From the Left Seat - A Night Flight with the Venerable Boeing 767-300
by Mark Wensrich
Boeing 767-300, WestJet
Flying a heavy has saved my smart phone. Instead of trying to smash its built-in alarm with my fist at 2 or 3 a.m. when I occupied the left seat of the Boeing-737NG, my airline’s 767 route structure usually takes us overseas. And most oversea flights depart later in the day or at midnight.
Tonight we are flying from Toronto to Barcelona.
Departure Time: Midnight.
Duration of Flight: All going well, eight hours, 29 mins.
The flight starts with a flight and cabin crew meet and greet, meeting the people we are going to work with that day which could be someone you know or someone you’ve never met before. This is why Standard Operating Procedures are so important. When people who’ve never met are required to work together in a very safety intensive job, it’s important that everyone knows what to expect from their fellow crew members. It is not unlike a script. All the players know their parts, the mark to stand on and what words they and the others are going to say. After introductions, it’s down to the work.
We pilot types settle into the front office, a.k.a. the flight deck, and begin reviewing the flight plan, and notices we need to be aware of, the routing, the weather, and the loading, while the flight attendants check the emergency equipment, functioning of the cabin equipment and make sure they have all they need to complete the flight. The ground crew has already started loading the baggage and cargo, the fuelers are likely there filling the plane with the required fuel, and the army of support people at the operations centre have made the flight plan, monitoring the weight and balance and timing the departure to make sure we are ready to go when the time comes.
One of us now begins to power the aircraft up and begins the flight deck checks of all the systems making sure to test the safety equipment, turn on all the systems that need to be on, turn off all the things that shouldn’t be on and generally give everything a good going over to make sure all the switches, buttons and dials are where they are supposed to be and all the lights are blinking in sequence. The other goes outside for the exterior inspection to make sure all the parts are still there and no damage is present. The walk around is either a joy or not, depending on where you happen to be. In the middle of a snow storm, not so joyful. A nice warm day in a pleasant climate is a little more joyful. You see a lot of interesting stuff on the walk around. Like the pets that may be coming along, the tiny chicks that we sometimes take along for the ride, a Harley Davidson on a pallet going to an-other country for a vacation tour.
Presuming all the checks show the aircraft is ready for the flight, we start programing the flight plan into the computers. In case you wondered, this is where (I am quite certain) 8086 and C-64 processors went to die. The flight management systems are reliable and efficient but they are old and slow and require some training to use. In the cabin, the passengers have begun to arrive and are struggling to get their bags into the overhead bins and take out all the things they think they will need for the flight. The hive that is the aircraft is at its busiest. Up front, we are getting our air traffic control clearance and verifying it is what we have programmed into the computer, then doing our briefings on what we are expecting to fly on departure and what we will do if anything goes wrong. Checklist time.
Most people don’t realise that the majority of the work that goes into a flight is done before the doors are closed. The planning, checks, and set up are the most important part of the day because you want to trap and eliminate any errors or problems before you leave the ground. If done properly, and it almost always is, then the army of people who did their jobs with Swiss watch like precision and efficiency can relax for the rest of that flight as things will look like it was easy. If you see a crew working hard in flight, something is wrong.
The passengers and cargo aboard, the final weights being fed into the computer and the take-off speeds and balance numbers being confirmed, it’s time to close the door and start getting paid. I’m not sure how flight crew pay wound up being the way; it is something I would really like to know.
It is pretty much industry standard that none of the crew is being paid until the cabin door is closed. So, all that prep work is un-paid labour. One could do all that work, have an incident where we have to unload the airplane, possibly switch to another airplane and do all that work a second time or fill out the paperwork as to what happened, and not be paid for any of it. But the doors close and we are getting a pushback clearance up front, doing checklists and talking to our ground crew about the pushback.
A quick check with the push crew to make sure we are in a safe place to start the engines so we don’t cause any damage from the jet blast coming from our engines (we can’t see behind us) and we begin the start process. It’s another checklist and taxi clearance. Now we take the lettered taxiways to the runway making sure we don’t wind up on the wrong taxiway or missing a stop we were told to make. This can be pretty complicated depending on which airport you are departing from, how familiar you are with that airport and how busy it is at that time of day. You can see airplane rush hour at almost any large airport. It takes a bit of practice to control a 400,000 pound tricycle even if it is a closed track with professional drivers. Another checklist.
