Final Flight for this Delta 747 into Pinal County Airport
- Thread starter Springer
- Start date
Finny
Well-Known Member
Meh, call me when a 747 does a midfield crosswind entry into a left downwind. Bonus points if they say, "any traffic in the area please advise," over CTAF.
A Life Aloft
Well-Known Member
UAL's will all be toast by the end of the year. End of an era. sigh
gotWXdagain
Polished Member
Truly visual or can their geewizz boxes program a glideslope and centerline?
I'd like to think they're doing some old fashioned flying. Aimpoint/airspeed. Definitely a good opportunity to; last flight, no pax. Plus, all the ones I've seen come in, enter a wide downwind and fly a VFR pattern, vice a straight in. Cool stuff to see!
gotWXdagain
Polished Member
I would like to think that also, but you know, kids these days.
They could be using automation, I'm not sure. But the appearance is of more of a visual traffic pattern from what I've observed. Either way, its both very neat as well as very sad, to see a plane coming in here for the last time. Generally, crews seems to do one or two low approaches.....sometimes even a clean pass at pattern altitude also....as a final salute to their aircraft's last hurrah. I often look across the ramp here at the different areas: the storage area: where planes are stored either awaiting a new customer, or slowly losing parts to inventory. The maintenance ramp: where aircraft are either coming in to be worked on and then leaving, or in rare cases, have been pulled from the storage area and are being returned to service. And the scrapping area, which is actually two parts: the actual planes being scrapped, and the ramp right next to it of planes awaiting scrapping.
I often wonder if many of these planes could talk, what stories they could tell of what they've experienced in their lives, the places they've been, or the people and cargo they've carried.
There are indeed some interesting types here, as I detail when I place new pictures in the "Around the Ramp at MZJ thread". The sole TWA plane, that 747-100 N129TW, just noticed that its rudder is now missing a large chunk of the upper half.....from all the months/years of being parked and its unsecured rudder slamming around, I imagine.
At night, when its pretty dead quiet at the field, except for some random mx work going on or the I-10 traffic 3 miles away, you can hear odd groans, creaks, and whines from the scrapping and storage areas. Have never been able to identify which particular plane is trying to speak its peace.
One plane here about a decade ago or so, a UAL 747SP, a ground crew was towing it to the scrap area when something in the brakes suddenly engaged or jammed and its main wheels dragged the tug to a halt. Took a while to get them released from the affected side.
Almost as if the 747 knew where it was being towed to, and was making one last futile effort to try and save its own life.....
Cptnchia
Dissatisfied Customer
If you're talking about the crews bringing the 747s in there, I'd highly doubt kids are flying them. More likely the old salts who are being forced off the fleet who don't trust any geewizz boxes.
gotWXdagain
Polished Member
They could be using automation, I'm not sure. But the appearance is of more of a visual traffic pattern from what I've observed. Either way, its both very neat as well as very sad, to see a plane coming in here for the last time. Generally, crews seems to do one or two low approaches.....sometimes even a clean pass at pattern altitude also....as a final salute to their aircraft's last hurrah. I often look across the ramp here at the different areas: the storage area: where planes are stored either awaiting a new customer, or slowly losing parts to inventory. The maintenance ramp: where aircraft are either coming in to be worked on and then leaving, or in rare cases, have been pulled from the storage area and are being returned to service. And the scrapping area, which is actually two parts: the actual planes being scrapped, and the ramp right next to it of planes awaiting scrapping.
I often wonder if many of these planes could talk, what stories they could tell of what they've experienced in their lives, the places they've been, or the people and cargo they've carried.
There are indeed some interesting types here, as I detail when I place new pictures in the "Around the Ramp at MZJ thread". The sole TWA plane, that 747-100 N129TW, just noticed that its rudder is now missing a large chunk of the upper half.....from all the months/years of being parked and its unsecured rudder slamming around, I imagine.
At night, when its pretty dead quiet at the field, except for some random mx work going on or the I-10 traffic 3 miles away, you can hear odd groans, creaks, and whines from the scrapping and storage areas. Have never been able to identify which particular plane is trying to speak its peace.
One plane here about a decade ago or so, a UAL 747SP, a ground crew was towing it to the scrap area when something in the brakes suddenly engaged or jammed and its main wheels dragged the tug to a halt. Took a while to get them released from the affected side.
Almost as if the 747 knew where it was being towed to, and was making one last futile effort to try and save its own life.....
Somehow some way I'd like to get on one of those airfields at night, be it MZJ, GYR, IGM, VCV, MHV, or ROW with my camera, the flash and flashlight, and color gels and do the Troy Paiva thing. I hear they sort of frown on doing that without permission though
gotWXdagain
Polished Member
That or @Screaming_Emu types, with their Lattes in the cupholders and subaru porn. Do they even know they're in an airplane anymore?
A Life Aloft
Well-Known Member
She just didn't want to go. To think the skies were once filled with these planes........all over the planet and dressed out in every livery for every major player. Sad.
It's like the video of this old gal lifting her eyes to the skies just one last time like she's yearning to return there. Eerie.
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Springer
Well-Known Member
I am in and out. Vid was sent by the NWA retired pilots association. If I were that crew I would have stayed in the pattern and flown down to min fuel. They are going to defuel it anyway and can't be reused or can it?
z987k
Well-Known Member
I've been flying the thing for about a year now. 40 Landings so far. They're so spread out, you never become very proficient at any type of old school/hand flying the thing as an FO. The hardest thing to do is a pure visual, because to be honest I don't really know what that looks like. I'd imagine it's the same for everyone regardless of carrier.
You can build one in the FMC from any runway.. or really any fix if you wanted. Gives you vertical and lateral guidance.
As far as I see, if you're taking the jet on its last flight, its your fuel to play with.
A few weeks ago, I'm out southwest of MZJ by about 30 miles, north of Gu Achi Peak; middle of nowhere desert tooling around at a couple hundred AGL, when I see this 767 level at about 2500-3000 AGL coming my direction headed west-southwest bound, towards Ajo. No markings that I could distinguish other than being a civil jet with a blue tail. Headed towards Ajo, essentially low level. Was wondering what it was all about, and figured it was probably just a crew burning off fuel prior to taking the thing into MZJ. Just weird to see that where I was, as low as it was, and headed in the direction it was.
OneNineHundy
Well-Known Member
Might have been one of the old Air New Zealand 767's?
Richman
JC’s Resident Curmudgeon
"I believe that when we leave a place, part of it goes with us, and part of us remains.
Go anywhere in this station when it is quiet. After a while, you will hear the echo of all our conversations....every thought and word we've exchanged.
Long after we are gone, our voices will linger in these walls."
- Ambassador G'kar
Screaming_Emu
Well-Known Member
I've done two straight up visuals and they both actually went really well. I fly a lot smoother when I'm not chasing the flight director around. First was a side step from an ILS in OSN. Once we started the transition I asked the captain to turn off my FD because it's kind of hard to ignore. The other one the captain thought I was relying on the FD going into ANC so he turned it off. ILS to a visual at about 1000ft and he was surprised when the needles didn't move.
If I struggle with anything, it's getting the right rotation rate on takeoff. I always seem to think about a tail strike in the middle of it and my rate ends up a little too slow, leading to being a bit above V2 on climb out.