The Flying Ends

“Through the Canyon” by Emily Cho

For a brief few moments near the ragged end of a long career, I had a spontaneous feeling of joy. We were ferrying a Boeing 767 from its recent inspection in Ulan Bator to Bangkok, a six-hour flight between the capitals of Mongolia and Thailand. Flying south into China, we skirted the eastern edge of the Gobi Desert, where a panorama of the unfolding landscape spread out beneath a dark-blue sky. The peaks and valleys reminded me of the basin and ranges of America’s southwest desert, and it occurred to me again how much of this varied world looks similar from the air. The setting sun played with the light on the western horizon, making it difficult to tell if the distant mountains were topped with snow or capped in lenticular clouds. They were nearly a hundred miles closer to the sunset, and my colleague, a young Thai named Prop, couldn’t tell either. Pointing to the horizon, he spoke in his native language to Kong, the company mechanic.   

We were cruising above the ground at over 550 miles per hour, but the view from the front windows changed only slowly because even the mountain peaks were several miles below. Prop, Kong, and I were the only ones aboard this otherwise empty plane, as all 325 passenger seats sat empty. Prop asked if he could step back to the cabin with Kong so they could get some “fresh air,” his jovial code-talk for smoking a cigarette. It was against company policy to smoke, even on ferry flights, but we saw no great harm if we bent this one little rule. I remember an old captain from another era who was known by the borrowed phrase, “Rules are for fools and the guidance of wise men.” With a caveat or two, I could easily agree and, in that spirit, suggested they take their time. Alone on the flight deck, I was silently appreciating the setting sun and the dimming panorama of the world outside.

All was normal and strangely quiet, save for the occasional radio chatter, most of it in Mandarin Chinese. Suddenly, without the slightest nudge of effort, I became engulfed with a feeling of joy and appreciation, yet mixed with a certain melancholy. My mind became more alert but relaxed, and a mild buzz, almost like electricity, ran down my back while goose bumps covered my arms. The wonder I had felt on my first solo cross-country, a flight in California between Van Nuys and Bakersfield, revisited like a welcome apparition. Long forgotten and decades old, the memory quickly formed, conjuring the mountains around the Tejon Pass. Interstate 5 wound its way through the rugged terrain before descending into the southern tip of the San Juaquin Valley, connecting the small towns that sparsely dotted the land below. Here, over the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, I could make out a few paved roads, most leading to mountain hamlets with their boxy-looking buildings in brown and blue. Compared to this widebody Boeing, the two-seat Cessna was like a motorized kite, but the feelings were eerily similar and seemed to be connected by a much shorter path than the decades that separated them. Thirty-seven years had just compressed, like a chain of many links into just one. Then, as now, I was alone at the controls. That previous time, before I was allowed to depart for Bakersfield, my flight instructor checked the preflight planning and weather. Just prior to this flight, we flew with the Mongolian mechanic who supervised the month-long inspection, running through various checklists to deploy the backup procedures to several system malfunctions. In doing so, for a brief hour over the steppes of Mongolia, I was a test pilot on a Boeing 767.  

Alone on the flight deck over the Gobi Desert, I was hoping Prop and Kong would light another cigarette. In savoring the moment, I tried to make sense of the long and broken path connecting that first cross-country flight to this one. There was that feeling of sadness tinging my thoughts, but the sadness was not entirely unwelcome; it has its place in a long and varied career. And varied was putting it mildly, having lived on five continents and flown to over ninety countries. Living in Ethiopia and flying for the national airline introduced me to Africa and the Middle East. That job eventually gave way to this one, flying for an airline that was primarily a money laundering operation for the Chinese mafia. That little tidbit was not known to me until I well established there. But the melancholy was due to the creeping awareness, now fully evident, that my flying life was winding to a close. And quickly.

The sky was dimming fast in the setting sun, and I reduced the flight deck lighting to lessen the glare. There was a radio call to change frequencies, and I took a little extra time to call up the next sector, wiping my forehead, daubing my eyes. Prop returned to the flight deck and, after settling in, asked if everything was okay. I replied that ops were normal, one frequency change, and I was just rubbing my eyes to get the sting out.

