Say Again?

In Canada it is illegal to disclose the contents of station to station radio transmissions. In effect, this means that when I tell you about the guy in the Luscombe trying to sell a used boat to the ground controller over the radio, or the tower controller telling an pilot arriving to no traffic and calm winds to "pick a runway, any runway" that I am technically in violation of a law whose name and number I don't know.

No one seems to mind, although I suppose it might be enforced if a newspaper reporter monitored transmissions from an aircraft in distress and used them to file a story that was not otherwise available. It's not illegal to listen to the transmissions: plenty of people without aeronautical radio licences buy scanners and listen to the voices of pilots and controllers. It's interesting to hear different accents and different styles, and part of my job is to build a mental picture of where everyone is based on their position reports and the clearances they have received.

"Alfa Bravo Charlie you are cleared to land runway 07. Hold short runway 18."

"Alfa Bravo Charlie cleared to land 07, hold short 18."

"Foxtrot Golf Hotel continue number one runway 18, expect clearance short final."

"Foxtrot Golf Hotel"

"Romeo Sierra Tango cleared takeoff runway 18, traffic landing 07 will hold short, no delay, traffic on final."

"Romeo Sierra Tango rolling 18"

I can see the picture, with traffic operating on intersecting runways, and the controller fitting them in between one another in different directions, like the RCMP musical ride. It's fun to be on top of it, and know who is going to get the next call, what you are waiting for before you get your clearance, and it's a matter of safety to know where everyone is. If the pilot of RST above hears ABC call an overshoot, he should realize that could be relevant to him. If FGH hears RST reject the takeoff, then FGT knows he's going around.

All this is interesting enough that some people listen to it for fun. Sites like this one, hosted at Futura Studios have live radio feeds so you can listen to the chatter from various parts of the world. At Dallas Fort Worth you'll hear the word "bridge" in clearances a lot. It's not special jargon: DFW actually has taxiways that cross bridges over the highways coming into the airport. It will help your listening if you get an airport diagram and a local terminal chart.

Enough of my readers thank me or ask me for funny ATC stories that I thought I'd post this link so you can listen to live ATC and discover some gems of your own. Just not from Canada. I remember when I was a student pilot there was a radio feed available from a Canadian tower, for a while, but it was shut down.

In an additional note, Eric, Director of Futura Studios Digital Design Studios, noticed some flaws in the airplane image I use on this site and in my profile. He sent me some great corrected images, and they should now be the ones you see at top left and in the sidebar. What do you think?

Kids These Days

There's no question that the industry is picking up right now. My company hired a whole bunch of people into their first commercial job recently. In a manner of speaking I supervise some of them. That manner being that I can get in trouble if they screw up, I can tell them not to do things, but don't have any real authority to order them to do things. They got these jobs without any trouble, and it shows.

We had an airplane break down in one of those places you can tell from the name you don't want to be. Ever noticed that when a Canadian placename starts in Fort or ends in River, it is in the boonies? When a place becomes civilized, it loses the Fort or the River and stands on its own. The dispatcher had made the phone calls and schedule adjustments to determine that we couldn't get a mechanic into Fort River until the morning, but could get the people out tonight, we just needed a pilot. I was there, but the trip conflicted with my schedule, so she started looking for someone else.

The next pilot in the door was greeted with "where are you going now?" When he responded "home" the dispatcher cheerfully made a game show 'wrong answer' buzzer sound and informed him that his next destination was in fact Fort River. And he said no. He wasn't dutied out; he wasn't fatigued; he just wanted to go home and see his girlfriend. He's worked for the company for about three months. Two of the new hires turned down the trip like it was some kind of joke. I wanted to throttle them. I wanted to bloody their snotty little noses.

The third pilot in the door started the same day as I did, one seniority number above me. This is beginning to sound like an episode of Wings, but the dispatcher greeted him with "You've just won an all expenses paid trip to ..." and everyone else chimed in with "Fort River!" He has a work ethic, or maybe his girlfriend was away, because he just checked the weather and went.

And then another new hire refused to come back in to sign a journey log, and tried to get the dispatcher to forge it. How do I list this difference in attitude that distinguishes me from the other idiots the employers I want to work for are considering hiring? Anyone can say he is responsible and committed. You can't prove it on paper. You have to prove it at the end of the day.

Our Replacements

I was discussing GPS with a colleague who is preparing for the exams to upgrade his commercial licence to an airline transport licence. I mentioned that they like to ask us to recall the frequencies on which GPS operates: 1575.42 and 1227.60. He asked why there were two frequencies, and I started to explain about standard and precise positioning service, and then realized that my explanation was out of date. "You know, I'm not sure how many frequencies there are any more. Every time I read about GPS it gets more advanced, and I don't honestly know what level of technology is experimental, cutting edge, or actually installed in our airplanes. It's not like I'm ever going to be in a position to either tune the frequency, or build a GPS unit out of stone knives and bearskins. I know how to turn on the box and get it to tell me the right direction to fly."

"And," he concluded, "this is how we will be replaced."

For all we can argue that a cockpit must have a skilled pilot or two in it, automation is increasingly able to do most of our job. Automation is far better than people at monitoring a situation that rarely goes wrong, over a long period of time, and then, hours later, doing a task that requires alertness and precision. I told the pilot that he wouldn't be out of work. He'd sit on the ground monitoring five or ten flights for any abnormalities. If the landing gear failed to retract or an elevator trim jackscrew appreared to be misbehaving, the normal flights would be transferred to another operator and he would focus all his attention on the affected flight, landing it by telemetry. Yep, there are situations where only a real live pilot in the cockpit could save the day, but there are also plenty of situations whe real live pilots have messed up where automation wouldn't have.

He got into the speculation. (Anything is better than studying for an exam). "And they'd all have TCAS, but instead of saying 'Climb, Climb,' they'd just climb. The airplanes in communication with each other."

"And with automated ATC."

"And mostly I'd just watch them. And pat the dog that was there to bite me."

We concluded that for every Sioux City there are a dozen Everglades, Silk Airs, or Little Rocks, and that that would be the new price of air travel. And then we went back to work.

But It Could Have Been Me

Sorry for the long gap in posts. Someone asked me about my silence and I admitted that every time I went to blog I looked at the last entry and didn't feel like blogging anymore. Why does this death bother me more than the last aviation funeral I attended?

Partly it's my ability to identify with Nancy Allan more than with a male pilot that is affecting me. If you aren't a white male in the prime of your life, you may have discovered the importance of role models: the more similar someone is to you, the more you realize that you could achieve what they have achieved. Or that what happened to them could happen to you. Before her death in Winnipeg last week, Nancy logged about the same number of flying hours as I have. Some of her background is similar to mine. Someone even e-mailed me asking me to assure them it wasn't me.

Sometimes when someone dies, we use a little of the Right Stuff tactic. You think to yourself, "the company he flew for had poor maintenance," or "I've seen him do a skimpy walkaround," or "they had some pretty dangerous operational procedures." You come up with just the right balance so that you aren't mentally slagging the other pilot, but you maintain a reason why it can't happen to you. Not here. Morningstar is an excellent company. The Caravan is known to be not-so-good in ice, but it's certified and there was no reason I wouldn't have done the same scheduled take-off if it had been mine. The airplane she regularly flew was out getting painted. Yeah, she was covering for someone else who was on vacation: wasn't even supposed to be in that horrible Winnipeg weather.

I can explain that anyone could be killed crossing the street, but you see, pilots and elementary school teachers and computer programmers and legal secretaries all cross the street. I told a friend once in all seriousness that "it's not that that many pilots are killed at work, it's just that we all know one another and there's such a network of communication, and when we die at work it makes the news, so it seems like more." He nodded sagely, and managed to pretend that it was probable that Canadian office workers die in gruesome filing cabinet and stapler-related accidents every month, but that the media just doesn't report it, because it's not glamourous like an airplane crash.

So I have to resort back to knowing that we all die in the end, thus I might as well do what I like doing in the meantime.

It Wasn't Me

This morning the radio reported the crash of a FedEx cargo flight, a Cessna 208. The initial radio report had far fewer details, and simply led with the fact that the "female pilot" was killed. I won't jump on a feminist soapbox to claim that inclusion of her sex in the report equates to condemnation of her abilities. I don't believe that. It may add sensation to the story, but that's the job of the news media. I can't blame them for trying to sell radio advertising, any more than they can blame me for cancelling flights when the fuel pump doesn't work. I don't think there's anything wrong with including someone's age, race, sex, hair colour, or fashion statements in an article about them. It makes it more interesting. But no one should learn of the death of a friend or relative in between jokes and stock prices on the radio morning show. In this community, by naming the company, the route, the type of aircraft and specifying that the pilot was female, you pretty much identify her, at almost any company.

It sounds as though she encountered in-flight icing and picked up more than the aircraft could endure before she could get back on the ground. I hope the TSB figures out what happened.

Aircraft Snag

Every aircraft logbook page has a space to report snags (problems), and each snag has to be numbered to correspond to maintenance rectifications and deferrals. Sometimes there are little jokes hidden within.

At the end of a particularly hot week, an airplane might turn up at the maintenance hangar, logbook annotated with:

Air conditioning u/s

If the head of maintenance is in the right mood, some poor apprentice may be sent to diagnose the unserviceable air conditioner. The game is to see how long it takes him to figure out that the aircraft never had air conditioning installed.

Cosmetic problems in the cockpit don't get rectified quickly. It's amusing to see how many executive transports sport brand new leather interiors in the passenger cabin, while the pilot seats are ratty cloth partially recovered in ratty sheepskin. Its not worth writing up a snag for a coffee stain. Unless the right opportunity presents itself.

