Time For A Change

So after 15 years in the left seat of the MD-80, the time has come for a change.

My final trip was a 3 day affair with stops in Columbus, Mexico City, and Baltimore.


Day one began with a leg to Columbus, back to DFW, and then on to Mexico City. The descent to Columbus took us right over downtown Cincinnati and a very muddy Ohio River.




Clear skies prevailed over Columbus also.


Arrival at MEX was just past midnight and included a non-precision approach to runway 5L. Their ILS was out of service so we had to fly a VOR approach. No problem though....we made it OK.

The next day we saw this Mexican 727 passing by. The Federales fly some pretty old equipment down there. Sorry about the nose being cut off.....the First Officer took the photo!
So back to DFW and then on to Baltimore for the night.
One leg back to DFW the next morning and that was it. No more MD-80 time will be going in the logbook. 11,000 hours in the left seat and almost 3000 hours in the right seat and I still can't make a decent landing! Well, maybe once in a while....

So what's my next plane at AA?

This streamlined beauty?



Or maybe this three engined trans oceanic luxury liner? It even has curtains!








How about this deluxe wide body cruiser?



Nope. None of those.


All good choices I'm sure, but the 767 will have to suffice for now.

Training starts next week so the blogging will be taking a back seat for a while until school is over with.

Here's a few more photos from my time spent on the line.


So the sun has set on the MD-80. But more adventures await on the 767.It should be fun!
Thanks for reading.



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Who Says It's Hot In Phoenix?

In keeping with the West is Best theme....Another recent trip of mine took me out to Phoenix. By June of any given year, Phoenix is already well into the 100 degree days, but this day was an unusual exception. It was only 88 when we landed at 4 PM and very clear. No global warming here....

The arrivals from points East are routed either from the Northeast or the Southeast. Nothing is allowed to come straight in from the East due to restricted airspace. Today we flew the Northeast arrival over Payson, Fountain Hills, and then Mesa and Tempe.

The Superstition Mountains were well in view today as was the Salt River where I spent many hours over the years tubing down the river. Those were fun times.


Here's a shot of a long final approach to the West.On short final you pass just slightly North of Arizona State University. This is a good look at the campus. Sun Devil Stadium is also visible.

Not long after landing it was time to head back to Texas. Like the arrivals, Eastbound departures from PHX are always routed to the Northeast or the Southeast. Today we flew the Southeast departure. It took us pretty close to White Sands missile range in New Mexico.
Once over Western Texas, we passed through a developing storm front. Lots of cumulonimbus clouds were building. They would soon be full blown thunderstorms. The hole in the middle is where we passed through. Down at the surface we could see the dust being blown up from all the fields. This was a West Texas dust storm in the making!


The tops on this cell were well in the 50,000 ft range. There would be no climbing above this one in our MD-80 today!

In less than an hour we were parked at the gate, packing up our stuff, and would soon be headed for our respective homes.


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The West Is Best

In a previous post I talked about the great sightseeing opportunities when flying in the southwestern United States. A recent trip of mine was no exception.

I learned to fly in the small border town of Douglas, Arizona. One of my first cross country flights was up to Tucson and back. I can remember having to wait for takeoff so a bunch of A-7 Corsairs from the Arizona Air Guard could land.
A recent trip took us to TUS. Once again we had to wait for the Air Guard guys. But now they have upgraded to F-16's.

The ground crews at Southwest Airlines are showing their Arizona spirit with their tractor painted up like the state flag.

Not long after launching back to DFW, we spotted this fire in the hills just east of Tucson. The amazing thing about the photo is the cloud that has formed above the fire. The heat was apparently so intense that it formed it's own little weather system.

The next day would take us out to Palm Springs. A visual approach (as always) was made to runway 31. Just off the left out of the photo is a ridge of large mountains. You have to hug the ridge in order to set up for final approach to the runway.



Mt San Jacinto lies behind the tail. A missed approach off of runway 31 requires a right turnout. A left turn would be trouble!

Our routing back to DFW took us well north of course over southern Utah for some weather avoidance. Here's a shot of a canyon the Colorado River has carved out in Utah.

And finally another great southwestern sunset was in store. We took off from DFW and chased this sunset for almost one hour as we cruised westward towards Phoenix.

The West is Best!

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Just When The Going Was Good......

The oil crisis has been hitting AA especially hard. Just yesterday they announced a huge reduction in our flying for later this year as well as the accelerated retirement of numerous MD-80 aircraft and even some A-300's that are widely used in the Caribbean.

