More than anything I wanted to be aloft with the geese and cranes, basking in the sun that warmed the Cessna’s cockpit. But with a freelancer’s income and two kids in college, for the past half decade, and for how many ears to come,  looking up is as close as I’ll get. But I’m not complaining.

The FAA counts active pilots by current medical certificates. Given the declining numbers, I’m not the only one who let mine lapse. For many of us, flying is something we do for fun, which means it comes after higher priorities, like a roof, food, and providing for the family. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t host a pity party for one on days such as this.

At least I did until I talked to Steve Wood, a pilot who divides his time between the UK and US, and who has set nearly 300 speed records over a closed course, 90 of them FAI-recognized world records. After hearing his story, I realized that what’s most important is that I still look up when a sound, especially a flying-machine-made sound, draws my eyes skyward.

Watching airplanes fly over his Yorkshire hometown is what captured and sustained Wood’s interest in aviation. “It’s not like here,” he said from his second home at Spruce Creek, a fly-in community in Daytona Beach, Florida. “There was no hanging out at the airport.” More than anything Wood wanted to fly for a living. Under the UK’s strict medical requirements, a kidney stone ended that dream in 1964.

No matter where they may be, watching dots hum their away across a heavenly hemisphere has sustained an aficionado’s interest in aviation. In 1993 Wood had saved enough money to act of his passion and earn his private pilot certificate in San Diego. It is a sobering thought, but maybe looking up is the one true measure of anyone’s dedication to flight.

Looking up inspired and sustained the brothers Wright and others through their times between failures. Looking up seized the imaginations of terrestrial souls and ultimately drove them skyward. And it nourishes those of us now grounded for whatever reason.

In past periods of aeronautical despair I’d mourn the passing of my aerial peregrinations and whine some overwrought, bitter epitaph to an uncaring beer bottle. But no longer, thanks to the epiphany brought to light by the life of Steve Wood.

Whether past, present, or future, a pilot’s life is not measured by flight time. A pilot is born with his or her first glance skyward, and it ends when nothing tips the head back to better enable the eyes to search the sky. Looking up is what connects the time on the ground and sustains our future in aviation.–Scott Spangler

Overall, the GA accident rate adjusted proportionally to 2008’s decreased flight time. Homebuilts, however, are about 10 percent of the GA fleet, so their accident and fatality numbers contribute to the overall GA safety rate. Remove—or reduce—the homebuilt data, and GA would have had a much safer year. 

Succinctly, per 100,000 flight hours, in 2008 the homebuilt accident rate  was 5x higher than store-bought airplanes. The fatal rate was 7x higher. Contributing to this is the interesting—but not surprising—fact that nearly twice as many homebuilt accidents were caused by mechanical problems and other causes that often start with a sudden loss of power.

It should be no surprise that this has captured the attention of many, and it won’t be a surprise when they attempt to remedy the problem with an online education effort. Before they invest too much in this, however, I suggest some research because, it seems to me, the Internet could well be a contributing factor to homebuilt accidents. Here’s my logic.

From first-hand experience, I know that amateur aircraft builders have a lot of questions that usually start with How do I…? How do these parts…? And, Is this right?

Today, it seems to me, most of these questions are broadcast online, often accompanied with digital photos. The answers come from the other members of these  online communities of builders. Certainly, this is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be the only thing. Builders need to get face-to-face with their peers and old hands, preferably in the shop.

Before the Internet, this is where builders got answers to their questions. And because they were homebuilders, after the Q&A and a cup of coffee, they’d often poke and prod the rest of the project, one proudly showing off his work and the other looking at it with a critical eye and pointing out problems that could lead to an accident if not corrected. Doing this online, in a close-up digital photo, is impossible.

Even better, in the movement’s early days, building airplanes united homebuilders in a face-to-face community, an EAA chapter. One member would host a meeting at his shop so everyone had a chance to admire his craftsmanship, share skills, and work as a group to make  homebuilts the best they could be. This still happens, naturally, but not like it once did.

