I just arrived back in Hong Kong from a three day trip across the Pacific to San Francisco. Photos of my visit can be seen by clicking the photo above. With almost 200 mph winds blowing West to East across the Pacific, our flight was less than 11 hours to the West coast of California, but then coming back, it was a little more than 14.5 hours.

The captain flew us to San Fran and then I flew us back to Hong Kong a few days later. Both takeoffs were at heavy weights due to the weight of all the fuel it takes to travel those long distances. My takeoff, coming back for the longer flight, was the heaviest I’ve even taken off to date, which was at the maximum takeoff weight of the 747-400 passenger plane: 397 metric tonnes, or 397,000 kgs. For my American readers, that’s heavy, at nearly 875,000 lbs! We left San Fran with 375,000 lbs of fuel, enough to run a family car for an average of 80 years. We landed back in Hong Kong with a little over 18,000 lbs left in the tanks.

Aircraft use flaps, both on the leading edge and trailing edge of the wings, to generate lift at slower speeds, like for takeoff and landing. These flaps extend, and to the untrained eye, can look like the wing is coming apart. As the flaps retract, they change shape so that they can fit back into the wing. While they are changing shape, they actually create more drag than lift, or said another way, they create more trouble than help — at least momentarily. As they create more drag for the few seconds that they are changing shape, our stall speed increases. When a wing stalls, it quits making lift and [for the purposes of simplicity] the aircraft quits flying. It actually still produces lift and is flying, but that’s for another technical discussion when you need to fall asleep some night!

As the stall speed increases, we have to be going faster, or be above that speed, to keep flying. The trouble with heavy takeoff weights like our flight out of SFO, is that there is another factor at play: maximum speed. As the flaps travel from flaps 1 to flaps up, there is an upper speed limit for flaps one, and there is a lower speed limit of stall speed. That difference between the upper and lower limit is only about 8 knots! At 272 kts, we start to get the onset of stall, and at 280 kts we overspeed the flaps. The lesson I learned that day was the importance of being right on the money as far as departure speeds as there is little room for error. It would be like keeping your car’s speed to within 35 mph and 38 mph, or something bad would happen.

It’s at those moments that we as pilots do not want an engine failure to occur. It has been said that the purpose of the engines is to keep the pilots cool — because when they quit running, just see how the pilots start to sweat. When I flew my ERJ-145 at my last job, our flaps up speed was usually around 150 kts. At these heavy weights in the 747, the flaps up speed, or clean speed, was 282 kts. That difference is an amazing value.

In this post, I bored my readers with a discussion on flying great circle routes, as the shortest path between two points on the planet. The San Francisco trip actually did not follow that route at all. To and from the West Coast, we flew a more southerly route, over the fatter part of the Earth, passing just a few hundred miles north of Hawaii. A great circle path would take us up near Cold Bay, Alaska, and just south of Anchorage. This trip was a case of caring more about the wind speed and how that could help us, instead of flying the shortest distance. We were able to gain a lot of time and fuel savings by following where the winds were pushing us the strongest, instead of flying the shortest path to SFO and back.

It was nice as we approached the coast of California. The weather was fine and we could see the 1 and 101, that run along the coastline. Those are the highways where Toyota and others film their commercials of cars running along the coast. It was also nice to be able to hear American air traffic controllers for the first time in six months. I didn’t have to strain my ears to hear what was said and the faster they talked to us, the faster I could “give it back” to them. It was amazing to return to the Bay area. The first time I was there, I was interviewing with Cathay. Before that, I had only been there on my computer, flying Microsoft Flight Simulator as a kid in junior high, wanting to be a pilot someday. In that version of the flight simulator, the airplane started off on runway 27 right, in Oakland. I would takeoff and fly over the bay and land in San Francisco in my little Cessna 172. It was fun to do it years later, experiencing the real thing.

I’ve been very blessed to have a lot of full-circle moments along my career as a pilot, where I have been able to return to places as a pilot, where I once was simply a young kid, looking out, wishing I could be a pilot. The first moment came when I was able to land my RJ into DFW. I grew up near there in Arlington, Texas, and would spend ours in the heat watching American Airlines MD-82’s launching and landing. My dad and I once snuck into a construction zone to get a better view, where not even a fence separated us from the runway. There were no signs saying specifically to stay out, so we helped ourselves. Our plan was to slip away or play dumb if the cops rolled up. Another time was when I fly into Purdue University’s airport in my RJ on a charter flight, taking the Purdue girls basketball team back to West Lafayette, IN. I had spent many hours at Purdue learning about aviation, and then got to return there as a pilot. Another time was heading Back to Bali, Indonesia with Cathay. Then there was also this SFO trip.

I tell you: I’m not very rich, but I’m a very wealthy young man. God has truly blessed my life and it’s easier to see when I put His blessings in the perspective of the “full circle” view. All I can say is that if I can do it, anyone can. If I can attain some of my dreams, then so can you. Don’t give up, stay focused, and you’ll get there too, whatever dream it is that you have. How? It’s simple, really. See, the secret is that I didn’t do any of it. We can’t do much on our own, but with His help, anything is possible . . . If you feel your dreams are falling flat and you need some encouragement, think back on how much your life has been blessed. It will help put things into perspective.

We had an extra day to relax in SFO, so I walked around downtown, as our hotel is right there in the middle of it all. I walked passed Union Square, where I interviewed, looked around in the Macy’s store, and rode the cable car down to the Wharf on the Embarcadero. There was good food on the Wharf, a great view of The Rock, a chance to see Lombard Street, and a great time riding the cable cars.

Taking this picture, with Alcatraz behind me, I saw some birds overhead, and then felt a splatter of something moist on my head and shoulders. Yuck! I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what that was. Needless to say, I’m not too happy in the photo . . .

There are some pictures of the wooden brakes used by the trollies. Basically 2×4’s that press down on the tracks are what stop the cars. At the bottom of the San Francisco hills, everyone riding can smell the scent of burning wood in the air. The cars are pulled along by a cable under the street and the driver simply pulls a lever to grab onto the cable when he wants to move forward, and then releases the cable when he wants to stop. The cables are driven by a central hub that runs several cable lines at the same time. The pictures show the cable and the pulley’s and the large operation it takes to make it all happen. Over the life of one cable, it can stretch over 100 feet. Because of this, a second pulley is set up to take in the slack, as the cable stretches. Also underground are the giant pulleys that turn the cables 90 degrees to go around the corners of intersections. If you head to Frisco, a ride on the cable cars and a view of the pulley system is a must.

