donger need food.

Runway Twenty Eight Left

It’s been almost 8 years since I last went on business travel (and it was all in coach). Back then, I was a young (it’s a sad day indeed when I refer to the late-twenties as “young”) whippersnapper full of big dreams and ideals…an aspiring software developer getting his kicks out of debugging TCP payloads in client/server transactions. Ah, the good ‘ol days. That first computer job found me working in a tiny little software shop, where the owner in a previous life ran the Tomahawk project out of General Dynamics. It made for interesting enlightenments for yours truly, a self-admitted schooly-geek-boy at heart…

On our flights, he would teach me about the intricacies of missile guidance systems, and how it really came down to a simple feedback loop (details of which I won’t bore you with here). He’d also identify those subtle nuances differentiating a good pilot and a not-so-good one (the amount of throttle adjustments while entering the glide path). And he informed me of the simple runway numbering system. Kindergarten stuff for pilots, but interesting for wanna-be flyboys like myself. Runway 28L, for example, translated into a runway that ran 280 degrees – now this is the part that bothers me…in my old age I’ve forgotten whether 0 degrees referred to due north or due east. Let’s say due East – so that puts the runway facing north, 10 degrees westward. Actually, this makes sense, since out of SFO this was the big runway that planes approach from the south (over the bay). Oh, and “Left”, well is pretty obvious, referring to the left runway since there’s two of those big strips of concrete.

And “big” this thing was.

I’m sure a bunch of you have made an international flight before, but for me it’s basically my very first time in a big ‘ol mommahonker 747-400. This thing needs all the runway it can get. Takeoff had a nice initial kick from the 4 big turbojets, but the acceleration definitely wasn’t as strong as the tiny 737 sardine cans I’m used to. Other neat little things this international flight rookie enjoyed:

• We get slippers, a night patch, ear plugs, toothbrush, blanket and pillow
• These seats are so cool. It even has AC power.
• There’s a little camera on the plane that shows the view from the front, so you can see the plane take off. Neat-o
• I’ve never had plane food this good.
  
• You really have to see the safety video…there’s this one scene where little animated characters are jumping out of a plane and there’s hordes of people on the ground running away from the plane. I got a chuckle out of that one

Why does comfort like this have to come at such a high price? Why the class distinction between coach, business class, 1^st class? “First class…before, it used to be a better meal, now it means a better life”. I can’t imagine sitting in coach for 10 hours straight, let alone 14. Hm…I wonder if they’ll let me use my miles to upgrade for the Europe tour, and leave those other LIKHA suckers to suffer out back in coach with the commoners. hahahhahahaha

posted by VirtualErn @ 1:47 AM

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]