Show Notes
Delving into my log book yet again I recall thatI had flown a couple of supernumerary trips to John F Kennedy airport in New York, sitting in the back of the cockpit watching how it was done but now it was my turn to clamber into the hot seat to start my line training with Virgin Atlantic. I was also flying with the Chief Pilot so absolutely no pressure!
Compared with the Airbus A340, the old Boeings were beginning to look a bit like dinosaurs!
The confusion of aircraft flying over the Atlantic only really became apparent when they were all leaving contrails!
With the early MCDUs it was possible to outpace the processor that was trying to keep pace with your key presses.
Despite the plethora of satellites whizzing around the world, the world of aviation still often relied on old fashioned HF radios for communication.
The data we used to plot our position on maps came from the same source as that that guided the aircraft!
I was surprised to see that this famous airport still regularly used approach aids common in much less developed countries.
Images used under a creative commons licence with thanks to Nick Anderson, NATS, Airbus and the UK Gov.
More from Plane Tales
With the influx of new Airbus airframes, Virgin needed more pilots and not just to occupy the right hand seat… there were opportunities for promotion to Captain much earlier than had been the norm. When I joined the time to command was about 8 years. Looking back I did my first sector with Virgin in July 1994 and it was now November 96, 2 years 4 months later and I was already starting my pre-command training.
We last spoke to Basam when he was doing his Jet Upset Training but now that he has his dream job it was appropriate that we should chat again on one of his London layovers. In particular, he is flying around a war zone which presents additional challenges to a civil airline pilot.
A flock of seagulls had chosen that moment to break ground from the grass beside the runway and fly across our path. They disappeared under the nose as we climbed away and cleaned the aircraft up… no noise of an impact but then we noticed the No 2 engine’s N1 vibration number was pulsing and reading a bit high. So starts another Tale from my flying logbook.
The next tale from my RAF Logbook, albeit now being filled with civilian flights for Virgin Atlantic Airways…