Freight Dog

Generalizations don't often work (and sometimes they make people unhappy), but I'm going to make one now. There are two types of pilots - ones who like to wear the hat and those who don't; ones who fly during the day and those who serve the night; Those who love the sound of their own voice on the PA and pilots who just drive; Pilots who fly through fog, ice and thunderstorms at night with no radar in questionable planes alone and those who bought their way into jets; Guys who load their own cargo and those who whine that their flight case is too heavy. Don't get me wrong, both types can be very good, professional pilots who get the job done, but I like the dogs the best. I aspire to that ideal, even though I do like it when little kids ask, "are you really a pilot?" with a tinge of awe in their voice.
This month I get to be a cargo dog. I fly mostly at night without flight attendants. The rules for flying cargo are more lax than flying passengers, because if we screw up, the world is only out a couple of pilots and a plane (maybe some more if we land on your house). I love cargo.

The other day we flew from Shanghai to Mumbai, we were only on the ground a few hours. On our taxi out saw some of the slums but none of the millionaires.
Our flight to Hahn, Germany was very eventful. We had an indication that our flaps might not work on landing. This is not a good thing, because the flaps are used to slow the airplane down - we didn't want to run off the end of the runway!
Our next wake-up call was "fuel quantity fail" warning. More of an annoyance than a problem, but any question about not having enough fuel will stress me out. The flaps worked fine on landing, turned out to be a sensor problem.
The farm land around Hahn was in bloom with the canola crop. Too bad I couldn't get any pictures from the air.