Restless Wings

"My soul is in the sky." William Shakespeare

I need to get my fix - my flying fix, that is. Other than flying the simulator the other day, I have not touched an airplane in over two weeks. And that is two weeks too long.

I'm not really asking for much. I don't need a 10-day trip, especially with the holidays approaching. I just want to fly anything; a 4-hour training flight would suffice. It doesn't help that my squadron had five training lines cancelled in the last week, and I was scheduled for two of them. I'm not worried about getting rusty; I only need one takeoff and landing by the end of the month to stay current in the airplane, but I would like to fly, simply because I need my fix. My restless wings yearn for the sky.

I miss the early mornings as the crew bus pulls up to a dark jet, sitting like a silent sentinel amid the reddening dawn. I miss admiring its sleek lines as I approach the aircraft. I miss the urgent growl of the ground power unit and the jet's annoying electronic alarms as it begins to awaken for its flight. I miss the first whine of the engine as it surges to life and the sickly sweet smell as its exhaust fumes faintly fill the air. I miss the crackle of interference on the radios as a crew member checks his email messages on his Blackberry one last time before takeoff. I miss the roar of the engines as the aircraft begins its takeoff roll, charging down the runway as the distance remaining markers pass by in a blur. I miss the point of no return, when the aircraft leaps into the sky, leaving all other earthly worries behind. I miss climbing into the boundless liberty of the heavens and dancing among the clouds, my soul reveling in the infinite playground of the sky. I miss admiring the earth unfolding beneath my wings, its enduring beauty revealed in grandeur from my lofty perch among the firmament. Few earthly delights can rival the lure of flight - it is a drug to which I have mortgaged my spirit. It is the closest I have ever felt to God.

Sometimes, it is hard for me to believe that I get paid to do this job.

Thankful

As the Thanksgiving weekend wraps up and the maddening rush towards Christmas is well underway, I have a moment to ponder why I am so thankful this year. I was home for Thanksgiving: I enjoyed spending time with my family, seeing relatives, eating way too much, watching all of my football teams lose, putting up the Christmas tree with the kids, and hanging Christmas lights on the house. Simple things really, yet so rewarding.

I will also be home for Christmas; if by home, I mean not flying the line. My family and I will be traveling to Texas so the kids can see their grandparents and cousins, as well as friends from my high school and college. I am quite fortunate to be able to be home for all of the holidays this year.

So, I can't help but think of others who are not so fortunate. Many of the airline pilots in my reserve squadron will be working the busiest travel days of the year, especially those not senior enough with their airline to bid time off during the holidays. But even they will be home within a day or so. The not-so-lucky ones will be flying for Uncle Sam over the holidays, perhaps grabbing a Thanksgiving dinner at a Denny's near an East Coast airbase in the middle of the night; or eating an in-flight meal while crossing the pond heading to Europe; or dining on schnitzel at a German gasthaus; or eating at a chow hall in one of the many outposts scattered across the Sandbox.

But even my brothers and sisters flying the line will be fortunate enough to be home within a week or two. And those flying over Thanksgiving will not likely be flying over Christmas, the way the schedule balances out. Usually if you work one holiday, they take pity on you for the next one.

I am thankful for the men and women whose time in the Sandbox far exceeds that of my fellow airlift pilots, who at most will spend 90 days at a deployed location in the Sandbox. While our overnight stays may not be in choice locations replete with 4-star resort hotels and fine restaurants, our tent cities do not compare to those in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the added threat of airbase attacks can rattle the calmest of nerves.

Those deployed over the holidays will not know the joy this year of carving the turkey with the family or seeing the joy on their kids' faces as they open their presents on Christmas morning. Many of them will miss more than a year in the lives of their families: birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, baptisms, family reunions, bar mitzvahs, three-day holiday weekends, their kids' proms, high school football games, boy scout campouts, and often the births of their children. Those moments, perhaps enjoyed from afar via video tape, internet, and phone calls, cannot be fully appreciated from thousands of miles away.

I am thankful for their sacrifices. I am thankful for their devotion to our nation and to one another. I am thankful that because of them, I am able to enjoy the peace and joy of this holiday season, knowing that they are standing watch for the rest of us. Because of them, our nation can enjoy the fruits of liberty; they have safeguarded our right to act and speak freely, without fear of reprisal. They are the keepers of the enduring experiment in democracy that started with our founding fathers, a system that allows criticism and dissent, even of those who preserve that system, often upon the sacrifice of life itself.

Thank you.

