blind pew
20th Jan 2016, 08:13
Swissair and the first scheduled direct operation from Northern Europe and Rio.
I was asked about this on the BOAC 707 thread by a guy who stated that we generally launched from 05 in Geneva whose downslope allowed us to get airborne. He had the pleasure of the thrice weekly late evening rumbling of three Pratt and Witneys screaming over his house.
I'm beginning by quoting from Bertram Picard whose grand father is immortalised in the character of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek. I attended the Coup Icarus film festival in autumn and the winner was a biography of Bertram. His father had been exploring the ocean bed at the same time as the Moon landings were happening and the family had mixed with the astronauts.
"In America we were Heros and everyone was interested, in Europe we were just "bloody"* Swiss and in Switzerland "so what"". *my addition but the sentiments.
This sums up the psyche to a degree as in SR we had the swiss astronaut, the Jetman, another who crashed and burnt whilst trying to do a solo round the world flight (IIRC) and a FE who climbed the highest peaks and jumped off with a large square chute to a avoid climbing down...amongst a fair few other dare devil stunts.
Switzerland, the Swiss and Swissair were unlike any other country.
First of all it's close to a democracy with referendums a go go.
Bullying as many experience in the UK and France doesn't exist as you would expect in a land where every male possessing public hair and functioning testicles has an assault rifle and a couple of clips standing in the corner of their nuclear shelter. IMHO bullies are cowards.
Those who profess their religion, management position or proffered a funny handshake upon initial meeting were also absent.
The airfares were the most expensive but the majority of the passengers were those who preferred us to their national carriers. I asked a few Brits who could have taken my old employer and had a direct flight why....a stopped pretty quickly mentioning that I was a proud Trident and VC 10 pilot. Their quizzical look was always along the lines of has he got a screw loose.
So what else was special about Swissair?
Firstly the training - besides the most modern simulators we also had audiovisual trainers which we open 24/7 and when we finished that lot I disappeared to Shannon for a week of circuits and non precision approaches - all hand flown of course. This was followed by 100 line training sectors with a fully qualified first officer. (Because of my experience my line training was reduced by 20 sectors). Followed by a five day rotation under check (20 + sectors).
We worked our way through the fleets - short range/ medium range / long range then back through them after command course.
Unfortunately I missed out on the DC8 by one place, didn't fancy the A300 (after Habesheim) and chose the DC10 because of the route structure.
Secondly we didn't have bid line nor did we have training and managers nicking the cream trips unlike my last employer. Our rosters were "balanced" except that one could ask for extra unpopular trips...Dar e Salam, enlarging crew on the Rio and Anchorage in the winter being the least popular. I did more than my fair share of the latter two.
Thirdly we carried armed guards as did Aeroflot and Elal.
Needless to say our maintenance was very very good.
Probably the most important part of the Swiss psyche was demonstrated in 2007 when they prosecuted 19 managers who they alleged were responsible for the demise of Swissair whereas in several accidents and incidents in my old employer,which would never had occurred without the incompetence of the management, the blame was placed upon the captains, unqualified co pilots, flight engineer and in one case a captain on the jumpseat.
We flew the Extended Range DC10 on the Rio...technically I didn't like the 10 as like the Trident the design had been messed with. IMHO the worst fault was the three hydraulic lines being routed around the gear bays and engine 2. You would have heard about Sioux City but before that happened we had a chief pilot climbing out of Africa have engine two go bang which took out two of the hydraulic systems. It wasn't general knowledge as it was a virtual non event such was the standard of our managers but if it had been at take off power rather than climb power maybe the outcome would have been very different.
Rio and Anchorage was a stretched operation to say the least and we often left commercial payload behind.
Flight planning often being based on Recife with diversion to Rio and Fairbanks with diversion to Anchorage. Our airborne contingency fuel varied with distance from destination and preflight planning was far more conservative.
What I haven't mentioned and might shock many commercial pilots is that until 1992 first officers were NOT allowed to taxi, take off, fly the departure nor clean up and use the brakes!
Whilst I would have preferred otherwise as far as safety in a critical situation the procedure made sense. Landing I was allowed to make my own decisions but if it looked like a cloud base of 300 ft or lower I would opt for a monitored approach. We had to have landing configuration SELECTED by 400ft and cross wind limits were the aircraft ones.(which meant stabilised approach from 300ft ;-)
The Rio trip originated in Zurich with two full flight deck crews. At briefing generally it would be four pilots and one engineer - the other would be preparing the aircraft.
The enlarging crew would fly the first half but in reality we would normally do a good 60% of the flight time which was the ITCZ transit. Sometimes this would be a non event but others might be two hours of having the cr*p knocked out of you whilst dodging the storms as best as our radar allowed us. Occasionally a nervous second pair of eyes would be on the flight deck - the second captain. That the AF skipper thought it was a good idea to go and see his crumpet beggars belief.
Rio was difficult because the forecast were not accurate and Atc had vectored two aircraft into mountains around that time.
The weather forecast problems were thunderstorms and early morning fog - one lot gave me an insight to how frightened interrogation could be - more later.
