I’m not superstitious. I’ll brave an elevator that stops on the 13th floor. I won’t deem the day a potential catastrophe when a black cat crosses my path. But after a round trip to São Paulo, Brazil, during a total lunar eclipse, I had to wonder. This particular eclipse also qualified as a blood moon, which is a relatively rare astrological phenomenon.
And apparently, the blood moon was part of a tetrad, a series of four eclipses occurring in close succession. In some circles, a tetrad is the sign that the Apocalypse is about to begin or that an event of similar magnitude involving frogs and locusts will be arriving in short order.
Unaware of this harbinger of doom, I boarded the employee bus at JFK and exchanged greetings with my relief copilot, Lisa. Among other subjects, inclusive of her upcoming training on the 787, she discussed her advocacy of always cleaning the oxygen mask prior to departure. When I raised an inquisitive eyebrow, she provided an explanation.
On her last trip while returning from Buenos Aires, one of the 777’s electronic bay-cooling fans decided to self-destruct. The fan sent an acrid-smelling haze into the flight deck. The event required the full-blown use of the oxygen mask and goggles. The smoke-removal checklist is an extensive and stressful procedure that requires good crew coordination. Wearing that apparatus while flying an airplane is not a pleasurable experience, especially if the mask has not been swabbed clean with an alcohol pad. An emergency was declared and accompanied by a diversion to Orlando. The landing was uneventful.
I commended Lisa and her crew on a well-executed plan. And then I requested that she leave her bad juju behind for our trip to São Paulo. She nodded with a sly grin, unaware that her juju would indeed follow us.
Not to be undone, my other copilot had his own bad juju history … but it was with me about eight years earlier on a 757. John was brand new to the airplane when I had a nasty reaction to a popular brand of coffee. The reaction manifested itself into about 10 trips to the lavatory en route to Montego Bay. To this day, I won’t so much as sniff that brand of java.
Despite past history and the potential effects of the lunar eclipse, we departed for Brazil. Refusing a trip based on bad vibes probably wouldn’t have been well received by my supervisors anyway.
As I have discussed in previous columns, all-night flying over the Amazon jungle is not high on my list of favorites. Although we divide the rest breaks among three pilots, it’s a classic battle with circadian rhythm, at least for me.
Additionally, radar coverage and ATC communication are inconsistent. Reception is often difficult. On some portions of the route, we have to endure earwax-removing background squeal. And within some areas, ATC transmissions include an echo that sounds as if the controller is speaking through the back end of a vacuum-cleaner hose. Combine this fidelity with limited language skills and the cadence of foreign accents from both sides of the windscreen and the operation can be challenging.
Having taken the last break, I returned to the cockpit about 45 minutes before our planned touchdown. Shaking off sleep inertia and a couple of “was that radio call for us?” inquiries, I was doing just fine … well, right up to the point that we got thrown a curveball.
The controller must have believed a 777 had the agility of an F-18 because he instructed us to hold at a point that was 5 miles in front of us. An airplane that weighs about 500,000 pounds and traveling at a groundspeed of 500 knots is not a good combination for an almost immediate course reversal. By the time the three of us were able to understand the controller’s pronouncement of the holding fix, it was behind the airplane.
My mistake was not to have cried foul by simply stating “unable.” Instead my fingers stabbed the keypad of the flight management computer (FMC) in an attempt to regenerate the waypoint we had just passed. It was my copilot’s leg to fly. I instructed John to use the autopilot’s heading-select function to direct the airplane in the appropriate direction for the hold until I could get the magenta line sorted out.
And par for the course, by the time I had established the holding-pattern display we were given vectors back toward the airport. A runway change with landings to the west was the culprit. For São Paulo, this direction was an atypical occurrence.
My focus for concern now shifted toward terrain avoidance. We had been given a descent clearance while on a defined route. With an off-route vector over an unfamiliar area, I was on high alert. Fortunately, we were in VFR conditions. John rose to the occasion and had the airplane configured and stable at the appropriate phase of the approach.
About 200 feet above the runway threshold, two black specks ventured into my peripheral vision. In a split second, one of the specks thudded with an audible smack underneath the radome on the copilot’s side. Apparently, two robin-size birds had decided unsuccessfully to defend their airspace. Certainly the last words of the bird that impacted our 777 were “watch this!” Upon inspection at the gate, the only damage incurred was a couple of smears of blood mixed with feathers.
Our return home the next evening carried a handful of glitches as well. First on the list, John’s “careful” packing of some duty-free wine in his rolling bag couldn’t compete against the X-ray machine’s conveyer belt. At the exit end, his bag sprung a leak. In addition to a pool of red that flowed across the terminal floor, the wine had managed to saturate most of his clothes.
Next, our dispatcher-initiated flight plan had been rejected by ATC because of a minor duplication in waypoint identification; one segment of the route could be defined by both a VOR and an NDB, a common idiosyncrasy for this flight. Obtaining a new flight plan was not an issue, only that it would be sent to a dot-matrix printer that operated at a rate of about one word per minute.
Deciding not to observe the painful printing process, John and I elected to make better use of our time. We marched toward the airplane. Unfortunately, the new terminal was unfamiliar territory for both of us, and we managed to find the wrong jet-bridge ramp, having to reverse course and re-enter through another gate entrance much to the bemused entertainment of the agents.
With flight plan in hand and cockpit preparations complete, we pushed back from the gate only to find that our takeoff data had been altered due to an untypical flap setting. And then magically, the untypical flap setting returned to normal after retrieving our final weight and balance information.
Our takeoff proceeded without issues all the way to our cruise altitude of FL 360. As we would realize later, our initial level off was the only time the nine-hour flight would be smooth. Topping off the bumpy ride was the fact that Tropical Storm Joaquin had upgraded itself to a hurricane, the forecasters expecting to give it a Category 3 rating as it spun faster in the Caribbean just south of the Bahamas.
Our route took us just to the east of the storm and just to the west of an undefined system of convective weather that hadn’t been given a name. Essentially, our flight was planned to travel through a 100-mile-wide corridor. On average, corridors aren’t conducive to smooth rides, but in this circumstance it was no worse than what we had already experienced for most of the trip. In the pre-dawn hours, we waved goodbye to Joaquin and rocketed toward our next challenge.
Faster than forecast, almost without warning, JFK weather began to deteriorate until we faced a 500-foot overcast ceiling with moderate rain. Runway 13L had a 45-degree crosswind with light to moderate turbulence on the approach. Inclusive of my crew’s bravery while monitoring its captain as he hand-flew the airplane, the mission was successful.
Should I consider calling in sick on the next lunar-eclipse-and-hurricane combo? Well, chances are good that I’ll go anyhow. But I’ll let you know.
