A few days ago, I pulled up to the aircraft in JFK to fly to Anchorage.  The 747 was dwarfing this little red machine sitting on the ramp next to it.  That little red machine was cargo destined for Hong Kong and pretty sweet machine it was. A Ferrari F40! The other crew members and I couldn’t tell what year it was made, but the production years were from 1987-1992. When new, these hot little things sold for just under a half million bucks.

When driving around town, I often see these stupid, jazzed up Honda Civics that have a fat exhaust pipe and spoiler (in case the rear end wants to lift up at high speeds — whatever!) This Ferrari actually needs the spoiler, when ground speeds easily exceed 200 mph (321 kph). This was a racing version of the car, which came with a spartan interior, racing seats, no air conditioning or glove box, and racing dials for engine gauges.

I wonder what type of individual has the money to not only own one of these beauties, but also can pay to ship it via air to Hong Kong? When a 30 day cargo shipping voyage just won’t due, send it by air! I wonder what Cathay charged this person to have their precious cargo half way around the world in less than 19 hours?

A few days later on this same trip, I had a fun experience flying into Anchorage from Hong Kong. It was my leg to fly and we were going to be landing near max landing weight into Anchorage at 295 tonnes (650,000 lbs). By the way, max landing weight in the 747F is 667,000 lbs! Because of our weight and the length of the runway, we didn’t want much of a tailwind on landing. When we approached runway 7L on a beautiful afternoon, we checked in with the tower and they told us the winds were 260 at 12. That puts us in almost a direct tail wind landing, and not good when you need to stop quickly.

The captain asked the tower if we could circle to land runway 32 and we were approved to do so. We needed runway 32 because it was longer and wouldn’t have the tailwind situation. This required a right turn to break off the approach for runway 7L and then a arcing left turn to join final for 32. This all happened at around 1500 feet, and we were fully configured for landing with gear and flaps out. Being configured for landing makes the maneuvering much easier because we don’t then have to worry about being at the right speed or altitude to add more flaps because we are already set for landing — all we have to think about is maneuvering.

In the 747, when flying visually and doing your own thing, it’s best to turn off the flight directors and just look outside. The trouble is, as a long haul pilot, I don’t get a lot of practice doing visual approaches, especially ones that involve circling to another runway. The hard part of changing runways is seeing the new landing zone and judging the distance to touchdown. With no DME (distance measuring equipment) or GPS signal (we didn’t have time to reprogram the computer for a new runway) everything becomes “stick and rudder” and flying old school — looking outside. What a novel idea!

It all worked out well, and I was glad for the chance to fly the visual runway change without the autopilot. I don’t get to do that much at all, and it brought back memories from my regional jet days. My captain was funny because as I taxied off the runway he said, “Nice job, but your ram memory was definitely full!” Well, he and I lived to tell the tale and I look forward to my next chance to fly visually and manually.