When kits started to replace scratch building from plans, chapters started to evolve. A good many of them became more social, because that’s the members’ primary shared interest. This led to a brain drain because the hardcore homebuilders didn’t have a reason to leave their shops. When they got lonely, they joined an online community of their peers. Still, most chapters have an   EAA Technical Counselor and EAA Flight Advisor.

The hard part is getting new builders to join a social group so they can meet these helpful, knowledgeable friendly, advisors who are eager to help—and invite them over for coffee and questions. This is a conundrum EAA has been attempting to solve for some time.

Some might say that the Internet is a suitable source of education and information, and that the airworthiness inspection is the face-to-airplane time to catch—and correct—problems. That might be the case, if the builder had to dismantle the airplane into component pieces so the inspector could see that the builder had done something improperly. These inspections rarely get beyond the paperwork or under the skin.

Safety is a vexing problems for all aspects of aviation, but especially so for homebuilts, which is why they must carry a passenger warning that says  flying in them carries greater risk.

Regulating safety is only effective after the fact. Prevention is the ultimate, effective remedy, but it depends on a human trait often in short supply: personal responsibility.  And that’s something you cannot get online. –Scott Spangler

After World War II, the private pilot requirements weren’t that much different from today’s sport pilot ticket. Then the FAA started adding requirements to keep pace with technology, which was only right. One  private ticket should be enough, but the NPRM appeared to put sport pilot on the same path.  Proposing that sport pilots get an hour under the hood violated every concept that led to the creation of this Day/VFR-only ticket. Yeah, new fixed-wing LSAs  have glass up to the simulated IFR training mission, but what’s the point, other than someone thought it was a good idea?

Reading elsewhere that only 150 or so people and AOPA, ASC, EAA, NAFI, and USUA submitted comments didn’t do much to assuage my cynical skepticism. Given the whole of aviation and its problems, sport pilot barely registers in the overall picture. With so few comments, I figured the FAA would approve its proposals and move onto more pressing problems.

Imagine my surprise to read that the FAA withdrew the problematic proposals—including hood time—and approved those that will benefit the greatest number of people. First among them is the use of Special LSAs, like the Cessna Skycatcher, by Part 141 flight schools (see Ground School Delivers Consistent Quality). With the outcomes of these proposals, the FAA has sedated by cynicism and planted a seed of hope for the future.

Equally important for schools and their teachers, sport pilot instructors will no longer need five hours in each make-and-model aerial classroom, and they will not be transferred to the bureaucratic gauntlet of Subpart H. It would have been nice if the FAA had also withdrawn the requirement for sport pilots to carry their logbooks when they fly, but it’s still there (and pilots should carry a copy, not the original).

Other worthwhile changes, all of which take affect on April 2, 2010, include mountain flight that tops out at the loftier of 10,000 feet MSL or 2,000 feet AGL. In the same practical vein, before their solo cross-country, SP students needed communication and navigation radio training, even if their LSA was not equipped for it. Now, they only need the training if the LSA has the gear. Even more impressive is that this was the FAA’s idea. Bravo!

While the changes are beneficial—and important to those they affect—most of them are little consequence to most in aviation, until you think it through. For example: To get a private in a powered parachute or weight-shift trike, the student needs three solo trips around the pattern at a towered airport.

Many (most?) towers have a hard time working these slow fliers into the pattern, so meeting this requirement isn’t easy. The FAA could have gone two ways here. It could have told towers to provide the necessary services and deal with the speed differences, which would make the lives of faster fliers way more interesting. Instead, its new requirements allow students to gain the necessary radio experience during dual instruction in an airplane.

I’m guessing that most readers will find these changes of only passing interest, and if you want more precise info, you can follow the links at the head of this post. What may be of primary importance is that the FAA, given all of its more pressing problems, didn’t take the easy way out, and for that I offer my thanks by the shovelful. – Scott Spangler

Way. A billion bucks way. That’s what United Technologies is putting in Sikorsky Innovations, the effort to create a no-pilot H-60 Black Hawk and other projects to make helos fly faster, simulate vision, and monitor their own performance. The Houston Chronicle headline of the AP story was clear: Sikorsky Helicopter Will Need No Pilot.  

