Air Force One seen by BA pilot

Gary

Not trying to put you down but have lots of experience with 1000 mph +
rates of closure in heavy iron. That's over 16 miles a minute and
about 1500 feet per second. At one eye blink per second that's about
7500 feet for 5 seconds. That's almost a mile and a half travel in the
5 seconds. If it takes the brain 2 seconds to process information a
bird can be pretty dam close before one can try to recognize.

Unless one is forewarned by center, aircrew may or may not see
closing traffic unless pulling a con. Trans ocean traffic is very
boring (as you know being in the business) and no one crew member is
tasked and sits there with an eye ball covering the forward quadrant
during the long cruise portion of flight. In fact some airlines allow
one pilot to nap during fight so he will be sharp at destination I'm
told. They found some pilots were doing this due to late night and
boredom so they made it legal ) Couldn't do that in the fighters so
they gave us Phenobarb (sp) prior to landing.

All of this discussion after the fact is media garbage. Bird with
President aboard does NOT have to use the Call Sign AF!. In Stealth
mode it can be called anything.

I'm just surprised that some media type didn't let the cat out of the
bag unless they took all the cell phones away and gave everyone a pat
down and only let them use the birds com system after they had
departed Iraq and were in International airspace.

No matter what the nay sayer's say, good trip and a boost for those in
Iraq even if he was pretty closely monitored and protected. He did go
in harms way and a brace of mortars could have caused a lot of
casualties and put the media in a frenzy.

Big John

New subject. Where can I get the positive and negative G limits of
commercial birds, 747, 757, 767, etc? I want operational limits not
ultimate. Have looked on Internet and not found so far.



On Sat, 29 Nov 2003 20:34:09 GMT, "Gary Mishler"
wrote:

"Big John" wrote in message
.. .

I thought center gave vertical and horizontal separation for birds on
same over water route?

They do.

Didn't they a few years ago reduce vertical
separation from 2K to 1K if certain (new accurate alt measuring)
equipment was on board the aircraft to increase (double) traffic
density on the overseas routes?

Yes, it's called RVSM = Reduced Verticle Seperation Minimums

If flight was direct from way point to way point then I doubt if the
birds came within visual range??? Would be an odd throw of the dice.

Huh? With all do respect, I do this for a living and there are "birds"
somewhere in the Flight Levels that come within visual range of each other
(both same and opposite direction) every minuite of every day. We are often
able to visually identify company paint schemes and aircraft types (again
both same and opposite direction) all the time. There is nothing odd about
it at all. Plus, with the 1K RVSM sep that you talk about above, it would
be even easier.

That said, I can postulate a situation where two birds with a few
thousand feet vertical clearance going the same direction on the same
route and with different cruising speeds, slowly pass each other and
BA be able to recognize the distinctive paint job on AF1. This in day
light of course.

In the real world "birds" don't just flash past each other in the FL's in
the blink of an eye. Even if opposite direction you usually have several
seconds of good visual (weather conditions permiting, of course) opportunity
for an identification.

Tale has a lot of characteristics of a good bar story ...

I disagree. To those of us in the trenches (er, Flight Levels) it has the
characteristics of an entirley plausable event that happens every day.

Good show George.

Agreed.

Regards,
Mish