> The Captain of the Air France flight had logged 346 hours of flying over the past six months. But within those six months, there were only about four hours in which he was actually in control of an airplane—just the take-offs and landings. The rest of the time, auto-pilot was flying the plane. Langewiesche believes this lack of experience left the pilots unprepared to do their jobs.
They should really be talking about the First officer. The captain knew exactly what to do but wasn't at the controls of the plane until after it had already been stalled.
Not sure how flying a plane while it's essentially doing nothing is helpful to anyone.
If anything airline pilots should be taught to troubleshoot a plane more and fly it less. Maybe if the First Officer understood the correct way to exit a high altitude stall and that applying inputs to his control cancelled out the other pilot's inputs the plane likely would not have crashed.
A big plane in a normal condition doesn't require much attention and can fly itself. Humans are best at exceptional circumstances (in theory) and computers best at doing the boring and tedious work.
Flight hours in this context are pretty meaningless, they should be judged by percentage of abnormal incidents survived in a simulator instead.
AF447 is often misunderstood, there simply is no easy root cause for that particular accident. Or any other aerospace accident, it always is a combination of multiple factors.
447 occurred from a design flaw in Airbus aircraft that have independent joysticks instead of the Yoke available on Boeing fly-by-wire.
The first officer who had more experience than the pilot flying the plane was unaware that the pilot was pulling back on the joystick. If the plane were properly designed as Boeing fly-by-wire craft were designed, eg, 777 at the time, then the accident wouldn't have happened because the first officer would have realized the pilot was pulling back on the yoke for the stall.
A principle in safety is that you want things encoded in the "hardware", eg, you can't put your car in reverse without putting your foot on the brake, even though you are taught this in driver's ed.
The Airbus designers forgot this major principle by using independent joysticks, a lesson not forgotten by the Boeing fly-by-wire craft.
Aside: Magenta the color is interesting - the color code is #ff00ff. When I used to use the BBC Micro you had 8 colors by combination of red, blue, green on and off. Magenta is red and blue on, green off. So the color is a result of lack of memory for more colors. Probably the same reason for planes.
I feel like this is true with the new crop of personal 'evtol' aircraft. There's a lot of marketing being said about being so "easy" to fly that even your "concierge" could do it. I do wonder how much aviating you could do in those things and if they even have a "manual" mode so to speak.
Vortex ring state is an extremely real danger with these craft, the computer is what stands between the occupant and a fiery death. Hence the concierge treatment.
There's no manual mode per se with something like a quadrotor, even a simple one requires really unintuitive applications of thrust to affect things like yaw. You could fly one in 'rate' mode though - where the stick deflection commands pitch/roll/yaw rates directly.
Unlike a 172, it's pretty unstable flown like that, and most people would turn such a craft into a smoking crater shortly.
10 years from now nobody will be able to back an old car out of a parking space because old cars don't have backup cameras.
This doesn't make backup cameras bad but it does require that new drivers be trained for what happens when they fail. This idea is fairly new for driving instruction but it used to be mandatory for pilot training.
I started flying in 1999, and I have to say, this article more closely resembles my flying then than my flying now. Dual VORs, one with ILS, no LORAN, obv no GPS, and all pitot/static vacuum gauges. Not CHT, I think it had an EGT, no fuel flow or digital engine monitor. I remember when I went from a C152 to a C172 and finally a 200RG Arrow, one of the biggest learning curves was folding/unfolding your maps faster to keep up and keep a clean sterile cockpit.
Its hard to state how much aviation has progressed in the last two decades.
What's wild is that a lot of that equipment (or barely newer versions) is still standard fare at flight schools. It's possible to get a fancy glass panel if you look. But you'll probably still fly a 172.
It'd be nice if the regulations would make designing clean sheet airframes a viable business again.
Consider part 43, appendix A: It is legal for an owner to change a worn out tire. It's also legal to service wheel bearings. If, however, in the course of reassembly a new brake rotor or pads are installed instead of the old ones, illegal work has been performed. Part 43 also says nothing of actually inflating tires, so it's unclear— in the letter of the law— whether or not filling flat tires is approved.
