Got a kid interested in aviation? Not sure how to help foster it?

In the US, the Experimental Aviation Association (EAA) will give kids from 8-17 their first flight in a small plane!

I’ve flown a few; a great opportunity for kids & pilots, too!

eaa.org/eaa/youth/free…

We’re not spraying aluminum from the skies.

After Oxygen & Silicon, Aluminum is the most abundant element in the Earth’s crust.

Dig up a patch of your garden & you’ll find Aluminum. Dig up a different patch & you’ll find a different concentration of aluminum.

Running Aluminum through the engine on purpose would not be very good for the engine. You can try it at home with common household items! Tear up some foil into the tiniest pieces you can & dump them in your fuel tank.

Let me know how it works out!

I finally got to try the new touchscreen computers.

I imagine the old ones were expensive to maintain w/ physical buttons, but I’m not a fan of these so far. Lots of lag in response & having to push several times to get it to work.

Slows me way down.

Thankfully, it looks like water. Not sure about Airbus, but there is generally a valve you can close.

Jets don’t use as much of the “blue juice” for the toilets as they once did. Waste is sucked into an unpressurized tank that’s less likely to leak than the old design.

Went gonzo on the kid’s dinner. Started w/ a Parmesan Garlic Linguine recipe & totally departed the fix.

White wine reduction, mustard, turned it into a pasta bar w/ bacon, toasted pine nuts, sautéed mushrooms…whatever sounded good. An egg yolk on top to stir in.

Winning.

OK, this is me trying to tap dance on the landmine again, but this song is making the rounds, so I’ll try to explain it:

Pilot contract negotiations begin very soon at the major U.S. airlines.

I’ve only seen it once before & it was during covid, so a particularly bizarre case. Nevertheless, during negotiations the airlines & unions have their own tactics to gain an upper hand. There isn’t a lot that can be done, but vague threats seem to be standard.

One of the airlines recently sent a letter to all pilots that basically said “hey, we can look at your sick calls & ask for evidence”. Which is kind of true according to the current contract & kind of not according to the industry standard practice, but the pilots were displeased with this threat.

It comes amid rumors that the airlines are using AI to check on sick calls & try to prove you weren’t really sick. Like, say, you posted golf pictures on your social media during the time of a trip you called in sick for. There are various other ways I’ve heard they are looking at it, and I think the techniques would be easy to carry out, but you don’t need to know details.

Now, I have no evidence the AI thing is true. It might be, but I have no proof. So you should take that with a massive grain of salt…I’m just trying to give you a clue about the atmosphere
& why pilots received the message poorly.

The union was also displeased. They took their own action, but it’s not relevant for this discussion.

Pilot sick call is a little different than other employee groups. Yeah, get the flu, call in sick. You don’t want to fly when in a physically deteriorated condition.

The 4 day trip you called in sick for may not be over by the time you recover from the flu.

But you also don’t want to fly when mentally distressed, either. That’s clearly a safety issue. There are times when you are not fit to fly one day, but can be good the next. Like, say, mom goes to the hospital in bad shape. But then they check her out & it’s something minor they can fix easily. Hopefully you get the idea.

Lots of examples, but you get the point.

Anyway, this song is a response to the situation I described. I happen to know the “Poker Pilot”…flew KC-10s with him. We had a lot of talented people in the KC-10.

So, that’s my attempt to tap dance on this landmine without it exploding. I imagine this could be seen in a poor light by both the airline & the union…I’m not trying to make anyone look bad, just be an honest reporter & help you understand. Please don’t shoot the messenger.

memotune.com/song/CXeSCr

As I understand it, this would probably destroy the airline miles cards. Or, in my case, my Marriott card.

I like my points, but I’m under no illusion the bank & Marriott give them out for free. Rather, it’s some percent of the value of what they collect in profit, and their profit comes from interest paid.

Now, 10% is a reduction, sure, but I think the bigger hit would be that these lenders would have to dramatically restrict who gets access to credit. Suddenly a huge percent of the people who have these cards will no longer be safe enough to lend to at 10% rates. So both the interest rate & the total number of customers will decrease.

I pay my card off every month, so they make very little profit off of people like me. Transaction fees & such, but no interest. There is no way Marriott or an airline can keep giving away points / miles if it isn’t generating profit.

