job has its grandeurs, yes. There is the exultation of arriving safely after a storm, the joy of gliding down out of the darkness of night or tempest toward a sun-drenched Alicante or Santiago; there is the swelling sense of returning to repossess one’s place in life, in the miraculous garden of earth, where are trees and women and, down by the harbor, friendly little bars. When he has throttled his engine and is banking into the airport, leaving the somber cloud masses behind, what pilot does not break into song? — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Night Flight,‘ 1933. Aviation is proof, that given the will, we have the capacity to achieve the impossible. — Eddie Rickenbacker Earthbound souls know only the underside of the atmosphere in which they live . . . but go higher – above the dust and water vapor – and the sky turns dark until one can see the stars at noon. — Jacqueline Cochran |
| Don’t let the fear of falling keep you from knowing the joy of flight.— Lane Wallace, ‘Flying‘ magazine, January 2001.Flying is like sex – I’ve never had all I wanted but occasionally I’ve had all I could stand.
— Stephen Coonts, ‘The Cannibal Queen‘ Buddy of mine once told me that he’d rather fly a jet than kiss his girl. Said it gave him more of a kick. — Jerry Connell, in the 1951 movie ‘Air Cadet’ In order to invent the airplane you must have at least a thousand years’ experience dreaming of angels. — Arnold Rockman ‘ Pilots track their lives by the number of hours in the air, as if any other kind of time isn’t worth noting. — Michael Parfit, ‘The Corn was Two Feet Below the Wheels,’ Smithsonian Magazine, May 2000. Aviators live by hours, not by days. — T. H. White, ‘England Have My Bones,’ 1936. I would recommend a solo flight to all prospective suicides. It tends to make clear the issue of whether one enjoys being alive or not. — T. H. White, ‘England Have My Bones,‘ 1936. A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, first sentence of ‘Southern Mail,’ 1929. What freedom lies in flying, what Godlike power it gives to men . . . I lose all consciousness in this strong unmortal space crowded with beauty, pierced with danger. — Charles A. Lindbergh Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price. — Amelia Earhart A man can criticize a pilot for flying into a mountainside in fog, but I would rather by far die on a mountainside than in bed. What sort of man would live where there is no daring? Is life itself so dear that we should blame one for dying in adventure? Is there a better way to die? — Charles A. Lindbergh Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history. — James Dickey, ‘New York Times Book Review,’ 15 July 1979. I think it is a pity to lose the romantic side of flying and simply to accept it as a common means of transport, although that end is what we have all ostensibly been striving to attain. — Amy Johnson, ‘Sky Roads of the World,’ 1939. Aeronautics confers beauty and grandeur, combining art and science for those who devote themselves to it. . . . The aeronaut, free in space, sailing in the infinite, loses himself in the immense undulations of nature. He climbs, he rises, he soars, he reigns, he hurtles the proud vault of the azure sky . . . — Georges Besançon, founder of the first successful aviation journal ‘L’Aérophile,’ February 1902. How do you like your coffee, Captain – cream & sugar?’ — Brian Calvert, the opening paragraphs of ‘Flying Concorde,’ 1982. I don’t understand these people anymore, that travel the commuter-trains to their dormitory towns. These people that call themselves human, but, by a pressure they do not feel, are forced to do their work like ants. With what do they fill their time when they are free of work on their silly little Sundays? — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, ‘Wind, Sand, and Stars,’ 1939. And if flying, like a glass-bottomed bucket, can give you that vision, that seeing eye, which peers down on the still world below the choppy waves — it will always remain magic. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh, ‘North to the Orient,‘ 1935. My highway is unfeatured air, — William Ellery Channing, ‘Hymn of the Earth.’ To fly! to live as airmen live! Like them to ride the skyways from horizon to horizon, across rivers and forests! To free oneself from the petty disputes of everyday life, to be active, to feel the blood renewed in one’s vein — ah! that is life. . . . Life in finer and simpler. My will is freer. I appreciate everything more, sunlight and shade, work and my friends. The sky is vast. I breathe deep gulps of the fine clear air of the heights. I feel myself to have achieved a higher state of physical strength and a clearer brain. I am living in the third dimension! — Henri Mignoet, ‘L’Aviation de L’Amateur; Le Sport de l’Air,’ 1934. . |
Football and Texas go together like Airline and Security
It isn’t often that an airline flight crew has time to go to a football game during a layover. Many years ago when I was a plumber on the old DC-8 we used to have beacoup Detroit layovers, which meant we were laying-over in Ann Arbor at the venerated Ann Arbor Inn.
