Incognito

I'm at my desk checking NOTAMs while my co-worker pops out for a quick Tim Horton's run before boarding. Seconds after he leaves, I hear footsteps on the stairs again. Thinking he has forgotten his keys or something, I start to say, "That was the quickest Tim Horton's run ever," but it's not someone I recognize. He works for the company next door.

He says, "Oh, not one of your pilots. Do you know where he has gone?"

It takes me a moment to parse this. The first sentence makes perfect sense, because I'm the chief pilot here, so a pilot working for this company is in some sense "my" pilot. But why does he want to know where my non-pilot co-worker has gone, or even know that he exists? Then he continues with why he's here, and my understanding cuts in. In his eyes I am not a pilot. I am a woman working at a desk. The possibility that I am the pilot he seeks has not even crossed his mind.

The guy who is now on his way to Timmy's towed the aircraft out to an inappropriate position, and it is blocking the egress of another airplane that is ready to depart. I apologize and leap up to help move it, but he says that's okay, he has a co-pilot. With my permission they will push it back a few metres. About a minute later their assistant chief pilot comes in with the same complaint, but he knows who I am. I grab a reflective vest and go out to the ramp even though I know it's handled.

I suppose I could choose to be offended or outraged that some twenty-something (who is inexplicably wearing a toque even though it's about twenty degrees now and will go up to thirty by the afternoon) has a concept of "pilot" that does not include people who look like me. On the broader scale, there are huge problems in a society when people's concept of "law-abiding citizen," "person suitable for employment," "person worthy of respect as a human being," and "potential friend" arbitrarily exclude huge swathes of the population, but today I will just be amused by my own power of invisibility.

Free the FAA

This article, Free the FAA, came across my desk today and I felt compelled to tell its author, through talking to my monitor, that almost everything related to air travel is a matter of air safety. Unionization gives workers the power to say no to unsafe working conditions or to refuse to sign off inadequately repaired aircraft, because the union can protect them from retribution. Disputes of any kind are a source of stress and intra-workforce friction, a documented factor in accidents. I don't think there is any community in the contiguous United States for which subsidized air service is an essential service, but if it were, the provision of such service would be a safety issue, because left to the free market, communities that the larger airlines found uneconomical to serve would be served instead by the sort of company that undermaintain and overinsure their aircraft, so that a hull loss results in an upgrade.

By Edward L. Glaeser THE FEDERAL Aviation Administration does a fine job at its main duty - making air travel safe. But it’s is also involved with a lot of things it shouldn’t be, from disputes about unionization to subsidies for rural airports. If Americans want to keep flying safely, Congress must free the FAA from obligations unrelated to preventing accidents. The agency got back to work recently after a two-week, politically charged shutdown that had nothing to do with safety. To continue some operations related to planning and maintaining airports, the FAA needed new authorization from Congress. But the Senate initially balked at a House plan that also capped "essential air service" subsidies to rural airports at $1,000 per passenger. Some Senate Democrats also opposed a House plan that, by reversing a pro-union ruling last year by the National Mediation Board, would make it harder for workers on airport projects to organize.

I'm not saying there aren't gross inefficiencies and waste in the FAA giving opportunities for cost savings without loss of function. It's a government body, and one attached to the very large government of a traditionally rich country, so that's to be expected. But it's very difficult to draw a circle around "safety" functions yet exclude some aspects of air travel oversight.

What Do You Mean, One Way?

All the BC work was done in one fell swoop, and just as well because it's cloudy the next day. I'm flying back to Alberta via a little airport in the north where we have an assignment. It will be an IFR flight to the area and then VFR work in the area, so I must file a composite flight plan, a combination of IFR and VFR. This is allowed for in Canada, because flights leave urban areas IFR then continue VFR to remote destinations or even more needed the reverse, where an aircraft departs a northern area VFR, maybe on amphibious floats off a lake, then flies south to where radar coverage begins, climbs onto an airway and picks up an IFR clearance into a urban area. The box for flight plan type allows four choices: V, I, Y or Z. V is for VFR, I is for IFR and the other two are for composite plans. If the first leg is IFR, the composite plan is a Y, and if the first leg is VFR, the composite plan is a Z. You can switch back and forth more than once during a flight, but the letter still designates the first leg. I remember this because if the legs IFR, VFR are in alphabetical order, then you get the first letter, Y, but if they are in reverse alphabetical (V then I) then you file the last letter of the alphabet, Z. Not terribly clever, but if you have an operational need for composite flight plans it can save you looking it up again.

I filed out eastbound on V304, the closest to going in my direction and then when I ran out of airways pointing in the direction of my destination, and the terrain got a little lower, direct the destination. I picked up my departure clearance, but then before I taxied out ground called back and said that IFR flight planning wanted to talk to me. I have, apparently, filed eastbound on a one-way airway. Weird. I don't remember those from any part of my flight training. There is nothing I saw on the chart on the chart to indicate that it is westbound only. I ask the IFR flight planning guy, who reroutes me around to the south, how I should have known. He says I should have consulted the preferred routes in the CFS.

Now that makes no sense. If I am going between two centres that get a lot of traffic, or if I'm generally going in the direction someone on such a trip would take, I consult the preferred routes. But there isn't even an airway going to or in the direction of my destination. You'd have to be psychic to divine that V304 was not for use of eastbound traffic just from the fact that it wasn't the preferred route to Calgary or Edmonton. I accept my amended, detouring clearance and depart as advised, accepting vectors all over the place before finally being cleared direct to "maintain one fife tousand while in controlled airspace." You have to read back the "while in controlled airspace" part too, I guess to acknowledge that you are heading out into the great green beyond. (Canadian IFR charts colour regions of uncontrolled airspace green on the charts).

I have two radios on board, but one of them I have been advised not to transmit on, because ATC always complains about the readability. I monitor ATIS on that radio, or monitor the current ATC frequency when I'm using the talking radio to call flight services for something. Every once in a while, maybe two or three times in twenty flights, the receive button for COM1, the listening-only radio, somehow gets activated and I'll be listening to whatever ATIS or other frequency I have up there. I try to unpress the receive button for COM1 but it won't work and I have to reactivate COM2 in order to get it to go away. I guess I must be reaching for something and hitting the wrong button, but I'm never conscious of having done it. Maybe it's because I'm wearing gloves against the cold.

We climb up to altitude and level off over the clouds. I trim out the airplane, set the power up for cruise and finish off the rest of my cruise checks, then get really decadent and put on the autopilot. The autopilot is good not just for giving me a rest from flying, but for freeing up my mind and hands to do other checks. I pull out my pulse oximeter and clip it on the end of my finger. It freaks some people out the first time I offer it, because they assume something that will check their blood oxygen level is going to take their blood, and they don't want to put their finger inside. But it just shines a light through your fingernail and looks at the colour. The problem is that right now it's reading an oxygen saturation level of 79% for me, and that's not right. I have the operator reset my connection to the system and I'm quickly back up into the nineties where I should be. You really can't tell when you're hypoxic until your visions starts to go. It's worse than being drunk, where you usually have a clue. Like being drunk, even if you do notice, you lose the ability to make good decisions about it. As the oxygen mask manual explains, you may decide that you always wanted blue fingernails.

We clear the last of the mountains and reach the Alberta area where we have work to do. I say the magic words "cancelling IFR" and then we're left alone to fly lines under visual flight rules. The operator says the camera is fine, despite our transit through clouds. I don't know why sometimes a single wisp is a threat and at other times half an hour of solid IMC isn't. Maybe it depends on his level of hypoxia. We fly back and forth in really straight lines until that project area has been completely photographed, and I land at a little airport where we can get the fuel pump activation code by giving a credit card number over the phone. We fill up there and I file another flight plan for some higher altitude work. The heater works, but we hardly need it today, both because it's significantly warmer (yay!) and because we're shut down by the daytime cumulus we call popcorn clouds, for their ability to suddenly pop up and cover the area in white spots.

We're right overhead where he wants to land, so I do a shuttle descent, back and forth with tight turns on the ends, like the weft in a loom, because shuttle is named for the instrument a weaver uses to send the weft back and forth through the threads of the warp, to make cloth. Vehicles that go back and forth--be it from the hotel to the airport or from the airport to outer space--are called "shuttles" after the weaver's back and forth shuttle, but the etymology goes full circle because the name of the weaver's shuttle derives from the Old English scytel "a dart, arrow," and from the same root as shoot. The back and forth motion and the turning and the heat makes the operator sick. I feel badly because another human being is miserable, partly attributable to what I am doing, but there is nothing really that I can do, except put the airplane safely on the ground.

