Fly Me Friendly

The folks at Flight Experience Melbourne are running a competition for their 737 flight simulator. Write up your scary flying story and you could win a free session in the sim. Woo hoo.

I’ve had two very scary flights in my life and I’m adding them to the collection even thought I can’t win ‘cos I’m staff (I run the blog :) So, here’s the first of my two stories.

We were returning to Boston on United Airlines (from memory a 757) in the mid-90’s. It was coming up on winter and the weather was grey, windy and lots of rain. The pilot came on the PA to advise that due to weather, Boston Logan airport (our destination) was going to be closing. We were to be the last aircraft that would be allowed to attempt a landing and that the crew would give it their best shot to try and get everyone where they were going on this dark & stormy evening.

He also told us all to ensure we buckled up tight and stowed all loose gear because it was probably going to be a bit of a ride. Oh joy.

All cabin crew were strapped in, lights were off and window shades were open as we descended further into the soupy clouds. I had a window seat behind the wing on the right hand side and was watching the outside world as we descended.

The turbulence started to kick in as we got lower and then we broke through the overcast, coming in over the grey, seething waters of Massachusetts Bay. Now the thumps and rattles which had us all shaking about in our seats were “enhanced” by rocking & rolling as we got closer to the surface.

Looking out the window, I was seeing alternate dark grey sky and then very dark grey sea. The aircraft was rolling with the engines surging while the ailerons & spoilers were deflecting madly as the crew fought the variable & gusty winds down the approach path.

Soon we were over the inner harbour and I was starting to see some of the navigation equipment that’s anchored in the water. We were still having quite the roller coaster ride but it eased off as we got over the tarmac, although the crew were still working hard to keep us aligned.

Finally we thumped it onto the deck, the spoilers deployed and almost immediately the thrust reversers were applied. Through the rain on the window you could see the airport buildings and aircraft looking very windswept and miserable.

As we taxied off the runway, the lead flight attendant came on and in a slightly shaky voice said “Welcome to Boston, folks.” There was some laughter but it was mostly a quiet cabin as we all breathed a huge sigh of relief.

On the way off the plane I stopped to chat with the captain as he stood at the cockpit door (remember when they used to do that?). I congratulated him on the landing and said it was the hairiest ride I’d ever had. He agreed it was a pretty good one but noted that he was ex-US Navy, at which point we both agreed that night landings on a carrier are the most intense experience of all (I think there’s a joke about that, right? :)

Given this is my personal blog, I can share the joke with you:

The best things in a pilot’s life are a good landing, a good orgasm & a good shit. Night carrier landings are the only way you can experience all three at the same time :) :)

I got word this morning from Carlo at Flight Experience Melbourne that he’d just arrived at Melbourne airport (YMML) and seen an Antonov parked on the ramp. Talk about perfect timing as I was taking one of my workmates to the airport for his trip home to Sydney (flying Tiger Airways – good luck with that!).

After dropping him off, I shot off around to the viewing area near the AirServices compound on Operations Rd. As expected, this was too far away to be of much use for photos, but gave me an excuse to go check out where it was parked (and take a couple anyway, what the heck).

On my way back I stopped off at one of the ramps where some of the cargo, VIP and QANTAS maintenance operations are so I could get a shot of the Ansett DC-3 (VH-ABR) parked in front of a RAAF BBJ (A36-002) and the A319 that flies to the “blue ice runway” in Antarctica (VH-VHD). Nice :)

I then scooted back around towards the main terminal area, stopping on Link Rd to get a distance shot of the An-124 that, although a bit further away, was better as it had fewer fences & hills in the way. From there I headed back to the freight area and started hunting around for a good view of the ramp. Fortunately I found a spot where I could park the car and get up to a fence, shooting through the links to get a reasonably good view of the beastie.