We normally waited for runway 05 because of the runway downslope as well as the engine out obstacle clearance allowed us a higher take off weight. The flight was scheduled as the last GVA departure not only commercial reasons (connecting pax and arrival time in South America) but because of OAT and performance considerations. So mostly we were at max certified TOW despite the altitude.
A few of the captains would brief that they were "go minded". I don't condone that mentality but having seen the approach lights at close proximity many times one appreciates that an experienced captain is a far better bet than a first officer in a limiting take off especially as there is no question of who does what when one swops handling pilots.
Generally once we got within VHF range of South America we would wake up the other crew...whilst hard work it was self preservation as the other crew might have to fly an approach into fog or thunderstorms and occasionally it would be a dive and drive to minimums.
The enlarging crew would have a couple of days off before flying back through the ITCZ whist the regular crew would take the next service to Santiago de Chile or Buenos Aires followed by the following service back to Geneva/Zurich. We all got a week off back at base.
The crew bunks were a container inserted in business class taking up six seats in the middle of the cabin. It was better than nothing but some of the cabin crew would deliberately ram their trolleys into it especially after their union got stroppy and tried to run the outfit.
The trip I got a dose of the willies was one where we considered tech stopping for fuel as we had a particularly bad ITCZ transit and our track deviations had consumed most of our reserves. Inflight we had Rio with São Paulo alternate and both airfields were above minimums (alternate minimum being higher than destination) but it was before sunrise which often changes things.
The skipper wasn't Swiss and I knew of him as being a bit of a boring fart which generally goes with someone lacking ability or confidence or both - I won't say anymore because it will identify him. Not someone who inspires confidence and although my skipper didn't say anything we did even more extra time up front.
All seemed to go well whilst we were locked into our little aluminium igloo ...normal flap and gear selections until go around power was applied and we flew around with the gear down and flaps out.
We certainly didn't have enough fuel to do that and with the terrain around the airfield it was license to do some serious damage especially to me.
I felt the aircraft level off and power reduce...then someone did the sensible thing and apply lots of power and clean up the aircraft. I knew we had to get into Rio and fifteen minutes later we touched down. It was a long fifteen minutes.
I don't know how little fuel was left and I didn't want to know.
They had tried a dive and drive approach which they hadn't been able to land from.
I would guess the next was an ILS regardless of the weather that they had to land from.
Rio was and is an interesting place and as privileged visitors at the time of a military dictatorship I had some "interesting" experiences.
Also had an interesting polar flight when crossing the pole our INS displayed two tracks 30 degrees apart..not what you want in the middle of the night over a frozen waste without a lot of kerosine.
I was asked about this on the BOAC 707 thread by a guy who stated that we generally launched from 05 in Geneva whose downslope allowed us to get airborne. He had the pleasure of the thrice weekly late evening rumbling of three Pratt and Witneys screaming over his house.
I'm beginning by quoting from Bertram Picard whose grand father is immortalised in the character of Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek. I attended the Coup Icarus film festival in autumn and the winner was a biography of Bertram. His father had been exploring the ocean bed at the same time as the Moon landings were happening and the family had mixed with the astronauts.
"In America we were Heros and everyone was interested, in Europe we were just "bloody"* Swiss and in Switzerland "so what"". *my addition but the sentiments.
This sums up the psyche to a degree as in SR we had the swiss astronaut, the Jetman, another who crashed and burnt whilst trying to do a solo round the world flight (IIRC) and a FE who climbed the highest peaks and jumped off with a large square chute to a avoid climbing down...amongst a fair few other dare devil stunts.
Switzerland, the Swiss and Swissair were unlike any other country.
First of all it's close to a democracy with referendums a go go.
Bullying as many experience in the UK and France doesn't exist as you would expect in a land where every male possessing public hair and functioning testicles has an assault rifle and a couple of clips standing in the corner of their nuclear shelter. IMHO bullies are cowards.
Those who profess their religion, management position or proffered a funny handshake upon initial meeting were also absent.
The airfares were the most expensive but the majority of the passengers were those who preferred us to their national carriers. I asked a few Brits who could have taken my old employer and had a direct flight why....a stopped pretty quickly mentioning that I was a proud Trident and VC 10 pilot. Their quizzical look was always along the lines of has he got a screw loose.
So what else was special about Swissair?
Firstly the training - besides the most modern simulators we also had audiovisual trainers which we open 24/7 and when we finished that lot I disappeared to Shannon for a week of circuits and non precision approaches - all hand flown of course. This was followed by 100 line training sectors with a fully qualified first officer. (Because of my experience my line training was reduced by 20 sectors). Followed by a five day rotation under check (20 + sectors).
We worked our way through the fleets - short range/ medium range / long range then back through them after command course.
Unfortunately I missed out on the DC8 by one place, didn't fancy the A300 (after Habesheim) and chose the DC10 because of the route structure.
Secondly we didn't have bid line nor did we have training and managers nicking the cream trips unlike my last employer. Our rosters were "balanced" except that one could ask for extra unpopular trips...Dar e Salam, enlarging crew on the Rio and Anchorage in the winter being the least popular. I did more than my fair share of the latter two.