It was great to be back in the U.S. however brief it was, and it was amazing to be able to do such a long-haul trip. If training wasn’t so stressful, I would actually relax and enjoy all this flying! This was a great trip, and I hope my others turn out to be as nice as this one was.

Our 747-400 was cruising along smoothly at 35,000 feet, late at night over the Indian Ocean. I sat in my seat, staring out the window in awe and amazement as I couldn’t believe what I was able to see. For even though there was no moon and it was a dark night, the sky was ablaze with stars. Out over any ocean late at night without the “lesser light” of the moon governing the night, so many more stars can be seen. And because there are no cities over the ocean to pollute the view of the stars with Earth light, the view of the stars and Milky Way Galaxy were not short of stunning. I felt like I could read my charts in the light of the stars.

When the sky looks like this, constellations are hard to make out because there are so many other stars, that previously couldn’t be seen, that are now clogging the view. I could see Orion out in front of us and the Milky Way was arcing over our heads. The Indian Ocean below us was easy to make out, simply because it was the dark part of the view where the stars ended. The water’s horizon eerily swallowed up the stars out on the edge of the Earth, like a cosmic event horizon. The beauty of the moment was both overwhelming and terrifying, as I thought about the sheer scale and grandeur that is the cosmos above us. Read my blog entry on the Hubble Deep Field (HDF) for some insight into the true scale of the Universe.

As the captain and I sat there mesmerized by the view of the stars, some lights appeared on the horizon. As we drew nearer, they spread out and got larger. In the middle of this huge sea of blackness, a ring of lights became clearly visible. They took on the shape of a rough circle and reminded me of something similar to a scene in the movie Abyss, where lights formed in the ocean as well. Unlike the Abyss, we knew what the lights were: the Island of Réunion. It sits well off the coast of Madagascar and has two large volcanoes rising up out of the center of the island. One volcano is 8,600 feet tall and the other rises over 10,000 feet and tonight, they were unseen in the darkness. Because of the active volcanoes, no one lives in the center of the island, but everyone spreads out by the beach (wouldn’t we all?). That’s why the island, at night, looks like a ring of lights, because the darkness in the middle of the lights is actually very high terrain. There were some low lying clouds that made the islander’s lights glow with an eerie haze. In all this blackness, under all these stars, this strangely lit island, seemingly suspended in space, was quite the view to fly over on our way back to Hong Kong from Johannesburg.

I have never been as far South as Johannesburg, South Africa and I really wasn’t too sure of what to expect. The photo at the top gives you an idea of what I thought it would be like to travel to South Africa’s spot on the globe. Luckily, even though we were way down there, up was still up and down was still down (isn’t this planet cool?). You can click the sideways picture for more photos from my trip. Speaking of cool, our hotel rooms weren’t. I had also forgotten that as one passes south of the Equator, the seasons are opposite to those in the Northern hemisphere. Late November near the Cape of Good Hope is quite warm, as it is nearly summer there. The hotel had problems with its air conditioning and promised it would be fixed by the afternoon. It was still not working when we left the next day. It was okay, because even though it was warm, it wasn’t too bad, as Jo’burg is over 5,550 feet above sea level.

That height above sea level is what causes the flying in and out of that airport to be a bit more of a challenge. The higher one gets above sea level, the thinner the air is. With thinner air, aircraft engines don’t perform as well, as there are fewer air molecules to work with. Our flight into Joburg was uneventful, but on the way out was when the troubles began.

When we arrived at the airport, the temperature was already 85 degrees. We found that the APU (axillary power unit) that runs to provide air conditioning for the plane, was not working. So we went from a warm hotel to a warm aircraft! Inside the cockpit, the temperature read 108 degrees, as the plane had been sitting in the sun for some time. This was an unacceptable situation to load passengers in, so because the APU was out of commission, we’d have to start two of our four engines to do the job of cooling the cabin. As it turned out, one of the three air cycle machines (air conditioners) wasn’t working either! The fueling was being done on the left wing and the cargo was being loaded on the right side, so we couldn’t start any of the engines until one side was clear. Since we were going to board passengers via the ramp with air stairs, we elected to wait until the cargo was finished loading on the right side, so that those two engines could be running while we loaded the passengers on the left side, to try and keep the cabin as cool as possible. So, once the cargo was loaded, we started and then ran the number three and four engines (the right side) for about a half hour to cool the cabin down to something tolerable, like 80 degrees. Air cycle machines only do so much in hot weather, because unlike your car, they compress and then re-expand air to make it cooler, which can only do so much in the high heat.

The plan was to finish boarding, and then push back and start engines one and two. However, just as the last passengers were boarding, the load controller came up and told us we had a problem. They had to remove one container of cargo from the cargo hold. This could only be done with the engines shut down on that side. The captain let out an exasperated sigh, and we came up with the plan to start engines one and two, and then shut down engines three and four while the cargo was unloaded. We had to start engines one and two on the left wing, or the cabin temp would quickly rise again, with 390 people back there.

Finally, we got the all clear and it was time to push back. With all that time spent running engines, we were two hours late and right on the limit of the minimum amount of fuel needed for the long twelve and a half hour flight back to Hong Kong. It was my turn to fly us back and that would give me experience performing a max power takeoff. We took off right at our performance limit, based on temperature, weight, and hight above sea level (over a mile high on the ground in Joburg). Our takeoff weight was 371,000 kg’s, or 818,000 lbs. That’s heavy, even when not departing from a place like this.

The captain stood the power up for takeoff, and all we did was sit still with a huge, roaring rumble behind us. All four Rolls Royce RB211-524 engines, that can produce 60,000 lbs of thrust each, gave us all they had, but we just sat there for a moment. It takes a second or two to get over three quarters of a million pounds moving down a runway. We started to creep forward and the captain called, “Thrust set”. A while later, he called, “80 kts”. There are then two more calls: V1 and Rotate. V1 is called as a point of no return, so to speak. At that speed, we can no longer safely abort the takeoff, so, if after that speed is called, an engine fails, we have to continue and get into the air, or we’ll overrun the end of the runway on an abort. Rotate is called at the speed in which I need to pull back on the yoke and fly us off the runway. The captain called “V1” and I could clearly see the end of the runway coming closer. Closer. CLOSER! After what seemed like an eternity, he called rotate, and we lumbered safely into the air. The numbers say it will work (an abort that is) but even when V1 was called, the far end of the runway was quickly approaching.

At these heavy weights and high altitudes, long takeoffs are normal, however it takes a little nerve and practice to resist the urge to rotate early, prior to it being called by the other pilot, especially when the literal end is near.

It was a nice ride back as we headed out over Madagascar and then seeing the beautiful ring of lights that was Réunion Island, just south of Diego Garcia, North of Kuala Lumpur, over troubled Bangkok, and then into Hong Kong.

