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For the next few days, Athena and I enjoyed the delights of Manhattan’s theater district. When she hustled off to Vegas, I hooked up with Scott Wallace, the other first officer I was partnered with for ground school and simulator training. He was another Yank in his late thirties, of medium height, built similar to a wrestler, with blond hair and crisp blue eyes. Scotty and I used our per diem to rent a house for the next couple of months at Long Beach, right next door to Atlantic Beach, in Nassau County, south of Long Island.
We soon learned from the locals at the deli on East Park Avenue, that we were in the middle of historic mafia country. In fact, this is where the Corleone Compound was supposed to be located, in the movie The Godfather.
Each day when we drove to JFK in our big Lincoln Town Car (we were supposed to get a compact – however the rental agency ran out – giving us this monster at the same price) we’d pass the closed toll booths of the Jones Beach Causeway.
Our rented Lincoln Town Car and house at Long Beach.
Akin to myself, Scotty had a twisted sense of humor – so when we hit the toll booths he’d start making machine gun noises. As this is where actor James Caan (playing Sonny Corleone) got gunned down in the movie.
Toll Booths at the Jones Beach Causeway.
Sonny Corleone getting his “ticket punched” at the Toll Booth.
Sick fucks that we were, dear reader, we’d giggle all the way down the Nassau Expressway to Rockaway Blvd. - thence into JFK. I couldn’t have been teamed with a better training partner – Scotty was priceless.
JFK International before the blizzard.
JFK International after the blizzard.
Boeing 747s at JFK International: Note the World Trade Center in the background.
JFK International: Note aircraft on the taxiways.
During my 747 training odyssey, I ascertained some interesting comparisons between New York and Jeddah. The first thing to catch my attention were the potholes. In Manhattan, the richest city in the world, my poor, oversized Lincoln would come upon the most breathtaking potholes I’d ever encountered!
Good thing I wasn’t in a VW Beatle, dear reader, I would have totally disappeared!
Whereas Jeddah was pothole free, thanks to all the new roads built by the Koreans.
Then I had the misfortune of visiting a couple of SAUDIA Flight Attendants sharing an apartment in Greenwich Village. Where I set a sandwich down on a plate, turned my back, then went to pick it up again...and found a cockroach on it that could go bear-hunting with a switch!
The ladies laughed themselves silly when I lifted my skirt, jumped up on a stool, and screamed like a little girl! Their apartment was lousy with them, and the girls had resorted to naming each one as if it was a pet! Seasoned flight attendants are exposed to so many horrible sights in their work, it’s difficult to rattle them.
In contrast, during my six years in Jeddah, I never came across a single cockroach in the two apartments I resided in.
TWA Training Center at JFK International.
Then there was the TWA Training Center at JFK. Jesus, what a run-down, tired dump! The classrooms were old and worn out, as were the instructors, and the training aids were few and far between. Basically they dropped a manual on the 747, the size of a New York phonebook, in our laps, and said: “Memorize everything.”
The TWA Flight Handbook for the B-747. Memorize everything.
Followed by boring lectures, tons of homework, and lots of exams on all the systems. As for the coffee breaks, all rancid items came out of battered vending machines that frequently stole our money.
On the other hand, the SAUDIA Training Center, at Jeddah, was an altogether different story when I attended ground school there on the 707. The building was newly constructed by a German company, with beautiful classrooms, possessing slideshows, films, and an array of the most astounding electrical training boards that I’d ever seen. When you threw an outsized switch on these boards, you saw exactly where the engine bleed air, oil, fuel, hydraulic fluid, electricity or air conditioning/pressurization was traveling throughout the entire 707. The foreign, contracted instructors were young, enthusiastic and, more importantly, knew their stuff. As for the coffee breaks: on the first floor was the “Canteen,” with short-order cooks that would rustle up fresh snacks or full meals. As for the coffee, there were several exotic types freshly brewed, along with fruit juices. Plus, your money never got stolen by a crappy machine.
SAUDIA’s Training Center Canteen at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
So please explain to me, dear reader, which of these two locations would you classify as a third world city? What happened to New York City anyway? For that matter, what happened to America?
Despite the “Big (rotten) Apple’s” disappointments, checking out on the Boeing 747 was still a dream come true.
Let me take a moment, dear reader, and give you a few interesting comparisons. As for you non-technical types, feel free to skip this next bit. Trust me; my humble chronicle is slated to become strange, twisted and more bizarre later on. It will entertain.
B-707 in the foreground – B-747 in the background.
The gross weight of the B-707-368C was 333,600 lbs, whereas the B-747-168 had a gross weight of 735,000 lbs. The 707 used four Pratt & Whitney engines that produced 19,000 lbs of thrust each. In contrast the 747 had four Rolls-Royce RB211 engines at 50,100 lbs of thrust each. The range on the 707 was 4,295 miles at Mach 0.82 (555 mph), in comparison the range on the 747 was 6,562 miles at Mach 0.84 (570 mph). As for the service ceiling; the 707 could reach 42,000 feet, while the 747 achieved 45,000 feet. And regarding the passenger load; the 707 would seat 147, whereas the 747 could haul 377.
As you can easily see, dear reader, the 747 was one amazing aircraft that performed incredible feats.
Another 747 feature, I found interesting, was the redesigned throttles – there were now three sets of four throttles each.
The four largest throttles - that stood in the middle - were operated by the pilots. Behind these were four smaller throttles, which were used by the flight engineer to fine-tune the thrust settings. In front of the pilot’s throttles, were another set of four small throttles that the pilots used to reverse thrust. These could only be unlocked when the main throttles were at idle, and the main landing gear was firmly on the ground. Reverse thrust really shortened the landing distance. This design of three sets of throttles was only employed on the 747 – the 707, 727 and the 737 didn’t have them.
In addition, for you hotrod motor-heads working on your Edelbrock 500 horsepower engines, please keep in mind that each of my 747 throttles controlled 87,000 horsepower. Which, times four, means I had 348,000 horsepower in one, very sweaty, hand.
SAUDIA’s B-747s had Rolls-Royce Jet-Turbine Engines.
At this time SAUDIA had eight B-747-168s in service along with two B-747SPs. The SPs (Special Performance) were used exclusively on the Jeddah to New York and Riyadh to Seoul runs. Due to its shortened fuselage, knocking the gross weight down to 670,000 lbs, the SP had a longer, nonstop range of 7,650 miles. Otherwise its performance was identical to the B-747-168, except its passenger load was less at 230.
Whenever I’d spot a B-747SP on the ramp, dear reader, it always reminded me of a short, fat toy designed by Disney.
When the Wright brothers began this insanity of moving people through the air, with the first powered flight in 1903, they did so with a craft built of spruce and muslin. It stayed in the air for twelve seconds, reached a speed of 6.8 mph, a maximum altitude of 10 feet, and achieved a distance of 120 feet.
The wingspan of a B-747 is 195 feet, dear reader, 75 feet longer than the Wright’s first powered flight. Aviation had come an astonishing long way in 1983; barely 80 years since the Wright’s impossible feat.
Taking a break one night from all the bookwork and checklist memorization – Scotty and I caught an old black and white movie on Home Box Office. It was a Laurel and Hardy in the French Foreign Legion.
Legionnaires Laurel & Hardy fighting the Arabs.
When the pair out-processed from the legion’s desert outpost in their civvies with their battered suitcases – dancing out surrounded by Arabs, date palms, camels and sand – Scotty piped up, “Son of a bitch, Pete, there we go...out-processing from SAUDIA!”
We laughed till we cried. It became a running gag throughout ground school.
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