While I was snapping the shots, a QANTAS 737 was being towed from maintenance to the terminals, letting me get a good size comparison shot. Yes, that thing is *huge*

Not sure why it was parked on the ramp at Tulla, but if I find out I’ll be sure to post it here. Meanwhile, you can see all the shots I took (including larger copies of each shot) over at the YMML Antonov page on my photo gallery.

Carlo and I are really enjoying our sessions in the Flight Experience 737-800 fixed-base simulator. Even when we have a comparatively bad session with all sorts of hassles and mistakes, we’re still enjoying it. So, are we just having these sessions for the fun of it? Well, yes, there is a large “fun” component involved, but we have two major goals we’re working on:

• Our Skills: We both dream of one day flying a real commercial jet liner, but we have a long way to go to get there. We both have families, work, debts and other pressures that get in the way (as most people do). Carlo has extensive experience with MS Flight Simulator while most of my flying has been in real aircraft (usually Cessnas). We both went and flew a full-motion 737-400 sim many years ago and have been considering ways to work in aviation. I spent a few years as crew chief for Balloon Sunrise and have had a couple of goes at getting my pilot’s license, while in 2007, Carlo set up the Melbourne Flight Experience operation. When time permits, we’ve had a few adventures in the sim. Initially it was a “fun thing to do” but it has now become a challenge, learning systems, getting used to how the 737 handles, practicing procedures, working on our CRM and trying to do the best, professional job we can. Like I said, even when it goes wrong, we’re really enjoying it.
• Route Proving: While Flight Experience lets members of the public see what it’s like to fly a commercial jet, they also cater to serious simmers and pilots wanting to step up. For those who want more than a simple flight, they are going to offer 3 hour packages featuring multiple take-offs and landings in a realistic, commercial environment. So, the flights we’re planning and executing are tests to prepare these 3 hour packages. The EuroFun trip has already had a beta-test with a real customer and the feedback has been helpful (yup, there’s problems to address). This certainly provides us with a more challenging situation as we’re not just focusing on our own education but also creating experiences for others to follow.

While this is not directly contributing to progress on my path to getting back in the air, the experience I’m building is certainly helping, I’m having a great time and it’s also giving something back to Flight Experience that, in turn, allows others to be challenged as well. Does it get much better than this?

Earlier this month Carlo and I went into the simulator to fly the EuroFun tour we’d dreamed up, traveling from Graz, Austria (LOWG) to Milan, Italy (LOWI) to Lyon, France (LFLY) and then to Innsbruck back in Austria (LOWI). If you’ve read the report of that earlier session, you’d know that we had LOTS of problems, ranging from “What the F***K is it doing now?” moments to me getting completely confused and almost crashing. To see if we’d learned anything from the post session discussions, we decided to return and fly the same route, but this time to do it better. With such a low initial point, how could we not improve?

Once again on departure from LOWG we had a minor “WTF??!” moment as the autopilot played silly buggers while crossing the Graz VOR. Not to worry, we caught it and handled it very quickly, keeping us on track and everything moving smoothly. Tracking through the departure path and across to Milan went well. Our approach into LOWI went smoothly with the system locking onto the beams and taking us in for a beautiful CAT III autolanding. Nice.

I quickly reprogrammed the FMC and performed a manual take off, heading out from Milan through the SID and transition then on to Lyon. Once we were established in the STAR for LFLY, I switched to fully manual and got us on the ground in one piece, albeit with a bit of a bouncer landing. At least I was doing it all fully manual (throttles included) and the hassles I had were linked to getting the sight-picture right and getting used to the lag on the throttles (think: spool up time).

Once parked on the apron, we commenced programming the FMC for the run to Innsbruck and again hit a problem with the SID we wanted to use. The FMC had us going all over the place and nothing we did could fix it, so we dumped it and manually coded the departure.

Carlo flew us out of Lyon and we tracked over Switzerland heading back to Austria, going for an altitude record and causing me some concern when we lost all visuals at over 38,000 feet. Turns out we’d moved into layer of super-high overcast of some sort – not sure how Carlo managed to program that in.

