I just arrived back in Hong Kong from a three day trip across the Pacific to San Francisco. Photos of my visit can be seen by clicking the photo above. With almost 200 mph winds blowing West to East across the Pacific, our flight was less than 11 hours to the West coast of California, but then coming back, it was a little more than 14.5 hours.
The captain flew us to San Fran and then I flew us back to Hong Kong a few days later. Both takeoffs were at heavy weights due to the weight of all the fuel it takes to travel those long distances. My takeoff, coming back for the longer flight, was the heaviest I’ve even taken off to date, which was at the maximum takeoff weight of the 747-400 passenger plane: 397 metric tonnes, or 397,000 kgs. For my American readers, that’s heavy, at nearly 875,000 lbs! We left San Fran with 375,000 lbs of fuel, enough to run a family car for an average of 80 years. We landed back in Hong Kong with a little over 18,000 lbs left in the tanks.
Aircraft use flaps, both on the leading edge and trailing edge of the wings, to generate lift at slower speeds, like for takeoff and landing. These flaps extend, and to the untrained eye, can look like the wing is coming apart. As the flaps retract, they change shape so that they can fit back into the wing. While they are changing shape, they actually create more drag than lift, or said another way, they create more trouble than help — at least momentarily. As they create more drag for the few seconds that they are changing shape, our stall speed increases. When a wing stalls, it quits making lift and [for the purposes of simplicity] the aircraft quits flying. It actually still produces lift and is flying, but that’s for another technical discussion when you need to fall asleep some night!
As the stall speed increases, we have to be going faster, or be above that speed, to keep flying. The trouble with heavy takeoff weights like our flight out of SFO, is that there is another factor at play: maximum speed. As the flaps travel from flaps 1 to flaps up, there is an upper speed limit for flaps one, and there is a lower speed limit of stall speed. That difference between the upper and lower limit is only about 8 knots! At 272 kts, we start to get the onset of stall, and at 280 kts we overspeed the flaps. The lesson I learned that day was the importance of being right on the money as far as departure speeds as there is little room for error. It would be like keeping your car’s speed to within 35 mph and 38 mph, or something bad would happen.
It’s at those moments that we as pilots do not want an engine failure to occur. It has been said that the purpose of the engines is to keep the pilots cool — because when they quit running, just see how the pilots start to sweat. When I flew my ERJ-145 at my last job, our flaps up speed was usually around 150 kts. At these heavy weights in the 747, the flaps up speed, or clean speed, was 282 kts. That difference is an amazing value.
In this post, I bored my readers with a discussion on flying great circle routes, as the shortest path between two points on the planet. The San Francisco trip actually did not follow that route at all. To and from the West Coast, we flew a more southerly route, over the fatter part of the Earth, passing just a few hundred miles north of Hawaii. A great circle path would take us up near Cold Bay, Alaska, and just south of Anchorage. This trip was a case of caring more about the wind speed and how that could help us, instead of flying the shortest distance. We were able to gain a lot of time and fuel savings by following where the winds were pushing us the strongest, instead of flying the shortest path to SFO and back.
It was nice as we approached the coast of California. The weather was fine and we could see the 1 and 101, that run along the coastline. Those are the highways where Toyota and others film their commercials of cars running along the coast. It was also nice to be able to hear American air traffic controllers for the first time in six months. I didn’t have to strain my ears to hear what was said and the faster they talked to us, the faster I could “give it back” to them. It was amazing to return to the Bay area. The first time I was there, I was interviewing with Cathay. Before that, I had only been there on my computer, flying Microsoft Flight Simulator as a kid in junior high, wanting to be a pilot someday. In that version of the flight simulator, the airplane started off on runway 27 right, in Oakland. I would takeoff and fly over the bay and land in San Francisco in my little Cessna 172. It was fun to do it years later, experiencing the real thing.
I’ve been very blessed to have a lot of full-circle moments along my career as a pilot, where I have been able to return to places as a pilot, where I once was simply a young kid, looking out, wishing I could be a pilot. The first moment came when I was able to land my RJ into DFW. I grew up near there in Arlington, Texas, and would spend ours in the heat watching American Airlines MD-82’s launching and landing. My dad and I once snuck into a construction zone to get a better view, where not even a fence separated us from the runway. There were no signs saying specifically to stay out, so we helped ourselves. Our plan was to slip away or play dumb if the cops rolled up. Another time was when I fly into Purdue University’s airport in my RJ on a charter flight, taking the Purdue girls basketball team back to West Lafayette, IN. I had spent many hours at Purdue learning about aviation, and then got to return there as a pilot. Another time was heading Back to Bali, Indonesia with Cathay. Then there was also this SFO trip.
I tell you: I’m not very rich, but I’m a very wealthy young man. God has truly blessed my life and it’s easier to see when I put His blessings in the perspective of the “full circle” view. All I can say is that if I can do it, anyone can. If I can attain some of my dreams, then so can you. Don’t give up, stay focused, and you’ll get there too, whatever dream it is that you have. How? It’s simple, really. See, the secret is that I didn’t do any of it. We can’t do much on our own, but with His help, anything is possible . . . If you feel your dreams are falling flat and you need some encouragement, think back on how much your life has been blessed. It will help put things into perspective.
We had an extra day to relax in SFO, so I walked around downtown, as our hotel is right there in the middle of it all. I walked passed Union Square, where I interviewed, looked around in the Macy’s store, and rode the cable car down to the Wharf on the Embarcadero. There was good food on the Wharf, a great view of The Rock, a chance to see Lombard Street, and a great time riding the cable cars.
Taking this picture, with Alcatraz behind me, I saw some birds overhead, and then felt a splatter of something moist on my head and shoulders. Yuck! I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what that was. Needless to say, I’m not too happy in the photo . . .
There are some pictures of the wooden brakes used by the trollies. Basically 2×4’s that press down on the tracks are what stop the cars. At the bottom of the San Francisco hills, everyone riding can smell the scent of burning wood in the air. The cars are pulled along by a cable under the street and the driver simply pulls a lever to grab onto the cable when he wants to move forward, and then releases the cable when he wants to stop. The cables are driven by a central hub that runs several cable lines at the same time. The pictures show the cable and the pulley’s and the large operation it takes to make it all happen. Over the life of one cable, it can stretch over 100 feet. Because of this, a second pulley is set up to take in the slack, as the cable stretches. Also underground are the giant pulleys that turn the cables 90 degrees to go around the corners of intersections. If you head to Frisco, a ride on the cable cars and a view of the pulley system is a must. 
It was great to be back in the U.S. however brief it was, and it was amazing to be able to do such a long-haul trip. If training wasn’t so stressful, I would actually relax and enjoy all this flying! This was a great trip, and I hope my others turn out to be as nice as this one was.