Kaman Aerospace and Lockheed-Martin beat them to it, according to an AP article in the Washington Post a week later: "Lockheed, Kaman Unmanned Helicopter Test a Success.” Fulfilling a Marine contract, the heavy-lift K-Max demonstrated programmed and remote-control flight, hovered at 12,000 feet, and delivered 3,000 pounds of cargo within the time limit. 

For an encore demonstration, with its four-hook carousel the unmanned K-MAX lifted loads with a combined weight of 3,450 pounds. On the single flight it delivered three of the four sling loads to preprogrammed delivery coordinates. A ground operator controlled the final delivery. 

Each demo mimicked the confined area challenges of Afghanistan. If technology can safely meet this challenge, say what you want, but it seems clear that the cockpit of the not too distant future will be a cubicle in some office building.

The article on the Sikorsky Innovations effort succinctly summarized what’s motivating UAV activity on all fronts: “Steven Zaloga, a senior analyst at Teal Group Corp. in Fairfax, Va., said unmanned aerial vehicles represent ‘one of the few dynamic markets’ in the aerospace industry hit hard in the recession.”

In its 2009 market survey, the Teal Group predicts the worldwide UAV market will be $62 billion over the next decade, growing from $4.4 billion a year to $8.7 billion. Naturally, the military will be the initial customer, but as they have since the brothers Wright first flew, military innovations soon become things civilians take for granted, like jet engines.

People never welcome with open arms new ideas contrary to the status quo, which is why the feds  still spends millions trying to get people to buckle up when they get into their cars. Flying in no-pilot aircraft is no different, and whether we like it or not, it may become the norm, just like the seatbelts people buckle up 73 percent of the time.

Consider the safety benefits: cubicle cockpits could run like a factory or hospital, where one shift relieves another to provide round-the-clock coverage. Working a regular shift and living near the control center, pilots would not start work impaired by the dilatory effects of rotating shifts or lengthy cross-country commute. With corporate czars and bottom-line bean counters calling the shots, most likely a single pilot would remotely control one aircraft. To maintain safety’s checks and balances they would report to a manager called captain, to preserve tradition.

To pilots flying today, this future doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, and I’m right there with ya! Please don’t think that I’m promoting this cockpit cubicle future; I’m just sharing what I see on the horizon. It occurs to me that this change is really no different than the relocation of an airplane’s third wheel, from tail to nose, about a half century ago. Taildraggers called  nosewheel-pilots posers and lamented the certain decline in safety. How is that any different than moving the cockpit from the pointy end of the airplane to an office park off the airport? – Scott Spangler

This fascinating piece on the Polar Keyhole will expand the minds of pilots who have never flown way up north as it details some of the peculiarities of the basic magnetic compass we all fly with coupled up with the Flight Management Systems (FMS) found in most turbine-powered aircraft.  Val Trent is a former Army helicopter pilot with some 19,000 hours in his logbook and currently flies a Global Express. The only continent Val’s missed is Antarctica and he says that’s just fine with him.

Please welcome Val Trent to Jetwhine.

The first questions most people might ask are, “What and where is the ‘keyhole?” followed pretty quickly with so “What do we do about it.” I’ll answer the second question first. “We don’t do anything.” Now back to the first one …

True vs. Magnetic

In the Honeywell FMS‘ used in most large aircraft, the background navigation operations are always computed using “True Course” 100% of the time. If you’re one of those pilots who know that, count yourself as one of the relative few that enjoys mysteries. Transparent to the pilot is a background built-in conversion within the software that makes all of our operations appear to us in the cockpit seat to be magnetic so that we can operate in an environment with which we are familiar almost 100% of the time. The Magnetic environment is familiar, common to all aviation and marine navigation, and doesn’t change…right?

Well, … almost. Magnetic variation is constantly changing but the adjustments for accurate navigation are transparent to us up front in the cockpit.