1. Left engine stopped producing power immediately after take-off.
2. Aircraft landed over max certified landing weight.
3. Brown stains on pilot seat.

It's all about context.

The Sting

Two Transport Canada officials came by one day, and planted themselves in a public area in our lounge, with a good view of the ramp. No one likes to see Transport swoop into the company unexpectedly, and it was amusing to see pilots swerve away from them, and find another direction to walk in.

"What are they doing here?" I asked a colleague.

"They're going to do an enforcement action on Air Raccoon," he replied.

"How do you know?"

"I heard them discussing it next door."

There they were, clearly keyed up with anticipation of triumph, grinning and sidling up to each other, as the Raccoon-marked airplane taxied in and parked. ID badges carefully adjusted, windbreakers zipped up and clipboards at the ready, they strolled out through the security doors to the tarmac, towards the offending aircraft. The mood evoked drawn guns and the bulk of bulletproof vests. We all craned our necks around the corner and hummed the theme song from COPS. Apparently the aircraft had been loaded so obviously over its gross weight that someone had reported it. I'm not sure what the fine or penalty was.

As I write this, I realize that it's really rather nice that aviation enforcement doesn't actually involve armed takedowns. Two badges and two stern looks almost certainly brought that pilot to the professional equivalent of being handcuffed face down on the pavement. Whatcha going to do when they come for you?

Stripes and Buttons

The stripes you see on a pilot's shoulders as part of our uniform are attached to a flat tube (is there such a thing as a flat tube? or do tubes have to be cylindrical?) that slides over a flap of fabric on the shoulder of the shirt. The flap buttons down to hold the stripes on. There's a word associated with all this: epaulettes, but I'm never sure whether the flap of shirt, or the stripes themselves are called epaulettes. The stripes are ludicrously expensive. If you ever have a job where you have to go to a pilot supply store and buy the correct colour of stripes for yourself, you'll find it runs you $15 to $25 for the pair. When you get a new job, or especially an upgrade to captain, it's important to leave your stripes in a sunny window so they will fade quickly and make you look more experienced.

When you're done flying for the day, and have to walk around in public, you take the stripes off and stuff them in your breast pocket, along with your pen, and your oversized aviator sunglasses. Stopping in to the grocery store while wearing your stripes ranks right up there on the dorkiness scale with tripping over your own shoelaces. I typically rebutton the flap, so it isn't just flapping around. Some companies don't have you wear stripes, just the shirt with the little flaps on, so that everyone knows you're a pilot. Either way, at the end of the day, when I get home and take off the shirt, the little flap is buttoned up.

Technically, according to pilot laundry lore, you're supposed to unbutton the flap before putting the shirts in the wash. I'm not sure where I learned this. It wasn't in flying school. The theory is that if you leave them buttoned, they will catch on something and the buttons will rip off. I think I did it for a while, then stopped bothering, and discovered that the buttons never ripped off.

Until today. A shirt came out of the laundry separated from one of its buttons. I think that's a pretty good average. If I took all the time it would have taken me to unbutton and rebutton shirts over the years, I think that would equal to more than the time it's going to take me to reattach this one button. So I come out ahead.

Someone is probably thinking at this point, "but she has to unbutton it eventually to reattach the stripes, so why not do it before the laundry rather than after?" Except that I want the flaps fastened while the shirts are on the hangers in the closet, so I would have done them up again, anyway. For no particular reason. And if you add in the time I just spent blogging about it, I really have wasted a phenomenal amount of time in buttoning, unbuttoning, rebuttoning, mending and talking about buttons.

Being Responsible is Less Fun

During the pre-take-off checks, the fuel pressure on my right engine was high. Not just a little higher than normal, not just touching the red line on the gauge, but right through it. With the electric fuel pump turned off (leaving just the engine-driven pump supplying fuel to the engine), the pressure fell to normal. I turned the pump back on again. The needle went back through the red line. What to do?

The high fuel pressure probably would not do any harm. What's going to happen? It's not as if the pressure is going to get so high the engine explodes. It would be different if it were low fuel pressure. This airplane was needed for multiple flights. The weather was good. We had a clearance. A number of people, not to mention my entire day's income, depended on that airplane flying. Other pilots would also lose income, as would the company, if the airplane didn't fly. Maybe it was just parallax error that made the gauge appear to read in the red. Maybe I didn't notice it during take-off. The electric fuel pumps would be selected off during the flight, anyway. Yeah, right.

When I have a borderline serviceability issue, I ask myself: if I did this flight, and something happened, how would I feel explaining my decision to take off to Transport Canada, or to a passenger's family. I said out loud, "There's a reason why the manufacturer painted a red line on that gauge." We taxied back, and I recorded the problem, in ink, in the aircraft journey log. No changing my mind.

The required part was on order stock. The airplane is off line. The ripple effect is going to carry right through the week, disrupting schedules and disappointing people. No one gave me a word of criticism: not maintenance, not the customers, not my co-workers, not even management. But I didn't get to go flying today, received no flight pay, and I'm sure someone was pissed off.

It's just like being a responsible teenager. Safe decisions result in lower popularity, and missing out on the fun.

Prada or Polyester?

I picked up a novel, The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger. I don't recommend it. It's about a new college grad enduring her first job as assistant to a ridiculously demanding fashion editor. The editor piles her with ludicrous and poorly defined tasks and then becomes furious when they are not done to her exacting standards.

Many of the episodes in which the protagonist gets in trouble involve her being sent on an errand and not returning in the expected time, usually because she is talking on her cellphone, smoking a cigarette or otherwise dawdling. So this is supposed to be a story about the most unreasonable boss ever, but I can't sympathize with the girl, because she's wasting time. If you're supposed to have the engine started and be off blocks at 05:23, you're off blocks at 05:23. That means you get in as early as you have to in order to be fuelled, loaded, preflighted, deiced, started, briefed and trundling towards the appropriate taxiway at the exact prescribed time.

In another episode, the boss's commercial flight out of Miami is cancelled for weather, so she demands that her assistants get her a private charter. I laughed a bit reading that part, because weather is weather and if one pilot won't take off through Miami weather in a commercial airliner, there's not a good chance of another pilot planning into it in something smaller. But that wasn't the problem encountered by the assistants. In this fictional account of the aircraft charter industry, charter companies don't work nights. "I called every single private charter company in the state of Florida and, as you might imagine, they weren't answering their phones at midnight on a Saturday." Someone else told her she had, "a better chance of getting hit by lightning twenty times than I did of securing a plane and a pilot at that hour." Then I really started laughing. What does Lauren Weisberger think that charter companies do? They take people from Florida to New York on short notice in the middle of the night. That's what they're there for. Limosines of the sky.

This young author acts like she doesn't realize that people really do have jobs that require them to be on call twenty-four hours a day, to make all problems, even caused by the weather, their own responsibility, and to let their boyfriends know that if their pager rings, nookie is over. The protagonist of the novel gets free designer clothes as a job perk. I get a free polyester blend shirt and tie. But she also has to wear high heels. I've got her there. Sensible shoes all the way.

Perhaps I should be worried that the only favourable point of comparison between my working conditions and a fictional hell-job is footwear. But I'm not. I'm committed to my job, and I like it.

Optional Procedure Turns

The most awkward part of a hockey stick procedure turn is transitioning from crossing the beacon, to tracking outbound along the shaft of the hockey stick. If you arrive via a heading that is close to the outbound heading, then you only have a small turn to make passing the beacon, and can line up quite easily. But if you are approaching the beacon from the inbound heading, you have to do a full 180, and then have to make quite a large cut to intercept the outbound track. It may be more convenient to use another form of procedure turn.

If you arrive at the beacon via a heading that is close to the inbound heading, the racetrack may be the easiest. After crossing the beacon, the pilot makes a turn towards the protected airspace side, to the outbound heading, and simply parallels the outbound track for a couple of minutes, before making a one-eighty in the same direction to interept the track. It's shaped like a hold. In still air, this should work out nicely, but with wind you might not end up where you think you are. One of the dangers is that with a strong wind blowing from the protected side, you could be blown through the track so that when you made your turn, you were actually turning away from both the inbound track, and the protected airspace. You must pay attention to the instrument indications of your position relative to the track, even though you aren't tracking. The wind could blow you sideways, pushing you towards the inbound track, so that when you turned around and tried to intercept it inbound, you would overshoot it during the turn. If that started to happen, you could intercept the track outbound and then switch to a hockey stick procedure turn. If you caught it early and really had your heart set on a racetrack, you could switch to a modified racetrack.

You might choose a modified racetrack if you were approaching from the unprotected side at an angle that might put the outbound leg of the racetrack too close to the inbound track. So crossing the beacon, you turn to a heading that is about forty-five degrees from the outbound heading, towards the protected side. You fly that heading for a minute, then turn to the outbound heading for a minute or two, and then turn 135 degrees, to intercept the inbound heading at 45 degrees, just like the corresponding part of the hockey stick PT.

Coming from the protected side, some pilots do an S-turn: crossing the beacon, turning immediately to a heading 45 degrees to the protected side of the outbound, flying that heading for a couple of minutes, then turning around to intercept the inbound. It's kind of like a modified racetrack for people arriving from the protected side.

There's also a 90-270 rapid reversal that starts out like the hockey stick, but instead of turning forty-five degrees off track and then doing a one-eighty, the pilot turns ninety degrees off track and then almost immediately whips the rest of the way around to intercept it. I suppose it's faster.

