Flight Level 390

• No Paper Umbrellas
  Position: Approaching MMZO (Manzanillo, Mexico)Altitude: 9,200 feet and descendingIndicated Air Speed: 250 knotsEquipment: A319Pax-on-Board: 112Airborne... The beach and (probably) my favorite Mexican runway in our twelve o'clock and a couple miles. This is what flying is all about right here, right now. A superb 319 with two powerful engines inhaling t […]
• Heavy Leather Flight Jacket
  Position: Inside FONTA; runway 26-Left, KONT (Ontario, Ca.)Altitude: 1,000 foot radar altitudeIndicated airspeed: 145 knots plus or minus 10Equipment: A320 V2500 A-5 enginesPax-on-Board: 150Airborne... Day one/leg one; three hundred overcast, one-half mile vis, heavy rain, forty degree crosswind.One thousand boss...Roger that... Uh, we are stable...Gotta lov […]
• Keep it Moving
  Position: KONZL intersectionIndicated Airspeed: 310 knotsAltitude: 17,050 feetEquipment: A319Pax-on-Board: 123 plus three jumpersAirborne...The cradle of humanity, as it appears, is stretched before us... The Los Angeles basin. Millions of yellow sodium vapor street lights all the way to the black edge of the Pacific. Never ceases to amaze me! We can see the […]
• Approved for Line Operations
  Position: Over Springfield, ColoradoAltitude: 35,000 feetGroundspeed: 600 kts (690 mph)Equipment: A321 Enhanced- New MetalPax-on-Board: 183 plus 2 jumpersAirborne...Out of the school house and back on the airways with the mark of the Training Department on my forehead: AfLO (Approved for Line Operations)And, once again, my fantasy of being hired away from th […]
• Old Dog Training
  Position: The School HouseIt's that time of year again... The best and brightest of the Training Department/Flight Standards are trying to teach this Old Dog new tricks. Some of the classroom/simulator instructors are compadres of mine from the earlier days of political incorrectness. The days when Line pilots were really, really bad... Not just sort of […]

Blogging at FL250

• End Game
  Well my, it's certainly been an interesting few weeks in the old "bums in seats" business, eh? WidgetCo pilots started contract negotiations about six months early, Southwest/Airtran possibly reached a deal with WidgetCo to offload their MD-95s B-717s, and the UCAL pilots got so fed up with their own joint contract negotiations that they annou […]
• Around the World
  Longtime readers likely know that my teacher-wife Dawn and I usually take overseas trips every year during her spring break. Or at least we try to...two years ago, we were going to Vietnam, got stuck in Moscow, had to come back to the States, and rode my motorcycle through the Southeast instead. Last year, we were going to China, had a death in the family th […]
• Cross Country
  It's an enormous, wide spread land we Americans inhabit, and we seldom recognize that fact. We think little of flying from coast to coast in five or six hours, and many coastal denizens derisively refer to the massive expanse in between as "flyover country." In this country, a two or three hundred mile drive is practically local. Embarking on […]
• Reinstated
  Most non-military airline pilots today were flight instructors at some point in their career. It's the easiest way to build flight time early in your career, and most ex-instructors agree that the experience is invaluable. Not everyone enjoys it, mind you, and even those liked instructing are usually happy they don't have to do it anymore. It' […]
• In Patagonia, Part 3
  Ya'll wouldn't believe how busy I've been lately. I can't believe it's taken me so long to write a simple photo travel post. I'll keep this brief, and I have some rather interesting aviation content forthcoming. I promise!***Puerto Natales was actually much nicer and quainter than it seemed from the boat, but its tree-lined aven […]

Aviatrix

• The Empire Will Be Pleased
  The title is what my coworker said through his Darth Vader oxygen mask as we descended from the flight levels in an unpressurized airplane after completing a tricky piece of work. We descended overhead Banff, Alberta. It is so spectacularly beautiful there that I was distracted from the work I was supposed to be doing. I was even raving about the remarkable […]
• Always Check NOTAMs -- Even When Running Drugs
  Pilots and regular readers know that a NOTAM (NOtice To Air[wo]Men) is a little bulletin describing a change to facilities, airspace or procedures that isn't published on the current charts and publications. They look boring. They can be tedious and repetitive to read. Most of them won't pertain to your operation. If you fly out of some little flat […]
• CAT I Takeoff
  I'll tell you about the circular yurt construction shortly, but today I couldn't pass up this story about a cat that escaped from its carrier before take-off on an Air Canada flight. Air Canada allows small pets to be carried in the passenger cabin, provided that they remain in approved pet carriers that fit on the floor under a seat. The door to t […]
• Solve for X
  Today someone in an aviation workplace was either amused or insulted, I'm not sure which, by my excitement that he was genuinely using trigonometry for real things. I'm afraid that he may have thought that my excitement and admiration was over the fact that he knew how use trigonometry at all, but really this is just one cool part of a very cool pr […]
• Helicopter Charter
  I'm not currently working with helicopters, either as a charter customer or with a company that operates rotary ring aircraft, but I had to love this trojan horse spam. Your order for our air commuter services has been received and processed. The chopper will be at your disposal from 3.30 p.m. wednesday to 5.45 tuesday. Once again, the rates are as foll […]

The Gimli Chronicle

Plastic Pilot

• Five tools necessary for adequate airport snow removal
• My personal aviation Christmas tale…
• Thank You, and Merry Christmas
• So much to do, and so little time… an aviation wish-list for 2012
• Something new at Frankfurt Airport and a video of Tegucigalpa