A friend of mine sent me this video over the weekend. It’s a good two minute animation of the crash in the Hudson River; flight 1549. It’s nice because it incorporates animation with the radio and air traffic control. You can hear the departure controller in LaGuardia frantically calling controllers at other airports and stations to try and clear a way for the powerless airplane to get a safe place to land.

This is a picture of Cathay Pacific’s dispatch room in Hong Kong. This is where the pilots meet prior to a flight. This is a really nice setup, and most of Cathay’s ports don’t have this, but at headquarters, we get a nice facility.

At an hour and ten minutes prior to departure time, the pilots for the flight meet up at the table that has their flight number and flight paperwork. We shake hands and greet one another if we’ve never met in the past and get to know each other a little bit. There is a sign in sheet that we initial, and then we all have a look over the paperwork.

One thing that is a lot nicer than my last job, is all the prep work that the dispatchers do for us as far as paperwork. There is a sign with the flight number on it, so we know where our paperwork is. The dispatcher has laid out all the paperwork: the fuel slip, flight plan, dispatch message, notams, weather, and other various bits of information. All we have to do is show up and look at it all, and that makes it pretty nice. Also, all this information is posted on the internet a few hours prior to a flight, so we can save time in dispatch by making some decisions before we even show up at work.

After signing in, we each have a look at all the paperwork involved in flying from A to B. The dispatch message shows us our expected weight for takeoff and the maximum allowable weight for takeoff, tailored specifically for the aircraft we will be flying that day. A lot of the planes don’t weigh the exact same amount, and it would be crazy to try and memorize the weights of each plane, so it is written down for us.

The Notams, or notices to airmen, are notes about defects at airports that are on our specific route of flight. For example, the approach guidance may be inoperative at the last airport we fly over prior to going oceanic. That would be nice to know, because if we need to turn back or have trouble, we will know that if the weather is bad, we won’t be able to use that particular airport. The weather report shows us general weather and winds along the route, and then also at all the airports along the way. This is valuable information because if we have to divert with trouble, we need to know which airports we can expect to be able to use or overfly due to poor weather.

The flight plan is looked at, and it gives us tomes of information about what our flight will entail. How high will we be flying, where our step climbs will be, what the route is, and what our fuel load should be. Step climbs are important because on a long flight as we burn more fuel, the aircraft gets lighter. As it gets lighter, it can fly at a higher, more optimal altitude for fuel burn. A heavy plane can’t climb all the way to it’s top cruise altitude because it is too heavy. After five hours or so, it will have burned off tons of fuel, be lighter, and thus be able to climb to a higher altitude. Higher altitudes save fuel, so we want to climb when we can. On a 16 hour flight from JFK to Hong Kong, the Boeing 777-300ER might start at 29,000 feet, but 15 hours later, just prior to the descent into Hong Kong, it might be at 39,000 feet, climbing a few thousand feet, every few hours.

Finally, we all agree on a fuel load, based on things like weather, how heavy our cargo is, and so forth. Filling out the fuel slip is the last thing we do, and then we gather all that paperwork up and head out to the bus that takes us to the aircraft. At other ports, we just look at the paperwork online and then again in the cockpit, but in Hong Kong, the setup is really nice. Also nice in Hong Kong is that Cathay’s crew hotel is connected to dispatch, so we just walk out of the lobby, and we’re at work!

I’m headed back Eastbound toward North America after a stressful but necessary few days in Hong Kong. This past week was my biannual checkride, two simulator sessions to keep my flying licenses current and my emergency procedures up to standard. After a while, these six month checks become a little more routine, but as a fairly new hire, they are still very stressful and honestly, a little nerve-racking and scary.

Each six months, a pilot’s license currency expires and thus has to be renewed. Also, it is a chance to practice emergency procedures, like engine failures on takeoff, fires, electrical problems, technical problems like the landing gear not coming down, and so forth. These are drills that a pilot will almost never experience in a career, so they need to be practiced in a simulator so that if bad luck strikes, we will be ready to act.

