“Minutes of sheer terror, followed by hours of sheer boredom, followed by minutes of sheer terror.”
Months of boredom followed by minutes of sheer terror was reportedly first used in The Great War (WWI) to describe the waiting and then terror of trench warfare. The adage has since been modified and adapted to activities like aviation, racing, baseball and space flight. The above version was used to describe flying an early model and sometimes cantankerous business jet. It’s now used to illustrate the extreme mental or physical contrasts of an activity. Such can be the contrast between a routine cruise, followed by a frenzied descent and a demanding approach.
The last thing most pilots want is to feel rushed. While flying a high-performance aircraft on a short, slippery runway or landing with an aircraft system failure, or flying at night, in icing, in low visibility (the list could go on and on), feeling hurried can be a recipe for disaster – or at least a recipe for mistakes. There’s a handful of reasons ATC may give us a slam-dunk descent. Most commonly, it’s because of conflicting traffic below us, an airspace constraint, letters of agreement between sectors, or the controller waiting for a “hand-off” from the next sector. Of course, in the cockpit, we joke that the reason for a late descent clearance is that they had to finish a donut, a sneeze, take a potty break, or simply forgot about us. In any case, it’s up to us to manage the resulting faster-than-normal descent.
WKF
WKF: White Knuckle Factor. Used in the measurement and evaluation of stress in the cockpit.
In modern GA, we can perhaps replace the minutes of sheer terror description above with excitement or, more accurately, intensity. If you fly enough, there will be events that elevate the intensity level, which in turn, increases the WKF. You may not have heard of WKF, but a moderate level of it is both real and desirable. It shows a person is paying attention. Too much, however, can result in panic and the disappearance of the laminate on the yoke.
Transitioning through the V-speeds and climb segments during a heavyweight takeoff or from a short runway can be much like a rocket launch, with several critical decision points along the path. And if the departure or arrival requires precision due to terrain, weather or procedural constraints, the WKF can be elevated. Running low on fuel, an engine failure on takeoff, slippery runways, and hoping the visibility comes up another quarter-mile at the alternate are examples that could elevate the WKF to a new-yoke-needed level.
Relaxed
If the last hour (or five) in the flight levels have gone smoothly, we often find ourselves quite relaxed at the top of descent – with zero WKF. This pre-descent mental condition can resemble being sleepy, lethargic or having hypoxia. Because of this, the transition from cruise to descent can often come quickly and catch us by surprise. Like waking to an alarm set later than we meant, then trying to catch up. I’m sure that you have experienced it. You think you have prepared for the descent, but once it begins, you feel like you’re behind the airplane. The phenomenon occurs because our body and mind have been at a reduced level of tasking, and the new demand for physical and mental concentration is a relatively large and sudden change. What we needed was a warm-up period.
Just as during takeoff, it’s important to devote the requisite level of respect and attention to planning, preparing and accomplishing the descent and approach. This is particularly important when the upcoming procedures are complex, dicey due to weather and terrain or ATC issues you a slam-dunk. There are several things we can do to prepare both physically and mentally for the descent and approach in order to get ourselves warmed up. These techniques include physical activity, mental aerobics and drugs.
Drugs
I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.
– W.C Fields
Since the suggestion of using drugs to enhance alertness raised your eyebrows, let’s cover stimulants first. In the military, pilots of single-seat aircraft flying long missions are issued prescription-strength amphetamines to be taken 30 minutes or so before landing. When strong stimulants wear off, the resulting mental crash can be significant and unpredictable, hence the reason military pilots go through a testing phase with the drugs first and why we don’t want to use them in GA.
Since prescription stimulants are not an option, more civil and predictable alertness-enhancing drugs can be found in common drinks. Caffeine in coffee, tea, or soft drinks is the most prevalent and is effective in most people. Energy drinks are another source. They use a combination of sugar, caffeine, ephedrine, taurine and ginseng for the desired effect; an intense and potentially unhealthy cocktail – also inducing a follow-on mental crash. For some, however, none of these drinks are effective for long. In any case, you must manage the timing of the mental crash. And unless you have an onboard potty, the timing of all this drinking will be critical. You don’t want the distraction of a full bladder using up your 15 minutes of new-found alertness and concentration.