As we navigate along, the Flight Management System takes the course you’ve programmed, looks at its database and checks the course with the magnetic variation along the route and converts back and forth so that we have an accurate route to follow. In the far north however, the lines of variation grow closer and closer together to the extent that in one particular area, they are so close that distance between the computed variation changes so rapidly with our groundspeed that the computer can’t keep up. This area is called the keyhole. I’ve flown through it several times and you can see it happen almost to the “degree” although it does vary minutely. A flight from Seattle (KBFI) to Stockholm (ESKN) for example, takes you right through the keyhole.

Upon entering this region, the FMS, along with the Horizontal Situation Indicator (HSI) in some aircraft such as the Global Express show a big red “HDG FAIL.” In fact, above 73° North and below 60° South, it won’t compute variation at all because the lines of variation are too close at those latitudes north (and south) and are not even stored in the variation database. That’s why all navigation above and below those regions is in True all the time.

Back to Square One

Ok, now we can more specifically answer the first question, “what is it” at the same time we answer the last half, “where is it?” Basically, the Polar Keyhole is a box from the ground up, the location of which is fairly specifically located between 90° and 120° west longitude and 70° to 72° north latitude. Because the FMS cannot keep up with the variation changes, your FMS will annunciate, “ACTIVE MODE IS MAG HDG” and your HSI’s annunciate the red “HDG FAIL.” This all reminds you to switch the FMS to indicate TRUE headings.

But what do you do about it? Actually nothing is the correct answer. In the Global Express, the HSI’s go into “HDG FAIL” mode but the airplane is still navigating as it always has. Nothing is wrong and nothing changes except what you see on the HSI and the FMS. If you do nothing, the aircraft will come out the other side of the keyhole on it’s own and operations will appear normal from there on. I believe that other types such as the GV series do change to TRUE mode on the HSI’s without pilot input.

Bottom line, not a big deal, unless you’re not expecting it and don’t know what it is. That can be a cause for concern until you figure it out. One more piece of useful pilot knowledge to tuck under your cap for that first trip up north. Be sure and send me some photos too.

Val Trent

I landed here because powered paragliders fascinate me. A PPG? It’s the fabric wing you wear like a parachute that’s powered by the meat grinder on your back. Yeah, I want to fly one, so I’ve been wandering around this afternoon looking for someplace to learn how, once it gets warmer.

In the PPG section it has a number of embedded videos that took my breath away. In one a Canadian mounted a camera in his canopy, and when he took off from the frozen lake, the snow looked like clouds and reminded me of those shots you see of the Space Shuttle orbiting Earth.

The second appears to be in a warmer clime and season, humming across agricultural lands and coastlines. Ah, now this is flying. No airports, no hangars or tie downs, no ATC, and no traffic. Keep the rig in the truck; freedom as close as humans can approximate to the birds. The ultimate antidote for thaasophobia. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to resume my research. There has to be a PPG school somewhere close. –Scott Spangler

Despite its importance, the quality of ground school instruction is the greatest variable in the flight training equation. Cessna has removed this variable (at least at its more than 280 Cessna Pilot Centers) with its new Part-141 approved Sport/Private Pilot Course, which went online late last year and delivers consistent, high quality education in a virtual classroom to students when they are in a mood to learn.

Cessna gave us a preview a little more than a year ago (see Next-Gen Challenge: Selling Aviation), but based on the online demo, the company heeded an essential aphorism of success: under promise and over deliver.  Half the credit should go to the good folks at King Schools, Cessna’s educational partner, who developed and maintains (or so it seems, given the URL) the virtual classroom.

Ground school’s value is directly tied to the teacher, just as it is in any institution of learning: good teachers provide a good education and bad teachers are a waste of student time and money. Contributing to teacher effectiveness is the classroom and available teaching tools, which start at a chalkboard and crude airplane model and top out at a computer projection system. Finally, there is the student variable, a three-part equation of availability, attention, and attendance.

