Old Friends

The first trip of the new year was from Cherry Point, North Carolina to Leipzig, Germany (more Marines headed to Afghanistan). I flew with James Ackerman and Matt Riley. It was a very nice trip with almost no hiccups. The best part about the trip was the flight back home. From Leipzig we "dead-headed" on a World DC-10 to Baltimore. 23 of us had the back of the airplane to ourselves and a great crew up front. Dave Mauldin, assisted by Symon Rankine and Bill Wade flew us to Baltimore. I hadn't seen these guys in years, so it was great to talk to them.

You may not be able to tell from the picture, but Bill Wade could strike fear into any flight engineer. He was one of the check engineers when I went to school to learn the DC-10 engineer's panel. He always had some obscure systems question on the tip of his tongue, and when I wouldn't answer quickly enough, he would berate me about not reading the manuals. If you look closely, you may notice a sly smile beneath that mustache of his. He is a true professional aviator and a great guy to be around (if you've read your manual).

Symon Rankine was in my new hire class back in 2000. From the first time I met Symon I knew I would like him. He always has a funny story to tell and knows the most interesting and odd trivia about all kinds of subjects.

Dave Mauldin is the kind of pilot you want around if anything goes wrong. When we started out at World, Dave and I flew a number of times - and something always went wrong! Our first flight together was my first "real" flight after training (it was one of Dave's first flights after training also). Our captain, Nikki Manes, had her hands full with both a new first officer and never-been-on-the-line flight engineer. After some problems setting up the navigation system, we took off out of Miami. About 5 minutes into the flight we had a severe vibration on the number one engine - ran checklists and returned to Miami. After switching planes we took off again for San Juan. Over the Bahamas we got a cargo fire warning. More checklist and emergency calls to divert into the Bahamas (well if your going to have a problem it might as well involve landing in Nassau). I ran more checklists on that flight than any simulator event.
I was glad that we had no such problems on our flight to Baltimore.