Let’s Get Physical
(Olivia Newton-John, 1981)
If cockpit or cabin space allows, standing up and doing a few “squat” type exercises or simply moving around can warm up the muscles. When flying the Citation, I like to go to the cabin and socialize with the passengers for a few minutes mid-cruise. This presents the opportunity for some mild exercise and is good PR – as long as I don’t do push-ups or squats in their view. Isometrics is a type of exercise in which the joint angle and muscle length do not change during contraction. For flight decks with limited space, or a cabin full of curious but anxious pax, this type of exercise can be accomplished while remaining seated by pushing arm, leg, stomach and neck muscles against themselves or an immovable object.
Muscle contraction will stimulate blood flow, increase heart rate and improve alertness. An additional benefit of standing and performing isometrics is the prevention of deep vein or arterial thrombosis (DVT). This potentially serious medical condition is the clotting of blood sometimes associated with extended periods of sitting. These clots can embolize (lodge in or obstruct) and cause arteries to the brain to occlude (close off), resulting in an ischemic (clot) stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA). Bottom line: Get off your butt or do some isometrics.
Old-Fashioned Ciphering
The final warm-up is in our thinking process. It’s prudent to use the last 15 minutes or so before beginning the descent to review the arrival, approach and missed approach. In previous issues of T&T, we addressed the math commonly used in computing an efficient point at which to begin the descent: multiply the altitude to lose by three then add or subtract a smidgen for the tailwind/headwind, and that will be the distance consumed, in miles, for the descent. We also conceded that modern avionics usually make such old-fashioned exercises obsolete – unless you need/want to warm up that brain. Anyway, it’s also a good way to confirm electronic calculations. Reviewing the altitude and speed restrictions on the arrival procedure is also prudent because often the printed restrictions are not easy to find without searching the outlying narrative and fine print. And the exercise will also confirm that the FMS database agrees with the pubs in your tablet.
Some RNAV arrivals can be quite a handful, even when using the VNAV mode of your flight management system. The FRDMM FIVE into DCA is a prime example. It’s a two-page (which is now common) RNAV, descend-via-arrival. You pretty much can’t look away from the instruments as you monitor the step-down fixes, course changes and speed restrictions. It’s hard to imagine that the airspace around DC is so complex as to warrant such precision. One of my FOs once speculated that the arrival procedure is nothing more than a filter making it easier for ATC to recognize a non-pilot with nefarious intentions. Drinking some coffee, doing some squats and waking up the brain may help you to comply with a DCA-type procedure and prevent the launching of surface-to-air munitions in your direction.
Slam-Dunk
We’ve all had ATC issue a descent clearance that came later than we would prefer. Pilots have labeled this a slam-dunk: throttles to flight idle, set the speed command to the fastest number ATC will allow, throw out the speed brakes and dive-dive-dive. This type of maneuver, however, is suggested as a possible contributing factor in the 2013 crash of Asiana flight 214 in SFO. When necessary, a response of “unable” to ATC can solve a multitude of problems. If you attempt compliance, the slam-dunk will assuredly increase the feeling of being behind the airplane and possibly contribute to a serious error in judgment.
And finally, even if you fly the same approach often, a good review will help to catch changes to the approach or missed approach procedures. A commonly skipped check is a RAIM prediction if planning a GPS approach. If the number of GPS satellites available is 23 or fewer, RAIM availability must be checked using ground-based prediction software. Otherwise, you are reliant on your onboard system to discover insufficient RAIM at the last minute during the approach. Don’t forget to take note of inoperative components, such as the glide slope (making it a localizer approach) or part of the approach lighting, like runway centerline lights or the VASI or PAPI. Often the transition from landing to a high-speed taxiway is very busy as ground control issues a catalog of rapid-fire instructions. So, take note in advance of any closed taxiways, particularly ones you intend to use for exiting the runway.
Terror, Thrombosis, and Snakes
The view out our window is compelling. It’s easy to divert your attention from the cockpit to the world outside – the view is, after all, one of the reasons we fly. And it’s normal to be distracted by onboard events as well. Let’s not neglect preparation for the descent and approach, though. For a variety of reasons, this phase of the flight has become increasingly demanding with opportunities to commit errors of omission and commission at every turn (pun intended). Prepare for the descent and approach by increasing your alertness, circulating some blood and warming up your brain. Be careful out there. None of us want our boredom in cruise to be followed by minutes of terror or arterial thrombosis. Unless that is, you carry some stimulants and a snake in your kitbag. If so, never mind everything I said.
