30 August 2006

Unforgiving

The Airbus-319 and I arrived at Dulles with an authoritative thud late in the afternoon. The tires gave a squeal that was audible in the passenger compartment, and I could feel the fuselage flex around me.

“Navy pilot,” I thought, used to flying the steep glideslope into the controlled crash required to land on a precise point on an aircraft carrier's pitch deck. It was not necessary with 8,000 feet of smooth concrete ahead, and I always wonder what the combined consequences of these acts of violence are to the anonymous aircraft we board with such trust.

The impact was significant enough that the Chief Flight Attendance commented on it in her welcoming address to Washington DC over the intercom.

Pilots trained by the Air Force know how to flare their landings. They always have plenty of concrete.

I didn't care. Landings equaled takeoffs on this trip, and even if they broke the airplane, I was home. Not a bad ride. There had been some moderate turbulence coming down from Flight Level 38, nothing much, and it had been a calm ride over the mid-section of the nation.

The internet check-in seat selection menu claimed the aircraft was fully booked, just as all the airplanes I have been on this year. It turned out not to be the case. I had an empty seat next to me, just as I had on the outward leg of the trip. I could stretch out, just like back in the days the airlines were going out of business and travel was fun.

I do not know if the new terror rules have affected discretionary travel. I knew that my gels and liquids were in the belly of the airplane, along with my plastic lighter.

I had to check my bag, if I was going to keep my shaving kit and my travel bar. I gave up checking luggage years ago, except on long overseas sojourns, and dashing directly away from the flight and the confines of the security perimeter was the only thing I could do to mitigate the agony of air travel.

You have to do what you can these days.

I had been keeping a weather eye on the television; Hurricane Eduardo came ashore in south Florida a year to the day after Katrina, but with much less bluster. I don't blame everyone for being a little jumpy. There was anguished discussion about the state of the Herbert Hoover Levee around Lake Okeechobee, since it's construction was eighty years ago, and the Corps of Engineers does not believe that it is up to code.

Around 2,500 died the last time a storm pushed all the water of the fourth-largest American lake up against the rim of the levee and it gave way. Nearly as many died in the storm of 1927 as did on 9/11, but we have a blessed ability to forget. The generation that survived is all gone now, and their children are building strip malls along the flanks of the levee.

There was no unpleasantness aloft yesterday associated with the storm, at least not yet. The forecasters are saying that it will pass offshore and intensify as it passed north along the coast of Georgia and the Carolinas, and they say that the personal inconvenience will arrive on Friday, the big travel day before the last break of the summer. I'm glad I am not going to try to fly anywhere.

I am not going anywhere, not since the former marital dog came to visit, and we will hunker down at Big Pink until the clouds and sheets of rain pass.

It is curious that airline travel has become so safe, just as we have managed to make it so unpleasant. The ComAir jet that crashed over the weekend produced the first civilian casualties in commercial aviation since the terror attacks.

They say that the crew turned out on the wrong runway, and there was only one controller in the tower, contrary to FAA rules. You can imagine the last moments, I'm sure, just as I do. The lights on the edges of the concrete were not lit.

There was a brief discussion, caught on the cockpit voice recorder. Must be a result of the construction last week, one of them said, and I imagine the other nodding as the throttles went forward.

I could not help remembering the old joke about the crew who landed on a runway that was far too short, but 7,000 feet wide. A little misunderstanding is all it was, but this was horrifyingly real. The plane was pushing through rotation at around 130 knots, just about ready to fly, when the concrete ran out and things went completely to hell.

It is not a dangerous thing to fly. It is just remarkably unforgiving.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com


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