My schedule is going to be keeping me pretty busy in the next two weeks. Because of this, my blog entries are going to suffer. Because I’m in training, the flight assignments change all the time and the only way to stay sane is to be flexible. I was scheduled to go to Manila in the morning. Then, after preparing for that, in the afternoon, it got changed to Taipei. Now, that trip just got taken off my schedule. Things are all a little fluid, but it gets frustrating for me as a newbie. Why? Because flights take hours to prepare for and when they change or get removed from the schedule, that time is somewhat lost.

Later this week, barring any changes, I’ll be headed out on a four day trip that departs Hong Kong for Bangkok, Mumbai, Dubai, and back through Mumbai and back to Hong Kong. A few days later, I’ll do a round trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. That trip is longer than my Hong Kong-Frankfurt trip by about 1,000 miles. Johannesburg is around 6,600 miles from Hong Kong and is mostly flown over the Indian Ocean. One of the only places to drop into in an emergency would be Diego Garcia, an airport that is basically the whole island, that sits 1,000 miles south of the Indian coast.

In some ways, flying at night, over the Himalayas or over vast oceans can be pretty spooky. The new route over the Himalayas used to travel from South East Asia to Europe is called Yankee One (Y1). It’s the path that requires all the escape routes incase of an engine failure or rapid loss of cabin pressure. At night, flying along in total darkness, and not being able to see out and see the mountain tops, but knowing they are there, ready to kill you if you aren’t prepared, is pretty sobering. It’s the same on the way to South Africa or to America’s Left coast. At night, nothing can be seen out the front windows, but there are miles and miles of flat ocean below us. I don’t know about you, but I don’t like the thought of treading water for more than a few hours in the cold north Atlantic. Yes, there are life rafts, but, will they inflate when I need it to? Will I even be able to survive the crash to get to a raft?

Ultimately, history and safety records are on my side, and better than that, I know there is a God in Heaven who looks after me. Which reminds me: During a crash, I wonder how many people who have spent their life ignoring God finally decide to call out to him? Anyway, seeing the Himalayas during daylight hours is one thing, knowing that we could turn to avoid a peak if we had to descend due to an engine failure. But when the night is as dark as pitch, and all you have is a computer and a map, things can get a little more serious. I liken it to being in a submarine, navigating underwater canyons without being able to see out — except for us in a plane, it’s better than being in a sub, because while all is going well (like 99.999% of the time) we are above the mountain tops and above the icy waters below.

I have a new found respect for the pilots who have gone before me flying long routes over potentially deadly terrain. There are some passengers out there who say that all we do is push a few buttons on a computer and drink our coffee. Well, parts of that may be true part of the time, but when the airplane suffers a depressurization and the only safe thing to do is get lower for breathable air and play chicken with the mountain ridges that we can’t see because it’s a dark night, those people might start to get a different idea of what we do. Then, once safely on the ground in Urumqi (pronounced Ur-rum-chi), a desolate place in western China and an emergency landing site and safe haven amongst 28,000 foot high mountains, hopefully, the coffee drinking, button pushing stigma melts away!

As amazing as all that sounds, as far as I know, I don’t think it has ever happened, at least not at Cathay. However, that is part of the reason why training is so stressful and long: there are so many things to learn about and prepare for. Flying 747 long haul flights has taught me that a lack of preparation and mental preparedness can be deadly. Yes, I want training to be over, but I also what to know all that I need to know to be a safe Cathay pilot.

Now, where’s my coffee? I have some buttons to push!