AVweb Classics

Mo had brought me my second beer and I was well on my way to losing my first ten bucks to the video blackjack machine imbedded in the bar when Janet and Keith showed up to share my Las Vegas layover with me.Probably in accord with the public’s preconceived notions of gender roles, Janet was […]

It is a very rare occasion when I attend an Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) meeting. Usually, they are held at some motel meeting room hundreds of miles from my home, and it is also usually during a very nice day that could be better spent outside playing tennis.The turmoil over potential pay cuts of […]

My co-pilot, Jerry, breezed into the cockpit at pushback time plus five and threw down his flight bag. “Sorry I’m so late — I somehow screwed up my schedule and didn’t even know I was supposed to fly today!”That sort of thing happens from time to time and there isn’t much you can do about […]

Computers have made aviation so much easier. A mere decade ago, flight engineers were trained to compute weight and balance figures on something called “a piece of paper.” These figures were then used in the operation of the aircraft.Then a major breakthrough happened and the airlines came up with a radio dispatch system that was […]

I am having trouble believing that the 727 is ancient history, I said to my tennis-club bartender.”What is a 727 and why are you sitting at my bar if all you are going to drink is Diet Coke?” asked Fred. Fred has been the bartender at my tennis club for over 10 years, and this […]

The pilot lounge at our crew base is just like every other one in the airline universe: some preschool-type art tables with folding chairs and walls covered with cork bulletin boards, which in turn are covered with the flotsam and jetsam of pilot life. There is the usual large screen television showing either the usual […]

I was in a tent and it was raining, but at least it was warm. Standing behind a plywood podium in a “forum tent” at a recent Florida Fly-In, I had been invited to give a little talk to the experimental airplane crowd on what airline flying was really like.I was more than a little […]

The employee cafeteria in the ground-training building is a sad place, filled with the forced boisterousness of the indentured student.Facing either a five-day stint for recurrent or the “serious time” of a five-week initial, the diners found in this plastic forked purgatory gather at round, Formica-covered tables festooned with pepper and salt shakers, the current […]

Holiday Inn bars really aren’t so bad if you need a place to spend the afternoon on a long layover. I had gotten into Memphis at noon and didn’t have to leave until the next morning, so sometime around four I gave up on cable TV and found myself in my normal corner booth in […]

The flight to Denver was going well enough. Light chop in the clouds at three-three-oh and only an hour and a half before we got to the front range of the Rockies.Today’s cockpit conversation wasn’t about the ride or the destination, though. It was about next month and our holiday schedules. The line-of-time bid results […]