Lampposts and Overpasses

Apparently this happened today.

One of the useful things about small planes is that they do land at about the speed of traffic, typically touching down at 75-120 km/h. It is cool that no one saw the airplane and freaked out.  I know someone who was making a similar emergency landing and the driver of the car he was following saw the airplane in the rear view mirror and slammed on the brakes. Fortunately my friend had enough momentum to bobble up and land in front of the car, but better that everyone just keep their chill. I think there's a telescoping effect that makes everything look closer together in this picture.  From the angle we see it, it looks like a Ford Probe could barely merge into that space, but there's no honking or swerving as the Piper slots in.

This may be as much about Québec drivers as this pilot. I suppose every city's drivers look maniacal to every other city's drivers, but this is the only province in Canada with signs advising you to "attendez le feu vert" -- wait for the green light.  Maybe it's to prevent people from making right turns on red, allowed in, I think, all other provinces, but it seems to me that Québec drivers need the reminder that traffic lights aren't optional. If you've been to Toronto and to Paris, you will understand when I tell you that being a pedestrian in Montréal is much more like the Paris than the Toronto experience. In my opinion, the anything-can-happen-next experience of driving in la belle province has prepared these drivers for traffic that casually merges from above and then takes up three lanes.

The thing that freaks me out is the non-motorized obstacles.  Look at all the wires, the signs, the overpass and the lamp standards. If you're in control of your airplane you can put it on a runway point of your choosing, but damn, I like my approach corridors uncluttered.

Antitailgating Access Portal

I'm currently struggling with a security clearance issue. I can't talk about it specifically, because the security training includes my agreement not to disclose details. I'm hoping this issue is a misunderstanding or an incompletely articulated policy, because like many valid security procedures, makes no f[iretr]ucking sense. While researching the issue in search of more definitive information on what I am allowed to do in secure areas with the pass I hold, I was amused by this:

Three airports – Kelowna, Winnipeg and London – have installed an access control system called a “mantrap,” so named by Washington-based Newton Security Inc., the manufacturer of the operative mantrap technology called T-DAR; Canadian airports variously refer to it as a mantrap, persontrap or, in Winnipeg, antitailgating access portal.

Who would have guessed that little Winnipeg was the epicentre of Canadian overnaming conventions? Henceforth I shall call them Stargates, and fully expect that every time I pass through one, there is a good chance I will encounter an alien civilization that curiously speaks English or French almost exactly the way they do in my part of the universe.

Also, here's your daily dose of pilots landing a Cessna on a highway.

Not a lot of detail there. The Mayday call reports engine trouble. The vehicles following seem to have figured out that tailgating is not a good idea.

Pilots and Birds

Pilots have sort of a love-hate relationship with birds. Some learned to fly out of a desire to be like the birds. I came grudgingly to appreciate avian skills while I was a student pilot learning to judge winds and momentum in the flare. I still derive schadenfreude from watching a bird misjudge a crosswind landing, because they usually get it so perfect, angling their wings and tail and settling on a single branch just as groundspeed and vertical speed reach zero. I knew an ultralight pilot whose pinnacle of life experience occurred the day an eagle flew along wingtip-to-wingtip with his tiny craft, checking him out and then seeming to just share the joy of being aloft on a beautiful day. If you've got through any part of a career in aviation without having to reject a take-off, perform a go-around, declare an emergency, or visit maintenance because of birds, then I can't imagine which part of the planet you fly over.

The airplane I flew yesterday bears a scar that we think is a rat strike. I know that a rat is not a bird, but I still blame a bird. See, one day an eagle crossed our path while we were on the take-off roll. There was no thump and no exploding cloud of feathers, so we were pretty sure we hadn't struck the eagle, but after the flight there was nevertheless a small dent, mostly just stretching of the aluminum skin between two ribs on the wing, and some blood spatters. The airport crew reported finding no carcass, and certainly an eagle would have made a bigger dent. Our theory is that the eagle dropped its payload in order to more easily dodge us. I should have gone full CSI on the remains. I'll bet I could have found some fibres and checked them out at the MicrolabNW Photomicrograph Gallery. As it is I just nag maintenance to put the dent repair on their spare time list, because tiny as the dent is, it is a roughness in the wing, and that spot is always the first one to ice up in flight.

The video below (preceded by an ad, you don't lose anything if you just mute the whole video) is from an incident a year ago when a bird strike smashed the spinner on a Dash-8 on take-off. I don't see any damage to the propeller itself, but the damage to the spinner must have caused an imbalance, because the pilots elected to shut the engine down. You can see the blades feathered (aligned with the direction of flight for minimum air resistance). And I have to laugh at the fact that the very terminology "feathered" is bird-related.

They inspired us to fly in the first place. They interfere every day with our ability to do so safely. We can't stop admiring them and we can't stop resenting them. This whole post has just been an excuse to show you this gif. Does anyone not love this crow? It's just a looped gif, but the full YouTube clip shows that it wasn't an accident. That crow was hanging in there for the ride. I suppose it wasn't all that different to clinging to a branch on a windy day, but it's having fun, isn't it?

The World Is For Me

I imagine a spectrum in which each person's feeling of entitlement shows up as a different colour. On average, people feel entitled to somewhat more than the world can provide for them, leading to the phenomenon of the tragedy of the commons, a general dissatisfaction with one's lot, or the assumption that rules are for other people, and that whatever works best for me is the thing to do. So at one end of the spectrum we have Mother Teresa who sees that the world has problems, and that there is something she can do about some of them, so dedicates her life to helping people. At the other end we have extreme psychopaths who will kill someone for entertainment. Some people dump unwanted items and garbage in vacant lots or on the highway. Some people separate all their unwanted items into things that can be used again by others, various types of recyclables, and garbage, and then make the effort to get them all to the right places. Some people organize others in their community and go out to clean up garbage that has been dumped in vacant lots. I'm not saying that Mother Teresa never littered or that if you throw your trash in my backyard you're probably a psycho killer, but these are examples on the spectrum of how much a person feels entitled to inconvenience others.

I once expressed reluctance to be the first person to park in a curb lane after morning rush hour had ended, when it became legal. I said something like, "I hate to be that person who takes that lane out of service for everyone else." My friend thought that was bizarre. She said she loved to be the first person to park on a block, because it was so easy. Someone's going to be the first person to park there, so why not her? The effect one's actions will have on others affects different people's actions by different amounts. Intelligence and experience factor into it a little, but I have observed young children and those with intellectual disabilities make decisions for the good of the many. I'm not talking about decisions driven by ignorance or malice, just those made by assigning different weights to "this inconveniences me" and "this inconveniences someone I don't know." People's behaviour can be artificially bumped along these scales by laws and social norms. I want six cookies, I don't care if anyone else gets one, but I share them equally because it would be more inconvenient to me to have all these people annoyed at me and consider me rude, than it would for me to forego five of the cookies I want. It is a lot of bother to find a legal parking spot in rush hour, but my friend does so, because if she parks in the curb lane before nine am she'll be ticketed and towed, and that would be a lot more inconvenient than driving a few more blocks and walking back.

