Ahhhhh......the worlds we know nothing about........the mystery is super cool but equally cool is being the person who gets to see behind the curtain.....what is going on up there?
I remember United Airlines used to have the Air Traffic Control frequency as one of the 13 options for audio channels. As a young pilot, I would follow along and try to understand all the fast talking people. They also used to have a video camera that would project the takeoff and landing on the movie screen at the front of the cabin that played the 1 movie on the flight that we all got to watch. When they announced the movie for the flight, there were collective cheers and boos for the movie watching crowd.
Although the audio and video have long since passed away, the fast talking people have not. It seems that you aways have that Air Traffic Controller that wants to talk at such a speed that everyone has to have them repeat themselves. Yes it is cool to get American 2244, fly 170 Knots to NETEE , Maintain 3000 ft, cleared for the ILS Runway 18L, switch to tower at NETEE 124.15.....thats a mouthful. But imagine having the receiving plane say......uhhh....can you repeat? Every airplane in the airspace sighs.......just talk slower man!
Coolness and ridiculousness do collide a lot in aviation........some of the coolness lies in our highways in the sky. Remember the Thomas Guide?? Ours is 3D though. Invisible points in space that help us get where we need to go. All of these waypoints are 5 letters: 7,893,600 possible intersections! And they are clever in how they put them together. A lot of airports have intersections that are relevant to what makes that city great. Here are a few: This is Orlando........a nod to Aladdin.
How about an arrival to salute the FEWWW, the PROUD, LETHR NECKK SAYLR?
One day things were quiet in the Charlotte Airspace so I asked them about the JONZE arrival? They had the PARQR (DOUG PARKER: Former CEO of AA) but I was baffled by the JONZE.....the controller explained that "Cup Cake Jones" as they called him was the best controller ever and he had retied two years earlier but would never be forgotten. WOW! You must be really good to have that many points named after you!!!!
Finally are our famous waypoints.......my Niece's father in law played for the Cleveland Browns and on a hunch I poured through the arrivals into Cleveland and there he was at KLLAY intersection on the BRWNZ Arrival. And of course going into Los Angeles you have the HLYWD arrival........it's like the walk of fame in the sky!!
This one made me laugh after I finally figured it out......Tweety Bird is speaking here......
ITAWT, ITAWA, PUDYE, TTATT.......now that is clever!
So there you have it.....some of the coolness we get to enjoy as we fly around our 3D roadways in the sky........oh and the ridiculousness you ask?
This is the taxi-in line for GATE 1 at JFK.........they actually painted this craziness on the ground too. I am not sure who is more foolish: The guy that decided that this approach for a 200k airplane to travel in the last 40 feet as a good idea , the guy that actually painted this on the ground, or the guy that had to put this on paper knowing that pilots were going to look at this and say, "What!!??" Maybe if we are drawing lines with 4 turns in them, we should see it as a sign that maybe parking here is not the best idea. Well as long as I stay on the line (good luck with that)............I am staying out of trouble....LOL.
We get it all in our world :-)
Until next time....Patricia