People who say that planes basically fly themselves (who are usually not pilots or even frequent fliers) are wrong, as of 2009. There is so much that goes on in the planning stages, takeoff and landing phases, and during an emergency, that I don’t see pilotless planes in the near future. I guarantee that a computer could not have landed safely in the Hudson river! A pilot really earns his money when there is a problem. Some like to say that pilots are over-paid – until that pilot saves that person’s life when an engine quits over the North Pacific!

I spent the last few days in two simulator sessions, an RT (recurrent training) and a PC (proficiency check). The RT is graded, but it is more of a chance to warm up for the PC, that is graded on a lot more strict level. The RT is also a good chance to practice more non-standard problems, that the PC just wouldn’t have time for.

Every pilot learns to hate checkrides. They are stressful because if a pilot doesn’t perform well on the day (as he is just having a bad or off day) then there is chance he could lose his job. Real world emergencies are often non-events or at least only happen as a singular event. In the simulator, the checker running the profile is throwing problem after problem at us. Once we solve one problem, we have another one, and once that is solved, another problem pops up. Four hours later, you hope to still have your sanity.

The simulator is quite a cool machine in and of itself. It is a huge box up on hydraulic stilts that moves all around in space. It has a wrap around visual system on the front of it so that as we look out the front windshield, we see the “real world.” The large boxes on the top of the sim are the visual projectors. A ramp moves down into position so that we can walk into the sim and then it pulls away to allow the sim to move all around. For example, on takeoff, the sim tilts back, and gives us a sense of acceleration. The sims are real enough that pilots can be certified to fly the real airplane without having flown the real airplane, just the simulator. — and this is old technology. These 747-400 sims are 20 years old and don’t always cooperate. During our RT, the sim we were in quit working on us twice, and just like a poor windows user, the sim tech had to reset the computer. Luckily for the more stressful PC, nothing like that happened to us.

Needless to say, checkrides are not fun, but they are a necessary part of being a pilot. I will certainly take the stress of having a check every six months, over not remembering what to do when an engine quits for real. And as for the burning question, yes, I passed! I had a great captain to fly with and he was good and making sure I was doing everything correctly. The examiners were also very nice and laid back, which helps to set a good tone. So, I’m safe for another six months, until I get to do it all over again.

There are three of us pilots on the flight from Anchorage to Hong Kong, one captain and two co-pilots (known as first officers, by those with a title complex). The other co-pilot and I were discussing our pasts, like most pilots do to pass the time, and I discovered that he was Argentine and has lived in the U.S. for the last six years. Alfredo is getting his U.S. citizenship soon — a great guy, but unfortunately, he will add to the liberal voting bloc :o)

He was a pilot in the Argentine military back in 1982. I immediately asked him what he thought of Margaret Thatcher and he laughed. He continued to regale stories from the war and how the Brits would shoot at ships, just as his friends were launching off the decks of those ships in navy fighters. Asked why he thought that Argentina would want to fight the British, he talked about how there was economic hardship in the country at the time, so a war may spur on national pride and recovery. There also was a sense that the Brits wouldn’t fight as hard, being so far from home, for just a few islands. He felt that they had a fighting chance, but that they didn’t count on Reagan sending in help. Looking back, he said, it would have been obvious that Reagan would try and help Thatcher.

Fast forward twenty five years. A lot of the British Aces from that war are now senior training captains at Cathay Pacific. As a matter of fact, a great check captain Paul Barton, the one who did my base training – where we practice takeoffs and landings, was the first British Harrier pilot with a kill in the Falklands war. He probably shot at my new friend Alfredo! When Alfredo was hired and did his initial checkrides, Paul Barton was the examining check captain for him. Alfredo’s sim parter was also in the Falklands war. As they were in the middle of their training, Fredo’s sim partner asked him when he flew in Argentina. He answered, “In the early 80’s.” His sim partner laughed and said, I was in her Majesty’s Navy, and I’ll bet I shot at you! They had a good laugh about it. Alfredo likes to remind the British guys that the weapons technology was so much more advanced in the Royal Navy than what he had. “The Brits could just click the fire button and the missile would launch and head for the targeted aircraft, chase it, and blow it away. They could even fire on an Argentine airplane coming straight at them and if the missile missed, it would turn around and follow the target! We had nothing like that, so we earned our kills.”