Thirdly we carried armed guards as did Aeroflot and Elal.
Needless to say our maintenance was very very good.
Probably the most important part of the Swiss psyche was demonstrated in 2007 when they prosecuted 19 managers who they alleged were responsible for the demise of Swissair whereas in several accidents and incidents in my old employer,which would never had occurred without the incompetence of the management, the blame was placed upon the captains, unqualified co pilots, flight engineer and in one case a captain on the jumpseat.
We flew the Extended Range DC10 on the Rio...technically I didn't like the 10 as like the Trident the design had been messed with. IMHO the worst fault was the three hydraulic lines being routed around the gear bays and engine 2. You would have heard about Sioux City but before that happened we had a chief pilot climbing out of Africa have engine two go bang which took out two of the hydraulic systems. It wasn't general knowledge as it was a virtual non event such was the standard of our managers but if it had been at take off power rather than climb power maybe the outcome would have been very different.
Rio and Anchorage was a stretched operation to say the least and we often left commercial payload behind.
Flight planning often being based on Recife with diversion to Rio and Fairbanks with diversion to Anchorage. Our airborne contingency fuel varied with distance from destination and preflight planning was far more conservative.
What I haven't mentioned and might shock many commercial pilots is that until 1992 first officers were NOT allowed to taxi, take off, fly the departure nor clean up and use the brakes!
Whilst I would have preferred otherwise as far as safety in a critical situation the procedure made sense. Landing I was allowed to make my own decisions but if it looked like a cloud base of 300 ft or lower I would opt for a monitored approach. We had to have landing configuration SELECTED by 400ft and cross wind limits were the aircraft ones.(which meant stabilised approach from 300ft ;-)
The Rio trip originated in Zurich with two full flight deck crews. At briefing generally it would be four pilots and one engineer - the other would be preparing the aircraft.
The enlarging crew would fly the first half but in reality we would normally do a good 60% of the flight time which was the ITCZ transit. Sometimes this would be a non event but others might be two hours of having the cr*p knocked out of you whilst dodging the storms as best as our radar allowed us. Occasionally a nervous second pair of eyes would be on the flight deck - the second captain. That the AF skipper thought it was a good idea to go and see his crumpet beggars belief.
Rio was difficult because the forecast were not accurate and Atc had vectored two aircraft into mountains around that time.
The weather forecast problems were thunderstorms and early morning fog - one lot gave me an insight to how frightened interrogation could be - more later.
We normally waited for runway 05 because of the runway downslope as well as the engine out obstacle clearance allowed us a higher take off weight. The flight was scheduled as the last GVA departure not only commercial reasons (connecting pax and arrival time in South America) but because of OAT and performance considerations. So mostly we were at max certified TOW despite the altitude.
A few of the captains would brief that they were "go minded". I don't condone that mentality but having seen the approach lights at close proximity many times one appreciates that an experienced captain is a far better bet than a first officer in a limiting take off especially as there is no question of who does what when one swops handling pilots.
Generally once we got within VHF range of South America we would wake up the other crew...whilst hard work it was self preservation as the other crew might have to fly an approach into fog or thunderstorms and occasionally it would be a dive and drive to minimums.
The enlarging crew would have a couple of days off before flying back through the ITCZ whist the regular crew would take the next service to Santiago de Chile or Buenos Aires followed by the following service back to Geneva/Zurich. We all got a week off back at base.
The crew bunks were a container inserted in business class taking up six seats in the middle of the cabin. It was better than nothing but some of the cabin crew would deliberately ram their trolleys into it especially after their union got stroppy and tried to run the outfit.
The trip I got a dose of the willies was one where we considered tech stopping for fuel as we had a particularly bad ITCZ transit and our track deviations had consumed most of our reserves. Inflight we had Rio with São Paulo alternate and both airfields were above minimums (alternate minimum being higher than destination) but it was before sunrise which often changes things.
The skipper wasn't Swiss and I knew of him as being a bit of a boring fart which generally goes with someone lacking ability or confidence or both - I won't say anymore because it will identify him. Not someone who inspires confidence and although my skipper didn't say anything we did even more extra time up front.
All seemed to go well whilst we were locked into our little aluminium igloo ...normal flap and gear selections until go around power was applied and we flew around with the gear down and flaps out.
We certainly didn't have enough fuel to do that and with the terrain around the airfield it was license to do some serious damage especially to me.
I felt the aircraft level off and power reduce...then someone did the sensible thing and apply lots of power and clean up the aircraft. I knew we had to get into Rio and fifteen minutes later we touched down. It was a long fifteen minutes.
I don't know how little fuel was left and I didn't want to know.
They had tried a dive and drive approach which they hadn't been able to land from.
I would guess the next was an ILS regardless of the weather that they had to land from.
Rio was and is an interesting place and as privileged visitors at the time of a military dictatorship I had some "interesting" experiences.
Also had an interesting polar flight when crossing the pole our INS displayed two tracks 30 degrees apart..not what you want in the middle of the night over a frozen waste without a lot of kerosine.