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Sheraton Hotel, Tel Aviv, Saturday, 1999-01-23 01:00 local (Z+3)
Hello, All,
The following Assocated Press article appeared concerning Tower's Sunday JFK to San Francisco flight. I operated the flight the Friday before.
. NEW YORK (AP) -- A minor engine fire forced a San . Francisco-bound Tower Air flight to return to Kennedy . Airport, airline officials said Monday. . The four-engine Boeing 747, with 268 . passengers and a crew of 17, took off at 8:48 p.m. Sunday, said airline . spokesman Leo Devine. . "As it was climbing past 13,500 feet, there was an indication of a fire in . the No. 1 engine," he said. The crew initiated emergency procedures, . dousing the fire with an extinguisher mounted in the engine, and . returned safely to Kennedy at 9:08 p.m., he said. . Port Authority police inspected the aircraft when it landed and . determined that the fire was out, said spokesman Bill Cahill. . Passengers left the plane using the standard jetways. . Passengers were offered other flights on Tower Air or other carriers . Sunday night; others were put up in hotels and took flights to their . destinations on Monday, said Devine. . However, some complained that they were not kept adequately . informed by airline officials before, during and after the incident. The . flight was initially delayed about five hours; Devine said it was due to a . scheduling change involving aircraft and had nothing to do with . mechanical difficulties. . Cahill said Port Authority police were called to the Tower Air terminal . around 11:15 p.m. to quell a disturbance involving passengers from the . aborted flight and airline workers. The passengers were promised they . would be provided hotel rooms, which helped calm the situation, Cahill . said. . Responding to reports of passenger complaints, Devine said, "We . responded to the occurrence as best as we could and explained the . situation. We feel that we have done our part in helping them complete . their journey." . The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating, said . spokeswoman Alison Duquette. . AP Content Copyright © 1999 The Associated Press
The captain on the flight was a friend of mine. He's a little older and due to retire next month. Tuesday he was at the Sunrise (the hotel I and many other Tower pilots use at JFK), and decided he'd had enough. He called in sick and went home (ranch outside of Reno), telling fellow pilots that he planned on staying sick until his retirement date.
The article and the situation are revealing in other ways. Note that the flight departed nearly five hours late, not unusual for Tower and especially for the San Francisco flight. It cancels as much as it flies and is almost always late.
They had a near-riot afterwards. We average about one of those every two months at Tower's JFK terminal. Combine that with our semi-regular bomb-scare evacuations, and it can be considered a truly adventurous place to work.
Tower never puts people up at a hotel unless the law requires it, and the law doesn't require it at points of origin. Most airlines do more than required in the interest of public relations, but Tower's not p.r. sensitive, knowing that the class of people we carry are loyal to price only. However, in this instance and only because of the near-riot, Tower relented.
Finally, the purser over-reacted to the situation and briefed the cabin crew and passengers for a possible crash landing, the whole take-off-your-glasses, pull-your-false-teeth, put-your-head-between-your-legs (and kiss your ass goodbye as the saying goes) drill. That was completely unnecessary. The fire indication had gone out when they shut down the engine. The crew shot one fire bottle into it simply as a precaution, and an engine-out landing in a 747 is no big deal. I've done four of them for real and, of course, innumerable ones in the sim.
That completes that horror story. On to the next, which proves Murphy's Law, if anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible time. By the way, the corollary to Murphy's Law is that Murphy was an optimist.
This happened to one of our check airmen last week. Some background is necessary to appreciate the situation. Check airmen are captains that are certified by the FAA to give required flight checks. One of the required checks is that a prospective new captain must be given a line check. A line check is an actual operational flight with passengers. There is another requirement that a prospective captain new to a given airplane must be observed by the FAA. There is a further requirement that the initial certification of check airmen must be done observing the prospective check airman while he is observing a checkee. Now if you're still with me after all that, you know that three things are going on:
- the FAA is watching the prospective new check airman,
- the FAA is watching the prospective new captain,
- the new check airman is watching the prospective new captain.
Got all that? So last week on a JFK to Tel Aviv flight, the FAA, in the person of Tower's POI (Principal Operations Inspector), is sitting in the jumpseat immediately behind the new captain in the left seat. The new check airman is sitting in the right seat. The weather is crappy, the flight is late, the cabin has 480 already-unhappy passengers. The airplane has had to be de-iced, and since it's snowing, anti-iced as well. There's a time limit for anti-ice effectiveness; it's called the hold-over time. The airplane is an old -100 with small fuel tanks and small engines, which means they couldn't load a lot of excess fuel over and above the minimum required for takeoff. They're sitting in one of JFK's long, infamous congo-lines awaiting takeoff. It appears they'll be cleared for takeoff just slightly before the anti-ice holdover time expires and just before the fuel drops below the minimum required (the 747 burns about 8,000 pounds of fuel per hour while taxiing).