Monica and I had recently decided our stay in Thailand would soon be ending and, with it, this flying life. I used to love flying. Then I liked it. Then I liked my job. Then it was just a job. But in those few moments, I learned again why I chose this path and regretted that I let the wonder slip away for so much of it. But I was grateful to rediscover the old joy, however briefly, the kind of joy that only a beginner’s mind could create. My six-month check was due in about a week, and with mixed feelings I had accepted that it would likely be my last ride in a flight simulator. I didn’t know it at the time, but that ferry flight from Mongolia was to be my second-to-last trip, ever, as a pilot.

* * *

Two days after the flight from Mongolia, I was scheduled to fly an out-and-back to Chongqing from Phuket, originally set to depart at one in the afternoon. Just before noon, in uniform and looking for the flight’s paperwork in the dispatch office, I saw the duty manager hang up the phone. He appeared to think carefully before speaking to explain our flight would be delayed “maybe ten hours.” Apparently the company’s sole remaining 737 was stuck on the ground in Nanning, and the 767 for our Chongqing flight was borrowed to clean up the mess. Our other 737s had been grounded due to lack of spare parts (translation: unwilling to spend the money) and were parked on the maintenance ramp to be cannibalized for their bits and pieces.

The “mess” was the situation in Nanning, where the aircraft’s nose gear was missing one of its wheels, stranding the inbound passengers to Thailand. Our dispatcher was showing photos, taken on his phone, of the wheel lying quite innocently on the grass by the runway in Phuket. Apparently it separated as the plane was lining up for takeoff, casually rolling away from its once-secure home to collapse where its inertia died. There are no idiot-lights or wake-up bells on the flight deck to warn of this, and if the pilots didn’t see the rolling wheel, their only hope would be other pilots seeing it, or the local air traffic controller, and warning them over the radio. No such luck in this instance, however. They departed with half the nose gear and flew all the way to Nanning before it was discovered. They were lucky it separated when it did, for had it dropped onto a Nanning neighborhood as the gear was being extended, a whole spectrum of problems would be created, including the company’s ability to fly in China. The company had had several sudden diversions within China due to poor maintenance, a number way out of proportion to our small size, to the point where this company  was becoming a regular topic in the Chinese press.

I was told to go home, get the legal rest, and crew tonight’s Chongqing flight at midnight, the earliest possible time our aircraft would be available. I was told this when I was well-rested from a full night of excellent sleep only a few hours before. So…I was expected to just go home, sleep on demand, and magically wake up all refreshed for a midnight departure, then stay awake all night, then through a sunrise, and feel nice and chipper and crisp when we returned to Phuket at nine in the morning. The “refreshed” part would never happen, of course, because, like most people, I cannot sleep on demand. If this new plan actually happened, we would be landing in Phuket late the following morning after having been awake for almost thirty hours. I would be thoroughly exhausted and struggling to concentrate for even the simplest tasks, like changing a frequency or reading a normal checklist. I could predict this with certainty because I had been played like this before. My colleague for this trip was a young Thai named Popp, a competent pilot whom I had flown with before. He told me he would go home and sleep, and that sounded so absurd to me that I started to laugh. Then he laughed too. Popp had an interview scheduled with another airline the following week.

Because we were officially off duty the moment we were told of the delay, this now counted as “rest time,” enabling this travesty to be legal. This blatant disregard that airlines and their regulatory agencies have for the effects of fatigue is not exclusive to this airline or the region they operate in. I have been subjected to a not-so-subtle pressure to fly from every company I have worked for, regardless of how tired I was or would likely be. Of course, every Flight Operations Manual—the legal document that defines the policies an airline will operate by—states clearly that safety is the number one priority, and under no circumstances is a pilot to accept a flight if he or she believes they will be too tired to safely fly. Most of these manuals also have a few nice-sounding words assuring that a pilot can self-declare his or her fatigued state and be removed from the flight with no disciplinary response from management. My inner cynic, backed up with decades of personal observation, suggests that the real intent of such wording is not to provide a pilot support if he removes herself or himself from the trip; rather it is to shift all the blame to the pilot if an accident or incident occurs while fatigued. A rogue pilot suggests the basic system is sound, and no responsibility should be placed on airline management or their regulators. In the real world the first time a pilot invoked this clause, he or she would be called in to explain why their time was not managed correctly, and the second occurrence would most likely be their last, at least at their now ex-company.   