This spectrum of empathy and entitlement speaks to whether you crowd around the boarding lane at the gate before your row is called, recline your airline seat, put one of your carry-ons under the seat in front of you, and otherwise share the limited space on board a passenger airplane. And then there's this guy. I suppose it is possible that he was really as clueless as he claims, that he didn't figure out that others were queuing in the aisle because that's how one gets off an airplane. But I think he saw a special little door just for him, the way solo drivers in the HOV lanes "didn't see" the signs or the diamonds painted on the tarmac, just the opportunity for them to get where they are going more quickly. The bright side is that he showed that the emergency exits are obvious enough to use that a passenger who wasn't paying attention had no problem operating one. I wonder if he brought his carry on with him.

Secretly, don't we all want to go down the airplane slide? How much would you pay for a chance to do that? How much extra to be the one who pops the door and sets off the slide? At the $16,000 to reset, quoted in the article, I don't think it's a missed revenue stream for the airlines, especially as passengers often sustain minor injuries, such as broken ankles, during real evacuations, but wheeee! slide!

The aircraft I fly doesn't have an escape slide, but I require all crew members to practice opening and egressing through an emergency exit at annual training. It causes a little wear and tear on the aircraft and the crew members, but I flew so many airplanes myself without ever having actually operated their exits, that I wanted it done. It's hard to describe exactly how it opens until you do it, and this way we know for sure that they work.

Oh! Don't tell anyone, but I'm going to see if I can get a toy inflatable slide for this year's training.

Staying Alive - Be Prepared

This is from the Cheeseburger network's "demotivational posters," but it's the right rule for a pilot to remember. The exact wording on my poster would be "Always leave room for one more thing to go wrong." You can do a turn at low altitude close to the mountains, but can you do it at he same time as an engine failure or a bee sting? It sounds terribly negative, but constantly asking "what is the worst thing that could happen right now and how would I deal with it?" is a very positive way to fly.

I think I already told you of the effect Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys has had on my life, but it's my blog, so I'll tell it again. He urged boys to survey the situation around them at all times, think what emergency could arise, and be ready to deal with it in advance. Times have moved on since he wrote, so just as he only addressed "boys", one emergency he suggested was that of a runaway horse in a public place. The possibility of a horse bolting through the shopping mall or down my street was remote but so much more exciting than plausible emergencies that the idea launched me into a lifetime of imagining and preparing for infinitely unlikely but exciting emergencies. I honestly think I spent more time as a student pilot thinking about being struck by a piece of debris that fell off a passing airliner than say, a bird strike or an electrical failure.

Always leave room for one thing to go wrong is my own coinage, a realization I had so long ago that I don't remember what had happened to bring me to the conclusion. I think I was a student pilot so it might have been a combination of things that I now handle while eating lunch and boring my co-workers with repeated stories about my life, but at that time, on that day I realized that I didn't have the capacity to handle another problem. It goes with an astronaut saying I just learned, "In space there is no problem so bad you can't make it worse." That one is from my countryman and fellow pilot, Chris Hadfield.

Halon Extinguisher

This video is sort of adorable, and I think it may be as close as I'm going to get to my VP's request of a video showing a Halon fire extinguisher in action. Finishing the job with an obviously capped bottle of water is a great touch. It was probably made for the same reason that I'm searching for on: it would be nice to know in advance how long the unit will function, what the chemical looks like coming out, and the efficacy we can expect in using it. Halon is restricted under the Montreal Protocol, to which Canada is signatory, so you can't just go out behind the hangar and discharge expired bottles for training purposes. Expired units are returned to the manufacturer and the Halon is recovered and recycled.

I'm pretty sure the colourless Halon gas is virtually invisible while being discharged. The information on the can is sufficient to calculate that the contents are not in excess of what will produce an average 2% concentration in the air of the aircraft cabin. But how long will it take to be exhausted, and how big a fire is too big for it? You don't want to use the whole bottle on half the fire, but perhaps you want to be sure you have put out one part of a fire before moving on. But it lacks information on the stream rate, discharge rate, time to be fully discharged, whatever one might call it. I am, however, finding plenty of interesting things about Halon.

There are two types of Halon: 1211 versus Halon 1301. (That isn't the interesting part yet. I might also be overselling "interesting".) I just knew that the handheld extinguishers use 1211 and the installed setups like in computer rooms and cargo areas use 1301. I hadn't even thought about what "halon" meant, but it's a hydrocarbon with halogens replacing some of the hydrogens. Halon 1211 is chlorodifluorobromomethane. The number isn't just some kind of catalogue number, but a description of the molecule. The first digit specifies the number of carbon atoms: unsubstituted methane is CH4. the second digit is the number of fluorine atoms, the third is the chlorine atoms, and the fourth is the number of bromine atoms. If there happens to to be iodine on board they'll add a fifth digit for that, and presumably a sixth digit could be added for astatine, but an unstable radioactive halogen wouldn't be a good choice for a fire extinguisher. (If you didn't find an interesting part in there, sorry. It was interesting to me. I love knowing how things got their names).

Something I didn't know, and actually believed the opposite of, is that Halon 1211 is not appropriate for burning metal fires. Fortunately my aircraft does not have magnesium components. But perhaps I should double check that.

And then, just as I thought I had milked the Internet dry of useful (or interesting) information on Halon fire extinguishers, I found this study. Really if you're nerdy enough about aircraft firefighting chemicals to have read this far, you should just go and roll around in that link. Sure, it's a PDF of a typewritten document, but what do you expect from 1986? Six percent of cabin fires during the period they sampled were from "smoking materials". i.e. people lighting fires on board aircraft for recreational purposes. (There's no breakdown of tobacco versus other). The FAA built a wind tunnel out of sheet steel, a Cessna 210 and a couple of jet engines. It's not crystal clear from the description but it appears that this test rig was designed and constructed specifically for testing fire extinguishers. And damnit, they did. There are sixty pages in this document, with graphs and tables and all the data I could ask for, including the fact that a 2.5 lb Halon fire extinguisher takes ten to fourteen seconds to fully discharge. Thank you, American taxpayers.

Ditching Instructions

I'm delivering recurrent emergency training to pilot and non-pilot crewmembers in a couple of weeks, so I sat down to brainstorm some of the items to cover. Challenge-response checklists, the names of the various levers, the protocol for what to say if the right engine is on fire and the pilot asks you to confirm left as she shuts it down. (Hint, not "right!"). I covered evacuation, including special life-saving tips like "wait until the aircraft has stopped moving" and "be careful not to get run over by a firetruck". It would be depressing that so much of training people consists of telling them what they could figure out for themselves, except that it in comparison to reading reports of accidents caused or exacerbated by people not doing things they could figure out for themselves, it's not depressing at all.

I move onto bullet points for the Off-Airport Landing. We don't fly floats or bushplanes, so this represents a fairly drastic emergency situation. I type in ...

