• Memories from 30 Years of Flying the Line

By Capt. Bill Austin
Flying Tigers/FedEx, Retired

• A large handful of thrust levers, each one connected to 60,000+ pounds of thrust.
• Rotating at VR and feeling 800,000 plus pounds of airplane come alive as she lifts off.
• Hearing the nosewheel spin down against the snubber in the well after takeoff. A delightful sound signaling that you were on your way!

• Punching out the top of a low overcast while climbing 6,000 feet per minute.
• 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 to the windshield.
• The majesty and grandeur of towering cumulus. And maneuvering the airplane through canyons between them.
• Cloud formations that are beautiful beyond description.
• 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, and miles from any land, on a night crossing of the North Pacific.
• Ice fog in Anchorage on a cold winter morning.
• The patchwork quilt of the great plains from FL 370 on a day when you can see forever.
• 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.
• Dodging colored splotches of red and yellow light on the radar screen at night.
• Lightning storms at night over the Midwest.
• The welcome view of approach lights appearing out of the mist just as you reach minimums.
• 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, the Bypass, Cargo, Outer, North-South… Anything to drive newcomers and especially foreigners crazy.

• The majestic panorama of an entire mountain range stretched out beneath you from horizon to horizon.
• Lenticular clouds over the Sierras.
• Mono Lake and the steep wall of the Sierra Nevada range when approached from the east.
• Yosemite Valley from above.
• Sunsets of every color imaginable.
• Seventy-thousand-foot-high thunderstorm clouds in the tropics.
• The deep blue-gray of the sky at FL 430.
• The Alps in winter.
• The lights of London at night from FL350.
• Squall lines that run as far as you can see.
• Watching the lightning show while crossing the ITCZ at night
• Exotic lands with exotic food.
• Old Chinatown in Singapore… before it was torn down, modernized, and sterilized.
• Long-tail boats speeding along the klongs in Thailand.
• The quietly turning paddle fans in the lobby of the Raffles Hotel in Singapore.
• A cold San Miguel in Hong Kong after a long day’s flying.

• Ocean crossings.
• 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.”
• The taxiway sentry (with his flag & machine gun) at the old Taipei downtown airport.
• 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.

• The endless expanse of white on a polar crossing.
• The hustle and bustle of Hong Kong Harbor.
• The bus ride to Stanley...on the upper deck front seat of the double-decker bus.
• The Star Ferry in Hong Kong.
• The Peak tram in Hong Kong.
• The bustle of Nathan Road on a summer day.
• Bangkok after a tropical rain.
• 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. Even in the Bitburg Garden in HKG.
• The white cliffs of Dover.
• Oom-pa-pa music at the "Gemaltes Haus" in Frankfurt.
• Double-decker buses in London.
• The “Gas Station” in Frankfurt.
• The Eiffel Tower.
• Fjords in Norway.
• The aimless compass, not knowing where to point as you near the top of the world on a polar crossing.
• Breaking out of the clouds on the IGS approach to runway 13 at Kai Tak, and seeing a windshield full of "checkerboard" and as you 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 old Charlie-Charlie NDB approach into Kai Tak.
• The Burma Road.
• Flight bags crammed with charts to exotic places.
• An empty weight takeoff in a B-747.
• The rush of a full-speed-brakes descent at barber pole in a B-727.

• 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 quiet of a DC-10 cockpit.

• Main gear touching down while the 747 cockpit is still 70 feet in the air.
• The coziness of a B-747 cockpit.
• Good co-pilots.
• Good flight engineers.
• Deadheading in First Class.
• The Canarsie approach into JFK.
• Max gross weight takeoffs.
• Cross-wind landings.
• The brief, yet tempting, glimpse of runway lights…. after you’ve already committed to the missed approach.
• The tantalizing glow of the flashing strobe lights just before you break out of the clouds on approach.
• CAT IIIb autolands in the DC-10 on a foggy day, when you feel the wheels touch before you ever see the ground.
• “Leak-checking” your eyelids on a long night flight but then.....
• Sunrises seen from the high flight levels that make the heart soar.
• And, as one friend so perceptively pointed out, payday

© Bill Austin, March 2, 2006