Bus chasing on a pig

Newer planes are here to stay. Mandala ordered 25 brand new A320s, Batavia already has 2 new A319s, and Lion is going to flood our skies with 739ERs. So what do we do? Our 737-300 and -400s are slower, and guzzle more fuel than them, although we aren't as bad as the -200s. But then, the recent holiday season did reveal something, sometimes passengers DO notice if we take off before an aircraft that lands before we do.

How do we go about this?

On a recent flight from Medan to Jakarta, we were late. As we were completing our boarding, a Mandala A320 next to us had already commenced their pushback. Our flight was full, and we were heavy. I looked at the first officer and asked, "Wanna beat that Airbus?"
"Sure Kep, how?"

"We filed for flight lever 350?"

"Yes."

"That Mandala I heard is filing at 350 too. He'll be doing mach 0.76 to 0.78. Shall we speed below them? Say max cruise at FL310? If we have no delays we should catch up with them just after Palembang."

"Wouldn't the chief want to have a word with you when he sees our fuel burn?"

"Hey, we're late, we're full, we got connecting passengers who don't want to miss their onward flights, so, WHY NOT?"

"Your call Kep! It's your turn to fly next anyways."

"Let's revise after we push back."

We pushedback just as the Mandala was entering the runway. With little traffic, we were soon taxying towards runway 23. As we neared the holding point, the first officer asked if there was any incoming traffic that would delay us. There was none. We asked to revise our altitude to FL310.

"Standby," was the answer.The tower came back telling us to line up and wait on the runway. So we did.
"Pigflyer 73, Flight Level Three-One-Zero is approved. After airborne turn left direct MEDIA climb FL150. Wind is calm. Runway 23 cleared for take off."

The first officer answered promptly and then turned to me, "310 approved Kep, and clear for take off."

"OK, let change the cruise altitude on the FMC."

"Ok. Done."

"Ready?"

"Ready when you are."

As we took off, I wondered how far the Mandala A320 is. We cleaned up quickly, turned to MEDIA to join W12 and asked for high speed climb. After switching to the autopilot, we revised the climb speed and manually overrode the econ cruise. After we were happy that the fuel estimates on arrivals were safe, we committed ourselves to the race.
Whilst enjoying coffee and puffing away at FL310, we'd check on the TCAS on the position of the Mandala A320 4000ft above us by selecting "UP" on the TCAS from time to time. We were catching up slowly, although we were burning 250kgs extra fuel per hour.

Unless there are significantly different winds, a given mach number at FL310 would yield a faster ground speed than one at FL350. We overtook the A320 from underneath just as we passed Palembang, and continued until we had enough distance infront of him before slowing down to our economic cruise, and then perform a normal descent.

We landed 10 minutes ahead of the Mandala, and did it all safely without exceeding any of the operational limits, with fun, and most of all regained time for our customers, ain't that right chief?

Remembering Congonhas

I woke up this morning for yet another round of flights. I switched on the TV and found a horrific scene, a plane had crashed. An A320 had crashed while landing at Sao Paulo's Congonhas airport. The carnage of it all foretold the inevitable outcome, 200 people had died.

Many years ago, I went to Brazil on a holiday with some friends from Argentina. I had heard about the wonders of Congonhas and Rio's Santos Dumont. I had a pleasure of jumpseating the flights into both airports, and they were unforgettable.

Santos-Dumont was a scenic airport from a pilot's point of view, although, one could be said to be crazy to want to fly jets there. It's only 1350m with water on either end. It was definitely not a place to mess around. My pulse raced on the finals into Santos-Dumont, but it was nothing in comparison to Congonhas.

Congonhas' runway is about 2000m long. So what gitu lho! Sorry, it's 2000m long at an elevation of 2500ft. The nearest we got to that in Indonesia are Bandung and Malang, with Bandung having a slightly longer runway than Congonhas, and at a similar elevation. I had not flown into Malang so I can't comment. So what made Congonhas so scary? Bandung has no ILS at the moment, and the applicable minimas are "generous" in terms of, if the weather conditions are such that it's going to make you run for the toilet, you'd be below minimas and had to go elsewhere. Before I took the holiday to Congonhas, I already had a jumpseat ride into Bandung. I thought it would just be similar, and I was wrong.