• possible reasons
• pilot briefs situation
• secure cargo, self
• consider needs
• distress call
• landing configuration
• brace position
• evacuate

An extreme form of off-airport landing is ditching, landing on the water. That's obviously going to be the next item. As I'm starting on that, I notice that one of my keycaps is loose, so I wiggle it into place and press down on it to fix it. Then I look back at my document. It says...

Ditching

• aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Maybe I'll leave it like that.

As Pretty As An Airport

Douglas Adams said many sage things. Way back in school I was asked to write a term paper on the Brandt Report, and I summarized my criticism with Douglas Adams' observation on the oddity of proposing movement of small green pieces paper as solutions to the problems of people being miserable, given that it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy in the first place. But when, in The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul Adams asserts, "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on Earth has ever produced the expression 'As pretty as an airport'," it becomes clear that he does not understand the true beauty of an airport.

An airport is soothing when it appears along my route, its inviting stretch of flat unobstructed pavement serving as a marker that I am on course, a milestone in my journey and a source of refuge if anything should go wrong. An airport is pretty when it comes into sight right ahead during descent, and I am cleared to the circuit, especially if I need to pee. An airport is a stunningly beautiful sight, dark and lashed with pounding rain, blowing snow or almost obscured in fog, when it appears at minima on an IFR approach. No one who has ever flown any distance with peripheral vision repeatedly drawing her eyes to needles flickering at the E on the fuel gauges, or the red line on the oil pressure, or illuminated red caution lights on the glare panel can fail to appreciate the all-surpassing glory of an airport.

The closure of an airport is the loss of a refuge, and in the case of Edmonton City Centre, which finally closed on 30 November of this year, it's the loss of a great place to stay when there's no emergency either. It really was in the centre of the city, within walking distance--with luggage--to hotels, restaurants and malls. It's been under threat of closure for years. They shut down runway 16/34 years ago, meaning that when the afternoon winds picked up there was almost always an exciting crosswind challenge getting in there. YXD has dodged the axe so many times that I haven't flight planned into it for a few years without double-checking that they were still open, and still had fuel available. Lately that caution has been warranted. A month or so ago the FBO sold their oxygen equipment, so we had to go to Edmonton International for an O2 fill. The last time I was there, less than a month before it closed, I had to track down airport security to get off the airport. It had been designed around 24-hour FBOs and when the last one cut its hours, there were no pedestrian gates to let me out after midnight.

In 1926 the Edmonton City Council approved a $400 outlay to pack the soil and cut a few trees to turn the Hagmann Farm into Jimmy Bell's Air Harbour. It became Canada's first licensed airfield and was later named Blatchford Field, after the mayor who approved it. It has also been known as #2 Air Observer School, RCAF Western Air Command, Industrial Airport, and Municipal Airport. I've been a passenger on a B737 that landed at Edmonton International, made a short hop to the Muni, and then continued north to Grande Prairie and Fort Nelson.

This site used to discuss the decision to close the airport but now that it's a done deal, it's just a page about the development process, mentioning the airport only as history of the site. I suppose we'll be landing at the International more often. Their ATC are great, handling our little aircraft without making us feel like we're second class, and the FBO we used provided everything we needed, plus they had an Estonian consulate on site, because you never know when you're going to need one of those. Once you leave the airport you're in a little bubble of hotels, way the hell out of town, and the other remaining airports in the area are no better. You can't even get a pizza delivered to Villeneuve.

CYXD, I'll miss you.

Edit: I looked it up on the NavCanada weather site.

METAR/TAF

CYXD -> Invalid or unknown aerodrome ID

Erased from existence.

Double Generator Failure

I found this in my drafts folder, I guess I was saving it for a busy day. I've been punting it a month into the future every month. Obviously I'm busy today, because it published.

I had a double generator failure once. I'll spoil any suspense now by saying it was not a big deal. The designers of this airplane knew that electricity was fickle, newfangled stuff and not to be trusted, so no essential system for VFR flight was electrical. We were VFR and it was a beautiful clear day after the invention of cellphones. The master was on, no visible circuit breakers were popped, and there was no smoke or fire smell. The reset for the generators was under the dashboard. With multiple people on board we could have reset them it in flight, but not knowing why they had popped, we elected to leave them off.
Our destination was a reasonable-sized controlled airport, not at an especially busy time, so we just pulled out a cellphone and called them to tell them we were coming. They cleared us to land, I can't remember whether it was by a steady green light on final or they just gave the clearance over the telephone. Possibly both. They seemed far more stressed about the event than I was. I never consider a communications failure to be a showstopper, especially when I manage to make contact another way. And why on earth had they dispatched firetrucks to follow us down the runway?

It was kind of fun mind you, and the firefighters were friendly. I think they like driving their trucks around, especially when thy don't have to pull anyone's charred remains out of a burning airplane, so they were happy when we thanked them and assured them that there was no problem.

At the time, it was the only twin I knew the systems on, so I didn't realize that some aircraft have electrically activated landing gear. ATC was worried that I might not be able to lower the wheels. The only electrical component of this one is the indication system, and extension can be verified by the thumps from the mains plus visual identification of the nose gear in the mirror on the nacelle. The air traffic controllers knew that in general a systems failure on an airplane could be a bad thing, and must have thought I was being cool and not admitting I could have a gear problem. Communication by cellphone in an operating aircraft is not simple. ATC they have this great button up there in the tower for letting the firetrucks out, so why not? So long as we didn't make the local news.

I can't even remember the reason for the failure. We had it checked out at a local shop and were certified good to go for the next leg of our adventure. I think I was reprimanded by the aircraft owner for saying "electrical failure" instead of just "comm failure." He was a need-to-know kind of guy and I'm more of an anything-that-might-be-relevant gal.

Last Post

I wrote this not knowing if it was a last blog entry I would never post, or the first blog entry in a new chapter of my blog. Today someone, two people actually, sent me Google+ invites. I thought "Eh, what could it hurt? I might as well try this out." I clicked through on one of them and started filling out the form. I never give my actual birthdate to fun services online, because that's part of the verification information for real services like banking. I give a fake birthdate that I can easily remember. For this account I decided to give the memorable date of my first flying lesson.

Immediately Google seized on this information and determined me underage. I haven't been flying for eighteen years, and apparently you have to be eighteen years old to author a blog. The screen said Google would delete my blog in twenty-nine days if I did not send them government-issued ID demonstrating that I am over eighteen. Unfortunately Aviatrix Anon does not have government-issued ID, so I knew that unless I had a friend at Google, that would be the end of my blog.

I knew that I probably did have a friend at Google, or at least a friend of a friend, but my blog contact list is on Gmail, and Google locked not only the blog, but the Gmail account. Of course that means they also locked the back-up Cockpit Conversation Redirection blog, my account through which I could access Google Help, and even my ability to comment identifiably on other blogs. I sent a fax to the Google people explaining the situation, then plea-for-help e-mail to a few bloggers with common traffic, whose e-mails I happened to have on my home account, and then I waited.