Once there, we park at the fuel pumps and then become the centre of attention from two pilots in a King Air 200. They are on one of those missions where you fly your people somewhere and you wait patiently and they are bored enough that two people they haven't met yet is a fascinating diversion. We all share a cab, us to our hotel and them to a café nearby. The cab driver delights in showing us the spot where a drunk driver went off the road at 150 km/h or so. You take your excitement where you can in a small town.

We go shopping and can't find sick bags available, so we improvise with plastic freezer bags tucked into brown paper lunch bags. Tomorrow's mission is in airspace that I'm told we have permission to operate in, but it's marked on the charts as military restricted airspace Monday to Saturday, with hours, other times by NOTAM. I call the number listed in the Designated Airspace Handbook for the controlling agency, and speak to a very polite but unambiguous and emphatic young man who absolutely cannot give me permission to operate there. He's forceful, but not in the least rude. Even as I am frustrated, I am admiring. The Canadian military has taught him this, and this is exactly the way I like to think my country's soldiers are enforcing the rules wherever they are deployed. If you can be this verbally clear without being demeaning, then nobody needs to get shot, but it's also perfectly clear that while this young man lacks the authority to give me permission to cross the line, he does not lack the firepower to stop me from crossing it by any means necessary.

Clipboard security woman, if you remember her from last year, could really use the training this man has received. And I don't just mean that she should be made to take off her silly shoes and march around in the heat or cold for days carrying heavy objects, although I'd be happy to know she was subjected to that, too. She would greatly benefit from training in giving clear definite prohibitions while being perfectly polite and respectful. I would be happy to be that good at it as a captain. I thank the soldier and ask him how I can get in touch with someone who has the authority to give that permission. I have to call back in the morning to get someone. So I will.

---

I'm not going to mention shuttles for nothing. Did you see this picture showing the same father and son watching the first and last space shuttle launches? It's a little daunting to realize that I've lived through the whole era of the space shuttle. What's next?

Brightline on the Flight Line

My first flight bag was actually an insulated lunch bag that my flight school sold me with the headset. The insulation served as padding and there was a pocket on the side into which I could cram sunglasses or charts. I later graduated to a laptop bag, which was good for charts, but didn't hold the headset. I tried using a document case like the big airline pilots carry, but my cockpit didn't accommodate it. I now use a messenger bag leather messenger bag I bought at a Danier sale. It has lots of pockets which although not perfectly suited to the things I carry, I now am accustomed to navigating to find my stuff when I need it. It's tough and looks good, and the leather feels nice. Animals definitely are made out of excellent stuff.

When I fly single pilot, I put my bag in the copilot seat and secure it with its own strap, then open all the pockets that contain things I need in flight. An additional pocket contains things that I won't necessarily need in flight but which I could need if I'm stranded somewhere I didn't expect to go on this flight: a change of underwear and socks and my cellphone charger. One tends to use one's cellphone a lot during irregular operations.

You could fly with your stuff in a Spider- Man backpack from Zellers and you would probably be able to dig most of it out when you needed it, but it's nice to have something that looks professional and that both protects your gear and makes it more accessible. There do exist bags designed specifically as flight bags. A reader sent me a link to a YouTube clip featuring the Brightline bag. They've clearly put a lot of thought into it.

The Brightline bag does solve a few common flight bag problems. My headset is the same size as the blue one in the demo so it doesn't fit in the little end pocket on many flight bags. I do like the water bottle pocket and the dedicated spare battery pocket, and having it break in half.

At $US 129.00, it's quite expensive for a bag, but it's not out of the ball park for flight bags. I don't know about the material or how durable it is. Will the pens poke holes in the little pen pocket? Does it stand up to catching on the sharp metal bits at the edge of the fuel selector panel? I like how compact it is, and they may be right that it does the job of bigger bags, becaue my bag is not stuffed full. But an advantage to having a larger bag is that I can stuff my sweatshirt and a couple of books in it, whereas if I wanted to add that much to the Brightline book, it wouldn't fit. If I felt my current bag were worn out, I'd definitely consider this bag, but I'm happy enough with the leather one to keep it until it gets ratty.

When I searched my inbox to find the name of the reader who sent me the link, so I could credit him or her, I found insteada message from the manufacturer, offering me a commission if I were to sell any bags. I had archived that message probably without even reading it, because I don't advertise on the site. But then I thought: as I'm going to post about this bag anyway, if someone was going to buy it anyway, then what's the harm in having them buy it from this site and have some of the money go towards building houses for Cambodians? So if you like this bag enough to buy it, do it by clicking the link below.

BrightLine Bags for Cambodia

I eventually realized that I didn't find the original message because it came to my personal mailbox, not my Cockpit Conversation one, because this reader is also a former student who figured out long ago who I was, and thus knows my real e-mail address. He doesn't have a blog, but I can tell you he once took a little Cessna out and overflew a prison, inside a charted restricted area, but didn't get in trouble, because he asked permission of the proper authority first. It was a ballsy little demonstration that that's how the system works.

Attitude Does Not Equal Authority

The next day there is no delay. I wake, eat breakfast and go. Today I add two litres to the left engine and one to the right. You can tell we're getting close to maintenance when the oil consumption increases, but I haven't burned that much since yesterday. I'm putting more in than what is required just to replace what was there yesterday. A greater amount of oil will, I hope, amortize the cooling job across more oil so I won't need to use the cowl flaps so much. I text my fellow pilot to ask him if he can buy some more oil today. We're almost out. I clean the windows, give a straightforward briefing to a person who my instincts say would not appreciate the silly one, and we go fly.

We're just five hundred feet below the clouds, working fairly near the airport. A little Cessna takes off and joins us up here too. I later looked it up by its registration and learned that it's a privately owned C150 registered to two owners, one in Dawson Creek and one in nearby Pouce Coupé. I wonder who they are, not living together, different last names, but sharing an airplane. Every time the pilot position reports, she is much lower than us, and having recently been in a C150 I think that's because she doesn't want to take the time and trouble to climb this high. They land after perhaps an hour. Probably she was just up for a joyride.

We fly over Pouce Coupé and kill a few minutes trying to decide how to pronounce it. I think it retains close to the French pronunciation (it means "cut thumb") and rhymes with Moose Toupée, but for all we know it rhymes with Mouse Poop. After six or seven hours of equally inane conversation we are overhead the airport ready to land. "Down in six minutes," I tell the FSS guy, and my touchdown is six minutes and six seconds later. My sense of victory is brief, because I flub the flare glancing inside to check my time accuracy. Dork. Smooth landings require follow through.

After I exit the runway I stop on the apron and set the parking brake. As I wait for all the equipment to be shut down properly in the back, I text my flight follower and discover that I am to fly to another destination right away. Then I get a call from the other pilot saying that he will do the flight, to avoid giving me an overlong duty day in case there's a long hold. He's probably been awake for almost as long as I have, but I don't argue because he didn't fly yesterday at all. And his duty day has probably only just started, He may have been napping all morning. I taxi to the fuel pumps.

There are a couple of people standing in the "secure area" square outside the terminal, and some small pieces of furniture possibly symbolically blockading it. I pull around the outer boundary of the square and park at the pumps. There's a guy there in ear defenders, reflective vest, etcetera and as the mission specialist disembarks ear-defender guy asks him how much fuel we are taking. I hear "You'll have to ask the pilot" so I come out and tell him 700-800 litres, but I want to check with the pilot of the next flight first. He's on his way, so I'll start fuelling while I wait for him to arrive. The guy asks me if I want 100LL or jet and I tell him 100LL and then get out my credit card to activate the pump while he unfurls the hose. He tells me that a Hawkair plane is coming in for fuel too.

"Do you work for Hawkair?" I ask.

He gives an answer that I don't remember verbatim but that was roughly equivalent to "I work for you too." It's not uncommon for the operator of a self-serve pump to provide fuel service when he's around, especially when the pump is busy, so this isn't incredibly irregular. I turn on the pump once the credit card has been verified, and he pumps fuel. He momentarily knocks the nozzle out of the tank and sprays fuel all over the wing. Some pilots freak out about this sort of thing, but it's probably about 30 cents worth of fuel. "It happens," I say, to let him know I'm not fuming at him. He puts the nozzle back in the tank and I open the other tanks I want filled. I tell him that I will be right back. After seven hours in a plane, the sound of rushing fuel is not conducive to continued bladder control. I can also see the other pilot approaching from about 30 metres away, so he'll be here to say what fuel he wants before this tank, which I know he wants, is full. I wave to the approaching pilot and head towards the terminal.