There's probably an advisory circular around somewhere that expounds on this, but it illustrates well the over regulated[0] nature of GA in America[1] where the results of regulation do not necessarily effect safety. We have 50 year old (on average) airframes flying around with engines designed in the 1940s (on leaded fuel, no less). It costs $40,000+ to rebuild these engines, due largely to laws about who can work on them and the monopolies on who can provide which engines. It's only like this because the FAA is, for whatever reason, unable to work to a real solution.
[0] This is a specific complaint, not an argument for a general rollback
[1] Yes, I am aware that aviation is even more regulated elsewhere-- and that costs are increased while participation is decreased in those places
A refreshing exception to this is the Experimental Amateur-Built (EAB) category, basically home-built aircraft. Subject to a different set of regulations, the owner or pilot of an EAB category airplane has surprisingly wide latitude to install equipment, perform maintenance, experiment with the power plant, and so on. I can't so much as run a USB charger out to the panel of a Cessna 172, but I can make major engine and airframe modifications to an EAB airplane and do the annual condition inspection if I was the builder.
Consequently, a lot of the innovation that's happening in General Aviation, including avionics, safety systems, ignition and fuel systems, is happening in the EAB world, with the Certified world catching up later.
In the EU pilot-owners can self-certify their aircraft for unleaded fuel, provided that the engine is unmodified and that its manufacturer has approved the use of Avgas UL 91. Print an AFM supplement page and put on new fuel quality placards and you can release the aircraft to service yourself. EASA has a set of "standard changes and standard repairs" (CS-STAN) that offer simplified procedures for some common modifications and repairs and this is one of them. CS-STANs have been around for about a decade now.
In the US you still need to go and purchase a supplemental type certificate for your specific aircraft type for this, I believe.
GA is a much smaller phenomenon in Europe than it is in the US but that's not because regulators are out to make it more complicated.
People are always surprised when I tell them I want to defund the FAA. They have irreparably harmed a beloved hobby of mine for generations. The list is quite frankly endless.
I guess most of it is because these light aircraft just won't die. These are simple, well built machines, and treated well and with the appropriate maintenance, they can last essentially forever. Because they have been in use for so long, we know just about every failure mode, and they were build in a time where the idea of safety was comfortable margins and aerodynamic stability. It results in robust machines suitable for training.
Sure, they are slow and inefficient, but these are not airliners where the point is just to get passengers to their destination as effectively as possible. Here, flying is the entire point, who cares if it is slow? And the fuel costs are less than buying and maintaining a more modern airplane when you already have a 50 year old but still usable 172.
Clean sheet airframes exist of course, like carbon fiber, high performance machines, good for those who want high performance, but usually, that's not a priority for flight schools.
A 172 might be a luxury. I flew mostly C152's during my flight training. The only times I got to fly a 172 was when my instructor had to fly morning traffic patrol and invited me to fly for him.
Nicer airplane, though. Nowhere as cramped as a 152.
I remember walking up to a 152 for my first flight lesson, peering inside, and then laughing. You can just reach over and touch the other side of the plane without leaning inside, it's only as wide as your arm is long (well, I suppose it depends on your arms, but you get the idea).
> And as I got to know the airplane, I could estimate the fuel burned on a trip within a gallon. Leaning was done by pulling out the mixture until the engine got rough. It was much later when the fancier planes got EGT gauges, and decades after that with EGT readouts for each cylinder
Correctly leaning a piston engine to balance the power output, manifold pressure, EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature), Peak Pressure Point and RPM is a fascinating subject. After a series of mysterious spontaneous combustion events in my home flight simulator, I found a 1999 article by John Deakin of AVweb, and was finally able to investigate and resolve the issue and take my Constellation up to FL220 - and back down again - with all four engines intact!
I've found no other more informative article on the topic!
Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced. John Deakin points out that "virtually all factory big bore engines suffer from this uneven power distribution, which sets an artificial limit on just how lean we can run." Radial engines have superior fuel flow, because the fuel is driven by centrifugal force into each cylinder equally from a central pipe!