Those layovers were seasonal in nature, meaning that the Atlanta based pilots got it in the summertime and we Chicago guys got it in the winter. A lot of layovers seemed to go that way. For some reason, every summer I was laying over in Phoenix and Shreveport. Every winter found me sitting snowed-in at a motel in Fargo, N.D., or Portland, Maine.
The Ann Arbor layovers had a certain allure for this young engineer. In addition to all the parka-clad coeds cruising around the student union at the University of Michigan, we could sometimes score tickets for a football game that they held in their half-buried stadium on the east side of campus. Going to a football game on an Ann Arbor layover was way more fun than visiting the Michigan Museum of Natural History or trying to get sweet tea with your lunch at the Lamplighter Inn.
We don’t lay over in Ann Arbor anymore. The particular flying market has long since been given to the RJ crowd. Why fly hundreds of fare-paying people into a big city when you can fly small amounts of them at a higher cost? The logic of airline management flies over this captain’s head once again.
This layover with my co-pilot Hank was in Dallas and/or Fort Worth and we had a total of 36 fun-filled hours to enjoy our stay. Normally, layovers don’t last longer than a good nap, a healthy poop and a quick shower, but during the end of the month, changeover trips tend to get a little squirrelly. We were in the DFW area until one month ended and a whole new month’s set of bad trip-rotations began. What the heck; we were young jet pilots with a weekend to spend eating Tex-Mex food and watching the interstate in Arlington near Six Flags Over Texas fill with the honking, smelly cars of the local Texicans.
Who knew that Hank would come up with two football tickets from his old Texas alma mater, Goat Rope State? Hank’s home team was coming in from the far reaches of West Texas to play those low-life, sister-marrying, communications majors from Southeast Central Texas Agricultural University.
Yep, it was going to be the Fighting Goat Ropers going toe-to-toe against those milk-money-stealing Horned Cows from SCTAU and the game was going to be a more exciting than a coach meal with an ice cream sundae, according to Hank. The hotel van from the Arlington Hilton gladly took us away from their lobby bar and deposited Hank and me directly in front of the hallowed stadium of the fighting Horned Cows. “Dan Jenkins Field” is a beautiful place if you can ignore the fact that it is built with taxpayer money on the biggest salt flat in the DFW area.
We viewed the scene through our company funded Serengeti sunglasses and began the long climb to our seats. The stadium is about two miles south of the departure end of the DFW runways, so we were not surprised at two facts; First, the noise of departing overbooked airliners drowned out the playing of the national anthem by the Fighting Horned Cows marching band and, second, there was a big advertisement for our airline on the inside cover of the game’s program right next to printed text of the Horned Cows rousing fight song.
The ad was a picture of one of our 757s with the sales pitch: “Get the Hell out of Texas on Our Modern Jets!” Hank and I got our beers and settled into our seats in Section 11a, Row 65. We sat in a sort of “reverse seniority,” with me on the right and Hank on the left. We were situated just above a group of skanky SCTAU females whose only saving grace was that their tattoos appeared to be spelled correctly.
Sitting With The Good-Old Boys Football Crowd On either side of us were two guys. Joe, who was on my right, sported a SCTAU wife-beater shirt (three sizes too small) and a baseball cap with a picture of a cartoon Rebel on it saying, “Forget? Hell!” On Hank’s left side was a fellow with wire-rimmed glasses, a leather-elbowed tweed sports coat and a hat saying, “Our Sports Team is far Superior to Your Sports Team.” Great; redneck on the right, nerd on the left.
My new friend Joe started the conversation off by first apologizing for spilling beer on my leg and then telling me how many games of the SCTAU Horned Cows he had attended in his lifetime, which was all of them.
“You fly for the airlines, don’t you?” Joe began while at the same time lighting up his third cigarette. How did you figure that out? “Because you are still wearing your airline ID on your jacket.” Oh, crap. In my hurry to get ready for the football game, I forgot to take my secondary ID off of my commuting jacket. A secondary ID, for you non-airline or law-abiding airline people, is the ID you get from the company when you lie to them and tell them you lost the first one.
