Q&A With the Pilot, Volume 7
AN OLD-TIMEY QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SESSION.
Eons ago, in 2002, a column called Ask the Pilot, hosted by yours truly, started running in the online magazine Salon, in which I fielded reader-submitted questions. It’s a good idea, I think, to touch back now and then on the format that got this venerable enterprise started. It’s Ask the Pilot classic, if you will.
Q: I was on a jet with five seats across: two on one side, three on the other. Does an asymmetrical configuration like this have any bearing on flight? What if all the seats on one side were full, and empty on the other side?
Lateral balance is wingtip to wingtip, not cabin wall to cabin wall. In other words, for purposes of this discussion, a 747 isn’t 20 feet wide, it’s 200 feet wide.
Imagine an airplane as a see-saw. The ends of the see-saw, where the kids are sitting, are the wingtips. The fulcrum, in the center, is the cabin. The leverage is coming from the distance between the wingtips and the fulcrum. Shifting weight from one or two inches left of the fulcrum, to one or two inches right of it, makes no measurable difference.
Longitudinal balance, front-to-back, is a bit more important, though still less than you’d think. Passengers will occasionally be asked to move forward, or rearward, depending on the situation, to help fine-tune the plane’s center of gravity. Cargo and fuel are usually part of this equation. Are you going to crash if people aren’t in the correct rows? Of course not, but technically the plane might be nearing its CG limits.
Passengers and their bags account for a surprisingly small portion of a plane’s overall weight. The jet I fly has a maximum takeoff weight of about 500,000 pounds. A full load of people and their bags weighs around 55,000 pounds, or a bit more than ten percent of the total. Where they’re sitting doesn’t make much difference.
Q: Coming in to land one day, we were just about on the pavement when suddenly we shot back up again. A few minutes later the pilot said, “The plane in front of us missed its turn-off and was still on the runway.” Which sounds terrifying… though I know from reading your site that sometimes pilots say things that sound scarier than they are.
True, and what you describe isn’t terribly uncommon. Was it a “near miss”? No. The go-around was initiated to prevent one.
Runways at big airports usually have multiple turn-off points. You take the one that is safest to take, based on your speed, regardless of which one the controllers want you to take. You might be planning for particular turn-off point, and/or ATC might ask you to minimize your time on the runway because of traffic following you, but it doesn’t always work out. You’re not going to force the turn and risk skidding or sliding or putting undue loads on the landing gear. If need be, you keep going and take the next exit. If the plane behind you needs to go around, so be it.
Q: As an international pilot, you obviously fly to many non-English speaking countries, which got me thinking about air traffic control protocols. Are communications with pilots conducted in English, or do American pilots have to be fluent in the native language of the places they fly to?
If so, I’d be fluent in about 20 languages. As it happens, English is the lingua franca of commercial aviation, and except perhaps for remote corners of China or Russia, all controllers and pilots are required to speak it.
But, depending on the country, they might also use their local language. In Brazil, for example, you’ll hear both English and Portuguese over the radio; controllers talk in English to foreign crews, but in Portuguese to local crews. France is another one. There are several.
I don’t like these multiple language airports because it’s harder to keep track of which planes are where. Pilots listen not only for their own instructions, but for those of other pilots as well. By creating a mental picture of what other aircraft are doing, they can orient themselves in the choreography of a crowded sky (or tarmac). This is more difficult when instructions and clearances are being given, and acknowledged, in a tongue you can’t understand.
EMAIL YOUR QUESTIONS TO patricksmith@askthepilot.com
Related Stories:
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 1
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 2
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 3
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 4
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 5
Q&A WITH THE PILOT, Volume 6
Q&A, COVID EDITION
PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
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5 Responses to “Q&A With the Pilot, Volume 7”
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Re: Go-arounds: On one trip from LAX to SFO, we were on final(*) and suddenly the engines got much noisier and the plane tilted upward. Once things had settled down, the Captain got on the PA and explained: he spotted another plane on our assigned runway and did a go-around on his own initiative.
I might add that the sudden change in attitude was somewhat disconcerting to the semi-circulars.
That go-around added nearly 15 minutes to our travel time, but sure beats an on-the-ground crash!
(*) I assume, since the runway was visible to passengers in window seats
Patrick, why does Roberto ask about moving seats in an aircraft for weight and balance when you already addressed in one of your answers?
Patrick, I have a question about the blog. Whatever happened to the Express Blog?
Why does the flight crew sometimes ask passengers to change seats on the plane to ‘balance the weight on board’?
Thanks
Well that’s what I’m talking about in the post. They sometimes ask passengers to move forward or aft (never side to side) when the center of gravity tolerances are close. Unless you’re moving a large number of people, it really doesn’t make much difference, but technically the CG has to stay within a certain range.