I can see the Hawkair on its landing rollout, as I recall it was a small Dash-8. At this point there's a number of people on the ramp in high visibility clothing and ear defenders, plus a woman in a skirt. She's the only one who isn't visibly doing something, so I ask her, over the roar of the turboprop taxiing in, if she knows if it's okay if I cross the yellow square to the terminal without a badge. She says yes, but I won't be able to get out, and I say yes I know. I have the code. I bolt for the toilet. That done, I go out the groundside door, around the building to the codelocked side gate, dial in the code and jog back to my airplane. The person who was fuelling is now gone, the pump turned off and the fuel nozzle left propped in an open tank, and a number of people, including skirt woman, are glaring at me. "There was someone here fuelling me when I left!" I say by way of apology, and take the nozzle out of the tank so I can restart the fuel pump without risking it ricocheting out.

"It's self-serve fuel!" she says. True, and I have no idea why the guy was helping me, but he was. And my coworker should have arrived to take over before he had to flee. Then I realize that he is at the pumps, but skirt woman has him cornered, as she is chewing him out for walking in between the Hawkair and the terminal. "It's a SECURED airplane," she tells him. "It's going to VANCOUVER!" In fact she's so busy chewing him out that I think she failed to see me do exactly the same thing moments ago. I thought she meant I wouldn't be able to get out again because I wouldn't be able to get back through the CATSA people to exit the terminal, not that I wouldn't be allowed back in the yellow square.

The Hawkair turboprop is now parked behind our airplane and although the Jet A hoses reach it in that position, they can't start fuelling until I'm done, because the keypad that controls both tanks is shared. If she would stop hassling my co-worker we could get out of the way faster. My coworker rekeys the fuel pump and we finish fuelling while everyone glares at us. I mean WHAT? Sure the Dash-8 is bigger than me, but there's no reservation system for the pumps. I was here, pumping fuel before it even landed, and so there's no way I can be accused of having cut in front. If there is some reason why it should have priority, the young man with the reflective vest could have told me to push off and wait. Yes, it does take a while to fuel my airplane. But it probably takes a while to fuel a Dash-8 too, and we're departing immediately to Edmonton, with the pilot's duty day ticking. We have every right to be here. We ignore the glares and chat about how he didn't have a chance to buy more oil yet, but it's available at the airport, and how we should get badged so we don't get hassled for doing our jobs. Skirt woman (who wears absolutely no symbolic or official badge of authority, not even a reflective vest or a clipboard) says it wouldn't make any difference. No one is allowed to go between the airplane and the terminal. It's SECURED! Because it's going to VANCOUVER. We remain unimpressed. We've both been to Vancouver.

When I get to the last tank, I give my coworker the nozzle to finish fuelling so that I can remove my gear from the airplane and let him get on his way. I leave the key on the floor inside the rear boarding door and tell him that. Everything done, I wish him a good flight, pick up my bags and the in-flight garbage and very carefully go around the Dash-8, outside the magic yellow square, not between it and the terminal. At no point during my transit am I any closer to the Dash-8 than I was while I was at the fuel pumps. When I re-emerge to her view on the other side, skirt woman comes over to yell at me.

"You're not supposed to be there! If Transport Canada were here ... This airplane is SECURED to go to VANCOUVER!"

I gesture at where my feet are. "I'm not inside the yellow square." I resist the temptation to touch it with my toes.

She says it doesn't matter, that the nearest I'm allowed to be, "is .. is .. there!" while gesturing vaguely westward. She may be pointing at a distant maintenance hangar. It is not clear. She says I need to be escorted if I go anywhere. I literally throw up my hands. "Escort me" I say in exasperation.

"Where do you want to go?"

"A FOD bin."

She doesn't know what that is, but one of the rampees does and gestures for her. She escorts me to a big yellow drum and I throw out my in-flight garbage, and then continue past to the exit gate.

I am in general a law-abiding, cooperative person. I have read all the NOTAM and posted signs for this airport and I have worked at airports large and small all over North America. I was actively trying to comply with the security protocol. Moreover skirt woman had ample opportunity to explain her particular security rules. I initially approached her for instructions. Then she stood around and glared at me for five minutes or so while I pumped gas. She could have spent that time explaining her rules. The aren't the same at every airport. I have had many cordial conversations with security people as I stood just outside the magic yellow square. I was willing to grant her the authority to dictate limitations. Just tell me lady, please, what I may not do; tell me what I need to do. I'm not cowed by the mere presence of an airplane bigger than mine, so without further instructions it's business as usual. She did nothing to indicate what procedure I must to follow in order to respect the "secured airplane," until the third time I crossed the ramp.

Sigh. She probably hates that aspect of her job, and doesn't really like confronting people, so that by the time she does she becomes bitchy and ranting. And now I'm bitchy and ranting, too. My customer also ran afoul of her, but because he didn't have to be on the ramp he just fled to his truck until I was done. We go to Canadian Tire on the way back and rant to each other about the difference between authoritative and bitchy. I buy a flashlight to replace the broken one in the airplane. As we leave we notice the "secure" Hawkair taking off. My customer notes snidely that no one is clinging to the tail, and that's enough to snap me out of my rant.

I finally have a chance to get those groceries I've been needing, at a chain supermarket across the street from the hotel. The appearance of the produce section is a bit of a shock. There is hardly any green, and what there is, is rotten. There are paved roads coming in here, but I guess I'm further north, culturally speaking, than I thought. Despite the paucity of produce, I'm so hungry that most other things look good, and I buy a bunch of stuff I shouldn't. The produce truck pulls in just as I'm crossing the street back to the hotel. I hope they are bringing something fresh and green. Also I was so eager to escape from skirt woman that I completely forgot to hunt down that oil.

The customer calls to say that I have a 05:30 report tomorrow, so I eat some of my groceries and go straight to bed.

---

His Casket Was Almost Orange!

And here's an update too interesting to leave to the people who follow old comments. A few days ago I posted "His Casket is Actually Orange," a short blog entry on the passing of David Warren, inventor of the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder. His son, Peter Warren, stopped by the comments, and fortunately father and son share a great sense of humour because Peter answered the blog's flippant questions with both a link to a picture of the coffin (apparently they did consider painting it orange, but went with plain wood), adorned with messages from family, the words "Flight Recorder Inventor: Do not Open," plus his actual last words. "I was a lucky bastard."

I love it. I've never seen anything like it in Canada. Everyone is going to die eventually and I think there's a lot to gain in admitting humour and personality to the last rites.

Why Are You Surprised?

I have previously blogged about discontinued satellite monitoring of 121.5 MHz and the ever-retreating deadline for Canadians to switch to 406 MHz ELTs. In that entry I mentioned that Canada was hoping the Americans would require the new emergency beacons first, so that they would make cheap ones and we could afford them. A better reason is probably so that they wouldn't have to decide between making an exception to the rule for American tourists, or losing the tourist revenue when Americans refused to by a new piece of equipment just to overfly Canada.

Curiously, it isn't the FAA (the U.S. agency that regulates aviation) or the NTSB (the U.S. agency that investigates accidents and makes safety recommendations) that have made the move. It's the Federal Communications Commission, the agency that regulates "interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable." These are the guys that decide who gets to broadcast on what frequency, and the ones who spent hours scrutinizing television footage of Janet Jackson's naked breast. On June 1st the FCC released this document. The ELT ruling is in sections 16 to 19 starting on page ten. It says, in part:

After reviewing the comments, we conclude that we should prohibit the certification, manufacture, importation, sale or continued use of 121.5 MHz ELTs. We believe that if 121.5 MHz ELTs are no longer available, aircraft owners and operators will migrate to 406.0-406.1 MHz ELTs, and the advantages of 406.0-406.1 MHz ELTs will provide safety benefits for search and rescue teams as well as aircraft pilots, crew and passengers, while also preserving search and rescue resources for real emergencies.

The American Pilots and Owners Association immediately opposed the new rule, objecting to the sudden cost it would impose on their members. My reading is that the FCC didn't consider existing installations of ELTs to be use, and weren't actually intending to make it illegal to fly with an old ELT. If they really meant to forbid flight without a 406 MHz ELT, then why would they use words like "believe" and "migrate"? Remove the word "use" and I think it would be a pretty clever solution. You don't need to buy a new ELT until you need to buy a new ELT. And I think anyone who needed to buy a new ELT these days would most likely buy a 406 MHz one anyway. Wouldn't you?

Dead: Two in the Cockpit, Four in the Cabin and One Far Away

This accident investigation tells a sad tale. It's not just the story of an airplane that had some kind of problem after takeoff. The crew consisted of a results- (as opposed to safety-) oriented maverick chief pilot and what the NTSB terms an "ill-prepared" first officer. They explain that term only in stating that the company gave inadequate checkrides, but one can imagine he or she was new, got less actual training than the company records stated, hadn't been required to demonstrate an ability to fly the airplane unassisted, and did not operate in an environment where he was given the opportunity to absorb an understanding of two crew teamwork.