This paragraph was going to contain either gratitude to the person or persons who helped me out, or a fond farewell to all the people who have read and commented on the blog, and even met me in person, over the years. If the blog was deleted, I wasn't going to start a new one. It's too much to lose and try to start over.

While waiting for someone at Google to get back to me one way or another, I decided to try the other offered means of age verification, the credit card. I don't have a credit card with the name Aviatrix Anon on it, either, but maybe they wouldn't check. Seeing as you can get a credit card for your cat or dog and buy preloaded credit cards at the grocery store checkout, I thought it was only scammer porn sites that professed to use credit cards for ID verification, but I decided my blog was worth thirty United States cents, and Google probably wasn't running a credit card scam. I gave Google my credit card information and instantly my Blogger account was restored. Thirty cents is a cheaper bribe than I thought I'd need. Most of you probably never noticed the interruption.

So kids, if you want a blog, lie about your age. Grownups, lie about your age if you will, but make sure you don't take too much off. Either way, any credit card will do to fix your error.

I can't really recommend Google Plus, but if you use other Google services with the identity you use to connect to Google Plus, please make sure you tell it you are over eighteen.

Getting Things Flowing

I received a phone message regarding another job I applied to. Odd, as I applied maybe two months ago, and it wasn't a large company. Why the long delay? Does the guy plan that far ahead for his employment needs? Did the first two candidates not work out? I'm glad I was out getting plumbing supplies and didn't have to field that one cold. It's a job that could be interesting and right for me, given certain constraints, but it could be a backwards step that would look bad on my resume. I had a list of questions to ask about it by the phone for a while after applying. In fact I just threw my notes on that out the other day.

If the potential employer took two months to think about it, I can take a day. For now the plumbing issue is more pressing. I have already replaced the ball and washers, but the old tap has rotted inside and spews water all over the counter when I turn it on. Under the sink the associated plumbing is crazier than the wiring on a thirty-year-old airplane. It's a mismatched mess of PVC and copper with shutoff valves I run into some difficulty removing the old tap. There should be a nut holding it on underneath the sink, but I can't find it. It's very difficult to see or get any purchase under there because this is a double kitchen sink installed very close to the back wall of the cabinet, so everything is hidden in the sink's cleavage. I do some internet research, trying to figure out if there is an alternate way this might be fastened in, and rein in my urge to just shred it into bits and tear out the bits. There are old copper lines coming directly off the underside of the faucet assembly, and I've already destroyed them looking for what is holding it in place. Besides rust.

Delta, the faucet manufacturer has a toll-free line, so I call for advice. The rep is excellent, listening, understanding, suggesting, then putting me on hold to consult with an expert on older models. He comes back and asks if I have any need to reuse the old faucet. Hell no. He doesn't come right out and tell me to remove the sucker by any means necessary, but I got the idea. The sink is stainless steel and I do need to keep that, preferably untorn, so I destroy the old faucet with tinsnips and a big pair of vice grips so that I can pull its shredded remnants down through the hole in the counter. The new tap goes in easily and the water comes out of it in an attractively coherent stream. When you have done work involving open plumbing lines you need to open the tap up and then turn on the water from below and let it run to flush out any junk from the lines before operating the faucet mechanism. I probably would have run it for a while even if I didn't know that, just to watch the pretty water coming out into the sink and not onto the counter.

And then I signed up with a free trial with Netflix. If I'm going to be off work I might as well get free movies. It's also a way of ensuring I won't get to use it. I should sign up for a gym membership and enroll in a CPR renewal class, too. Every time I do either of those things I have to move halfway across the country for a new job.

And still on the topic of stopped up plumbing, here's a nice job of handling a recalcitrant nosewheel. It looks like a combination of a firm landing on the mains and slowing down enough to reduce airflow pressure was enough to get the nosewheel down and locked.

Actual Quotes from Company Manuals

My all time favourite advice from a company manual is from a chapter that after explaining how to tear out the electrical wiring to make snares to catch rabbits, notes that you will get sick if you eat nothing but rabbits for a week. I've mentioned that one before, but I have a few more gems to share with you.

"Pilots must use their best judgment in dealing with life threatening situations."

Those were from the section on dealing with hijackers. I WISH I had the lack of scruples to quote you the hijack bomb threat instructions because they are hilarious. I am now convinced that airline pilots affect the solemn, noble "I'm sorry I can't tell you that for security reasons" demeanour on this subject because they would be embarrassed to admit the ridiculous advice their company gives them to deal with a whacko with a gun to their head. You might be better off to read the hijacker the manual and hope he keels over laughing.

"In the event of a forced landing, if time permits, it would be advisable to anticipate possible injuries (especially head trauma and broken ankles) to one or both pilots and have an evacuation plan."

So after you've run all the checklists, you turn to the pilot in the other seat and say, "In the four minutes before we hit the ground, I'd like to make a pact with you that if one of us is conscious and capable of locomotion while the other isn't that we'll drag each other's asses out of the burning plane, okay?" Or does it go more like "Anticipating head trauma and broken ankles, lets skip movie night on Tuesday, k?" Maybe someone with more CRM experience can give me a heads up on how that conversation goes.

Elsewhere I'm advised that in the event of complete loss of pitot-static information, I should fly pitch and power. That's easy to say, but in IMC it would be extremely difficult. It's not something a person gets a lot of opportunity to practice.

Escape Route

For all the praise lavished on the DHC-2 Beaver, I don't think anyone has ever called it ergonomic. They were designed back when you were supposed to be a real man in order to fly an a airplane and if you couldn't cope with the fact that the levers weren't in the standard order on the throttle quadrant (as they were on one I flew) then you weren't man enough. I can't remember if it was the throttle and prop, prop and mixture or mixture and throttle that were switched, and the fact that I don't remember perhaps illustrates the problem. Imagine if one of the cars you drove had the accelerator and brake pedal switched. Or maybe the accelerator and clutch. It wasn't the designer's fault in those days.

One of the problems with Beavers has been the door handle. It was designed to close securely, and probably was cool and modern, or at least normal in 1947, but twenty-first century passengers have grown accustomed to a different style and standard of exit door from a vehicle, and have not found it to be an intuitive escape route. Deaths in otherwise survivable accidents have led to a redesign of the door handle, something that is a little unusual in an out of production aircraft, but they are still so popular that a different manufacturer has the licence to make parts for them and has taken on the responsibility of the replacement door handle.

