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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
From cockpit check to walkaround to stocking the galley: The Zen of preparing the "Monster" to fly.
By Patrick Smith
Read more: Technology & Business, Flying, Airplanes, Airlines, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot, Food and Travel
April 4, 2008 | BRUSSELS, Belgium, 1998 -- From the van at 4 a.m. I catch sight of the Monster, its ink-dark silhouette looming in the Zaventem mist. "Monster" is my affectionate nickname for the Douglas DC-8. Or not so affectionately, really, as I assume the lumbering hulk of metal is destined, one way or the other, to kill me. Sure, it's my first jet. And sure, it's big. But it's also ancient. The real airlines gave up flying these things nearly two decades ago, and the cockpit looks like something from a World War II Soviet submarine. In a lot of ways, I'm reminded of the first airplane I was ever paid to fly -- the twin-engine Beech-99. The scale is off by a factor of 50, but the technophilic pilot inside me -- it's in there somewhere -- finds the antique ship embarrassing. Hell, the DC-7, its immediate and piston-powered predecessor, had a rudder covered not with aluminum or high-tech composite but with fabric.
Most pilots can, even for an international run, get the DC-8 ready in less than an hour. I stretch it to a meditative 90 minutes. To me there is, or there should be, something Zen about preflight procedures.
It begins in the cockpit with a flip through the aircraft logbook, making sure the required sign-offs are there and taking particular note of items that have recently been deferred. This is followed by a top-to-bottom cockpit check -- an intense choreography of system tests. Every radio, instrument, light bulb and electronic box is given the once-over.
Then I take a seat at the second officer's panel -- my office, as it were -- highlighter in one hand and coffee cup in the other, running through the 20-page flight plan, marking up the important parts: flight time, route, weather, alternates, fuel planning.
The relaxed pace also allows ample time for what is truly my most challenging and important responsibility: cleaning, stocking and organizing the galley.
Next is the exterior check, or the "walkaround," as we call it. I circle the plane clockwise, eyeing the various lights, sensors, doors and control surfaces. It's a leisurely, almost peaceful stroll -- except for the landing gear bays.
A look into the gear bay of a jetliner is, if nothing else, sobering. Were human beings meant to howl through the air at 600 miles per hour? To properly answer that question, one needs to glimpse firsthand the apocalyptic assembly of cables, struts, pumps, ducts and plumbing that lives under there. Ostensibly I'm checking the tires, inspecting the brakes and looking for any wayward hydraulics. But I'm also shaking my head, wondering who in the name of heaven ever conceived of such a hulking, terrifying contraption.
The landing gear itself is frightening to consider -- those giant black tires and greasy struts thicker than an oak tree. Ask the typical flier what he or she fears most, and you'll hear things most pilots rarely worry about: turbulence, lightning, wings snapping off. People don't think much about landing gear, but after almost four years of crewing the Douglas I've developed a very short hierarchy of potential nightmares, and tire disasters are one of them. Failure of a main-gear tire at high runway speed, particularly on takeoff and when a plane is heavily loaded, can induce all sorts of trouble, from greatly reduced braking capabilities to an explosion or fire.
Late one night we were prepping for takeoff on this very same flight -- Brussels to New York -- at our highest allowable taxi tonnage when the ground controllers gave us a long, circuitous route to the runway. Rolling along the apron in the early morning darkness, we suddenly heard a bang and felt a shudder. A taxiway pothole, we concluded, and kept going, as otherwise the aircraft felt normal. Just as we turned onto the runway and were cleared for takeoff, we heard a second bang, followed rapidly by a third, and then a fourth. And with that, the airplane -- all 355,000 pounds of it -- seized and wouldn't move.
The first noise we'd heard was one of the DC-8's eight main tires violently giving up the ghost (they are paired in two sets of four). At max weight and after several sharp turns along the taxiways, it was only a matter of time before the adjacent one met a similar fate. With two gone, stress on the remaining two sent them popping as well. We were lucky it happened when it did, and not at 150 knots, with the threshold lights fast approaching. The runway was closed for seven hours, until the crippled plane could be unloaded, defueled and towed away for repairs.
Returning to the cockpit, my duties include monitoring and supervising the intake of fuel. This morning we'll be needing 121,000 pounds of the stuff. That is the number cooked up by the flight planners and dispatchers back at our headquarters in Cincinnati. We need enough to get from Belgium to New York City, based on weather and winds aloft; then enough to reach any required alternate airports (the determination of which is another complex process); then an additional 45 minutes' worth on top of that; plus more for any anticipated delays or holds. Plus taxi fuel. The captain has the option to add more still. The fuel-burn schedule on the flight plan goes on for pages. At each way point or tick of longitude, actual remaining fuel will be cross-checked with the forecast totals.
That 121,000 pounds of kerosene equates to 18,000 gallons, to be divided among eight tanks integral to the wings and belly. En route, to maintain balance and proper engine feed, fuel will need periodic shifting. On the DC-8, the valves are opened and shut by a row of hand-operated vertical levers that run across the lower portion of the second officer's workstation. Trimming up the tanks, I look like a madman trying to play a pipe organ.
From outside comes the diesel roar of a pallet lifter. The main-deck freight floor is empty for now, and a glance is like peering through a long, empty highway tunnel. I walk back there sometimes, imagining what that space must have looked like 20 or 30 years ago, when it carried passengers for Air Canada. In 1982 I flew to Jamaica with my family on an Air Canada DC-8. This identical one, possibly.
Nature and travel writer Barry Lopez once authored a wonderful essay, called "Flight," in which, standing inside the fuselage of an empty 747 freighter, he compares the aircraft to "the quintessential symbol of another era -- the Gothic cathedral of twelfth-century Europe."
"Standing on the main deck, where 'nave' meets 'transept,' and looking up toward the pilots' 'chancel' ... The machine was magnificent, beautiful, complex as an insoluble murmur of quadratic equations."
The iconic 747 is deserving of such a grandiose comparison. The pedestrian Douglas is not.