They take off, and something happens that makes control of the airplane difficult. It might be runaway trim, the autopilot misbehaving: the investigators don't know. As soon as this happens, the pilot who notices, probably the flying pilot needs to articulate the problem to the other pilot, even if they aren't quite sure what is wrong. "I can't hold the nose up!" "The trim is freaking out!" "I'm holding full left rudder to keep it straight." The flying pilot needs to continue flying the airplane, concentrating on keeping the airplane right side up, clear of obstacles and with an appropriate heading and airspeed. If it's an emergency for which there is an aircraft checklist, there will be a call for that, e.g "runaway elevator trim emergency checklist," and the correct aircraft configuration, procedures (and exactly what the pilots say to one another) may be specified right in the checklist with the first few steps committed to memory. If it's something outside the checklist, well that's why pilots learn how their airplanes work, so they can make reasonable decisions.

Usually any relevant checklists are followed exactly, but if there are extenuating circumstances and where the crew hasn't yet determined what is going on, the captain makes the final decisions. But the division of labour is fixed: one crew member flies the plane, and the other one does other stuff. For this reason the captain often gives control to the FO in an emergency, because anyone can fly a plane, I mean really, you could. I tell you "you have control. maintain 140 knots, three thousand feet, on this heading, and you're going to have to exert about 10 kilograms of back pressure to keep the nose up." If the FO has toothpick arms, then the captain may make a different decision, but someone has to be flying the airplane. They shouldn't both be trying to find a circuit breaker any more than they should both be working on their laptops.

There are many events like the one the NTSB describes that led to this fatal accident that are non-events, because a crew manages the situation professionally and returns to the airport to get it fixed. The "we don't know what happened, but they should have handled it better" vibe is a little harsh here. After all, if they don't know what happened who says that the crew didn't manage it in a flawless textbook manner, but it was more than human beings could handle? The dead, ex-drug runner captain has already shown a disregard for the law and others' safety, so he's an easy mark on whom to pin the blame.

Also do you see what they are doing regretting the absence of cockpit video monitoring? Every time they say "too bad there was no video recording," they are angling for video monitoring of our workplace. YouTube of the future will be a more grizzly place.

And finally, the fact that their cargo includes a human transplant organ, introduced extra pathos for me. Had there been five in the cabin instaed of four it would have made no difference to me, but I imagine someone's cellphone ringing that afternoon, with the joyous news that a matching donor organ had been found. That person grabbed an overnight bag and went straight to the hospital, or perhaps they were already in hospital, knowing a transplant was their last chance at life. They were prepped for the operation, and then received the news that the organ wasn't going to arrive after all. And the loved ones of the donor were hoping to hear news that their deceased family member's organ had helped someone else to live. Instead they learn that six people died transporting it, and the organ became fish food.

The NTSB investigation report from which I have inferred all this melodramatic speculation is here.

---

Yesterday Cirrocumulus pointed out that the aviation industry "needs objective research into effective ways of keeping boredom at bay and humans alert while they're just monitoring safety-critical machinery. At present the humans are between the rock of forbidden pastimes and the whirlpool of stupefaction." I liked this by itself, and then Aluwings took up the standard to outline some of the strategies employed. I laughed at his post because I have done and seen similar ones. Never met the UFO guy, though.

When Is a Tower Not a Tower?

I've been getting some questions in comments lately about airport control towers. This post is about air traffic services at Canadian airports, from a pilot's perspective. The controllers and specialists themselves might describe it differently.

First off, the ultimate authority regarding runway selection, wake turbulence separation, altitude of flight and everything else about the flight rests with me, the pilot. I am required to follow any air traffic control instructions which I accept, but if an air traffic controller clears me to do something illegal, and I do it, I still get in trouble for it. If a controller instructs me to do something dangerous and I do it, I still die. Next, any pilot is capable of navigating from any airport to any airport without the assistance of air traffic control. Any pilot, from the student pilot on his first solo, right up to crew of an Air Canada jet coming across the Pacific from Japan, knows how to safely finish a flight with no radio at all. Many flights are conducted every day in Canada in aircraft that are not radio-equipped. Air traffic services greatly increase the safety and efficiency of air travel, in much the same way that traffic lights increase the safety and efficiency of the highways.

Look up any Canadian aerodrome in the Canada Flight Supplement (CFS) and you will find at least one of the following. (You could find more than one if for example the control tower closed at night leaving either an FSS or a MF).

• a tower
• a flight services station (FSS)
• a mandatory frequency (MF)
• an aerodrome traffic frequency (ATF)
• the aerodrome is not listed at all

If there is a tower frequency listed in the CFS, there is probably also an ATIS and ground frequency and could be more frequencies for clearance delivery, outer tower, different areas of the ground, and so on. Call any of these frequencies and you are speaking to someone sitting in a physical tower overlooking the airport. They may not have a clear view of the whole thing. They may be 1/8 SM in fog and see nothing out the window. It could be one person operating both the tower and ground frequencies. (I think in that case there would someone else in the break room getting a coffee, and that at a Nav Canada tower no one works a solo shift, but I could be wrong).

If there is a tower, as there are at about forty Canadian airports, then a pilot starting up at that airport will request permission to taxi up to the edge of the runway and then report ready and wait for clearance to enter the runway and take off.

Fort McMurray Ground, GABC on the east apron, request taxi for VFR to Grande Prairie, six thousand five hundred.

GABC, McMurray Ground. Taxi runway 25 via alfa, call tower holding short of 25.

I acknowledge that, trundle up taxiway A to the line marking the edge of the runway and finish my checks before calling...

McMurray Tower, GABC ready 25 on alfa

GABC, cleared takeoff 25

I acknowledge that, and take off, if everything looks safe to me.

I left out some other things we would probably tell each other, but the basics are there. I ask for what I want, they give me instructions and clearances.

About fifty Canadian airports have an FSS but no tower. There may actually exist a raised structure with a good view of the field, and the flight services specialist may indeed sit inside it and look out at the airplanes going by, but when we say there is or is not a tower, we are referring to a tower frequency and the requirement to obtain clearances for movement. The reason I said "about forty" and "about fifty" is that towers and FSSes open and close according to need, so a tower that was occupied by air traffic controllers last year houses an FSS this year. Some FSSes don't have towers, just regular buildings, or even portables. If I want to go somewhere at a field with an FSS but no tower (even if the FSS guys are in a tall skinny building that used to be called a tower) I call the FSS and tell the specialist what I am about to do. An FSS is addressed with the call sign "Radio."

Grande Prairie Radio, GABC on the east apron, taxiing for VFR to Fort McMurray, five thousand five hundred.

GABC, Grande Prairie Radio. Active runway is 12. Traffic is a King Air landing 12 in two minutes.

I see the King Air touch down and go past the intersection. Everything looks safe, so I call..

ABC rolling 25.

Again I left out the FSS giving me the wind and altimeter setting. The difference is that the tower tells me what to do, and I decide if it's safe, while the FSS gives me information and I make a decision based on that. The line blurs of course, because the tower may offer me a choice and the FSS may give me a recommendation, but in the end I ask the tower but I tell the FSS. If I'm departing IFR into controlled airspace, the FSS gives me my IFR clearance.

At all the other airport, some of which may have tower like structures that used to house an FSS or control tower, but are now unoccupied, or used to store paint and frangible taxiway lights, I make calls to traffic. I make calls just like the ones I made to the FSS, but now I talk to "traffic" instead of "radio". There may or may not be anyone else listening to the traffic frequency. If there is, they will tell me if i pose a conflict. If the airport has an MF, then I have to have a radio, listen on the frequency and make appropriate calls. If the published frequency is just an ATF then if I have a radio I should make the MF-style calls, but aircraft using that aerodrome are not obliged to have or use a radio. And if the aerodrome is just a lake somewhere or someone's hayfield then I don't have to make calls, but I can, using the the standard aerodrome frequency of 123.2. In any of these cases there may be someone on the frequency who will give me information. The people who run the fuel truck may reply, e.g. giving me the wind direction and telling me that there's a NORDO ultralight doing left hand circuits on 34.

Whichever kind of airport you depart from, you can enter airspace controlled by terminal or centre controllers. They usually work in darkened rooms, sometimes in the same facility as a tower, so they can share infrastructure like maintenance and backup power. If I have an emergency I can report it to any ATC or FSS I am speaking to, and they will help me coordinate with other facilities to get vectors, firetrucks, whatever I need. Canada has excellent air traffic services, and they are hiring.

And for the pilot geeks: User Friendly. My cockpit overhead light isn't working, but I didn't ground the airplane, because it's light out enough all the time that I dont' need it.

Communications Failure

No, there's nothing wrong with the radio, and the headset hasn't undergone a final disintegration. It's my mouth. I can't seem to get communications right with this customer. I try to be really communicative, because that's one of my strengths. I can express myself, explain things, recognize information that will help people make decisions, and share it in a way that is relevant and understandable to them. I've never fallen prey to the desire for power through withholding information. Yay for me! But I keep telling these customers things that make them angry.