Prior to checking in for this flight, I was still on a residual happy buzz from the Mongolia trip a few days before. Now, in the taxi from the airport, I was abandoning any hope that things would ever improve here. Maintenance had degraded to the point where the entire operation was shifting from merely unsafe to blatantly dangerous. Knowing this, continuing to fly here would render me guilty in the event of an accident. I felt this culpability even if I was not a crewmember on any future accident. Such a catastrophe would be the end of the airline, and there was a growing uneasy feeling that circumstances were aligning to make such an event inevitable. The poor maintenance now bothered me more than the late and short paychecks, especially with the realization that no improvement was coming.  

Just before midnight I returned to the airport to begin an eleven-hour duty period, already tired and feeling like I could just go to sleep and knock off a good eight hours, regardless of consequences. Quitting on the spot in a righteous display of anger was never my style, and I have worked for companies that provoked even more revulsion than this one. Popp and I conducted a more thorough preflight inspection than normal, with our minds open to grounding the aircraft for the least discrepancy. None was found but while walking around the aircraft, flashlight in hand, it occurred to me that the company owed nearly $20,000 in back pay that I knew I would never see. And like the rest of us here, I had genuine doubts if we would ever receive another pay deposit. The flight attendants, who had no union or even an unofficial association, recently gave the company an ultimatum: Pay us or we stop flying. And for the past two weeks, the flight attendants were met at the gate prior to every departure from Thailand and each given one thousand baht cash, about $32. This was not their full pay for the flight and did not address back pay issues, but it kept them coming to work. Morale was low and everyone (except me) was actively looking for a different employer.

I began the crew briefing with words to the effect that I could be asleep before my head hit a pillow, and we probably all felt the same, but let’s get through this without rushing, and let’s all look out for each other. We were legal from a rest-time perspective, but I just admitted to the entire crew that I was, for all intents and purposes, impaired. I then babbled something about how our passengers would also be at the end of their patience, having been stranded at the airport for nearly twelve hours. I concluded the briefing by robotically blorting out the standard stuff, like flight times and weather. On the latter it was forecast to be good all night at both Chongqing and Phuket. Despite the forecast I still requested four thousand kilograms more fuel than the flight plan called for, providing just short of an hour of extra think time or margin if things did not unfold to plan. Carrying extra fuel was habit in China, as their Air Traffic Control (ATC) was notoriously uncooperative with individual requests.  

We departed Phuket uneventfully and climbed to cruise altitude. An hour after takeoff we passed over Bangkok, where we radioed our main dispatch office at Don Mueang Airport. This was a routine call to forward our estimated arrival time and current fuel on board. On these calls we receive an updated weather report for the destination. The visibility at Chongqing was significantly below forecast but above the minimum for landing. We were still a few hours away, but I didn’t like the trend being so different from the forecast. The temperature would likely decrease by a few degrees, and the wind was calm so chances were good that visibility would change for the worse by the time we arrived. I mentioned this to the dispatcher six miles below, and the only guidance he provided was repeating the official forecast for our destination, which still showed that the visibility would be good enough for our arrival. This forecast was issued several hours prior, at the same time it indicated Chongqing would be significantly better than it was now.

I asked the dispatcher if he was comfortable with us continuing to destination with decreasing visibility, and he didn’t seem to appreciate the nuance in the question. I asked Popp to relay our concerns in Thai. No one in the dispatch office was prepared to make the decision to alter the flight plan because, technically, there was no reason to alter it. The official forecast was okay, so there was no official reason to alter the flight. I had my third cup of coffee since takeoff and officially pressed on.

We were about fifteen minutes out of range of Chongqing’s automated weather service, a broadcast loop of the airport’s conditions, when Popp informed me that aircraft were diverting from Chongqing due to poor visibility. About 80 percent of ATC in central China is conducted in Mandarin, and Popp (who also spoke that language) was hearing that Chinese airlines were being cleared away from their destination of Chongqing. The visibility had plummeted to one hundred meters in the last five minutes, three hundred short of what we would need to land. I wrote down the time and our fuel on board, then throttled back to reduce speed. The latter would save fuel, but there was also no point in going fast towards somewhere we didn’t plan to go.