I guess time does heal all wounds (or it wounds all heels, I can’t remember). Alfredo can laugh about it now, but I find it more than ironic that when he came to work at Cathay Pacific as a new hire, he had a sim partner and then a checkride given by pilots who tried to kill him earlier in his life! Luckily, everyone is around to laugh about the stories and I guess it proves that the pilots at Cathay are truly diverse.

Now that I finished all my initial training, it was time to start my first trip as a real 747 pilot for Cathay Pacific. Finally, my puppet strings were removed, my wooden body became living tissue, and my long wooden nose shrank to the proper size – I was a real pilot (boy)! (That grasshopper that used an umbrella as a cane quit following me around too.)

Training is nothing like “flying the line.” Flying the line is normal operations, without a training captain, and without all the stress that comes with being constantly evaluated, second guessed, and instructed. I have nothing against learning. Because I’m finished with my training doesn’t mean I am finished with learning. However, I can certainly say that I am very glad to be finished with training. Talking with other copilots, they all agree that getting over that hump is a huge stress reliever.

I can honestly say that this switch to Cathay Pacific has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Maybe I’ve lived a pretty cushy life, and maybe Cathay makes it harder than it needs to be, but the stress of training took a heavy toll on my body, emotions, and family life. I don’t want to say “woe is me” but the training at Cathay is much different than the training that goes on at most U.S. airlines. I think this is in part because they fly into third-world countries, where the government doesn’t spend much money on air-traffic services like radar, radios, and airports in general. They fly with around 55 nationalities in the cockpit as far as pilot backgrounds go. They fly heavy equipment, with a world class product, and a have a sterling reputation to uphold. They have a British background that stresses perfection in all areas of flying, and they are known in the pilot realm as a checking airline, not a training airline (the trainers happily tell the trainees what they messed up, but don’t do too well at instructing). All this combines to make a training program that is much different than what can be expected if I joined a U.S. carrier’s training. At a U.S. major carrier, once someone passes the interview, for the most part, they are on the road to success. At Cathay, all is in doubt until the final line check is complete!

The point about checking vs. training may be an issue that is slipping into the past. All my training captains were excellent and did a great job, and I think part of that comes from the excellent training manager that is now in charge – Gus Larard. Gus is a great guy who backs the trainees 100% and makes sure that he and his team support us through the trials and stress that we are under while in training. When I had a hiccup or two, he was quick to let me know that I could relax and get the training I needed to be successful. There’s not much worse than being halfway around the world, having just quit a decent job, and now in a training program so tough that the perceived threat of being let go looms with every mistake.

Anyway, that is all in the PAST and I’m glad to be on my way. Yes, on my way from New York to Chicago O’Hare and then on to Anchorage. This was a short, three day trip, where the only negative part to it was that it started at 10:00 p.m. That first night, leaving JFK and heading to ORD wasn’t too bad, but the six hour flight to ANC got pretty long. We arrived in ANC around 10:00 a.m., having flown all night.

Once in the hotel, I took a short nap to catch up a bit, and then took a stroll down to the local mall to see downtown Anchorage. It was a sunny day, somewhat. At noon, the sun was barely up and the shadows were already quite long. Being winter in the far north, the sun can play tricks on “normalcy.” It was also 15 degrees, a bit on the chilly side for my stroll, but I was determined to make the best of it. I made a few purchases for Laura as she celebrates another birthday tomorrow. Consequently, if you are ever in Alaska, make sure and do some shopping, as there is no sales tax.

