I was sound asleep, until the announcement woke me up. I glanced out the window, and noticed we were on the ground. I wasn’t sure if we were still here, or if we’d left here and already gotten there. I must’ve been nearly unconscious. A big bear of a man was standing in the front of the plane, using the flight attendant’s handset to talk to the passengers.

“Hi. I’m Gary, your pilot. Enjoying the flight so far? Great. Pretty smooth, isn’t it? Right. Well, you’re probably wondering why we stopped here instead of taking off. Dispatch just radioed to tell us there was a security breach in San Diego. The airport is locked down, they are emptying the terminal right now, no flights are being allowed in or out, which means the bad news is we ain’t going anywhere for a while. If we go back to the gate, we’ll never leave this airport, because that’s just how these things work. So… we’ll just sit here for a while and see if they’re able to catch the poor confused granny that caused this security breach. The good news is, if you’ve ever wanted to see the cockpit of a jet, now’s your chance. Come on up and say hi if you want. I’m not going anywhere either.”

I told Brian, the coworker I happened to be seated next to that I was going to take Captain Gary up on his offer. I jumped up, and beat two little kids into the doorway of the cockpit. When he saw me standing there, he motioned to the vacant copilot’s seat said, “Welcome to the cockpit. Pull up a stump.”

Incredible! For the first time in over fifteen years of commercial flying, I was actually sitting in the only seat in the plane better than first class. I marveled at the vast assortment of switches, knobs and buttons, as well as the multi-display computer screens. I was also surprised to see there was no control yoke in front of the pilots. A single joystick attached to the wall controls this whole plane? I asked Captain Gary about it.

“Yeah, that’s it. Try it out. Go ahead. It’s not even connected to anything except four little springs.” Then, as I fooled around with the joystick, “Woah! If you did that while flying, we’d all be dead. Look,” he said, gently easing back on the stick, “that’s all I do to rotate for takeoff. In flight, it’s little inputs only. In fact, the computer flies the plane about 90% of the time.” He sighed. “Pilots are just redundant safety features anymore. See that red button right there? That’s the one thing we still control. That button fires the missiles!”

He continued, “This plane can even land itself. In fact, if I try to correct it with the joystick during automated landing, the plane will actually fight with me to land in the dead center of the runway. Pretty soon they’ll be flying these things from the ground, and we’ll all be out of work.” Then he leaned over and whispered, “Personally, I hope it happens soon. I’m ready to go back to Alaska and be a bush pilot again, this security shit is so stupid.”

Then he brightened up. “You want to see something really cool? Check this out!” Captain Gary was nothing if not exuberant. He reached up and threw a switch. Immediately an alarm and a mechanical voice filled the cockpit. “Engine Fire! Engine Fire! Engine Fire!” I looked at him in horror and amazement, wondering if he set a jet engine on fire just for my entertainment.

“Cool, isn’t it! It used to be that we had to remember checklists for everything. So, once I turn this annoying alarm off, I’d have to go through a mental checklist of engine fire procedures. But, look at this screen. The whole checklist is right there.”

I looked. Step One was Shut Down Engine. Alert Crew was down around Step Six.

With a smile he said, “I don’t have to remember much of anything anymore. This screen tells me everything.”

Then he paused, and looked at another small screen in the center console. A text message had appeared. It read, ‘Will update ETO as necessary.’

This made the pilot laugh. “ETO?!? ETO?!?!? What the fuck is ETO?!? European Theater of Operations? ARRRGH!! I have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about!”

He calmed down, laughed again, then continued my cockpit tour. “Anyway, this screen tells me everything I need to know.” Switching readouts on the screen, he said, “For example, right now our main engines are off. If they were on, these readings would tell me fuel burn rate, engine temperature and efficiency, and anything else I might need to know. We burn about 1200 gallons an hour, more or less, on takeoff, and about 600 gallons an hour at level flight at high altitude. The higher the altitude, the more efficient we are.” He added, “Honestly, I can fly this plane better than the computer can, but the one thing I can’t do is fly with the fuel efficiency of the computer.”

I looked up, and saw that Brian had made his way to the cockpit. I switched places with him and took this picture after he sat down.

Another message came through, informing Captain Gary the crisis in San Diego had passed, and we were cleared to takeoff. We thanked the good captain for making the delay entertaining, then returned to being ordinary passengers once again.

Author: frenchy

One Response to “Waiting for Takeoff”

1. wubba12 says:

   June 2, 2008 at 9:13 PM

   JESUS! Not sure i want to fly with that pilot…seems a little cuckoo. I agree with him on the security shit tho…fucking annoying

   Reply