"So There I Was"

One of the vastly under-appreciated aspects of pilothood is the ability to tell a good flying story. Just as there is a wide variance among pilots’ flying skills, the degree of proficiency in telling flying stories is also a benchmark of sorts in rating a pilot’s competence and social standing among his or her peers. If a pilot cannot weave a story in which the laws of physics were briefly suspended during some kind of airborne emergency or near-disaster, resulting in saving the airplane and all the lives onboard entrusted in their care, then other pilots could reasonably question that pilot’s ability to handle the stick when things go bad. And that really is what makes a pilot a pilot; heck, you can teach a monkey to fly, but only a select breed have the steely nerves and daring attitude to make things right when things go wrong. When the wing-off light illuminates on the console, you want a calm and collected hand at the controls, not a monkey reaching for a banana. And story telling is an insight into the pilot’s soul, whether he or she has the right stuff for the job.

Tom Wolfe, in his best selling book The Right Stuff, sums up the attributes required of a pilot well when discussing Chuck Yeager and his contributions to the piloting profession. There are pilots in the mold of Yeager himself who would rather ride an airplane with a multiple-engine flameout into the ground like a glider than utter the E word (emergency) lest some air traffic controller think they’re not real pilots. While not a pilot himself, Wolfe was able to peer into the soul of our profession and accurately expose the “Brotherhood of the Right Stuff” to readers worldwide. If you’ve ever wondered why nearly all airline captains sound like they’re from some dog hollow out yonder from Charleston, West Virginia (Charlie West in pilot parlance), you should do yourself a favor and read Tom Wolfe. He may very well have written the best book about pilots since Ernest K. Gann’s Fate is the Hunter.

There are three scenarios which dictate the degree of truthfulness one should relay when telling a flying story: among his or her aircrew peers, among non-flyers, and at parties or other places where alcohol is being consumed.

After the last flight of the day, it is customary for the crew to meet for drinks after checking into their lodging for crew rest. It really doesn’t matter if folks have changed out of their uniforms or not, or if anybody has showered or not; what is vitally important is that before anybody does anything else, such as sleep or go to dinner, the entire crew must meet in somebody’s room and discuss things over a few drinks. While many subjects from politics to current events may be discussed, inevitably the discussion will turn to flying. And when telling a flying story in front of your peers, it had better be believable. There is some leniency for rumors or hearsay, but if it happened to you, you’d better tell it correctly and you’d better be (mostly) truthful. There doesn’t necessarily even have to be much of a point to the story, but there must be a lesson that everybody can learn from. Even when discussing an aircraft accident, many pilots will not assign blame; they merely discuss what could have been done differently to break the chain of events leading up to the accident. However, nobody can overly criticize what the crew was thinking or what they did before the accident, since others cannot accurately say what they would have done in the exact same circumstances, especially if the mishap aircrew is no longer among the living to defend themselves.

A good example of this kind of story: So there I was, flying an emergency medical flight from Japan to Hawaii with a two-week-old infant with congenital heart failure onboard. After landing in Honolulu, we were directed to exit the runway on the far side from the airport ramp. Once on the taxiway, we realized that we had blown a hydraulic seal on the system that powers the C-141’s brakes and nose wheel steering. The ambulance could not reach us where we were, so we decided to taxi to the ramp using asymmetric thrust to make turns and reverse thrust to control our speed and to stop. I wouldn’t normally do that, but under the circumstances, it was the quickest way to get the poor kid to the ambulance. Yeah, they could have shut down the runway to let the ambulance across, but it would have taken far more time. Lesson learned: sometimes rules are made to be broken if somebody’s life is in the balance.

There is somewhat more leeway when telling flying stories to non-flyers, simply because there is nobody to call you out on your tale. That being said, dear readers, everything I have ever said in this blog is 100% true. If I were standing in front of you at a gathering, I might embellish a thing or two to make it more entertaining, but I would eventually ‘fess up. For instance, I went to pilot training at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Texas. When we returned to base from our practice area, we would fly along the Rio Grande to enter into the traffic pattern for landing. One time, an instructor and her student pilot started flying along the river, but it soon petered out in the desert. Realizing that the Rio Grande has its headwaters in southern Colorado and not in West Texas, the instructor executed a sharp turn to the east; they had followed a tributary into Mexico. Sometime later, I took a little liberty with the event and made it my own story; I told a friend at a Christmas gathering that I had strayed into Mexico and was intercepted by the Mexican Air Force flying WWII era P-51 Mustang fighters.

