En route from London to Tokyo, a pilot’s-eye view of life in the sky.
By MARK VANHOENACKER MAY 14,
2015
TAKEOFF
As we push back from our gate at
Heathrow Airport we light the Boeing 747’s engines in pairs, starting with
those under the starboard wing. A sudden hush falls in the cockpit as the air
flow for the air-conditioning units is diverted. It’s this, air alone, that
begins to spin the enormous techno-petals of the fans, faster and faster, until
fuel and fire are added, and each engine wakes with a low rumble that grows to
a smooth, unmistakable roar.
We begin to taxi. In legal terms, a
journey begins when “an aircraft moves under its own power for the purpose of
flight.” In aircraft manuals, elaborate charts that recall da Vinci’s
“Vitruvian Man” illustrate the angles and distances that the extremities of the
plane sweep through as we maneuver on the ground. A pleasing terminology
accompanies these images of the plane’s turning limbs: tail
radius andsteering angle and the wingtip that swings the largest
arc.
A quarter of an hour later we reach
the runway. I push the four thrust levers forward for an experience that
repetition hasn’t dulled: the unfurling carpet of guiding lights that
say here, the voice of the controller that saysnow; the sense, in the
first seconds after the engines reach their assigned takeoff power, that this
is only a curious kind of driving down an equally curious road.
But with speed comes a transition,
the gathering sense that the wheels matter less and the flight controls on the
wings and the tail matter more. In the cockpit we sense the airplane’s
speed-born life to come in the air, we feel clearly that long before we leave
the ground we are already flying along it, and as the lights of the runway
start to alternate red and white to indicate its approaching end, as the four
rivers of power that equal nearly a quarter of a million pounds of thrust
unfurl over the runway behind us, I lift the nose.
As if we are only pulling out of a
driveway, I turn right, toward Tokyo.
We are underway.
When someone I’ve just met at a
dinner or a party learns that I’m a pilot, he or she often asks me about my
work. Three questions come up most often, in language that hardly varies. Is
flying something I have always wanted to do? Have I ever seen anything “up
there” that I cannot explain? And do I remember my first flight? I like these
questions. They seem to have arrived, entirely intact, from a time before
flying became ordinary.
WATER
London, now, is on my side of the
cockpit. The gaze of passengers on the right side may follow the Thames as far
as the North Sea. From the flight deck we see the Suffolk coast directly ahead
of us, a clean line of land’s end that moves steadily down the aquarium-thick
panes of the windshield as we climb and accelerate.
Land, not water, will predominate on
this route to Tokyo — a journey across all of Eurasia, the world’s largest land
mass, bookended by the blue of two seas. But these first minutes over the North
Sea are enough to remind me that flying offers perhaps the last thing an
aspiring pilot would expect: a close experience of water.
About 70 percent of the world’s
surface is ocean. Much of the land that long-haul pilots work above is covered
in snow or ice. At any given time, roughly two thirds of the Earth is covered
in cloud. For many miles and hours in the sky — sometimes for nearly an entire
flight — water, in one state or another, is the only thing we see.
It’s routine from the cockpit to see
storms form in real time, and from them the fall of new rain on the roof of the
ocean, or to overfly the endpoints of glaciers, where shards of the ancient
snow-glass tumble into the police-light blue of northern seas. When, after long
hours over desert or sparsely inhabited land a city appears, the water we see
near it — lakes, dams, rivers locked in their rolling green frames of
vegetation — looks holy as blood.
Our image of the Wright Brothers on
the windswept Carolina coast is the best reminder of the debt every pilot owes
to the sea. Today in the air we still speak a nautical language —
offorward and aft; cabins, galleys andbulkheads; manifests,
rudders andtrim. We count aircraft by hulls andfleets.
Our port and starboardwingtips are marked by red and green
navigation lights, arranged as upon a ship. Our speed in the blue between two
cities is measured inknots. What remains of us is ourwake.
AIR
Perhaps the simplest question about
any flight is, How high are we?