I was the designated pilot for the descent and landing at Innsbruck (LOWI) which features a steep descent path over mountains followed by a tight, descending 180 before aligning with the runway for landing. Being the masochist that I am, I went fully manual again and my hands were busy with throttles, speed brakes and yoke while my thumb got a great workout on the trim control. We threw out the landing gear as I commenced the turn, cranking it around to a chorus of “Sink Rate,” “Bank Angle” and “Terrain” warning calls, then had the flaps at 30 degrees as I rounded out, hunting for the runway line. Carlo had programmed clouds so I was watching the magenta line on the map as well as outside to get into the right position. When we had the VASI lights sighted, I called full flap (yes, 40 degrees – hang it all out, dude!) and flew it all the way down, juggling it all until, once again, I ballooned slightly just before the flare and we floated a way down the runway, thumping down a little further than I would have liked. Fortunately the use of auto-brake, thrust reversers and manual braking had us slowed down with lots to spare.

So, another reasonably successful run in the simulator, some good landings in challenging conditions and a much better result than last time. Yay! Photos from the session have been loaded in the gallery.

On Monday night, Carlo and I once again strapped ourselves into the Flight Experience B737-800 simulator, turned on the cockpit DVR and commenced a process of ritual humiliation and embarrassment that reinforced to me how much we need to learn about flight systems, nav computers and CRM. While my flight planning was significantly improved over our previous sessions, once we were in the cockpit and trying to operate with more realism than before, we quickly got behind the aircraft, had failures in our situational awareness and the most common phrase of the evening was “What the **** is it doing now???”

This flight was our third “let’s get real” session in the sim, having already done a Hawaiian Island tour and visited some Mountain airports. This time we decided to do some flying around Europe so I was able to make use of a great site of European airport charts to get all the information I needed for planning. I had all the approach plates, SIDs and STARs sorted out and our course planned and even loaded onto a Google Map. I didn’t have the way points between the end of a SID and the start of the STAR though, so I just had us fly direct between them. Not brilliant, but certainly much better than some of the planning I’d done previously.

Sadly, my preflight planning did not extend to bringing my camera, so there will be no photos from this session – DOH!

Despite being a bit delayed in getting started due to some “house keeping” work in the shop itself, we had everything programmed for Graz (LOWG) to Milan (LIML) and ready to go without too much hassle (even though I was a little rusty having not done any FMC programming since last session). We made our first major mistake when we headed off down the taxiway relying on my memory of the Graz layout (from looking at the sheet earlier). I had assumed that the taxiway we were on would take us to the end of the runway – bzzzt – no – it actually took us to the parallel grass runway instead. We should have turned right earlier, crossed over the end of the grass runway, crossed the real runway and then proceeded to the end of the runway via a taxiway on the other side. DOH!

Every gone “off road” in a 737? I certainly don’t recommend it!

So, after fixing that little mistake, we lined up at the end of Rwy 35 with all our checks completed. I ran the throttles up, verified all was looking good, released the brakes and hit the TOGA buttons. Vroom – a rather nice take off and switch over to let “Otto” fly the aircraft.

NOTE: “Otto” is the name we use when referring to the autopilot and is based on the name of the inflatable pilot from the movie “Flying High” (“Airplane” in the USA).

We had programmed the system to fly the DOLSKO 1U SID but for some strange reason the computer’s flight path wound up doing a 180 to the left instead of to the right as per the SID. Odd – our first “What’s it doing now?” moment for the session.

The flight to Milan was good and we enjoyed the views of the mountains (at least until we changed the weather on the sim to be low clouds, a bit of fog and reduced visibility to make the CAT III landing a bit more realistic). We slotted into the LUSIL 1A arrival quite nicely and were heading towards the intercept point for the Rwy 36 ILS when we noticed the damned thing wouldn’t go into autoland mode. We started mucking about with the systems as we headed towards the intercept and had some more “What the frak is it doing now?” moments. We also noticed that it wasn’t descending as necessary and was, in fact, holding level at about 8,000′ – oops.