Throw in a little alcohol at a party or a bar and anything is fair game. You can say whatever you want and there is a pretty good chance that your audience will not know the difference, unless there is another pilot among the crowd. As a matter of fact, pilots are in their prime at such events; just as my opening blog last month stated: How do you know a pilot is at a party? He’ll tell you. The follow-up joke is: How do you know a fighter pilot is at a party? He’ll keep telling you.

My office job in the squadron when I am not actively flying is that of executive officer. As such, it is my job to write performance reports, commander’s correspondence, awards and decorations, and other official documentation. I especially like writing awards for members of my squadron, since I am privy to events happening on all sorts of missions; I have read about camels crossing the runway during the takeoff roll, airbase attacks, emergency depressurizations, engine failures, bird strikes, and other stories that make good inputs for Air Medals or other awards. They are also good fodder for embellishing my own stories should the need arise. And with the holiday party season kicking off this week, I should have plenty of opportunities to engage in some festive story telling.

I particularly like the camel crossing the runway story. Seriously, how would you explain a camel strike? We have a standard form to fill in for a bird strike, but how would you write up hitting a camel at 100 knots? Maybe it would go a little something like this:

So there I was…

Texas Skies

When I was a kid, I used to study maps so closely that some of my friends called me Mr. Map. I was so skilled at map reading that my dad allowed me to navigate on our summer car trips to Colorado and Arizona. It is a skill that has served me well as a professional pilot; I am often so familiar with the terrain I am flying over by merely looking out the window. A curve of a river or a stretch of highway approaching a town is sometimes all I need to ascertain my aircraft's position. If I ever have to divert for an in-flight emergency, I would instinctively know many of the nearby airports suitable for landing.

This is especially true when flying over Texas, my home state. Each time, I am able to pick out towns and cities I have visited over the years. As we headed southeast from New Mexico to South America, I scanned the Texas landscape unfolding beneath us: the flat expanse of plains around Midland and Odessa, the hill country towns of Fredericksburg and Kerrville, the Central Texas cities of Austin and San Antonio, the curve of the Brazos River just west of Hempstead, Bryan-College Station just to the north and my beloved Aggieland, and the piney woods stretching north of Houston into East Texas. I could even see the upper stretches of Lake Livingston near Trinity where my parents now live.

As I approached Houston, I looked for the familiar neighborhoods where my friends from high school now live: Barker Cypress, Willowbrook, Bear Creek, Spring, and the Oak Forest neighborhood where we all grew up, tucked up against the Northwest Freeway and the Loop. The multiple skylines of the city rose in glassy splendor: downtown, uptown, the Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, and other skyrises seemingly popping up everywhere like mushrooms after a rainstorm. The freeway network laid out with intricate precision, carrying commuters to the once rural outlying counties, now virtual cities unto themselves. The Juicebox, Toyota Center, Reliant, and the Dome - places I have rooted for Houston's teams, if only in spirit. The east side refineries, the economic engine of the region, stretched along the ship channel toward the San Jacinto Monument, marking the place where Texas was won on the battlefield.

Beyond the Johnson Space Center lay Galveston Bay and its smaller cousin, Clear Lake. The bayside communities, so terribly devastated by Ike, appeared unblemished; even Galveston looked undamaged, but its scars could not be seen from my elevated perch. However, the Bolivar Peninsula's damage was clearly evident; even from 30,000 feet, the land where beachfront homes and towns once stood appeared to have been scoured away by the sea. A line of ships waited for their channel passage at the bay's mouth, anchored amid chocolate colored water on either side of the clear channel leading to the gulf.

And then Texas was behind us as we headed out over the gulf towards South America.

Yet hours later, after a second round of stops in Peru and Ecuador, we returned under clear midnight skies. First, lights flickered below us from the gulf; hundreds of off-shore platforms stretched as far as the eye could see. A meteor raced across the sky, leaving a momentary trail of smoke as it sped towards Mexico. A dim glow on the horizon soon morphed into Galveston and Houston, beckoning us towards land. Looking right to left, I could see the lights of every city along the entire Texas coastline, from Beaumont to Brownsville. It was an amazing sight.

We coasted in from the gulf just south of Victoria and started our descent into San Antonio, our destination for the night. The city was sleeping as we were vectored for the ILS approach into Kelly Field on the city's south side. I clicked off the auto-pilot and auto-throttles as the glide slope came down and manually flew to a landing on runway 15.

It wasn't the Texas overnight I was hoping for; it was well after 1 am and there would be no margaritas on the Riverwalk that night. The Texas skies I'd flown through would have to sustain me until December, when I'll return with my family to celebrate another Texas Christmas.