Three altimeters in the cockpit —
two bright digital readouts, and one old-school device with hands that turn
like those of a clock — show 31,000 feet.
Yet we know that we are probably not
as close to 31,000 feet as these altimeters suggest. We are somewhat lower; or
perhaps we are higher. One thing is certain — it would be easy to find a dozen
airliners flying over different parts of the world, all of whose altimeters
displayed 31,000 feet, none of which are at the same altitude.
How is this possible?
Planes calculate their altitude by
measuring air pressure. The air lies most heavily on places that are lowest,
the places that have the most air piled above them. A barometric altimeter
(baros, meaning weight) equates high air pressure — lots of air weighing down —
with low altitude. As a plane climbs, there is less air above it. The altimeter
senses less air weight and reports a higher altitude.
There’s a problem, however. Air
pressure is not constant. It varies across the Earth. It also varies in each
place as time and weather pass.
Consider an airplane parked at an
airport. If the air pressure changes, then what’s displayed on its altimeters
changes too, even though the airplane has not moved an inch up or down. It’s a
regular occurrence to board a parked airplane whose altimeters claim that it’s
either well underground or already climbing up in the sky.
Such anomalies are dealt with by
adjusting the altimeter. Before we depart we obtain a measurement of the
current local air pressure. With our altimeters correctly tuned, we can ensure
that at low altitudes we are safely separated not only from other airplanes but
from nearby obstacles and hills.
These rigorous calibrations to the
local air were a surprise to me when I was first taught about them. But even
more surprising is the fact that at the higher points of flight, we abandon
them.
At high altitudes we are far from
any obstacles below. But we face a new problem: Our local altimeter setting
would soon become inaccurate — both to the changing air around us, and to the
settings of other aircraft that departed from other cities. So, to ensure our
safe separation from other high-flying aircraft, we all set standard. We
switch the reference point for our altimeters to a common pressure setting
that’s derived from a universal, standard model of the Earth’s air.
To ignore local air pressure, of
course, is to ignore our true altitude. Indeed, planes following altitudes
referenced to the standard atmosphere collectively and continuously adjust
their degree of wrongness — gently climbing or descending in a collective,
school-of-fish-like movement as the true air pressure below changes with time
and location. Locked for hours at what our altimeters show to be 31,000 feet,
our true altitude may vary constantly.
Think of an ocean, of all the boats
across its vast expanse rising and descending on their local swells. All the
boats are on the surface, though their true elevation varies. An altitude
referenced to the standard atmosphere is called a flight level and it is just
like such a surface: a membrane encircling the Earth, pressed with indentations
and textured with rises, shimmering invisibly on the aerial imperfections of
the world.
SKY COUNTRIES
“Call now London,” an air traffic
controller says to us, followed by a new frequency.
Since takeoff we’ve been passed from
one London controller to another, sharing a few minutes of airtime before we’re
handed over to the next as simply as a baton. But now we’re nearing the invisible
border of London’s aerial dominion. The last of today’s London controllers says
“Contact now Maastricht. Good flight.”
The world’s airspace is divided.
There are various sorts of divisions. To the pilots who cross them every day,
their borders form what we may regard as the countries of the sky.
London is such a sky country.
Maastricht is another — indeed, it’s one of Europe’s busiest and most important
volumes of named air. It covers much of the higher airspace over the northwest
corner of Europe, a new and unified dominion above some of the Continent’s
historically bloodiest borders.
America’s sky countries look much as
its states might, if some pitiless war or committee had hugely reduced their
number. The sky called Salt Lake City covers parts of nine states, from
southern Nevada, north over the Great Salt Lake itself to the Canadian border,
which it meets between the air-states of Seattle and Minneapolis. There is a
region called New York; yet most of New York State lies in Boston, which also
encompasses all of New England.
AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL ZONES
KZSE
KZBW
KZMP
KZLC
KZNY
KZOB
KZAU
KZOA
KZDV
KZID
KZDC
KZKC
KZTL
KZLA
KZME
KZAB
KZJX
KZFW
KZHU
KZMA
Source: Navtech
The names of some sky countries are
familiar to pilots before we fly anywhere. Paris, Delhi, Bangkok; world cities
beneath their eponymous air countries.
Other aerial names correspond to
places less familiar to a pilot, like me, who grew up in western Massachusetts.
The syllables then form a kind of aerial poetry, the drumbeat of distant sky-lands
beyond the next fold of the chart: Turkmenabat and its sister Turkmenbashi;
Vientiane, Wuhan and Kota Kinabalu; Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, Norilsk and
Poliarny. Or the names are among the last you might imagine would rise to
prominence in the brightly modern sky: Arkhangelsk, Dushanbe and Samarkand.
In the borderlands, where pilots
transfer from one set of controllers to another, there’s a certain majesty to
the place names heard so high above the turning Earth. Several sky countries
after Maastricht, the sun is setting behind us, and the first stars appear in
the night we are racing toward. A Finnish controller says “Sir, call now
Sankt-Peterburg. You are released.”
WAYPOINTS
If you asked me where we are right
now, seven or so hours into our flight, I would say we are in the sky country
called Irkutsk. More specifically, we are approaching INTAK.
INTAK is a waypoint. An airplane
typically navigates through sky countries along a route composed of a few radio
beacons and many waypoints. Waypoints are defined by coordinates or their
bearing and distance from a beacon, and by a name, which typically takes the
form of a five-letter capitalized word — EVUKI, JETSA, SABER — that’s
pronounceable and distinct to controllers and pilots regardless of their first language.
Waypoint names are the sky’s audible currency of place, atomized and distinct.
Many waypoint names are random, but
others are not.
Near the border of India and
Pakistan is TIGER. Another TIGER forms part of an arrival pattern for London,
as if lifted from Britain’s former empire as incongruously as an animal taken
from a warm place to a zoo in a cold city. From Singapore to London, I may
overfly both. There are five SHARK waypoints — one east of Sydney, the others
off the islands of Jersey, Maui, Taiwan and Trinidad.
It’s America’s sky-mappers who have
gone to the greatest lengths to localize its skies. Near Kansas City are BARBQ,
SPICY, SMOKE, RIBBS, and BRSKT. Near Detroit is PISTN; also MOTWN and WONDR
(Stevie, Michigan-born).
Boston has etched a particularly
rich constellation onto the heavens above New England. There is PLGRM, of
course; CHWDH, LBSTA and CLAWW; GLOWB and HRALD for the city’s newspapers;
while SSOXS, FENWY, BAWLL and OUTTT trace the fortunes of the city’s baseball
team in long arcs across the stars. There’s a NIMOY waypoint; Leonard was born
in Boston.
In a letter written in 1869, Mark
Twain wrote that “the grand problem of aerial navigation” is “a subject that is
bound to stir the pulses of any man.” Twain, the pilot of riverboats who died
seven years after the first flight at Kitty Hawk, never flew. But he might be
pleased by the thought of 747s, and of TWAIN, the waypoint over Hannibal, his
childhood home on the Mississippi.
NIGHT
It’s been dark for hours now. There
are three pilots on a flight this long and now it’s time for my break. A
colleague takes my place in the right-hand seat of the cockpit. Before I go to
the bunk, located at the rear of the cockpit, I stay for a moment by one of the
side windows, to gaze out and up.
If you look into the night sky from
an airplane for more than a few minutes you may well see a shooting star. My
eye catches something. I look, smile and say to myself, There’s another
one. I don’t even mention them to a colleague; another will be along soon
enough.
One winter night, before I became a
pilot, I sat in a window seat on the left side of the plane for a flight from
Chicago to Boston. It was bitterly cold in both cities. About halfway through
the flight, I looked out the window and saw what could only be the aurora
borealis, the northern lights. I had never seen them before. The slow
transformations in shape and brightness took the form of milk poured into a
glass of iced coffee, or of dye landing in water. A few minutes later one of
the pilots came out to stretch his legs. He told me he was nearing the end of a
long career in aviation, and this night’s display was the finest he had seen so
far south in the planet’s skies.
