Lent [Day 5]: Approach and Departure

Two-Six Left

A train yard's beaded chevron unravels, almost imperceptibly. An abandoned unbuilt neighborhood passes below. Bold weeds and unapologetic brush build the picket fence that encircles ghosts of dogs and two point five kids on streets with squandered names. Long forgotten are the artists' cheery renderings in glossy brochures. Further on, a kidney carved by an age-wrinkled river. Filaments of sea froth unwind across a lake, echoed a hundred feet above by a sparkling white thread of birds in low sun.

The countdown from one-hundred-ten reflexively begins as the gear drops - a test of a flight attendant's tension-easing small talk several trips ago. A fling of a mooring rope to land about the time that faith in fluid dynamics wanes. (One-hundred-twelve to a crooked touchdown - owing, perhaps, to an errant forty-six and inconsistent pacing. The human measurement of the mechanical.)

Ascent again. A loosely-collected town, no planning commission to sweep together the fragments and splinters. Color leaches from earth as a brilliant ribbon of atmosphere - trapping the terrestrial from the celestial - intensifies. Details obscure until glitter sharpens against velvet. Light cast and light swallowed and light cast again. A tangerine moon rises as if from within the earth. Drawn by its gravity, we yield to its pull home.

Originally written 1 January 2010

Long Weekend

Even though (because?) I have tons of work to do this weekend, I'm really glad for the holiday weekend. This morning, I worked against some of my sleep deficit, which grew significantly this week and left me vulnerable to an opportunistic cold virus. I slept until 930a, which was perfect - long enough for good rest, but not too long that I felt I squandered the morning.

Yesterday's grey all-day rain gave way to clear-and-cool today, and I spent far too much of it indoors. As the sun sank, I decided to follow the very advice I gave to someone earlier this afternoon. I took a 45-minute walk around the neighborhood and down to the lake. Meanwhile, I got to see/hear some of the early-evening international arrivals and departures on 35R.

On Aviation Incidents

Rest in peace, all souls from CJC3407.

Commuter aircraft get a bad rap for a wide variety of reasons.  I've long disliked prop planes, and I'm sure I can trace this back to the Roselawn ATR accident.  I know they're as inherently safe as any other tube of metal hurtling through the air, but they sure are noisy and cramped, and to be honest, I generally prefer to divorce myself from the operation of my aircraft as much as possible.  Contrast a shaky takeoff in winter in a turboprop with an impossibly smooth climb out of a tropical airport in a 767.  (It's nice to have a home airport at which I have more choices than commuter planes.)

Still, I know that air travel is really safe.  Really safe.  I have lived and used to work for years right next to airports where hundreds of planes operate without incident each day.  I can rationally examine the statistics - and my brain acknowledges it readily, as I sit here on the sofa.  Surprisingly, despite all my frequent-flier miles, I can be a bit of a panicky flier if I'm not otherwise distracted.  Even a clear-sky approach into Orlando with rising thermals and wake turbulence from other inbound aircraft makes me hold on to my seatbelt a little tighter and start praying.  Again, even though I KNOW (far more than the average flier) the reasons for the turbulence we encounter at the top of the boundary layer, I often have to consciously unclench.  It's irrational fear and I know it.  It smacks of a larger issue I've been wrestling with lately - that of trust between me and God.  I guess it's easier to trust when your feet are on solid earth, but we have no more control here on the ground than in the air.   I ROUTINELY put myself in exponentially greater danger during my 1.5-h daily commute by car.  And yet, some days, it takes a boarding pass to get me to pray?  

I was on a commuter plane a couple summers ago from EWR-DCA.  It was a smooth summer-evening flight; midway through the final turn to line up with the runway, the gear came down and it felt like all hell broke loose on this plane.  Okay, maybe not all - we felt under control after what was likely just a few seconds and most likely always under control.  The NTSB today released FDR information from 3407's final moments, which made me think of that flight.  The gear dropped and the flaps lowered and, apparently, all hell broke loose.  Popular speculation is that a combination of icing and interrupted airflow from the lowered flaps caused a tail stall.  What's interesting is that procedures for recovering from a wing stall are exactly opposite to those for recovering from a tail stall.  So in an instant, a pilot has to determine what's gone wrong and correct it, with the wrong choice ending in disaster.  I make a ton of mistakes in the course of my career, so I have a lot of respect for pilots (consummate problem-solvers), who, bearing out the statistics, get it right almost all the time.

In reference to a passenger whose flight from MSY-EWR was delayed, keeping him off the crashed plane, a contributor on an aviation forum said an experience like that would change your life forever.

