Memories from 30 Years of Flying the Line

with Flying Tigers and FedEx 

By Capt. Bill Austin
Flying Tigers/FedEx, Retired

 

·        Sunrises seen from the high flight levels that make the heart soar.

·        The patchwork quilt of the great plains from FL 370 on a day when you can see forever.

·        Cruising mere feet above a billiard-table-flat cloud deck at mach .86, with your chin on the glare shield and your face as close as you can get it to the windshield.

·        Punching out the top of a low overcast while climbing 6,000 feet per minute.

·        The majesty and grandeur of towering cumulus.

·        Rotating at VR and feeling 800,000 plus pounds of airplane come alive as she lifts off.

·        The delicate threads of St. Elmo’s Fire dancing on the windshield at night.

·        The twinkle of lights on the Japanese fishing fleet far below, on a night crossing of the North Pacific.

·        Cloud formations that are beautiful beyond description.

·        Ice fog in Anchorage on a cold winter morning.

·        Seeing geologic formations that no ground-pounder will ever see.

·        The chaotic, non-stop babble of radio transmissions at O’Hare or Kennedy during the afternoon rush.

·        The quietness of center frequency at night during a transcontinental flight.

·        The welcome view of approach lights appearing out of the mist just as you reach minimums.

·        Lightning storms at night over the Midwest.

·        The soft, comforting glow of the instrument panel in a dark cockpit.

·        The dancing curtains of colored light of the aurora on a winter-night Atlantic crossing.

·        The taxiway names at O’Hare… before they were renamed: The Bridge, Lakeshore Drive, Old Scenic, New Scenic, Outer, The Bypass, Cargo, North-South…

·        The majestic panorama of an entire mountain range stretched out beneath you from horizon to horizon.

·        Lenticular clouds over the Sierras.

·        The brief, yet tempting, glimpse of runway lights…. after you’ve already committed to the missed approach.

·        The Alps in winter.

·        The lights of London at night from FL350.

·        Squall lines that run as far as you can see.

·        Exotic lands with exotic food.

·        Maneuvering the airplane through day lit canyons between towering cumulus clouds.

·        The deep blue-gray of the sky at FL 430.

·        The hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Harbor.

·        The softness of a touchdown on a snow-covered runway.

·        Hearing the nosewheel spin down against the snubber in the well after takeoff.  A delightful sound signaling that you were on your way!

·        Old Chinatown in Singapore… before it was torn down, modernized, and sterilized.

·        Watching the lightning show while crossing the ITCZ at night.

·        Long-tail boats speeding along the klongs in Thailand.

·        The quietly turning paddle fans in the lobby of the old Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

·        Dodging colored splotches of red and yellow light on the radar screen at night.

·        The sound of foreign accents on the radio.

·        Luxury hotels.

·        To paraphrase the eloquent aviation writer, Ernie Gann, “The allure of the slit in a China girl's skirt.”

·        Sunsets of every color imaginable.

·        The tantalizing glow of the flashing strobe lights just before you break out of the clouds on approach.

·        Yosemite Valley from above.

·        The almost blindingly-brilliant-white of a towering cumulus cloud.

·        A cold San Miguel in Hong Kong after a long day’s flying.

·        Ocean crossings.

·        The taxiway sentry (with his flag & machine gun) at the old Taipei downtown airport.

·        Seventy-thousand-foot-high thunderstorm clouds in the tropics.

·        Sipping Pina Coladas in a luxury hotel bar, while a typhoon rages outside.

·        Chinese Junks bobbing in Aberdeen harbor.

·        Watching the latitude count down to zero on the INS, and seeing it switch from “N” to “S” as you cross the equator.

·        Wake Island at sunrise.

·        Oslo Harbor at dusk.

·        Icebergs in the North Atlantic.

·        Contrails.

·        Pago Harbor, framed by puffy cumulus clouds in the late afternoon.

·        The camaraderie of a good crew.

·        Ferryboat races in Sydney Harbour.

·        Experiencing all the lines from the old Jo Stafford tune…

See the pyramids along the Nile.

See the sunrise on a tropic isle.

See the market place in old Algiers.

Send home photographs and souvenirs.

Fly the ocean in a silver plane.

See the jungle when it’s wet with rain.

·        White picket fences in Auckland.

·        Trade winds.

·        White sandy beaches lined with swaying palms.

·        Double-decker buses in London.

·        The endless expanse of white on a polar crossing.

·        The Star Ferry in Hong Kong.

·        Bangkok after a tropical rain.

·        Mono Lake and the steep wall of the Sierra Nevada range when approached from the east.

·        The bus ride to Stanley... on the upper deck front seat of the double-decker bus.

·        The Long Bar at the Raffles.

·        Heavy takeoffs from the reef runway at HNL.

·        Landings in the B-747 when the only way you knew you had touched down was the movement of the spoiler handle.

·        Jimmy’s Kitchen.

·        The deafening sound of tropical raindrops slamming angrily against the windshield, accompanied by the hurried slap, slap, slap of the windshield wipers while landing in a torrential downpour in Manila.

·        Endless ripples of sand dunes across the trackless miles of the Sahara desert.

·        Miller’s Pub in Chicago.

·        German beer.

·        The white cliffs of Dover.

·        Oom-pa-pa music at Meyer Gustels in Frankfurt.

·        Fjords in Norway.

·        The aimless compass, not knowing where to point as you near the top of the world on a polar crossing.

·        The old Charlie-Charlie NDB approach into Kai Tak.

·        Brain bags crammed with charts to exotic places.

·        The Peak tram in Hong Kong.

·        Breaking out of the clouds on the IGS approach to runway 13 at Kai Tak, and seeing a windshield full of “checkerboard.”

·        An empty weight takeoff in a B-747.

·        The bustle of Nathan Road on a summer day.

·        Sliding in over Crystal Springs reservoir for a visual approach and landing on 1R in SFO.

·        The smell of tropical blooms when you step off the plane in Fiji.

·        The quietness of a DC-10 cockpit.

·        Main gear touching down while the 747 cockpit is still 70 feet in the air.

·        The Eagle Pub in Cambridge.

·        The coziness of a B-747 cockpit.

·        Good flight engineers.

·        The Burma Road.

·        CAT IIIb autolands in the DC-10 on a foggy day, when you feel the wheels touch before you ever see the ground.

·        The rush of a full-speed-brakes descent at barber pole in a B-727.

·        The back-door approach into Kai Tak in a B-747 with your wingtip skimming the rooftops of Yau Yat Chen as you make the steep turn to final.

·        The twists and turns of the noise-abatement departure out of Osaka’s old Itami Airport.

·        Deadheading in First Class.

·        The Canarsie approach into JFK.

·        The “Gas Station” in Frankfurt.

·        The Eiffel Tower.

·        Max gross weight takeoffs.

·        Cross-wind landings.

·        Good co-pilots.

·        A large handful of thrust levers, each one connected to 50,000+ pounds of thrust.

·        Man-sized rudder pedals… as big as pie plates.

·         “Leak-checking” your eyelids on a long night flight.

·        And, as one close friend pointed out, payday!

 

©  Bill Austin, March 2, 2006

 

(Return to Memoriam Page)