Man, if the airlines lose their credit card deals, that would be a huge hit to them.

Our Dispatchers plan our routes around weather, but it’s an evolving situation. What the Dispatcher saw a couple hours ago may be very different when it’s time to actually fly.

ATC can issue route amendments. They change the route to help avoid weather, or airspace that closes suddenly. They can do so at anytime, from getting your clearance at the gate to mid-flight.

A major hurdle is that they have to predict how your route will interact with everyone else’s in addition to the weather. It’s pretty complicated in busy airspace, like the NE corridor (PHL, JFK, EWR, etc.) where a lot of traffic will pass through.

At times, the reroute leaves us lower on fuel than we’d like to be and adds significant time to the flight. ATC doesn’t want that, but there isn’t a better option.

I’m glad to see we’re trying to improve ATC. We’ve under-invested in the system for a long time & it’s been showing its age. Now, we need to get more Controllers…they are still seriously understaffed.

Driving to work is literally the riskiest part of my job.

Not that flying doesn’t have risks. It does, we’re just extremely good at mitigating them.

Starting tonight at 1 AM, we’ll be sharing the real radio transmissions from the night the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was lost on Lake Superior, 50 years ago.

These posts will follow the timeline as it happened, from the first reports of rough seas to the ship’s final transmission.
brance of the 29 men who were lost, and in respect for all who work the Great Lakes.

Transmissions from: ssedmundfitzgerald.org/fitz-timeline

Will I write a book? I dunno. I’ve played w/ the idea, but it seems like a lot.

Here’s what I put together tonight, between chauffeuring the kids around. If I do get serious, it seems like it could take forever.

I understand how the recorders are engineered, but it nevertheless never ceases to amaze me when they pull one up.

I’ve lost a lot of faith in most government institutions, but the NTSB is still one that I think does its’ mission admirably.

For young pilots, a primer on phones & cameras in the cockpit:

At *most* airlines, your phone & even a mechanical, 35mm camera are prohibited from releasing the brakes at the gate until setting the brakes at the destination.

It wasn’t always like that. I lament that it has gotten tk there is value to sharing the view & inspiring the next generation, but I understand why the policy is what it is. I got some good photos before the policy evolved, and I wish you had the chance to do so as well, but there were way too many examples of people taking it way too far.

I’ve heard verified examples. I’m afraid if I share them, I’ll be in trouble for violating some clause, but…people have been fired.

Now, if you pull out your phone to use the calculator or take a picture of the engine display to debrief maintenance on a problem, that’s allowable. Ideally, you would use your company iPad, though – creates fewer questions. The company can go back & see every keystroke on your iPad if they want & know exactly when you typed it in. Treat it like a tool, and use it for company business. Like taking a picture of the engine display, because your phone was put away making it hard to reach & the iPad was readily available. Get it?

The union supports this policy, by the way. If you get busted, they will of course try to help you, but you’ve deliberately disregarded a policy. You can screw up a lot of stuff by accident & stand a good chance of being protected, but if they catch you deliberately disregarding policy / procedure, you are in a *whole different ballgame*.

If you do it while on your first year probation…you are almost certainly screwed. The union has very little power there.

If not on probation but you try to protect yourself by lying & they find you out…you may or may not be cooked, but the water is boiling.

Maybe not all pilots will report you for using your phone. Maybe. But some will, and some won’t bother asking you to put it away. They should go with the smallest response first, of course, but there is nothing written saying they have to & them not asking you before filing a report will not be a good defense for you.

I’m sorry this is the state of things, but it is. I liked taking photos. I will look at them when I’m older & have fond memories. You’ll still see photos from an airline or military cockpit in flight, but those are specifically authorized by the airline & they may run it through the FAA first. Military has a similar policy.

You might see some that didn’t follow this rule. Every one of those is a threat to the pilot’s future. Man, I hate saying those words, but you need to know the truth.

Here’s a fun photo just to help the post get attention. It was taken under a policy that I’d call “dark grey” at the time (2016ish)…we might be legal if someone took issue, but if they hated us, they had a whole book full of knives to put in our back. Some rules are written to protect you, others are written to protect those above you.

Anyway, hope this helps you understand where we are & what is expected. Your internet presence doesn’t disappear once you get that interview with your dream airline…I was lucky enough to not have much of a presence before I got hired.

