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A belated end to the 2010 plane saga
The flights home Wednesday were fine. The first leg was indeed on a zippy little Embraer jet, small enough that I couldn't plant both my feet flat when sitting due to fuselage curvature. And yet, I was cool the whole way over. The crosswinds near the ground greeted the little plane with some playful buffeting as it prepared to land in Milwaukee, and I nearly laughed at the sensation.
Second leg actually gave me more jitters because even though we were on a big fat Airbus. It was moderately bumpy ride for the first hour or so, and it was too dark and cloudy outside to visually recenter myself. But then, just as the NOAA turbulence report predicted, it cleared away completely at around the halfway point. And then, magically, Chuck Jones' The Grinch Who Stole Christmas appeared on the seat-back displays! I plugged my headphones in and I tell you, this time I really did laugh. On an airplane! Several times, and not the hysterical kind, either. This, I would have not predicted.
In retrospect, the thing that has scared me the most about BOS landings has been the descending U-turn over the ocean that flights coming in from the west must often (always?) perform. Back when my I let my caveman-brain run unchecked during plane flights, even when this maneuver involved no turbulence, it was still terrifying. Ugh ugh! Ground went away! Water getting closer! Plane tipping over! Flee!! But this time I rode it down with a smile on my face (though I admit I craned my neck to keep the beloved twinkling city lights in view while we banked).
The fallout of all this is that I find my great personal success on these four flights the most memorable part of this vacation, and a source of honest pride on a personal demon subdued, if not utterly conquered. While I don't have reason to expect I'll ever really look forward to plane trips, I think I'm done being mortally terrified of flight. So, that's good!
As a bonus, enjoy this brief, silly Twitter conversation that happened between myself, my friend Jon, and Milwaukee's General Mitchell airport. MKE's message is what I woke up to find the morning after the flight, and it really was like a grown-up(?) version of getting a pilot-wings pin. I was a flyer, once again.
http://twitter.com/#!/JmacDotOrg/status/20285761140035584
http://twitter.com/#!/roody_yogurt/status/20288326221168641
http://twitter.com/#!/MitchellAirport/status/20489212797124608
Second leg actually gave me more jitters because even though we were on a big fat Airbus. It was moderately bumpy ride for the first hour or so, and it was too dark and cloudy outside to visually recenter myself. But then, just as the NOAA turbulence report predicted, it cleared away completely at around the halfway point. And then, magically, Chuck Jones' The Grinch Who Stole Christmas appeared on the seat-back displays! I plugged my headphones in and I tell you, this time I really did laugh. On an airplane! Several times, and not the hysterical kind, either. This, I would have not predicted.
In retrospect, the thing that has scared me the most about BOS landings has been the descending U-turn over the ocean that flights coming in from the west must often (always?) perform. Back when my I let my caveman-brain run unchecked during plane flights, even when this maneuver involved no turbulence, it was still terrifying. Ugh ugh! Ground went away! Water getting closer! Plane tipping over! Flee!! But this time I rode it down with a smile on my face (though I admit I craned my neck to keep the beloved twinkling city lights in view while we banked).
The fallout of all this is that I find my great personal success on these four flights the most memorable part of this vacation, and a source of honest pride on a personal demon subdued, if not utterly conquered. While I don't have reason to expect I'll ever really look forward to plane trips, I think I'm done being mortally terrified of flight. So, that's good!
As a bonus, enjoy this brief, silly Twitter conversation that happened between myself, my friend Jon, and Milwaukee's General Mitchell airport. MKE's message is what I woke up to find the morning after the flight, and it really was like a grown-up(?) version of getting a pilot-wings pin. I was a flyer, once again.
http://twitter.com/#!/JmacDotOrg/status/20285761140035584
http://twitter.com/#!/roody_yogurt/status/20288326221168641
http://twitter.com/#!/MitchellAirport/status/20489212797124608
no subject
The last time I landed in Toronto the wind was from the north, which is unusual. It meant the plane took a leg out over Lake Ontario and the approach was right over the city. It looked for a while like we were going to fly straight into the CN Tower, which we passed at a distance of what felt like 100 m, right at the level of the main deck. I'm not usually freaked out in the air, but flying that close to a building while still a good 10 km from the airport was kinda disturbing.
The thing to remember is that planes always take off and land as close to dead-on into the wind as possible, for a variety of reasons. It keeps ground-speed lower, and wind tends to gust more frequently than lull, so you want a headwind if possible. A gust in a headwind creates lift rather than what is sometimes known as "controlled flight into ground".
If you know the wind direction at the airport and the runway layout you should be able to guess within 90 degrees the landing direction. Cross-wind landings (lots of wing-waggle on final) aren't uncommon. Tail-wind landings are very rare.