You might say a prayer for me as my training days are coming to a close and my line checks (flight evaluations) are quickly approaching. Flying this beast is stressful enough, but being checked on it is even worse! I’ll just have to relax as much as I can during my evaluations, and think back to the beauty that was seen in the night sky over the Indian Ocean. As stressful as this training may be, I am truly blessed to experience these travels over God’s great globe.

I just got back from a trip to Bali, Indonesia. While I was on my way there, the People’s Alliance for Democracy, or PAD, stormed Suvarnabhumi International Airport (BKK), in Bangkok, Thailand. The rebels want to force change in Thailand and they feel that shutting down the airport can help their cause. This is somewhat scary because I was just in BKK a few nights ago and have friends doing their 747 training who are flying there right now. I don’t have a way to get a hold of them, but Cathay does a pretty good job of avoiding trouble. Many flights have diverted away from BKK, so hopefully, there is no trouble. Undoubtedly though, there are Cathay crews that are overnighting there right now, so I hope all is well with them.

By the way, if you are an American, I must say that you accidentally mispronounced Suvarnabhumi Airport. It’s pronounced “su-waan-na-poom” because the transliteration from Sanskrit to English doesn’t accurately portray how the word should be pronounced. Now you can sleep tonight!

Going back to Bali was amazing for me. Growing up in Yogyakarta, (pronounced “jo-ja-karta”) just a little West of Bali, it was great to visit the amazing beaches there. Bali is a resort for Western tourists because it has a great tropical climate and white, sandy beaches.

As we approached Bali, we passed a dormant volcano just off our right, that extends upwards of 11,000 feet. At 14,000 feet as we passed by, the peak looked pretty close, and I was able to snap a photo, the one you see at the top. Click that photo to see a few more photos that I took during my short time there. I was lucky enough to get a smooth landing into Bali and pull up to the gate where I had last been as a child. As we taxied into the gate, we could see the ocean waves washing up on the beach, just off the runway, and oh, how I wanted to stay!

The last time we were there was 1983-ish and I was only 5 years old. Back then, it was my dream to fly 747’s and it was so neat for me to be able to go full circle and pull up to the gate as a 747 pilot for Cathay. It just goes to show that anything is possible with God’s grace. If you have a dream, follow it with all you’ve got, and it very well may come true. I get pretty sentimental, so when I did the walk around, I took my camera and relished each step I took, thinking that the last time I walked here, I was 5 and living in Indonesia.

The air was clear and cool and I desperately wanted to stay longer than the hour we had on the ground there. I got a few snaps of the airplane, and then with me (Phatty McButter Pants) in front of it, to give some perspective on size — no, not of me, but of the 747. :o)

As I took my last step off the tarmac and onto the jetway steps, I lingered for just a second. I didn’t know when I would be back to Bali, and wanted to savor the moment. It was not unlike the scene in the movie “We Were Soldiers”, where Mel Gibson is one of the first American soldiers to step foot onto Vietnamese soil. He makes note of that moment, wondering what the future will hold for him and his U.S. troops there. My moment wasn’t so serious, but I was just glad to be there.

The high terrain around the airport climbs to around 10,000 feet, not including the volcano. What looks pretty for tourists is actually a real concern for us pilots. In good weather, avoiding the “terra firma” is no big deal, but with fog, clouds, and air traffic controllers without the latest technology when it comes to radar and training, makes the situation a little more serious. In those cases, the onus is on ourselves to keep everyone behind us in their seats eating meals and drinking wine, safe and sound.

On the taxi out, heading back to Hong Kong, we saw an MD-80 off-loading it’s passengers, a regional flight from somewhere. Stairs were wheeled up to the front door of the plane, while passengers also disembarked out the rear of the plane. The rear entrance always brings back memories for me because it was always so scary for me as a kid. The APU, or auxiliary power unit, sits back there and is a small jet engine itself, that powers the plane with electricity and air conditioning while the engines are shut down. It’s loud, and sits in the tail section of the plane. Because the engines are also in the rear (see the pictured link) small kids like myself think the big scary engines are running and are going to get them. I loved planes as a kid, but cried every time we embarked via the rear steps of the DC-9’s and MD-80’s. So as we taxied past, memories from Indonesia as a kid flooded back to me. I had to focus on the job at hand, but it was great fun to be back.

At some point, I’d love to get my family back over to Bali and Yogya, so we can remember old times. For now, I’m left with the sweet memories that I made when visiting my old stomping grounds, this time, on the other side of the cockpit door as a pilot. It was just an hour, but it was a great time in Bali.

The longest flight that Cathay Pacific flies is between New York (JFK) and Hong Kong (Chek Lap Kok). To be nit picky, flying to JFK is longer in mileage and flying back to Hong Kong is longer in flight time. Why is this? The answer lies in the understanding of great circle routes and jet stream winds.

Winds generally flow from West to East, so a flight leaving New York and headed for Hong Kong would be facing a headwind, whereas a flight leaving Hong Kong and flying to New York would have the wind at its back, helping push it along. Therefore, the flights into strong headwinds want to fly a route that covers the least amount of mileage across the ground because flying into headwinds slow planes down and costs money in extra fuel costs. When flights have a good tailwind helping push them along, an extra few miles added to the distance is negated by the help of the wind.

The next factor, beyond winds, is how to actually fly a route that takes the least amount of ground miles to go from point A to B, in this case, JFK and HKG. A great circle is a plot along the surface of a sphere that represents the shortest distance between those two points. Point A and B lie on a circle that cuts the Earth into two exact halves and represents the largest circle that could be drawn from the shape of a sphere – the Earth. The Equator is a great circle, cutting the sphere into equal halves and is the largest circle that can be derived from the spherical shape of the Earth. All other lines of latitude (think of rungs on a ladder) are not great circles, because lines of latitude don’t cut the Earth in half as they move toward the poles. However, lines of longitude (think of the long way down) are great circles, because they each can cut the Earth in half and go through the center of the Earth.

Now to twist the brain a little farther, imagine our two points on the Earth as being HKG and JFK. Any two points on a sphere (and even though the Earth is not a sphere, that goes beyond the scope of our discussion — read about a Geoid for more info) can be put on a great circle that cuts the Earth in half, or cuts through the center of the Earth. It might look something like this:

Using this method, we arrive at the path that is the shortest distance between two points on a sphere. If NYC and HKG are two points on a circle that cuts the sphere in to two equal halves, then that circle runs up near the North pole. Here is another view of JFK-HKG, looking at the Earth from above the North Pole:

You can see clearly that the “circle” this path creates, cuts right through the center of the Earth.

