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.