The Big Easy

I've been to New Orleans before a few times through the years. I was 12 the first time I went, but it's hard to really appreciate the city at that age. The next time I came back was in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, when I'd flown relief supplies to a submerged city still reeling from the untold devastation. Even last year, I'd stopped there for fuel on a previous trip to South America and was amazed at the damage still marring the city two years after the storm.

After parking our jet at the Signature ramp on the north side of the airport, we grabbed a cab and went downtown to the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel, on the corner of Canal and Bourbon in the famous French Quarter. I was very tired after our long duty day, but the entire crew gathered to head down Bourbon Street for a bite to eat. We found a great place called Oceana Grill, which had some of the best Cajun food I'd ever had. I had the Taste of New Orleans plate: jambalaya, crawfish ettouffee, and red beans & rice with sausage. The only drawback was that they didn't serve Dixie's Blackened Voodoo Lager.

After dinner, we walked the length of Bourbon, soaking in the sights and sounds. It was a chilly Saturday night, but the street festivities were in full swing. It almost had that heady atmosphere of Las Vegas, minus the slot machines, but I felt like a zombie from my lack of sleep. A few of the younger guys on the crew stayed out, but most of us headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

I woke up early enough to get a long run in. It was still cold, but I headed down Canal Street to the riverfront for a runner's tour of the city. I passed Jackson Square and its iconic St. Louis Cathedral, turned north on Esplanade, and back to Bourbon Street. I can say that this was the least favorite part of my run; the combination of smells from the high-powered bleach solution city workers were spraying down the sidewalks with and the still-unwashed sections with foul-smelling human discharges made it less than appealing. I was quick to leave it behind and head back to the riverfront. I headed past Harrah's Casino and the convention center down to the Greater New Orleans Bridge before turning back for the hotel. It was time to get ready for our flight back to New Mexico to pick up the second half of our mission.

I enjoyed my time in New Orleans, especially since it turned out to be our best crew rest of the trip. We'd still make it to San Antonio for an overnight stay, but a late arrival there scheduled for late Monday night wouldn't be quite as memorable as my short stay in The Big Easy.

The Longest Day

In the Air Force, the best-made plans can change as quickly as a shift change in our command post, so our short overnight stay in New Mexico changed into 40-hours thanks to a missing overflight clearance of one of our neighbors south of Mexico. I woke up about 6 hours prior to our expected alert, around 9 am local time. Our alert was delayed two hours, until 5 pm, and our overflight clearance was still pending. However, I was assured that our clearance would be granted prior to our takeoff.

We finally received the clearance, but a minor maintenance problem delayed our takeoff by 90 minutes. We knew we had a long day ahead; it would be 20 hours long without any delays and we had just lost an hour and a half. Once we hit 24 hours, we would have to be on the ground somewhere.

It was night when we took off and headed southeast, passing into Texas just west of Midland. The city lights along the I-35 corridor were clearly visible ahead; we could see every city from Fort Worth to San Antonio, but a layer of clouds obscured everything south and east of San Antonio. All that was visible of Houston was a dim glow from under the heavy clouds blanketing the city. Soon we left Texas behind and headed south over the gulf.

Houston Center handed us off to Merida (Mexico) Control and the lights of Cancun and Cozumel beckoned to the west. If we had had an in-flight emergency, we could have been sipping margaritas on the beach shortly thereafter. But we continued south, along the Caribbean coast of Central America, crossing over Costa Rica into the Pacific. When the sun rose several hours later, the peaks of the Andes rose above the solid cloud deck to the east.

Nearly eight hours after we took off, we descended and landed in Lima, Peru, where it was around 8 am local time. I was amazed at the uncanny resemblance of the Peruvian capitol to Kabul, Afghanistan; between the mountains, the haze, and the same shade of brown coloring the buildings, the two cities could have been separated at birth. There was a major difference, however; nobody in Lima was actively trying to kill us during our arrival. We quickly offloaded our cargo and prepared to depart for our next stop.

Minor language difficulties arose as we tried to obtain our departure clearance. It took some time to straighten things out, and we lost a little more time. Two hours later we descended into Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, a dense metropolis sprawling across the jungle and hills along the Guayaquil River. The city has close ties to my hometown; Houston is one of the Ecuadorian city’s sister cities. As if inspired by the glittering opulence of Houston, the largest city in Ecuador boasts numerous modern skyscrapers and freeways packed with cars. Our stop in Ecuador was merely a fuel stop and we planned to continue back to New Mexico for the night.