It works like this: Every airline pilot’s professional life is predicated on having his or her airline ID always at the ready. You need your ID to get through security. You need it to get into the pilot’s lounge and you need it to get access to your plane at the gate. If you forget it or lose it, your trip can come to a screeching halt. In order to keep that sort of thing from happening, the less honest of us tell the company that we’ve lost our ID. They will give us one free replacement and then start charging us an escalating amount for subsequent losses. That way I can keep one of them safely in my wallet or on my uniform and a second one handy for when I try to get on the plane home after a trip.
I had my second ID on my jacket for just such an occurrence but forgot to remove it and was now about to pay for it for at least four more quarters. “My uncle was an airline pilot just after the big war,” continued Joe with no encouragement from me. “Yep, after getting a bullet in the butt flying Hueys in Vet-nam, he got a job flying for Braniff. He got furloughed after Braniff went belly-up and got on with Southwest.”
How is he now?
“Dead.” Said Joe. “He was what you people call ‘laying-over’ in Little Rock and died from a heart attack while he was watching ‘Wheel’ on TV. They found him the next morning still in his uniform, sitting up, deader than disco.”
Those layovers can be dangerous, I said, trying to be helpful yet respectful of a dead captain and a war hero. “Yeah,” said Joe, who after his sixth beer was getting a little misty-eyed. “This stadium seat was left to me by my uncle. He was a big Horned Cow fan and once told me that airline flying was an awful lot like a football game.”
I had to ask: How so?
“Hours and hours of uncomfortable boredom interspersed with quick moments of excitement and pain.”
I’m sorry I never got to meet your uncle. He sounds like he was a good pilot and a great American.
By now, the game was not only underway, it was out of control. In between the howling madness of a hundred climbing turbojets, we saw and heard the dismantling of the Fighting Goat Roper’s entire football program. By half-time the score was: Horned Cows 46 — Goat Ropers 3.
Hank and I retired to the snack bar during the latter part of half-time for some much-needed beer and nachos. I asked Hank if he was OK staying and watching his alma mater getting their noses stomped into the mud like a new-hire at a chief pilot’s conference, or if he wanted to head back to the Hilton.
“Hell no! This is the best my team has done here in 20 years,” said Hank, who by now had imbibed at least as much brew as my new best friend, Joe. Rather than try to get Hank back up those 80 flights of stairs to our seats, I make a pre-emptive phone call and summoned the Hilton van back to pick us up early. Most of the Goat Roper’s fans were heading out the exits as we left.
They were moving for the doors faster than a “special needs” passenger at the gate on arrival in Fort Lauderdale.
Hank didn’t mind leaving a little early. His seatmate turned out to be an English Lit professor that he had taken a class from when he was a junior at GRS.
“Old Professor Snape didn’t remember me, but I sure remembered him,” said Hank. “He was the one who convinced me that my worst day flying an airplane was going to be way better than my best day reading Proust and talking about dangling modifiers. The day after I dropped out of his class and quit being an English major was the day I enrolled in Air Force ROTC, started majoring in engineering and began my Air Force career.”
I’m sure it was a great loss to the literary community but a great gain for the defense of our nation, I said. As our white, air-conditioned, hotel courtesy crew bus entered the interstate for our ride back to layover bliss, our conversation thankfully drifted away from losing football teams and we got back to more comfortable subjects.
Questions like, “What the hell is a pen and pencil revision?” and “How is it possible that every ground handler’s headset could go inop at the same time, system-wide?” Before we knew it, we had shaken off the dust of a cool-weather Texas football afternoon. We had forgotten all about Snape and my new-best-friend Joe and had begun to look forward to tomorrow night’s layover in Jackson, Miss. — the cultural center of the airline world.
Go to Kevin’s website: http://www.kevincreates.com/ceo.html buy his new book, The CEO of the Cockpit. All profits go to the National Kidney Foundation.
The Secret Sully Cockpit Tapes… (rated R for language)
*There is some strong language in this fake CVR transcript so if you don’t like cussing don’t read this. A friend sent his to me last year and it is so great and newsworthy I had to add it to my blog.
I wish I had written or “found” this secret cockpit voice recording of the US Air Hudson River ditching of last year. Whoever wrote this (and if you did please get in touch with me) has obviously flown in many airline cockpits. This is exactly how we talk:
Note: “SIC” stands for “second in command” or the co-pilot (who happens to be a helicopter pilot)
SIC: “Number two’s gone, boss.”