I missed a flight from London this summer, with 27 students on a tour.  Surrounded by a lot of panic and upset, I was relatively calm.  Part of it was my comfort with commercial aviation procedures.  Maybe it's because I'm on the ground, but I don't usually sweat delays or missed flights, though, and I attach a lot of baggage (pun intended.  would "gravity" have been any more acceptable?) to the deliberation when opting to switch flights or stand by for another.   To know why, rewind to 25 May 1979.  

Right before my third birthday, my parents and I flew to Los Angeles for my aunt's wedding.  We were going to take United ORD-DEN-LAX, but United pilots were talking about going on strike, so my parents booked American ORD-LAX instead.  We were originally ticketed on AA191 on the day before it became the deadliest crash on US soil (prior to 2001), but then my parents decided we would fly the next day.  They figured that if we were going a day later, we should take an earlier flight.  That was to put us in the air on the flight right before 191 crashed on takeoff.  That morning, we all overslept, had a 90-minute drive to Chicago, and had to return a rental car.  By the time we got to O'Hare, we had to run through the terminal in a flat-out sprint (my parents carrying me) the whole length of the concourse to make the flight.  Otherwise, we'd have been on 191, which was our back-up reservation.  Our tickets had 191 printed on it, but crossed out and our flight number written under it - I think my parents still have it.  

He's right.  It does change your life forever.

Believe what you will about your gods.  Mine kept me off that plane.

Look, I know I'm just one in a sea of people whose planes don't crash on any given day.  But I can trust a God who orchestrates infinite events, of which I'm not even aware, to put me where I need to be.  And I don't.  I've been bought at a price and have purpose.  And I let a little fluid dynamics freak me out?

I have a wrestling match to get back to...

Complete Nerdvana

I just got back from the BEST weekend EVER!

Mr. Jenspin and I attended an event for Continental most frequent fliers.  It was totally free, put on by employee volunteers who seem to have as much fun as we do.  We just had to buy plane tickets to Houston.  We went to one a couple years ago, and had the best geeky fun time.  We had face time with the President and CEO and a lot of the top brass - VPs from every department.  They did Q&A sessions, and a lot of the suggestions we made were put in place later.  I mean, an airline that listens to what its most frequent, loyal customers have to say?  And indulge us in nerdy fun like behind-the-sc

enes tours of all sorts of things - baggage claim, the corporate headquarters, flight simulators, the executive tasting kitchen for catering.  So when I learned there was another one this year, I didn't want to pass up the opportunity.

And what an opportunity it was!  I haven't stopped smiling.  We arrived on Friday night and went to the airport hotel, where they had a dinner buffet for us and a Deal-or-No-Deal game called Miles or No Miles where we competed for frequent flier miles.  We didn't get picked, but it was fun to watch, nonetheless.  We all got a gift as we left - sets of four surplus cups-and-saucers from an older first-class service.  I mean, an airline that does an event like this and then gives me dishes?  What's not to love?? 

Anyhow, when we registered and got our name tags, we also got our tickets for the next morning's tour.  We ended up on the Mystery Tour, and I was so happy.  I don't know why, but I was hoping we would get put on the Mystery Tour.  We'd already toured headquarters.  The simulators don't really thrill me, and catering certainly would have been fun - so would inflight training (they got to slide down evacuation slides) - but I really wanted the surprise.  And I can't believe they kept it a secret until we got on the bus that morning.  Especially with everything that was involved in this tour!  So we board the bus, and not even the employee guiding us knew anything until he opened the envelope.  We'd all been speculating about what it was, and we were making all kinds of airplane jokes about the bus.  So when the announcement was made that the Mystery Tour was going to be known as Continental Flight 9920, my initial reaction was, oh, that's cute.  But then he kept reading.  We were going to the airport to board a 757, which would give us a tour of downtown Houston, a buzz of the tower at Houston Hobby airport, a loop over Galveston, then over towards Austin and back to the airport.  It slowly dawned on me that we were going on a joyride around Texas.  In a commercial 757.  Who DOES this?  Well, we do, apparently.  Ha ha ha!