Someone call Kenny Logins, because we are about to enter the danger zone. Cleared on to the runway, a quick check left and right to make sure it’s safe and another checklist. It’s not that you don’t trust the controllers, but you trust and verify. Depending on the airport and the time of day, moving to take-off position can be leisurely or a bit rushed as it is yet another movement of the Swiss watch, with some airports having very tight schedules for departing and arriving. You have to be ready to go when you get that clearance. We stand the thrust leavers up to a ~40% setting letting the engines accelerate up to speed, and even out so you don’t have different thrust levels on different sides of the plane. We begin rolling thrust up to ~70% and you utter the phrase, “Set thrust” as your partner makes sure the auto-throttle has picked up the thrust, and it is settling on the calculated thrust for that take-off. Higher is okay, lower is not. We begin to accelerate down the runway and each second means we have more momentum and less runway if something goes wrong and we need to bring the whole mass to a dead stop while remaining on the runway. If we need to stop the aircraft during this time, we are going to use the most aggressive braking you will ever feel. After all, we are taking ~400,000 pounds, accelerating that to 150 to 170 miles an hour and then bringing all that mass and momentum to a stop in the shortest distance we possibly can. All that weight and speed means that we are going to generate massive amounts of heat in the brakes. So much that it is not uncommon for the brakes to catch fire. That’s okay, they are designed for that unless the tires also catch on fire from all that heat. Then we are possibly evacuating the aircraft. So, when you are told to leave everything behind and exit the aircraft, we mean it. Seconds count and whatever you think is important can be replaced… lives cannot. Five knots prior to V1, the point of no return where we go flying instead of stopping, the hands come off the thrust levers to prevent someone from rejecting just 1 knot too fast. V1 goes by and we are now committed to going flying, Vr is approaching fast as it is usually only a few knots different. Vr, “Rotate.” The 767 is a lovely airplane, very light on the controls and it takes the gentlest of back pressure to start the 2-3°per second rotation to 15° nose up. You want to rotate slow enough that you don’t hit the tail of the plane on the runway as you bring the nose up, but not so slow that you don’t get off the ground before you run out of runway. This plane has a wonderful power to weight ratio that gives it a very fast climb and acceleration rate, so things happen fast. Depending on the airport, you may have to turn after 400 feet for noise abatement because apparently, noise is more dangerous than maneuvering. This will be hand flown, but now you are through 1000 feet and you are accelerating to retract the flaps, then resetting the power to a more efficient climb setting and you might still be doing turns for the departure, taking vectors and flying the aircraft. It is a busy dance where both partners are doing the tasks they’ve been assigned through the standard operating procedures. Somewhere in all of that, you will likely turn the autopilot on to reduce the workload of the non-flying pilot who has been doing anything the flying pilot needs done (i.e. retracting the flaps, resetting speed bugs, verifying commands), talking on the radio and running checklists. Through 3000 feet, we accelerate from 200 to 250 knots for the climb out of the aerodrome area. The workload begins to get a little lighter as you start dealing with the departure controllers.
At 10,000 feet, we accelerate to our climb speed which will vary with weight, temperature, and company requirements and will be somewhere from 280 to 330 knots until our indicated airspeed equals our planned Mach number and then we transition from knots to Mach numbers...usually .80, or 80% of the speed of sound if you prefer.
As we level at cruise, we will usually begin preparations for the oceanic segment of the flight. Picking up our oceanic clearance (this can come at almost any section of the flight depending on how close the departure airport is to the oceanic airspace… everything from getting our clearance on the ground before departure, to in the climb, or in cruise) along with our High Frequency radio (shortwave radio) frequencies we’ll be using for that portion of our flight. More checklists as we verify we have all the equipment we need to cross the ocean in working order and nothing broke after departure. We will often log on to controller pilot data link centre, a type of data link with controllers that allow us to send and receive clearances via text as well as report our position once we leave radar coverage.