The Lockheed Super Constellation in my flight simulator shows no roughness when leaned, because it has radial engines. However, it's still susceptible to detonation due to the higher combustion speed when leaned. That's what was causing the fires. Interestingly, one feature which my flight simulator doesn't replicate - but was present on the Super Constellations in real life - is a 'spark retard' control. That would allow power to be squeezed out of the engines even more efficiently by letting the engines run leaner without detonation, artificially delaying the spark to compensate for the more violent combustion.
> Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced.
You can get balanced injectors[1] to solve this, and then you can more aggressively lean before the onset of roughness.
Indeed, EGT, CHT, Manifold Pressure and RPM were all available on the real Lockheed Super Constellation as well as the pre-WWII Lockheed Constellation. They also have a gauge labelled 'Brake Mean Engine Pressure', which also reports a super useful piece of information for working out the ideal mixture.
I know this article is more about pilots, but recently watched The Parallax View (1974)[1] and there's a scene where Warren Beatty goes to an airport, walks on the tarmac and boards a plane.
He finds an empty seat, a flight attendant comes over and has him pay for the ticket, all while the other attendants are offering drink service before the flight takes off and everyone is smoking.
I don't know how period accurate it is, and maybe it was embellished to make the plot smoother, but I couldn't help thinking how different air travel was 50 years ago in regards to being a passenger.
I flew all over the country working on the first CAT scanners in hospitals in the late 1970s. I would show up for work with my packed suitcase in the trunk of my car knowing I would be sent somewhere as soon as I walked in the door of work. I'd often travel to two or three cities every week.
Once I was told which hospital I was going to, I would pull out my flight book--a printed thin manual that contained all the latest flights for all the major airports in the USA. I'd select which time suited me and either call the airline to book my flight or just drive out to the airport, walk up to the airline's ticketing counter, and pay by company credit card.
Now I'm talking about a flight I intend to take within an hour or two of being told where I was going to go. Not tomorrow or next week or next month. I needed to go right now. And I wasn't paying extra to do it!
Being the seasoned traveler, I knew not to bother to board the plane till it was ready to go. There were times when I'd arrive at the airport, parked my car, walk to the door of the airplane just as they were closing the door. (No security checking involved.)
The "stews" could spot us frequent flyer business travelers a mile away. They knew we didn't ask for much and often preferred to just be left alone.
In the 90s there was a small airfield near my home in the US that Continental had some basic puddle jumper service at. There was a small office that could reasonably hold about 50 or so people that was between the parking lot and the tarmac. There was practically no security. One could go from buying the ticket in cash to boarding the plane in five minutes. Checked luggage was handed to the attendant at the bottom of the stairs.
It was nice as it connected to a major international airport on the far side of town. Instead of an hour long drive each way it was a 15-minute drive, barely leaving the neighborhoods. Free parking at a generally safe part of town. Really easy to get in and out, no hassle.
It operated until 9/11 happened. From what I understand pretty much all commercial operations there really died out, as it was also an air national guard and coast guard base.
Gosh I forget the name of the airfield at the moment but by any chance was it near the Clearlake suburb of Houston (Hobby perhaps?)
I used that airfield to get to Bush international several times back in the day. It was strange flying from one airfield to another in the same city to connect to my regularly scheduled flight.
When I was ten years old or so I was going to fly home from Spain to Sweden together with my younger sister. My mother worked for a travel company that also operated the aircraft. There were no seats available but we had school starting after the summer break in a few days. So it was considered important that we get home.
They decided to put us in the cockpit in the DC-8, which had five seats, pilot, co-pilot, engineer (?) and two more seats. We got to partake in the takeoff and landing as observers, whilst using the flight attendant’s seats during the flight. I it was great as kid to experience that. That isn’t likely to happen today. (Cockpits probably don’t even have extra space.)
