When we last left Marc, the pilot, he had just lifted off the ground in Los Angeles in a miracle flight to San Francisco. Everything had to go perfectly for Marc to make his commuting flight home to Portland from San Francisco and so far it had. Now the navigational computer was showing that Marc’s flight to San Francisco was going to land 20 minutes early; just enough time for him to run to his gate and make his flight home. That is if there is a seat for Marc on that flight. When we last left Marc, the author, he was doing his best to lose his audience by turning a mundane story, into a many-part, month long vanity piece.
Jack leveled off at cruise altitude and let the aircraft accelerate to the “barber pole.” The barber pole is a red and black-striped symbol at the top of a plane’s airspeed indicator, so called because it kind of looks like a “barber’s pole, (more so in the old-school round dial kind). It is the fastest you can fly an aircraft before you risk structural damage. Normally, pilots like to give themselves a buffer from the barber pole, because any gusts of wind or turbulence could suddenly push into the red and black. Besides that, if you go into the barber pole region, it makes an annoying sound affectionately referred to as “the clacker” because it makes a clacking sound (there is a pragmatic, non-creative method to pilot naming conventions). Not today though. Jack was riding the barber pole and I wasn’t protesting. The sky was smooth, the winds were in our favor, and having a flight to catch was exactly the reason for the barber pole speed to exist.
Another practical reason you never fly barber pole speed is because you can’t. Air Traffic Control won’t let you. On a busy route like LA to San Fran, the sky is full of airplanes all going to the same place, along the same route, and ATC has to keep them separated so they don’t have to land at the same time. The first tool that they use is to give you a speed limit. Unfortunately, they don’t care if a pilot has a flight to catch. So, as we were riding the barber pole, I was expecting any moment to get the dreaded call from the controller, “Flight three seventy-nine, how fast are you going?” I figured I would enjoy the speed while it lasted, but Jack wanted to test our luck. Instead of passively sitting by and hoping that ATC forgot about us, he wanted to poke the bear and wake it up:
“Ask ATC if we can delete all speed restrictions,” Jack said.
“What?” I replied. I was actually unsure if I had heard what he said. Because it wasn’t something you would normally ask ATC at cruise. All of the speed restrictions were on the arrival, at a lower altitudes, and would be enforced by Approach Control not the center controller we were currently talking to. All that asking to delete speed restrictions would do is highlight to ATC that we were going really fast and he should slow us down.
“Ask ATC to delete all speed restrictions.” I did as the madman suggested. ATC was even confused.
“What was that flight three seventy-nine?” ATC asked over the radios. I tried to sugar-coat the strange request with a little fib,
“Yeah, flight three seventy-nine is a little behind, wondering if we can delete all speed restrictions?” There was a pause on the radio. Then ATC came back.
“Uhh. Flight three seventy-nine, speed your discretion, but you’ll have to coordinate your speeds on the arrival with approach control.” Another thing un-expected in my favor. Sure, nothing changed immediately, but it could have. Jack had tested fate by making it clear to the controller that we were going faster than normal. On most days, that’s the equivalent of highlighting with a neon sign to a traffic cop that says, “I’m speeding.” Today, the traffic cop said,
“The highway is clear, have at it.”
We started our descent. The flight computer was still showing 20 minutes early. I had a real chance at making my flight home, but I was certain as soon as we begun the decent approach control would not only slow us down but give us turns all over the sky to build spacing between us and other aircraft. When I keyed the radio, I winced as I made the request like a little boy waiting for a spanking. “Norcal approach, flight three seventy-nine, checking in descending to flight level two-four-zero, request to delete speed restrictions on the arrival.” There was no pause, approach control immediately responded with some words rarely heard in Norcal airspace.
“Flight thee seventy-nine, speeds deleted.” My heart jumped in my chest. I felt like I had won the lotto. Jack gave a wry smile like he expected nothing different. For him, this was a normal day. For the last hundred miles into San Francisco, Jack took full advantage of the sudden Autobahn in the sky. He flew the barber pole all the way to 10000 feet, the magical speed barrier where all aircraft in U.S. airspace have to slow to 250 knots no matter what. Then he flew 250 knots until we were a mere 6 miles from the airport. At which point, like a true cowboy who knew every muscle-twitch of his horse so well, that he could anticipate its next move, he slowed the aircraft on schedule to be fully in landing configuration right at the last moment where it was legally required. I didn’t even have to stretch my tolerances for the rules.
I had dealt with two solid days of Jack being generally non-compliant, even non-responsive to the rules. I had spent a lot of time working double time to do both the company way and Jack’s way. Besides the mental effort of flying, I had also burned many brain cells by delicately navigating conversation topics that included the politically incorrect, conspiracy theories and hyper-conservatism, without confrontation and cockpit discord. To be frank, I was tired of the old mother#@%@*. But in that moment when the wheels touched down, over twenty minutes early, there was no one else I wished I had been flying with. I had to give the devil his due. There were few other pilots that could have pulled off such a flight with such a combination of not just skill, but an inherent amount of luck, that seemed to back-up his crazy smile.
As we pulled into the gate, he instructed me, “Get outta here. I’ll run the checklists.” Of course this was completely non-standard, but at that point I just nodded my head and did as I was told. It was 8:20pm and my flight was leaving at 8:39pm. The doors to that flight would close ten minutes before and I still had a quarter mile to run and security to get through. Every minute counted, but Jack had given me a real chance to make it. I wanted to hug and kiss the disheveled bastard, but didn’t think he would appreciate it, besides, his five day-old beard would be scratchy. Instead, I just said thanks and ran off the airplane with my suitcase in tow.
Just like Forest Gump, I ran and ran. Right off the jet, up the jet bridge, past terminal 3 security, out the terminal and onto the connecting sidewalk. I kept running all the way to terminal 1 at SFO. I ran up to security pulled out my ID, where the TSA agent gave me the green light and the thumbs up to keep running. I ran all the way to the gate where my departing flight was leaving from and arrived with an incredible surprise. The flight was taking off at 8:50pm. I had confused our original landing time with the departure time for my commuting flight. I hadn’t even needed to run. The gate was still open and they were just boarding the flight to Portland. The gate agent even smiled at me as I huffed and puffed with exuberance. Within a minute over her deftly typing my details into her magic computer, she produced a ticket for me with my own row. I wanted to hug and kiss her, but was fairly certain that she would immediately revoke the ticket she had just handed me. And besides, it had been a long day, I am sure my beard would have been scratchy.
As I sat in the back of the plane, with the sweat cooled on my forehead, my tie loosened and legs stretched out with all the legroom I could ask for, I contemplated all that had to go right for me be on that flight. I felt overcome with gratitude. I must have been the luckiest guy on Earth. In fact, I contemplated going up to the cockpit and telling the pilots to divert to Vegas, I was going to win everyone a million dollars. Then I remembered I was going to be sleeping in my own house, in my own bed, with my beautiful wife that night, instead of a hotel. I was definitely the luckiest man in the world. My wife on the other hand, would have been better off if I had taken all that luck to Vegas.