At this point, a flight attendant comes into the cockpit and loudly announces to all present that he just saw the purser completely consume the contents of a small liquor bottle of the type sold to passengers in flight. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Had this scenario been thought up as fiction, it would have to be discarded as unbelievable.
The following completes the scenario: both the purser and the accusing flight attendant are gay males. The purser recently completed an alcohol rehab program. The accusing flight attendant is black and has aids. He's a former purser—demoted by the company—just returning to work after an extended medical leave and has a lawsuit pending against the company.
If you had been the check airman, what would you have done, or, more importantly to me, if I had been the check airman or the captain on such a flight without a check airman or FAA presence, what would I have done?
Oh, oh, 02:00 in the morning and this may be approaching too long a length for some e-mail setups. So, I'll leave you in a possibly suspenseful state, send this, pickup my e-mail, take a walk along the beachfront, and come back to finish.
Everybody take care...Terry, in Tel Aviv where, since it's shabatt I won't be able to get hot chocolate for breakfast.
same place, same day, 08:00 local
This is part two. Some e-mail setups operate LIFO (last in, first out). If yours is such a one, you may see this before the first one. If so, reading the first part first may make this more understandable.
Anyway, I neglected to mention one additional fact about the check airman scenario. Prior to passenger boarding and before the arrival of the FAA inspector, the check airman had briefed the cabin crew on the flight. In other words, every crew member knew an FAA inspector would be in the cockpit. Such a briefing is routine. Everybody always needs to know the FAA is aboard.
Now to what happened. When the accusing flight attendant made his announcement in the cockpit, the check airman said that it would be unfair to dump this kind of a problem on the new captain during an initial check ride, and that the check ride was for the moment, suspended. The inspector agreed.
The accuser was told to return to his station; the purser was ordered to the flight deck and confronted with the accusation, which he emphatically denied. Also, his breath did not smell of alcohol nor did he seem in any way impaired.
Because of the FAA presence, the check airman decided to handle the situation in a conservative manner. He called the Port Authority (the New York Port Authority runs the airport) and asked for a vehicle to come to the airplane—remember it's in a long, slowly moving line of aircraft waiting to takeoff—and take the purser off. He told that purser that, if he was indeed innocent, to be sure and get a breathalyzer test before leaving the Tower building. The airplane had to pull out of line and on to an adjacent taxiway to allow the unloading of the purser through an access door in the floor of the forward part of the main deck. The access door leads down into an electrical equipment bay, which has another access door that opens to the outside just aft of the airplane's nose gear. The check airman covered the purser's departure from the airplane in the unorthodox manner by announcing to the passengers that he had been taken sick. A 747 requires eleven flight attendants. Fourteen are normally carried, and there's usually two or three on board that are purser-qualified, though only one is designated as the purser for any given flight. One such flight attendant took the purser's place.
The aircraft got back in line, but several others had moved in front of it during this procedure, thus delaying it's eventual takeoff. Unfortunately, the delay was enough that the anti-icing holdover time expired just before their turn for takeoff. If the holdover time has expired, you can still legally takeoff if a visual inspection of the wing reveals it to be clear of any accumulation of ice or snow. The check airman sent the flight engineer back to look at the wings from the cabin. He returned to report—influenced I am sure by the fact that the FAA was sitting there—that a small amount of snow had accumulated. At this point, the check airman had no choice but to order the airplane back to the gate to be de-iced again, and given the return taxi and the need to come out again, to be refueled.
By the time they arrived back at the gate, the accused purser had taken a breathalyzer test. The result on the two-digit readout was zero-zero—no detectable alcohol in his system. With the accuser's motives now suspect, the check airmen ordered him off the airplane as well, but did not let the accused back on, believing that it would be best to keep the situation on the flight as simple as possible, and to let the company sort out all accuser/accused problems.
This happened at night. When Morris Nachtomi, Tower's owner, came in the next morning, he blew his stack. In the words of our chief pilot, "We had to screw him down off the ceiling." Nachtomi believed the check airman had needlessly delayed the flight, and ordered him removed as a check airman. If it weren't for ALPA, I'm sure Nachtomi would have fired him. It's unfortunate that it was a Tel Aviv flight. Tel Aviv is the one flight with which Nachtomi has zero tolerance for problems. The flight is largely Hasidics. They complain in their congregations and to their rabbis. That costs Morris money and ruins his credibility with the rabbis, who get a commission for urging their congregation to fly Tower.
