(March 2011) IF YOU ARE DEVOTED TO airplanes, you’ll understand. If the maximum number of takeoffs and landings per month is of interest to you, you’ll get it. If you’ve ever found a way to fly from New York to San Francisco on a Boeing 707 that landed in Nashville, New Orleans, Dallas, Phoenix and Oakland and then flew the 10 miles on to San Francisco (OK, that was 40 years ago, but I remember it still), you’ll appreciate the span of days from Nov. 22 to Dec. 22 last fall. Some flying was in the cards.
Some lessons too. The relative importance of ceiling versus visibility was once again made clear. I was reacquainted with the sense of being taken hostage on an airline trip. The former reminder was in our Cheyenne, the latter many times on an ambitious four-day trip from the West Coast to the Middle East. But all along the thrill of flying was evident, despite the challenges and, mostly, because of the rewards.
My wife, Cathy, and I got started with a very familiar trip from Tampa, Florida (KTPA), to Lebanon, New Hampshire (KLEB), on Nov. 22. We broke the trip up with a fuel stop in Suffolk, Virginia (KSFQ), because the weather was forecast to be poor in KLEB and because the price of jet-A in Suffolk is as good as you’ll find most anywhere on the East Coast. Good thing, too. The skies were brilliantly clear from Florida to about 30 miles short of Lebanon. KTPA to KSFQ took two hours, 43 minutes for the 636 nautical miles flown. Suffolk to Lebanon, another 513 nm flown, took two hours, 24 minutes, the last 10 of which were spent on the ILS in a nonradar environment. As we came out of the procedure turn and slid down the inbound course, I was skeptical. The ATIS was calling for 300-foot overcast with good visibility beneath. The only trouble? The decision height for the ILS was 388 feet. The seconds and the altitude ticked down. The view out the window looked like ground glass. Just as I started to push up the power and admit to a go-around, I saw the runway end identifier lights through the muck, clicked off the autopilot, deployed another 20 degrees of flaps and made for the asphalt. The view after landing was impressive; you couldn’t see the tops of the hills. A month later it would be visibility rather than ceilings that posed a challenge for landing on this very same runway — in the other direction.
Nov. 24 had us heading to Georgetown, Delaware (KGED), another familiar stop. That trip was easy. A nice tailwind for the first part down to Hampton on the end of Long Island, then moderate headwinds the rest of the way. New York ATC then had us descend early to avoid traffic into Philadelphia. This is a new wrinkle, but not an onerous one, given the headwinds. After a Thanksgiving visit, we soldiered back to Tampa against some prodigious early-winter headwinds. Our groundspeed at one point was below 200 knots. The 775 nautical miles flown took three hours, 46 minutes. Long enough.
The next day Cathy and I set out to Memphis (KMEM) to visit the folks at the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which you have undoubtedly heard about. The place is magnificent; the people working there are extraordinary. Their mission is to cure childhood cancers. The flight was pretty much direct via Montgomery, Alabama — 620 nm flown all told. We elected to land at General DeWitt Spain Airport because the people are so nice and the fuel is $2 a gallon cheaper than at KMEM. This is sort of a “Suffolk on the Mississippi.” We were vectored south of the big airport, then north along the river in order to clear the fusillade of FedEx traffic departing to the south, all of which we could see clearly on this beautiful day. The total time en route was two hours, 44 minutes.
That night we pulled up to a good-looking restaurant in downtown Memphis called Flight. It wasn’t the kind of flight I was thinking of; the concept was a flight of food, like a flight of wines. No airplanes were involved, but the food and the staff were great. There were two extraordinary airplanes to see at Graceland, though. Elvis knew all about the wisdom of private aviation. He bought a Convair 880 from Delta airlines and named it Lisa Marie. My favorite was his JetStar with its old orange-screen radar and shag carpeting.
The next day we just barely beat a bear of a cold front (that would spawn damage by hail and tornado through Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas) out of town. The precipitation looked to be just 10 miles to the west when we took off. After some vigorous chop on the climb-out, we soon exited into clear air and climbed to Flight Level 230. When Memphis Center asked if we could do FL 250, I said yes, and soon we were up there, sauntering along at a no-tailwind 230-knot groundspeed back home to KTPA. I spotted two military King Airs cavorting with each other, and I then heard them assigned to a block altitude of 220 to 240, explaining why were asked to climb. The landing came at two hours, 46 minutes, after a trip of 598 nm.
