That's All Folks.

 So, my last trip was one of my best, except that I never did get the hang of landing the Airbus as well as I had all the Boeing Airplanes and the BAC.  If I managed to get a good one, it was just blind luck.  The last one was on Runway 13 at Dallas Fort Worth (DFW).

I documented many of the lasts of this trip.

 

This was the last drive on the Watterson Expressway for a rare daylight departure.

 Last time parking in the "secure" parking lot.

Last time going through security.

Last van ride to work.

Last time going in the NASC (the building where we reported and did our flight planning.  I never did learn what the acronym meant.  Didn't care either.)

Last checkin.

Last envelope of Jeppesen approach plate revisions.  I didn't put them in the manuals, just checked to see if any applied to the airports I would be flying to.

First flight plan and release of my last trip.

First Bus of last trip.

First preflight of last trip.

We really had the best job in the world.

Salt Lake City, the first destination of the last trip.

My rig.

One of the layover hotels on my last trip.

One of the competition's Airbus A-300s.

The following is what I wrote when I added this photo to an album on Google Photos.

We had several broken airplane issues with the Airbus (Eurojunk) during this trip.  The only other plane I had this much trouble with was the BAC 1-11 (another European plane), but I was an authenticated systems expert on that plane.  At least the Airbus's engines did not give me any trouble.  I can say that now that I won't be jinxing myself by saying it.  All of the guys I flew with on the Bus got to see it do something they had never seen before.  The Boeing 747-100 has the distinction of the most engine shutdowns (3) and the only fire warning in 42 years of flying.  The BAC was next, with 2 shutdowns.  I flew my last leg from Ontario CA to Dallas TX and I am about to board a UPS MD 11 to jumpseat home.  This is my last official duty with UPS.  By the way, while working in General Aviation, flying "those little airplanes" for 5 years and 5,000 hours I never experienced an engine failure.

Jumpseating home.  Trying not to feel too sad.

My pal Lou Berdoll, who was in my new hire class, happened to be at the NASC when I arrived.  He would be retiring soon after I did.  I always liked standing next to him, because I looked so much better by comparison.

Last van ride off the property.

 Last time passing through the guard shack on the way home.

 Finding the Denbomobile in the dark.  It is not easy to remember where it was parked a week ago.

go

Being greeted by the puppies when I got home.

Wow!  Lots of pictures.  At 1000 per, I save a lot of words.

Penultimate Trip And Ultimate Trip

 I was finally beginning to feel comfortable on the Bus.  It had been almost a year and I had adjusted to the differences from the Boeings I had flown.  As retirement drew nearer, I began to feel a little sad.  The airline pilot career I had been working to achieve since 1968 was about to end on my birthday in August of 2010.  

With 2 more trips and less than a month to go, I was informed I would be getting a line check ride on my next to last trip.  (That's what penultimate means, if you are from Pittsburgh.)  Of course, the question in my mind was WTF?  Why would this be necessary, if I would only have one more trip to go?  

The trip was to Burbank California and when I asked the management pilot why I was getting a check ride under these circumstances, it was revealed that one of his kids was doing something that day in Los Angeles and he was merely using my flight as a means of transportation.  If you have been following this blog from the beginning, you know I am not intimidated by check rides, whether from company check airmen or FAA inspectors.  That was not the problem.  It was just WTF, over?

My penultimate FO on the left and the guy who needed a ride to SoCal on the right.  No problemo.

For my last trip, I tried to get one of the first officers who had become a good friend to join me, but it didn't work out.  However, the guy who did join me was about as perfect as he could be.  

We both showed up for this trip with almost identical plans for the Portland weekend layover that began after an unusual daytime leg to Salt Lake City and then on to Portland Oregon.  We would arrive on a Friday afternoon and didn't have to fly again until Monday night.

 

Rare photo of the Flexible Flyer going to work in the daylight.  Nice arrangement on the tie.

Better.

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His name was Matt and he had brought a camera and backpack and reserved a rental car, planning to explore the area and take lots of photos.  Ditto for me. We canceled my reservation and picked up his car.  

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The next day, we ate breakfast and drove to the Columbia River Gorge.

First stop was Multnomah Falls.

Then we hiked to the top of the falls, via this trail system.

If you like to see and photograph water falls, this is your place.

That was in a visitor center.

Next day, we headed for Mount Saint Helens.

Mountains can create their own weather.

The destruction is incredible.

 

On Monday morning, we drove to the Evergreen Aviation Museum.

That is the home of the famous Howard Hughes airplane, The Spruce Goose.

Driving The Bus

 I was lucky with my commute to Anchorage.  I never missed a trip because of the commute.  I was able to get home very quickly at the end of a trip.  The planes I flew into Anchorage from Asia were soon going to be moving on to Louisville.  I could book a jumpseat on one of them and often just stay on the same plane I had brought in.  I had to travel to Anchorage a few days early only once, because of congestion on the jumpseats.  I had to spend one very cold New Years Eve alone in the crashpad.  No biggy.  My dad always said he didn't like going out drinking with the amateurs on New Years Eve.  Good philosophy.  

