Ask Mr. Pilot

This informative little column answers questions from non-pilots, and helps them understand the strange world of the “aileron,” the “empennage,” NOTAMs and even the word “niner.”

Question: Why are NOTAMs so complicated, and couldn’t there be a “NOTAM translator?” Something in plain language?

Mr. Pilot: The complication of NOTAMS (and this would be a cool band name: “LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!  GIVE A BIG HAND FOR ‘THE COMPLICATION OF NOTAMS!!’”, but I digress.  Where was I?) is necessary for the FAA to save space.  “A letter saved is a letter earned.”  There is an FAA  “NOTAM translator”  in its beta stage.  Here is an example:

Actual NOTAM: RUNWAY 18, TEMPORARY CRANE 5374FT FROM DER, 1398FT LEFT OF CENTERLINE, 149FT ABOVE GROUND LEVEL.

NOTAM translator: Are you a cropduster?  DERRR, no, you are not.  Then forget about the crane.

Question: Why do pilots wear hats that look like bus drivers or shopping mall security guards?

Mr. Pilot: A question to ask your ownself: “Why do I hang around bus drivers and mall guards so much that I know what their hats look like?”

Question: Why do planes stall?  Is it just like a manual-transmission car stalling when I put it in gear and let out the clutch too fast and the engine goes “clunk, clunk, clunk” and the car jumps and then stops?

Mr. Pilot: I noticed you asked a two-part question, tried to sneak in an extra question there.  Very clever. Listen, airplanes stall for various reasons, but most are caused by, just like in a car, “going uphill” too steeply.  Then the airplane stalls and “rolls back down the hill,” because in the air, we don’t have brakes to stop the backward roll like a car has on the ground.

And no, the plane doesn’t go “clunk, clunk,” etc., at least until it hits the ground. Then there is often clunking.

Question: I noticed in the previous answer you said airplanes don’t have brakes, but what about speed brakes?  Couldn’t they stop you from going backwards when you stall going “uphill?”

Mr. Pilot:  All pilots know that speed brakes only work if you’re going forward.  We use the toe brakes to stop a stall, which doesn’t work, but we use them anyway.

Question: A math question: if an airplane takes off from Los Angeles, California flying east at 200 miles per hour and an airplane takes off from Denver, Colorado at 300 miles per hour, flying west, and a bumblebee were to fly back and forth between the two windshields of the two planes, not touching the windscreens but reversing course just before touching, how many trips would the bumblebee make before the two planes meet, and where would the two planes meet?

Mr. Pilot: Good question, math nerd. I’ll get right back to you on that. Right after I go to MIT and study math for about six years.

Question: Why do pilots say “niner” instead of “nine?”

Mr. Pilot: Because “nine” sounds like “brautwurst,” so we say “niner” to avoid confusion.  We also say “tree” when calling out an obstacle like a tree, and “fife” to describe a small flute.

Question: What is the “phonetic alphabet?”

Mr. Pilot: It’s a “word-for-every-letter” thing that, in police movies, the cops always mangle. I guess it’s too hard for “the po-po” to remember all twenty-six words for the alphabet, so they just use any old word for reading letters off a license plate.

Example: for a license plate reading TVX2M4:  “We’re in hot pursuit of a white Ford, license plate ‘TELEKINETIC, VICTORIA’S SECRET, XYLOPHONE, TWOTURTLEDOVES, MOTHERMARYFULLOFGRACE, FOUR CALLING BIRDS.”

Question: When Sullenberger landed on the Hudson…

Mr. Pilot: Let me stop you right there, sorry to interrupt—your question reminds me of the movie Avatar, where the hero was named “Sully,” and they were trying to get something called “Unobtanium” on the planet “Pandora.”  They dumbed it down to almost my level, it was so dumb.  They could have made it dumber by throwing in “The Penguin” as a bad guy, too, I thought. But by all means, go ahead with your question, I’m sure it’s a really good one.

Question, finally: My question is, when Sully heroically landed on the river, uhh, oh now I forgot my question

Question: Did you ever know of anyone who ever flew drunk?

Mr. Pilot: Yes, I had a buddy in high school who flew forty feet out of his dad’s Chevy after he drove it into a tree.  He got severe brain damage, and because of that went on to a successful career in politics.

Question: Have you ever jumped out of an airplane?

Mr. Pilot:  Only on the ground.

Question: Have you ever “pulled Gs,” and what does it feel like?

Mr. Pilot: Yes, I have pulled Gs, like seven of them. It feels like a giant hand is mashing down on your body, crushing you.  Like being married.

Question: How much does it cost to learn to fly?

Mr. Pilot: It’s a simple math problem: take your net worth, multiply that by eleventeen.

Question: In the movie Top Gun, where the Russian MiGs are really US Air Force T-38 trainer aircraft. Did that kind of “ruin the movie” for you because as a former T-38 pilot you “knew too much?”

Mr. Pilot: No one has ever accused me of “knowing too much,” so no. But I did get ejected from the theater for standing up and yelling “Go get those Northrup trainer aircraft, Tom Cruise!”  I had on my flight suit, a helmet, and oxygen mask at the time, which “contributed” to my ejection, the cops said.

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Matt Johnson

Matt Johnson is from Fargo, North Dakota, where hundreds of other people are from. He went to school and learned very little, but the United States Air Force got ahold of him in 1986, when he attended Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma (“Little Prison Camp On The Prairie”). He was in the UPT class of 87-07, graduated, then went to Beale AFB, California, and flew as a KC-135Q copilot, refueling the SR-71 on worldwide missions—England, Okinawa, Japan. Also, he flew the T-38 in the Accelerated Copilot Enrichment (ACE) program, and his instructors were SR-71 pilots, Major Brian Shul and Major Terry Pappas. He got all kinds of excited about that jet, and became an Instructor Pilot (IP) in the T-38 after a short three-month school and ten short checkrides at Randolph AFB, and instructed in the White Rocket for a year and a half. Nobody called it the White Rocket, but that sounds cool and I’m a nerd. Note: nobody called it the “SR-71” at Beale AFB; we all called it “the sled.” Matt taught as a CFI for a couple years in Virginia, near Washington DC (bogies everywhere, like fireflies), and now flies for fun out of KFAR, Fargo, ND, in a Lancair IVP. He writes, too, which is troublesome.

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