We finally got through the fence of the airport and drive over to our plane, outside one of the hangars.  We went through a security screening and milled about the plane, took pictures of the landing gear, peered into the engines.  Then the VP of Inflight came down the air stairs and talked to us (~100 of us) about some of the things we'll see on the aircraft, like the on-demand entertainment system in every seat.  We'll have champagne and a snack, and our crew are the flight attendants from the safety video!  Okay, that might not mean much to the average reader, but it's just... perfect.  We fly a LOT.  We have seen this video hundreds of times.  So we "know" the flight attendants featured in it like you'd "know" a character on a tv show.  There couldn't have been a BETTER choice of crew for this group.  That's how well this thing was put together.  So we boarded and took seats in row 9, on the A-C side, which turned out to be a most fortuitous choice for sightseeing.  The execs made a few announcements, refreshingly dispensing with the usual airlinese.  Then they announced that after we make our pass over the other airport, once we get back up to a cruising altitude, the flight deck will be open for us to come up and meet the pilot and sit in the cockpit.

WHAT.

In the cockpit.  Of a commercial aircraft.  Post-9/11. 

Words cannot convey how cool this was.  We took off, 

staying pretty low.  We sure lucked out with weather.  Perfectly clear air.  We flew past downtown at 3000ft, then descended to 1000ft with full flaps and flew over the terminals.  What Houstonians must have thought!  

(presuming any noticed)  The pilot pulled back on the throttle, taking us back on up, where we did a 270-degree loop-de-do around Galveston, conveniently dipping the wings on my side of the plane.   The line for the flight deck was pretty long, so we just stayed in the cabin and chatted with the flight attendants 

and by the time we got up to the cockpit, we didn't have much more time than to put the pilot's cap on, take a couple pictures, gawk out the windscreen, and let someone else have their turn.  We landed, gathered up our swag (new business

 class amenity kits, pillows, blankets, and headsets - with this and our china, I'm surprised staff on Sunday didn't think we were stealing the entire cabin of our last flight), took some more pictures milling around

the bottom of the plane, then boarded the bus to return to the hotel.

So.  We took a commercial airliner on a joyride for an hour with celebrity flight attendants and an open cockpit door.  I'm going to need a grin-ectomy.

The afternoon was Q&A sessions with executives, including one by the CEO and President.  Then the evening's hangar party, where there were more fun and games (a Continental trivia match, hosted by the CEO; a Price-is-Right style competition; and a Let's Make A Deal game in which someone picked the gold curtain and won a galley bar cart, and someone else opted for the box, under which was a pot of cheese soup), a 737 to climb all around, a band, and a buffet.  

They really outdid themselves with this.  I thought the last one we attended was pretty great, even if I took a fair amount of ribbing by my colleagues for spending a weekend at an airport.  But I don't know how they'd ever top this weekend.

Thunderstorms

We had quite the stormy night tonight, and I'm reminded of a piece by Garrison Keillor (from salon.com, June 2001) that I've held onto for years:

Some big thunderstorms rolled across St. Paul last week, with lots of nearby lightning strikes to shake the windows and a downpour of rain, and Mr. Blue got to stand on the front porch with Baby Blue and enjoy the rock 'n' roll. It's a modest life here in River City, no struggle for fame and power, just the occasional spell of weather, and a good June thunderstorm is a great boon in every way. It rinses the air and greens up the lawn and garden and gives us a demonstration of power far beyond human control. And the thunderclaps make a little girl laugh out loud. And afterward everything is somehow changed, the ions rearrange. You go for a walk after a good rollicking thunderstorm and feel your own life slightly altered. We live in a mixed bag of a neighborhood, the sort of neighborhood you find a lot of in St. Paul, which doesn't have lawn police, and as you stroll around, you pass old manses lovingly restored and Home & Garden yards and you also pass old manses with trees growing out of the eaves and ancient rags for curtains and yards that look as if the owners are seriously on heroin. But after a deluge, we're all refreshed, obsessive and neglectful alike, and a sort of democracy of meteorology prevails. And as I write this, the sky is darkening and the light turning purplish and there is a great stillness in the yard. Two hundred miles east of here, a westbound plane from Boston is slowing down as the FAA computers tracking the storm rearrange the landing slots at Minneapolis-St. Paul and the sleeping forms in Row 23 stir slightly at the change of engine pitch and the pilot comes on the P.A. and warns of possible turbulence and the lady in 2A asks for another bloody mary and west of here the farmers whose fields are already soggy go to the refrigerator and get out a beer and here in our house a little girl looks out the window at the dark sky and turns to me and says, "Boom!"

After further deliberation, I've decided to append a couple albums to my last list of albums with no bad tracks. Which edges it to a Great Eight list instead of a Top Five, but let's be honest - I've always played fast and loose with the constrictions of five.

1. U2 - Achtung Baby
2. Dave Matthews Band - Crash
3. 10,000 Maniacs - MTV Unplugged
4. Paul Simon - Rhythm of the Saints
5. Simon & Garfunkel - Concert in Central Park
6. Soundtrack - The Last of the Mohicans
7. Leeland - The Sound of Melodies

Stuck in Chicago

So I'm currently stuck at O'Hare. Not the most exciting airport in which to be stuck, either. "Flight rescheduled due to air-traffic control"...

