Each have their pluses and minuses but what your seeing as a negative in airline flying (hours at cruise) is no different in smaller aircraft. I’ve done 3.5 hours in a C172 and 3.5 hours in a jet. It gets just as boring after a while no matter what altitude or speed you are at. I have to agree that the simplicity of flying a small airplane from point A to B is fun. Heck its fun just flying from Point A back to Point A. But that same thrill is there at all levels of aviation.

Even more real flying….

Through 12,000′ MSL, 320 knots the airplane is decending at 2000 fpm to eventually level off at 10,000′ MSL. ATC gives a futher decent clearance to 7000′ and asks to call the field in sight. You’re now 70 knots too fast to decend below 10,000′ so off goes the autopilot and out come the spoilers while keeping an eye outside looking for the airport. You find it at 2:00 and only a few miles ahead. Your co-pilot lets ATC know that you’ve spotted the airport and you’re then cleared to land.

IAS is finally below 250 knots so the spoilers are stowed and the decent continues. You call for the approapriate decent checklists and your co-pilot is busy getting the airplane and crew ready. Now slowed to 220 knots you’ve already passed the airport but there is still 5000′ left to lose. At over 3 miles a minute you don’t have much time to decide how to set up. The call for flaps goes out and the co-pilot selects them. ATC asks if you can keep it in “tight” to allow for another aircraft to join the final behind you. “Sure thing.”

Down goes the gear and the turn to base is started. The decent is increased to 2500 fpm but the airspeed is still at 210 knots. That works for now but as you roll out on final on glideslope you’re carrying too much speed. You pitch up to bleed off the airspeed because the sleek lines of a jet don’t give much drag. As the airspeed starts to fall you can bring down more flaps but you still have another 40 knots to lose to get the final flaps down. Descending at 500 fpm now through 1500 AGL the speed is just about there. As you pass through 145 knots you call for the last flaps to be lowered and landing checklists to be run. You lower the nose to get back on the visual glideslope and settle at a final approach speed of 130 knots.

Over the fence you slow those last few knots. As you get into the flare the thrust levers are brought to idle and attempt to settle the aircraft down smoothly. Oops, not today. Out come the thrust reversers and you start applying the brakes to slow the aircraft down to a taxi speed.

In about 5 minutes you’ve taken 10’s if not 100’s of tons of aircraft from 2 miles up, traveling at 6 miles a minute to safely sitting on the ground moving at slower speeds than cars on the road. Not only is it fun but it’s very rewarding. There is a lot of fun and rewarding aspects to GA flying as well.

I was hoping the launch customer would be domestic for no other reason than to mean I’d have a better chance of seeing the 7E7. Oh well, a small loss but it’s nice to see such a large first order for the new airplane.

Great pictures!

I just realized how similar Ryanair’s livery is to Continental’s.

The EMB-145 family doesn’t have a lockout pin but has a trigger on the yoke that disconnects the nose wheel steering. The steering is then engaged by pressing once down on the tiller. These system is powered by the hydraulic pumps on the #1 engine. To avoid an accidental engagement of the nose wheel steering during a pushback we only starte the #2 engine. The #1 engine is then started after the tug disconnects.

Rumor has it that they are going to retrofit the airplane to have a lockout pin. I don’t know what brought that “fix” on.

Great pictures, all of them!!

I posted this picture on our company pilot forum and a 737 pilot said the same thing. No lockout pin on the push with the nose turned by the tug would be a perfect set up to lead to the bent towbar. Hopefully no one was hurt.

I’d be suprised if it was only alumnium. A few years ago there was a EMB-145 that basically had the nose gear torn off by the tug on the push. The ground crew started the push before the brakes were released. The nose gear gave before that tow bar did. There were pictures floating around the internet a few years ago of the jet with it’s nose resting on the ground but I can’t seem to find them.

Here’s the NTSB report for that incident. oops.

http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief2.asp?ev_id=20010601X01054&ntsbno=NYC01LA125&akey=1

I don’t think it was windshear. Being that the initial report indicated that they commanded rotation but got no response. A shift to a tailwind would also drop the indicated speed which would mean that the crew wouldn’t have seen the required IAS for rotation. Without the guages showing the required IAS, they wouldn’t have tried to rotate. Since they attempted to rotate they would have been showing the right airspeed.

Wind shearing to a tailwind would show a large decrease in IAS as well as decrease in performance.

There were some onboard failures that we don’t know about that lead to this. The braking system failed on the landing roll and another (possibly related) system had failed on the takeoff resulting in the failure to retract the flaps.

Originally posted by andrewm
Maybe the aircraft still had parking brakes on when they tried to push?

That would require the tugs engine and towbar anchor to be powerful enough to bend hardened steel. Probably not. Me thinks there is something else behind the picture.