The next several hours are spent monitoring the airplane systems, confirming that we are navigating where we are supposed to be navigating and generally solving all the world’s problems with my flying partner, … and occasionally having a hot beverage and a cookie. All while watching the sun set, rise, sneak around the pole, or getting to watch the stars slide by.
As we get within ~200 miles of our destination, Barcelona’s El Prat Airport, the workload begins to increase as we gather the weather and traffic information, which runways are in use and begin to set up our arrival. This involves calculating our landing distance with the weather and runway conditions provided, programing and verifying the arrival that takes us from the enroute structure to the terminal arrival area, to the final approach. Then the briefings about how we will conduct the arrival, any restrictions like altitude or speed restrictions, how we are going to transition from the arrival to the approach and what we will do if things don’t go according to plan. Yay, more checklists. Always good to make sure you don’t miss anything. Then the announcements in that smooth jazz voice. Around 140-120 miles from our destination we start our descent. Ideally, if all goes well, we reduce power to idle and keep it there until we are about 1200 feet above the ground…this almost never happens. As we descend out of the high level airspace, we once again match Mach number to Indicated Airspeed and transition from Mach to IAS as our means of speed measurement.
Now we enter the highest workload of the flight at the end of a long night. Through 10,000 feet we are really starting to get busy as we are in the terminal area. We slow down from our 320-280 knots to 250 knots or less. There is a reduction in the space between planes as we all start heading for the same point in space, the airport. Radio traffic begins to get busier as Barcelona’s controllers make adjustments to our altitude and speed to keep everyone separated as well as lining us up like Can Can dancers for the runways in use, all while keeping us in the confines of their airspace. This can mean that the flaps are starting to come out pretty early. All this last minute refining is usually why we don’t get that smooth idle descent but it can also be how the arrivals are designed.
As we manoeuver on to our final approach, we are usually at 3,000 feet above the aerodrome and 10-12 miles from the runway. We’ve slowed down to 200 knots and decelerating towards our calculated approach speed, which is in the 150-130 knot range depending on the flap setting, how heavy the airplane is when we land and the weather conditions. Ideal, we have our gear down, flaps set and we are on speed around 4 miles from the runway, but we want to be there no later than 1000 feet to touchdown. By this time, the autopilot may or may not be still activated. This all depends on the pilot, the conditions and what type of landing we are going to do. Visual conditions mean visual landings. That’s at least 3 miles of visibility and the clouds are no lower than 1000 feet above the runway. For instrument approaches, there are large variations in cloud base and visibility depending on the type of approach (NDB, VOR, GPS GNSS, GPS RNP, LOC, LOC BC, ILS Cat I, II, III a, b, or c) but the key here is that we always need to be able to see the runway at some point to land. Just like you have to see the road to drive your car. And where we switch to manual flight might range from the top of descent to after landing depending on the type of approach and weather.
Since this is such a nice flying aircraft, the flair is pretty nice as you go from roughly 4° nose up to 5° nose up as you reduce the thrust to idle. You don’t want to bring the nose up too high or you might hit the tail on the runway; you don’t want the nose too low or it might land nose wheel first. Both of those are bad things. As we touch down, the spoilers will come up and true to their name, spoil the lift on the wings to maximise the weight on to the wheels and give us the best conditions for braking. Then we gently fly the nose of the aircraft down to the ground and begin the use of reverse thrust until round 60 knots, then we stow the reverse thrust so we don’t send debris forward of the engine to be sucked up by the engine. All this while still controlling for crosswinds, gusts and any loss of braking friction. “Fly it until it’s parked” is the saying.
It’s another taxi in, being sure to be on the correct taxiways and not miss any hold short points until we arrive into the apron environment and find our gate. From there our trusty ground crew will guide us into the gate and make sure we don’t come into contact with anything while we manoeuver close to buildings, other planes, vehicles and personnel.
At long last we can set the brake and shut down the engines. More checklists. Fill out the paperwork for the flight and record any defects that may have shown up during the trip so maintenance can have it repaired. Then we set the aircraft up for the next crew to take over. If we have an opportunity, we brief the incoming crew on the condition of the plane, the weather and the flight over so they might know when and where to expect weather and turbulence, and this night flight comes to an end.
(This story appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Glidepath - the quarterly publication of the Canadian Museum of Flight).