Also: The TSB recommended floatplane passengers wear lifejackets but the airlines object. They say it's because passengers might inflate the jackets inside the airplane, hampering their escape. That's a true risk, and has caused fatalities in water landings, but I personally think there is at least as much, if not more, risk of a passenger inflating a lifejacket inside an aircraft if they have just put it on than if they are already wearing it. And there is certainly more risk of not having a lifejacket on when you need it if you have to put it on in the time period between realizing there is a problem and escaping the aircraft. I was once present when a large floatplane dug a wingtip into the water during landing, and the only person who got the lifejacket out from under his seat during the crucial seconds before the airplane fortunately didn't require an emergency evacuation, was a jumpseating captain. The real reasons the airlines don't want to put lifejackets on passengers before every departure are time, cost and did you see Six Days Seven Nights? Notice that despite all the commercial seaplane flights depicted being in the same type with the same pilot, the only flight in which the pilot required the passengers to wear lifejackets was the one in which the premise required them to be nervous and seem ridiculous.

Landing During an Earthquake

I have another anonymous, much forwarded piece from a pilot who was operating in Japan during the earthquake. This one is also from a Delta pilot, identified as "J.D." It complements the other, as s/he was landing at the time. Note that if any of the pilots involved in these stories wants to be credited by name or to have the story removed, just let me know. I think they are fascinating examples of the kind of can't-plan-for-it decision making that flying entails. This is edited only in that I removed the part where the writer pointed out the Top Gun reference, because the punctuation involved broke my html, and you guys don't need that sort of thing pointed out for you.

I'm currently still in one piece, writing from my room in the Narita crew hotel. It's 8am. This is my inaugural trans-pacific trip as a brand new, recently checked out, international 767 Captain and it has been interesting, to say the least, so far. I've crossed the Atlantic three times so far so the ocean crossing procedures were familiar.

By the way, stunning scenery flying over the Aleutian Islands. Everything was going fine until 100 miles out from Tokyo and in the descent for arrival. The first indication of any trouble was that Japan air traffic control started putting everyone into holding patterns. At first we thought it was usual congestion on arrival. Then we got a company data link message advising about the earthquake, followed by another stating Narita airport was temporarily closed for inspection and expected to open shortly (the company is always so positive).

From our perspective things were obviously looking a little different. The Japanese controller's anxiety level seemed quite high and he said expect "indefinite" holding time. No one would commit to a time frame on that so I got my copilot and relief pilot busy looking at divert stations and our fuel situation, which, after an ocean crossing is typically low.

It wasn't long, maybe ten minutes, before the first pilots started requesting diversions to other airports. Air Canada, American, United, etc. all reporting minimal fuel situations. I still had enough fuel for 1.5 to 2.0 hours of holding. Needless to say, the diverts started complicating the situation.

Japan air traffic control then announced Narita was closed indefinitely due to damage. Planes immediately started requesting arrivals into Haneada, near Tokyo, a half dozen JAL and western planes got clearance in that direction but then ATC announced Haenada had just closed. Uh oh! Now instead of just holding, we all had to start looking at more distant alternatives like Osaka, or Nagoya.

One bad thing about a large airliner is that you can't just be-pop into any little airport. We generally need lots of runway. With more planes piling in from both east and west, all needing a place to land and several now fuel critical ATC was getting over-whelmed. In the scramble, and without waiting for my fuel to get critical, I got my flight a clearance to head for Nagoya, fuel situation still okay. So far so good. A few minutes into heading that way, I was "ordered" by ATC to reverse course. Nagoya was saturated with traffic and unable to handle more planes (read- airport full). Ditto for Osaka.

With that statement, my situation went instantly from fuel okay, to fuel minimal considering we might have to divert a much farther distance. Multiply my situation by a dozen other aircraft all in the same boat, all making demands requests and threats to ATC for clearances somewhere. Air Canada and then someone else went to "emergency" fuel situation. Planes started to heading for air force bases. The nearest to Tokyo was Yokoda AFB. I threw my hat in the ring for that initially. The answer - Yokoda closed! no more space.

By now it was a three ring circus in the cockpit, my copilot on the radios, me flying and making decisions and the relief copilot buried in the air charts trying to figure out where to go that was within range while data link messages were flying back and forth between us and company dispatch in Atlanta. I picked Misawa AFB at the north end of Honshu island. We could get there with minimal fuel remaining. ATC was happy to get rid of us so we cleared out of the maelstrom of the Tokyo region. We heard ATC try to send planes toward Sendai, a small regional airport on the coast which was later the one I think that got flooded by a tsunami.

Atlanta dispatch then sent us a message asking if we could continue to Chitose airport on the Island of Hokkaido, north of Honshu. Other Delta planes were heading that way. More scrambling in the cockpit - check weather, check charts, check fuel, okay. We could still make it and not be going into a fuel critical situation ... if we had no other fuel delays. As we approached Misawa we got clearance to continue to Chitose. Critical decision thought process. Let's see - trying to help company - plane overflies perfectly good divert airport for one farther away...wonder how that will look in the safety report, if anything goes wrong.

Suddenly ATC comes up and gives us a vector to a fix well short of Chitose and tells us to standby for holding instructions. Nightmare realized. Situation rapidly deteriorating. After initially holding near Tokyo, starting a divert to Nagoya, reversing course back to Tokyo then to re-diverting north toward Misawa, all that happy fuel reserve that I had was vaporizing fast. My subsequent conversation, paraphrased of course...., went something like this:

"Sapparo Control - Delta XX requesting immediate clearance direct to Chitose, minimum fuel, unable hold."

"Negative Ghost-Rider, the Pattern is full"

"Sapparo Control - make that - Delta XX declaring emergency, low fuel, proceeding direct Chitose"

"Roger Delta XX, understood, you are cleared direct to Chitose, contact Chitose approach....etc...."

Enough was enough, I had decided to preempt actually running critically low on fuel while in another indefinite holding pattern, especially after bypassing Misawa, and played my last ace...declaring an emergency. The problem with that is now I have a bit of company paperwork to do but what the heck.

As it was - landed Chitose, safe, with at least 30 minutes of fuel remaining before reaching a "true" fuel emergency situation. That's always a good feeling, being safe. They taxied us off to some remote parking area where we shut down and watched a half dozen or more other airplanes come streaming in. In the end, Delta had two 747s, my 767 and another 767 and a 777 all on the ramp at Chitose. We saw two American airlines planes, a United and two Air Canada as well. Not to mention several extra Al Nippon and Japan Air Lines planes.

Post-script - 9 hours later, Japan air lines finally got around to getting a boarding ladder to the plane where we were able to get off and clear customs. - that however, is another interesting story.

By the way - while writing this - I have felt four additional tremors that shook the hotel slightly - all in 45 minutes.

I can so empathize with the successive feelings of "yep, we're good on fuel ... okay we've got enough fuel ... if anything else happens we won't have enough fuel ... let me get on the ground now! now! now! ... phew we're on the ground with fuel in the tanks." You are always balancing the desire to please the company, ATC and passengers against the desire to land with lots of yummy delicious extra fuel. Pilots think about fuel the way broke people think about money: all the time.

Boarding During an Earthquake

I had this forwarded to me without a name. It's a first hand account by a Delta Airlines captain whose flight was boarding at Narita when the 8.9 earthquake struck off the coast of Japan.