Sully: “I know it! What do I look like, an R-22 pilot (that’s a baby helicopter a real egg beater)? Just shut the f*cker down, boy. Oh, and tell Departure that we need to come back in and land. F*cking birds…
” SIC: “Sheesh, somebody got up on the wrong side of his throne this morning. You don’t have to insult me just because I got my commercial helicopter rating in the mighty Robinson. Oh, and by the way, sir, we’re not climbing, if you even care. Maybe your decision to take on that extra 5,000 pounds of fuel wasn’t so hot, Captain.
” Sully: “One more comment like that and I’ll make sure the union keeps you in RJ’s for the rest of your miserable, short career.”
Sully: “SON OF A BITCH!”
SIC: “Number one’s failing, boss.”
Sully: “I can see that! Am I a-f*cking-sleep? Can I not read the gauges? Am I not flying the plane here?”
SIC: “I’m just sayin’…”
Sully: “Goddamn Canadians, sending their f*cking geese down here every winter. Why, if I ever *see* another Canadian I’m gonna punch him right in the throat. I *HATE* Canadians.”
SIC: “Everybody does, boss. Think we can make Teterboro or straight-in to 22 at Newark?”
Sully: “Yeah, probably. But f*ck Teterboro! Let’s go to Newark. I’ve flown out of Teterboro. Short damn runways…always a crosswind. And their FBO’s suck. I’d rather land in the Hudson f*cking river than land at Teterboro. Hey….”
SIC: “You’re not…”
Sully: “Why not? Maybe we can take out some sailboats with some prick Canadian snowbirds.”
SIC: “You ever land on the water before?”
Sully: “Plenty of times! I got my seaplane rating back in 1946. I think it was in a…Piper…somethingoranother, I forget. Never mind. It’ll all come back to me. Pull out the Before Water Landing checklist and run it.”
SIC: (flipping through the stack of checklists) “Can’t seem to find one for that.”
Sully: “Fooled ya! HAH! There ain’t one! Just get on the horn and tell the people to put their heads between their legs and kiss…no wait, that won’t sound good on on the CVR tape…make it, ‘brace for collision’…no wait, make it ‘brace for impact.’ Yeah, that’s better. No wait! Tell them that out the left side of the plane they can see the Intrepid Museum, and that if they’d like to visit it, they’ll be able to, this afternoon, like, in about twenty minutes. Oh, and ring the stews and have them bring me a rum and coke. If I’m gonna do this, I need a good stiff drink. And have that one with the big tits bring it up. If I’m gonna die, I wanna die drunk and with a boner.”
SIC: “Like your grandfather did?”
Sully: “This is no time to make jokes, son. I would really appreciate it if you’d try to take this situation seriously. I’m fairly certain that my grandfather did not die with a boner. I mean, have you ever met my grandmother?”
SIC: “You know, if you pull this off CNN will be calling you the Hero Pilot of the Year.”
Sully: “F*ck CNN. Liberal bastards. All I care about is what the fair-and-balanced Fox News will call me. I hope Fox News calls me a hero!”
SIC: (sighing) “They probably will too. Nobody will remember *my* name. It’ll be ‘Sully this’…and, ‘Sully that.’ ‘Captain Sully, the big f*cking hero.’ Like you are the only f*cking one in the cockpit.”
Sully: “You’re quite bitter. You really are a helicopter pilot at heart, aren’t you? You know, some pilots wait their whole career to be called a hero. I mean, Christ, I’ve only got two years to go to retirement. That was close!”
SIC: “We’re not down yet, Captain Skygod.”
Sully: “I know, this thing glides pretty well, huh? Dammit, no sailboats. Oh well, let’s see if we can buzz one of those damn sightseeing helicopters. What’s best-glide/engines out?”
SIC: “Beats the shit outta me.”
Sully: “Vref?”
SIC: “F*ck if I know.”
Sully: “Britney Spears’ birthday?”
SIC: “December 2, 1981.”
Sully: “Well, I’m glad you know SOMETHING! Just gimme full flaps…” [END OF RECORDING]
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Find them, Kill them and move on
I am getting tired of being treated like a criminal.
Travel by airline now means that you are told not to move in your seat. You are told when to go to the bathroom and how long you can stay there. Your nail clippers are taken away from you and even liquids like that cup of coffee you are drinking as you approach the security checkpoint are trashed.
Meanwhile, the government — our government — the one that has been spending billions upon billions of our dollars for our safety does not bother to communicate with itself even when it has a defined, specific threat from a specific individual. Even when that person’s dad goes to the embassy to warn us about his son. Even when that person buys an airline ticket with cash and has no baggage.
