Note: On August 29th, a Tuesday, I will be
hosting a telephone interview with my friends
Kevin and Warren of Natural Point Inc., based in
Oregon. The call will start at 11:00 AM West
Coast Time (adjust for your time zone) and a link
will be posted on my site later if you can't make
it. Details including the number to call and how
to submit your questions will be sent out in next
week's Update. The call will last from 30
minutes to an hour.

We'll be talking about their fantastic and
innovative product, called the Trackir
(pronounced "tracker”) which I had the fun of
trying out at the recent International Flight
Simulator Convention recently here in Denver.
The device, which clips onto a cap or visor,
allows the pilot to see not only straight ahead,
but out the side windows with only a slight turn
of the head and keeping the eyes focused on the
computer screen.

The reason I like it so much is that in addition
to the side views, I can also tilt my head just
slightly to see my overhead panel or look down
slightly and see my center pedestal. Everything
is displayed ahead of me on the screen, but the
view changes with just slight inclinations of my
head while keeping my eyes straight ahead.

Anyone who is interested in flight simming should
tune in to this call, and you'll hear how to get
a nice discount on the product as well. This is
the first of my planned series of interviews with
the makers of add-on products for home flight
simulators. If you're at all familiar with
TrackIR already and have questions, submit them
to me at support@fromthecockpit.com and put
TrackIR in the subject, please.

Now, on to this week's Update. I received an
email out of the wild blue yonder from an old
friend of mine, a former crew scheduler for
United Airlines named Myrna. She wrote to tell
me she was hospitalized, having just had some
cancerous brain tumors removed. This is her
second bout with cancer, the first one having
caused her to retire from United several years
ago. Another lousy break for someone who
certainly deserves better.

I immediately called her in the hospital. We've
kept in sporadic touch over the years and I even
bumped into her a few years ago at the terminal
in Chicago. She was arriving on a flight and I
was picking up the airplane to fly out. She is
the only crew scheduler I ever visited at home
and certainly one of the all-time pilot favorites
to work with.

Let me tell you a little something about airline
crew scheduling. Line pilots, meaning pilots
holding a regular schedule because their
seniority is good enough, deal with crew
scheduling at times, but reserve pilots are on
call and in almost constant communication with an
airline's crew desk. This is less true than it
used to be due to advances in computerized pilot
scheduling, but it's still the reserve pilots who
work most closely with an airline's crew desk.

A pilot can choose to be junior in a senior rank
and fleet, or senior in a junior rank and fleet.
For instance, at the end of my career, I could
have been an extremely senior captain on a
smaller airplane, like the B-737. Or I could
have been a very senior copilot on a big airplane
like the B-777 or B-747. By choosing to be a
captain on the biggest airplane I could hold with
my seniority, I was a very junior captain on a
very senior airplane, and that meant being a
reserve or on-call pilot.

Lots of pilots (as well as flight attendants)
live in cities other than their home bases. I
live in Denver but flew out of Chicago as a B-777
captain, and being on reserve in other than your
own city can be a frustrating challenge. I felt
it was worth the aggravation of commuting in
order to fly the airplane I wanted to fly on the
routes, some international, that I wanted to fly.

International flights are often assigned or
picked up by pilots through a computer system a
day or so in advance, but domestic trips can be
assigned as little as just a few hours prior to
departure. That means if a pilot is on reserve
and nothing is already assigned, it's necessary
to travel to the home base and just hang out at a
hotel or crash pad hoping to be assigned a trip.

There is an old joke about a pilot union meeting,
where the guy running the meeting says something
like, "Gentlemen, you'll be pleased to know that
according to the new contract we just negotiated,
we will now fly only on Wednesdays."

There is dead silence in the room while the
pilots mull this over. Finally, one crusty old
captain at the back of the room stands up and
says, "Is that EVERY Wednesday?"

No matter how good a schedule a pilot might have,
there seem to always be some changes desired, and
that means rather extensive interaction with the
crew desk. Some advanced programs have picked up
some of the load now, but there is still plenty
of interaction directly between pilots and
schedulers.

