We took off from Anchorage the other night behind FedEx 90. We were on the same route for a while. When we got to altitude, it turns out we were 2000 higher and slightly behind. We were running about .1Mach faster and had slightly better winds… as a result, I managed to get some of the shots you see in this slideshow. Click the photo for the slideshow.
FedEx 90 over Alaska
You can also ge HERE to see some raw videos of this flight.
I just completed a few ‘firsts’ this week. Considering I’ve been doing this for more than 13 years, this is somewhat remarkable. I left the house at 0545 Wednesday morning, and walked back in about 5:15 pm Friday evening. That’s a total of just under 60 hours. In that time I flew from BOS to MEM and started my official pre-trip crew rest. At 0315 Thu morning we launched for NRT (New Tokyo International Airport – Narita)
The route is displayed here: http://is.gd/8w8J This is roughly the path and the speed we flew. While on a map, it appears to be that we ‘curved’ north – perhaps to follow a route close to land, the fact is, this is a ‘great circle route. If you were to take a piece of string and lay it on a globe from MEM to NRT, this is the path the string would show as the shortest distance between two points.
It was about 13:49 air time, (average 80 knots headwind) and 14:30 block time. As we landed in NRT on Friday morning (local time) the visibility and ceiling were unrestricted, thus allowing for a fabulous view of snow-capped Mount-Fuji shortly after sunrise. This is the longest flight I can recall doing since I’ve been flying. The other long flights I’ve operated are Paris to Manila, and Osaka to Memphis. I then waited in NRT about 4.5 hours, and took the next flight home… NWA 12 from NRT to DTW then BOS.
From the time I left MEM at 0320 and arrived in BOS at 1520 was about 36 hours. In that time, I spent about 28:45 on moving airplanes. OUCH! The big trick to surviving this is 1. Hydration. Lots and lots of water. 2. Good rest. While I can’t and DON’T take anything as an operating crew member, as a passenger on NWA, I did take a ‘simply sleep’ and managed to get about 7.5 hours straight sleep on the flight from NRT to DTW.
While this type of flying is ‘once in a lifetime’ for many people, it’s just part of what I do. I frequently ride passenger carriers to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Paris, Frankfurt, Delhi, etc and get paid to do it. I try to always remain conscious of how special it is, and how lucky I am to get to do something that many people would love to do, but will never or only rarely have the opportunity.
Semper Fly!
PilotPete
Originally uploaded by boxav8r
We passed this jet just south of Moscow on Sep. 12, 2008. Beautiful viz and a relatively smooth ride!