The flights up to ANC and back were very uneventful and smooth. The captain was very nice and helped put me at ease, as this was my first freighter flight. All through training, I had only flown passenger aircraft, and even though they are pretty much the same, there are some subtle differences. We flew aircraft BLIA, up to ANC and back. It’s a cargo version of the 747-400. I need to do a little more research, but I believe it is the newest 747 in the world! It is an ERF, or extended range freighter, and Cathay has purchased the last six coming off Boeing’s assembly line. Yes, sadly the 747-400 days are numbered, however a new variant, the 747-8 is due out in the next year or two. It is similar in looks, however it uses a newer winglet design and is much more fuel efficient.

The -400 freighter is a great airplane. I stepped onto the flight deck and everything smelled new and the instrument panels were all so clean and nice. The passenger versions that I’ve flown are nearly 20 years old, and their age shows. The cockpit on the freighter has a curtain for a door, as there isn’t too much of a security threat. Behind that is a galley with a full oven and a refrigerator stocked full of catering for us. We had sandwiches, fruit, veggies, bread, salad, cheeses, snacks, and full entrées. The meals that we heat up are usually something like cod in butter sauce, chicken parmesan, beef with potatoes, and the like. It’s awesome, and I need to be careful how much I eat, or we might have to offload some cargo to adjust the takeoff weight to account for my own body weight!

Next to the galley is a cavernous restroom. Moving farther back are six large seats, like first class seats on a U.S. domestic flights. Not as nice as lie-flat beds, but still very comfy, with power ports and all. Finally, there is a back wall with a door in the center. It opens up to the crew rest bunks. Walking in, one can turn left or right and there are curtains on either side of the inside of the door. The curtains keep the light out of the respective bunks when the door is opened. The beds are wide and there is even a window for us and a coat closet to hang our uniforms up while we sleep. All in all, it is amazing, and way better than the bunks on the passenger fleet. Those bunks are smaller because they are inside the cockpit, but because the freighter isn’t limited on space, there is a lot more room.

I flew the leg from JFK to ORD, and this airplane is a dream to fly. It’s very responsive and all the automation is new and up-to-date, as the airplane itself is only a few months old. I even got lucky and the landing just rolled it on. Again, the landings are somewhat scripted in how they are accomplished, at least on a large jet like this. It’s all about the callouts. The airplane will call out “50, 40, 30, 20, 10” as in feet above the runway on landing, in an automated voice. At 50 and 40, I just prepare myself for what is coming next, and make sure I’m lined up perfectly on the centerline of the runway. At the 30 foot call, I start to squeeze in some back pressure on the control column to start the flare (this is not to be confused with the word flair) which pulls the nose up about two degrees to slow the rate of descent. At 20, I start pulling the power to idle so that by the call of 10, the thrust levers are at full idle. Then, for the last ten feet, it’s just: keep on doing what I’m doing – holding the nose up at the same attitude, and waiting for the main wheels to touch down. If I’ve done everything correctly, we don’t feel the touchdown and the aircraft just starts rolling down the runway. The speedbrake lever moves back to the full up position, spoiling any additional lift created by the wings, and we decelerate smoothly with the autobrakes bringing us gently toward 70 knots. If I haven’t done everything correctly, we certainly feel it in our lower backs and don’t need to hear the speedbrake lever moving to know we’ve touched down! I hate those, but every pilot gets a bad one every so often.

Once back in JFK, our trip ended around 9:00 p.m. and well after all the flights to Columbus had departed. There was an early flight the next morning, and I didn’t want to pay $100 bucks for a hotel, especially for just a few hours of sleep. (Yes, $100 is the cheapest deal to be had near JFK. I long for a $35 Motel 6 or a mom and pop dive that just gives me a bed to sleep in, but alas, that’s the way NYC works.) This meant that I was going to sleep on the couch in operations there in the hangar at JFK. Ah, the life of an illustrious 747 pilot for an international airline. The couch was in a closet sized room with a company computer in there and some blankets and pillows off the passenger fleet. I didn’t even want to think about who had slept on the pillows previously or how UN-recently they looked like they had been washed. Sleep was important, so I pushed those thoughts out of my head and into the dirty pillow. The cargo handlers outside the door to my “room” seemed not to care much for closing the doors in the hallway in a smooth fashion as they worked through the night, but were bent on letting things slam their way home. I mean, who doesn’t enjoy those sounds while sleeping? To save $100 bucks, right?

