FIFO Theory

FROM CAP’N MERYL

Link to this week’s column at USAToday.com/travel:

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/columnist/getline/2005-04-18-ask-the-captain_x.htm

The “FIFO” Theory – And Why It DOESN’T WORK

Thanks to all of you who responded to my
invitation to come to my first Teleseminar for
Fearful Flyers. If you have not visited
www.flyingfearless.com yet I hope you’ll do so
now. You can order my Free Report from the site
and get all the details regarding my Teleseminar
at the introductory price. It’s not too late to
sign up for this coming Thursday’s Teleseminar.
Keep in mind I don’t sell anything without a 100%
Money-Back Guarantee if you’re not happy. I’ll be
doing some major press releases in the very near
future but so far, the word is out exclusively to
those of you who subscribe to my Weekly Update.

Before I start this week’s Update, I want to give
you a link to another female pilot’s site. She is
Canadian Bettina Jenkins Bathe, who’s written a
series of children’s books about “Violet The
Pilot.” Violet flies different airplanes and has
different adventures in different locales like
Maui, France and Canada.

Bettina wrote this series in order to be able to
leave something behind when giving talks in
children’s schools. In memory of her father, who
recently passed away, $1 from the sale of each
book goes to the Heart and Stroke Foundation. So
I hope you’ll visit Violet the Pilot at

www.violetthepilot.com This new link and
Bettina’s phone number are also available on the
Favorite Links button at fromthecockpit.com.

Another, unrelated site you may want to visit is:

www.sleeptravel.com if you have trouble sleeping
on airplanes. I have trouble sleeping on
airplanes, but I’m not SUPPOSED to sleep on
airplanes, at least not while I’m working. But
people love these products so I thought I’d pass
the information along.

On another note, apparently the women controllers
of Shanwick Oceanic, located in Scotland, were off
the day the pictures were taken for my new Album
“Worldwide Air Traffic Controllers” so I hope
you’ll have another look if you’d like to meet
Fiona and Cheryl, along with Jasper, Peter and
Alan.

Click here:
http://www.fromthecockpit.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=16&pos=2

Okay, so what is “FIFO” in the title of this
Weekly Update? First of all, it’s pronounced like
the middle two words of “Fee-FIE-FOE-Fum” as in
“Jack in the Beanstalk.” It’s actually an acronym
for two things which are aviation-related.

The first one is the “First In First Out” rule
which applies to reserve pilots like myself. That
is, when I’ve finished a flight and am back at my
home base of Chicago, I go back on the reserve
list again. Whichever pilot got in first is the
next one to leave. I guess that makes sense,
right? It actually says “Reserve FIFO List” at
the top of the reserve pilots’ list so we can all
see who’s next in line.

But there is another, lesser known meaning, and
that is the “Fly-In, Fly-Out” theory, the more
full translation being, “If the jet flew in, the
jet will fly out.” Sounds good, but it isn’t
necessarily true, and I was reminded of it TWICE
this week while flying domestic routes between
Chicago, Denver and San Francisco. Not good, but
everything worked out okay.

One of my column readers asked how come an
airplane can fly in, sit there for hours, and then
suddenly have a mechanical problem which surfaces
just in time to make the flight late or even
causing the flight to cancel. How come the
problem isn’t detected long before it’s time to go
again? Yeah! How come!

It’s like this: You know how you get home at
night and your car worked just fine, and then you
go out in the morning to find a tire flat? Or the
battery dead? Or the battery’s fine but the car
just won’t start? So how come you didn’t detect
the problem when you got home?

I think the answer is fairly obvious: the tire
hadn’t yet gone flat or you simply didn’t see it
was going flat, the battery hadn’t yet gone dead
and you didn’t try to start the car until you were
ready to drive away in the morning, so that is
when you detected the problem.

When an airplane shuts down, the electrical system
goes from being powered directly by the engines to
either the airplane’s APU (Auxialiary Power Unit)
or to a GPU (Ground Power Unit) which is not part
of the aircraft’s systems, and during these power
transfers all sorts of unpleasant things can
happen, but they’re things that may not arise
until the aircraft is under its own power once
again.

Modern jets are mostly writhing masses of various
computers, and electrical “gremlins” can cause
signals to become mixed or crossed or whatever and
things can and do get out of whack. Sometimes a
reboot of a particular system or even the whole
airplane fixes a problem like this, and sometimes
just switching the power from one source to
another does the trick. This is a favorite
“trick” in the Airbus in particular that works the
majority of the time. (The Airbus is sometimes
referred to as “the electric jet.”)

But there are other things that can and do go
wrong as well besides electrical weirdnesses. On
one of my flights this week a flight attendant
went to “disarm” a door after we pulled into a
jetway. Remember that all our doors are also
emergency exits and that slides will inflate when
they’re opened. These doors are “armed” to deploy
those slides any time we’re not parked at a gate.

On this occasion, the flight attendant reported to
us pilots that she was unable to disarm the door
after we parked, so we called maintenance. The
mechanics/technicians (I’m never sure anymore
which is the correct term) discovered that a piece
had broken somewhere inside the door and the
entire door would have to be dismantled and the
slide re-rigged. This would take several hours—at
least.

Fortunately, a substitute airplane was provided
and we went on our way a little late, but no real
harm done and all connections made. I went into
the boarding area and explained the situation
directly to our passengers, a move they seemed to
appreciate a great deal (not to mention the agents
appreciated it.)

In another case—and this also happened this past
week when I flew only domestic trips—I literally
had my hand on the parking brake to release it for
pushback when the flight attendants called the
cockpit on the interphone. The oxygen masks above
a row way in the back of the airplane dropped out
of their compartment without provocation and for
no apparent reason. Hey, it happens.

It takes about 15-20 minutes for a mechanic to
repack the masks, but in this case, the passengers
were moved to an empty row and, because nobody was
sitting in the affected row any longer, it was
legal to defer this item until the next flight.
(The masks were taped into place but again, plenty
of masks were available for everyone on the
airplane, and plenty of extras as well.)

And THAT is why the wonderful “If it’ll fly in
it’ll fly out” theory is just that—a theory. A
very, very GOOD theory—but it doesn’t apply to
airplanes. Or cars. Or anything else that we
humans have had anything at all whatsoever to do
with.

And there you have it! The wild, wonderful,
absolutely worthless “FIFO THEORY OF FLIGHT.”

Until Next Time,

Maintain Airpseed!

Cap’n Meryl

www.flyingfearless.com