That night I thought it must be a
wonderful thing to be a pilot, to see such a sight regularly. In winter’s long
darkness the auroras are our clouds of light, from beneath which wisps of
illumination drift away, like rain swept sideways by the wind. Yet as the years
since I became a pilot go by I find that the northern lights have come to
represent a challenge I didn’t expect.
Sometimes I find it hard to remain
interested — in the northern lights, in the ceaseless meteors or a hundred
other phenomena of the sky and Earth — because they appear so regularly,
because to pilots, they are ordinary.
My original excitement returns, at
least in part, when I try to share what I see with others. When I see the
auroras start to form I often tell the flight attendants, so they can look from
a window or come to the cockpit for a wider, clearer view. Sometimes, if a
passenger is awake, one of the cabin crew may quietly point to the window, to
the surf of light breaking along the sky’s northern shores. Afterward the crew
member and I may talk about the sight in the galley, as if it was almost new to
us again.
LANDING
A chime sounds in the darkness of
the 747’s cockpit bunk. My break is over. I feel for the switch that turns on a
pale yellow beam. I change into my uniform, which has been hanging on a plastic
peg for about three hours, nearly 2,000 miles.
I open the door that leads from the
bunk to the cockpit. Even when I know it’s coming, the brightness always
catches me out. The cockpit beyond the bunk is blasted with a directionless
daylight so pure and overwhelming, so alien to the darkness I left it in hours
ago and to the gloom of the bunk, that it is like a new sense.
At this moment it’s the light
itself, rather than what it falls upon, that is the essential feature of the
Earth. What the light falls upon is the Sea of Japan, and far across this
water, on the snow-capped peaks of the island nation we are fast approaching.
The blueness of the sea is as perfect as the sky it reflects. It is as if we
are slowly descending over the surface of a blue star, as if all other blues
are to be mined or diluted from this one.
We cross Japan and then sail out
over the open Pacific, until the headings issued by the controllers direct us
back to shore. The descent is its own kind of journey. Our eyes are drawn
downward; they follow our intention as we move.
The technologies that bring us
across the sky still amaze me. We saw Tokyo from so far away. We saw it from
the other side of the world, through fog and cloud and the skies of many
countries. We saw it from London; we saw it from another day.
At first a runway appears like a
punctuation mark, a bracket tilting away along the ground, marked off as
preciously from its surroundings as a painting on the far wall of a museum.
When I’m first able to pick out the runway I announce, “I’ve got it.”
Occasionally colleagues say, “Land ahoy” at the sight of the runway, even if we
have not been over the sea at all during the flight, and I know just what they
mean.
I now have a clear view of our
assigned runway ahead. I disconnect the autopilot and silence the whoop-whoop
of the siren that warns me I’ve done so. We lower the landing gear and complete
the extension of the flaps that expand and alter the wing. We read the landing
checklist. The air is bumpier now.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull found
that when he flew low he could fly “longer, with less effort.” All pilots know
just what he meant. The wing starts to provide more lift when it is near the
ground, even if nothing else has changed. On the 747, I feel what is described
as a float through the controls, a sudden resistance by the airplane to descend
as willingly as before. The air beneath us begins to act like a pillow — a
parting gift from the sky, or a welcome from the approaching Earth. In the last
few hundred vertical feet of our journey from London, as I start to feel this
ground effect, I lower the nose slightly, remove a touch of power.
At about 30 feet above the surface
of Japan I pull the nose up and begin to close the thrust levers. I feel that
moment of poise: a sense that continued flight is as likely as anything else,
that we have lowered the wheels but they are not yet turning upon the Earth,
that a question has been asked but not answered.
Then the hard-won lift runs like
water from the wings, and we land.