Cessna and King started to address these variables in the early 1990s when they launched the multimedia heavy ground school course taught at CPCs. Those were the days of dial-up, so most of the course was on CDs, which, in addition to the human variables, tethered schools and students to specific hardware and facility requirements.

Let’s be honest. Most CFIs are not good ground school instructors. They’d rather be flying, because most of them only get paid when they are in the air. At many Part-61 flight schools, the classroom could double for a storage area. The demands on a student’s time hasn’t gotten any better either. The new Cessna course addresses these concerns with its on-demand virtual classroom complete with needed tools, like a flight computer (so students can’t complain, “I forgot mine!).

Students can get to class from any Internet connection. The course is taught in three stages. Stage 1 five blocks take students to to solo; five blocks in Stage 2 take them to Stage 3, checkride prep. Each lesson is presented in PowerPoint fashion, a series of bullet-pointed slides packed with full-motion diagrams, videos, interactive quizzes that reinforce knowledge just taught, and end-of-lesson interactive exams. If students leave in the middle of a lesson, the program remembers where they left off.

CFIs are not totally out of the loop. A Phase Progress Report gives the date a student completed a Knowledge Group/Lesson and lists the questions missed and the number of tries the student made in answering it. It is the perfect guide for preflight discussions.

Lack of student preparation is a common gripe among all teachers. CFIs will be happy to hear that the new Cessna course addresses this with preflight scenarios, which instructors can customize for each student’s needs. Presented as a PDF that students print at home, these are, without a doubt, the coolest part of the course!

Each scenario is a lesson plan (another quality variable). It starts by giving the Objective, Where to Go, How to Get There, Planned Deviations, Planned Malfunctions, Purpose/Pressures (real or simulated), and Risks (real or simulated). Next it lists stuff that’s New This Scenario, followed by Improving Your Skills, stuff learned the previous lesson.

Not only do the scenarios prepare students and teachers for what they will practice the air, they lead the educational duo through the lesson by the hand, reducing the chances of forgetting something. Certainly, there are better teaching methods, but in the prosaic realm of  Part-61 flight training, the teachers who who employ them are the exception, not the rule.

Cessna and the Kings have delivered a course perfect for today, a course that addresses the demands on students and instructors and schools and delivers a high-quality education no matter where they take to the air. Nicely done, and it will work, if students and CFIs use it correctly. –Scott Spangler

“The FAA has been made aware of an issue with an update to a navigation database that became effective on 14 January 2010.  To date, the known affected models are: Honeywell Bendix/King KLN 35, KLN 88, KLN 89, KLN 89B, KLN 90, KLN 90B, KLN 94, KLX 100, KLX 135, KLX 135A, KLN 900.”

It provided a link to a Honeywell website for more information. It described the problem succinctly in bold red letters:

After production and distribution of the Cycle 1001 databases (effective date 14-Jan-2010), Honeywell was informed by our data supplier, Jeppesen, that the data file delivered to Honeywell contained incorrect Dynamic Magnetic Variations for all terminal and en route waypoint records. For that reason, it is imperative that the incorrect databases NOT be used for arrival, departure, or approach operations.

In other words, airplanes with avionics that use the affected database are grounded until pilots download and install the corrected replacement. Fortunately, correcting a database error is a lot easier and expedient than correcting the same error on paper charts. It’s a pain, for sure, but imagine the inconvenience if pilots had to wait for new charts?

Magnetic variation is a term familiar to all pilots, the result of incorrect data is clear, an increased chance of metal meeting something hard, with an unfortunate outcome. But what in the heck is Dynamic Magnetic Variation?

On my first pass through Google I learned that Dynamic Magnetic Variation plays an important (but not clearly understood) role in the operation of MRI machines. Interesting, but not what I was looking for. I had better luck in the Instrument Procedures Handbook, FAA-H-8261-1A, which was better suited to my dynamic knowledge quest.

The glossary says: “Dynamic Magnetic Variation – A field which is simply
a computer model calculated value instead of a measured value contained in the record for a waypoint.”