I called the lead flight attendant to inform her that we would not be landing in Chongqing any time soon, and we should begin preparing for a weather diversion, most likely to Guiyang. In fact, we were flying abeam Guiyang as we chatted on the interphone, and I could see clear skies over the city, and just to its east we could make out the airport and its green-and-white beacon. Good weather, and since Guiyang was the nominated alternate on our flight plan, I did not think we would have a problem diverting there. As I hung up the interphone, Popp was accepting a clearance from ATC to descend about three thousand meters, and before we begun the descent, I asked if we could maintain altitude until we knew what our new plan was. The clearance was in meters, but it corresponded to about ten thousand feet of altitude, creating a significant effect on our fuel burn. “Negative, begin descent immediately,” was the clipped reply from ATC.

Having little choice but to comply, I asked Popp to request if we could hold nearby, as we would likely be landing “right down there” anyway. “Negative, maintain lateral clearance,” was the reply in broken but easily understood English. A few moments later we were given a frequency change to Chongqing’s control, followed by a no-debate order to an even lower altitude. Good, I thought, they were descending us for Guiyang and would soon turn us around to set up the approach.

But no. We were instructed to proceed on our original clearance to Chongqing while ATC coordinated a route to “an alternate.” “An” alternate is subtly different than “the” alternate, and although that nuance of English is probably not known to the Chinese controller, I keyed the mic and requested a clearance to Guiyang, stating that it was the alternate airport in our flight plan. “Stand by,” was the response, and on toward Chongqing we proceeded. Twenty minutes later we arrived over the airport and were told to enter a holding pattern until further notice. As we entered the holding pattern, ATC asked us to state our endurance (with our present fuel, the time we could remain flying). I asked Popp to tell him to stand by while we cooked up an answer.

Stress levels were steadily inching higher, but my inner flight instructor saw a good teaching opportunity that ought not to be missed. “What do you think our endurance is, Popp?” He immediately pushed a few buttons on the flight management computer and confidently said, “Two hours and four minutes.”

“That’s correct, but do you think that’s the best answer?” Popp was a good and knowledgeable pilot, but it did not occur to him that we could answer ATC’s question with something other than the digital readout on our computer screens. Knowing the fuel on board, the computer bases its calculation on current fuel consumption and a few other variables, but I did not want to provide ATC with the rope to hang us. The law states we would need to get to Guiyang with forty-five minutes of reserves, and Guiyang was now almost thirty minutes behind us. I asked Popp to tell ATC we had an hour and fifteen minutes endurance and also tell them we could accept our clearance to Guiyang. Strictly speaking, two or three laws were broken by understating the time in this manner, but I had already felt our situation to be steadily deteriorating, and I was willing to lie to ATC to increase the margin of safety for this flight. Twice in the same week, I was reminded that “rules are for fools…”

“Stand by,” was their reply, followed in a few minutes by “Guiyang is not available. Please stand by.” I had a growing concern to get safely on the ground, as good options were beginning to disappear. I keyed the mic and reminded the controller that Guiyang was the alternate on our flight plan, a flight plan approved by Chinese ATC.

“Guiyang not available.” We were still a long way from declaring a low fuel emergency, but the minutes were ticking by with no plan in place while precious fuel was wasted in a holding pattern. After a few more minutes, I asked Popp to request a clearance for Chengdu. It was about as far as Guiyang but in the opposite direction and had the added benefit of being a company station. In fact, as recently as the previous month, it was the flight plan alternate for Chongqing until the Chinese CAA required that we change it to Guiyang. After a few more minutes, ATC responded, “Chengdu not available, please stand by.” For reasons not disclosed to us, neither destination was permitted. More exasperating, Popp was understanding every word in Mandarin over the ATC frequency, and several Chinese airlines bound for Chongqing were being cleared to both Guiyang and Chengdu.

“Should we request the reason for refusal?” Popp asked.

“Would it change their mind? Or do any good?” I replied.

“Not likely.”  

Everywhere else I have flown (extensively, over five continents), pilots do not have to ask ATC where they can divert to, let alone wait in a holding pattern while the decision is made for them. The pilot tells ATC where they are going, and ATC accommodates, almost always with a willing-to-help attitude. More minutes ticked by and unless we were cleared to someplace soon, our only option would be to proceed directly to Guiyang or Chengdu. Otherwise we would declare an emergency and just proceed ourselves, whether ATC liked it or not. This would certainly create administrative or legal problems for the company, and probably myself, as this airline would now have yet another emergency over China. It would make little difference that, to most knowledgeable observers, Chinese ATC and their administrative procedures contributed the bulk of cause to our predicament.