The hockey stick (or the faster varient) procedure turn does have one huge advantage, and that is that while flying outbound, you are tracking, following the needle indications that tell you that you are exactly on the outbound track, and not confusedly flying the wrong way, nor being blown by strong winds out of protected airspace and into a mountain. I favour the hockey stick or the racetrack. My philosophy is that if you have to cross through the outbound track anyway, you might as well intercept it.

I believe that in the United States (and someone will correct me if I'm wrong), this thing is called a course reversal, instead of a procedure turn, and you're only allowed to fly it as depicted on the plate, and those are usually hockey sticks. I doubt Americans do them much at all: radar coverage is almost universal in the States.

Tribute to the NHL

When you are flying IFR (i.e. in clouds) in a busy, radar-controlled environment you normally receive radar vectors to intercept the approach. The controller tells you what heading to fly and you keep following her instructions until you have intercepted an electronic line in the sky, and you can fly straight in and land. But not all airports have radar coverage, and some approaches are not appropriate for radar vectors. You have to turn around and line yourself up to land.

An instrument approach normally has a radio beacon of some sort (NDB or VOR) either right at the end of the runway, or pretty much lined up with the straight in path to the runway. Lets say that you want to fly an approach to runway 18, so that to be lined up perfectly you have to be flying on a heading of 180, or due south. You have to work out some way to be exactly north of the beacon, pointing south. If you were looking out the window to plan this, you'd just fly to a point a few miles north of the beacon, turn around, and line up, like widening out and planning a turn with your car into a parking stall. But the point is that IFR you're in cloud, so you can't see to line up. And there is not usually another beacon ten miles north and exactly aligned with the first, so you can't fly there to turn around and line up. You have to fly to the beacon that is there.

Reaching the beacon, you're either directly overhead the runway or within a few miles. Either way, if you try to turn around and point at the runway to land, it's not going to work. So you when you reach the beacon you turn away from the runway and then later turn around and come back: a procedure turn.

There are various flavours of procedure turn, and in Canada you can choose any one you want for an approach, or make up your own, provided that you remain within protected airspace. Approach designers typically protect airspace 10 miles back from the beacon (it wil say on the plate exactly how far), 5 nm on the procedure turn side, and a mile and half on the non-turning side. Protection implies that if you fly at the published altitude you will be one thousand feet above the highest obstacle, and that ATC won't allow others to fly there while you're using it. Take a piece of scrap paper and draw a vertical line near the bottom, then a small circle further up the page in line with your vertical line. That's your runway, with the beacon to the north. Now draw a big rectangle, such that the beacon is near the bottom right hand corner of the rectangle. That rectangle represents the protected airspace for a left procedure turn. (A turn might be left or right, depending on what mountains, airspace or enormous TV antennae the designers had to contend with).

The standard procedure turn is called the hockey stick. Imagine a hockey stick (the Canadian kind, for real hockey, played on ice, not the little curly kind for grass hockey) with the butt end at the beacon and the blade turned off to the left, all inside the protected airspace. The airplane will follow a path down the shaft, left around the top of the blade, right along the bottom of the blade (where it would be resting on the ice) and back down the shaft to the beacon, and hence the runway.

So you fly directly to the beacon, from whereever you are, descending to the higher of the altitudes specified by the approach plate and ATC. When you reach the beacon, you turn, left or right, whichever is the shortest turn to the outbound heading. And then you turn a little bit more. Why? Because you were moving forward while you turned around, so if you turned due north you would be paralleling the shaft of the hockey stick and not flying along it. The outbound heading is written right on the approach plate, so that pilots don't have to worry about difficult math like adding or subtracting 180 degrees from the inbound heading.

You continue flying that little-bit-more heading until you are almost on the shaft of the hockey stick (correctly set and interpreted instruments will let you know when this happens). I say "almost on" it, because if you wait until you are exactly on it, you will overshoot it while you are making the turn. You don't want to be zig-zagging back and forth like a drunk driver trying to stay on the road. You want to establish yourself, with the minimum amount of zig-zagging, on an outbound track along the shaft of that hockey stick.

You fly along the hockey stick for a minute or two, doesn't really matter exactly how long, so long as you remain within protected airspace and have a plan. If my co-pilot has a thing about flying one minute and thirty seconds exactly, that's okay with me. We just want to get far enough out that turning around and lining up is easy, and so we have enough time to descend. After that agreed upon amount of time, you make a 45 degree turn to the left (or to the right, if the plate specifies a right PT, but my example is to the left). You're following the blade of the hockey stick. The heading to fly to get a 45 degree turn is also printed on the plate. After one minute (more or less if you know there's a strong wind affecting your progress towarads the tip of the blade) you turn right one hundred eighty degrees and head back towards the shaft of the hockey stick. Approaching the shaft (needles tell you when) you turn to the inbound course, timing it perfectly so that you roll out wings level, exactly aligned with the inbound course. Failing that, you make an appropriate correction to get on track, and start descending, according to the limitations on the plate. When you get back to the beacon at the butt of the hockey stick, you descend further, in the hopes of actually seeing the runway.

I could probably get an account that allowed me to put pictures up, but then I'd have to draw them, and scan them. Describing things in words that really ought to have pictures is kind of fun. I'll describe more procedure turns later. For those of you who know what it means when I write about holds: no this isn't a "holds" blog entry. I'm glad hockey is back. I'll describe other procedure turns later.

Bits and Pieces

I saw a quote earlier, ostensibly what the Long Beach tower controller said to the pilots of JetBlue 292 after their gear inspection flyby. Something like "Your landing gear is turned ninety degrees the wrong way," but I liked it better. ATC have a talent for saying things that are amusing in their succinct simplicity. I couldn't find the quote again, but I found a few other things I wanted to share.

"You never really read the pamphlets or pay attention to the flight attendants, but everyone was listening to every word they said."
---JetBlue Flight 292 passenger Pia Barma

Grrr. Listen to the briefing, people. We don't do it for our own amusement.

"There were a lot of people in our office that were really stunned about how perfect that landing looked."
---FAA spokesman Donn Walker.

Good when the FAA has something nice to say about what a pilot did.

(Both of those from the LA Daily News. BTW, correction to my previous blog entry: the A320 can't dump fuel in flight. The fuel load was reduced solely by burning it off. Don't know why I wrote that. Must have repoter genes.)

And here's an ATC trainee who singlehandedly made up for all the odd clearances, poor sequencing and confused silences I have ever received from ATC trainees. Note that trainees are very closely supervised, for a surprising amount of time.

Newark Tower, July 26, 2004:

"Scott Dittamo was in the final stages of his trainee program at the busy Newark Tower, receiving training on the local control position. The weather conditions were ideal; clear skies. Dittamo was looking out the window. 'We had a [Boeing] 747 coming in,' he said. 'You can point out a 747 easily on a clear day.' It was Air India Flight 145, with 409 passengers aboard.

"'He was on five-mile final approach,' Dittamo remarked. 'I saw him but I couldn't see gear.' With his [instructions] in his head - 'Always look for feet' - Dittamo glanced in a different direction and then turned back to the 747 to look again. No gear. 'I thought, something just doesn't seem right,' he said. 'In my mind, I said I would pick it up in my next scan. But then I looked up and the plane definitely had no gear.'

"By this point, Flight 145 was on a half-mile final at an altitude of 600 feet. 'I was surprised he didn't go around,' Dittamo stated. 'I was going to let it go for one more second, because this was a critical phase of the flight for the crew. But then I just said to myself, I'm not going to let this go for any longer.'

"Dittamo keyed the mike, 'Air India 145, check gear down. Gear appears up.' The pilot acknowledged the transmission with a calm, 'Air India 145.' Down came the gear and the 747 landed safely on Runway 4R.

"'Holy cow!' said another controller in the tower, realizing that Dittamo had just prevented a possible disaster. Several other pilots on the frequency, taxiing or waiting to take off, heard the transmission and instantly knew of the importance of Dittamo's actions to catch a very rare occurrence. One pilot ... offered a succinct compliment: 'Hey tower, good catch.' "

"Holy Cow." Yeah, that's what air traffic controllers say.

And the last one, which I have a much easier time believing an ATC actually said:

"Hey Al, are you okay with that SKW6100 (4,000 feet) and that VFR at 3,399 (feet)?"

I initially misread the second as "and that VFR at 3,999" which would have been funnier, assuming it worked out. Both of those are from an Air Safety Week article on awards given to air traffic controllers for especially astute saves.

JetBlue Flight 292

If you want spectacular news footage or wild speculation about flight 292, check your local TV station. This entry is about how pilots react to news such as today's emergency landing of an Airbus A320, with an abnormally positioned nose gear.

First, we tell each other. Someone in the crewroom received a text message. He read it aloud, "turn on CNN now." There was a quiet moment where many of us thought about another time we'd all watched airplanes on CNN, but we a quick check of cnn.com revealed that the Airbus was circling near LAX with a gear problem. We started my mocking reporter-speak: the "front landing gear" was stuck sideways, so the pilots were going to try landing on the the "back landing gear." I suppose those terms make a lot more sense to the public than "nose gear" and "main gear." But perhaps they could mention that pilots usually aim to land on the mains. It's bad form (as in serious aircraft damage) not to.