At this point, I should have called “No Joy” and aborted the approach until we could sort out the problem. But no, I wind up thinking that this is just the sim so lets keep going. Hmmmmm. We eventually get what Carlo calls the “banana” to appear on the pink line – that’s the green arc on the flight path line in the Nav display – it shows where you’ll be when you reach the altitude you’ve set on the MCP. Once we got that sorted out, we managed to get it into autoland mode just before the intercept at which point Otto takes over and we start dropping like a brick. This was the second point that I should have called for a go-around as we were certainly not on a stable approach. We finally get down below 200′ and still can’t see a thing. Carlo had said he’d set the cloud to thin out below 200′ but it certainly wasn’t the case so I think he got something mixed up with the sim’s weather settings.

When the voice called out “100 feet” we had reached the third point where I should have been calling out “Go Around! Go Around!” but I was in the sim so I let it ride. Well, at 50′ we were still at zero viz and wondering “What do we do now?” – just as I was about to say “Ummm – flare?” we started to see runway markings and thumped onto the ground. Wow. We ran down to the end of the runway in near zero viz and I was watching the taxiway line markings heading off, counting each one until it was time to call “That’s it!” to take the one we needed (the last one available, too). Sadly, my call wasn’t definite enough and we overshot – oh well, a quick 180 later we were back where we were supposed to be and picking our way through the fog to a gate that didn’t have something vaguely aircraft shaped already in it.

We shut down and started reviewing the whole thing. I mentioned how there were multiple points where I was tempted to call “Abort” and Carlo said I should have done it. Just ‘cos we’re in the sim doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be doing it as close to “real” as we can get. OK – I’ll definitely keep that in mind for future sessions.

Carlo reset the sim’s weather and suddenly we could see outside – very handy. We had some puffy cumulus clouds around and a slight haze, but otherwise it was great viz (certainly a lot better than it had been). We departed Milan on the SRN 5D departure then transitioned to OMETO 8A for an uneventful flight towards Saint Exupery airfield in Lyon (LFLY).

Despite a good entry into the AMVAR 1 arrival, we again had problems with the computer systems and more “What’s it doing now?” moments. This time, Otto was taking us all over the place and not following the flight path line, instead he was making turns and chasing his nose around the place. I told Carlo to shut Otto off and we’d fly the landing manually – visibility was OK and the puffy cumulus clouds around the place just made it fun, not nasty. Carlo reckoned he had it sorted and we managed to get autoland engaged once again (after some dicking around with CMD buttons and such). As we were hunting around for a visual fix on the runway (damned clouds) we realised that while we were descending and on the right heading, we were going to be way to high – in fact, we were at 1,000′ with less than a mile to go. Ooops. At this point, I called abort and Carlo agreed. He called out “Full Manual, you’ve got her” and gave me a course & altitude to fly with the Course Director lines. Sadly, I fixated on the lines and started pulling up and turning as they directed, forgetting one VERY important thing: “Fully Manual” means throttles as well – oops. With the nose coming up to follow the lines, our speed bled off and I started to get all sorts of alarms going off. As I’m saying “Huh? Wozzup?” Carlo is yelling “Power, dude! Power!” Fortunately he pushes the throttles forward and we’re able to fly out of the impending stall-spin-splat that I was setting us up for. Major oops.

Now that we’ve recovered from that stupid lapse, we head back out to start the approach all over again. Sadly, Otto is still in a very confused state – we’ve requested straight and level at 5,000′ and he’s trying to power climb us to 8,000′ – like, major WTF moment. Carlo spends a bit of time getting the computers cleaned up and settling everything down then we get a TCAS alert. Oh great. We sort that out, get relaxed again, stabilise the systems and then head back to intercept the ILS once again.

