Life as a Physicist

The central question about air travel boils down to: Do commercial airline mechanics ever fly in commercial jets?

This question occurred to me while waiting for a plane to be repaired in O’Hare a few months ago. The flight from France was a bit early, and so I rushed to get an early plane to Seattle. It was delayed by 10 minutes when I got through immigration, so I sprinted. This was a real score because it was scheduled to leave a full 3 hours before the flight I had a booking on. Had it left on time I wouldn’t have made it.

Only once I’d moved my reservation over did I realized the departure time had been moved from “10 minute delay” to “no estimate.” Hmm… That is never a good sign! In response to “What’s wrong?” I got back “The pilot noticed a bent turbine blade. They are just making sure that it is bent, not broken.” That didn’t sound too bad.

I walked around to the windows and I could see the engine being worked on. There was a guy, perhaps in his 50’s, standing inside the engine. He would brace the turbine with by jamming his foot between the blades. This kept it from turning. He would then saw away at one of the blades with what looked like a regular metal file. Every now and then he would pull out some sand paper and give it a rapid sand. All the while people - managers?? - kept wandering up to him and asking him questions. All, I imagine, that boiled down to “How much longer?” They would do this every 5 minutes. Eventually he turned around and gave some sort of long lecture to one guy — no idea, but I’d like to think it went something like “I’d have already been done if you guys didn’t keep interrupting me!” He looked like that kind of guy.

Eventually one of the managers came in to update the ground crew on what was going on. As he was walking away from the desk I asked him what was up. “Well, on the pilot’s walk around inspection he discovered one of the turbine blades was bent. The engine had probably sucked something in, like a big rock. The worry is that there is now a fracture in the blade, and through the course of running the vibrations will grow the fracture until it hits the hub of the engine. Then foom! the engine will come apart.” He paused. “And that is why a pilot has so much training. For those 10 seconds.” And then he walked away.

I looked back at the engine and the fellow now sanding away at the blade. He was soon finished and we boarded and I arrived two hours earlier than my original schedule.

It is nice to know that a machine as large and complex as a Boeing 757 can still be fixed by one guy with a file. On the other hand, I’m not sure they should have let that mechanic talk to me. I was sitting right next to that engine.

Update: Check out this comment left by a retired 757/767 pilot on another post. Especially the pictures of the Chinese jet engine and youtube video of a bird strike (i wish I could have seen what that engine looked like afterwards).

I’ve had this trait in my personality since childhood: don’t spend money. And when I do I often have a tough time enjoying it.

The plane trips of the last few weeks have been pretty bad. But for the first time in a long long time (more than a year, I think) I really missed a connection yesterday on my trip from Glasgow back to Marseille - and got stuck in Paris. My flight arrived more than 30 minutes after the last train to Marseille had left (the flight, out of Heathrow, was delayed by more than 2 hours due to weather and other things). So I had to find a hotel. It was close to 9pm when I came to this conclusion, so I walked into the Paris airport Sheraton. At that point they were almost out of rooms and had only the “Club” room. By the time I signed out it was a touch over 300 euros. With the very very very weak dollar that isn’t 500 bucks, but is is darn close. So I took it, not willing to spend another hour getting off site to another airport.

I’m pretty sure that is the first time I’ve ever paid that much for a hotel room.

I did my best to enjoy it. Really. I ordered the free breakfast (it was good, but the fresh OJ was amazing). Stole most of the bathroom soap thing-ys. Tried to use each bit of furniture in the room. Enjoyed the view of the planes pulling out and in from my window. Sat in the bar downstairs and had a very expensive beer. I didn’t use the internet: it was 10% the cost of the room for 24 hours of use! For that cost they should have a fiber connection directly to my brain!

Being able to walk down an escalator and climb on a train, about 10 minutes, including checkout, after I walked out of my hotel room? Priceless.

What burns me about this is that after I made the decision to stay there, and had paid, and had checked in, I kept thinking about it. At that point it was too late: time to move on. Enjoy the room! Nope, instead it festered. Even after I checked out this morning and was standing on the train platform thinking that I’d spent too much (well, it is true, I had, but it was a little late at that point!).

I’ve often complained to people that we don’t get paid enough in this job. True only so far as I look around at what others in the business world with similar skills and training get. But I obviously get paid enough to be able to do this in an emergency. And it is very nice not having to worry about this sort of thing.

I get on a plane to return to Marseille in a few hours. Last night Hal and I managed to get a seat at a place called Gandolfi Fish. When we stumbled on it walking around the night before, we knew it was crowded. But last night we found out it had been opened only 4 weeks and was one of the hotter places in town. The only reason we were able to get a table, I think, was we some how befriended the bar-tender who was also in charge of the reservation list (and sitting at the bar for 1.5 hours). After two bottles of a very good Sauvignon Blanc, Hal and I decided the lesson here was the same as in asking for money from the NSF: always better to do it in person than not. Someone that had made their reservation a week or so ago got bumped in favor of us because they were waiting at another bar down the street and couldn’t be contacted. I think they got in eventually, but it was after the kitchen started to run out of food.

At any rate, the Glasgow conference was good. I’ve got some pictures posted, but the network connection has been so awful I’ve not been able to organize them. I’ll do that tomorrow when I’ve got a decent net connection back in Marseille.

Well, now that my flight to Glasgow from Manchester has been canceled, I’ve been on the road more than 24 hours (I think I’m above 26 now). This trip will take me through 5 airports. In each of the middle three I’ve now had a layover of longer than 3 hours.

When I checked in they told me the Glasgow flight was canceled because there wasn’t the crew. They have a cool thing in this airport: if your flight is delayed more than 2 hours you get free drink tickets. Sadly, I was delayed only 1:55 minutes, so they didn’t give it to me (!). Better yet was the check-in woman’s opening statement to her manager on the phone when trying to see if I might possibly qualify: “Hey! Guess what! The one guy on the Glasgow flight showed up!”. Crew now around, eh?

O’Hare now has official wifi service. Done by boingo. Imagine my surprise when I arrived in Paris (for a second 5 hour layover) that they also have boingo service. Further, the $7 bucks I spent in O’Hare still gets me an active connection here in Paris! Now, if only Satellite 5 had power outlets…

A meta-stable car cruise control. Ours had two states, about 8 miles/hour apart. The 10 seconds it took to switch from the slower state to the faster state that first time was scary. Holy…

Just another example of the famous PT Cruiser engineering. Tail light was out. And the gas mileage was less than 20 miles/gallon. But it fit a baby seat very comfortably!

This time next Monday I’ll be arriving in Glasgow for the ATLAS overview week. The airport was just attacked. When the story first broke, it sounded like it was local. But apparently, it is much broader than that. I wonder if it was meant as a going-away gift for Blair? At least few people were hurt!