It was a weekend in Guayaquil, so they only had one fuel truck driver. Each truck carried about 20,000 lbs. of fuel and we needed nearly 100,000 lbs. Even if we had been the only aircraft on the ground, it would have taken quite some time to refuel, but there was another C-17 ahead of us, and several more landing behind us. We soon realized that we would not be refueled in time to make it back to New Mexico before the end of our 24 hour crew duty day. Our clock was striking midnight and we would soon turn into a pumpkin.

I used the Sat phone to arrange for other destinations; we would be unable to stay in Guayaquil with more C-17s scheduled to arrive later in the day. Perhaps we could make San Antonio, Corpus Christi, or Houston. But as the fuel trickled onto our plane as if through a soda straw, those options were quickly becoming limited as well. We started looking at Cancun; maybe we’d still enjoy those margaritas on the beach. Our command post wasn’t keen on Cancun, much less Houston. They suggested Key West; a quick look at our computer and existing fuel load showed it was possible. So I opted to take the fuel we had and we took off.

I had now been awake for well over 24 hours, so I passed my instructions to my co-pilots and I hit the bunk for a nap. It seemed like minutes later that I was awakened; we were being told that Key West did not have room on their ramp for our arrival, so once again we started looking all along the Gulf Coast for other options. We could still make Houston, but were informed that Customs would be unavailable at Ellington Field at our planned arrival time. The command post suggested NAS New Orleans, but it would be a three-hour wait for Customs at the Naval Air Station. So we asked about Louis Armstrong International.

After a few phone calls, the command post agreed and arranged for our arrival in New Orleans. After checking in with Houston Center, we coordinated our in-flight divert to the Big Easy. Soon the city appeared from the darkness and we were vectored to a landing on runway 01. A check of the time as we shut down the engines revealed a 24-hour and 7 minute long day. Our longest day was over.

On the Road Again

After being home for a week, I am back out on the road again for a relatively short 5-day trip. With the first of the fall rains pummelling the Pacific Northwest with a vengeance, driving creeks and rivers over their banks, we took off in the stormy night for the American Southwest. This will be one of those trips when I wonder why I fly jets for a living; minimum crew rest, nearly maximum crew duty days, minimum en route ground times, difficult language barriers to overcome (on the radio), and numerous nighttime approaches and landings at unfamiliar foreign airports with mountainous terrain nearby. But there will be a few new pins to add to the map and a country I've never been to before, so it won't all be bad. The icing on the cake will be an overnight stay in San Antonio on the way back, and an evening on the Riverwalk with great Tex-Mex food and margaritas is hard to beat. Anytime I can get a trip to Texas, I jump at the chance.

By the time we landed in New Mexico, it was late, but we still had quite a bit of work to do. While my loadmasters and crew chief fueled the jet, loaded our cargo, and put the jet to bed for the night, I tried to figure out if we would be able to takeoff the next day. Due to the mountainous terrain surrounding the airbase, the standard instrument departure routing requires a significant climb gradient to ensure terrain clearance. But with the amount of fuel we need to make it to our destination tomorrow, we may be too heavy to meet the required climb profile. I passed the matter off to our command and control agency until tomorrow. I'll check in when I wake up in the morning to see what solution they have for us.

We finally arrived at our hotel in a town near the airbase well after midnight; it's one of those one stop-light towns in the desert where everything but Denny's has been closed since 10 pm. It'll be a short night; we will take off later today for the first of two very long days, only to return here for another overnight stay. We'll be here during daylight hours when we return, but something tells me this place won't be too much more exciting than it is now.

Sometimes people ask me if I would choose this life if I had the opportunity to do it all over again, knowing how unglamourous a pilot's life can be at times. Lord knows the sacrifices this life entails; living out of a suitcase can be trying - times away from family, missing important events, and sleeping in a different bed nearly every night I'm on the road. Despite the trials and tribulations of a flying career for Uncle Sam, I wouldn't hesitate to make the same choice. I cannot imagine not doing this job; it is all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid.

Many of my fellow reserve pilots also have airline careers. I was hired by a major US airline earlier this year, but thanks to high oil prices and a recent change in the mandatory retirement age for pilots, I was furloughed fairly quickly. But I saw enough to know that an airline job does not provide the same satisfaction as flying for the military. It has all the negative aspects of the job - the late nights, bad airport food, lumpy hotel beds, and missing time with family and friends - but it doesn't compare to the camaraderie that I find in the military. When I am away from home, the entire crew becomes a second family, both pilots and loadmasters. It is us versus the system and we must work together to ensure the mission is successful. And while I would eventually make far more money flying for the airlines, I could never buy the esprit de corps shared by the pilots and loadmasters in my squadron.