Our government finds no trouble in turning all of its citizens into potential terrorists. It has no qualms about confiscating knitting needles from people who plan to pass the air time by knitting. They have no problem with taking even nasal hair scissors from old men and metal toys from children. The only thing they seem to have trouble with is taking the terrorists out of the equation even when they know exactly who they are. Our government has failed not the system they set up. and certainly not the normal everyday passenger.
We constantly react after the fact when it comes to threats. If the passengers on the panty bomber’s flight had followed the rules set down AFTER the fact the plane would have blown up because nobody would have been allowed out of their seats to stop the bomber. It was passengers, not Homeland Security that saved that flight.
Even the name “Homeland Security” gives me the creeps. It reeks of terms like “Fatherland, Final Solution and Peoples Police”. It means that we gave given up our freedoms for security and now have neither freedom nor security. The new American secret police we set up when we established the Homeland Security Department has done almost nothing to address the real problem — bad people from certain backgrounds filling specific PROFILES that do the terrorist acts.
The worst part in my opinion, isn’t the fact that our government looks more like a third world tin-pot dictatorship. It is the fact that airline passengers and everybody else, especially the media, has rolled-over and think all the new requirements are okay. If prisoners at Gitmo were required to sit still for hours with their hands on their knees we would be howling about how their rights have been abridged. It is okay though if we can’t even travel with the comfort of a blanket because the government security brain trust (the same one that can’t pick up a phone and talk among themselves) says that we are all suspects because it would be wrong search and suspect any group of people. Political correctness has surpassed what was written about by Orwell.
Justice should be sure and swift for terrorists. United States citizens should not put up with having to be scanned to the point of nudity in order to travel through their own skies. I am sorry but a guy who just burned his nuts off with a bomb in his underwear isn’t a “suspected terrorist” or an “alleged bomber”. He is the guy. He is the one who had the explosives in his pants. He should be shot with a pork laden bullet within twelve hours of his conviction and his body should be sent back to Nigeria and put on display.
This has to stop. Everytime we allow these animals to add to our flight security rituals we lose. Every extra minute spent going through security for American Citizens, every extra security pat down and every TSA Gestapo tactic means that the animals are winning. They are winning because in our quest to be politically correct and nice we keep forgetting that we are at war and the murdering animals out there are for real. They can be found and they can be killed. It is time for us to stop rooting through grandma’s bra at bogus security check-points and get on with the business of making the retribution for terrorist acts against the United States so horrible and unthinkable for the perps that they become physically ill at even thinking of doing them.
Pandering to seventh century wack a doodles is getting us nowhere.
Terrorist making BOOM-BOOMs in his Underwear…
A vastly different way of me doing this blog is about to emerge. I plan to take on a whole new way of looking at this thing and begin writing more of what I think and much much less of what I think you want to read.
You see, most professional writing organizations talk about, write about and most important, blog about how important it is to promote yourself through your blog. In addition to your bloggage, you really should twit at leat a hundred times a day and if you still have time (and your fingers haven’t gone into a permanent cramp) you should do linkedin stuff as well.
I have followed that particular white rabbit down that particular hole for too long. It may work and for some writers it may sell literally grillions of books, but for me it is a major pain in the butt and it makes me feel about as artistic as a person who wears an Arby’s sign out on the highway to gather in traffic for the sale of rubbery beef sandwiches.
Won’t do it anymore — Promise. I will write, from time to time, things I am thinking about the world of aviation and other parts of the world that interest me. Read it. Don’t read it. I don’t care. Go to my website: http://www.kevincreates.com or don’t. I am cool with it. If you like what I write you could always hire me to help you with your creative projects and ideas. I would like that. I have been spending money ane eating since I was very young and would love to continue to eat and spend.
There. That housekeeping chore is done and I can finally write about people who carry bombs in their skivvys — Literally, “BOOM BOOMs in their UNDERWEAR”. That’s right — I am using all caps when I want to.
I can write installments on this blog thing wondering just how much the flying public will endure before they say enough! and stop traveling by air. Personally, when they won’t let me go pee during the last hour of a nine hour flight they have crossed a very big line in the sand. Plus, now the terrorists will just set off their BOOM-BOOMs over the ocean instead of over Dearborn Michigan.
We’ll get into more important stuff later. For now, please consider subscribing to this blog. I have a lot to say and am about to start saying it.