I remember that flying in the 90s was a hell of a lot smoother than after 911. I recall once (1998) getting to the airport 10m before departure time, running through the airport (with help from airline agents), and making the departure (a bit sweaty).
This would be impossible today.
I wonder how much of this was move to deregulate vs. increased consolidation in today's market.
>I remember that flying in the 90s was a hell of a lot smoother than after 911.
When living in Redwood City, from 2000 to 2001 I could leave my apartment, park my car at SFO, get through security, and get to the plane's gate within 50 minutes.
Airports are now giant shopping malls. The incentive is for you to hang out and be a good consumer. Too short, no shopping. Too long, they need more chairs, space and wifi.
My first time flying was 1982. Back then you dressed up to fly (suits and ties for the men, dresses for the women). Metal detectors had been in place for less than a decade (before that, “skyjackings,” where the plane was directed to go to Cuba, were a monthly if not more frequent occurrence). In-flight service included drinks in actual glasses and metal silverware for any meals (when I moved off-campus, I liberated some airline silverware to augment the dining-hall silverware I ate with in my apartment). Meeting arrivals at the airline gate was a common practice (as was saying goodbye at the gate).
It was as absurd as people wandering around a plane defecating on the tray tables. More ridiculous is how gullible classism has always been, continuously and eagerly falling for marketing hype.
There’s a scene at the end of the movie Fletch (1985) where Chevy Chase uses a plane ticket made out in another person’s name, and no one blinks an eye.
Can confirm. My first snowboard trip was to Mount Hood, Oregon, in the late 80s. I only went because something came up and my friend couldn't go, so he just gave me his plane ticket. The person at the ticket counter just asked me, "Are you Kevin Johnson?" I said "Yep", and walked onto the plane.
In the late 1980s, I flew under my suitemate’s father’s name to get to college once (he had to change his travel date and sold me his ticket which was under his father’s name so his dad would get the frequent flyer miles).
My father flew on commercial airliners somewhat frequently throughout the 70s, 80s and 90s in Europe, Africa and the Americas, and told me that travelling by air was just like catching a bus in South America.
There's nothing I would like better than being able to get hold of a proper timetable for a given airport, but sadly this doesn't seem to be easy. Airlines book their slots months in advance, so its not as if they don't know when they'll be flying.
I flew quite a lot in Europe in the 90s and it was definitely a completely different experience compared to nowadays.
I do remember walking on the tarmac yes. I had my ticket before but could seat wherever. I could just show up 60 to 30min before take off. I was also - as a kid - always asked by the stewardess if i wanted to visit the cockpit.
I remember telling that to a friend of mine who was 10 years younger and never flew before 9/11 and he thought I was making it up.
I have walked on the tarmac plenty of times in the last 10 years either at smaller airports or at very large airports. At large airports it's because smaller flights don't get to park right up to the terminal so you have to board a little bus that takes you from the airplane to the terminal and vice-versa.
At smaller airports it's because planes that small (100 or fewer passenger jets) don't really need the big walkways.
> I could just show up 60 to 30min before take off
I do that every time I fly domestic out of SFO. Super fast airport :)
I haven’t walked over tarmac from a terminal to a plane since
checks
Sunday.
Showed up 45 minutes before the flight and still lamented how early it was. Despite security and passport control the longest time was spent walking through the duty free section.
> I could just show up 60 to 30min before take off
In the early 90's I showed up at a check in counter for a domestic flight from SYD 1 minute before scheduled departure time and the lady there apologized and told me that I missed the flight because it had left a little early.
I don't ever recall seeing people paying for a flight on-board but I did fly from Las Vegas to Reno (and back again later) to visit UNR and walked up to the Hughes Airwest counter, paid my $45 for a ticket, walked out to the tarmac and up the ramp and sat down on the plane. Maybe 15 minutes from parking to sitting down. The stewardess checked my ticked when I got on the plane to make sure I was on the right flight.
Nice article. Recent crashes with pilots failing to understand modern avionics are in dark contrast to this level of understanding and craft in the airplane.