We were at the gate onboard ship 7001 with passenger boarding in progress when the earthquake began. My F/O, Joe Haggerty, had taken his seat and I was standing behind the center radio console when the airplane began shaking. Initially thought it was wind gusts but ruled that out since it had been calm when we left the hotel. Jet blast from a taxiing aircraft? Nope, look, the terminal windows are flexing and the building is...moving! It's an earthquake...immediately, in a brilliant display of airmanship, Joe reached over and set the parking brake. It seemed quite possible that we could jump our wheel chocks and roll into something hard. After a minute of this, the shaking got much worse and lasted about 2 1/2 minutes total. Our passengers intuitively decided that the safest place in all of this was on the aircrart and not in the terminal or the jetway. Never seen 261 people board a 777 so quickly! Two long and impressive aftershocks followed during the next hour. Narita closed it's runways and our inbound flights began diverting. 281 from Atlanta was about 10 minutes from landing and diverted to Nagoya. Hanada and Narita were both closed. They evacuated everyone from the Narita terminals deeming the structures unsafe for occupancy. The Narita tower was evacuated, Narita Approach Control was evacuated. At about 4pm, the airport was notam'd closed "until 0600 tomorrow morning". So, Delta cancelled us and all of the other flights out of Narita.

Well.........there was only one "safe area" established at the airport (outside in a cold rain) where passengers could be taken if they deplaned. It became full. There was no chance of deplaning into the terminal. No chance of deplaning at all. No ground transportation as all busses and trains were shut down and the highways had been closed. So, Delta calls the Narita Airport Authority and suggests that since the runway had been inspected, it might be a real good idea to allow 6 Delta departures and get maybe 1,400 customers out of this mess. They agreed and after a four hour wait at the gate, we got out of there. On departure we could see four distinct, large fires in downtown Tokyo, 50 miles to the south. A refinery was on fire at the coastline to our east. We had no real idea of the size of the disaster until we had a datalink discussion with our dispatcher who filled us in. Now, watching the news at home, I am stunned at the devastation. All Delta crews and employees are safe and uninjured in Japan. I am not sure if the layover hotel has power. I'm glad I'm not in room 932 anymore with the aftershocks that they are getting.

Happy to be home and thanks for your concern.

It's weird when you're on the ground and the airplane is moving in a way you haven't commanded it. I remember the first time I couldn't taxi straight in wind, and can see why that was the captain's first impression.

Prophylactic Security Measures

Finally, after a string of tentative aviation but not work posts, I'm ready to finish up posts on my last shift at work. This might be a little confusing because I tried hard to get these done before I left for Cambodia, but they really take place before then. So we rejoin me during the final week of my last shift before I left Cambodia.

I'm lazing about in an anonymous hotel. 'Tis not the season for working very hard in Canada, so here is a story from someone else who was working hard at a US airline which I won't name. I have his permission to post it, properly anonymized, so if you're close enough to the story to recognize the players, please don't say anything to give it away.

We had a serious situation on our flight yesterday that resulted in a diversion to an airport where we have no base, and a full evacuation. A few passengers received minor injuries during the evacuation, but otherwise everything was fine. We had no staff based there, but another airline came to the rescue in helping us with locating buses and assisting our passengers. They even had some of their staff mobilize to get bags off the aircraft. As a result of the landing, the airport was forced to close for most of the day yesterday and into this morning because the brakes had locked and we could not move the aircraft. This airport doesn't even have a towbar appropriate for the aircraft, so we trucked one in from another city along with other ground support equipment to help with moving the aircraft.

Once our airplane was no longer impeding airport operations, the next priority was to return it to serviceability. We brought our own employees, all appropriately badged for airside access at two of our other bases, but the TSA would not permit them onto the field here, to work in a maintenance hangar. The airport authority and the airline are in agreement that this incident is an emergency situation which requires mitigative response in allowing our personnel to fix the aircraft immediately without having to go through SIDA training for the new airport. TSA maintains stoically that any staff working to get this plane operating need to go through SIDA training.

SIDA stands for Security Identification Display Area. Every airport has its own application procedure including a short training course. Presumably the training consists mainly of being told not to let anyone into a secure area, not to enter one without your badge, and not to lose your badge, plus lots of threats and scary information about what happens if you disobey. Perhaps the airport-specific part includes a map showing all the secure areas on the airport in question, and an introduction to the head of security who will kick your ass if you don't comply. That takes about 45 minutes (the training, not the ass-kicking) so the lengthy part of the application procedure is the ten day wait for a background check. You can't use the fact that you got a background check at three other airports to waive this requirement, as the airport badge must be issued right after the passed background check.

The eye-rolling frustration of this policy is evident from the quoted diversion incident and the details of the SIDA application process itself. Plus the first google hit for SIDA training TSA is a plea to standardize the training for all airports. While I'd agree that a trainee aircraft groomer at SeaTac shouldn't automatically have an all-access pass at DCA, I can't conceive of a reason why an aircraft mechanic with 20 years experience at JFK can't be issued a temporary pass to work on a company aircraft at LAX, after the validity of her JFK pass has been confirmed. Can you? It's not like it's hard to identify the secure areas at an unfamiliar airport. They have a stop sign sticker with the SIDA acronym, and they're usually locked, anyway.

I always flinch slightly when I see the SIDA sticker on airport doors, not because I've ever been badged at a US airport, but because they happen to have chosen the same acronym as the French term for AIDS, as in the HIV+ disease. Not that that's something one contracts by turning the wrong doorknob, but it is an extra deterrent to keep me out of secured areas.

It's pasta Tuesday, the highlight of the week in northern wherever we are. We all go to Boston Pizza.

Update: The missing paragraph of the post is now visible. I accidentally hid it through an html error.

Altitude

I don't usually watch scary movies, but when I saw the publicity photo for this one, with the cast posing in a piston twin, its very familiar cockpit prominent in the background of the shot, I had to see it. Fortunately it isn't really movie-scary. That's not to say that pilots watching this movie won't have nightmares afterward. Let me set the scene.