Now, one could argue that I would make good use of my time by grading exams, but that really involves spreading out papers across surfaces and there just isn't that much table space around here. But there is wi-fi (albeit not free - but cheap). So blogging it is! I'll save my book for the jet.

The people-watching has been fun. Normally, I'd be up for browsing booksellers or grabbing some ice cream, but I'm particularly tired, so slogging my exam-laden backpack up and down the terminal concourses just doesn't hold much appeal today. I'm on United, which isn't my preferred airline, but it does have one significant benefit: Channel 9. The air-traffic control broadcast to the seats in back. My next segment is a regional jet, which won't have it, but I got to listen to ATC on the Airbus. Glimpses into otherwise unseen worlds like that are fascinating. Kind of like factory tours - you get to see how it all happens. The arrivals controllers talk pretty much nonstop, carefully arranging their ballet of aircraft. I think it would be an interesting job, but I don't know if I could do it.

We had rain at home, but we took off just before sunrise and had sun the whole way, but icy grey stratocumulus clouds between us and earth. I was reminded of one thing that I loved about flying out of Monterey. Invariably, the airport would have a blanket of stratus over it. But the stratus layer is usually thin, and once you get through a few seconds of grey after take-off, you pop out of the clouds into a brilliantly sunny sky, with a cottony blanket of cloud below, snuggled up against mountain peaks that rim the bay. I was always a slightly nervous flier out of that airport (probably because of all the turboprop aircraft - not a fan of those), but I that particular moment always made up for the white knuckles.

I should go grab some lunch and wander on down to the gate. Wintergreen candy canes and Barnaby's pizza await my arrival.

A New Plane in Town

The Airbus A380 made a visit to MCO earlier this week. I missed the takeoff and landing, but I did get to see it on the tarmac. I made a drive-by shooting of it on my way to work one morning - hence the crappy composition and the bad sun angle.

Weather Geekery

Latest installment in the I-don't-have-time-to-write-a-real-post-so-I'm-just-
going-to-link-to-something-interesting page that used to be my blog before school resumed:

Footage from the cockpit of the Hurricane Hunter aircraft during a nighttime core-punch, as it were, of the eyewall of Hurricane Felix. Click.

Fly Kitty Air

Why was I not informed??

"The cabin interior is a fantasy land with sweet Hello Kitty paintings on the walls, and friendly flight attendants wearing Hello Kitty ribbons in their hair and Hello Kitty aprons. The Hello Kitty fun starts at check-in and lasts until luggage is claimed just as it does on EVA’s original Kitty Jet. Passengers get pink Hello Kitty boarding passes and luggage tags. Service onboard is accompanied by Hello Kitty accessories. Menu choices include Hello Kitty meals with special Kitty ice cream, and passengers have access to exclusive EVA Hello Kitty duty-free shopping."

Looking at that airplane food made me reminisce about Asian vittles. I wish we had these available in convenience stores in the US. And better selections of rice-cracker snacks. The stuff served in JAL's Sakura lounges was particularly tasty. Both the onigiri and the snack mix. I should spend more time downtown in the Asian grocery stores. And go for sushi sometime soon.

The Confessor Confesses

Admittedly ripped from a Postsecret card posted a couple months ago. But I totally do the same thing.

It's a bit of a problem, given how close we live to the airport...

Our Next Vacation

Maho Beach, St. Maarten
Princess Juliana Airport (SXM)

So many kinds of awesome.

My FlightMemory

My Latest Internet Addiction.

I don't have all my flights in there yet, even, and it appears I've already spent the better part of a month of my life in the air.

I know I'm missing at least three Christmases worth of flying, at least two Thanksgivings, a holiday weekend, and two weddings (all in Indiana, and all from the West Coast). Also, two trips toLos Angeles in my youth, one to New Orleans, and one to Phoenix. But I've input all I can stand this weekend (213 flights! :-D).

Of course, this isn't half as bad as my husband who has taken far more mileage runs and business trips than I have.

Like that disclaimer makes my flight habits look any healthier...


Oh yeah - the Boeing 787 Dreamliner was unveiled today. Sucks to be Airbus. Boeing's gonna make a killing on light fuel-efficient aircraft, over their gamble on a super-jumbo.

It's Friday?

I love how days just blur into one another on vacation. I had no idea it was Friday until I had the pressure of titling this post (was going to do something lame like "XXXday's Thoughts), and I had to stop and think about it.