The airplane won’t fly this exact route due to weather, airspace air traffic control restrictions. Also, the flight has to remain within a certain safe distance of a suitable landing airport, incase of trouble. But, on the whole, this is about where the plane will fly. Because this is the shortest route possible, it seems strange to be heading almost due north out of New York to head for Hong Kong!

We get so used to the Mercator projection, where the map of the world is formed to wrap around a cylinder (instead of one that would wrap around a sphere) so that straight lines on those maps represent lines of a constant course.

The trouble is that it the farther from the equator one looks, the more “distortion” there is. No — Antarctica is not the same size as Russia and Greenland is not the same size as Africa! It’s not really a distortion, but the size of a landmass has to change so the goal of the map (all straight lines represent a constant course) remains true. When a great circle route is drawn on a map with Mercator projection, we get those familiar curving paths that are seen in the backs of airline magazines. The curve is accurate for the map, but the airplane is not constantly turning, like the map line would suggest. We are so used to viewing of the world through Mercator projection, that when we think of taking a flight from JFK to HKG, we would be passing overhead the Colorado rockies, then the Golden gate bridge, then the sunny beaches of Hawaii and the Philippines, and then descend into HKG.

However, this couldn’t be farther from the truth, because that would be so much father, and take so much longer than flying a great circle route. The Mercator map is lying to you! Put a string over a globe and see how much farther flying the “mercator method” is versus flying the great circle route. The shortest way across the globe from NYC to HKG would be close to crossing the north pole and then next map projection will show that to be true.

Another map projection is the Gnomonic projection, where all straight lines on it represent great circle routes. That might help a pilot get a general idea of what countries he will cross when flying a great circle route, but for the most part, isn’t much help because of it’s extreme distortion from the actual size and view of the continents. As you can see, it also isn’t much help to school kids to learn their countries.  It is similar to the Google Earth view from overtop the North pole. 

Flights that travel Easterly, like our example from Hong Kong to New York, don’t always travel the great circle route. This is because of the high tailwinds that can be achieved by following closer to the route of the Jet Stream. Even though deviating from the great circle route adds track miles to the route, the winds pushing the flight along more than make up the difference of flying a farther distance. In this case, the route of flight would head well south of North Pole. The flight would head out over Japan, over the North Pacific, and then make landfall around Anchorage or Vancouver, and then over the northern U.S. or Southern Canada, and then into NYC. A lot more miles, yes, but much faster and less fuel is burned, thanks to winds of up to 200 miles per hour, pushing the flight along.

The great circle route, though a simple concept, is much harder to explain than it is to understand. The flying of these routes has opened up a whole new era in air travel. Because airliners have navigational computers that can calculate these routes, greater and greater distances can be flown, connecting more and more cities. The next time you are headed overseas to a tropical paradise, especially over the Pacific, look out your window and look down. If you see ice and snow covered plains, you’ll understand why and have it make sense to you. It’s all about traveling the shortest distance and forgetting about the world as a flat map on the wall.

Just as an aside note, the four longest scheduled flights in the world are:

1) Singapore – New York (Newark) 9,500 miles (Singapore Airlines)
2) Singapore – Los Angeles 8,700 miles (Singapore Airlines)
3) Bangkok – New York 8,600 miles (Thai Airways)
4) Hong Kong – New York 8,100 miles (Cathay Pacific)

The flight times and distances are staggering and hard to comprehend. Remember, these are non-stop flights. Over three hours flight time separate flight number one from flight number four, and only the ultra long range Airbus A340-500 and Boeing 777-200LR can make the Singapore – New York run. Singapore to New York is over 18 hours flight time, so if one of these above flights are in your future, I recommend that you save up enough money for business class. If not, at least bring some binoculars to look for Santa on your way “over the top.”

My schedule is going to be keeping me pretty busy in the next two weeks. Because of this, my blog entries are going to suffer. Because I’m in training, the flight assignments change all the time and the only way to stay sane is to be flexible. I was scheduled to go to Manila in the morning. Then, after preparing for that, in the afternoon, it got changed to Taipei. Now, that trip just got taken off my schedule. Things are all a little fluid, but it gets frustrating for me as a newbie. Why? Because flights take hours to prepare for and when they change or get removed from the schedule, that time is somewhat lost.

Later this week, barring any changes, I’ll be headed out on a four day trip that departs Hong Kong for Bangkok, Mumbai, Dubai, and back through Mumbai and back to Hong Kong. A few days later, I’ll do a round trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. That trip is longer than my Hong Kong-Frankfurt trip by about 1,000 miles. Johannesburg is around 6,600 miles from Hong Kong and is mostly flown over the Indian Ocean. One of the only places to drop into in an emergency would be Diego Garcia, an airport that is basically the whole island, that sits 1,000 miles south of the Indian coast.

In some ways, flying at night, over the Himalayas or over vast oceans can be pretty spooky. The new route over the Himalayas used to travel from South East Asia to Europe is called Yankee One (Y1). It’s the path that requires all the escape routes incase of an engine failure or rapid loss of cabin pressure. At night, flying along in total darkness, and not being able to see out and see the mountain tops, but knowing they are there, ready to kill you if you aren’t prepared, is pretty sobering. It’s the same on the way to South Africa or to America’s Left coast. At night, nothing can be seen out the front windows, but there are miles and miles of flat ocean below us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the thought of treading water for more than a few hours in the cold north Atlantic. Yes, there are life rafts, but, will they inflate when I need it to? Will I even be able to survive the crash to get to a raft?

Ultimately, history and safety records are on my side, and better than that, I know there is a God in Heaven who looks after me. Which reminds me: During a crash, I wonder how many people who have spent their life ignoring God finally decide to call out to him? Anyway, seeing the Himalayas during daylight hours is one thing, knowing that we could turn to avoid a peak if we had to descend due to an engine failure. But when the night is as dark as pitch, and all you have is a computer and a map, things can get a little more serious. I liken it to being in a submarine, navigating underwater canyons without being able to see out — except for us in a plane, it’s better than being in a sub, because while all is going well (like 99.999% of the time) we are above the mountain tops and above the icy waters below.

I have a new found respect for the pilots who have gone before me flying long routes over potentially deadly terrain. There are some passengers out there who say that all we do is push a few buttons on a computer and drink our coffee. Well, parts of that may be true part of the time, but when the airplane suffers a depressurization and the only safe thing to do is get lower for breathable air and play chicken with the mountain ridges that we can’t see because it’s a dark night, those people might start to get a different idea of what we do. Then, once safely on the ground in Urumqi (pronounced Ur-rum-chi), a desolate place in western China and an emergency landing site and safe haven amongst 28,000 foot high mountains, hopefully, the coffee drinking, button pushing stigma melts away!