There was a TV available so we proceded to watch live coverage of the aircraft circling, dumping fuel, and no doubt allowing the pilots to conference with company maintenance and Airbus technical staff. They kept cutting back to earlier footage where you could see that the nose gear ("the front wheels") were turned completely sideways: ninety degrees to the direction of travel. We drowned out the repetitive, information-free media commentary ("no doubt a very stressful situation for the pilots and passengers, Bob") with our own voiceovers: mock PAs, mock cellphone conversations by the passengers, mock French-accented technical recommendations from Airbus techs, and armchair quarterbacking ("they should go to Edwards Airforce base" and "they should have more flaps down by now").

On final approach, it came down to: would the gear shear off or just catch fire? Either way it would be a shower of sparks, followed by a closed runway, and a flurry of passengers complaining about their luggage and calling lawyers.

If you didn't see it, it was a beautiful landing, with the airplane perfectly centred on the runway, the mains touching down at about the thousand foot marks and the gear skidding, smoking, flaming, blazing right down the centreline to a full stop. It didn't collapse, and neither did Airbus Industries. I hope I would do as well with an equivalent emergency in what I fly. And no doubt tomorrow it will be heralded in the papers as a miracle, rather than design and skill.

Night Currency

CARS 401.05 Recency Requirements states in part that:

(2) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Subpart, no holder of a flight crew permit or licence, other than the holder of a flight engineer licence, shall exercise the privileges of the permit or licence in an aircraft unless the holder

(b) where a passenger other than a flight test examiner designated by the Minister is carried on board the aircraft, has completed, within the six months preceding the flight,

(i) in the case of an aircraft other than a glider or a balloon, in the same category and class of aircraft as the aircraft, or in a Level B, C or D simulator of the same category and class as the aircraft, at least

(A) five night or day take-offs and five night or day landings, if the flight is conducted wholly by day, or

(B) five night take-offs and five night landings, if the flight is conducted wholly or partly by night,

The short version of that is that in order to carry passengers at night, you have to have done five take offs and landings by night in the last six months. The idea is that if you've forgotten how to land at night, you're only going to terrify yourself.

Yes, the rules for night in Canada are substantially different from the United States, whose licence holders require three night landings and take-offs to a full stop in 90 days. I'm not sure the purpose of the full stop part, and whether that would be served by doing stop-'n'-go landings (where you brake to a complete stop on the runway and then take off again from the same runway without exiting). The ninety day versus six month thing is easily explained though: in Canada darkness becomes so short in the winter that it's possible for someone working a regular operation to go four or five months without conducting many take-offs or landings at night. The rules avoid penalizing those operators and pilots in the fall when the evenings darken.

I'm flying two classes of aircraft for my current job, and recently I realized that I was night current on only one class, yet scheduled to fly the other class on a flight that would end after official nightfall. How to gain currency?

We don't have a class B, C, or D simulator, so I did the same thing that dozens of pilots do every fall. I started up an airplane with no passengers on board, and taxiied out for five circuits. A circuit consists of a take-off, a neatly flown rectangle around the runway, and a landing. If runway length and local rules permit, you can immediately take off again into the next circuit. Americans call the circuit the pattern, but they would say they were going out to fly touch and goes, not "patterns." Canadians would also use that terminology, but it's more slangy.

Many operations have more stringent requirements for take-off and landing currency, but ours doesn't. Now I'm legal.

The Other Side

A guy walked into work the other day, clutching a piece of paper and looking uneasy. It was a busy time, with the lounge crowded with customers and pilots so I went up to him and asked if he was looking for someone.

"The chief pilot."

"He's up on a flight, I'm Aviatrix, can I help you with something?"

"I'll wait for him, thank you."

I looked at him for a moment, then guessed correctly that the piece of paper was a resume, "Are you a pilot looking for work?" I asked him about his qualifications, where he was from, and so on. He didn't appear to be a complete moron, and we're pretty desperate for warm, licenced bodies right now, so I asked him to wait a moment. (Likely said "standby" as that's how I talk, but he's a pilot after all, and understood.) I went and found the person whose opinion matters more than the chief pilot's when it comes to hiring and firing at my company. I introduced them, then went up on my flight.

When I got back, ten minutes behind schedule, after a longish, tiring day, the chief pilot was sitting outside. Watching me park. Almost like he was waiting to speak to me. Eep. For being ten minutes late?

He was waiting for me, but I keep forgetting, ninety-nine percent of the time when my boss wants to speak to me, it's not to give me hell, but to give me more work. I had another quick flight to do for a customer, and then was needed to check out the newly hired pilot on company aircraft. In the dark.

And that is how I need to get a job. Piece of paper in hand, it doesn't matter how shiny your shoes, how recent your haircut or how snappily you can tell someone about yourself. If you have the qualifications they need and the airplanes are sitting empty, you're hired.

Nigerian Defence

My Nigerian aviation correspondent seems a little wounded that I implied that government bribes might form a line item in his business expenses. He replied:

I didnt ask for for more then the cost of a good plane to start with, and banner cost. and do you know even the US congressmen take gifts to pass bills. and sorry about want happen in neworlean, may God confort the lost souls.

All power to him if he can set up a business without paying any non-scheduled government fees, but I stick by my original statement that local classifieds and contacts remain superior to e-mailing foreigners when it comes to determining the local cost of aircraft and banner tow STCs.

For those who don't know, an STC is a Special Type Certificate constituting official permission to modify an aircraft from the factory design. Other than attaching a banner tow hook, an STC might encompass larger fuel tanks, special wheels, floats, or externally mounted survey equipment. If there is already an STC in effect for your model aircraft, the modification can be done without much paperwork, but if you are the first person to want to modify that model in that way, you're in for a lot of time, paperwork and cash.

Forgot the Hockey Puck!

Last night I dreamed that I had built my own airplane and was flying it around to visit my friends. While doing a preflight inspection, I suddenly realized that there was no hockey puck in the propeller dome, just a conspicuously empty space where, in the universe of my dream, everyone knows there should be a standard issue NHL hockey puck. And I had been flying this thing!

I think the hockey puck I had omitted bore a Boston Bruins decal on it, which is odd, as I've never been too fond of them as a team.

Later in the day I told someone about my dream, and the bizarre hockey puck requirement. He instantly replied, "But of course. If you pitch the nose up more than 37 degrees without a hockey puck, the propeller falls off. Everyone knows that!"

In case it isn't sufficiently clear from the above, normal airplanes that do not occur in dreams do not require regulation hockey pucks. I guess my subconscious is just excited about hockey returning.

Sports Scores and the Price of Gas

On first contact with an air traffic controller, a pilot gives basic information like her call sign and altitude then the controller gives the latest altimeter setting, and describes the location of any traffic that the pilot should watch for. If the airspace is not busy, the pilot and controller may not talk to one another again until it is time for the controller to pass the aircraft along to the next controller en route. Or sometimes the controller has information to give, or questions.

On a quiet frequency the other day, I received a radio call:

Him: X-Ray Yankee Zulu, a question.
Me: Go ahead for XYZ.
Him: What's the price of avgas these days?
Me: A dollar fifty-five last time I stopped.
Him: I wondered why there was nobody out there.

Not everyone was of the same mind. Later, another controller who was juggling a number of airplanes, helicopters and even a hot air balloon asked us with some frustration:"Why aren't all you people home watching the Canadian Open?"

That last one reminds me of controllers who would put the latest hockey scores on the ATIS, or report them to arriving aircraft, so we could pass the news onto the passengers, "We'll be landing in Sumspot in fifteen minutes, and the Flames are up 3-2 at the end of the second period."

Operating Manual Required

In answer to the question on whether the operating manual really has to be on board, yes it does. This is from the CARs Part IV - General Operating and Flight Rules:

Availability of Aircraft Flight Manual

605.04 (1) No person shall conduct a take-off in an aircraft for which an aircraft flight manual is required by the applicable standards of airworthiness, unless the aircraft flight manual or, where established pursuant to Section 604.83 or Part VII, the aircraft operating manual is available to the flight crew members at their duty stations.

(2) The aircraft flight manual or, where an aircraft operating manual is established pursuant to Section 604.83 or Part VII, those parts of the aircraft flight manual that are incorporated into the aircraft operating manual shall include all of the amendments and supplementary material that are applicable to the aircraft type.

The wording makes it okay to lose your operating manual during flight: you just can't take off again. There's a good loophole. If you've forgotten your POH (pilot's operating handbook) also known as the AFM (aircraft flight manual) and you see the two guys in jackets coming across the tarmac, quickly agree on the phase of flight after take-off during which it fell out of the aircraft. And be on the phone to company to get a replacement.

There are aircraft that don't have operating manuals, I'd hazard a guess that if you build one in your garage it might not, and I've flown some old ones that had never had one, and a not as old as you might guess one that had an operating manual consisting of about eight mimeographed pages. (The mimeograph is an ancient duplication device falling in the historical timeline somewhere between carbon paper and the photocopier). Half of the pages dealt with the oxygen system (not installed). In a large airliner there's a whole shelf of ring binders that makes up the AFM. And yeah, you're supposed to have it on board, because then the passenger who has to land the aircraft during the climax of the movie can use it to look up the approach speed and the flap setting for landing. And you can look up fuel consumption figures for different altitudes, or settle arguments about what is on the circuit breaker labelled ALT FLD, or maybe ACI ECO depending on your interpretation of the font.

Oops

At the bottom of a car glove compartment, along with a few fuzzy kleenex and half used rolls of breath mints, there are typically a few documents: insurance papers, a copy of the transfer of ownership form, emissions testing certification, and the car owner's manual. If you're stopped by the police, you'd better have the insurance papers on board, and be able to produce your driver's licence. Airplanes have similar requirements.

