CEO of the Cockpit

Cruising in the sun after a long ground delay, three bouts with de-icing and a half-mile-viz takeoff on a snowy runway can really help a pilot relax. The sun was shining in the big, 767 cockpit window on my left and was slowly roasting my arm. I still had my zone heat up high and […]

Dubya had done us a favor this holiday season and officially made all of the Military Operations Areas “cold” during Thanksgiving weekend. What a guy; the MOAs are normally shutdown during holidays anyway, but a political point is a political point.Because of resting military flight crews and a generous (albeit disingenuous) president, we actually arrived […]

It was a nice, sunny day at home. A day off with great weather can be a rarity where I live and I intended to enjoy it to the full. My neighbor and fellow pilot, Chad, and I had one appointment to attend to before we headed out to play tennis. Apparently, there is such […]

My nephew Kermit had moved up in the world. Fresh out of the Aviation College at the University of South Toledo, he was a sales-rep gofer for one of the dozens of new VLJ manufacturers that dot the flying landscape of late.He was justifiably proud of the “Sky-Screamer 100.” Not only did this three-place, subsonic, […]

It isn’t often that an airline flight crew has time to go to a football game during a layover. Many years ago when I was a plumber on the old DC-8 we used to have beacoup Detroit layovers, which meant we were laying-over in Ann Arbor at the venerated Ann Arbor Inn.Those layovers were seasonal […]

A Boeing 767 can taxi up a shallow-grade taxiway on one engine and no additional power. I should know — I have been taxiing big airplanes up the hill in Atlanta next to Delta’s Jet Base for over 28 years now.The key to the whole conga-line taxi thing is to take your time and not […]

Ladies and gentlemen, I said on the PA, I know this defies belief, but we aren’t delayed in any way today. There is no gate hold, no ATC delay, and we have all the necessary paperwork to dispatch this flight.The catering, such as it is, was placed on board 20 minutes ago and all of […]

Our airline had come out of bankruptcy and all of us were still alive. Poorer financially, yes, but wiser to the ways of the world and just how much credence to give to the promises of politicians and managers from both sides of the labor/management divide.With any reorganization, changes are bound to come. Our pilot […]

The company had issued a call, asking that employees bring in ancient artifacts of an airline gone by — ours. The company’s museum was expanding. Now that we were almost out of bankruptcy it was time to start spending money irresponsibly again before we forgot how.The museum is a wonderful place, situated in a corner […]

“I can’t figure it out,” said Sid, my co-pilot. “The airplanes keep getting bigger but the coffee cups keep getting smaller.” He was looking askance at his shot-glass-sized coffee that the flight attendants had just brought up.”I wonder why they are so stingy on coffee. The passengers are just going to bug them for a […]