A non-instrument rated pilot with only a few hours multi-engine experience, poor weather assessment skills and an affected emotional state boards all her closest friends onto an aircraft she has never flown before, with inoperative wing boots, and without providing a preflight safety briefing, securing their baggage nor performing a weight and balance calculation. She departs beneath the dark bases of towering cumulus and then attempts to outclimb them in poor visibility in mountainous terrain.
None of these factors dooms the flight, but an authoritative preflight safety briefing may have helped their case. Or maybe not, considering what the film throws at the terrified group of teens. Unlike my typical movie 'review,' I'm not going to give the whole story away. Most of the scary parts are an old-fashioned movie of the imagination with some depicted B-movie monster fun.
Although some aspects of the initial emergency that drives the plot are roll-in-the-aisles funny to anyone who knows how an airplane works, the aviation parts of the movie show the hand of a competent technical adviser. I know her. She is a commercial pilot who worked on Wings Over Canada. The pilot runs accurate checklists and, before she degenerates into screaming "MAYDAY" on multiple frequencies, makes the most authentic radio calls ever heard in a major motion picture. The weight calculation that she performs in her head (in flight, after icing become a concern) doesn't include any moment arms, but it's almost startling to hear her use terms like "basic empty weight" and explain that the stall speed will increase with weight.
Sadly the movie does not escape the "we have to lighten the load!" trope, involving throwing baggage out of the airplane, but they do avoid cutting to the fuel gauge at dramatically more frequent intervals. The pilot even leaves the Janitrol heater turned off specifically to conserve fuel. You don't realize how many things there are to know about aviation until you see the high ratio of things they got right to things they got wrong in the details.
The aircraft callsign for the purpose of the film is C-MYXZ. That's not a real callsign, as Canadian registrations never have an M after the C. Registrations are often changed for movie purposes. The Americans even have a small group of N-numbers reserved just for movies. This is the first time I've seen this particular obfuscation on a Canadian movie airplane. Maybe it's M for movie. it's like a 555 telephone number prefix for airplane registrations. The actual registration on this airplane is personalized to the owner, while YXZ is about as generic as you get.
I think not being a giant studio movie placed fewer layers between the technical advice and the finished product, and the result lends a lot more verisimilitude to the picture than you'd expect from a scary teen movie set in an airplane. Even though the director may not have intended suspense based on a VFR pilot hand flying through IMC, my heart was pounding. Spotting editing errors like an outside shot of the aircraft crossing the hold short line while the dialogue has the pilot reading back a hold short clearance, or a huge split in the mixtures when both engines are functioning normally is just part of the fun.
So is the ultimate hazard to this aircraft to be a control surface malfunction? Icing? Structural damage from turbulence? Fuel exhaustion? Loss of control from disorientation (and the pilot constantly turning her head around to talk to the people in the back)? Psychotic passengers? Hypoxia? CFIT? Not even close. Try giant space octopus. That's not a spoiler: its tentacles are right on the movie poster. Advance publicity billed this as a Lovecraftian monster movie, but monster fans will probably be disappointed. Aviation B-movie lovers should buy it right away, though.
The writer confesses that the original ending killed them all by crashing into terrain, but the actual ending is clever and satisfying. There are still a few loose ends, but I'll just call them red herrings. My largest complaint is that the visual post-processing was done overseas by a mainland China shop. This is not a quality issue, but because there's a lot of taxpayer funding in this, Kaare Andrew's first feature film, I'd rather it have gone to local talent. I'll forgive them because apparently they tried to have it done locally and then there was some screw-up; a Chinese company, with a Canadian connection, saved the film. It's filmed in Canada with anonymized airports and nav aid names, but if you've been there you'll easily spot where they really are.
It's rated restricted in the US for "language" and a "sexual gesture," but it's not a sweary or obscene movie at all. Apparently in the US, a guy hidden by a seatback who makes a gesture that suggests he may be opening his pants and waggling his wang poses potential trauma for a sixteen year old, while kids are free to see movies where someone is bludgeoned to death, so long as no blood is depicted. (I recall no bludgeoning nor bloodshed in Altitude).
As you can tell from the date on this blog entry and the direct-to- video release date of the movie, I got to see an advance showing, but I don't have a personal or financial connection to the film or its crew. I paid for my ticket and for my own copy of the DVD.

On the topic of products being released imminently by independent Canadian entertainers and of entertaining fictional death, a year or so ago one of my favourite webcomic artists, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics, solicited stories about a world in which a person could learn the manner of their death in advance. Selected best stories have been edited into an anthology, and the book is about to be published. In an attempt to get a little bit of attention to a book that major publishing houses wouldn't accept, they ask that if you'd like to buy the book, buy it on Amazon.com on October 26th, in order to spike the sales and get it on Amazon's bestseller list, just for a day. A more cogent argument for that strategy is here. Again, I have no connection to the product, didn't even submit a story, but I appreciate Ryan's work, and I'd love a world where artists did wonderful things and simultaneously had enough money to support themselves, without all the intervening apparatus of the ... I want to say "dinosaur publishing world" but that would imply that they were as cool as Ryan's character T-Rex.

More Evidence Pilots Can't Count to Three

Exactly eight hours after I put my head down on the pillow, the alarm tells me to wake up and go back to work. I get out of bed, switch on the computer, and put on my clothes while it reloads windows. And I see that the weather gods have rewarded me for my scrupulous adherence to duty time laws, as the fog at Regina has not materialized. Why should weather gods care about duty time? I don't know, but I feel virtuous so I accept the reward.

Breakfast will be a meal replacement bar out of my flight bag. A "company note" (flight itinerary) will stand in lieu of a flight plan. I call down to the front desk to let them know I am looking for an airport shuttle. It's on another mission and won't be back for over half an hour. Aargh. I come down to the desk and check out, asking about taxis. It turns out there's one sitting outside. That will do.

I ask the driver to take me to the airport, but not the passenger terminal, the Kelly FBO, "It used to be the Shell," I explain. He asks me which airport. "The big one, the international, Winnipeg International ..." Damnit, it has another name. Which dead politician or war hero is this one named after? "The one Air Canada flies into." Good thing he asked. I'd have hated to end up at a cropdusting strip or one of the flying school fields around here. I put my head down and start texting my flight follower. Then I look up. We're approaching the passenger terminal. "This is the wrong side," I explain. "I need to be on the other side of the runways, where the Esso is." The Esso hasn't changed names lately, I hope.

"You said the big airport," he counters.

And my realization dawns. To non-pilots the airport is not the place with the runways. It's the terminal. To him this is two separate airports, the one with the big airplanes and the one with the charter planes and scruffy pilots like me. He drives back around the runways and I'm at the FBO only a little later than I had planned. I've yet to find the perfect words to explain to cab drivers where I need to go.

I paid for my fuel last night, so I just go through and preflight the airplane. No water in the fuel, lots of oil in the engines (or maybe not and I added some). All the airplaney bits are still attached in the right order. I load my flight bag and overnight bag into the airplane and secure them in place, then open the CFS to get the clearance delivery frequency and check on any special departure procedures. And there is one I hadn't planned on. Aircraft not on a VFR flight plan must call flight services at least 30 minutes prior to departure, in order to obtain a transponder code. Sigh. I shut down. They're doing this everywhere now. I call clearance delivery and see if I can get away without one, but he is unbending. I call flight services on the radio and ask if I really have to wait half an hour. "Try in five minutes," he recommends. I start up again and then a guy comes by in an Esso truck and signals for me to shut down. I do so and he tells me there's something on the ground by the plane. I open the door and look and it's the little bag in which I keep my wallet, licence and passport. It fell out of my flight bag while I was loading. I thank him profusely and check to make sure my head is screwed on.