In the back of my mind was the awareness that in addition to declaring an emergency and proceeding to a good-weather alternate, there was always a last resort should the situation become dire. It would raise a few eyebrows and also necessitate declaring an emergency. Like all modern airliners, the Boeing 767 has full Autoland capability, able to fly an approach, touch down, maintain the runway centerline, and brake to a full stop. In fact, many airlines are certified for landing in conditions where the visibility is so low that the pilots do not see the runway until they have already touched down. This certification includes additional training and maintenance procedures (read: cost) and is known as “Category 3b” Autoland certification. I was qualified for this at Ethiopian Airlines and knew how to set up and monitor the autopilot. I was confident we could land with zero visibility in this manner if that was our only recourse. This airline was not qualified to do this; hence it would be an unusual procedure requiring the declaration of an emergency, with all the official attention it would bring. Ending the flight in this manner at Chongqing would be the best outcome for the passengers but would likely expose me, and possibly Popp, to “legal problems” upon arrival.

After another turn in the holding pattern, we were told that our alternate was Kunming, a city we passed over en route to Chongqing and about an hour southwest of our present position. After some inputs to the computer, it indicated we would land there with twenty minutes to spare before both engines flamed out due to fuel exhaustion. Our new endurance was quite the discrepancy from what I estimated based on the earlier calculation, but the variables differed with the new flight plan. The current weather and forecast for Kunming were excellent, and I reluctantly accepted the new clearance, provided we could proceed with no further delay or diversions. We would pass Guiyang on the way, so we were not without options if conditions deteriorated.  

The flight management computer indicated we would have just over three thousand kilograms of fuel upon landing, an amount no dispatcher would ever plan for and no pilot would ever accept at the beginning of a flight. With no further changes I would merely be uncomfortable for the flight’s remainder, not panic-stricken. We informed the flight attendants and passengers of the new plan and settled in for one of the longest hours of my life. To make matters worse, ATC did not let us climb above our holding altitude to a more fuel-efficient one. I had time to stew over this predicament and develop a building anger to the situation we found ourselves in. If things deteriorated to an accident, I knew that any court in the world would place all the blame on the pilots—more specifically, me.  

Approximately halfway between Guiyang and Kunming, my discomfort increased as the precariousness of this flight became more evident. The fact was I had allowed this situation to deteriorate to the point that we must land in Kunming on the first approach. If not, our contact with the ground would not be at an airport. At the time Kunming had only one runway, and if between now and our arrival that runway became closed for any reason… I didn’t want to think about it.

“How are you doing, Popp?”

“Fine, Captain.” Perhaps this wasn’t the time to remind him he could call me David.

“We’re committed to land in Kunming. There’s no other choice, you know. We’ll plan a straight-in approach to runway two-one unless there’s a ridiculously high tailwind. It looks like two-one and three are the only strip of concrete open.” This information was buried in the preflight paperwork.

“It’s not our fault, Captain.” He was reading my mind and already two steps ahead in the conversation. He knew exactly how crazy this was, and if his nerves were as agitated as mine, he hid it well. He was right, though. It wasn’t “our fault.” It was mine. Our computer now indicated we would land with 2,600 kilos of fuel, not enough to safely go around if our first approach had to be abandoned. The computer’s fuel estimate for landing can go up or down throughout a flight, but over the last twenty minutes it was steadily trickling down. I was trying to figure out why our fuel consumption was greater than it should be, even looking for the grossly obvious: a fuel leak, the position of the gear and flaps, and the speedbrakes.

We could see a dark expanse toward the left side of the city that we were sure was the airport, and after tuning in the runway’s navigation frequency and interpreting our horizontal displays, we confirmed it. I suggested to Popp that if there was any further delay, our plan was to declare an emergency and land anyway, but in the meantime, please tell ATC we were ready for the approach. Without telling Popp, I had decided that we would land on the parallel taxiway if another airplane or vehicle took the runway, regardless of ATC instructions. Both of us had frayed nerves, fueled with adrenalin. We should have been exhausted but instead were tired-and-wired, our focus hindered by tunnel-vision perceptions.