> I never flew to Vermont or Maine, the last two states I now need to have visited all 50
This is too bad, VT has some great airports. I used to enjoy flying from B01 (Granville, NY) up to B06 (Basin Harbor, VT) for lunch. They had a nice restaurant right off the runway. Then I'd head over to KLEB or KRUT, fuel up, and then back to B01. This was in a 1949 Piper Clipper ca. 2004, handheld radio, VFR. Wasn't much different than described in the article, but I never spent much time in controlled airspace except for however many hours was required in training (mostly at KLEB IIRC).
Apart from some minor electronics improvements (like easier radios), that all sounds remarkably similar to my experience learning to fly twenty years ago. Still all paper charts, compass, time, VORs. Was definitely rewarding to get the navigational calculations right. Planes were the same too!
Having learned sailing in the GPS-and-chartplotter era, I sort of miss that. Time to get buy the HO tables for the sextant, I suppose…
I also got my license around that time with eb6, paper charts, VORs, NDB approaches, … and I don’t miss it a bit. Nostalgia - yes. But not missing it. I like to fly direct, I like to get LPV approach to 200 feet at an airport that would never ever ever would had had an ILS installed, I like traffic and weather on ADSB, I like my ForeFlight, and list goes on. The new technology helps to make flying safer. Yes, you need to know how to use all of this. And yes, it’s complicated. But the benefits are great too.
Sure, just like I’m really happy having for instance AIS for collision avoidance on the boat.
I never got to fly with all the modern automations, though. Fuel prices shot up drastically around the time I got my license, and so I let it expire after a couple of years.
There's a good quote in that “Children of Magenta” article:
“We appear to be locked into a cycle in which automation begets the erosion of skills or the lack of skills in the first place and this then begets more automation.”
Though this comment from that 2015 article aged like milk:
“Airbus planes, by the way, are no more or less safe than their main rival, Boeing.”
Readit News
"Children of the magenta" should be required reading/listening for anyone interested in aviation.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magen...
1. The Turn (1993) by the same William Langewiesche quoted in Children of the Magenta:
https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/langew/turn.ht...
2. The Crash of United Flight 232 (1989):
https://www.iamcraig.com/2010/11/15/the-crash-of-united-flig...
https://youtu.be/ovkgV2_t9uc?si=DarGgG4wpeJ5SwH6
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-f...
They should really be talking about the First officer. The captain knew exactly what to do but wasn't at the controls of the plane until after it had already been stalled.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
If anything airline pilots should be taught to troubleshoot a plane more and fly it less. Maybe if the First Officer understood the correct way to exit a high altitude stall and that applying inputs to his control cancelled out the other pilot's inputs the plane likely would not have crashed.
A big plane in a normal condition doesn't require much attention and can fly itself. Humans are best at exceptional circumstances (in theory) and computers best at doing the boring and tedious work.
Flight hours in this context are pretty meaningless, they should be judged by percentage of abnormal incidents survived in a simulator instead.
A principle in safety is that you want things encoded in the "hardware", eg, you can't put your car in reverse without putting your foot on the brake, even though you are taught this in driver's ed. The Airbus designers forgot this major principle by using independent joysticks, a lesson not forgotten by the Boeing fly-by-wire craft.
Deleted Comment
There's no manual mode per se with something like a quadrotor, even a simple one requires really unintuitive applications of thrust to affect things like yaw. You could fly one in 'rate' mode though - where the stick deflection commands pitch/roll/yaw rates directly.
Unlike a 172, it's pretty unstable flown like that, and most people would turn such a craft into a smoking crater shortly.
This doesn't make backup cameras bad but it does require that new drivers be trained for what happens when they fail. This idea is fairly new for driving instruction but it used to be mandatory for pilot training.
It'd be nice if the regulations would make designing clean sheet airframes a viable business again.
There's probably an advisory circular around somewhere that expounds on this, but it illustrates well the over regulated[0] nature of GA in America[1] where the results of regulation do not necessarily effect safety. We have 50 year old (on average) airframes flying around with engines designed in the 1940s (on leaded fuel, no less). It costs $40,000+ to rebuild these engines, due largely to laws about who can work on them and the monopolies on who can provide which engines. It's only like this because the FAA is, for whatever reason, unable to work to a real solution.
