![]() We level at our initial altitude of 5000 feet followed shortly with step climbs, being cleared higher just as we approach the next assigned level off. The airspace is very busy with JFK, LaGuardia, Newark, and Teterboro all sharing the same neighborhood. We then receive vectors for the climb to keep us out of the arriving traffic flow. We’re handed off to departure control and crossing Canarsie, we turn left again and head outbound on the 176-degree radial. Eventually, we find our way and join the conga line, patiently inching ahead for our turn to takeoff.įinally, we depart runway 31L with an immediate left turn toward the Canarsie VOR. There’s a lot of airplanes moving around, rapid fire instructions from the controllers and many different taxiways with a lot of intersections that allow for plenty of opportunities to mess up. Taxiing a Boeing 747 at a big, busy airport is probably the greatest challenge of the night. We’ll burn just over 22,500 gallons of jet fuel tonight, converting that to avgas, that’s enough to fly well over two thousand hours in the Cherokee, even if I push it hard, and if I still had the Champ – well, that’s an awful lot of flying! It’s my own check as to the madness in the world when I then convert the gallons figure into how much flying I could do in my Piper Cherokee back home. Looking at the flight plan, I convert the fuel burn that is listed in kilos first to pounds and then to gallons. Tonight’s flight will be taking us 3359 nautical miles mostly across water and is planned for six hours and twenty three minutes, takeoff to touchdown. We’re leaving New York’s JFK airport headed to Europe, to the old Hahn Air Base just outside of Frankfurt Germany. ![]() The difference, though, is that the fish falls back down to the water, while I fall up into the night sky! The Greatest Challenge of the Night for a Cargo Pilot ![]() And then like a fish jumping out of the lake, we popped out. I knew that if we kept climbing eventually I’d see the stars. Once all was confirmed to be behaving properly, I peeked over the instrument panel and was greeted with two greyish white javelins from our landing lights spearing into the layers of broken clouds. All was right with the world because the instruments say it’s so – at least in my little world anyway. The numbers on my altitude tape continued to get bigger, so that was good, the heading bug was where it was supposed to be, the attitude indicator showed blue on top and brown on the bottom, and the airspeed numbers got bigger and then settled where they belonged at our climb speed. Other than the thump of the landing gear retracting into the wheel wells and the slight rumble felt with the retracting of the flaps, there was almost no sense of motion. In about as much time as it took for you to read those words, we had slipped into the inky murk of the low hanging clouds. ![]() On takeoff, it was just an instant of watching the last of the white lights fall away from the nose when I transitioned inside and onto the gauges, or more accurately, eyes onto the “glass”. The first layer of clouds was at 300 feet, with a broken layer at 500 feet and overcast at 1100 feet. On this night, the winds were out of the north at 12 knots with 3 miles visibility in light drizzle and mist. As a cargo pilot, I do a lot of night flying…. I know that if I keep the plane in the blackness between the two rows of white lights and if I add enough power and gain enough speed that eventually I’ll feel the last clunk of the runway being left behind as we climb into the blackness. I see two rows of blue lights and if I keep the plane in the blackness between them they will lead me to two rows of white lights. Oddly enough, most of the places look the same after a while. I get to see a lot of the world in my “day” job. As a cargo pilot, I do a lot of night flying…
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