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Tel Aviv, Sheraton Hotel, Monday, 1996-03-25 11:00 local (Z+3)
Things have been hectic. Since my last message I've been home and back out twice, and all the time at home has been spent on Windows 95. I'm really feeling the need to come back up to speed in the computing world. When I have to quit flying because of my age (3.5 years from now), going back to some type of software development appears at this point to be my best bet for generating an income. Who knows, I may get that chance sooner if I don't survive probation at Tower. Nobody's said anything adverse to me yet, and my probationary year is up 15 days from now, but in some instances guys have had no hint until they were terminated two days before their year was up. Tower is a very political place!
I have Windows 95 on both my desktop and laptop machines now. I installed it a total of three times on the desktop machine. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice it to say I learned a bit. Given that experience, I knew what to avoid when I installed it on my laptop, and that went smoothly. I still need to fine tune it on both machines, and I think I may still have some hardware glitches on my desktop machine.
The first of the two trips since I last wrote was interesting. It was one of those experiences you can look back on with some fondness but which you would never want to experience again. We took an empty airplane from JFK to Newark for a charter to pick up a full load of college students on Spring break and take them to Cancun. It was a disaster. The problem was the airplane. Tower just purchased it, and it had been sitting in the desert in storage. Maintenance simply had not had time to get it up to speed.
To start with, we were about three hours late getting out of JFK as they were madly trying to fix or defer known problems. One the problems deferred was that the APU (auxiliary power unit) wouldn't work. The APU is actually a small jet engine that is used to provide electrical power and a pneumatic (air) supply while you're on the ground. If you don't have it working, you can still supply electrical power from a ground power unit, and you can also hook up a ground pneumatic supply—preferably two for the 747. The engine starters on large jet aircraft are powered by pneumatics. So, to start your first engine without an APU, you must have both ground electrical and air supplied. After you get one engine started, you can use it for both electrical and air.
Anyway, we get in the air for the short hop over the Hudson River to Newark, and all sorts of things started going wrong. My artificial horizon had a problem, and that kept setting off the CIWS (central instrument warning system), which consists of a flashing red light in front of each pilot and a very irritating, beeping horn. That necessitated our resetting the system every 30 seconds or so. With this going on, we land at Newark. The captain flew the leg, and as he started coming out of reverse thrust, he had real problems controlling the aircraft's direction. Reason: the reversers on both # 3 and # 4 engines wouldn't come out of reverse. At one point we were on this taxiway needing to turn left. However, all we could get was reverse thrust on the right side. It is to the captain's credit that he was able to get the airplane to the gate without having to shutdown and call a tug.
So, we arrive at the gate where 400+ impatient college students are waiting, angry because their planned partying in Cancun has been delayed by at least 3 hours. What they and we didn't know was that it was going to take another 6 hours before we would be able to get out of Newark. They were pissed, so much so that 2 policemen were called to restore order. That wasn't enough! Finally, they had 10 policemen in riot gear brought out. They formed a skirmish line between the students and the gate, and a police lieutenant acted as an intermediary between us and the students.
We finally got into the air with me flying the leg. The captain is nervous about the reversers, so he orders me to not use them at Cancun. I brought up the problem that with the 80+ temp there, the brakes will probably overheat. He says not to worry about it. So, we land and let the brakes absorb all the energy. Every one of the went out of the green, into the yellow, and then to the top of the red on the brake temp gauges. All three of us thought we would lose at least one fuse plug. There's a fuse plug in every wheel. If the wheel heats up too badly, the idea is the fuse plug will blow before the tire does. Each tire, by the way, is filled with nitrogen to a pressure of 225 psi at standard temperature. We lucked out, though, and didn't lose a single tire, which was good because Cancun is not exactly a 747 maintenance base.
What did happen though is that I in my curiosity decided to go down and see just how hot the brakes were. So, after we unloaded the college kids, I start poking around the wheels, squatting down to better check how much heat the brakes are still radiating. Not paying attention in the dark, I raised up to go the next truck and rammed my head into one of the gear doors. It stunned me for a moment, but I shook it off and started to walk on. It took about 30 seconds before I realized I was bleeding profusely. So, at one in the morning I'm stooped over on the ramp at Cancun waiting for the blood to stop running so I can straighten up without getting blood all over my uniform. Unfortunately it kept running, so I finally blotted it with my handkerchief and ran for the air stairs. When I got to the top, I yelled for a first aid kit. I guess I was quite a sight. The captain said later that when the flight attendants saw me with all the blood on my face it really freaked them out. Fortunately we had a purser on board who is a paramedic, and he cleaned me up. If we had been someplace where regular medical help was available, I probably would have had a stitch or two put in. However, I felt fine, and who cares whether one has a scar on the top of his head. When I finally go completely bald, it can be a conversation piece. <g>
The story doesn't end here. There are another 400+ students in Cancun waiting to return to the U.S., and they've been waiting at the terminal for 9 hours, the length of our delay relative to the original schedule. They're pissed. It gets worse, we had accumulated more problems, and those problems took an additional 12 hours to fix in Cancun. The Mexican police handled the situation quite nicely. They simply got on the p.a. system and announced that anyone causing any problems would be immediately thrown in jail. Since nobody likes to spend time in Mexican jails, that took care of that problem.
Now normally, we could have gone to a hotel while waiting for the airplane to be fixed, but because of Spring break, there were no hotel rooms available. So, we were forced to spend all night in Cancun on the airplane. Remember, though, that we have no APU, and Cancun only had one ground pneumatic unit (they call them “huffers”), and it would be available only for starting. It was a hot, humid night...more so on the airplane. I spent most of the night walking around the ramp.
Well, this hasn't been much to cover all the time since the last message, but I'm pooped. I want to be asleep by noon. I've got a 21:00 wake-up call coming and then a 12 hour leg back to JFK. By the way, I'm only about 3 blocks from the shopping center in Tel Aviv where all those people were killed by the last Hamas suicide bomber. Gives one pause.
Terry
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