Word: rudder
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Many airline pilots these days are more like office workers than Chuck Yeager. Today's highly computerized flight decks mean that pilots spend a lot of their time typing data into their flight-management systems rather than sharpening their stick-and-rudder skills. "Some pilots can get into situations that are so unnatural and frightening that they freeze," says Terry McVenes, deputy chairman of the pilots' union's safety committee. "For example, when the plane goes nose down, it takes a lot of physical strength--and absorbing about 3 Gs--to pull the plane out. If a pilot tries...
...small building on the edge of the Roswell, N.M., airport, we were given a preflight briefing. Even the veteran pilots were getting butterflies as they listened to the flight plan. Knotts explained the sequence of maneuvers we would fly to re-create such real-life accident scenarios as the rudder failure of USAir Flight 427 near Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1994 and a hydraulic failure that resulted in the cartwheeling crash of United Airlines Flight...
Then it was up in the sky. Flying the Learjet, even with it customized to feel like a 737, makes one realize just how little time a pilot has to react to a crisis. We tried rudder malfunctions, icing problems, wake turbulence and losing all hydraulic power. In one exercise, pilots are told to point the nose almost directly at the ground and then pull like hell out of the dive. Watching the ground get closer in the Learjet's large cockpit windows was frightening; it felt as if it took forever before we started to climb...
...other times, I study photographs of my father from many years ago, or film clips. I don't want to forget how his eyes used to look. Alzheimer's teaches a harsh lesson--that the past is like the rudder of a ship. It keeps you moving through the present, steers you into the future. Without it, without memory, you are unmoored, a wind-tossed boat with no anchor. You learn this by watching someone you love drift away...
...change of scenary didn’t end a seemingly cursed season for the Radcliffe second varsity. Just past the preliminary heat’s 100-meter mark, where a race cannot be stopped for technical difficulties, the second varsity boat’s scag and rudder fell off, making the boat impossible to steer. Despite being unable to finish the preliminary race, the second varsity still rebounded through the repechage and Petite Final to place 10th overall, but that finish was far below early-season expectations...