As amazing as all that sounds, as far as I know, I don’t think it has ever happened, at least not at Cathay. However, that is part of the reason why training is so stressful and long: there are so many things to learn about and prepare for. Flying 747 long haul flights has taught me that a lack of preparation and mental preparedness can be deadly. Yes, I want training to be over, but I also what to know all that I need to know to be a safe Cathay pilot.

Now, where’s my coffee? I have some buttons to push!

I just got back from my first long-haul flight. It was a trip from Hong Kong to Frankfurt and then back to Hong Kong. The flight was almost 13 hours to Germany and about 11 coming back. It’s all pretty amazing when I think about how my longest flight at my last job as a regional pilot was around three hours.

On long flights like these, we have four pilots, where two are always at the controls at any one time. The captain and I were at the controls for takeoff and climb up to cruise and then we went to bed in the bunks. The other two guys flew us for about five hours, and then we got up and took over while they went to bed. Then, all four of us were up for the landing into Frankfurt.

The cockpit of the 747 is great because inside we also have a room with two bunks and a bathroom. The toilet is on the right and the bunk room is on the left, and we can go the whole flight without having to leave the cockpit. The flight attendants are really great and bring us food or coffee and we get on with the business of flying.

The bed that I was in was pretty nice — it was quiet and dark in there. It is hard to get sleep when your body clock says it’s daytime, or the turbulence keeps waking you up. After a few hours of bouncing and sleeping, one of the other pilots came in to wake me up for my shift.

Four pilots you ask? There is a captain, who is in charge, a relief commander, who is in charge when the captain is asleep, a first officer (copilot), and a second officer. The relief commander can be a captain, but is usually a senior first officer. The second officer doesn’t fly, but helps with paperwork and watches over the autopilot.

This flight to Germany took us over the mountains of China. When the captain and I woke up, we were already past the high ground, but we’d have our chance to deal with flying over the mountains on the way back to Hong Kong. Flying over mountains is much more challenging than over flat lands, because we have to be prepared for a depressurization or engine failure. If we depressurize, we need to get down to a lower altitude for breathable air. Sure, oxygen masks will drop, but they won’t provide pressurized oxygen to passengers at high altitudes. Consciousness with those little masks is about 15 minutes above 20,000 feet. The trouble comes in when the highest mountain peaks are over 25,000 feet! What to do if we need to descend for air?

There are published escape routes through the mountains that allow us to descend to a lower level depending on where we are and where we are headed. Sometimes, even the escape routes keep us up around 20,000 feet. The passengers just have to suck on that oxygen mask until we can get lower, but all the routes guarantee that we can get down in enough time. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be able to use that route. With an engine failure, or two, we also have to descend, because the remaining engines don’t have enough power to maintain altitude. That descent isn’t as bad because we come down slowly, and have time to think about where to go. Rapid depressurization is more critical, because we have to descend to a lower altitude (for breathable air) and thus the critical need of escape routes.

It’s all technical and very critical, with constant planning on the current escape route, and asking ourselves how low can we go now if we had a problem, but it gives us something to do with the hours we spend up front.

On our way to Frankfurt, after the captain and I got up, we had a low hydraulic quantity message in the number one hydraulic system. There are four systems, one pressurized from each engine. With just a little bit of fluid remaining, we turned off the hydraulic pump to save the last bit we had with the plan to bring it back up online just prior to landing. In flight, there is enough redundancy to not have any problems with one system turned off. However, that system runs our nosewheel steering and once on the ground, we’d need that to get to the gate.

We advised air traffic control when approaching Frankfurt that we would be able to turn off the runway, but we might not be able to taxi to the gate. We put a lot of emphasis on the fact that we would not block the runway, however! But, once we were on final approach, we could see hundreds of flashing lights from fire trucks and rescue equipment. They followed us down the runway and all the way to the gate. When we landed, there was enough hydraulic fluid to allow for steering, but that didn’t stop all the rescue people.

Since we knew it wasn’t a big deal, we never mentioned it to the passengers, but once we landed, we were upset that the airport had caused such a scene for so little, especially as the passengers could look out their windows and wonder what was going on. All in the name of safety I guess (or overtime for the crash and rescue workers!)

The captain made the landing because there could have been some trouble and with my experience level, it would have been best if he were flying. Normally, the flying pilot does both the takeoff and the landing, but in this case, I was happy to sit and watch.

Once in Frankfurt, we took a bus to Mainz, Germany, where we stayed in a very nice Hyatt Regency right on the Rhine river. Mainz is where Johann Gutenberg is from, the inventor of the printing press and the “Gutenberg Bible.” I took several hours to walk around Mainz, a beautiful little town, and took a tour of the Gutenberg museum. The museum held four original Gutenberg Bibles inside a huge walk-in vault.

Coming back to Hong Kong the next day was good and uneventful. This time, the job of navigating and planning the route over the mountains fell to the captain and me. Luckily, there was no trouble. Coming back to Hong Kong, a few hours out from landing, we could watch the sun come up, from 39,000 feet.

All in all, it was fun trip. I get stressed out during these training flights, as I am always learning and messing up, and then learning again. But, flying to Europe and back from Hong Kong, through mountains, beautiful overnights and nice hotels, I think I’ll enjoy it, training or not.

I just got back from two days of flying that ended up not being too bad at all. Day one I did a quick trip to Manila and back and then yesterday I did a trip to Taipei and back. The Taipei trip was a split-duty, where we fly up there in the morning and then come back 7 hours later. In that case, the company gets us a hotel room for the day and some per diem. This view is out my window from the the hotel, which is quite far from downtown, and not in the best of neighborhoods.

I don’t want to sound like a complainer, but these trips are hard and stressful for me. I know that two trips in two days doesn’t sound bad, especially when each leg is only about 90 minutes each. In the real world, where I was finished with training, these flights would be no big deal, and fun to do because they are so quick and easy. Unfortunately, I’m not in the real world yet, and still in training. That means that even though things sound quick and easy, they really are hard. It takes me several hours to prepare for the day’s flying, and the entire trip is filled with learning (stressors).

One of these days, I’ll be able to jump into the cockpit and say, “Lets go!” but for now, everything is slow and methodical and at a pace that screams “I’m new at this.” It will take some time to get used to the Cathay system, and how everything runs. It’s going to take time to gain the necessary experience to fly this 747 like they want it flown, and it will take even more time to get comfortable in the first officer’s seat. But, that all comes with time and I look forward to those days.