Appendix A on Airborne Navigation Databases provides a better explanation. Specific points on earth—airports, navaids, waypoints, and intersections—are known as “fix records.” Smaller than a Tweet, each one contains 132 characters divided into fields, some of which are common to all such as lat, long, and magnetic variation.

Because avionics and instruments use this data to display magnetic courses in the cockpit, how the database deals with magnetic variation depends on the type of fix. For airports  “the magnetic variation is given as the difference in degrees between the measured values of true north and magnetic north at that location.” A VOR navaid fix record uses “Station Declination,” which is “the angular difference between true north and the zero degree radial of the navaid the last time the site was checked.” And waypoint fix records use “Dynamic Magnetic Variation,” a computer model calculated value instead of a measured value.”

The subject gets even more interesting later in Appendix A, under the heading Issues Related to Magnetic Variation. I already knew that the amount of variation changes over time because stuff is slowly moving—drifting—deep in the earth. But aviation database publishers apparently don’t use annual drift values, they acquire their variation data from NOAA in the “ Epoch Year Variation” format. “Theoretically, this value is determined … and published for public use every five years.”

In some cases, it seems, “the variation for a given location is a value that has been calculated by the avionics system. These “Dynamic Magnetic Variation” values can be different than those used for locations during aeronautical charting.” (Still, it’s computer based, so GIGO–garbage in, garbage out.)

Thankfully, the manual clarifies this: En route, “magnetic courses are computed by airborne avionics using geodesic calculations based on the latitude and longitude of the waypoints along the route. Since all of these calculations are based on true north, the navigation system must have a  way to account for magnetic variation.” – Scott Spangler

Josh is the editor of Bush Pilots at the Alaska Dispatch. His is a blog you’re going to want to spend a little time with because airplanes in Alaska mean something totally different than they do down here in the Lower 48. Bush Pilot is full of original stories and video from pilots in the 49^th state. The still photography is astounding and the videos are creative and insightful if not doggone funny. Take a look at this one with a Beaver taking off from a truck. Only in Alaska. Or this interesting arrival into Seward. Have any white-knuckled tales or pictures from your Alaska flying? Email Josh at jsaul(at)alaskadispatch.com. Tell the folks at the Alaska Dispatch that the folks down in the nice warm Midwest said hi while you’re there.

Rob Mark, editor

Created in 1995, I learned, the register connected public and private destinations by interest area to highlight thousands of sites on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2003, as part of the Centennial of Flight celebration, they launched Aviation: From Sand Dunes to Sonic Booms, which has an international reach.

It lists more than a hundred aviation sites by category – from the Wright Brothers and Aviation Pioneers to Air Power, Modern Aviation, and Space – and by state. Naturally, it includes all the well-known sites, like Kitty Hawk, but it was the unexpected sites that caught my attention and led to a list of warm-weather plans, because now would not be the time to visit Attu Battlefield and U.S. Army and Navy Airfields in the Aleutians.

Better would be Truk Lagoon Underwater Fleet, because diving among nearly three dozen sunken warships and aircraft in the Pacific Ocean just north of Papua New Guinea, where it is now cloudy and 82 degrees. But I cannot afford that, so I switched to the list of sites sorted by states to see what might be worth a visit when the Midwestern weather warms.

Right next door to me here in Wisconsin is the Larson Brothers Airport,  Winnebago County’s first flying field, built in 1922 and home to the first agency in the state to sell government-approved airplanes. Just across the Mississippi River, in Minnesota, is the house where Charles Lindbergh grew up. That has the makings of a good tour on the Great River Road.

The site that really intrigues me, however, is in Nebraska: the Second-Generation Norden Bombsight Vault at the former McCook Army Air Base, which trained B-17, B-24, and B-29 crews. Digging into its story, I learned that the airfield became the McCook State Airport, which closed in 1969.

A March 16, 2009 article in the McCook Daily Gazette told the airfield’s story and said that its five hangars, big enough  for a B-29, still survive: “Though these hangars have been subjected to a great deal of use, misuse, and neglect over the last 60 years, all five are still standing in 2009. An ongoing movement by the friends of the air base would restore and preserve at least some of these hangars.”  

