Category: Aviation

I just landed at Chicago en route to London. There’s something about me and ORD. Last time I flew in here, the approach controller got the spacing wrong, and we had to go around. So when we started a go-around procedure about a mile out, I assumed that it was the same thing. But no…. eventually our captain told us that we hadn’t got a green light on the nose landing gear of our MD-80, so they had to use ‘an alternate procedure’. And then we stooged around for 10 minutes over the lake while they lined up all the emergency equipment next to the runway, just in case.
Many passengers didn’t understand what was going on. I got the impression that those of us that did were simultaneously calming anxious passengers while fully expecting the gear to collapse on landing. But it was all OK. When we finally landed, it was delightfully smooth.
And now the ORD-LHR flight is boarding. More anon.

One of the most enjoyable blogs that I follow is Flight Level 390, the occasional observations of an Airbus A-320 captain from Phoenix. His latest piece is a classic, and as always the photo alone is worth the price of admission!

We just landed at Washington Dulles from Boston, en route to Seattle. We’re now on a taxiway, with nowhere to go. All of the gates are full, and none of the planes are ready to go. The current plan of record is to plough the remote parking area (currently under a heavy blanket on snow), taxi there, and use the (in)famous Dulles mobile lounges to deplane us! It will be interesting to see how long this takes – we’ve been waiting here 30 minutes so far – and whether continuing passengers get to stay on the plane. (And what about bags?)
Until recently they’d probably have pushed back one of the departing aircraft and kept them sitting on a taxiway until it was clear enough to depart. But after the recent Jet Blue experience, no-one is going to do that – especially in Washington!
More anon….
UPDATE: We just pulled in to a gate, conveniently close to a Red Carpet Club – which is where I am now. United is currently showing a departure time of 2pm, which seems optimistic.
ANOTHER UPDATE: It’s just after 2 and we’ve boarded. Latest prognosis is 20 minutes to get the fuel sheet(!) and then 45 minutes to get de-iced. The snow has stopped, and we now have a steady freezing rain. Mmmm……
Of course the flight is full. Cancellations will do that.
FINAL UPDATE: We actually pushed back around 4:45pm EST, and after 4:45 of flying over unbroken cloud cover we reached Seattle at 6:30pm PST. According to the captain, ours was the only flight to make it out of IAD to SEA all day. After waiting around for my bag (I’d checked it, because it was overweight with some liquid contents) I got back to my apartment in time to watch the first episode of the third series of Slings and Arrows on Sundance. (Hat tip to Merry.)

From the 2006 retrospective edition of Salon’s excellent column Ask the pilot:

Speaking of things that never happened, how could we forget last summer’s liquid-bomb terror scare. In case you were living on Neptune at the time and missed the news, British police broke up an alleged London-based scheme to bring down several U.S. airliners using hard-to-detect liquid explosives. The public continues to believe that authorities rushed in and saved thousands of lives in the nick of time. Quite the contrary. What makes the story so special is how much of an overblown ruse the whole thing was, and just how preposterous our reaction to it has been. The fact that both alleged ringleaders of the plot have been released without charge has gone scarcely noticed by the press. Meanwhile, despite assertions by experts that the types of bombs alleged in the scheme are all but impossible to brew, millions of travelers remain subject to absurd prohibitions of liquids, gels and aerosols from their carry-on bags.

And the result: the insane, chaotic scene from Heathrow that I blogged about recently. But to fix this, some politician somewhere is going to have to violate the most important taboo in politics: Never Admit That You Made A Mistake. Apparently it is more important to be consistent than to be right. (Probably because in this complex world, nobody can actually tell if you’re right, but any idiot can tell if you’re consistent. Dumbed-down political discourse. Good grief….)
P.S. Did you know that the plot ringleaders had been released? I certainly missed it….

Brief summary of flight so far. 5pm BOS-ORD is delayed until 7:20pm. ATC flow control into ORD. Some passengers had been at BOS since 6am: several flights cancelled. Flight uneventful (at FL260 to stay below the weather.) Approach controller at ORD screwed up, so our flight was waved off about 5 miles out. The missed approach/go-around delayed us until 10pm CDT. Fortunately UA rebooked me on a later SEA flight (sched at 10:10pm, but now set for 11:15).

Fun and games…..

UPDATE: The ORD-SEA flight didn’t actually take off until around midnight CDT, and despite efforts to shorten the routing we landed at 1:30am PDT. There weren’t any cabs to be seen, so I wandered down to the bus stop and finished Anansi Boys while waiting for the next bus to Seattle (at 2:40am). I’m rather glad that I did: the clientele on that bus was “colourful” (and occasionally noisy)! I finally got to bed at 3:30am, woke at 7:00am, and was just 2 minutes late for my 8am breakfast meeting at Andaluca on 4th and Stewart after walking across town.
I expect to sleep well tonight…..

Yesterday evening I went to the United site to check in for my flights back to Seattle. I logged in, and saw that the BOS-ORD flight was annotated Flight not open for checkin. Hmm. I returned to the site several times during the evening, wondering whether this was a harbinger of a cancellation and re-routing. This morning I tried again; the message was the same, but a possible explanation appeared. Originally the flight was to be on a 757; the itinerary now says “767”. We’ll see….

UPDATE: They’ve now changed my seat to 15A. According to SeatGuru, this is bad: row 15 on a United 767 doesn’t have a window. Let’s hope I can change it.