Restart the engines. Clearance delivery has my transponder code, ground gives me a prompt and easy taxi clearance, and tower clears me for takeoff. Vroom into the sky I go, approved for a left turnout. There's a little bit of mist over the ground, in low spots, but other than that it's a lovely day. I climb out to some bush pilot like low altitude and level off. I hear a call from a flight number "911." I think it may be that company's standard medevac flight number, but they do have a 9-1-1 of sort. They also have just taken off and are requesting a return for landing because of fuel leaking visibly out of the tank caps. Someone else is having one of those mornings. They decline all emergency services, fire trucks and other offers of assistance. I think I would have left off the reason for my return in my request, and just let ATC be curious.

About 50 miles outside of Regina I make a call to traffic on 126.7. It's not strictly necessary, as I'm going to call tower in a few minutes and they will provide traffic information in the vicinity of their control zone, but it's what I'd do in the bush approaching an airport, so I do it here. A voice answers with my real name, recognizing my voice even though it's been a long time. It's a mentor, my very first aviation mentor. The guy who gave me a postcard with an A319 on it on my first cockpit visit. He is so awesome. He gives me his phone number and I promise to call tontight.

I copy the Regina ATIS and call tower. They sequence me and ask me if my destination is apron II. I look at the airport diagram in the CFS and see apron I opposite the terminal, apron IV way down taxiway Charlie, and II and III down that way too. I'm not sure which of II, III or IV is right, but it's down that way, so I answer in the affirmative. I'm cleared to land, do so and then call ground.

Ground gives me taxi instructions that don't gyve with my destination. I look at the CFS diagram now that I'm not flying an airplane, and realize that the area I'm looking at isn't marked II and III, but is marked III in two different places. Apron II is off on the opposite side of the terminal. I call back and admit that I can't count past two and need to taxi the other direction, which he approves. It's twenty to eight as I pull up, but there is no one waiting impatiently for me. I've made it. I shut down and fill out the journey log.

Recurrent Training

Next day I go for a flight with my chief pilot. Due to a variety of SNAFUs, there hasn't been time to book an examiner and do the required training for a PPC renewal, so although my IFR expires in a few days, we're not doing the six hours of training required to renew it, just the one hour for the company annual. I'll be restricted to VFR flight only, and to part 702 work--no night VFR with passengers--until we get that straightened out.

The flight is practice and demonstration of competence at a few procedures that I never do in the normal course of work. We start with steep turns, 45 degrees of bank, maintain altitude and airspeed, roll out on the initial heading. My first one is terrible, but I try a few more each way and determine the sweet spot. Still not stunning, but the chief pilot is satisfied. Not banking is generally what I am paid to do.

Stalls are simple. Reduce the power below the setting at which the airplane can maintain level flight, let the speed bleed off and trim down to blue line or so, then maintain back pressure on the control column and hold altitude until the angle of attack approaches a critical point. If I let it continue right to the stall, the nose would pitch forward as the centre of pressure moved aft. It's not entirely dissimilar to the feeling when you're not pedalling a bicycle hard enough for the grade and it slows to a stop and would flop over if you didn't put your foot out. The standard for the exercise calls for me to recover at the first sign of a stall, which in this airplane is the stall light and horn, so when it flashes and bleats I apply full power and pitch the nose down just enough to fly again. We repeat the exercise with the flaps and gear extended. This time I have to raise the gear and reduce the flap setting gradually to aid recovery.

My worst exercise is recovery from the engine failure in the overshoot. Considering that I do mentally practice for an engine failure on take-off, and that I know I'll be given a failure as we simulate an overshoot, I should have been much better at simulating the feathered engine while maintaining speed and heading. I do another and the procedures are better but the airspeed control, but the third one is the charm. I'm fairly horrified, but the chief pilot is tranquil. I remind myself that the purpose of training is to train, not to be perfect already, but I hate being bad at things I should be good at.

Once I have the airplane cleaned up with the simulated engine failure, my next instruction is to turn to a heading. It is the reciprocal of the heading I am on. I look for traffic, and then bank, saying out loud, "turn away from the dead engine." Pilots who turn towards a failed engine can find themselves unable to control the airplane. And it turns out the instruction was a test.

At the end I do an ILS approach, go missed, fly a circuit and come back and land. I'm signed off for another year of company service, and we'll try and schedule a PPC before too long.

Iceland: Not Just Ice

I wasn't going to say anything about the volcanic activity in Iceland shutting down aviation across northern Europe, because I didn't think I'd have anything to add to the news coverage. But then CTV had a piece on it, including an interview with a former airline pilot in which they asked him why volcanic ash was such a threat to airplanes. His answer was that it forms very large clouds that don't show up on radar. That's true, but he never got to the nitty gritty of why, the literal nitty gritty, or at least gritty. Volcanic ash does not vanish to powdery nothing on your fingertips like wood ash: it consists of very hard, sharp particles of well-tempered glass. It flames out jet engines as its volume disrupts the airflow, damages the first stage from the inside by etching and abrading the perfectly machined moving parts, and then the glass can melt again inside the combustion stage of the engine and then re-congeal. Where it doesn't melt, it can mix with atmospheric moisture into a concrete-like slurry. The ash cloud also opacifies windscreens and inundates all moving parts, effectively sandblasting them.

Then the reporter set him up perfectly by asking, "Are you saying at an enormous 747 with four big engines could fly into ash and have all four engines snuff out?" By naming that specific type I suspect that the reporter had done some research and wanted the reveal of this flight or this one to be made by an actual airline pilot.

But instead of saying, "It has happened," the pilot said "it would never happen in practice," and went on to describe the satellite imagery and communications that steer aircraft free of ash clouds. I'm sure he knew about the BA flight, and was acting on the side of not panicking people and giving modern information. Technically the ash only shut down three engines on flight 9, as one of the engines had already been shut down as a precaution. That was in what saved them, because the engine that had not been running during the ash encounter was able to restart.

Oh and here's a brilliant piece of ignorance from a commenter on a CNN article. (Sorry I don't have the link, someone forwarded the text to me).

The ash cloud has stopped fights because of the danger of it stopping the aircraft engines? Another blatant lie. How were those aerial photos and videos taken? Those aircraft were far closer to the ash plume than commercial craft would fly. Why didn't their engines stop?

Perhaps the airlines sold this little falsehood because the real problem is that the ash would cause extra wear in some engines and they don;t want the expense of more maintenance. As always, the news media eagerly repeats any "official" story without thinking, "Can this be true?" Follow along now sheeple, nothing to see here. You there! Stop that thinking right now!

That person probably thinks airplanes fly just fine underwater, because he's seen lots of aerial shots of oceans and lakes. Just to be clear, that's from a member of the public in an online comments section, not a paid member of the media. But hey, at least he's not believing everything he's told.

Here's a geekmade tool showing the skies over Britain clearing of aircraft after the warning came out, the largest airspace closure since September 2001. There's an upside, though, according to this infographic on CO2 emissions.

I've never had a volcanic ash encounter, nor had to cancel a flight for ash. I have seen volcanoes and wow. The Earth itself can wreak havoc. Maybe there will be fish to eat in the future after all. Fish that breathe fire!