Letters to the Editor
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Amazing pictures
I'd like to see an interview with Steve Morris--he's got the eye of Ansel Adams.
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The Pilot is Back
Now, that's a good aviation story. Patrick, stick to this.
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Over in 5 seconds
Hilarious! But...who has time to reach for a barf bag in 5 seconds? As they passed the cockpit on their way out the door, did the passengers congratulate you or were they too green to speak?
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I agree with pmm
I enjoyed the article as usual, but the real hidden gem is finding the photos of Steve Morris. I have never seen aviation photos like his.
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Wake turbulence at Logan
Well, forty years ago I was following a Lockheed Constellation (four engine piston airliner) in my Mooney M20E (single engine four seat retractable)onto 33L. It was night and I was 600 feet over the water. The tower wanted me to be as close to the Lockheed as possible. The wake turbulence seized my Mooney and I was immediately upside down, despite full opposite aileron. Everything was on the ceiling, including my glasses. Then I was out of it and rolled rightside up. The tower never saw my roll, and I decided to land well beyond the touchdown point of the Connie, putting me above the wake. Since my Mooney could land in less than 1000 feet, and 33L is 10,000 feet long, that was not a problem. I did not have to go around in such a small plane. It was an amazing sensation looking up at the water only 600 feet away.
I had two other two experiences at Logan, while we hangared our plane there. We had fuel injector problems while coming in at night. Approach Control immediately closed the field and alerted the emergency vehicles. They were desperate to foam the runway, but I rejected that notion. The taxiway parallel to 33L was lined with every ambulance and fire truck they could muster. After an uneventful landing we taxied over to the Van Dusen hangar and parked the plane. I walked over to the tower and asked them how many reams of paperwork I needed to fill out. They laughed and thanked me for the opportunity to test their emergency response capabilities, since they could never keep their tests a secret, and evryone was ready for one. They said to go home and forget it. I was also the last plane to land the night of the great NE blackout of 1965. I wss talking to the tower and landed normally, and suddenly the lights went out and I could not talk to Ground Control. So I taxied over to Van Dusen and parked. Luckily it was a bright moonlight night and even if the lights had failed on final approach I could have still easily landed. I drove to my apartment in Cambridge through a very dark city.
I still miss those days of being a bachelor in Cambridge with an airplane at Logan, and dating smart, talented, and beautiful Harvard graduate students. I ended up marrying one and she had spent a year between undergrad and Harvard being a Norhtwest stewardess. Of course she learned how to fly.
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1972
Ah, Patrick.
An enjoyable article, though I think you were so dazzled by those awesome shots of wake vortices
(as was I) that a couple facts got missed:
It was a DC-10, not an L1011, that contributed to the DC-9 crash during a training flight in
Fort Worth. And wake turbulence was a bit better understood than you lead us to believe. A
particular irony is that on board the DC-9 was an FAA inspector who should have known about
the potential for wake turbulence and could have advised the pilots if they were flying in an
unsafe manner.
http://amelia.db.erau.edu/reports/ntsb/aar/AAR73-03.pdf
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Re: Over in 5 seconds
If I were one of the passengers, I may have been thinking "nice roll, but maybe final approach is not the best time or place to practice aerobatics".
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My incident report
A number of years ago, I was on a wide-body trijet (can't remember if it was a DC-10 or L-1011) and after a smooth takeoff, on climbout, we took a sudden roll, perhaps to 45 degrees, and had a compressor stall to boot (a loud bang from the port engine). There weren't too many passengers on this particular flight, and it was very quiet when this happened; no one screamed. Sometime afterwards, the pilot came on the intercom and said "well, we were a little busy up here for a while, but everything is ok, and we're continuing on to our destination". On final approach, the pilot came on again and said "you're going to see some fire trucks as we're landing, but don't worry, they're not for us." Turns out there was another aircraft for which they were taking some precautions (they had a safe landing too). In many years of flying, that incident was the only time anything untoward has happened, knock on wood!
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eeek!
First of all, Patrick, I enjoy reading your column every week.
Your article this week makes me glad I had my wake turbulence experience at 30,000+ feet and not on approach/takeoff.
Mine happened this last August on a flight to Seattle from Denver. We were somewhere over eastern Washington when we took an abrupt roll to the right, then left, then right again. As I was on the right side of the aircraft, I got a pretty intense look at the ground through my window. I also think a yelp and gasp of surprise were involved.
After we were stable, the pilot (or first officer, I'm hazy on that) came on and explained that, oops, "we got too close to an aircraft travelling ahead of us". Yeah, you think?
Good thing I'm not a nervous flyer.
--Sharon
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Wake Turbulence
Patrick, I have a similar horror story. I was the pilot flying from the left seat of a B727 landing Rnwy 27 at MEM. It was a calm summer night and we were about 3 miles in trail of a company 72. Everything was going routinely, we do this every night!, then at about 100 feet, the plane started to roll left. I applied opposite aileron and firewall power but still got the dreades electronic " Bank angle, Bank angle". Just as I hit the stops on the throttles, the mains touched. No point going around at this point and the engines hadn't even had a chance to spool up, so I pulled the throttles back, taxied to the ramp sure I caught a wing tip or flap. I was never so happy walking around the big jet and seeing no damage....got a bit lucky that night.
Now Fedex is jamming more and more planes into MEM every night and they just ordered a bunch of 757's to replace the 72's. Yikes
Tom