For example, I received a text from my company about our planned maintenance schedule. I called the customer to get his approval on that plan, and while there was nothing wrong with the plan, and we were willing to change it if there was, the customer was unhappy. I believe he felt ambushed because a mere pilot knew before he did. I should have waited until my boss told his boss and his boss told him, so he'd know in a day or so, instead of my getting the information to him as soon as possible.

It just seems wrong to me to have information that someone needs and wants, and that is intended for him anyway, but to be obliged to withhold it until it arrives through the proper channels.

It's not all cruising along above the mountains, joking with ATC and recalculating my fuel reserves.

This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb

Boing Boing lists a news story in which a band sticker on a bicycle shut down an airport. The name of the band is "This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb," and apparently it isn't the first time its appearance on an innocently parked bicycle has caused a bomb scare.

Everyone can appreciate that security at an airport has to be taken seriously, but it seems a little odd to base the alert level on the label. If a bicycle being a pipe bomb is a credible threat, restrict bicycle parking to a secure bunker. A bicycle sticker reading, "This bike is not a pipe bomb," wouldn't calm anyone down any. If I knew that there was one bike on the whole rack that was a pipe bomb, I'd expect it to be the one with the only stickers being the manufacturer's name and local registration. The words "pipe bomb" precipitate the security response. Not the credibility of the threat. It has been illegal for as long as I remember to make jokes or false statements about carrying dangerous items while at airport security, but this shouldn't be extended into making any statements about security or dangerous items while at airport security.

A car bombs makes a bigger bang than a bike bomb. I'd love to see a bumper sticker for cars reading "This could be a car bomb," but you know that instead of being taken as either a silly joke or a reminder to maintain constant vigilance, it would get you in trouble. They can be perfectly truthful statements, but if your t-shirt says "Some terrorists look like me" and there's a sticker on your computer saying "No explosive residue," you should probably be wearing underwear that says, "I knew I'd get strip searched today."

I'd buy that underwear, though.

And I'd need some new underwear were I forced to use this bicycle lane.

And finally, despite the really corny gaggle of geese, this animation of the US Airways landing in the Hudson River is very well done.

It Started With Telemarketers

Canada recently instituted a nationwide do-not-call list for telemarketers. Apparently the US Congress recommended such a thing fifteen years ago, but the final decision was to have individual telemarketers maintain their own do-not-call lists. That is fairly stupid, because there are so many companies that you'd never get on all the lists before one company folded and reemerged as another, quite possibly using its old do-not-call list as its new list of hot prospects.

Canada's new do-not-call list is equally stupid. There's a website you can go to in order to register your number(s) as do-not-call and any Canadian telemarketing company or foreign company making calls on behalf of a Canadian corporation is supposed to check their list against the registered do not call numbers and not call them. They can be fined $1500 for calling me anyway, so it sounds like something with teeth, but it disregards the fact the telemarketing is a scummy industry, and it's implemented in a stupid way.

Instead of being required to submit their call lists to be checked and pruned against a master list, the companies are required to buy the master list. That's right, telemarketing companies can buy a list of every Canadian who has asked not to be called by telemarketers. And the way the system works, the larger the company, the more they have to pay for the list. So of course what has happened is that little tiny companies open for the sole purpose of buying the list for cheap, and then selling it offshore where they can call me with impunity.

I got a call today, one of those machines calling. It told me that a friend had entered my name at the Bay or Zellers and that I had won a trip to Costa Rica. Now the Bay and Zellers are Canadian companies, and my friends are smart enough not to enter me in dubious contests, so I knew this was not above board. I pressed 1 to talk to a customer service representative. He had an impenetrable accent, so I couldn't understand his name, nor the name of the company calling when I asked for it. I think he may have made it deliberately unintelligible because when I asked him to spell it, he said for more information he would have to transfer me. Transferring is good, because the higher up the chain of command you get, the more of a nuisance you are able to be. In order to transfer me he wanted to know my name. I told him I wasn't giving him my name because he called me and therefore the onus was on him. He said he had to have my name to transfer me, so I told him sarcastically it was Jane Smith. He either didn't or chose not to recognize that as a default generic name and accepted it, but then wanted to know if I had more than $5000 in credit card debt. I told him I didn't give out that kind of information, just to transfer me please. He tried a few more times to get me to tell him. I told him the answer was Mu. He insisted on a yes or a no, and when I made it clear I wasn't giving it out, he hung up on me.

Scumbucket telemarketing company. This sort of thing is bad for my blood pressure or something, I'm sure. The *69 call told me that the call was from 616-980-2643 which is in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Their service provider is named Lucre but the company name is ex-directory. Michigan has do-not-call laws protecting Michigan consumers, but what can I do about it? Global telecommunications is such that every single country in the world would have to be signatory to a global death-to-telemarketers pact before do-not-call registries are of any use whatsoever. I can't screen my calls by number, because I get calls from all over and who knows when some pilot friend is calling from a hotel or an FBO in Grand Rapids telling me they are coming north and can I meet for lunch? And screening by always letting the machine pick up also causes you to miss important calls from people who want to talk to you now or not at all. I could solve this with technology, but it's not just about telemarketing.

While I was still fuming about this, a story came on the radio about a chemical plant in Canada that had been sold to someone in Edmonton who just walked away from the responsibility of the plant when the economy took a nosedive. No payroll no forwarding address no nothing. Because I live in a modern, responsible country, the government stepped in with an emergency order asking the workers to stay at work and make sure that the plant didn't just explode, or pump hazardous chemicals into the environment or become the incubation ground for a new Batman villain, or whatever happens to untended chemical plants. I'm not sure anyone knows. The government then tried to track down the owner of the company and apparently the trail ends in Slovenia.

That's the way the world is these days. I'm horrified to think of what is happening in countries with lesser ability to step in and deal with this kind of situation. A Canadian company could just walk away from responsibility in Zaïre and who is going to be able to do anything or even know? Someone knows, and with today's global communication I'm sure I could find dozens of such cases documented by concerned individuals, but how is anyone to distinguish real should-be-crimes from made-up stuff posted on the loony websites of whacko sky-is-falling nutjobs? And even if the whole world knows, who can prosecute or hold to account a numbered Uzbekistani company with investors listing addresses in Slovenia, Paraguay and Delaware? For countries that have environmental regulations, it would be possible to require, as part of the initial environmental permitting process for new facilities, the posting of a bond sufficient to safely close down production and clean up the area in the event of abandonment or catastrophe, but that would be a large amount, and the savvy investor would just build the facility in a jurisdiction with a more short-sighted desperation for jobs.

Anything that happens in the world affects the whole world these days. The working conditions and pay at your job may be cantilevered by unions and government regulations, but ultimately in the global economy it is dependent on what the most desperate person will accept. And that person can be anywhere in the world. We can't just fix our own countries. We have to fix the whole world to get this to work. How do you fix the whole world? Historically, the spread of law has followed conquering armies. I don't think conquering the world for freedom from telemarketers is the way to go here. More optimistically, manufacturing and environmental standards also spread by economic pressure. The kids who grew up in the Cold War had it good. They knew they'd be wiped out by the Bomb. Me, I can't figure out which worldwide disaster to be concerned about.

The telemarketing part had a happy ending. I called the Bay's customer service and they efficiently transferred me to a customer service rep who knew about the usurpation of the company's name and assured me that their loss prevention department was working with the relevant authorities to stop the telemarketers, who apparently were also fraudsters. I assume they are going to nuke them from orbit, so if you live in Grand Rapids, you should probably go out of town for the weekend. And if you comment on this blog entry, do take into account that the official Posterperson for Readers of Aviatrix's Blog is employed in the telemarketing business, so any comments demonizing all telemarketers will not be taken well.

The Final Nexus

I finally got home and got an appointment to be interviewed for the final stage in the Nexus Pass application. I went to the site listed on the website, only to find out that the website was wrong. They sent me to the correct site, and I arrived within seconds of the scheduled appointment time, where they looked for my name on a list, checked it off and sent me to sit and wait. The seats were the kind that bother my back, so I picked up a pamphlet, disobeyed instructions and stood around to wait.

It was kind of funny watching the guys in the office. American customs officers all carry guns, and it looks kind of silly when people are typing at computers, answering phones, rolling around on swivel hairs and reloading their staplers with Glocks strapped to their thighs.