Next up, some airline travel, which served as a potent reminder as to why having your own airplane is such a stellar idea. I was to give the keynote lecture to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in Cleveland at 1 p.m., which necessitated getting up awfully early to catch the 6:30 a.m. departure to Detroit, so as to catch the regional jet to Cleveland, scheduled to arrive at 11:17. The first leg was a breeze, but the regional jet was 45 minutes late coming in, so we didn’t get to Cleveland until almost noon. And then we were marshaled in to a spot where our airstairs would leave passengers just a few feet from an awning to protect us from the snow, which was falling lazily. One small detail: The airplane we were in, an Embraer Delta Connection flight (even though it had no name on the fuselage and had the remnants of Continental colors on its belly) had no stairs. This necessitated a further delay while a tug was procured and we were dragged to a gate with a Jetway. As I looked out the window, I wished I’d flown in the night before or, more to the point, flown the Cheyenne. After a cab ride reminiscent of a chase scene in a Steve McQueen movie, I got to the convention hotel, raced up the stairs and handed my PowerPoint USB to the audiovisual guy at 12:50 — plenty of time for a professional.
Our flight home the next day via Atlanta was without any similar excitement. So was the Southwest flight to Chicago the day after that and the return, via Columbus, Ohio, the next day. The day after that, which brings us to Dec. 5, got me back into our Cheyenne for the short trip to a meeting in Palm Beach (KPBI). With my boss in the right seat, we set out for 15,000 feet and enjoyed a brisk tailwind, just touching a groundspeed of 300 knots at one point. We joined the dance line for the approach to 28R at KPBI just at sunset. I could see the traffic ahead and behind us on the SkyWatch. After we’d been cleared to land, we heard an airplane reject its takeoff. Next the tower asked us if we could accept 28L. “Yes,” I said. We craned our necks to see the excitement to our right. It was a Boeing 727 with TRUMP in big gold letters on the side. I imagined the boss was on board and I worried that the pilots would hear “You’re fired!” Just the opposite of what should happen to a cautious pilot.
I flew solo back to Tampa on Dec. 6 in time to catch the Delta nonstop to Los Angeles at 6:30 p.m. This Boeing 737-800 pushed back on time, but headwinds resulted in a flight time of five hours, 28 minutes and put us into KLAX almost 40 minutes late. As for the biological clock, it was well past midnight. It had been a long day.
After working a few days in LA, the long-haul portion of the month was next. On Friday the 10th, we boarded a massive KLM 747-400 bound for Amsterdam. I was to fly on to Dammam, Saudi Arabia, to give some lectures on the 12th and return to Tampa on the 14th. Cathy was coming with me to Amsterdam, where she would remain while I went on to the Middle East. We’d meet up on the morning of the 14th at Schiphol airport for the nonstop to Detroit on Delta. My sponsors in Saudi Arabia had sent me a business-class ticket for the LAX-AMS-DMM-AMS-DET-TPA flight. The printed ticket revealed a cost in the low five figures! We bought Cathy a coach ticket for less than a thousand dollars.
I settled into a posh seat at the very front of the main deck of the airplane, so far forward that you could almost look out ahead. I was sitting in front of the flight crew ensconced up above. A young, attractive Russian lady, traveling from Hawaii to LA to Amsterdam to Moscow (in one go) sat next to me. Across the aisle sat a polished young man who reeked of wealth. He was, it turned out, an oil magnate heading to Kiev to host a Christmas party. Don’t we all?
We pushed back on time at 4:15 p.m. and sat there. With a 10-hour flight ahead of us, what, really, was the rush? An hour later, we taxied back to the gate. The captain explained that the intercom between the cockpit and the flight attendant stations was inoperable and that a software fix was needed. At 6:33, more than two hours late, we pushed back again. We took to the runway at 6:43; the power came up, then immediately went to idle. We went 1,000 feet down the runway, turned off and taxied back to the gate. The rich-looking guy got his things and got off. The rest of us milled about — like waiting in a doctor’s office, already tired of the magazines. I went back to visit Cathy, who was on the same deck and only 20 yards behind me. I brought her some nuts and champagne that had been distributed up front. It looked like the second part of the month’s travel might not be as lucky as the first. And, I had more than 15,000 miles yet to go.