This will undoubtedly lead to huge furloughs among the employee groups. Just when many of our pilots were beginning to be recalled from furlough, they will probably be getting pink slips before too long.

Despite all the negative publicity about the poor service from the nations airlines, we continue to see full flights this year. I haven't seen a flight with less than a 75% load factor in a long time. It's hard to believe that we're still losing money with loads like this, but apparently the price of a ticket is still way too low to cover the direct operating cost of getting people from point A to point B.

But life goes on and the airline must continue to move the paying public. This weeks flying for me included a trip out to Fresno. It was a Sunday and ATC gave us a nice shortcut directly over Edwards Air Force Base. This is restricted airspace but today we were allowed to pass through it without the fear of an FAA violation.
The dry lake bed next to the base is Rogers Lake and has been used extensively over the years for many test aircraft including the space shuttle.

Next we passed over Mojave airport. Burt Rutan has been based here for many years and he and his company Scaled Composites have produced some of the most exceptional experimental aircraft ever built here. Mojave is also a graveyard for many old airliners. They come here to be scrapped after living out their lives with the airlines. I'm sure our MD-80 we were flying this day didn't appreciate us flying so close to it's eventual cemetery!

The departure from Fresno took us eastbound directly over the Sierra Nevada range. Great views today!
Thats Mono Lake below in the distance.
Further eastbound we passed over Canyonlands National Park in Utah. More great views!So then it was back to DFW and then on to Monterrey, Mexico. Another full flight as usual. The terrain around Monterrey consists of many high jagged peaks and they are usually covered in smog.
This almost always results in us having to complete a full instrument approach to find the airport. But this evening skies were clear enough for us to fly visually to the field.

After a short night there we launched another full flight
back to DFW the next morning.

The view from runway 29 shows some of the surrounding peaks.


In just over an hour we were on the downwind leg at DFW.

The photo shows a view of DFW with Grapevine Lake also pictured.A quick trip through customs and then it was off to another gate and another city. The airline life goes on.


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Don't Cross That Runway!

So it's back to work again after a nice but way too short vacation.

The next two trips on my schedule were a pair of identical three day trips spread over an eleven day period. Day one included a five leg day. Day two was just a west coast turnaround and day three would be three legs. Not too terrible.

The five leg day included a visit to Denver International. This view from the downwind leg shows how spread out the airport is. Their longest runway is 16,000 ft long. I can't think of any longer commercial runways in this country.



Southwest Airlines has a number of unusual paint schemes in their fleet. Here's one of them at DEN.



Speaking of runways...The FAA has an experimental runway status light system in place on one of the runways at DFW airport. There are Takeoff Hold Lights that automatically illuminate to warn takeoff or landing traffic if an aircraft or ground vehicle inadvertently enters that runway after their takeoff or landing clearance is received. Also there are Runway Entrance Lights at the crossing taxiways that automatically illuminate when traffic takes off or lands on that runway.
The red lights down the middle are Runway Hold Lights. Takeoff is not allowed when these lights are illuminated. Traffic could be crossing downfield.
The red lights here are the Runway Entrance Lights. You are not supposed to cross this runway when these lights are illuminated. Very bad things could happen if you were to taxi onto this runway when any of the red lights are on.

The system has been a great success so far. I hope it gets adopted nationwide.

Along the same lines...Here's a shot of El Paso airport from 36,000 ft. It's the one on the left. It shows the proximity of Biggs Army Airfield to El Paso International. It has almost the exact same layout. Many a pilot has lined up to land at the wrong airport and then realized their mistake. And some of them have even continued their approach and landed at the wrong airport! A bad day for sure.


Anyhow, the rest of my two trips went without too many hitches. We flew into Los Angeles a couple of times that week. There's always a bunch of good photos to be had there.

The descent from the east takes you through Banning Pass near Palm Springs. Mt San Jacinto can bee seen on the left. The clouds that move in from the coast almost always dissipate right near the pass. This day was a perfect example.


Here's a Continental 757-300 launching from runway 25R.



Also a United 747-400 about to lift off the same runway.

Finally an Eva 777-300 just airborne for Taipei.

So where did the word runway come from anyhow? I know that it's a term used to describe the path that a pilot takes to makes his or her takeoff run (That's obvious). But I wonder how it originated? Maybe someone can chime in.

More to come soon.....


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