I call it "The Pilot Dance" and here is how it
goes:

A pilot calls up the crew desk to ask for some
vacation time, which can be taken a few days at a
time, and drop a trip if there are enough reserve
pilots. The crew scheduler answers but it's not
one of the ones with whom there is a reasonable
chance of getting what is asked for. Pilots
typically know their schedulers in terms of which
ones can be hit up for various requests with a
reasonable chance of success. The pilot asks
half-heartedly if he might drop his next trip for
vacation and the crew scheduler says, "No, I'm
sorry but we're over max usage right now." Just
as expected.

The pilot hangs up and waits for the next shift
change, and this time Myrna answers, or another
one of the Santa Claus variety of schedulers.
This time when the pilot asks, she answers, "No
problem." Schedulers like Myrna didn't look at
the schedule and then say "no." They invariably
said "yes" and then worked out afterward how they
would manage it. They gave the pilots what they
wanted and needed and in return got very
cooperative pilots when they got into a squeeze
and needed someone in a hurry.

The pilot-crew scheduler interaction is
representative of a lot of dealings in life, I've
discovered, and that is, "If you don't get the
answer you want the first time, just keep asking
until you do get the answer you want." This
seems to be common knowledge among
pilots--especially reserve pilots.

Now, having said that, being a crew scheduler is
a really, really challenging affair at times and
I’m not being critical. It's a position I could
never handle myself. I always felt empathetic
toward the schedulers, realizing their
challenges, and had a good relationship with them
as a pilot, as do the majority (hopefully) of
pilots.

For instance, once when I was living just about
fifteen minutes away from Denver International,
where I was based at the time, I got a frantic
call from a crew scheduler who informed me a
captain had just called in sick after he had
already checked in for a flight to Miami. There
was a plane-full of passengers sitting at the
gate with a copilot but no captain. Normal
call-out time was four hours but they asked me if
I could go immediately, which I could and did.

The scheduler informed me I would spend the night
in Miami and come back on the first flight
available at 6:00 AM the next morning, but this
was a beach layover, and if my readers know
anything about me they know I love the beach.
The scheduler also knew this and offered me an
extra day at the beach if I wanted, which of
course I did. The scheduler got her trip
covered, the passengers got their captain and I
got to scare everyone off the beach in Miami.
Perfect.

Next week I'll tell you about something I
consider extraordinary having to do with my
friend Myrna, something that gives me hope with
regard to the basic generosity of the human
spirit.

Now you can go wonder about that for the next
week.

This week's question and answer for "Ask Cap'n
Meryl" has to do with ETOPS (Extended Twin Engine
Operations) http://www.fromthecockpit.com/Engine_Failure.html


Our computer troubles are finally over, at least
for now. Faulty wiring in the video card of Al
The Web Guy's main computer, the one used to
update my site, caused an overheat and the
destruction of the card, which incapacitated his
computer.

The repair guy has brought the wrong part three
times now, and Al finally gave up and went back
to Circuit City, where he had bought the
computer. They sold him a new card at a
discount, and Al will return the part on order
should it ever actually arrive, and receive a
refund when he does. I have my doubts, but in
the meantime www.fromthecockpit.com is updated
once again. Don't forget to submit your own
aviation-related questions to me at
support@fromthecockpit.com and put Question in
the subject line.

Be sure to visit the last uploads to the Photo
Gallery here, where I've added some new friends
to the Cap'n Meryl & Friends Album, and created a
new album called Microsoft Simulator Screen
Shots. There are six new additions, all with
August dates:
Cap'n Meryl & Friends
You'll find my friend and fellow pilot Jim
Hayward, a helicopter instructor for Army pilots,
some screen shots by Microsoft's John Southmayd,
a photo of my cousin Michael, whose photos appear
in the Animals & Fish album, with a reef shark,
and Melinda with husband Dave and Joe the llama.
Melinda is the daughter of my 1980 DC-10 United
Airlines flight instructor Jerry Warnke. You can
find him in the San Diego Road Trip album on page
6, or just click here:
Captain Warnke


For those of you interested in tuning in to my
telephone interview with the manufacturers of the
TrackIR, please note the following:

Date: August 29th, 2006

Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Time (adjust for your own time zone)

Number to call: 1-620-782-2200
Access Code: 69728

Link to the Product with discount:
TrackIR

How to submit questions: Submit to me at
support@fromthecockpit.com and put TrackIR in the
subject OR you may have a chance to ask questions
during the call. If you already know you have a
question, best to do it in advance to make sure
it gets covered.