You rarely get pulled over by a police helicopter during cruise, but after landing it's quite possible that you'll be approached by two guys (they always travel in twos) with Transport Canada jackets and little dangling ID badges -- they stand out pretty clearly at small airports where no one else wears ID. They ask to see your documentation and sniff around trying to find or make you admit bad things about your aircraft and your operation. And they will ask to see the airplane documentation.

For an airplane you need to have on board proof of insurance and the pilots' licences. The owner's manual is actually required to be on board, as is a certificate of registration, proving someone owns the airplane, a certificate of airworthiness, proving that the airplane was once considered safe to fly, and a weight and balance document declaring how much the airplane weighs with all its installed equipment. There's also a big book called the journey log that lists everywhere the airplane has been, when it took off, when it landed, who was flying it and what went wrong with it. Some operations also require a radio licence.

At my company, the essential documents are kept in a little pouch that the pilot picks up at the dispatch counter with his or her flight assignments. The journey log is too big to fit in the pouch, so it's separate. Before flying, one checks in the journey log to ensure that nothing critical went wrong with the airplane and hasn't been fixed yet. It's important to rememner to bring the documents with you, after stopping to check them. Combined with the title of this post, you can see where I'm going with this.

Yes, we left the documents on the table in the dispatch room and did a flight without them. Yes, we noticed the absence of the documents when we tried to fill in the journey log after a series of flights. Yes, we snuck sheepishly back into dispatch. The documents were not in evidence, and just seconds before I opened my mouth to ask if anyone had seen them, I saw one of the more zealous Transport Canada officials, ID badges dangling from his belt. I walked past him to the dispatch counter.

Fortunately, he wasn't there because of my transgression, but had just dropped in for free coffee or something, and I got away with my oops. The dispatcher had safely set the documents aside. Being nice to dispatchers pays off. A dispatcher who didn't like me could have got me in a lot of trouble over that. I snuck off and filled in the journey log without anyone else being the wiser.

The Art of Being a Guy

I was in the crew room, checking weather on the computer. One of the guys was eating something vaguely resembling lunch while others explained to him that none of the Olympic athletes depicted on the bag would ever eat anything from a fast food restaurant. Pilots will eat anything, though, so he ate it anyway. I guess he won't be competing in the next Olympic Games.

He finished his cheeseburger, then crumpled up the wrapper and declared, "Map, locker, garbage." He threw the wad of paper and it bounced off the wall map and the locker, but hit a desk on its way to the garbage can and tumbled away onto the floor. The person nearest to it could have picked it up and put it in the garbage, but the thrower asked for it back. While it was being passed, the spectators debated the bank shot and the correct sequence of bounces to get the paper bag into the bin from that side of the room.

It's what guys do. They throw things at things. I remember being stranded with another pilot at a remote airport, while we waited for company to fly in with some parts. Once we had exhausted the entertainment possibilities of walking up and down the gravel runway, the other pilot, male, set up a pebble on top of a boulder. He decreed that the name of the game was to take turns throwing rocks at the arrangement, aiming to knock the pebble off the boulder. I threw like a girl, my rocks tumbling into the ground short of the boulder and sending up a little cloud of dust. His hit nearer the mark, but the pebble remained unmoved. He threw with such serious concentration, and I realized that this throwing rocks at things game was a normal guy thing. Guys have been competing at throwing rocks at things since the development of the opposable thumb. It improves their skill in the hunt, I suppose, while the women are out gathering plants.

I'm competitive too, so I went back to the aircraft and got my glasses. My next shot nailed that little pebble and sent it flying. And then we switched to a female time-wasting activity: gathering plants. I showed him how to make daisy chains out of the local wildflowers. Possibly we then threw rocks at the daisy chains. I don't remember.

Back to the first part of this story: the guy with the crumpled paper bag took aim again and predicted, "Locker, map, desk, garbage." We watched as it arced across the room and hit the locker, then the wall map. It angled from the wall to the side of the desk and then flew cleanly into the garbage. We all cheered, arms raised, as if our hockey team had just scored. Too bad garbage disposal snooker isn't an Olympic sport.

In a Nutshell

"You know so much about so many useless things -- but so many useful things, too."

That's a comment addressed to me, from a flight dispatcher. For me, it's probably the perfect answer to "tell me about yourself."

Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A

Today ATC asked me to keep the speed up, then gave me a series of heading instructions so bizarre that I was tempted to ask the controller if he was attempting to write his name on the radar. I was literally zigzagged back and forth across the normal inbound route, with occasional backtracking. Once, immediately after I had been told to fly direct towards a landmark following a road, another aircraft reported over my destination landmark, and was told to follow my same road in the opposite direction. It was only five miles away, almost the same altitude, so that made me a little antsy until ATC turned us both in new directions.

We were number three on base when number two was asked to go around, so I got to cut the corner a little and land. I'm really starting to believe my joke about the controller trying to create a pattern on the radar.

Honest, Officer

Interviewing isn't my best skill. When something is important, I get very precise and literal-minded. This works well when the question is "What was your requested altitude?" or "Able immediate?" but falls down when the question is "tell me about yourself?" Alternately, I babble, desperate to provide all information relevant to the topic. This became apparent at a police roadblock.

Usually I get waved through a roadblock without ever coming to a complete stop. A woman, wearing a uniform, seatbelt fastened, already winding down my window as I approach. Typically the officer waves a flashlight baton in what has just occurred to me is essentially the aircraft marshalling signal for "your engine is on fire," and I continue on my way, winding the window back up.

But this time they stopped me, and the officer asked me where I was coming from. "Work," I answered. Yeah, I know, I could be a security guard or a doorman with this uniform, but it was obvious to me.

"Where's work?" he asked.

"At the airport," I'm pointing behind me. "Well not exactly at ... I drive from the airport ... I'm a pilot." Now I'm pointing vaguely up and behind me.

"The address," prompts the officer, pretending to be patient.

"It's an airport. It hasn't got an address. Or maybe it does, but it takes up a lot of addresses." I finally name the airport. "Airport Road, maybe?" I'm wondering if it's on my business card. Maybe in my electronic organizer. I name my employer and point vaguely some more.

He seems to be satisfied with that, and shines his flashlight in the car a bit. It's was your typical well-used economy car (my ex-car). Company memos, pens, and chocolate bar wrappers litter the seats. Nothing more interesting. He asks, "Where are you going?"

In what I swear was complete innocence, I answer, "Home." It doesn't even occur to me that this is an antagonistic answer until I see the look on his face. I babble out the name of my neighbourhood and finally my address, and he lets me go, with a shake of his head.

Where do I work. That's a hard question. They're supposed to ask if I've had anything to drink, damnit. I know the answer to that one. At least he didn't ask me to tell him about myself.

Congratulations and Jealousy

I was working at my second commercial job when she got her first. She has just been hired by Air Canada. So it's possible, but I haven't done it. I'm beginning to doubt I ever will.

Nigerian Consultancy

I'm sure you're all familiar with the Nigerian scam wherein the widow of the late Foreign Minister Ufo Garatybo has a family fortune of TWENTY (20) MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS, but needs you to send her ten thousand dollars and all your bank accont details to help get it out of the country, for which service you will be rewarded with one tenth of the recovered cash. Recently I received the following e-mail from Nigeria requesting not money, but information on setting up an aviation service.

I am a B747 pilot flying presently for a cargo operator in africa in and out of europe.
i am also thinking of retireing soon in to banner flying in my country nigeria with my saving.
its going to be the first of that kind in nigeria with so much to make. how can i start?

Suddenly I'm an expert on banner towing in Nigeria? I sent him a quick generic reply, advising him to determine the applicable local laws, obtain a suitable airplane and banner towing installation, make arrangements with an airfield, and practice his slow flight.

And then he writes back. Apparently I am the world's foremost expert on banner towing in Nigeria.

Am happy u reply my mail, and i would just continue with u still i get started. The authourity does not have any laws set down now on banner towing. they are even talking to me to come together and set up one, i am putting a little of this and that from the FAA and the CAA to make up something for them. Give me a idea what it will cost to start.my bank would like to know. (2) the permission i have even with surport of the goverment, the elections are coming soon, they want thier banners towed. And with that speed , that no problem.

So I told him, "I have no idea of the cost of the required airplanes, maintenance, aviation fuel, facilities access, insurance, or government bribes in your country. If you don't, I suggest you shouldn't be trying to run an aviation business." I'm betting his next letter suggests that I invest in his sure-to-be-successful business. But perhaps I should instead sell him my consultancy kit "Setting up a banner towing operation in Nigeria." It will be dispatched immediately on receipt of his certified cheque or money order. I suppose I'd have to charge at least $1000 US for everything I know about banner towing in Nigeria.

If he's legitimate and/or persistant, Google will see that he finds this blog entry, but geez, Captain, if you ask random strangers on the internet for business advice, you deserve worse than a little mockery.

The individual previously named in this story turned out to be both legitimate and persistant, and has accepted my offer to remove his name from the posting. I have also removed the comments as it was the only way I could remove his name as the author of some of those comments. I hope that in the future he will take up my invitation to write about flying in Nigeria, for the blog readership.

