What I Remember--What I Miss

by Captain Edward T. DeChant, UAL-Retired Nov 1, 2001

The Beauty:----------------

Sunrises crossing the Atlantic that makes one sit back and appreciate just being alive.

Flying the polar route from London to Los Angeles and being over land that inhabits absolutely no one for hundreds of miles.

The Tetons -- approaching them from the East.

Flying over Iran, enroute to India from London, and seeing sand dunes that must be 4000 feet high.

Flying from Argentina to Chile at 26,000 feet over the Andes whose peaks are just a few thousand feet below you. 

The majestic panorama of that same mountain range stretched out beneath you thousands of miles from left to right.

The northern lights as they can only appear from an airplane 5 miles above the ground.

The lights of London at night from FL350. (35,000 feet)

Flying from Seattle to Los Angeles on a clear day with all the majesty that exists on that route. Old volcanoes like Mount Rainier, Mt Hood, Mt St Helens (not so old), Crater Lake, Mono Lake, Lake Shasta, San Francisco, the San Andreas Fault Line.

The dance of St Elmo's fire on the windscreen as you fly through electrified precip.

The Patchwork quilt of the timber industry in Oregon where they cut sections of timber from the forest that makes it look like a checkerboard.

The tantalizing glow of the flashing strobe lights just before you break out of the clouds on approach.

The soft, comforting glow of the instrument panel in a dark cockpit.

Beautiful Sunsets of every color imaginable. When you are flying West the sun takes hours to set.

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The Majesty -----------------

Flying over Iowa on a stormy day and watching the birth and growth of a thunderstorm as a small cue raises from about 6000 feet to about 43,000 during the time it takes you to fly by it.  5 minutes.  What power!

The grandeur of a line of thunderstorms and the challenge of picking your way around them without your passengers knowing they exist.

Landing at night on the mountain top in Charleston W VA with thunderstorms miles away on both left and right side of the airport, and lightening overhead going cloud to cloud between them, just above you. 

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The Fun ---------------------

Making your first ever Jet take off (727)  with so much excitement and electricity in your body that you could light up Denver.

Landing a 727 on the saddle runway 27 at Pittsburgh with a touchdown so smooth that the only way you knew you were on the ground was the nose wanting to come down to the ground---and having Terry Bradshaw in the jump seat for that landing, marveling at what he just experienced.  (Bradshaw always rode the cockpit on charters.)

Skimming the tops of a perfectly flat overcast cloud layer at 550 mph.

Climbing through a cloud layer at 4000 fpm and punching through the tops, feeling like the space shuttle at launch.

Being cleared for a Slam Dunk approach from 13,000 over JFK.

Taking a slight detour to fly over my island in Canada to take photos coming back from Germany to Chicago.

Pleasant evenings in the Zim Pose Jazz Bar in Dusseldorf.  (I took Joe Concannon and Ron Teeter there)

Visiting friends in London and Paris.

Showing the crew your secret haunts in your beloved Paris

The Piano Bar in the Palmer House in Chicago. 

Getting orchid letters from passengers who think you did an extra-ordinary job.
 

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The Challenge ----------------------

Taking off from Tulsa to find oneself under the overcast of a flock of thousands of geese that stretched for nearly two miles on radar and was nearly 3/4 mile across. (flocks of Geese can bring down a jet airplane, the contain so many geese in the mid western national flyway that they show up on radar.)

Doing an autoland in London with visibility of only 300 feet.

Having a serious abnormality in the air that was not covered in the training, and handling it well.

Taxiing a 737 at Rapid City on an smooth ice covered taxiway that was improperly sanded in a stiff wind and have the airplane weathervane a full 90 degree sidewise on the taxi way. (on clear ice sand is normally applied hot so it sinks slightly an is not blown away with the wind.)

The brief, yet tempting, glimpse of runway lights…. after you’ve already committed to the missed approach at Guatemala City.

The challenge of trying to fly in South America where there is little radar and controllers whose English is extremely limited.

Landing at Portland Maine in a snow storm and experiencing a total white out for the first time.

The aimless compass, not knowing where to point as you near the top of the world on a polar crossing.

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A Sad Experience -------------------

Flying along a squall line in Ohio and watching the storms on the radar, Seeing the hooks in the radar echoes that mean tornado.  Finding out when you land in ORD that Xenia Ohio and other Ohio towns were being destroyed and fellow buckeyes killed by tornados in those very storms, as you watched them on the radar.
 

The Reality -----------------

Pay Day!!!  It was better then, than it is today.· (UAL went bankrupt and abolished employee pensions.)