“Hey folks, we’re starting our descent into SFO & are still 25 minutes early!”

Slowing past 100 knots on landing, noticing jets parked on a departure runway (1L), jets parked on every taxiway between the landing runways (28L & R) and a sea of red beacons on the main taxiways:

Hey, young pilots:

If you aspire to the airlines, realize that it’s a small community & someone always knows you. *If* you get an interview, you’ll have to explain why you thought it was a good idea to make TikTok dances while taxiing an airplane.

Blowing over objects with your jet blast is a constant concern. The engines don’t even have to be running close to full thrust to do it.

On the ramp & in alleyways, my airline limits thrust to 45%. Even that is a little risky. I can’t see behind me, but I can get a glimpse of what will be behind me as I make turns or get pushed back from the gate, etc., so I have to plan my taxi based on those clues.

While in a ramp area, I’ll push the thrust up to get moving forward, then cut it to idle as soon as I start a turn. During the turn, my tail is going to be pointing at parked jets, baggage carts, fuel & catering trucks, etc. & I have no control over them.

There are little roads for ground vehicles to cross the ramp. Those concern me, as I have no idea when someone has decided to cross one behind me just as I start putting the throttles forward to taxi.

Once back on the centerline of a straight taxiway, I’m less concerned. There are jets behind me, sure, but they are pointed into my exhaust & as it turns out jets are built to be pointed into windy conditions. You can often feel this when in line for takeoff…the jet in front of us will shake our jet around some when they push the throttles up to move forward. If we park very close & the winds are right, they can shake our jet even at idle.

(Strong winds on the ground can shake the jet some, too)

The KC-10 had a particular issue with this, in that the tail engine was pointed downward at about 2.5°. Doesn’t sound like a lot, but it made it more likely to blow stuff over.

I’ve heard of helicopters being blown over, scaffolding, fighters, sheds…once, a jet turning out of parking near a hangar blew the closed hangar doors inward. I’ll bet that was expensive.

In cases like this, I don’t know who they will determine is at fault, but if I was taxiing a Cessna I’d stay as far away from a 737 as possible.

Related story:

Around my Grandma’s 10th birthday, her dad gifted her stock in some local company. This would be not long after the crash in 1929.

It was put in a safe deposit box & she wasn’t interested. I imagine she saw the certificates occasionally, but that company didn’t exist anymore.

Grandma gets incapacitated from dementia around 75 years after the gift. We move her in with us, eventually rent a small house down the street where my brother & I can stay & help take care of her while we finish college.

Mom is tasked with sorting out her personal affairs. Tracking her teacher’s pension down, medical, insurance, etc.. She finds the safe deposit box & stock certificates for a company that no longer exists. So she tracks it down.

The company no longer exists because it was bought out by another company. That company was in turn bought out by another. I’m not sure how many iterations of this there are, but the last company these certificates became part of was…

…Lockheed-Martin.

Without wading too far into it, here are some great books for young boys. Most of these are a whole series.

My son endorses.

After many decades in aviation, I have an observation:

Many runways are parallel to each other. You can depart at nearly the same time as someone departing on the other.

If you are on the right runway, you’ll turn right. If you are on the left runway, it’s left.

There are exceptions to every rule, but if you find yourself on the right runway with a left turn programmed, that should raise questions.

Notice when the engine fails, the nose starts veering right. Not much, but the thrust is now asymmetric & the nose wants to go away from the stronger engine (left). The right is *probably* still producing some thrust.

The nose drops a little. That’s the pilot…they aren’t high enough to be on autopilot yet & won’t engage it anytime soon…the autopilot can eventually handle an engine failure, but you have to get it in a position to do so.

If the jet is taking off, the pilots have done the calculations to ensure it will be able to climb & return to the airport if we lose an engine. On very hot days, these numbers don’t always work, so…we just don’t take off. We could easily takeoff under those conditions if we can guarantee we won’t lose an engine, and the chance of that is incredibly small (well less than 1%), but we don’t roll the dice. It can either go on one engine, or we don’t go at all.

It’s going to be busy for a while in that cockpit, but they already briefed what they would do in this exact scenario before they even started the engines. They’ll come back, land and then the airline can rebook everyone. If they have to do a go-around on a single engine for some reason, they’ll be fine…they start at a higher altitude, with more speed and closer to the beginning of the runway than the end.