Ten Things Only A Pilot Cares About Her New Car

1. The specified fuel capacity doesn't indicate whether it includes any unusable fuel.
2. The fuel gauge is non linear and has no calibration, showing only the vaguest qualitative information on fuel remaining.
3. The odometer, tripmeter, gas gauge and low fuel warning light are all combined in one multifunction display, giving a single point of failure for all information on fuel status.
4. The manual does not list a speed for best range.
5. It does, however, give a marvellous little chart showing the optimum speed for shifting gears, at different altitudes.
6. The door open caution light is on the hot battery bus, meaning that it always illuminates when a door is open, even with the ignition off and the key removed.
7. The low coolant temperature caution light always illuminates during the first few minutes of the trip, but according to the manual, action need only be taken if it remains illuminated for "a long time." It should be suppressed until after "a long time" so that the development of a problem presents a noticeable change to the caution panel, and so it doesn't irritate me when there is nothing I'm supposed to do about it.
8. It has an event data recorder (i.e. a flight data recorder, for things that don't fly), that records the status of things like speed, brake and accelerator pedal depression and seatbelts, at the moment of airbag deployment. Cool. I never knew cars had those.
9. The manual specifies a maximum carrying capacity of the car, but does not indicate how much options like an air conditioner add to the empty weight, nor does it specify if that max weight depends on a particular zero fuel weight.
10. Use of a two-way radio in the vehicle could apparently affect seatbelt function. Even Airbus doesn't have fly-by-wire seatbelts.

So yeah, I replaced the car. It gets good gas mileage, holds me and all my stuff, and so far no one has driven into the back of it.

Ever Have This Feeling?

I have no idea how I will find the time and energy to fulfil all the commitments in my life right now. I think I'll watch TV.

Complete Waste of Time

You've probably noticed a severe decrease in my blogging lately. Work has been busy, the weather has been grand, but neither has kept me off the internet. I've been absorbed fighting imaginary monsters and mixing imaginary martinis in the Kingdom of Loathing.

I've had the opportunity to build a cottage by combining cottage cheese with anticheese, to fight a possessed can of asparagus with a pet sabre-toothed lime at my side, and to slay stick figures with a giant discarded plastic fork. It is an utter waste of time.

I also had a job interview, with an enthusiastic CEO, but I don't meet the (foreign) government-mandated minima for the position.

Industry Update

This post consists mainly of the optimistic ramblings of a Canadian pilot interview preparation centre. These folks offered a free resume evaluation service some years ago, in order to build their contact database. At the time I thought they were wasting their time configuirng my 200-odd hour resume, but in retrospect it was quite a clever idea. They did a good job on my resume, gaining my trust, and now years later I'm far more likely to turn to them than any other company. What do they offer now? Inside information on the questions that are asked at airline interviews, and practice via a mock interview for actually handling the questions. Knowing what you're in for is a great head start.

Air Canada is leading the way as it receives new Embraer EMB170 jets every week and faces higher retirement rates. After years of no recruitment, AC is looking to hire between 600 - 800 pilots over the next 2 years. The Air Canada Interview Process includes a Personal Interview, a one hour computer based Cognitive Test, and a Medical. They no longer use a Simulator Evaluation to evaluate their candidates.

Likewise Air Canada Jazz is in a bit of expansion itself, taking delivery of new Bombardier CRJ705 Regional Jets (Jazz is the Launch Customer). Also some Jazz pilots have already interviewed and have accepted positions with Air Canada mainline. In combination with the new CRJ705 deliveries, this has resulted in the first pilot interviews at Jazz in a number of years. The Jazz Process involves a Personal Interview, and if successful, an invitation for a Dash 8 Simulator Evaluation to be conducted at a later date.

Skyservice is doing well in the Charter Industry and is actively interviewing and hiring pilots onto their Airbus A320/319 and Boeing B757/767 fleets. The Skyservice Process involves a Personal Interview with their Pilot Recruitment Team.

CanJet has started services across the country connecting it's main base Halifax to Vancouver through the major cities in between. With the hiring at Air Canada, and the acceptance of more used Boeing B737-500s, CanJet will be interviewing and hiring pilots from now until the end of the year. Canjet's Pilot Hiring Process involves a Personal Interview with their Pilot Recruitment Team.

WestJet is getting rid of it's older B737-200s in favour of their new Boeing B737 New Generation Airliners - the B737-600s, -700s, and -800s. The new Boeings continue to arrive in Calgary and the successful low-fare airline continiues to grow at a steady rate. WestJet will continue to hire pilots for the foreseeable future. The WestJet Process involves a unique Personal Interview with their Pilot Recruitment Team.

Canadian North of Calgary/Edmonton/Yellowknife continues their niche operation connecting cities and towns of the remote north with the southern centres of Calgary, Edmonton, and Ottawa. The Diamond Industry is booming in the north and Canadian North is taking advantage with their Boeing B737-200 Gravel-Kit Equiped Combis. These aircraft have a large cargo door installed on the upper forward left fuselage and thus have a configuration of near 50% passengers and 50% cargo. The Canadian North Interview Process involves a Personal Interview in Calgary, and if successful, followed by a Simulator Evaluation at a later date on the B737-200 Sim.

After many lean years in Canada, the excitement in pilot voices as they inquire about Interview Preps and our Resume Design Services is welcome. The great thing though about the increase in Pilot Hiring is that as carriers like Air Canada take on these pilots, the entire industry from top to bottom will be affected. New openings will pop up everywhere including at Flight Schools, Skydive Companies, Medevac Charters, Corporate Charter Companies, Tier III Turboprop Operators, and even some of the other airlines as some of their crews opt for a career at AC.

Outside of Canada, foreign airlines continue to hire Canadian Pilots into their ranks. Cathay Pacific will be back in Vancouver in September to interview the next batch of candidates, and the expanding carriers in the Middle East (Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad Airways, and Gulf Air) continue to take on experienced Canadian airline pilots who fit into their company cultures.

It's encouraging, and not all hype. My mammals list isn't quite as embarrassingly out of date as the list at right seems to indicate, but close. I'd better get moving so I can give you a proper insider's view of this industry.

AIDS

They call it AIDS, short for Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome, and it's a serious problem. Pilots are away from home a lot. They get lonely. They are regarded as prime catches by the sort of people who fish. Meanwhile their spouses are home alone a lot. They get lonely, too. The pilot comes home tired, which may mean cranky, or uncommunicative or apathetic. Lack of communication, lack of sex, infidelity. Marriage breakdown. The guys say, "don't get married, just pick a woman you hate, and buy her a house."

I wasn't going to write about this phenomenon, because, like night stops in Shanghai, crazy flight attendant parties, and inflight meals that don't come out of my own flight bag, I thought it was something removed from my aviation orbit. And then I found out that one of my own co-workers is a victim.

As she said, it can happen to women, too. A long time stable marriage, with a child, and then he suddenly left her for another woman. It was so shocking. I don't even know her that well. I almost wished she hadn't told me. Take it as a warning, if you will. Or take it as a reminder to act on your priorities and cherish every minute of happiness. My condolences to anyone who has been affected by a the break-up of a long time relationship, whether aviation-related or not.

I took a long time to post this, because I suspect the pilot in question reads my blog. I'll take it down right away if asked.

My Doctor Never Mentioned

Note any surgical scars, tattoos or other marks. These may be useful for identification in aircraft accidents.

   -- From TP13312 Section 1

I ran across this gem in a manual instructing doctors who conduct qualifying medical examinations on pilots. Every year I submit myself to a medical examination designed to determine if there is any reason to believe that I might become medically incapacitated in flight. They keep stamping and initialing my form, so far. I've noticed the doctors asking 'friendly' questions about my job and home life, designed to ferret out sources of stress or mental imbalance. I've passed several different forms of hearing tests, including the one when I was supposed to answer a question whispered by a doctor with a difficult accent who was holding a sheet of paper over his mouth so I couldn't lipread. But I've never noticed a CAME inventorying my scars, tattoos and blemishes for some master database designed for disentangling my remains from my crewmates'. Lovely thought.

Hat and Shades

Pilots turn up fairly often in comic strips. Gary Larson has them gleefully inducing turbulence. The stereotype is so clear that there's a lot of humour to be gleaned from a few twists. And of course everyone is more interested in something that is about themselves, so of course I notice pilot jokes. I like the way "pilot" is so clearly defined here by two accessories.

That's Pearls Before Swine by Stephen Pastis.

How to Land an Airplane

Someone did a Google search on that topic and found this blog. Some airplanes are equipped with internet access, but I'm going to assume the searcher was preparing in advance, and not in desperate need of the information. It's too late now, as that was a few weeks ago.

Just in case, let me present a quick step-by-step primer. Remember a good landing is one you can walk away from. (It's a great landing if the airplane is reusable).

1. Find a suitable landing site

The best place to land is an airport. If you have any problems, prefer the airport with the best weather, the longest, widest runways and the most extensive emergency services. If you haven't got an airport, choose the longest, flattest, hardest surface available, without obstructions.

2. Tell them you're coming

Tune the radio to 121.50 and announce your intentions. Use plain English (or your local language) not pilot speak. Something like "My name is Albert and I have an emergency because I have never landed an airplane before," will get a lot of people's attention. Tell them to the best of your knowledge where you are, what sort of airplane you are flying, how many people on board, and exactly where you plan to land. If you happen to know your flight number (it might be on your boarding card, or on a post-it note on the dashboard, because pilots can never remember it either) or the callsign of the airplane, that would help a lot. ATC will line up all the firetrucks for you and move others out of your way. They can also help you find an airport. Don't let them distract you from your primary task of landing. If they tell you to do something you can't do, refuse.

3. Prepare the cabin

Stow all baggage. Have people remove items like eyeglasses and sharp jewellery from their person and aggressively tighten their seatbelts. Review evacuation procedures. Try to keep the passenger alertness level above complacency but below panic.