Being on a day-long virtual vacation, I took Google to the southwest corner of Nebraska, just before it steps over Colorado. Google Earth verified that you can still see them from the air. Along the way I came across another interesting side, Nebraska’s Fatal Air Crashes of WWII, which offered a better aerial view of the airfield, the hangars, and the Norden vault.

Then I went looking for the “friends of the air base,” and found McCook Army Air Base Historical Society. And there my vacation ended, because the group doesn’t have a website, and the most recent mention of it in the local paper was the group’s April 2009 letter to the editor promoting historic tourism. While I doubt that a trip to the historic B-29 hangars in Wendover, Utah, (see Enola Gay’s Wendover Hangar on Top 11 List) will happen this year, Nebraska is more doable…when it gets warmer. – Scott Spangler

As we enter another decade, ask your self whether we as Americans are as focused on anything so monumental as we were 40 years ago. We’re superb at taking partisan positions on just about everything today, but as the final flights of the Shuttle fleet quickly approach, where does space flight and the quest to look beyond our own planet for the answers to life’s questions fit into our national priorities?

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a couple of the Apollo guys over the years. Even had lunch with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell a few years back. I still get all goose bumpy thinking about it. What’s going to do that for kids these days?

(Restored Apollo 11 footage – click to view) 

Rob Mark, editor

Saying that learning to fly was the fulfillment of a lifetime dream, Braff showed pictures from his flight, him smiling at a rear-seat passenger from the left seat and the left wing of the Cirrus above a solid blanket of clouds the color of burnished butterscotch in the late afternoon sun. Trying to describe the ineffable feelings of climbing through the layer and  being the only living thing in sight all he could says was, “It is amazing.”

Google led me to an article, Super Fly, Braff penned for BestLife, by the editors of MensHealth. Of learning to fly he wrote, “I earned my pilot’s license this past November, and it was one of the coolest moments of my life.”

His enthusiasm for flight and all of its benefits was an early Christmas present in a year buried in coal. As this year, which has not been the kindest to aviation, winds to a welcome close, my holiday hope is that 2010 will embody the enthusiasm of all new pilots and will begin a gentle cruise climb to better days that are peaceful and prosperous because people in all endeavors are working toward a common goal, not fighting each other for a larger slice of a shrinking pie. – Scott Spangler

Scott and I are going to take the rest of the week off to hang out with family, but we both wanted to leave you with a couple of cool things to keep in mind this week while you wait for the arrival of the big guy.

First there’s the NORAD site that tracks Santa on the way to your house. Great fun for the kids. It also brings new meaning to use of the phrase bio-fuel.

And as they approach the North Pole on the way home, they need not worry about the weather as long as their Electronic Flight Back (EFB) is equipped with the proper North Pole approach plates.

Although the folks at GE are very proud of their new Green sleigh for Santa, the union representing the reindeer flight crew are not at all happy about the job losses the new vehicle might well create.

Finally, what would Christmas be without a good FAA flying joke.

Santa is about to take off on Christmas Eve for his annual ride when an FAA inspector approaches him in front of the hangar. “How long has it been since you’ve flown this sleigh,” he asks the Big Guy. “Exactly one year tonight,” Santa replies. “Well,” says the inspector, “I’d say you’re out of currency. We’d better take a ride together.

Wondering of course whether he did indeed turn in his paper certificate for a plastic replacement, Santa invites the inspector aboard. Being pretty quick, Santa couldn’t help noticing the 45 strapped to the inspector’s belt. “Why would you need a gun on a checkout flight?” Santa wondered.

“Well, I’m not really supposed to tell you this,” the inspector replied, “but you’re going to lose one on takeoff.”

Merry Christmas to everyone around the globe. Thanks for reading Jetwhine in this, our third year.