It’s tricky for me now, because there are so many more things to think about than when I flew the 50 seat regional jet at my last job. Also, Cathay is big on procedures I’ve never done before. For example, flying in the USA, air traffic controllers (ATC) issue descent clearances and then expect you to get down to that assigned altitude quickly. But over in Asia, there is a lot more leeway and if we don’t want to descend too quickly, we don’t have to. So, that being said, Cathay likes for our approaches to contain no level segments, from initial descent to touchdown. Anytime the airplane levels, it burns more fuel, is not as efficient, and is less comfortable for the passengers. If we fly on a constant descent path, then everything is smoother for our passengers and we burn less gas by not powering up the engines to initiate a level off.

Well, as one can imagine, no level segments means lots of planning ahead, lots of mental math, lots of small updated changes to the profile, and lots of stress for us new joiners! In my past life, if ATC said for us to descend from 5,000 feet to 3,000 feet, then no big deal, we dial in a 1,500 foot per minute descent rate, and forget about it. If we level at 3, then fine, if ATC gives us lower before we get to 3, then we continue to go lower. No biggie. But now, at Cathay, we don’t want to level at 3,000, especially if we are expecting a further descent clearance in the next few seconds. So, if we are getting close to level off, we need to select something like a 300 foot per minute descent rate, to help prevent a level off. This sounds somewhat easy in these simplified terms, but add in vectors for an approach, transitioning from VNAV to V/S or FLCH, track shortening, headings, and then joining the glideslope on profile, and things get a wee bit more difficult. As I learn to fly this big beast, I’d say this is one of the most difficult things about flying at Cathay. It will certainly take some getting used to.

I continue to have pretty smooth landings, sometimes by luck and sometimes by getting the hang of things. However, my most recent landing, back here into Hong Kong, was, shall we say, firm. Firm was the word used in my training captain’s report on my flying that day. You can’t win them all, right? The 747 flies like a dream and is truly a pilot’s airplane. I don’t have many hours on it yet and I can already tell that is true.

Landing is much different than what I was used to as well. At 50 feet up, the airplane starts making callouts: “50, 40, 30, 20, 10.” Those are the feet above the runway that the main gear are as we come in to land. At 50, I do nothing. At 40, I start to have a think about my flare: the act of pitching up slightly to start arresting our descent rate. At 30, I start to pull back on the yoke to make a small pitch change of only 2 degrees or so. At 20, I start to pull the power off to idle, so as to be at idle by 10. And then, it’s just hold everything steady until the main gear touches down. Easy, right? Yeah . . .

After a stressful flight with lots of questions from the training captain, lots of descent profile calculations, fighting wind gusts and bringing that big, lumbering baby down to the runway, it sure feels good to get a greaser landing. It’s a reward for all the hard work put in for the last few hours. To describe it another way, we arm the speedbrakes to auto deploy on touchdown (speedbrakes being the panels that rise up on the top of the wing to spoil lift upon main gear touchdown). When they are armed and the main gear touch down, the speedbrake lever/handle swings back about 8 inches to physically raise the speedbrake panels. It makes a geared sound like an ungreased door hinge opening — reeeh. That sound means you are on the ground. As I fight to make it a smooth touchdown, and I hear the “reeeh” sound, but don’t feel any bang or bump, that means success: a perfect transition from flying to rolling down the runway. It’s not always like that, but that is the goal. I want my passengers to ask, “Are we on the ground yet?”

“50 . . . 40 . . . 30 . . . 20 . . . 10 . . . reeeeh” Perfect.

After my two days of flying to both Singapore and Taiwan, I headed out on a four day trip that included stops in Bangkok, Mumbai (Bombay), Dubai, and then back to Mumbai and then finally back to Hong Kong. I flew with a different captain on this trip, Dave Coote. He was really great, knowledgeable, and helpful. We had a good time together, and he was very patient through all my mistakes.

He calls this trip the pit run. Bangkok-Mumbai-Dubai is the pit run because we fly from the cesspit to the fleapit to the sandpit. Funny stuff. More photos from this trip can be seen by clicking on the photo at the top of this blog entry. It’s actually a photo from Dubai and will be the tallest building in the world upon completion.

Day one on this trip was easy because it was just a two hour flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok. I flew this leg and things went well, however, my landing in Bangkok was okay, but not anything to get all excited about. I flew it technically well but I still need work on my finesse. What am I talking about? No one cares about my landings anyway! The hotel was quite nice in BKK and there are two wings to it. The lobby is very nice and the captain stayed in the new wing, while I stayed in the other wing, which hasn’t been remodeled yet. Hmmm. Seniority rules, I just wish we could have both stayed in the nice wing. My sink didn’t drain and the A/C only kept the room around 78, so I tossed and sweated all night long. Bummer.

Dave knew of a great Thai restaurant just a short cab ride from the hotel, so we got some great food for not much money, 540 baht. That was for both of us, with two entrées and he had two beers. 540 baht is 10 dollars and twenty cents! The restaurant was great with live music from a piano and string bass duo. I actually thought it was CD music until I saw them as we left. It was good to eat with Dave because it gave us a chance to get to know each other and he could learn that I’m really a nice guy, and not some jerk.

The next day was going to be a lot longer because we left for Mumbai about 5:30 P.M. which was 6:30 P.M. for us. We got into Mumbai about three hours later. Dave flew that leg because the approach into there can be very difficult, and he hadn’t flown into there for a couple years. Then it was off to Dubai. I flew that leg and I landed (at night) very well. I was so excited about my landing that I started to turn off the runway on the wrong side. The terminal, big as life, is on the right side of the runway, and the old, dark, cargo terminal is on the left, and I start to peel off left. The control tower guy was really nice and as Dave helped me correct back to right side turnoff, said, “Uh, yeah Cathay, that’s a right turn into the terminal. Have a good night.” It’s funny what the brain will do (or not do) when it gets loaded up or overloaded.

This was 10:00 P.M. local time, which was 2:00 A.M. for us. Finally arriving at the Shanghri La hotel at three in the morning for us, it was definitely time for bed. I got to my room as was blown away at how nice it was. This has to be the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. A Hollywood movie even had a scene filmed here, where the main character stayed at this hotel. I awoke about six hours later and headed down for some breakfast. There was a great breakfast buffet, where I tried Hummus, olives in oil, eggs, turkey bacon (no pigs around the Muslim world, remember?) and freshly squeezed OJ. The orange juice came out of a machine that was filled with peeled oranges, and as more OJ was needed, a crank would turn and squeeze it right there, to be seen through the clear plastic machine.