This time we get Otto sorted out and autoland mode is engaged smoothly, leading to a beautiful intercept, descent and landing into LFLY. It’s a short runway so we have auto-brake on max and wow, does that make a difference or what? We taxi into the airport and shut down but want to be on our way quickly as it’s getting late (in real time).

I start programming the FMC while Carlo resets the time of day and weather for the run to Innsbruck. I’m racing through things as he powers us up and taxis out to the runway but something’s not working right. The FMC seems to have the right route legs but stepping through isn’t working and the displayed route is really weird. We wind up holding short for a while and discover there’s something still hanging around in the FMC from our last flight. DOH! Once that’s cleared and the route is reloaded, all systems are GO and we’re looking good to depart.

Carlo lines us up on the runway, runs up the engines, we check everything and he hits the TOGA buttons then releases the brakes. Vroom – we’re off like a startled thing – gotta love a short field take off. We’re quickly into the MABES 2P departure and then heading smoothly out towards Innsbruck (LOWI). On the way there we spend a bit of time fully briefing the approach into Innsbruck, checking what waypoints we can code into the FMC to help navigate what is an amazingly tricky approach down ino the valley and then turning over 180 degrees to head back onto the runway.

We finish up doing perhaps the best briefing/review we’ve ever done and it’s just in time for the top of descent. Sure enough, Otto starts taking us down but once again I’m saying “Where’s my bloody banana?” – it seems that Otto was descending but not rapidly enough to be at the right altitude over the ALGOI VOR. Bloody hell! We get that sorted out quickly and everything proceeds as expected to the start of the Special LOC DME West approach into Innsbruck. We switch over to manual and I hand fly us onto the start point and then down into the valley, passing over the top of the airport and heading beyond it while staying as close to the left hand side of the valley as we dare.

Once again those damned cumulus clouds were still around – I probably should have hassled Carlo about turning them off before we left Lyon but it was too late now.

As we crossed the final fix point past the airport, I threw the aircraft into a solid right hand turn, generating a few “Bank Angle” warnings. Between these, Carlo saying “watch your altitude” and the very close looking terrain outside, I didn’t descend properly as I rounded out onto the runway heading and started hunting for a visual fix on it (those same damned clouds that blocked our view at Lyon had come here too – doh!). When we did get visual we were a bit high so we popped the speed brakes up and dropped back into the right approach path (albeit with a few “Sink Rate” warnings – oops).

I came in a little fast and flared a bit too quickly & high so we floated, dropped in and bounced a bit, but between reverse thrust and auto brakes set to max, we were down and slowed in time for the final exit. Once off the runway we cleaned up the aircraft and taxied into a bay, shutting down and finally taking a deep, relaxing breath.

What a rush!

While we had a great time, this session was certainly frustrating but definitely very educational and I’m looking forward to taking all that I’ve learned and applying it again in the next session. I feel a little better about my performance when I consider that I have very little time with the sim (systems, handling, etc) while Carlo’s been flying 737s in MS Flight Simulator for ages. Certainly he knows more about this sim and the 737 than I do, but even he got confused & frustrated with it on this trip.

So, what has been learned from this session? Oh, the list is enormous, not the least of which are:

• I need to do a lot more study of 737 systems
• I need some practice flying without the autothrottle
• I need to work on my situational awareness
• Carlo and I definitely need to work on our CRM
• I will not hesitate to call a go around (or switch to manual) if there’s anything that’s not working correctly and isn’t resolved quickly

There’s certainly more that needs to be done, but these are the big ones for now.

We’ve been talking about doing some flights around New Zealand (beautiful scenery, tricky approaches in the mountains, etc) but have decided instead that we’ll repeat this set of flights as soon as our schedules (and families) will allow. I really want to nail this one and do it right and I think the next session will be a whole lot better than this one.