Mark Vanhoenacker is a senior first
officer for British Airways on the Boeing 747-400 fleet and the author of
“Skyfaring: A Journey With a Pilot.” This essay was adapted from the
author’s book.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Post Memorial
Day article of interest:
Our
Forgotten Honor: A Memorial Day Reflection
I remember not liking him at first. I was an eighteen year-old
know-it-all with a weak jump shot; he was a six-foot-something, glasses-wearing
dad who out-played everyone in the church gym that Monday night. I don’t
remember much of the game, but he stuck in my brain. He never seemed to tire,
and never quit smiling.
Afterwards, my father told me the wiry man was a doctor and Army
reservist named Mark Connelly. I was surprised that he was a physician, but
more surprised that he felt compelled to serve our country by caring for the
wounded.
After that night, I never saw Dr. Connelly again.
Weeks later, my mother called to tell me that Dr. Connelly was
killed in action during the Gulf War. He had just called home to talk to his
family and was on his way back to base when disaster struck. His wife and two
children survive him.
His memorial service was one of the most powerful I’ve attended.
The community dearly loved him and our church congregation seemed to heave from
the loss. Pastor and Army Colonel Jerry Young led the service, charged with
remembering and burying a husband, father, professional and brother-in-arms. I
have never forgotten the tears that fell that day.
Many years later, Dr. Mark Connelly’s memory returns as I begin
planning my family’s Memorial Day picnic. My two small daughters will play in
the sprinkler and my in-laws will help grill the burgers and prepare the salad.
We will celebrate our life together, eat a bit too much and plant some herbs.
As I reflected on what this holiday actually means, I happened
to look at Floyd’s house next door. This middle-aged Jersey native who attends
church on Sunday and loves his three grown daughters has lined his entire yard
with American flags. He is thankful—thankful for the men and women who paid the
ultimate price for our burgers and fries and Cokes and gardens and the ability
to live with little regard for our security and safety.
I know it’s increasingly unpopular to show Christian pride of
country. I’ve discussed with young leaders whether or not it is appropriate to
recognize holidays like Memorial Day and Independence Day in our churches. I’m
often astonished at the growing lack of honor some display toward our veterans.
For us who sacrifice little—if anything—and yet have no qualms about enjoying
the luxury and freedom provided by this country we belie our lack of gratitude
with our cavalier attitudes toward the mixture of faith and country. Have we grown
so pious?
I find myself offering disclaimers to statements that might be
misunderstood as too patriotic, and I certainly don’t fly the colors on my
front porch. After all, I’m a citizen of heaven, right?
This weekend I took some time to look at some familiar passages
in Scripture. In Romans 13, I was reminded how the Apostle Paul urged the 1st
century Christians to be good citizens, living in submission to the
God-established rulers. In verses such as Isaiah 40:15, Daniel 2:12 and
Proverbs 8:15,16, I was struck by the overwhelming notion that God holds all
kings and kingdoms under his sovereign rule.
I know the debate surrounding Christians in the military or even
Christians celebrating holidays of a supposed imperial government will not be
solved in this forum. But I do believe one thing can be remedied: our Christian
spirit. The underlying citizen-ethic in Scripture is submission and humility,
an ethic modeled by the centurion in Luke 7:1-10 and Christ himself before
Pilate.
Waving a flag or observing a moment of silence on this “Day of
Decoration” (as it was formerly called in 1868) does not imply support for
every American initiative, both foreign and domestic. It simply honors the men
and women who have given their lives serving their fellow citizens and for
those who daily fight to protect something they believe serves the common good
of all humankind: freedom.
Dr. Mark Connelly’s commitment to the good of others in a time
of war makes me shudder. His memory shames me for all the times I withhold
honor from those who deserve it. I wonder if this Memorial Day we can find the
space in our picnics and parties and hipster theology to observe a moment of
silence for the Mark Connelly’s of the world. Let us raise our glasses and in
thankful chorus toast the lives of those made our day-off so special.
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