The very first time I was called out for a trip, it was to be with Captain Psycho Saroyin. Jerry Paddy Lester would be our Flight Engineer.
Courtesy and common sense dictated that, as I introduced myself to the Captain in the Ops office, I made a definite point of telling him that this was to be my first actual flight on the 747, and that I hadn’t flown for a number of years. In other words, watch your ass, and mine, I might be dangerous. Saroyin’s face registered no emotion as he grabbed his flight bag, a tennis racket, and headed for the airplane.
Our trip was to be from Honolulu-Sidney, layover for two days. Then Sidney-Melbourne-Sidney, layover, returning once again to Hawaii. In my excitement, I never noticed that both Saroyin and Lester had gathered up pillows and blankets as we entered the plane.
The Captain elected to take the first leg, HNL-Sidney, which was fine by me. It would give me the opportunity to watch him operate, as I got more comfortable with the airplane. As the PNF, pilot not flying, my duties were communication, navigation, and to back-up the Captain.
Pyscho took off from runway 8 right, the reef runway, turned right to an assigned heading, and we climbed to our initial altitude of 5,000 feet. Throwing on the autopilot, Saroyin says “you have it,” and both he and Paddy build cocoons for themselves, actual nests of many blankets and pillows, and they both drop immediately into a sound sleep.
This is going to be interesting, since winter flying north-south across the equator is a bitch. The storms that band the globe from 10 North through 5 North, and from 5 South to 10 South are brutal. The cells can be thirty miles thick, stretch for hundreds of miles, and climb above forty thousand feet.
Most passengers think that all a plane has to do to avoid weather is to climb above it, or to go around it. Not true. Indiscriminate climbing is out of the question, since the weight of the airplane determines how high
you’re capable of going. The initial altitude a fully loaded Boeing 747 is able to reach is about 29,000 feet. Burning about 25,000 pounds of fuel an hour lightens the plane gradually, allowing the pilot (assuming the concurrence of Air Traffic Control) to climb an additional two thousand feet every few hours. No way however, could we ever climb high enough, given our weight and time en route, to climb above the kind of storms we were going to face this evening.
As to deviation, when you take off on an eleven-hour-plus journey, fuel conservation is a real concern. Deviation must be kept to a reasonable minimum if you want to have enough fuel to reach your destination, plus some in reserve.
I was now “alone” in the cockpit, brand-spanking new, having to fly, communicate, navigate and do weather avoidance, constantly scanning the weather radar. On a moonless night, which this was, there is nothing to be seen out the windscreen, zero, nada, a black hole.
We were about an hour into the flight, only at 29,000 feet, when the first band of storm cells appeared on my scope. Playing with the radar, adjusting it’s pitch and range settings, showed me that we were not going to top these storms. I was going to have to decide the best way to penetrate this line of death, which stretched across the entire horizon of my radar scope. Choosing a path towards the yellows and greens, avoiding the pinks, reds and violets, I turned on the seat belt sign, put on the sparklers, (the ignition switches to “flight start” — continuous ignition), the nacelle anti-ice, and prepared for the worst. I also called back, and told the cabin crew to take their jump seats.
The plane bucked and kicked at first, and rocked and rolled. We were finally being tossed about by angry gods, a child’s toy in a whirlpool. My two companions’ snores continued from under their blankets. Saint Elmo’s fire was dancing off the windscreen, and it’s strange blue light traveled between the flight guidance controls and my hands when I reached for a switch or control knob.
I’m flying while weighing the degree of perceived danger against my ego-driven need not to wake Captain Saroyin. I decide that I can handle it, the hell with those guys.
The mechanical bull in Gilly’s Saloon in Texas was tamer than our ride became. Turbulence in aviation is measured in very specific terms. Light, moderate, heavy, severe and extreme, all have their meanings. Light is that uncomfortable chop we’ve all experienced, while extreme means the plane can no longer be controlled. We were in moderate and severe. Not once did my two fellow travelers open their eyes.
About four hours into the ride, we finally emerge into calmer air. I had been so busy flying, trying to control the airplane, navigate and call in position reports, that I never noticed how desperately I had to pee.
Now in smooth air, I reach over and wake up the Captain, indicating that I have to jump back to relieve myself. He might have sat up, I don’t honestly remember, so great was my need to go.
As the flight attendant opened the cockpit door for me to get back onto the flight deck, I used my body to block her view of the two corpses up front, swaddled in their shrouds… nobody’s awake, nobody is flying the airplane.
Now, with the luxury of an empty bladder and a full cup of coffee, I check the fuel balancing and fuel used, satisfying myself that our fuel burn is on flight plan.
An hour and a half later, having crossed the equator heading towards five-south, we’re approaching storms again. The Sleeping Beauties, as I was now thinking of them, were still out cold. I alerted the purser to put all the carts away, and to have all the flight attendants once again buckle in, since the approaching storms appear even more intense than the previous mess had been.
I had my hands truly full this time. We gained and lost a thousand feet of altitude at a time as the heavy rain and hail beat the plane, a maddened Gene Krupa on a set of steel drums. At the worst of it, flying in turbulence with Saint Elmo’s fire dancing around me, I am deviating as best I can. The Captain pokes his head out and opens one eye. The eye looks at me, at the flight control panel, then withdraws back under the covers. I guess I’m doing okay.
Flying is described by some pilots as hours of boredom, punctuated by moments of extreme terror. This night became hours of terror, punctuated by moments of boredom!
I started a decent about twenty minutes out of Sydney. I was about to wake the Captain, when Saroyin suddenly sprang up, folded up his camping gear, grabbed his DOP-kit, and went back to the lay.
Five minutes later, now level at 5,000 feet, I’m on a radar vector to intercept the localizer for the ILS at Sidney. Captain Saroyin returns to his seat, adjusts himself in, and says, “I have it.” He is shaved, smells of shampoo, his damp hair is combed back, he has brushed his teeth and he is in control.
A few minutes later we land in Sidney, eleven hours and twenty minutes after take-off, and the Captain has said a total of six, count ‘em, six words to me. He and the Engineer have been awake about fifteen minutes.
On the crew bus to the hotel, I exhaustedly sink towards oblivion. In my last moment of consciousness, I overhear my two crewmates planning to meet to play tennis in half-an-hour’s time. It turns out that these two guys are tennis freaks who buddy-bid, and pull this shit all the time.
It’s no fucking surprise to me that they call him Psycho Saroyin. We lived through my virgin flight, and although we were never in imminent danger, no sane pilot would allow an experienced man to handle that load by himself, no less a novice like me. For my part, I was wrong to allow my stubborn pride to win that particular game of “chicken.”
My flying rust disappeared fast, my spooling-up process was so accelerated that I never wanted anybody else to touch anything in that airplane but me. As it turned out, I had no worries in that department, since those two guys pulled the same stunt on me heading back for Honolulu a few days later.