4. Configure the airplane for landing

You need to slow down to a suitable approach speed. Too fast makes it hard to land, too slow makes it hard to fly, so you want to make an effort here. The air traffic controllers may be able to help you out. Maybe there's a TOLD card on the dashboard, or a placard listing approach speeds at different weights. Pull back the throttle(s). You'll hear the engine sound decrease, and the airplane will start to descend. Pull back on the yoke a bit to stop it descending and it will slow down instead. See if you can find a thumb switch on the yoke, or a vertically mounted trim wheel somewhere in the cockpit so you don't have to use a lot of strength to pull back. You'll also want the gear and flaps down. There are particular speeds at which these things should be deployed, but wrinkled flaps and torn gear doors are tolerable. The gear handle looks like a little wheel and the flap handle like a spatula. They should also be labelled. As a rough approximation, put the gear down with the airspeed indication at six o'clock and put half the flaps down, then slow to a speed at about the four o'clock position. Once you're happy with the speed, adjust the power so that the airplane is descending at a rate that will bring it to the runway and the ground at the same time.

5. Align with the runway

Bank the airplane towards the runway and then level the wings when you're pointing straight at it. Keep the wings level. You can do a bit of steering with the rudder pedals to keep the nose pointed straight ahead. Keep it straight. If it looks like you are going to land before the runway, increase the power. If it looks like you will go too far, pull the power back further and put down more flaps. Keep the airplane pointed at the runway.

6. Flare

When you get so close to the ground that you're afraid the nosewheel is about to crash into it, reduce the power to nothing and pull back on the yoke to level out. Don't pull the nose way up, just level out. The longer you can hold the airplane level with the power at idle, the slower the airplane will be going when it hits the ground. Slow is good, especially if you have no experience braking or steering on the ground. You both steer and brake with your feet on most airplanes as you are slowing down, but if you've never done it before, chances are you'll overdo it and go off the runway. Don't do anything too hastily, and remember the firetrucks are right behind you.

Good luck, and be cautioned: this website is no substitute for a good flight instructor. Aviatrix takes no responsibility for results.

I'd love to know how far off this advice is for your airplane.

Pilot Bars

Pilot bars could refer to the epaulette stripes that denote whether you are captain (four bars) or first officer (three bars). It could also refer to establishments that serve alcohol and which are frequented by pilots. There's one or two within a short cab ride of all but the most desolate airport. Before you go into the latter kind of bars, you have to remove the former kind of bars, along with your tie, your wings, and any other company identification, because most companies have a policy forbidding pilots drinking alcohol while in uniform, or while displaying company insignia.

The typical pilot shirt has a company logo embroidered over the right pocket, so technically you can't go to the bar after work without having a t-shirt or something to replace the shirt. In reality, we ditch the tie and the bars and wear the same sweat-soaked shirts to drink our beer as we did to land the airplane. A friend of mine, observing the lame tactics, such as turning down our lapels or scrunching into the corner, that we employ while trying to hide our logos suggested that pilot bars should have a supply of big happy-face stickers at the door, for us to paste over our company logos.

Expert Opinions

As everyone except the TSB offers an instant opinion on the Air France runway excursion, I encountered another example of the media consulting a dubious expert.

The Nanisivik airport serves the community of Arctic Bay, on the north coast of Baffin Island. It was originally built to serve a mine, but the mine shut down a few years ago, and, in wrapping up operations, cut off power to the airport. I've landed at plenty of airports not serviced with electrical power, but it's nice to have a functioning AWOS (automated weather observation something) and a vending machine with cold pop. The best part of this particular news story is the quote:

Rod Reid, a cargo handler at the airport, said he didn't feel it was safe for planes to land when the power was out.

All respect to cargo handlers, especially 1200 km north of Iqaluit, and he might even be a pilot working the ramp for an 'in' with a company, but was 'cargo handler' the highest level of expert commentary they could elicit on aircraft operations?

Legal Alternate: Part Two

A few days ago I began explaining the minimum weather requirements for an IFR alternate on a Canadian flight plan. See if you can remember what 400-1, 600-2, and 800-2 mean. Here's how to apply them.

Michael Oxner, who has a scanner and knows how to use it, has some approach plates online with beautiful explanations. I'll use his Moncton ILS or NDB RWY 29 (that will open in a separate window, if I did it right) as an example. The top right hand corner of the plate tells us the aerodrome elevation (the height of the highest point on the runways) and the touchdown zone (the first third or first 3000' of the runway, whichever is shorter) elevation for runway 29. They're both the same, at 232', which implies that the airport is flat. I like that in an airport.

Down near the bottom of the plate, opposite the category ILS you see 432 (200). The altitude 432' is the decision height while the (200) informs us that it's 200' above the touchdown zone, saving us from doing the arithmetic to subtract 232 from 432. The 1/2 RVR26 is the advisory visibility: 1/2 mile or RVR of 2600 feet, same thing.

To determine the required weather to file Moncton as an alternate, lets say that the runway 29 ILS is the only useable precision approach at the airport. That might be because there was no ILS for the runways 06/24, because the forecast wind was unsuitable for landing on any other runway, or because the other runway was unavailable for some other reason. So Moncton would have one useable precision approach. That requires weather of 600-2 or 300' and 1 above minima, whichever is greater. Adding 300 + 200 gives 500, and 1 + 1/2 = 1 1/2, so the standard 600-2 is greater, and applies. The forecast ceiling must be at least 600 feet above ground, and the forecast visibility two miles for this airport to be the alternate.

At St. Anthony, Newfoundland depicted at the bottom of the page, there are no precision approaches available, so we need 800-2 to use this as our alternate. But the MDA of 600' is 508 feet above the aerodrome. Adding 300 + 508 = 808, and 1 + 1 1/2 = 2 1/2, so the minimum weather is greater than 800-2.

Weather at the airport is always forecast to the nearest hundred feet, so when you need 808 feet, does that mean you need 800 or 900 feet? The changeover altitude is 20', meaning that a calculated required ceiling of 808 feet requires a forecast of 800', while a calculated requirement of 821 feet requires of at least 900'. Calculated visibility requirements of over 3 sm require no more than 3 sm forecast vis. There aren't many cases this pathological, but you can bet the guy who does your next PPC ride knows of one in your approach plate book.

I still didn't get to airports with GPS approaches or no approaches. There's so much in this tiny corner.

Backing Up

Someone who has been watching carefully as jets leave the gates e-mailed me with two questions about airplanes leaving the gate.

Why is it that the nosewheel steering is disconnected prior to push-back?

Nosewheel steering is typically a mixture of hydraulic and mechanical connections allowing the captain to steer the nosewheel through thirty degrees or so on either side. When a towing bar is connected to the noseweel, and the aircraft is pushed backwards, or pulledto the side, the nosewheel can be turned a lot further, perhaps through ninety degrees. Damage could result to the steering if it were left connected. Obviously it is equally, if not more important to ensure that steering is properly reconnected after the ground handling.

Is it because of the lack of a rear-view camera that aircraft can't use reverse thrust to push themselves backwards instead of having to wait for tow-tractors?

Not really. The guy driving the tractor has better visibility than the guys in the cockpit, but it's still pretty hard to tell what's behind a large aircraft being pushed back. Accidents happen that way, even with wing walkers and walkie-talkie-equipped crews.

Remember, an airplane taxiing isn't like a truck driving. The motive force comes from the movement of air. In crowded gate areas, aircraft are sometimes damaged or even overturned by the jet blast of other airplanes manoeuvring. In order for an airplane to back out of the gate, the thrust of the engines would have to be directed forward, through the plate glass window where you're standing watching the airplane. The ground idle danger zone for jet blast extends 450 feet behind a medium jet, and it takes more than idle to start taxiing from a standstill.

Some airplanes simply have no reverse. They go forward or they are pushed backwards. Some airplanes are designed to develop reverse thrust on the ground, but with limits, for cooling. I flew one that was restricted to one minute in low temperatures, and only as absolutely required up to 30 seconds in high temperatures. Reverse thrust is generally intended to be used to slow down the airplane on the runway, after landing not for ground manoeuvering.

"I'm okay with women flying airplanes, just so long as they don't have to reverse them into parking spaces." -- old timer captain

Right after I wrote this page, I discovered that Boeing has developed an electrically powered nosewheel to allow ground movement with no tug, with all engines shut down. Air Canada successfully tested it in June.

Plane Crazy

Here's another theatrical presentation with an aviation theme, this one much less morbid than the last one I mentioned. Plane Crazy (link plays music) is a musical about the Coffee, Tea or Me? age of aviation, "When Stews Were Sexy and the World Was Sexist." In the mid-twentieth century, there was a space of almost twenty years between the introduction of the birth control pill and the discovery of AIDS, that happened to coincide with a period of rapid expansion of passenger air transportation. As the promotional text for the musical explains it,

Plane Crazy is set during an explosive time in history: The intersection between the dawn of the Jet Age, the introduction of the Pill, the genesis of the modern Feminist Movement, and the Golden Age of Advertising.

Stewardesses represented the first-wave shock troops in a changing world. This was an exclusive sorority of women who had freedom. Freedom to travel wherever they wanted. Freedom to have sex with whomever they wanted. And freedom to have a career without needing the support of a man.

Sounds like some interesting social commentary attractively wrapped in songs and sexuality. It sounds like fun. I hope it's successful.

I wrote this entry some time ago while the website was part of a fund-raising effort to get the show produced. Today I'm a little busy to do part two on IFR alternates, but I've just discovered that the musical is opening in New York next month, so the time is right. And writer Suzy Conn is in Toronto; she's a Canadian like me.