Would I have done things differently? Well, yes, but I have had the luxury of time to think and would have had only an eight month flying career at risk rather than the fifteen years left for the mid-forties check airman. Given that, I do not fault him. He did what he believed was right. That I would have done it differently does not in any way mean he was wrong, just that my way of handling the same situation, with my different focus, would have been different. His way precluded any FAA complaints. My way might have raised the FAA's eyebrows a little.
And what would I have done? First, I would have been immediately very pissed at the accuser, although I would have been very careful to conceal that. To openly say what the accuser said, was inexcusable. He should have asked to speak to the check airman privately or have passed him a discreet note. It should have been the check airman's decision as to whether the FAA would be involved or not.
But given the pronouncement in front of the FAA, I would have kept the accuser on the flight deck and ordered the accused to the flight deck. I then would have told them both to remain silent unless they were spoken to, and would have reminded them that the cockpit voice recorder was recording everything said. With that I would have asked the accuser to repeat exactly what he saw. I believe very much in the right of the accused to face his accusers. I then would have asked the accused to have his say, but I would have permitted no argument or rebuttal. With the luxury of more flight attendants then legally required, I would have relieved both of them of duty, assigning the purser to take the remaining cockpit jumpseat and the accuser to take a seat outside the cockpit. When we reached cruise altitude, I would have periodically checked the purser for impairment. If, after a couple of hours in which he showed no impairment, I would have returned him to duty as the purser. My written trip report—required when anything unusual happens—would have stated that, in my opinion, the accusing flight attendant conducted himself unprofessionally.
My way would have had the advantage of keeping the airplane moving. That's in line with my personal philosophy of inconveniencing the few rather than the many if you have a choice. However, it would not have given the purser any opportunity to conclusively prove his innocent with a breathalyzer test. So, I'd be interested in any comments any of you might have concerning my analysis. Please feel free to disagree. As passengers sitting back in the cabin at the mercy of the crew, how would you have felt had you known what was going on?
All of the aforementioned didn't happen to me, personally. However, I did have one small bit of excitement on the trip over here. I was flying the leg, and when I rotated the aircraft on takeoff, it seemed a little nose heavy, but then reacted normally after the nose went past the ten degrees up mark on the ADI (attitude deviation indicator). As we climbed out, the purser came to the cockpit to report that the R2 flight attendant heard a loud, sharp noise on rotation that sounded like a pallet shifting in the lower forward cargo compartment. R2 stands for right side, second door from the front, the position directly over that compartment. Shifting cargo has caused a number of crashes down through the years, so we were all ears, especially since we all knew that Tower has been handed a number of fines from the FAA for unsecured cargo. The last was for $30,000 about a month ago—$10,000 each for three unsecured pallets.
We checked the weight & balance forms and found that there was one empty position in the lower cargo compartment. Thus there was room for an unsecured pallet to move fore and aft. That would also explain what I felt during rotation. We surmised that a pallet had moved forward during taxi. This because of the way a 747 is taxied. The maximum taxi speed is 25 knots, but the airplane will accelerate beyond that on idle power. So, when the groundspeed readout hits 25, you brake the airplane to a near-stop and then let it continue. With half a dozen or more near-stops, an unsecured pallet could have inched forward each time. That would have accounted for the nose heaviness on rotation followed by a loss of that heaviness when the pallet slid back, and hitting whatever stopped it would have accounted for the noise.
All three of us in the cockpit discussed the problem, concluding there was no immediate problem. Whatever damage may have occurred hadn't caused any loss of pressurization, and the distance the pallet could move, if that was the problem, wouldn't make the aircraft uncontrollable. Any further problem would likely occur on landing, and the risk would be no greater landing in Tel Aviv than back in New York. However, CYA (cover your ass) is always a consideration these days, so we called the company, told them what happened, what we thought the problem was, that it was going in the maintenance log (thus ensuring that the FAA will see it), and gave them the choice of having us return. They wanted us to continue and we did. We briefly discussed sending the flight engineer down into the compartment. It's accessible through a crawlway. However, there is no floor, only rails to hold pallets, and there would be no way he could even move a pallet (about 11,000 pounds each) much less secure it. The engineer was visibly relieved when I said he didn't need to go down there. When we landed, I used all the runway to minimize the deceleration forces, and nobody heard or felt anything unusual. We left the cockpit before they opened up the compartment, so I still don't know what they found.
Finally, for the second time in my life I watched a man get hit by a car. I was sitting at my favorite non-kosher restaurant on the sea front last night when a jogger flashed by, started across the street, hesitated, tried to backtrack, and then was hit. He went about eight feet in the air, cartwheeled into a light post, and came to rest about five car lengths in front of the car that hit him. I and others ran to him, and I expected to find a dead body. Amazingly, he sat up. He was still conscious when the ambulance took him away. Incredible! Ambulances here respond quickly. They're on constant alert, I'm sure, and they've had lots of practice with all the bombings.
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