BARKING DOGGIES

FROM CAP’N MERYL

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

USA Today column

I had my column for usatoday.com all set and ready
to go for this week, and then the JetBlue incident
happened. The editors at USAToday.com like it
when I can tie in to aviation events that are in
the news right now, and they eagerly agreed when I
volunteered to write something regarding the
JetBlue incident. This week’s column was over
twice its usual length due to the incredible
volume of questions which poured in after it
happened. If you haven’t seen the piece yet and
are interested, just click that link at the top.
I answered some of the more popular questions.

A friend and retired airline captain from my own
airline—Robert Boser—sent me his own editorial
about the incident. He’s a Boeing man, as you’ll
be able to tell, whereas I’m more of a
liberal—I’ve always liked the equipment I’ve
flown, including the Airbus, although I’m back to
flying Boeing for the moment.

Here is the link to Captain Boser’s piece:
JetBlue emergency landing:

His main site is: www.aviationsafety.com

I loved flying the Airbus and never personally had
any issues with the nose gear although there were
sometimes little electrical glitches going on in
this “electric jet.” My particular fondness for
the Airbus stems from the fact that there is no
yoke in front of the pilot but a sidestick
instead. It’s a much more comfortable cockpit
without that yoke or control column right in front
of you, not to mention they have little folding
tray tables for the pilots for charts and
food—mostly food (whenever possible). Having said
that, I love flying the magnificent and elegant
Boeing 777.

I once had to fly around burning off fuel when I
needed to make a precautionary landing in Denver.
I was on a flight from Las Vegas nonstop to
Washington, D.C.’s Dulles Airport when we lost one
our hydraulic systems (the fluid leaked out). On
the Airbus, the hydraulic systems are named by
color (on other aircraft they’re often named by
number or letter, like System 1, System 2, System
A, System B, etc.)

There is a green, yellow and blue system on the
Airbus and that’s the order of their importance.
We lost the least important one—the blue
system—and normally would have continued to the
destination and nobody on board would have known
we even had a problem. However, Hurricane Dennis
had just passed through the Washington, D.C. area
and the winds were high and very gusty.

The effect of losing that hydraulic system was
that our flight controls only moved at half-speed.
Under normal conditions, this was not a problem at
all, but I didn’t want to have to deal with
control sluggishness in such nasty wind conditions
at Dulles.

After a consultation (by radio) with our
maintenance and dispatchers, we stopped off in
Denver for repairs but spent an extra half hour
burning off some extra fuel. These days, with
fuel so expensive, I’m sure we would have simply
landed overweight. Back then it seemed like more
of a big deal to avoid landing overweight but with
the cost of fuel so high, the mandatory inspection
after an overweight landing is apparently the more
economic way to go.

The airplane doesn’t land differently when it’s
overweight—it’s just important to do a really
smooth landing with a minimum descent rate at the
very end in order to not overstress the airplane.
I’m happy to say I made the landing and was
surprised when the mechanics showed up. They said
they had videotaped the landing and could see it
was gentle with a shallow rate of descent. Only a
shorter version of the mandatory inspection (less
than 30 minutes) was necessary. There was also a
data recorder on board the aircraft so, if they’d
needed to determine the exact rate of descent at
landing, they could have done so.

Something kind of cute happened on this same
flight. I went outside on the ramp in Denver to
see how the repair was coming along. The
mechanics had our electric hydraulic pump on (in
flight they’re powered by the engines on the
Airbus) and this results in a noise referred to as
the “barking dog” because of the peculiar sound
the pump makes. So many people have asked me
about the sound I included it in the section
called “The Sights, Sounds, Smells and Sensations
of Flight” in my CD course called Ground School
for Passengers (available at
www.flyingfearless.com.)

In any case, there was an ACTUAL barking dog in a
crate the mechanics had offloaded so he (or she)
wouldn’t get too hot inside the aircraft, and this
real barking doggie was having none of the
mechanical barking doggie. Even with the other
noise out on the ramp, there was quite a racket
between the two “dogs.”

Next week’s column—the one we agreed to preempt
this week— is about a peculiar sinking feeling
some people notice right after takeoff. When I
got this question the first time several months
ago, I had no idea what the writer was asking
about, so I showed the question to Al The Web Guy
(retired B-747 captain for new readers who may not
know this).

He was as stumped as I was until the next time I
flew, and realized it was something we do on every
single flight so routinely I just didn’t recognize
it when someone asked about it. In any case, I’m
wondering if any of my readers can identify with
it: You take off and after several seconds the
power comes back and you feel like you’re sinking.
I’m anticipating a lot of feedback on this one as
I’ve been asked dozens of times about it, and a
couple of editors at usatoday.com commented after
I wrote it that they had wondered about it as
well.

I’ll also talk in the next column at usatoday.com
about the callouts pilots say out loud as we’re
barreling down the runway. If you haven’t noticed
it yet, we added a second video to our home page
at www.fromthecockpit.com. In addition to the
landing video, you’ll see a video of the takeoff
provided by the same pilot, Captain Juan Carlos
Arzillier. Be sure to turn your volume up and
listen for the crew callouts “V1, Rotate and
V2—but in Spanish! Next week’s column at
usatoday.com will explain the callouts and have a
direct link to this second video. When we ran the
landing video, we had over 600,000 hits in one
day!

One more note: One last reminder that if you
would like to attend a banquet where I’ll be the
keynote speaker for the 99’s (women’s pilot
organization, but men are welcome, too) in
Colorado Springs on Saturday, October 1st, write
to me at info@fromthecockpit.com and put 99’s in
the subject, and I’ll send you all the info. The
cost for attending just the banquet is $38 per
person.(price went up $5 after 9/20). It’s at the
Clarion Hotel, Happy Hour at 6:00 PM, dinner at
7:00 PM.

I hope to see you there but if not…

Until Next Time,
Maintain Airspeed!
Cap’n Meryl
www.fromthecockpit.com
www.flyingfearless.com
www.fromthecockpit.com/profile.htm
(keynote speaker information)