[0] This is a specific complaint, not an argument for a general rollback
[1] Yes, I am aware that aviation is even more regulated elsewhere-- and that costs are increased while participation is decreased in those places
Consequently, a lot of the innovation that's happening in General Aviation, including avionics, safety systems, ignition and fuel systems, is happening in the EAB world, with the Certified world catching up later.
In the US you still need to go and purchase a supplemental type certificate for your specific aircraft type for this, I believe.
GA is a much smaller phenomenon in Europe than it is in the US but that's not because regulators are out to make it more complicated.
Sure, they are slow and inefficient, but these are not airliners where the point is just to get passengers to their destination as effectively as possible. Here, flying is the entire point, who cares if it is slow? And the fuel costs are less than buying and maintaining a more modern airplane when you already have a 50 year old but still usable 172.
Clean sheet airframes exist of course, like carbon fiber, high performance machines, good for those who want high performance, but usually, that's not a priority for flight schools.
Nicer airplane, though. Nowhere as cramped as a 152.
Cessna 150.
But had a GPS and ADSB in/out.
Correctly leaning a piston engine to balance the power output, manifold pressure, EGT (Exhaust Gas Temperature), CHT (Cylinder Head Temperature), Peak Pressure Point and RPM is a fascinating subject. After a series of mysterious spontaneous combustion events in my home flight simulator, I found a 1999 article by John Deakin of AVweb, and was finally able to investigate and resolve the issue and take my Constellation up to FL220 - and back down again - with all four engines intact!
https://www.avweb.com/features_old/pelicans-perch-18mixture-...
I've found no other more informative article on the topic!
Particularly interesting to me is that the 'engine getting rough' behaviour that the C172 author describes is actually due to the variation of fuel flow to the different cylinders. When you lean the engine, the fuel flow isn't reduced identically to all the cylinders, causing the power output to become unbalanced. John Deakin points out that "virtually all factory big bore engines suffer from this uneven power distribution, which sets an artificial limit on just how lean we can run." Radial engines have superior fuel flow, because the fuel is driven by centrifugal force into each cylinder equally from a central pipe!
The Lockheed Super Constellation in my flight simulator shows no roughness when leaned, because it has radial engines. However, it's still susceptible to detonation due to the higher combustion speed when leaned. That's what was causing the fires. Interestingly, one feature which my flight simulator doesn't replicate - but was present on the Super Constellations in real life - is a 'spark retard' control. That would allow power to be squeezed out of the engines even more efficiently by letting the engines run leaner without detonation, artificially delaying the spark to compensate for the more violent combustion.
You can get balanced injectors[1] to solve this, and then you can more aggressively lean before the onset of roughness.
1: https://www.avweb.com/ownership/gamijectors-for-lycomings/
https://gami.com/gamijectors/order.php
Looks like they're still in business - smooth running engines at the bargain price of just US$1000!
EGT, Manifold Pressure, etc.. were on planes before WWII IIRC.
He finds an empty seat, a flight attendant comes over and has him pay for the ticket, all while the other attendants are offering drink service before the flight takes off and everyone is smoking.
I don't know how period accurate it is, and maybe it was embellished to make the plot smoother, but I couldn't help thinking how different air travel was 50 years ago in regards to being a passenger.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Parallax_View
I flew all over the country working on the first CAT scanners in hospitals in the late 1970s. I would show up for work with my packed suitcase in the trunk of my car knowing I would be sent somewhere as soon as I walked in the door of work. I'd often travel to two or three cities every week.
Once I was told which hospital I was going to, I would pull out my flight book--a printed thin manual that contained all the latest flights for all the major airports in the USA. I'd select which time suited me and either call the airline to book my flight or just drive out to the airport, walk up to the airline's ticketing counter, and pay by company credit card.
