rickair7777

Don't read the NOTAMS at LAX, 39 NM due East...

"Cleared RNAV 25L"

"Huh?"

"25L GS is OTS"

It's small/medium fields, most especially when the tower's closed where you really do need to read them. On the ground before departing such airports, and on the ground before departing *to* such airports. Awkward to read the NOTAMS enroute at 2345 and realize you can't land on the only rwy that will be open when you get there.

Also if the ASOS is inop, make sure the station has a certified weather guesser on duty, because under 121 you can't land with certain local WX data missing (ex. winds).

I didn't learn that stuff by reading the FAR/AIM at bedtime.

Cruz5350

Totally agree with this, I haven’t been in the industry for very long but I can’t imagine the schedules were like what we have today. Now it’s computers driving every metric for schedules dollars costs etc etc. It blows my mind how tight everything is run these days and the only component making sure metal isn’t bent is two humans of which managers across the board think we should get rid of one at a time…

nene

Remember the time in 2015 that Allegiant tried to fly into, than nearly ran out of fuel holding for the airport in ND that was NOTAM'd closed for Blue Angels practice for upcoming airshow?

Again, both the dispatcher and pilots missed that NOTAM apparently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diQmNfkc_wY

Margaritaville

Ha Ha Bingo Baden. That guy used to be in management at Northwest. Then he ended up in management at Allegiant. Then he tried to fly the line.

rickair7777

I see how he got the nickname, using mil terminology (incorrectly) with FAA ATC.

Puckpilot78

I dunno, based on the flightware info they were in a landing configuration. Lowest groundspeed I saw before they started climbing was around 150mph with a 500-700fpm descent. And it's been a long time since I studied GPWS callouts but there's no way they would've gotten down to around 500agl with no warnings if they didn't have at least some flap/gear out. Can't imagine how they got there, but seems to me they were all set up to land on that road until they got the low altitude call from ATC and woke the F up.

Turbosina

I dunno...there are some great articles from old aviation magazines from the 60s and 70s where they talk about airline schedules, and it made me feel tired just reading about it. It was either Len Morgan or Gordo Baxter from Flying magazine -- they were both columnists and Len Morgan retired as a Braniff 74 CA –– anyhow, one of them wrote of a typical schedule on the 727 at Braniff or TWA or somewhere. I want to say it was 7 legs and it reported at midnight, and they did this 4 or 5 nights a week.

I don't have the article handy but it was an eye-opener. We have it WAY easier than those guys did back in the early days of the jet age.

Plus, a monkey can watch the AP follow the FMS route that we simply download from CPDLC. Now imagine old-school jet route/ airway navigation using steam gauges and dual VORs and DMEs. So much more work.

GogglesPisano

Ya but, the cigarettes in the cockpit kept them going. Plus the 5 whiskeys with the stews on the layover.

NuGuy

Did some of this on the DC-9. It wasn't that big a deal. The biggest crisis is when the highlighter you used on your chart ran out. In some ways, it was easier. Fly a heading, proceed direct, no drama programming the box.

That said, some of the old Republic/North Central routes had 11-14 legs. Very squishy rest and duty rules. Who remembers "reduced rest" and "legal to start, legal to finish"?

No weather radar in the early days. Lots of procedural IFR (non-radar), which must have been a real hoot in places like MDW or LGA. Transponders weren't even a thing until the 60's, and even then most radar sites didn't have SSR. Lots of GA traffic with NO transponders, and there wasn't really any airspace classification anyway. At all. Altitude reporting wasn't even that common in GA until the early 90's, about the same time TCAS first really started to pop up.

Smoking.

Unairconditioned hotels.

Lard

Len Morgan is one of my favorites, and had some great stories, but broiling in a DC-3 during a Texas summer would make most people these days wilt in the first 3 minutes. No water sippy bottles back then, either. You drank coffee. Even when it was scorching hot.

Yes, schedules were built by hand, so there was some inefficiencies in that, but contracts weren't all that dialed in, either. Lots and lots of unpaid time sitting around. 24 hour reserve, tied to you phone, and that sucker was the landline wired to your house until the beeper became a thing.

7321

Would VNAV hooked to the AP cause a dive?