Rob Mark, editor

At the same time, the number of people traveling by train has been increasing, its growth limited by its atrophied infrastructure of rails just 56.5 inches apart. In early December my wife and I needed to be in Reading, Pennsylvania, for the wedding of her youngest son and for interviews and photos at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum for an in-the-works article. Anticipating the multi-flight airline trip with the enthusiasm of a death-row inmate about to roll up his sleeve, on a whim we visited the Amtrak website, which proved a welcome surprise.

Our combined round-trip fare–which included sleeping accommodations and all meals–totaled $580, an amount about equal to the fees the airlines, as best as I could discover, would charge above and beyond the ticket price for baggage and other “services.” Granted, the train travel takes time. The Capitol Limited left Chicago at 1840 Central and arrived in Washington, D.C., the next day at 1340 Eastern. After a 2 hour layover, we’d board the speedy Northeast Regional Acela express for Philly. As railway virgins, we didn’t know what to expect, but we agreed it couldn’t be any worse than flying the airlines. It wasn’t…it was way better, and like many of the people we met along the way, we’ve become railway converts.

Everyone we met, from trainmen, conductors, and attendants to counter clerks, security personnel, and our fellow passengers were, if not downright happy, at minimum in a good mood. Unlike the aggravated, anxious, aggressively rude misanthropes at the airport, from packed waiting rooms to the exclusive waiting rooms to the sightseeing car, people were polite, relaxed, and smiling.  The security matched that of the airport—without the striptease: the ticket clerk asked for a photo ID. In Philly it went a step beyond: a dog leashed to an armed law enforcement officer sniffed each of our bags before we got on the train in Philly.

As sleeping car passengers we were directed to the Metropolitan Lounge in Chicago and D.C. An expansive room decorated for the holidays and filled with over-stuffed chairs and couches, it offered free snacks and drinks and flat-panel TVs. An attendant announced our train for preboarding and walked us to it. It reminded me of the first-class airline lounges of the 1970s I saw only from the outside, and in the movies. We made our dinner reservation upon boarding and ate real food (pork tenderloin and salmon for me on the outbound and return trip, and veggie lasagna and salmon for my wife), with real silverware, on a real table cloth with linen napkins.

At dinner we ate community style, with unrelated passengers taking seats until each table was full.  Like most of our railway conversations on the train and in the waiting rooms, it didn’t take long before someone asked, “Why are you taking the train?” On the Limited, roughly a third were on business, a third were on vacation, and the rest were traveling for a multitude of reasons, from a new job to a family emergency. Regardless the reason, almost everyone expressed a hatred of flying. Not fear of being up in the air, just a seething  dislike of anything related to the airlines. The only time I saw people getting truly cranky is when they started talking about their last airline experience. And then they would go silent, look out the window, and let the passing scenery soothe them.

When talking with business travelers I probed their need for speed, the airlines’ primary selling point. Their responses confirmed what I’d learned from time in a corporate structure and its myriad planning meetings and approval channels: very little happens at the last minute and most deadline rushes are the result of procrastination and poor planning. Train travel not only gives you time for one last pass through the presentation before delivering you relaxed and refreshed, said one business traveler, it also gives you time to contemplate what you’re doing, to make sure it fits well in the grand scheme of things. Too many of today’s problems are the result of thinking about a decision after it’s made and acted upon, which brings us right back to procrastination and poor planning.

On our way back to Chicago, the Capitol Limited suffered a 2-hour delay because an important safety item—the horn—went in-op during then night, a malfunction exploited by the snow and sleet. Somehow, they made up a half hour of the delay, but it allowed us to sleep in. We pulled into Chicago at 0930, and it was clear it had been snowing seriously for some time. The TV news said more than 200 flights at O’Hare had been cancelled, and we might have been among that stranded mass of humanity had we not been a bit adventurous.

The chances that the railroads will regain their passenger supremacy is slim because the time, money, and land needed to rebuild its steel circulatory system is prohibitive.  But the railway’s good service and other amenities will, I believe, continue to nibble away at the airline’s passenger pool. And the airlines, arrogant in the notion that they are the only viable transportation option, will accelerate their passengers’ defection with an increasing array of higher fees and poorer service. – Scott Spangler