Last week I mentioned the above call would last
"30 minutes to half an hour." I just wanted to
see if you were paying attention, and apparently
some of you were. The error was corrected before
it went out onto my Blog at
www.fromthecockpit.com/Blogg. That's what
happens when you write stuff at 3:00 AM. The
conference call will last 30 minutes to an hour.

Now, on to this week's title. At the end of my
last Update you may remember this sentence:
"Next week I'll tell you about something I
consider extraordinary having to do with my
friend Myrna--something that gives me hope with
regard to the basic generosity of the human
spirit." If you missed that Update you can find
it here in the Blog See "Dancing With Pilots" August 16, 2006


Myrna is a very upbeat person. She's been
through the wringer twice now with cancer and is
still weak from surgery from this last episode of
brain cancer. She doesn't complain much, with
one exception, and that is about the deplorable
food served in both the hospital and the
convalescent facility she's in now.

She'd mentioned to me that one of the hospital
receptionists brought her a meal one day from
Burger King consisiting of a Jr. Whopper and
vanilla milk shake. Myrna, an excellent cook (I
know because she once cooked for me in her home)
raved about how good it tasted and how it was the
first time she hadn't felt absoltuely nauseated
after eating. She's lost at least 20 pounds
during this ordeal and I think everyone can
relate to cravings for certain things when one is
sick. She went on quite a bit about how
delicious it tasted to her.

So I probed a little bit, found out what she
likes and doesn't like, pickles or no pickles,
mustard or no mustard, etc., and then proceeded
to call the first of three Burger Kings I located
in the area. I asked to speak to the manager,
who referred me to a second location he said was
closer.

This manager referred me to a third one in the
area which was even closer, and I found myself
talking to a manager named Annie. It was close
to the dinner hour the day I decided to do this,
which was several days after the receptionist had
brought Myrna her hamburger.

As busy as this harried fast-food manager was,
she listened to my story and didn't hesitate.
She said something like, "I get off in half an
hour and I'll be happy to deliver it for you."
It absolutely caught me off guard because even
though I felt it would be a wonderful surprise
for Myrna, it was just too easy and I had been
expecting an argument like, "What, are you
kidding me? This is Burger King and we DON'T
deliver!"

I couldn't believe my good fortune and gave her
my credit card number over the phone, forgot to
ask for the milkshake until after the card had
gone through, and Annie simply added it with no
extra charge. She took it right to Myrna's
hospital bed and when I spoke with Myrna the next
day, she was ecstatic. She swore it was the first
time she'd kept anything down in days, first
decent night's sleep she'd had, and on and on.
It's as if she were stranded on a desert island
and all she could think about was what she'd have
as soon as she was rescued.

A few days later, after having spent weeks in the
hospital, she transferred to a conveslescent
facility pretty much next door, and I hoped she'd
report to me the food was better. Unfortunatley,
she told me it was as bad or worse.

So I once again picked up the phone and called
the same Burger King again. This time the
manager on duty was Trudy, and to my surprise, as
soon as I started to explain my story she said,
"Oh, is this Meryl? Did you want another
delivery? I'll take off a little early and I'll
be happy to take it over for you."

I almost fell off my chair. Annie, the first
manager, had told Trudy, another manager, all
about it and they said they were both happy to do
it. It's so un-typical in this day and age I
just stopped suddenly and said, "Trudy, let me
ask you--WHY are you and Annie so willing to go
out of your way like this?"

And she said, "Because life is short and we
should do what we can to help each other, and
Annie feels the same way."

After that, I sent a package to both managers at
Burger King with a signed set of my books for
each of them, plus a little something extra.
Trudy called me from her home with her husband on
the line to thank me for the package, but it's I
who am truly grateful to her and Annie for
helping me out. Not only that, but they're each
going to deliver another meal or two each to
Myrna while she's still laid up, but Myrna
doesn't know it yet and has no Internet access
for the moment.

It's such a small thing, but in Myrna's place if
I had to choose between getting flowers or a
hamburger, I'd take the hamburger (with cheese,
of course) every time.

But you know me.