Approach throughThunderstorms

I first saw this story in a previous version when all that was known was that the aircraft had gone of the runway and was burning. I did not expect the outcome to be so favourable. Apparently the Air France flight continued an approach to Pearson through a thunderstorm, went off the runway, off the airport and ended up in the Etobicoke river ravine. I think I've been walking in that ravine, right by the airport. Today everyone got out alive with fourteen (update: 43) out of 309 on board suffering minor injuries.

The accident caught my attention especially because it reminds me of another accident. I reached a milestone in my flying career on 2 June 1999, and then returned home triumphantly only to see pictures of American Airlines flight 1420 on TV. It had gone off the runway in Little Rock, Arkansas after a landing in a thunderstorm. The timing had a strong effect on me. The captain had been killed in the crash, and the first officer's leg was broken. He had made a weak attempt to prompt the captain for a go around, not quite intelligible on the CVR, but did not insist. I imagined the FO in that situation. He hadn't given himself the authority to stop what was happening, and then through comfusion and pain he would realize that the captain was unresponsive and now he was in charge. All together eleven people died there.

Thunderstorms bring almost every unfavourable weather condition at once; low level windshear, poor visibility, wet runways, and high gusting crosswinds make up only the beginning of the list. I'm thankful for whatever combination of flight attendants, emergency services and fate kept this one out of the fatalities column.

Additional Update: Holy c#@p, I've just seen footage of this on the National. They're calling it a "miracle." It's definitely dramatic.

Legal Alternate: Part One

Regardless of when she gets to descend, and whether she's governed by the approach ban or visibility, or MDA/DH alone, a pilot who fails to obtain the required visual reference to land must conduct a missed approach, and go somewhere else. If conditions are rapidly improving, or she has some other reason to believe that it's worth the fuel and time to make another attempt to land at the same airport, she may return for a second approach, but typically she turns for her alternate.

In Canada, every IFR flight must depart knowing that the weather at a specified alternate destination is forecast to be better than needed for landing. Not just good enough, but better, and they do tell you exactly how much better, depending on what sort of instrument approaches serve the airport. The weather is quoted in terms of ceiling -- the altitude above ground level of the bottom of the lowest layer of clouds, not counting layers that cumulatively do not cover half the sky -- and visibility -- how far an observer or RVR can see along the ground. These numbers are compared to the decision height or minimum descent altitude. MDA and DH are quoted in feet above sea level, because that's what the pilot reads on the altimeter, but this calculation requires feet above ground level. This is called height above touchdown, or HAT. For approaches where it may be necessary to turn or overfly the runway and circle back in order to land, the slightly different height above aerodrome elevation, or HAA applies.

If the alternate airport has two or more usable precision approaches to separate runways (not just opposite ends of the same runway), then for the typical ILS approach, the ceiling must be at least 400 feet and the visibility at least one mile. The typical ILS approach has a decision height of 200 feet agl and an advisory visibility of 1/2 mile. If, for some reason, the published DH or advisory visibility is greater, then in order to file that airport as your alternate, the ceiling must be 200' greater than the HAT and the visibility must be half a mile greater than the advisory visibility. We call this weather requirement "four hundred and one" and write it as 400-1.

If the alternate airport only has precision approaches serving one runway, then the weather needs to be even better. I'm not entirely sure of the rationale for this, because while it definitely gives you a better safety margin to have an extra runway available if something happens to one of them, even perfect VFR weather isn't going to improve your chances of successfully landing at an airport whose only runway has been closed due to a massive fuel spill. But when there is only one usable precision approach, the minima are 600-2, meaning a ceiling of 600' agl, which must be at least three hundred feet above the lowest usable HAT, and a visibility of at least two miles, being at least one mile greater than the advisory visibility.

Should the alternate airport be equipped with non-precision approaches only, the weather minima change to 800-2. The ceiling thus must be at least 800' or 300 feet above the lowest usable HAT/HAA, and the visibility at least two miles, still at least one mile above the advisory vis.

That's just the intro to Canadian alternate minima, but that's enough for one day. Tomorrow I'll tell you what happens if there is no IFR approach or only a GPS approach, and show you how to compare round number ceiling forecasts to the very specific numbers on approach plates. Also, see if the Americans who don't know can guess what it means that the standard alternate minima can slide.

Precision and Non-Precision

I've been avoiding stating the difference between precision and non-precision approaches as I discuss minima because it's too long for a parenthetical remark, so now I'll give it its own post. They are two classes of instrument approach procedures, based on the equipment available in the vicinity of the airport, and in the aircraft. The same airport, indeed the same runway, may have both a precision and a non-precision approach. I believe all Canadian precision approaches include a corresponding non-precision approach, but I haven't searched all my approach plates to make sure.

A precision approach provides both horizontal and vertical guidance to the runway. In other words, it's tells you if you're deviating to the left or right and it tells you if you're too high or too low, before you ever see the runway or any of the ten items associated with the runway visual environment. By far the most common type of precision approach, and really the only one available to civilians is the ILS. (It stands for Instrument Landing System, but we only ever say "eye-ell-ess.") Imagine a beam that extends from the desired touchdown point on the runway back up the approach, and imagine the pilot using instruments in the cockpit to keep the aircraft centred in the beam. That's not quite how the ILS works, but it's an adequate model. If you haven't found the runway by the time you reach decision height, usually 200' agl, you fly the missed.

A non-precision (NP) approach gives only horizontal guidance. That is, it tells you if you are off to the left or the right, but not how far above or below the glidepath you are. Of course it has to give some vertical guidance, which it does in the form of telling what altitude to start at, and what altitude to be at by each of a number of points, sometimes specified by DME (distance measuring equipment -- yes, aviation has some of the stupidest abbreviations) or passing overhead a radio beacon called an NDB (non-directional beacon). The lowest altitude you may descend to before sighting the airport is called the minimum descent altitude, or MDA. You stay at the MDA until you either see the runway or reach the missed approach point (MAP). If you see the runway, and it's possible to land safely from where you are, then you do so, otherwise you fly the missed.

One tricky thing about a NP approach is that the MAP may not be a specified point like "the beacon that broadcasts 'HI' in Morse code." It might be an amount of time past the beacon that broadcasts 'HI' in Morse cose, determined by how fast you're flying through the air, the wind strength and direction, and a little table in the corner of the approach plate. I think that sounds worse than it is, so I'll show an example.

I have here an expired approach plate for the ILS or NDB RWY 09 approach to the John G. Diefenbaker International Airport in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. (Sorry, I don't have a scanner, and I don't know where to find it online). We'll imagine the pilot doesn't have an ILS receiver in her airplane, perfectly legal in Canada, so she'll be doing the NDB approach. The diagram shows the XE NDB (i.e. the beacon that broadcasts Morse -..- . in all directions) aligned with runway 09 and located on the ground 3.6 miles before the runway threshhold. According to the plate, once the pilot is cleared for the approach, and is within 100 nm of the airport, she may descend1 to 4500' asl. Within 25 nm of the XE NDB she may step down to either 3300', if she's coming from the west, or 3700', if she's coming from the east. Once she has reached the beacon, turned around, and established herself on the horizontal guidance of the approach, coming straight towards the beacon on a track of 087 degrees, she may descend to 3000'. All these numbers are on the approach plate, with little coded diagrams. As she passes overhead the beacon, she may begin descent to the MDA of 2020 feet (367 above the ground, according to the plate). If she had DME she'd probably use that to find the MAP, but if her employer would pay for DME, she'd probably have a functional ILS, too, so she has to use the little table.

---

Knots	70	90	110	130	150
Min:Sec	3:05	2:24	1:58	1:40	1:26

---

She knows her true air speed for the approach is 120 knots, and we'll say she knows she is facing a fifteen knot headwind, so her groundspeed is 105 knots. That's faster than 90 knots, but slower than 110. From the table there's a 26 second spread over that 20 knot range, and five knots is a quarter of that, so six or seven seconds longer than the 110 knot case: giving a timing of 2:05. The pilot works this all out before starting the approach. On reaching the beacon she will start her stopwatch, reduce the power, and descend promptly to 2020 feet. For the best chance of landing, she must get there before her two minutes and five seconds have elapsed, because MDA or not, when the time is up, she's leaving. Most NP approaches are designed such that if you see the runway at MDA just as the time elapses you still have to go missed because they bring you out right above the threshold, too high to land. The trick is to chop and drop so that you are established at the MDA in time to see the runway.

This is where you want to look at the advisory visibility and calculate when you actually have to see the runway. The advisory visibility for the approach above is one mile. At 105 knots, she covers a mile in about 34 seconds, so she needs to be at MDA within 1:31 of the beacon to make this approach. When she crosses the beacon a 700 foot per minute descent rate should be enough to make that happen.

If the cloud bases are at 1900', no matter how fast she gets down and no matter how good the visibility underneath is, she's not going to see anything at 2020', and is really going to be wishing she had an ILS, because the DH for the ILS is 1853'2 and she'd be going home instead of heading to a motel in Lloydminster.

Technically, only ILS approaches have a DH. NP approaches may be based on a variety of navigational aids, but they all have an MDA and may have a time. GPS approaches for the time being are considered NP, but that may change.

Notes

1. I understand that in the United States she would need a separate descent clearance, but in Canada "cleared for an approach" allows her to descend.
2. Yes, 1853'. Not 1854' and definitely not 1852'. I may do another post on how they come up with these numbers.

Goodbye Mike

Someone I know died this week, flying. Searchers found his body today.

I don't have much to say about that, but I don't have much to say about funny radio conversations or IFR regulations today either.