Anyhow...


NYTimes: Airline Math.

Only one-third of the traveling public makes connections? That's really surprising. That can't be right. In this day and age of the hub-and-spoke airlines, I would have figured many many more people would still be making connections. I admit my husband and I are far from the norm when it comes to flying behavior, but I would have bet money that direct flights were the exception, not the rule. Or at least 50%. We fly Continental, and we don't live in a hub, so it's a foregone conclusion that we'll connect. I guess the low-cost carriers without megahubs (and, thus, more direct flights) are making more advances than I gave them credit. Still, I'd like to know how the consulting firm arrived at their statistics. Did they analyze itineraries, or did they look at passenger info per flight to see how many passengers on a given plane were connecting on?



Going to a concert tonight. I don't know one thing about the guy, but our friends are the opening act.

Oh wait. I do recognize one of his songs. Cool.

ATC FYI

For those of you playing at home, the answers are

Procedural control,
Flight plan comparisons by ARTCC controllers, and
Self-navigation by GPS.


Hm. Seems kinda laissez-faire to me. But I guess busy routes like the North Atlantic are close enough for contact with Iceland ATC.

Checking In

Darn. It sounds like there's more activity at the volcano than there has been recently, but it's still a 6-8h hike over hummocky lava fields to get to it. Oh well. I suppose that means we'll just have to come back! :)

Flying into Kona is like landing on the moon. It's otherworldly. The airport is in the midst of a lava bed and all you see surrounding the runway is rock. We flew Aloha Airlines from Oahu to The Big Island. Now, all I can think about is this. But I think, oh that was a long time ago, and it was due to metal fatigue on an old plane. Comforting thought until our plane pulls up, and it's a 737 that's easily as old as I am. :-/ I hope we're taking Hawaiian Airlines back over...

And check out that retro livery on this Aloha plane! --->

Speaking of planes, we had quite the long flight from the mainland (no "short hop" from LAX like we took when we lived on the west coast!) to ponder matters of aviation.

About 5h into our flight to HNL, the sheer absurdity of air travel hit me. I mean, when you really think about it, airplanes are completely preposterous. You strap yourself into a tin can, pump it full of air, go trundling at breakneck speed down a long path until the plane basically lifts off on its own volition, and somehow, you manage to come down safely on this tiny island in the middle of the Pacific. Which raises a question I need to research - who's responsible for air-traffic control over international waters? I mean, the guys up front are talking to people in Jacksonville after they take off from Orlando, but after you get out of Los Angeles's airspace, to whom are they talking then? I wondered the same thing on our trip to Europe last year, and I just realized I never found out the answer.

I like to be divorced from the operation of my aircraft, and I have to say that a 767 does not disappoint. Takeoff and landings are so smooth. Our 757 from MCO-IAH was comparably shaky through quite a bit of Gulf turbulence. But the 767 just muscles its way through the air with little regard to the vagaries of wind. Well done, Boeing. Well done.

Just so you know, winglets can make even a 737 look sexy. AmIright?

I had forgotten just how delicious Hawaii smells. Plumeria and ocean and tropical fruit. Yum.

I had a very irresponsible sun day yesterday (no sunscreen for an hour just after noon at 20 degrees north - all in the act of trying to get a tan started). I'm a bit pink, but overall not bad. I promise to be more responsible tomorrow!

Well, that's all the random thoughts for today. Will post more whenever I have extended internet access again, and who knows when that might be!

Just Plane Silly

Scurry away, planes! Scurry away from the Big Bad Thunderstorms!
...
Okay, it's clear, you can come back now.




ATTN REUTERS NEWS AGENCY

With a headline like this, I want *bees in the cockpit*. Don't toy with me.

Swarm of bees forces passenger plane to land



On the topic of planes, here's something I thought of recently, while on a plane at night, looking down at twinkling glittery cities:

What must the earth have looked like from a plane at night before electricity?

I almost immediately dismissed this as a Silly-Girl! thought (duh, Jen, if there's no electricity, there's probably not airplanes). But then I indulged myself. Take God, for example. I mean, He pretty much had the monopoly on views until planes were invented. He got to see the Before and After. I wonder whether He was thinking, "Gee, I can't wait until they figure out electricity, because it's going to make one side of the planet look way more interesting." And that led me to think about what else He can't wait for us to discover or for Him to reveal to us. Airplanes, even. Maybe He was thinking, "check this out - you guys are going to love this view!" But right now - what's He thinking, "Oh, man, it's going to be awesome when they figure ______ out!" about?