Where's The Donald?

It was a beautiful January morning in New York City today. The contrails were already in view just after sunrise. Apparently someone was already airborne before us!

It was unusually warm so I volunteered to do the preflight walk-around duties on our plane today. I mentioned the LGA control tower in an earlier post....I've always thought it was an eye catching design. They light it up with bright white lights at night and for St Patrick's day they use green lights.

One of our gate agents was telling me the supposed history of the tower. She said that it was built to look like a champagne glass and that the windows were made to look like the bubbles. Now I don't know if that's a true story or not but it sure sounded credible.

Check out the old photo with the AA 727 AstroJets and the Douglas DC-6's. Must have been in the early 60's.



Our flight times out of LGA are calculated with plenty of taxi time built in. Our flight plan today called for a 25 minute taxi time. We called for taxi and were told to wait for our sequence. Ten minutes later they called back and we were given our taxi instructions with an expected number of 12 for takeoff. Pretty typical day.

Every time I go to LGA, I look for Donald Trump's plane. It's usually parked on the general aviation ramp. Sure enough, there it was. It's a very nice looking Boeing 727-100. I'll bet it's nice inside.




We launched right after a Dash-8 on runway 13. With the engines run up to max power and the air conditioning off, liftoff was at 145 knots with only about 1500 feet of concrete remaining.....Whew!.....An abort would have put us in the bay for sure. Three and a half hours later we were on final to a north landing at DFW. Brakes parked at the gate and we're ten minutes early.

Only one leg today....not too bad.



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The Big Apple

Just a two day trip today but day one was a long one. 5 legs. We rarely have to fly this many legs in one day but this trip was all that I could fit into my schedule for this week. The trip sequence was to be from DFW to Houston, back to DFW, then to Oklahoma City, back to DFW, and then to New York. Almost 8 hours of flying.


The first turn down to Houston (IAH) went just fine. But no trip to Houston Intercontinental is complete without having to wait in line for takeoff behind a bunch of Continental Airlines flights. Houston is their home base just like DFW is home to American Airlines.



The turn up to OKC also went well. These short legs of under 45 minutes flying time are very busy in the cockpit. By the time we've leveled off at cruising altitude, it's time to start downhill again. The pilot that's not flying is busy getting weather information, landing runways, approach and landing speeds etc, and working the radios as well. Not much time for sightseeing.


On the other hand, these guys on AA flight #123 headed for Honolulu had about 8 hours in-flight. Plenty of time for sightseeing and reading their "flight manuals".





Coming back from OKC to DFW we had a short wait for this Air Force T-37 trainer to land. The T-37 is a Cessna two seat jet that the Air Force has been using as a trainer since the 1950's. I believe this one was based out of Vance Air Force Base in Enid, Oklahoma.

OKC is home of the FAA. So every time we go in and out of there, chances are good that we'll have an FAA inspector on board with us giving us a line check. Luckily today we had an empty jump seat.


We had a nice view of the Air Force ramp with a bunch of Boeing KC-135 tankers parked and looking ready for duty.

Back through DFW, a quick change of planes and then off to New York. The 90 knot tailwinds helped us get back on schedule and clear skies all the way to New York were most welcome after a long day in the cockpit.

The arrival routing into the New York terminal area tonight was one of my favorites. New York ATC had us fly visually over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and then fly up the Hudson River just past Central Park. This took us directly over the Statue of Liberty with a great night view of Newark on the left and Manhattan on the right. Then a right turn in for a visual approach to runway 22 at LGA. A good landing, an open gate, a short ride to the hotel and then the LSU-OSU game on TV and the day was done.






The photo is of a "Big Apple". >>>>>>>>>






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