Afterward, I headed out with my trusty D40 and walked about an hour from the hotel, down the main drag in Dubai. Next time I go there (in November) I’ll need to remember to bring sunscreen because I burned my neck under the hot October rays of the desert. There were some Middle Eastern men in suites and others in the full traditional dress. I had never been to any city in the Middle East, or any Arab state before, so it was a little different to see people dressed up in the head scarfs and all in person and not just on T.V.

Dubai was really great. It’s growing so fast that I quit counting all the new building construction sites. Most of my photos of Dubai were taken in the vertical profile to capture all the tall buildings and that really sums up Dubai. Vertical. It’s growing up and up and up out of the desert, and the progress there is amazing. I didn’t get to see the indoor ski slopes, but I want to some day. At least I now know where part of my gas money is going — to build an amazing city in the U.A.E. I’m also really proud of Dubai because they have proven that Arabs can easily and cohesively work with westerners for the enrichment of both societies. We need their oil to fuel our economy and they need our dollars to build their city. They show that it is certainly possible to be peaceful with the west, and in the end, that is more profitable and stable for both sides.

By contrast, just look at the rotting stink-holes of countries that hate America and shun the west in general. In the 50’s through the 70’s, Iran was friendly to the U.S. and was a beautiful city where western tourism flourished. Now look at Iran: It’s a cesspool in the desert with no tourism and a place where a few wealthy and religious zealots keep the people oppressed. But not Dubai! Wisely, they’ve figured out that in the end, we are all just people who want to make a buck and have a secure future for our kids, be they Muslim, Christian, or whatever. For this, I’m proud of Dubai for their pro-western stance. I also felt very safe there and enjoyed my visit. I also saw enough Starbucks to almost walk from one to the next one without ever going outside into the heat.

I wanted to get some sleep that afternoon because we would be flying all night that night, but unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep. It was daytime for me and getting to sleep just wasn’t going to work. We had to leave for the airport at 10:45 P.M. local time (2:45 A.M. body-clock time for us) and that was brutal. With no sleep and looking at an 11 hour duty period ahead of us, I was nervous I wasn’t going to make it and stay sane.

We headed to Mumbai and then back to Hong Kong, where we left Dubai at 3:45 A.M. for us, and would arrive in Hong Kong at three in the afternoon. Fun times! I took the first leg back to Mumbai and it wasn’t too bad. I was tired but it was manageable. I was really proud of how I flew into Mumbai, because we came in on the same approach that Dave had flown into the day before, the one that is somewhat tricky. It’s tricky because the approach slope is steeper than most approaches, the runway is narrow, so it gives the appearance of us being higher than we actually are, we couldn’t roll to the end of the runway because there was no way to exit that end (we would have to make a turn off exit prior to the end). The runway was short, and we had a tailwind on approach, which makes things even harder as it speeds things up quite a bit. Finally, there was high terrain around the approach end of the runway. All this is going through my head as I come in to land. So what’s going to happen?

The truth is, I got lucky. The landing was just about perfect. Right where it should have been and we just rolled onto the runway. I didn’t even know that we had touched down except for the speedbrakes auto deploying when the main wheels touched down, and that makes a noise. Wow! Dave said, “Well done, well done.” Even if luck had a role to play there, it sure made me feel good to get a good one, on an approach where it really counted.

Finally, Dave took us back into Hong Kong, and that leg was the hardest of them all because we were so tired. That sector was five hours long and I had been up for around 30 hours now. We did an autoland back into Hong Kong because it needed to be demonstrated to me for my training, as as tired as we were, it sure made sense. What’s funny about the Boeing 747 autopilot, is that its autoland system will put any pilot to shame — that dude is right on the money and smooth as glass, every time. I guess when the plane costs that much, you expect it to be good. We use autoland when visibilities are too low for us to see for a normal landing. We can actually autoland without ever seeing the runway when things are really foggy. Amazing. It’s good to see an autoland done while the visibility is good so that we can gain confidence in the autopilot system.

Back in Hong Kong, Dave and I debriefed and went our separate ways. He lives in Australia but has a boat he lives on here in Hong Kong while he is in town. For me, being so tired, I was actually excited to get back to the hotel I was familiar with. It was a long trip, but I learned a lot and am looking forward to my next trip. Things will only get tougher from here, as I am off the basic phase of training and am now moving on the advanced phase, but I’ve got to keep moving up the training ladder if I ever want to be finished with all of this. All in all, it was an amazing trip and I will get to do it again twice more in November if my schedule doesn’t change. We’ll see if I can once again get lucky in Mumbai.

This is a picture of a busy street in Taipei, just down from our hotel. It can be clicked on for more photos of my time in Taiwan. My first flight was down to Singapore and back, then the next day, I flew up to Taiwan and back. We only had a few short moments in Singapore, and when I stepped outside to take a few photos of the plane, my lens fogged up, and that was it — no photos. The next day, we had a seven hour layover in Taipei before we headed back to Hong Kong, so the company got us a hotel room. I used my time at the hotel to go exploring.

Just as an aside note, my little bit of extra money that I spent on my Nikon D40, instead of a cheap, worthless point and shoot has become worth it with the memories I’m able to capture. Sure, a little fancier camera will cost a bit more, but that money is paid back ten fold by being able to record memories that will then last a lifetime. Point and shoots just don’t have the capabilities to shoot in low light or have a large zoom range, that can make the difference in getting the shot or not. I want the shot. I want to remember the adventures I’ve embarked on, and so I’m glad I have my D40. If you are going on a trip where memories will be made, do yourself a favor and buy something that will actually do a good job recording the memories!

So, my first flight was to do a round trip from Hong Kong to Singapore. I was very nervous about what to expect and didn’t have any idea what that day would be like. Cathay puts a safety pilot in the cockpit with trainee copilots (me) for the first eight sectors (flights), just in case there is trouble on landings or whatever. My safety pilot was named Claudio and was really nice. The captain was even nicer, Martin Laver. He called me the night before and talked about what to expect. He chuckled and said to relax, don’t do any more studying and don’t worry about anything. He said that the first few flights are just to get oriented, so put the books away and enjoy yourself. Then he said, “So tonight, relax. If you drink, go for a drink. If you don’t drink, don’t start.” We both laughed out loud on that one.

The next morning, we passed through Cathay’s own security station in operations and got on a bus that took us directly to the plane we were to take to Singapore and back. Martin flew the first leg and I was the PM (Pilot monitoring), who works the radios, does the paperwork, and assists the PF (Pilot flying). As we pushed back from the gate and taxied out, it was surreal. I just couldn’t get my mind around the fact that we were a 747 with nearly 200 passengers (not nearly full) and were going to make a voyage to Singapore.

