The Orchestration of an Airline Departure
Oct. 11, 2005 — -- One of the most satisfying aspects of being an airline pilot is the feeling you get on arrival when the flight was smooth, the landing perfect, everything ran on time, and all the passengers smiled at you as they stepped off the plane.
For the air crew, a flight is a performance, a finite production with a definite beginning and end and a well-defined script in between. You grab your flight bag and overnight bag, make any necessary entries into the appropriate logs, and leave the aircraft to the next team of pilots and flight attendants as it sets up for the next performance.
But as the flight crew's show comes to an end, a symphony is beginning, full of speed, complexity, challenge, humor and occasional danger; all of it as exquisitely intertwined with changing harmonies (and occasional dissonance) as a symphony by Shoernberg.
As the aircraft noses into the gate, a small army converges with sound and fury signifying an amazing orchestration of people and material. And in most cases, within 45 minutes, the performance ends with the aircraft taxiing away, once again full of people, bags and fuel.
We watch this amazing performance with every airline flight, but it's so routine and usually so harmonious, we don't notice. In fact, when everything comes together precisely as planned, the desired effect really is a form of public invisibility. Of course, the passenger shouldn't notice the activity any more than the playgoer should be aware of the backstage crew working magic between curtains.
In some respects, the symphonic simile works on an interesting level.
From the perspective of the cockpit, the mechanic standing on the ramp (and sometimes on top of a large pushback tractor) as the aircraft approaches seems like a conductor, his or her arms raised as if signaling a touchdown, lighted wands in each hand. At the moment the nosewheel rolls into the right spot, the upheld wands come together in an "X" like a downbeat, and the first, frantic movement of the symphony begins.