I was called up to the desk after not too long, to be interviewed by a very young American customs officer. It was pretty informal. We didn't go into a separate room or anything, I just stood at the desk while he sat in a tall swivel chair on the other side. He had some very standard questions to ask, mostly the same questions that were on the online application and was genuinely interested in the answers. I ended up telling him how he might go about getting a pilot licence, but recommending against flying as a career. Customs officer doesn't look like a bad career. Maybe he was specially trained to be relaxed and natural so as to get truthful answers out of me, but I think he was simply enjoying talking to people as part of his job.

After a while another guy, with a Canadian uniform, came back from a break and sat next to my interviewer. "Oh hey," said my interviewer to him, "You can jump in and ask any questions you have any time." He then explained to me, "This is a joint interview. He's the Canadian." The Canadian told his colleague he trusted him and mostly just spectated amused.

One of the questions was "Have you ever been fingerprinted before?"

"No," I said. "Well, only at Disneyworld."

"Disneyworld?"

"Yeah, they scan your fingerprint on the way in and link a hash of the data to your pass, so you can't share it with anyone."

My interrogator was boggled. "Have you been to Disneyworld?" he asked the Canadian. He had. "Did you get fingerprinted?" He hadn't, but allowed that a lot might have changed there since 1983. "Heh," said my interviewer. "In 1983 I wasn't even born yet. My parents weren't even married, still working in the fields."

This must be the most human customs officer I've ever met. Did he miss the class on acting superior and aloof? The last name on his badge was Singh. Hundreds of East Indian immigrants come to the US and Canada to work as agricultural labourers. His parents were probably scrutinized and questioned by someone just like him, who might still work here. This kid was a genuine American immigrant success story. For over two hundred years people have been coming from everywhere in the world to the United States and becoming part of the nation. I think that's very cool. I wrote this before another dark-skinned immigrant's kid became the President-elect of the United States. Canada is like that, too, with our last two heads of state (Michaëlle Jean and Adrienne Clarkson) being non-white first generation immigrants. I think people should be evaluated on their own merit, not on where they come from.

On one basis or another, Officer Singh approved my application. He and the Canadian signed it, took my fingerprints electronically, took my picture and gave me lots of brochures to read about how not to screw up in the Nexus programme. I had to go to another office for the retina pictures, but they weren't scary at all, no different than having my picture taken normally.

Now I can zip back and forth across the border for work more easily.

If the Seat Fits

The Sup reme Court ruling that Air Canada, Jazz and WestJet must provide an extra airline seat free of charge to persons requiring an attendant or who do not fit in a single seat has engendered a lot of discussion, even in other countries. Most public comment I have seen agrees with the concession for an attendant, but has been incredulous or mocking over accommodating the obese. The latter part of the decision is unique.

In a way I have no opinion on this. (So why am I blogging about it, eh?) I can see plenty of arguments both ways and don't pretend to know more about the laws of the land than the judges who rendered this decision. I see some odd issues in application though. Will there be a box to check on the online booking form if you need to be accommodated in this way? If you're not big enough to require two seats, what happens if you say you are? Is Air Canada going to look at you and say, "I'm sorry sir, but you're not fat enough to have an extra seat without paying for it"? Are non-obese people going to claim that they are being discriminated against because they can't get extra hip and shoulder room for free? I don't think anyone in the "almost" category is crazy enough to gain twenty pounds in order to make the grade for an extra seat, but I just don't know, do I?

The reason I'm blogging on this issue at all is to pass on a comment made on the Airline Biz Blog by someone identified as Jenny. She says:

To say that you should not accommodate a disabled obese person because they got that way themselves is ignorant. Would you then not accommodate someone with cancer if they got cancer from smoking? Would you not make concessions for a quadriplegic because they took known risks in a dangerous sport and got injured? What if they were paralyzed while driving drunk? Where do you draw the line? Many disabilities are the result of poor judgement. Disabled is disabled.

This MSN article outlines four options the airlines could take to determine eligibility for an extra seat under the policy. They include from self-declaration (but the author seems confused about the benefit, because suggests that skinny people would declare to be obese in order to save money), a doctor's note, body mass index, and actual measurement by the airlines. They've had those baggage-sizing devices for years; I'm sure I'm not the only one who has joked about putting a butt-sizing device next to it. On January 10th it might be reality.

But please don't eat too much over the holidays. I don't think the extra seat is worth it.

Fun With the Constitution

As the entire planet knows, the USA recently had an election. A few of you also know that Canada had an election too. The US race will result in a change of governing party, but the handover won't occur until January when the president-elect will become the first US president with recent African ancestry. (I say "recent" because current science suggests that all our ancestors were Africans. It's just that some walked out long before recorded history, some were abducted, and some voluntarily emigrated). Meanwhile the Canadian election resulted in no change of Prime Minister, but now the party in power has only a minority of seats in the House. This blog entry discusses the current constitutional wrangling with respect to the Canadian government, which is a bit of a joke, and then a joke relating to the US constitution and their recent "historic election."

Canada first: When the ruling party in Canada is defeated in the House of Commons on a money bill or in a specific non-confidence vote, the Prime Minister has to go cap-in-hand to the Governor-General (the Queen's representative in Canada and our titular head of state) and ask for a decision. She can ask another party to form the government, call an election, or give everyone a timeout (prorogue). The PM can recommend a decision, and the GG usually abides by his recommendation, but she doesn't have to.

Last week a coalition of two parties, aided by a written agreement with a third stated its intention to vote against an important bill. The coalition has informed the Governor-General that they are prepared to form the government but the vote has been delayed because the GG granted the PM a prorogue. Meanwhile the ruling party, the Conservatives is casting disparagement on the opposing Liberals and NDP because they are allying with the separatist Bloc Quebecois. The Conservatives have a secret tape recording of advance planning of the coup. How do they have it? A member of the Conservative party was accidentally invited to a conference call on the subject, on account of having the same last name and a similar e-mail address to a Liberal MP. Meanwhile the Liberals have found an even older document proving that the Conservatives planned to do exactly the same thing if they were in the same position. Pundits are calling it a constitutional crisis, but it makes me laugh.

Politicians everywhere try to make their opponents look bad, and that's the theme of the US joke, a way that the Republicans could really tick off the Democrats. If George Bush were to resign before the inauguration, VP Dick Cheney would become president. Now that would annoy a lot of people, but here's the funny part. If Dick Cheney were to make Condolezza Rice his VP, and then resign himself, the Republicans could lay claim to the first African-American President of the United States.

By the way, the United States will be the third and last country on the continent to have a head of state who can trace ancestory to Africa. Mexico had the first in 1829 and Canada's Governor-General Michaëlle Jean is a first generation Haïtian immigrant.

I know I can trust you guys to comment on this blog entry without disparaging any of the candidates or the people who voted for them.

Psych Screening

This is an old story, with some new information about what happened when an Air Canada pilot became so mentally unstable during flight that the captain elected to have him forcibly removed from the cockpit. The captain made the PA announcement that amateur pilots' dreams are made of and the answer came from one of the flight attendants, a commercially licenced pilot with an expired IFR. She occupied the right seat for the remainder of the flight.

It's not unusual for flight attendants to be licenced pilots. For those already pursuing a career as a professional pilot, the job of flight attendant provides financing and acclimatization to the lifestyle. Flight attendants who didn't plan on becoming pilots are exposed to the environment, thus susceptible to the aviation addiction, and may be sucking into the vortex. I have known more than one person who has simultaneously been working as a commercial pilot on small aircraft and working as a flight attendant for a major airline. It's not clear whether the FA in this case had professional piloting experience or just a commercial pilot licence. Either way, she proved useful to the flight and they landed safely.

Air Canada has a rigid psychological screening programme as part of their interview process. I've actually spoken with an Air Canada recruiter who says that sometimes candidates the panel really likes and who score well in the simulator are rejected by the psych evaluation. The recruiters don't get to know what was "wrong" with the rejected candidates, but I wonder if the psych screening is selecting people who think just like the white males born in the 1950s who made up the airline when the ideal pilot profile was developed.

Events like this reflect the stress involved in the responsibility for a large airplane and trying to hold an aviation career together despite economic fluctuations, mergers, pay cuts and the risk of losing everything over a medical problem that would only be a minor blip in many other careers. And I can't help thinking that it's a tiny piece of vengeance for the people whose career progress was halted because they would or would not "like to see a film about an otter" or did or did not "prefer gardening to making wooden toys."

Oh and I asked Magic 8-Ball if I would be an airline pilot again and it told me You May Rely On It. I guess I should do something about that then, eh?

Edit: Reader Christopher provides a link to the report made by the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents in Ireland (where the flight landed). It shows that the captain didn't make an Airplane!-like call for pilots, merely asked an FA to check the manifest for company pilots, and gives some interesting details on the removal. The report commends the captain for his good CRM and professional actions, and also mentions that the FO's condition improved in hospital.