I’m typing this now on my way home to Columbus, aboard a US Airways Express EMB-170, and it feels good to be headed home. Laura’s birthday is tomorrow and I’m glad I’ll be in town to celebrate with her. I do this trip two more times this month and I have a feeling that the couch in operations and I are going to be well acquainted with one another by the time I’ve been at Cathay for a few years. I do love my job, and I feel like Cathay will be a great place to be, especially as the U.S. economy continues to grind ever more slowly. I feel extremely blessed to be flying one of the greatest aircraft ever made and am happy with the choice to be where I am. I acknowledge that there are downsides to my job, as there are with everything – like stressful training and restless nights on a couch in a hangar. Even so, I can’t think of a better job than flying airplanes.

God has been extremely gracious to me as he has protected me while oversees, has proven himself faithful through all the trials and stress of training, and has given me an opportunity to join the ranks of other 747 drivers, a relatively small group of pilots. Finishing my first trip makes me feel like everything over the last six months has now become worth it. I’d leave aviation in a heartbeat if I knew my family couldn’t handle it or if it became a strain on my home life. I like to say that being a pilot is ‘what I do’, it is not ‘who I am.’ For now, I’m just going to hang on for the ride and see where this adventure leads.

I had a pretty crazy schedule coming home from Hong Kong on my way back to Columbus, Ohio.

The last sector of my check flight was from Manila, Philippines, back to Hong Kong. Within an hour of arrival, I was scheduled to get on the flight to Vancouver, that then continued to New York. A nice little touch was that I was able to get first class on both flights, from Hong Kong to Vancouver (YVR) and also on to New York (JFK). Then I was just able to make it over to LaGuardia to catch a flight to Charlotte, NC. I had to make that stop over because US Airways doesn’t offer direct flights to Columbus on Saturdays, and US Airways is the airline I have some travel benefits with. As I ran up to the gate, they were calling my name over the PA to assign me a seat. Talk about timing!

A flight attendant on that flight noticed that there was one more first class seat available and waved me up from my economy seat to sit in first — three for three on sitting in nice first class seats! Finally, the trip up to Columbus from Charlotte was uneventful (no first class, but there were no first class seats installed in this all-economy seat regional jet).

It was a whirlwind trip, taking me to six cities in 30 hours: Manila, Hong Kong, Vancouver, New York, Charlotte, and finally home to Columbus. Whew! I’m certainly glad to be back in my own house again.

These are the words that every trainee wants to hear at the end of their training. It denotes the successful completion of their training and they are now officially part of the Cathay Pacific flight crew team. After starting training nearly six months ago, I desperately wanted to hear these words from a check captain and it would take the culmination of all that training to get me to the level of “checked to line” status.

After LFUS, or line flying under supervision, known as IOE in the U.S. (Initial Operating Experience) a progress check is given. If that is satisfactorily completed, it counts as the annual line check, and the new trainee is released to the line (the line being normal, everyday flying). If it doesn’t proceed well, a bit more training is given and a second progress/line check is given.

Unfortunately for me, my first progress check didn’t go the way I wanted it to. I messed up a few things that had to do with the function of the autopilot while in its approach mode. What was most disappointing is that I hadn’t flown as well as I had in the past, and when I needed to do well, I didn’t. Bummer! I was also scheduled to come home for Christmas upon passing my check. When I didn’t pass my check, I had to stay in Hong Kong over Christmas and leave Laura with her own family for the holidays.

