Ask the pilot

Why are ramen noodles a pilot's best friend? Plus: Northwest retires the DC-10, Boeing marks a milestone, and the heartbreak of Air-India's terrible new look.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

Jan. 19, 2007 | On Saturday, Jan. 6, the aviation world was rocked by tragic news. Momofuku Ando died of a heart attack in Japan at age 96. Ando was the inventor of instant ramen noodles.

To understand why this is important, let's begin with a public inventory of a pilot's black leather flight case. Namely, my black leather flight case. I'm often asked what it is that pilots lug around in their mysterious bags, and this is your chance to find out. Click here and follow along with the key-coded photograph.

A) The case itself. There's no official name for these things. It's a bag, a case, a kit -- whatever you want to call it. The one you see here was purchased new in 1990, and this is the only one I have owned. (Well, that's not entirely true, as I began my airline career using a brown leather briefcase scrounged from a stranger's garbage on Beacon Hill in Boston. A few weeks later I upgraded to the bag shown.) Some carriers do not permit stickers on crew members' luggage.

B) These binders are the bag's nerve center, and also account for most of its weight. Got a question about the anti-icing plumbing of your 757? The answer is somewhere in the Aircraft Flight Manual. Are we authorized for takeoff with malfunctioning runway centerline lights if the visibility drops below 1,000 feet? Better look it up in the General Operations Manual, a book of rules and procedures specific to the airline. There's also at least one thick volume of maps and charts. At some airlines this entire stack has been replaced by a packet of CD-ROMs and a laptop computer. "Paperless cockpit" is a term heard with increasing frequency.

C) Small vinyl bag of miscellaneous items. My stock includes pens, earplugs, a small ruler, two flashlights, paper clips, wipes, a Band-Aid. The paintbrush is used to clean dust from around aircraft radio panels and other cockpit instruments, which are sometimes filthy.

D) A roll of masking tape. Surprisingly useful for any number of tasks (no jokes, please, about holding the wings on).

E) My indispensable, $6.95 calculator. (This very same instrument is visible here, in action, as it were, and my embarrassing dependence on calculators was discussed in a prior column.)

F) Altoids tin converted into a home for spare flashlight batteries.

G) Notepaper. Necessary for copying clearances, for jotting down frequency changes, and for sketching out rough drafts of seething letters to the editor during those long stretches aloft.

H) A copy of B. Kliban's "The Biggest Tongue in Tunisia and Other Drawings." It helps to have something humorous on hand for those 90-minute air traffic control ground holds. (Kliban essentially invented the one-panel cartoon, and I'm a proud owner of his full library. Other regular take-alongs are copies of Air Transport World and any of Stephen Dobyns' poetry collections.)

J) Sony headset, inside a protective Tupperware container.

K) Assorted technical cards. We see a checklist, a de-icing-procedures flowchart and something called a "flight conduct chart."

L) Backdrop blanket pilfered from British Airways flight to Nairobi, 1987.

X) Finally, and most critically, five packets of Maruchan-brand instant ramen (assorted flavors).

If you fail to grasp why ramen noodles would be an imperative part of my repertoire, you've never been a very hungry and very broke pilot checking into a motel at midnight for an eight-hour layover. There are tastier things to eat, but ramen is cheap, it never goes bad, and its rapid cookability ensures you're rested in time for that 6:30 wakeup call.

The cellophane brick variety is preferable to the kind in Styrofoam cups because it's easier to pack and impervious to damage. Directions: 1) Rinse out the filter basket assembly of your hotel room coffee maker; 2) crush noodle brick into the carafe; 3) partially fill coffee maker with water, and switch on; 4) once carafe is full, wait three minutes; 5) drain carefully, add flavor packet, turn on Comedy Central and enjoy.

Don't overfill, and always be sure the filter basket is clean, as coffee-flavored ramen is even worse than "Creamy Chicken." Remember to carry a plastic fork (to replace the metal one stolen by the TSA), or you'll be forced to eat with your hands, or by holding two pencils in the shape of chopsticks. (If need be, you will do it, because you're that hungry, and you will feel ashamed about it the next day, when you're exhausted again and wondering if maybe you should have joined a troupe of traveling mimes instead of giving your life to the airlines.)

For a touch of the exotic -- in other words, marginally less pathetic -- spice up your snack with the addition of Huy Fong Foods-brand chili garlic hot sauce, available at most grocery stores. It's the one with the rooster on the bottle. It's true that upscale supermarkets often stock an extensive selection of art ramen, but if you're a commuter pilot making 14 grand a year, it's strictly the five-for-a-dollar brands.

The late Momofuku Ando developed his noodles in the late 1940s during food shortages in postwar Japan. Two years ago, the company he founded, Nissin Food Products, introduced a vacuum-packed ramen for the benefit of Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi on board the U.S. space shuttle Discovery. No word if Nissin ever thought about targeting airline workers, but I can attest to the product's easy adaptability to a life aloft.

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Other early returns for 2007

First, a sneak peak at the latest airline livery abomination. There's been no shortage of these lately, but this one is particularly disappointing because it afflicts Air-India, until now wearer of my all-time favorite color scheme. Here's the original, shown to gorgeous advantage on a 747. How can you not love it, from the Rajasthani palace window frames to the Nike-style fin flash? It's exotic, classic, understated, refined. All airlines should be those things.

Now for the update, depicted here on what I believe is a pre-delivery Boeing 777 at the factory near Seattle. The window arches and striping look emaciated. That scrambled egg on the tail is a bastardized version of the carrier's elegant Sagittarian centaur logo. He appears to have been electrocuted. (As for why an Indian company would choose a symbol from European mythology for its emblem, please revisit the archives.) Air-India has started naming its 777s after Indian ragas ("Hamsadhwani," "Kalyani," "Neelambari"), but its uniform, like too many airline makeovers these days, gets all gimmicky and flashy, selling out a part of its identity in the process.

Next page: Congrats to Boeing on the sale of its 1,500th 747!