Next Comes the Chainsaw Test

In an attempt to test the physical security of aircraft parked overnight on the ramp at O'Hare, a TSA inspector climbed on top of nine different American Eagle airplanes, using the external Total Air Temperature probes as a foothold. Forty flights were delayed while mechanics inspected the sensors, which are required for proper function of cockpit instrumentation. More details are given in this article.

That was stunning enough when I heard about it, but not beyond the bounds of imagination when I consider the zealous actions of the TSA inspectors I encounter regularly. Someone hadn't informed this guy that an airplane is not a jungle gym but a very delicate piece of machinery. Despite the fact that it can travel at close to the speed of sound, it is easily damaged by applying force to the wrong parts of it. I imagined that he would have a little talking to, and a memo would go out, advising people not to climb on airplanes they are supposed to protect. At least now I know whom the instructions on a toothpick box are intended for.

But then I found out that there already was a memo. A memo encouraging TSA officers to attempt to enter aircraft parked on the ramp. Someone's model of airplane security is just wrong. These aren't tanks. They are designed to keep air pressure in, to resist small bird strikes, to be quickly evacuated in case of fire. They are not designed as idiot-proof fortresses. The TSA sees this action as akin to a security officer trying doorknobs. They don't see that it's more like the security officer kicking in windows. It's like someone hired as a bodyguard for a family came along and pushed all the kids off their bicycles, to see if they were tough. Well no, they're not. It is fairly easy to get into an airplane that is stopped on the ground, especially if you don't mind damaging it in the process. That's why we need security.

My aircraft is sitting locked on an unsecured (no fence) ramp right now. I'm glad there is no TSA security to 'check on it' for me.

US Post Office

I have to mail a package before my flight back to Canada today, but because of time zones I can't get the destination address until 9 a.m. So I'm in the post office, which opened at eight-thirty. I've already bought the postage, but the postmaster tells me that I can't just drop it in a mailbox because it weighs more than a weasel, and new regulations require anything weighing more than a weasel to be submitted to the mails at an actual post office. (He didn't use the word "weasel" but rather some reference to ounces, but I don't know ounces, except in the context that puts them in the same phylum as weasels, and "weasel" is a funnier word.)

My plan is to stand in line, letting people go ahead of me until I have completed the telephone call that gave me the correct mailing address, then just hand over the parcel and run back to the hotel so I'm not late for my flight. It's a good plan, but an unnecessary one, because this post office defies the stereotype about post office lines. There is never more than one other customer here.

I use my waiting time to examine the post office decor. Like Canadian post offices they have community notices, like a copy of the police blotter. (The post office wasn't in Grass Valley. I linked to that one because the blogger's commentary always makes me laugh). Of course the post office has rules. No parking for more than 18 hours at a stretch. No carriage of firearms. Photographs may be taken in in public areas, except where prohibited by official signs, security force personnel or other authorized persons, or a federal court order. Fascinating: that's official sanction of security personnel concocting arbitrary photography restrictions. Gambling at the post office is forbidden, with one curious exception: sale of state lottery tickets at vending facilities operated by licenced blind persons. I wonder if that's a licence to sell lottery tickets or a licence certifying that you are actually blind. Probably the former, but the wording makes it sound like the latter.

There's also a detailed list of the rewards available for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators of illegal mail-related activities. You can collect up to $100,000 for helping to solve a murder or bombing; $50,000 if the crime is assault, meter tampering, robbery or child pornography; and $10,000 if it's burglary or money laundering.

And I can pick up a form to fill out to buy a postal money order, to send money to another country. The fascinating thing is that there was one version of the form, a bilingual Spanish/English form, and the primary language is Spanish. The prompts telling you which information to put in each blank are printed first large and in Spanish, and then the English is given, small and in parentheses, underneath. Clearly the vast majority of American residents who send money to other countries without using bank wire transfers are from Latin America, but I didn't expect it to be so blatantly acknowledged on the form.

A couple of people come in to get free mailing boxes (cool!) and all-you-can-fit fixed price mailing boxes (really cool!) I asked about the latter, and yes, it doesn't matter how much you put in them. The postmaster said some people use them for mailing pennies. I guess uranium would be out, for other reasons, but you could mail lead weights and barbells around the country for a low fixed price. Awesome.

The postmaster is very cheerful and patient with everyone who comes in, and recommends ways people can save money on their postal needs. As each person gives him a parcel, he asks them if it contains any liquids, explosives or dangerous items. Everyone says no.

At 09:01 I completed my telephone call, got the address and handed over the parcel, pre-emptively stating that the parcel did not contain any liquids, explosives or harmful materials. I made my flight, and I understand that the parcel arrived safely.

Nothing To Do

My client calls me in my hotel room at nine this morning and says, "there's nothing for you to do today. You have the day off." I thank him, and assure him I'll have my cellphone with me if he needs anything, and smile to myself. Just because he has nowhere for me to fly today doesn't mean I have nothing to do. My day's to do list already includes:

• order nasal cannulas
• buy charts
• find out the contact person for permission to access restricted airspace
• find shop that can do 100 h mx check
• buy garbage bags
• send weekly paperwork to boss
• buy antiseptic wipes for the icky masks, pending the arrival of the cannulas (cannulae?)

But I'll let the client maintain the illusion that I'll do nothing all day.

It's quarter to twelve when I'm done the paperwork and finished all I can do in the way of maintenance and airspace related phone calls and e-mails. I log on to the Utah public transit website to find out when the next bus downtown is. They have the usual little app that allows me to tell it where I am, where I want to go and when, so I punch in that data, telling it I want to leave at noon. I figure I can walk to the bus stop by then.

The application comes back and tells me to board a bus at 11:46. That's now. I click on the route schedule to find out when the next one is. Over four hours from now. Hmm. Time for Plan B. It turns out that the business/church association runs a free shuttle from the airport to downtown, intended to lure travellers with long stopovers into the temple and/or local stores. And my hotel has a free shuttle to the airport. I combine these to good effect and am soon downtown, at Temple Square.

My last night's hosts had warned me that the free tour of the square was weak on history and long on religion, but I could stand to learn more about the local religion, so I attended. The tour guides were young women, missionaries who had signed up for an eighteen month mission anywhere in the world, and they found themselves in Utah. The tour had a little of the aspect of watching news videos posted online, where you have to listen to the commercials in order to get to the content. So we would get a little spiel on the first Mormon commandment of faith, as 'background' and then some historical information. The guides took us to a room that looked out on the Temple Square buildings, and which was surrounded by busts of Mormon prophets. The first was Joseph Smith, the founder of the religion, then Brigham Young who led the faithful to Utah, and at least a dozen, maybe two dozen, more all around the outside of the room. They had somehow managed a continuous succession of prophets. I wondered how they went about finding the next prophet, after one died. Was the next identified as a child, like the Dalai Lama? Elected by the elite, like the Pope? Elected generally like the President? I asked, and they explained that each new prophet is chosen by and from the ranks of the apostles of the previous one, through prayer and consensus.

Next I toured the house of Brigham Young, where my guides were from Brazil and Italy. We saw the furnishings and restored interior of the house he had built and in which he lived and entertained visiting dignitaries. I had noticed by this point that all the missionaries carried around a copy of The Book of Mormon, much the way Phil has to be within reach of is flight attendant manual. (Thanks to Phil, I was momentarily distracted from the presentation by the idea of a doubly burdened Mormon flight attendant. Yes, Phil and I are trying to arrange to meet up, but when two people are in aviation, meeting is complicated.) Eventually I asked one of the guides if I could see her Book. She said of course, and I sat down to look at it. It read, and I hope I can say this without offending anyone, much like a book of the Bible it supplements. Records and prophesies and stories and lo and beholds. I didn't read enough to see anything reportable, I was just looking to see what it was that Joseph Smith had written. I was wondering to myself at how prolific this man had been, when the missionary mentioned that the book was written in 600 AD. That didn't line up with what I thought I knew. She said that the book, actually engraved plates, dated to the year 600, and had been passed from prophet to prophet until it reached the last one, Moroni, who had no one to give it to, because the people of Jerusalem had become wicked. So he hid it in the ground. This really didn't match what I knew of this being a very recent religion, and one founded in the US.

I asked something like, "But ... six hundred .. Joseph Smith?" The Italian Sister's English was not perfect. She perhaps said the wrong word or number somewhere.

But no, she went on and explained that the last prophet Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith as a resurrected being and revealed to him where the gold plates bearing these scriptures were hidden. He unearthed them and translated them.

"And where were they?" I asked.

The answer was an exotic name that I didn't recognize, so I asked where that was.

"New York."

"New York? United States New York?"

Yes. That New York. Okay, the language barrier had caused some problem here. "How did they get to New York?"

"By boat."