I felt pretty bad for her because I had already graced her without my presence for Thanksgiving, and I was looking forward to being home for Christmas. So there I was, having not passed my first check, wasn’t going to be home for the holidays, not knowing what the future held for me, and the stress was mounting every day that passed. But wouldn’t you know that God was still sitting on his throne?

I clung everyday to the lyrics of a song by my mom’s choir that I had on CD, called The Anchor Holds. “I have fallen on my knees, as I face the raging seas, the Anchor holds.” Good words for me to remember and I had to ask myself, does my anchor really hold? Well, does it? It sure is easy to trust God in the good times, but what fun is that? How can God reveal himself to be sufficient for our lives in the good times? What reason is there to lean on God during life’s easiest moments and most carefree days?

Maybe I’ve lived a pretty charmed life, but the training in Hong Kong has truly been the most difficult thing I’ve ever tried to tackle, at least on the tumultuous scale of stress levels. After six months of hard work, half way around the world from home, without family, would I fall off the cliff and be sent home looking for another way to earn a living? Did I just waste half a year of my life? Would God bring me to Hong Kong, take me to the edge of the cliff, and pull me back from it, or shove me over the side? He could have done either, as his plans for our lives are best, whether or not we think so at the time.

I got hard at work in the simulator ironing out the problems that I had struggled with on my check. It was good that I didn’t pass my check with the deficiencies that I had with the autopilot because I wouldn’t have wanted to been out flying with these issues still lingering. It all clicked and finally made sense to me. My second check went splendidly, and with no problems, was ‘welcomed to the fleet.’ I was so excited I couldn’t stop smiling. The stress and turmoil evaporated off my shoulders and I was able to relax for the first time in six months.

During all this, I heard a sermon about how thorns in our lives can be used to humble us. After all this mess, I certainly had to check my ego at the cockpit door and to truly rely on God to get me through it all. I’ve learned a few good lessons from all this pain in Hong Kong, and one is that failure can teach us a lot about ourselves, and also show how much or how little faith we actually have in both ourselves and God.

When we get to a point where the stress is so high it becomes unbearable, we have to give up on self reliance and let God lead us forward. Honestly, this stress was nothing compared to an actual loss of a job, or being diagnosed with a terminal disease, or losing everything we hold dear in this life. There will always be someone who has it worse than me. However, it was still a good learning experience for me, and I will be a better person because of the lessons learned from failure.

God always proves himself faithful to those who love him. Even if my training deteriorated and I ended up getting let go by Cathay, I would still have to praise him because that would only mean he has something else in store for Laura and me. I would have to say what Job said, “Though he slay me, yet I will trust in him.” Would I want to deal with that type of stress? No way! But, being led through those dark valleys only makes us better, more humble servants.

As it is, I am now sitting in a first class seat, (copilots usually only get business class seats, but God was good to me today) at 39,000 feet in a 777-300ER, headed back to JFK, dining on a piece of steak and sipping a 2001 Red Chateau Lynch Bages wine that is wonderful (however, it isn’t as good as the wine that was served at this wedding). I’m headed home for a few days, to be with Laura, as a fully qualified 747-400 first officer, and right now, as I have Mozart playing in my noise canceling headphones, with my seat reclined and typing away, life is good.

I know that it won’t last forever, and that there is another trial just around the corner, waiting to stretch me farther, make me trust deeper, and die to myself even more, but for now, I am enjoying the moment of victory and success! Sipping wine here in my seat with the leg room and Mozart only reminds me of how good God truly is.

From Psalms 46, what I read the other morning before my check flight:

God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day. Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall; he lifts his voice, the earth melts. The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress. Come and see the works of the LORD, the desolations he has brought on the earth. He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear, he burns the shields with fire. “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. “The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.

Here are a few photos showing me at some of the airlines I’ve worked for and the planes I’ve flown as I’ve gotten older and put on a few pounds. Private pilot’s license, a ramper for Delta in DFW, in the Saab 340 turboprop, a Chautauqua RJ copilot, then captain, and then in a Cathay 747.