Approaching Congonhas I quickly noticed the difference. First, it was busy. Second, you'd need the ILS there because unless you fly in and out of there everyday, there's no way you could find it, especially on a wet night! It was in the middle of a concrete jungle with lights everywhere. The crew I jumpseated did the familiar method to what we use for short runways. Duck under the slope when visual, land early and watch the speed and any wind that could send you hitting the ground lower. Once you landed, throw out whatever you have, and progressively manual brake to a halt, forget the autobrake if you got a tight schedule and cannot afford delaying due to brake cooling.

I could have ngompol (wet my pants) during that landing had the crew not told me beforehand what it would involve. Thank God they did tell me. On short final, you can see that the airport is 20 - 30 meters above the surrounding neighbourhood. Go low and you'll hit the hill, or the localizer antennae mounted on huge pylons about 100m from the airport. If you want a merciless airport, this would be it. Overrun, find yourself flying off the hill onto the buildings below. Go too low, and you won't make it onto the perimeter thanks to the hill. It was wet, it was scary, but it wasn't me flying. If it was me I could have just said, "forget this, I'm landing somewhere else."

Congonhas is just a memory, it was a thrilling one. But now, it is a sad one. In Memory of those who perished on JJ3504 yesterday.

The cheap prank

There's one way to find out whether someone does the preflight and preparation checks properly. I do this at the end of the night after a flight into Jakarta, and I know the guy taking my seat for the morning duty tomorrow has a reputation not doing those checks properly, or do this to someone who overzealously do those checks.

After you finish everything, take one last cigarette before leaving the aircraft, and use the oxygen mask as your ashtray. Always restow the mask with care. A good check should include checking the mask and that means mean you put the mask in front of your face and then open the bottle valve for a quick spray of oxygen. So, if you hear someone getting the ash in the face in the morning, you know he did the pre-flight checks properly!

A word of caution, if the chief decides to replace your target in the morning or there's an aircraft change, you'll get a call to go to the office by lunchtime!

Holiday Season

Holiday seasons mean lots of flights. The company you work for can determine whether you will have a few extra flights or a lot of extra flights. The holiday season means we have to throw our usual routine of four to five legs a day, with one day off and possibly a standby day in a week because one thing is almost for certain, minimum rests, one day off a week only and lots of schedule revisions!

The load that you fly changes too. The flights are always full, and the extra flights mean you have to chase your schedule because if you get delayed in the morning, your friend flying the aircraft after you is going to get home extra late, with their crying kids wanting to join the holiday rampage. It's not the best times for some people.

Carrying families mean you also have problems such as a family of four insisting to carry a house load of carry-on baggage in addition of their excess baggage. Sometimes, they carry so much that you end up over the weight limit. Explaining a family of 6 that their choice was to let three boxes of dolls for the kids or their 3 cubic meter box worth of oleh-oleh (gifts) or one of their suitcases of clothes to fly later in the day is sometimes harder than to explain to a shopaholic that the white dress is better than the pink dress with fluorescent green polkadots.

Then you get loud passengers that you can hear all the way in the cockpit on take off, or the dreaded baby crying louder than our engines on take off during a night flight. One thing I cannot stand is when after six flights, I have to pax back to Jakarta, sitting a row behind a crying baby and a row in front of 7 year old kids whose solution of boredom is to kick the seat in front every three seconds. All that while sitting to a know it all passenger who claims he's seen the Airbus A380 in Makassar.

The nice thing about holiday season is though, we do get good kids flying, and we love to take them into the flight deck and see their eyes go wide in amazement. We like to play with them sometimes, select the autopilot to leave the LNAV/VNAV and go into ALT HOLD and SPD. We then play with the speed a bit and they can spend 5 minutes at the moving throttles. Or change the heading a little bit and tell them "Look! No Hands!"

One thing is for certain on holiday season, you get damn tired. If you work for a company that gives peanuts for the flight hour pay, it sucks. If they give you a nice number for that, then, despite all of the grudges you may have on the season, it may be worth it. I may be tired by the end of the day, but at least the roads aren't jammed packed and I get home quicker.