Now I'm talking about a flight I intend to take within an hour or two of being told where I was going to go. Not tomorrow or next week or next month. I needed to go right now. And I wasn't paying extra to do it!
Being the seasoned traveler, I knew not to bother to board the plane till it was ready to go. There were times when I'd arrive at the airport, parked my car, walk to the door of the airplane just as they were closing the door. (No security checking involved.)
The "stews" could spot us frequent flyer business travelers a mile away. They knew we didn't ask for much and often preferred to just be left alone.
How much these flights cost back then? How much is that inflation-adjusted? How much to they cost now?
It was nice as it connected to a major international airport on the far side of town. Instead of an hour long drive each way it was a 15-minute drive, barely leaving the neighborhoods. Free parking at a generally safe part of town. Really easy to get in and out, no hassle.
It operated until 9/11 happened. From what I understand pretty much all commercial operations there really died out, as it was also an air national guard and coast guard base.
I used that airfield to get to Bush international several times back in the day. It was strange flying from one airfield to another in the same city to connect to my regularly scheduled flight.
Thanks for the memories!
They decided to put us in the cockpit in the DC-8, which had five seats, pilot, co-pilot, engineer (?) and two more seats. We got to partake in the takeoff and landing as observers, whilst using the flight attendant’s seats during the flight. I it was great as kid to experience that. That isn’t likely to happen today. (Cockpits probably don’t even have extra space.)
This would be impossible today.
I wonder how much of this was move to deregulate vs. increased consolidation in today's market.
When living in Redwood City, from 2000 to 2001 I could leave my apartment, park my car at SFO, get through security, and get to the plane's gate within 50 minutes.
In theory, IIRC, the smoking area was at the back. But in practice, the smoke and smell carried everywhere.
There's nothing I would like better than being able to get hold of a proper timetable for a given airport, but sadly this doesn't seem to be easy. Airlines book their slots months in advance, so its not as if they don't know when they'll be flying.
I do remember walking on the tarmac yes. I had my ticket before but could seat wherever. I could just show up 60 to 30min before take off. I was also - as a kid - always asked by the stewardess if i wanted to visit the cockpit.
I remember telling that to a friend of mine who was 10 years younger and never flew before 9/11 and he thought I was making it up.
I have walked on the tarmac plenty of times in the last 10 years either at smaller airports or at very large airports. At large airports it's because smaller flights don't get to park right up to the terminal so you have to board a little bus that takes you from the airplane to the terminal and vice-versa.
At smaller airports it's because planes that small (100 or fewer passenger jets) don't really need the big walkways.
> I could just show up 60 to 30min before take off
I do that every time I fly domestic out of SFO. Super fast airport :)
checks
Sunday.
Showed up 45 minutes before the flight and still lamented how early it was. Despite security and passport control the longest time was spent walking through the duty free section.
I did have a nominated seat though.
In the early 90's I showed up at a check in counter for a domestic flight from SYD 1 minute before scheduled departure time and the lady there apologized and told me that I missed the flight because it had left a little early.
E.g. https://youtu.be/pkH6kecIeBg
This is too bad, VT has some great airports. I used to enjoy flying from B01 (Granville, NY) up to B06 (Basin Harbor, VT) for lunch. They had a nice restaurant right off the runway. Then I'd head over to KLEB or KRUT, fuel up, and then back to B01. This was in a 1949 Piper Clipper ca. 2004, handheld radio, VFR. Wasn't much different than described in the article, but I never spent much time in controlled airspace except for however many hours was required in training (mostly at KLEB IIRC).
Having learned sailing in the GPS-and-chartplotter era, I sort of miss that. Time to get buy the HO tables for the sextant, I suppose…
I never got to fly with all the modern automations, though. Fuel prices shot up drastically around the time I got my license, and so I let it expire after a couple of years.
There's a good quote in that “Children of Magenta” article: “We appear to be locked into a cycle in which automation begets the erosion of skills or the lack of skills in the first place and this then begets more automation.”
Though this comment from that 2015 article aged like milk: “Airbus planes, by the way, are no more or less safe than their main rival, Boeing.”