Approximately three minutes before touchdown, we configured the aircraft for landing, and just as the gear lights illuminated green, the aircraft’s warning system sounded with three loud tones, alerting the crew to look at the screens for information. For the first time in my life, I had a Low Fuel warning message, illuminated in red on the top center screen. What little fuel remained had sloshed back in the tanks as the aircraft pitched up while configuring to land. Very bad but the runway was right in front of us, about five miles ahead, and it was empty of aircraft and vehicles. In other words, it looked beautiful, even though we were about two hundred feet too high, but fully configured and on speed.

The local controller, who had cleared us to land less than a minute ago, then told us to “Go around, too high.” Popp looked at me and didn’t say a word. Under normal circumstances, if a controller issues a go-around command, most pilots would correctly assume there is good reason and comply without much analyzing. It would be okay to question it later, but the immediate task would be to follow ATC instructions. These were anything but normal circumstances, and if I was to have blindly followed the controller’s instructions and initiated a missed approach, Popp would have been justified to take control of the aircraft, by force if necessary, and land the airplane straight ahead on the runway.  

“Do you see any obstructions on the runway, Popp? I fucking don’t!”

“No, Captain!” In hindsight I should not have led his answer, but brooding over classroom concepts like confirmation-bias was not in the forefront of my mind.

“Then don’t answer him. We’re landing straight ahead.” And we did, exiting the runway with about three thousand feet of concrete remaining without having to apply heavy braking. In other words, we might have been a little high but not to the point where ATC should be issuing a go-around command. Taxiing toward our assigned gate, Popp was shaking his head and laughing. I was just shaking. My left hand was twitching, and beads of sweat formed on my temples and forehead. No chest pains but I could feel my heart banging away and throbbing down to my twitching hand as the awareness kicked in…that we were only a few minutes away from the kind of catastrophe I would never have to live with but Monica and our son, Brian, would.  

After shutting down the aircraft at the gate, I had to write into the aircraft’s logbook various flight details, including the amount of fuel remaining. One point seven thousand kilograms. To put this in perspective, that is about enough fuel to start the engines, taxi to the runway, and begin a takeoff. The aircraft would never get airborne before the engines flamed out. It briefly occurred to me to write something other than the honest amount, as landing with seventeen hundred kilograms in a Boeing 767 is crazy-level dangerous, and any chief pilot would have a closed-door meeting with the crew, probably separately, to get to the bottom of it. But I was long past lying to preserve what little remained of my career. While reviewing the flight data, I uncovered the mistake that caused the projected landing fuel to trend down throughout the flight. Popp had programmed the optimum altitude into the computer for the flight to Kunming without updating it to our real altitude after it was clear ATC would not let us climb. It was equally my fault, if not more so, as I should have noticed the error. Had this mistake been caught before passing Guiyang, we would have declared an emergency and landed immediately, but our fatigue and stress-induced tunnel vision contributed to this detail being missed. 

Late the next afternoon, after insufficient toss-and-turn sleep, we flew the same passengers to Chongqing, then another 325 back to Phuket. During the cruise portion of the return flight, I spent an hour filling out an Irregularity Report, pulling no punches as to the severity of our predicament, emphasizing the inexplicable behavior of Air Traffic Control and my own role in allowing us to be led this far astray. In the report I called attention to my irrationally strong motivation to avoid declaring an emergency, thus giving ATC too much authority over the decisions for this flight. I only stood up to them at the last minute and only then by ignoring them. Before leaving the company offices at the conclusion of the flight, I faxed the report to the company’s safety director and chief pilot, fully expecting a phone call within the hour to set up an urgent meeting at the offices in Bangkok. But no acknowledgment was received, and no meeting was ever set up. That was my last flight ever as a pilot.

about the author

David James swapped a decades-long career flying dodgy airplanes for even dodgier companies to hike the forest trails of Arizona, often with his dog. He occasionally looks up and wishes he was back in the sky, until he comes to his senses and appreciates the grounded wilderness around him.

about the artist

Emily Sunghyun Cho is a 14-year-old attending Lolani School in Honolulu, Hawaii. In her free time, she also loves playing the cello.