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Bombay, Monday, 1995-11-06 18:00 local (Z+5.5)
They get CNN here in the Leela Kempinski Hotel, so I've been watching the Yitzhak Rabin funeral. The events there have certainly been sobering. They make our every day lives seen somewhat unimportant for a moment.
Though my everyday life has not been momentous, it has not been dull. Some things that are happening that affect me. Tower Air started a class today (or at least they were supposed to) of 13 more pilots. This is supposed to be followed in January by another class of 30. The FCI bulletin (Flight Crews International—it's kind of an industry newsletter) says Tower is getting two more 747-200s. Three more routes are supposed to be opened soon: Bombay to Hong Kong, New York to Johannesburg, New York to Cape Town. How much of this will actually happen is unknown, but the important thing to me personally is that it gets me down the road to getting back to being a captain. Of course, that presumes I survive the probationary period...and the upgrade...and whatever. Sigh. Life is certainly uncertain.
I rode in the back from Paris to Delhi, providing the 4th crew member required by Indian regulations. For the short leg from Delhi to Bombay, I operated, even got to fly—the first leg I've gotten to fly in the last six. It was the first time I had been at the controls while landing at Bombay in over 5 years. They have a steep glidepath here, 3.3°. The normal is 3.0°. One wouldn't think that an extra 0.3° would make much difference, but it does. It changes the relationships subtlely. The view of the runway is slightly different. Your speed control is a bit different. The flare rate changes slightly. This added to the fact that it's a short runway and that we had a slight tailwind meant that I couldn't afford to let it float while trying to get a greaser. I didn't let it float, but I didn't get a greaser. Oh, well, it wasn't a cruncher either.
The other consideration was that the airplane was going out as soon as possible after we landed. That meant we needed to keep the brakes from heating up. I tried very gently to suggest to the captain that we could dispense with the automatic brakes. He's a new captain and a nervous one. He said he wouldn't be comfortable with autobrakes off, but that once the speed brakes had deployed, he'd be comfortable with clicking them off. The speed brakes did deploy, he did click off the autobrakes, and I let the airplane roll as long as I could using only heavy reverse thrust. The brakes did edge slightly into the yellow range but never came near the overheat range. Last week that same airplane lost five tires to hot brakes. It's a real problem here in the hot weather with the short runway, and it's exacerbated by Air India's policy of carrying so much fuel. They insist on lots of fuel. At Tower we try to land with 30,000 pounds or a lot less if necessary. We had 80,000 pounds when we landed yesterday, so that was an extra 50,000 pounds we had to bring to a stop along with the 455 people on board.
Brakes work, of course, by converting mechanical energy, the speed, into heat—and they do get hot. This heat transfers to the tires, inflated by 225 psi of nitrogen. Overheat protection in the tires is provided by fuse plugs set to blow before the tires themselves blow. Maximum tire heating occurs about 20-30 minutes after the actual landing. Last week's 5 tires blowing was a case of the fuse plugs blowing after the airplane was at the gate. They brakes had been overheated on the landing in the same kind of conditions we had.
The tires blowing caused quite a problem. Air India doesn't keep much of an inventory. The other interesting thing about getting them changed was having to bribe Air India's mechanics to get them to loan our mechanics a jack. Our guys had to give them $300 before they'd let us use one of their jacks. This in spite of the fact that such services are supposed to be provided as part of our contract with them. The mechanic I talked to said we've been paying an average of about $500 in bribes each week, and that during the Indian Hajj (2 Tower airplanes on it), we paid over $10,000 in bribes. The corruption in this country is endemic.
There are about 4 crews here at the hotel. One of them brought in a 3rd Tower Airplane (2 are on the Indian contract) that was on an interesting mission. It was a U.N. charter to take Indian troops to Bosnia. India has troops in the U.N. forces there.
This morning the flight engineer and the 2nd co-pilot of the crew I'm with talked me into going to a flea market on the other side of Bombay. To this point I had never been away from the airport environs (the Leela hotel is just off the airport). We rented a cab to take us there, about an hour's drive, wait there for us for a couple of hours, and return us. The cost was 450 rupees, about 15 dollars total, so $5 apiece. It was an interesting drive. One of those things that you're not unhappy you did, but that you won't bother with again.
Things in the stalls at the flea market were quite cheap, but of course you have to bargain. The standard advice is to offer them a tenth to a quarter of what they originally ask for and to work up to no more than half of the original asking price. The contrasts in Bombay include the fact that, while things are cheap in the local economy, they're very expensive in the hotel. A bottle of water costs 8 to 11 rupees outside the hotel—59 rupees in the hotel. The other f.o. on the crew ate supper in the Chinese restaurant in the hotel. It cost him $27.
The cab we took to the flea market wasn't air conditioned, so we had the windows down. This meant that each time we stopped at a light, the beggar children could thrust their hands into the cab. It's really hard to ignore them, and I wonder if I should. Interestingly, two of them chose to pinch me as the cab pulled away, presumably because I had declined to give them anything.
What I found amazing was that these children, being barefoot, could stand without discomfort on the asphalt, and it was black asphalt, in the tropics, under the noon day sun. A few times in my life I've gotten my feet toughened up, but I never got them to the point where I could have done that.
When we landed here yesterday afternoon, the bus from the hotel wasn't waiting for us, so we had to wait for it. This exposed us to the beggars. One little guy had withered legs and sat on a square of plywood with castors on it. He kept looking up at me, and at one point I decided to give him something. When I stuck my hand into my pocket, one of the flight attendants said, “Don't do that. There are a couple of dozen of them across the street watching. They'll all be over here, and they'll try to steal us blind.” I took my hand out of my pocket and looked. Sure enough. There were at least 20 across the street watching. I backed off. We were already concerned about our bags while we were waiting. Airline crews are preferred targets for theft.
When the bus finally got there, I happened to be one of the first to get my bags in the lower compartment. This meant they got slid to the other side of the baggage compartment, and there are doors on both sides. I decided to walk to the other side of the bus. I got there just in time to see some guy checking to see if any of those doors were unlocked. They weren't, and he just looked at me and walked off. Lesson learned.
Back to the flea market. They have some real craftsmen there. They make antiques. I'm sure an antique expert could tell the difference, but I sure can't. The whole place is, from my standpoint, an incredible accumulation of junk, but a collector would probably go wild there. I watched one old man making what appeared to be a piece of antique furniture. He was barefoot and was using both hands and one foot to work the wood. The foot was used to hold things in place, his toes wrapped around it as good as I could do with my hands, probably better.
They have a saying here, “new construction, old materials,” alluding to the fact that when a new building is finished, it looks decrepit. There's an apartment building outside my window that I know wasn't there five years ago, but it looks as though its been there for at least fifty.
We leave tomorrow morning, hopefully, for Delhi then Paris. Since we'll be coming off the Air India contract and operating next on a regular Tower Air Paris to JFK flight, we'll be staying at the Meridien, and I can log on to Compuserve from there. So, everybody will get overloaded with all these messages I've been piling up.
Terry
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