Eventually, after a bit of back and forth, it dawned on me. "This was a trip from Jerusalem to New York that ... most people don't know about. It isn't recorded in ... regular history?"

And she confirmed it. Wow, this religion is starting to sound like an Indiana Jones movie.

"What language were they written in?" I asked.

The answer was in the Egyptian language, but with the Hebrew writing system. The Sister anticipated my next question and warned that this part might be hard to understand, but Joseph Smith was not a very educated man, he translated the plates using the power of God. Given the biblical story of the tower of Babel, and even some non-religious stories of people understanding foreign speech in extremis, that didn't really stand out as the astonishing part of the story. I'd just been told that there was a historical artifact, a written record of biblical times that had been found on North American soil. And I'd never even heard of it! Was this religion so persecuted that something like that could be covered up?

"Where are the plates now?" I asked.

She explained that there are replicas of some of them in the museum, but at that time the people were wicked and they could see that Joseph had these things that looked like gold, and they wanted them, so the angels took them back for safekeeping.

And the act of translation was the hard to grasp part? And then I had a little revelation of my own. All religions are based on faith, faith in something that appears fantastical to someone who does not have that faith. And once you believe in something that others don't, it doesn't really matter how convoluted it is, it's your faith. And perhaps the strength of the faith that is required to support the beliefs is a strength that carries one through adversity, such as the mountains of Utah, the Nazi concentration camps, or simply the horrors of grade nine in high school. It's likely that every single person in the world believes something that I don't. I am absolutely not going to judge or condemn them for that. I'm sure I believe some things that other people find highly unlikely. It would appear that regardless of their beliefs that these people work hard for themselves and to deliver humanitarian relief as well as evangelism to people who need it.

I did not tell the nice woman that her faith was an Indiana Jones movie, already written and ready to be scored by John Williams. I do keep an eye out for evidence that Joseph Young wore a fedora or carried a bullwhip.

I continued walking around Temple Square, looking at fountains and sculptures and monuments. Here's a detail from one commemorating "Brigham Young and the Pioneers," the first group of people to make that trek through the mountains to find this place. The plaque lists all their names, with stars next to those still alive at the time of the engraving. As you can see from the picture, this was summarized as 143 men, 3 women and 2 children, along with assorted animals. The male-female ratio struck me as an odd foundation for a polygamous society that rejects homosexuality, but apparently that group was merely the vanguard, the next year hundreds more people joined them. I counted the names to see if the "colored servants" listed separately at the end counted as men, and they did. Depictions on the monument also acknowledge the Ute Indians and the hunters and trappers who had made it to the valley before the pilgrims.

I had lunch at a restaurant called The Lion House, a historic home also on Temple Square. It was cafeteria style, quite good food and they offered Jell-O among the desserts. I was sorry to observe that there was no green, only red and orange, so I still haven't had the Utah state food. I had black forest cake instead.

I walked from Temple Square up the hill to the State Capitol. I learned about something called book cut marble, the way patterns like the one in the picture above are produced. The marble is cut four times as thick as it needs to be, then sliced in half like a layer cake, and then those leaves are again sliced, allowing the grain of the marble to form a fourfold symmetrical pattern. I spotted this mural of Brigham Young arriving in the valley. It appears that he did have a fedora. Perhaps his bullwhip is in the covered wagon.

Top Secret SUV

As I walked out to my airplane at the FBO today, the whole parking line behind my aircraft was filled with snarling fighter jets, almost cartoonlike with their painted teeth, and very real guns and missiles. They were cordoned off with a low nylon rope around orange traffic cones and there was a very small sign with the word Warning on it, propped in front of the middle airplane. I put my camera in my pocket and walked up to read the sign. It said, roughly,

WARNING:
This is a restricted area.
No entry without direct permission from the commander.
The use of deadly force is authorized.

It didn't say anything about photography plus or minus, but the potential administrator of the deadly force was behind the rope, in a beret and desert fatigues, with a large pistol holstered on his thigh. I pointed to the sign, to indicate I'd read it, and held up the camera. "Is it okay to take photographs?"

He said yes, but indicated I was not to photograph the sign, nor the black SUV parked between two of the airplanes. Apparently it's okay for me to read the sign, and they can't stop me from memorizing it, but I mustn't show it to others. Perhaps there were hidden defences embedded in the sign. The SUV I hadn't even noticed, but of course the forbidden draws attention. It appeared to be their guardhouse. He wasn't alone on the airplane guarding beat. There were others, and presumably snacks and water, inside the vehicle.

I took my photo and went back to my own airplane, to add oil, clean the windshield, and other Aviatrix tasks. As I continued to watch the jets, the guard crossed his perimeter rope and came over to talk to me. I told him about my mission and asked him if he flew one of those airplanes. He said no, he was a cop. I asked him if he had been there all night and he said no, there were shifts. I realized there were shifts, what I was trying to ask was whether he was going to have to stand long in the sun, or was going to get a break. I started to clarify my question, but then figured it might be interpreted as a sensitive security issue, so I aborted that line of inquiry and asked if he got to travel different places for his job. He said yes, he had been all over the world, and that he liked his job.

"I've been doing this a long time," he said.

Regrettably I couldn't help blurting out, "you don't look that old!" and he didn't. Heck he was young enough that I bet he gets IDed in bars. He was young enough that my words were an insult. So that was the end of our conversation. As he turned and walked away I realized that he had a much larger gun, an automatic rifle, slung over his back. He looked great, like a recruiting poster, a Fourth of July exhibit, or many a boy's dream. I wish I'd asked, "Wait, may I take your picture, please." But he probably would have said no, anyway.

Oh and I found out this year that John Adams proclaimed that July 4th, the American Independence Day, "...ought to be celebrated by pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations." Go for it, guys.

A Little Respect

One of the most common complaints about security is the rudeness of the screeners. I typed out a whole lot of theorizing on customer service in the US and Canada, southern USA hospitality, the British class system, French culture, the effect of competition on corporate attitudes towards customer service, and the public face of police services. But in the end I deleted it most of it. Simply put, the public expects smiles, please, thank you, and deference. The screeners expect orderly, respectful compliance. Both groups are very disappointed by what actually happens.

Security screeners are stuck with the dual and daunting task of preventing potentially dangerous objects from going onboard aircraft, and acting as the public face of the inconvenience of airports. I imagine that many of them try to face each new customer with cheer, or at least guarded neutrality, but after five hours of scowling, whining, eye-rolling passengers, they're probably doing well not to actually swear back at you. The public are incredibly rude to the screeners. The screeners are rude back. The whole process becomes self-perpetuating pit of nastiness.

My strategy: be nice. If I have to, I pretend that the screeners are behaving as reasonable human beings, and respond accordingly to my fantasies. The aim is for an Academy Award level performance, not sarcastic pseudoniceness. The first step in being nice is to follow the rules. I mean really, the rules don't hurt me. It's a nuisance to get my laptop, my boarding pass, my baggie, my shoes and my parka all organized on the belt, but that nuisance is not the fault of the screener.

I smile and say hello to any screener who looks at me. I say excuse me, and please, if I have a question. I say thank you if they give me an instruction or a bin. If they thank me, I tell them they're welcome. If I discover that I've accidentally packed something I shouldn't have, I apologize, and admit to knowing better. Everyone knows that throwing a tantrum will not result in being able to keep the prohibited item. And I know I feel better after an encounter if I think I've behaved in a civilized manner. It's a game. I score points if the screener is nice back to me.

A little bit of niceness goes a long way, in both directions. Some of the poor screeners are so starved for love that their gratitude shows. Some of them are so hardened in their ways you'd think I swore at them. It's like those studies showing that people are happier when they give money away as opposed to spending it on themselves. Is it my being polite that makes me happy, or someone else's being polite to me?

On a recent trip, I decided to try WestJet's e-Boarding Pass. I followed the instructions on their site and they e-mailed me a boarding pass. Not a boarding pass to be printed out, but a paperless one. At security, I displayed it as instructed on my computer screen. The screener looked at it, looked confused, and called another screener. They told me it was not adequate. It didn't qualify as a boarding pass because it didn't have a barcode.

I went back to the check in area and used a kiosk to get a paper boarding pass. I returned to the screening area and got the same screener. She was openly grateful for my easy acceptance of the original decision. I won't tell you what I got away with because of it.

I wonder if I put a big tinfoil happy face inside the bottom of my carry on, if it would show up as a happy face on the x-ray machine. Maybe I'll try it next trip.

The picture is of a bilingually labelled, CATSA-issue one-litre plastic bag. These are available free in most Canadian airports, from a table in front of security. I've also seen bags for sale in US airports. They should also have a vending machine for little mailing boxes, and postage, so you could mail things you weren't allowed to carry. I think a lot of US airports don't have mailboxes, though, so that would be a barrier.