It was after about a year of commuting, when there was a system bid in which I could see I could hold a captain seat again.  There were 2 possibilities, I could remain on the 747-400 in Anchorage or I could change to the Airbus A-300 and be based in Louisville again.  Believe it or not, that was a tough choice.  I like all the Boeing airplanes I had flown and really like the -400.  It had the kind of trips I liked and I would even be reasonably senior on it.  The only question was whether the commute would continue to be doable.  As a captain, I could afford to buy a ticket on a passenger airline to get there once in a while, but I had flown there on pax airlines before and it was a major pain in the ass.  From Louisville, it would usually take at least 3 legs and many hours to do, so a full day of airline agony.  The commute on UPS was one leg of about 6 hours and I could sleep on the floor in my sleeping bag.

I had heard things about the Bus that made me think I would not like it.  The technology was a step back compared to the Boeings.  It was slow.  Everyone made fun of it (I could handle that.  They used to make fun of the 757, until all the steam gauge airplanes went away and everyone was flying glass cockpit planes.).  It was made by the French😂.  The upside was that the cockpit was huge and comfortable.  Believe it or not, the cockpits in all the 747s are kind of small in width compared to the other wide body airplanes.  It is up there on a second deck, where the shape of the plane it thinner.  The Bus, 767 and MD 11 cockpits are huge.  Anyway, after thinking about it and discussing it with Doreen, I decided to come back to the Louisville domicile.

This is the A300 panel.  The left side is as it was when I flew it and the right is an update that occurred after I retired.

 Training on the Bus went pretty well, until the simulator.  I had an instructor who was actually being trained to be an instructor and he seemed to like to keep the crew overloaded all the time.  He gave us multiple problems at the same time and then kept interrupting as the air traffic controller while we were trying to run the multiple checklists.  (I had only seen that once before and it was a guy who the FAA did not approve as a check airman, because of that same scenario.  He was giving a sim. session to me and another check airman to get his approval and the FAA inspector pointed out that he had created an unrealistic profile that 2 check airman were having trouble performing.  We worked our asses off to try to get him through, but the inspector could see that many ordinary pilots would have been challenged to the extreme. ) Anyway, I passed all Airbus tests and check rides and maintained my perfect career record to the very end.

It's normal to feel like a fish out of water for some time after checking out on a new airplane type.  I was very fortunate to be a senior captain and be flying with senior first officers.  They were very helpful in keeping me out of trouble and reminding me what I was supposed to be doing.  However, I never did get to likin' the Bus and it didn't seem to be likin' me.  Strange things would happen.  When they did, the first officer would usually say something like, "Gee, Denny, I've never seen it do that before".  After which I would say, "It does shit like that to me all the time".  To which they would respond, "I don't think I want to fly with you anymore".

The Bus flew to Mexico City and Guadalajara Mexico.  I always hated flying to Mexico and tried to avoid it like the plague.  The company started sneaking trips to Mexico into lines that were mostly to other places.  It was hard to find a line that did not have at least one trip to Mexico on it.  I did my best, but got stuck with one such trip during my one year on the Bus.  I gave the first leg down there to the first officer, a guy I had never flown with before.  As we approached the border, we were gradually beginning to lose parts of our glass cockpit display and eventually the autopilot.  We still had all the basic stuff and could fly the plane, but all the computer magic was gone.  I knew there was a complex arrival and approach to Mexico City's airport and although the weather was reported as very good, I offered to divert to an airport in the good ol' USofA to the first officer.  He said, "Well, we have 90,000 pounds of stuff back there and I don't mind hand flying it, so let's press on" or something to the effect.  So, we pressed on to Mexico City.  On the arrival, there were all kinds of altitude and speed restrictions we had to make and without all the magic, we had to use parts of our brains that had become dormant.  We managed, but my difficulty understand the accents of the controllers speaking English didn't help.  I sent a message to the company there, that I wanted a mechanic to meet me when I opened the door.  As I opened the door, I saw the smiling face of a mechanic who had a Pittsburgh Steeler lanyard holding his ID.  I thought that was a good omen. I was worried about getting stuck there with a broken airplane and all this weird stuff happening to it.  The Mexican Honorary Burgh Boy Steeler Fan assured me all would be right when we returned from the hotel to fly back to America.

He was right.  He told me he just turned everything off and then turned it back on and it all worked normally, just like computers do all the time.  However, I was worried that the problem could recur, so I held my breath until after we lifted off.  Once we got that far, we could press on to Louisville and write it up again there.  I just wanted to get out of there.  We made it home, without another problem, but the FO said he had never seen it do that before and he didn't think he wanted to fly with me again.