It's ready to fly when I goddam well tell it it's ready to fly.

And I do believe goddam is the proper term.

I've never flown the 88. But I've heard that the 88 don't care.

Yes - it actually flew out one year later.

I'll bet there'll be a big memorial service in Waco next week, particularly remembering the first responders who died in the blast, and I'll bet that the governor of Texas will be the speaker.

Firefighters missing after massive, deadly Texas blast - CNN.com

I felt the same way when they disappeared from our bid packages (LAX 7ER) a couple years ago. It's great to have them back. Love the shorter drive and avoiding the employee bus ride that never ends in LA. Hope you get some too though...but not too many.

Oops...Orvil just got awarded TOTD!

Regarding 767 TailStrikes...the Lowest point of the fuselage is when the main gear are 3' above the ground on rotation. Tailstrikes on the 757/767 happen for 2 reasons; either an overly aggressive rotation or they are heavyweight and during the rotation allow the plane to settle back a bit. The 3 degrees per second is fine and will never result in a tailstrike. That is a really long rotation (5 secs to get to 15 degrees).

That being said...savvy long-term 767ER pilots almost always do the 2-step method of slightly rotating and getting it off the ground and waiting a few moments and then rotating on up to 12-15 degrees and watch the speed. The 767 is particularly prone to flap overspeeds because we're using flaps 5 and as you push over on the NADP1 profile...it accelerates like a raped ape. Carl brought up a point that has not been mentioned much.

In the Qual Stds for Q and CQ, we grade V2+10. The weights we'd been using make it really hard to meet the speed standards and consequently the focus has been on V2+10 and not properly flying the plane. So....we went back and adjusted the Qual Std and now the emphasis is not on V2+10.

The SVO debacle was just that. FO on cherry flight. Never did a heavyweight 767 takeoff. Complex departure, metric altitudes, low altitude hold-down and not english-proficient ATC. Capt lets the "fully certified" FO do the takeoff. They were within 500 lbs of max gross weight. FO "snatches" the plane off the runway, scrapes the tail. Capt tells the FO to continue flying and he and RF will work the problem (like we learn in CQ). FO blows through altitude, misses the radio switch and now they're NORDO and climbing to the moon. Not our best effort by a long shot. The company wanted to fry the FO and when cooler heads prevailed, they considered the Capt's action. May have been mucho better to let Junior watch the TO and let the experienced RF or Capt do it. The Threat was an inexperienced FO.....but the Capt probably should've recognized a better solution instead of just blindly following what we always do....

Cohiba,

Great post. Pretty informative.

Are there qualifiers for white slips like there are for yellow slips? I wanted to put in an open white slip but only wanted to designate international layovers.

Completely agree! Thank you for the detailed explanation.

Gotta admit putting myself in the newbie F/O's shoes I'd feel awful. I'm glad "cooler heads prevailed".

Having flown in Russia (during my 727 days) Russian controllers mastery of the English language is marginal at best. Add in the metric altimetry and everything else going on and the poor guy was set up for failure.