I’m doing some flight planning in preparation for our next session in the simulator at Flight Experience. This time we’re going to do the following run:

LOWG (Graz, Austria) to LIML (Milan, Italy) to LFLY (Lyon, France – Saint Exupery airport) to LOWI (Innsbruck, Austria)

We’re going to do a zero-viz CAT III landing at Milan and the famous approach into Innsbruck. It should make for a fun session and we’re due to be in the simulator on Monday evening. With luck I’ll have the report and photos loaded within a couple of days.

Just got home after another session in the Flight Experience B737-800 fixed base simulator. While another great time, it was a major wake up call for me as my landings were abysmal.

We had planned to spend 1.5 to 2 hours in the sim flying around Hawaii (PHNL -> PHOG -> PHKO -> PHTO -> PHNL) in “real time” with as quick on the ground as we could be. Well, it wound up taking us 4 hours because:

• We need to speed up our FMC route programming
• We weren’t transiting between the islands at best speeds
• We should have used a shorter, more direct route from PHNL to PHOG
• I had to abort my landing into PHOG then staggered around back onto the approach for a low & slow run into a rather dodgy landing
• Carlo (my co-captain) wound up doing a long, slow “drag it in” approach into PHKO from way out
• I completely screwed up the landing into PHTO and, in fact, crashed short (not helped at all by Carlo deciding to shut down an engine on me just as I was getting into the groove on the ILS)
• Carlo went out to get water & nibbles while on the ground at PHTO (hey, we’re dead, we can do this, OK?)

So, we could have done this a LOT better and we have a few ideas to speed things up on the next one:

• Have drinks and nibbles ready before hand (but only eat in the galley area during flight, not on the ground)
• No breaks on landing – start reprogramming as soon as we’ve done the shutdown checklist
• Have the waypoints listed in a better format
• Don’t forget to bring in the printed out route maps, STARs, airport diagrams, etc (yeah, I forgot them and had to reprint before we could start – DOH!)
• Push for faster cruise speeds where possible (0.75M at least)
• Fly a better approach (yes, that’s my issue once again)
• Save the inflight emergencies for when we’re a LOT better at this

We figure if we can do that, we’ll fly a tighter, faster run and come in much closer to expected times. Lots of lessons learned tonight – plus a reminder that I need to find a bit more time to study the panel layouts and autopilot modes. Still, I must admit I was a LOT better by the end and was finding my way around the panels faster plus my landing back into PHNL was actually not too bad (even with a head wind grabbing us in the last 300 feet or so).

Al up, it was another great fun time and we once again got to pretend that we knew what we were doing. You really can get caught up in it all and let the magic take you away. With a few more sessions, I may even be able to make a few acceptable landings in a row.

Today we flew back from Tweed Heads to Melbourne and I have to say the time in the Gold Coast terminal wasn’t that bad at all. While our aircraft was packed solid, there was lots of space in the departure lounge, check in was a breeze and the walk out to the aircraft was fun. Of course, the clear blue skies and lack of rain helped (we’d had rain all weekend so I was dreading getting soaked today).

This time we flew back on a B737-700 and the differences inside between it and the B737-800 we flew up on were quite obvious. Only one over-wing exit, row 12 is the exit row (on the way up we were in row 12 and were one or two rows ahead of the exit at least) and much more cramped seating.

On the way up from Melbourne we’d had a bunch of young sporting types in the back who were being a tad rowdy at times. I was thinking this time would probably be crying kids but no, it looked like the same bunch of rowdies were heading back home this flight. DOH!

So, which is worse. An aircraft with crying kids or an aircraft of rowdy sporting types? Hell, how about both? We had some kids behind us and rowdies all around us. Hmmm… Actually, it wasn’t too bad as I think they were all pretty tired and slept or snoozed all the way down.

We hit some chop coming into Melbourne as usually – a bit of sharp stuff around the tops of the clouds as we descended then some rolling lumpy stuff around 8,000′ which lasted until around 3,000′ then mostly cleared up. Sadly, one of the lads around us couldn’t handle the ride and barfed during the last few minutes – whoops – there goes that “cool status”…