The Light Twin

Boeing 757-200F

Flying the 757 was one of the great pleasures of my aviation career.  It was a real challenge to learn how to use the Flight Management System, but the plane flew like a dream.  It had a great feel and it encouraged me to fly it the way I had flown some of the better light airplanes I had flown.  

It was a flexible airplane.  It mixed in well with the big planes at the big airports and it mixed in well with the small planes at the small airports.  The way we flew it at UPS, it did plenty of both.  The 75 was capable of doing short flights to short runways and it was capable of flying coast to coast.

Early in my time as a new 757 captain, I flew with a young woman who had mastered the automation of the airplane.  I learned more by watching her fly a complex arrival at KMDT, Middletown Airport at Harrisburg, PA.  The controller was giving us lots of heading, altitude and speed changes as we were being vectored for an approach and I just sat there, talked on the radio and marveled at how smoothly and calmly she dialed up all that magic.  It was the first time I had hope that I would be able to be that smooth and eventually I was.

The 757 was used exclusively in the UPS domestic system back then.  I was able to fly to some of the 50 states I had not flown to yet.  Connecticut, New Hampshire, Montana and Mississippi were added to my resume.