UPDATE: I assumed that the plane was a domestic 767; it’s not – it’s what SeatGuru calls a 767-300 WW. And 15A is shown in red as a very poor seat. Even though it’s an exit row, it has “Restricted legroom… proximity of the toilet… can get very cold”. And when I was (finally!) able to check in, there were no other window seats available. Oh well: I guess I’ll bring along a sweatshirt.

My friend and former colleague Kate has been visiting for the last few days, and on Sunday we decided to visit Victoria, BC, to see an old mutual friend. It takes a couple of hours on a fast catamaran ferry, and we got there at 11:15. Werner Bahlke met us at the terminal, and we headed into town for lunch.

The three of us used to work together at Sun Microsystems in Chelmsford and Burlington, MA. Werner moved to Victoria about four years ago, and after some interesting “virtual company” experiences he’s really settled in there. (His office is in a wonderful location overlooking the outer harbour.)

After lunch, Kate and I explored Victoria, cameras in hand. You can see a selection of the pictures we took here. I’ve merged the two sets of pictures, then sorted them by the time they were taken, so occasionally you’ll see different shots of the same object. Two sequences of pictures are worth noting. First, we visited the rose garden next to the Empress Hotel, and I tried a series of macro shots. Then we took a path along the west side of the inner harbour, from where we could see the constant arrival and departure of ferries, kayaks, harbour taxis, sailing boats – and seaplanes! This stretch of water may look like a harbour, but it’s really an airport – and a very busy one.

Our northbound ferry had been almost empty, but when we lined up to board the return, we could see that the boat was going to be pretty much full. Presumably a number of people had been in Victoria for the weekend, perhaps as an “add-on” to an Alaska cruise package. In the depressingly prefab terminal building we saw new security equipment – airport-style metal detectors and X-ray machines – installed but not yet operational. There were also signs everywhere about the plans to require US citizens to carry a passport when visiting Canada; there are fears that this will hit the tourist business very hard. For now, Kate was able to simply show her driver’s license; I had my passport and green card.

Despite the crowds, we found good seats and had a smooth journey back. At one point everybody crowded out on the stern deck to see the bioluminescent diatoms that turned our wake into a shimmering silver trail. Very cool. What a great day.

Tomorrow is the first anniversary of 9/11 that I won’t be able to visit the memorial at Sun (see picture) to my friend and colleague, Phil Rosenzweig. I hadn’t thought much about the fifth anniversary until I read this powerful essay by Martin Amis in today’s Observer. And that put me in the mood to watch the DVD of United 93. I saw the film back in May, and bought the DVD yesterday evening.
I didn’t have any good words back in May, and I’m not sure that I do now. I do think that the film does a brilliant job of capturing the chaotic confusion, the disbelief, the cognitive dissonance that we all felt that day.
I may not be able to express this without being misunderstood, but I’ll try anyway: In a strange and awful way, that bundle of emotions – confusion, loss, pain, anger, questioning – is precious. I know that I haven’t dealt with it, “processed it” (or whatever the psych term is) yet. I know that I want need to do so, that’s it’s important, and it will take time – perhaps my whole life. And I know that I’m not alone in feeling this way.
Don’t misunderstand me: this doesn’t mean waiting until I’ve sorted it all out in my mind. Part of that “processing” includes thinking about (and supporting) the urgent acts of justice and, yes, retribution against those responsible.
But having said that, I am deeply angry that Cheney and his gang have used and abused these emotions for their own bloodthirsty and inexcusably thoughtless warmongering. They cheapen and despoil our feelings by lying about them. Quite apart from my opinion of their policies, this cynical exploitation of our most precious emotions simply disgusts me. I’m not naive – I understand how politics works – but the visceral reaction to those scumbags won’t go away. Nor should it.

I’ve just posted a photo library of airliner pictures that I took yesterday from Constitution Beach. (Take the Blue Line, get off at Orient Heights, walk 5 minutes. Easy.) This is mostly of interest to aviation geeks; sensible people are unlikely to care about the fact that the equipment on the afternoon BOS-FRA Lufthansa flight was A340-313X, registration D-AIFA. However I did manage to get a couple of tasty shots, including this one:

For a long time I’ve toyed with the idea of driving over to Deer Island to get some photos of the Boston city skyline from the east, and also watch the planes at Boston’s Logan Airport. As you can see in this Google map, Deer Island is close to the end of runway 27 (the east-west runway at Boston). When I saw that today’s forecast was for west winds and sunny skies, I decided that the moment had come. My hope was that the winds would be strong enough that they’d have to use runway 27 for landings; this would be great for photography since from Deer Island I’d have the sun behind me. Unfortunately the winds were light to non-existent, so most aircraft were landing on 33L and taking off from 27.

Nevertheless I was able to get some decent pictures. I drove to the end of Tafts Avenue, left my car in the little public park, and walked widdershins around Deer Island, taking photos of planes, city, sea ducks, islands, and the extraordinary waste water treatment plant whose giant ovoids dominate the island. (Purists will point out that Deer Island is actually joined to the mainland, and thus shouldn’t be referred to as an island. In fact it was an island, until the hurricane of 1938 rearranged things.) I spent a couple of hours exploring the place, staying out of the way of the joggers and professional dog-walkers who seemed to be everywhere.

So now that I know how to get there (MassPike -> Ted Williams Tunnel -> Rt.145), how to negotiate the mess at the Rt.1A/Rt.145 intersection, and where to park, I shall be watching the NWS for predictions of bright, sunny mornings with strong westerly winds….