Once over the South China Sea, we passed off the coast of Danang, Vietnam and I told the crew that my dad had spent some time there in the late sixties. They knew that meant the Vietnam War. It was a smooth and uneventful flight and Martin and I discussed some training topics as we passed the time.

Working the radios was a different story. As an American and used to talking on the radio to American air traffic control, this was my first indoctrination of what foreign accents and poor radios sound like. Many poor countries in South Asia are run by military dictatorships, who take all the country’s money and put it into worthless things, like militaries and weapons, which leaves very little for radar and air traffic control services that are used by the airlines passing through that country’s airspace. Combine poor English, with poor radar coverage, with a radio that probably costs less than a new MacBook from Apple, with me, who is new to all of this, and you get a very confused pilot. Martin helped me out a few times and I was glad he was there because sometimes I had no clue what had just been said. Sometimes, I think the Cathay pilots just know what to expect as far as clearances on the radio, and that helps them “hear” the clearance.

When we landed at Singapore’s Changi airport, we had a short taxi to the gate. As the passengers deplaned, we worked on all the after flight routines and took care of paperwork. It was then that I could catch my breath and take it all in. I realized that I was farther from home than I’d ever been before since I left for Hong Kong. Currently, the longest flight in the world is operated by Singapore Airlines, with their amazing A340-500 that runs direct to New York. It’s in the neighborhood of 9,500 miles away. The second longest flight currently is also out of Singapore — to LAX. It skips just to the other side of the north pole that the JFK flight takes. JFK to Hong Kong is fifth longest and shorter than SIN-JFK because Hong Kong is farther north than Singapore. As all these flights head up over the north pole in what is called a great circle route, the farther south the departure airport is, the longer the flight will be.

I didn’t have much time to miss the family because then it was time to get going again. It was now my turn to fly, and that means that I also taxi the aircraft out for takeoff, too. Driving that beast around is amazing. We sit over 30 feet in the air, so the biggest issue is judging the taxi speed and making accurate turns around the corners. The taxi and takeoff were uneventful and once up at cruise, Martin and I once again discussed operational issues. Coming back into Hong Kong would be my first landing at night, and as I suspected, that proved to be a little bit of trouble. The landing was, shall we say, firm.

There are large stripes on the runway that serve as aiming points for touchdown, and the perfect touchdown would have the wheels touch down right on them. As we came in for landing, I was aiming for them, but because I am now in such a large plane, the out-the-window picture is so much different than what I am used to from my previous experience, I miss judged it a bit. The landing gear are 100 feet behind the cockpit, and because the airplane approaches the landing with about 3 degrees nose up, the landing gear are much lower than the front of the plane. As I was looking at the aiming points, we hit hard, with those blasted aim points still in front of us out the window — whoops! It wasn’t terrible, but much worse than I had done in my base training. Oh well, there’s always next time, right?

Martin and Claudio had a good chuckle about it, but it was no big deal. I taxied in and parked us on the gate. That is also a fun part of the flight. The airplanes are guided in with a radio wave guidance system. It detects the type of plane we are as we turn into the gate area and will show on a large screen: 747. We have to verify that it does indeed read the right plane, or it will give us incorrect guidance to park at the gate. It then shows us a visual representation of how to pull in straight to the gate. There is a vertical line that represents the yellow line we are taxing on up to the jetway. Below the vertical line is an arrow pointing up. When the arrow is directly below the vertical line, we are right on track. When the arrow slides to the right of the vertical line, we are off to the right and have to make a small correction to the left. The whole system is very accurate, and it can be a little frustrating when you move just a few inches off and it starts telling you to turn the other way. Finally, it reads off how many meters are left until we need to stop, and below 3 meters, it counts down in tenths of meters, until a large STOP is shown. Following that guidance correctly puts us right on the yellow line and the mark where we need to stop.

Once parked, we did all our after flight duties and debriefed the flight and we talked about how we thought it went. Overall, he said I did a good job, and I was just glad to try and keep up with him. Sometimes I felt like I was so far behind, that if we crashed, I wouldn’t have been hurt because I would have been about 100 miles back.

With the first flight complete, it felt really great. Things were making sense and I was looking forward to going to Taipei in the morning.

The next day, Martin and I had a different safety pilot, Brendan, but everything proceeded roughly the same. This time, I was going to fly both sectors — to Taipei and back. The flight up to Taipei was only a little more than an hour, so things were not as relaxed as Singapore, but we managed to get everything accomplished that we needed to. This landing, in the daylight, was much better than yesterday’s and my confidence was starting to improve.

We were going to land and have about seven hours before we left again. So we got a day room in a hotel to rest and pass the time away. Martin and Brendan took naps, but I was going to explore a little of the city. The hotel was okay, but it wasn’t in the best part of town. Taipei is a pretty area, but there are factories and industrialization everywhere. The part of town we were in was far from downtown, so there was not much English written or spoken and there was not the huge buildings and city feel that Hong Kong gives.

None of the signs along the streets were in English, and people I came across could not speak a lick of it. There were not too many sidewalks where I walked, and I almost got taken out several times by mopeds and motorcycles whizzing by me. Many of the cars parked on the streets had their driver side mirrors pulled in so as to not have them swiped off by passing cars and scooters. I walked about 45 minutes from the hotel in one direction looking around and scouting out a place to eat. I then turned around and headed back to the hotel to then headed about 30 minutes in the other direction.

It was then that I came across an outdoor market like so many in Hong Kong. I bought some fresh fruit and then saw a McDonald’s and headed for it. I hate to eat fast food all the time, but in this part of town, it looked like the safest bet. Even in the McDonald’s, I had to point to the things on the menu that I wanted, because English was out and gibberish was in. “May I have some BBQ sauce?” “Forget it, never mind.” After dinner and on the way back to the hotel, I stopped by a cart on the side of the road that was selling fresh doughnuts (and since I’m so skinny) I got myself one. Or was it two?

The flight back to Hong Kong went well but now it was evening and I was wondering how my night landing was going to fair. Approaching the runway, the winds were gusty and blowing in a cross wind (across the runway instead of down it) which is more of a challenge. I focused as hard as I could and managed to get us down quite smoothly and accurately, with the aiming markers passing out of sight this time before touching down. Ah, so I can learn! Both Martin and Brendan complimented this one and I felt a lot better about myself.

Flying this plane is amazing and even though it can be challenging, I know I can do it. It’s just a matter of gaining experience and practice to make everything line up just right. So as the flying part comes along, it’s now time to focus more on the head knowledge that has to accompany the flying skills. I’ll have to work on that next time. Now, it’s off to Bangkok, Mumbai, and Dubai and back again.