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4 comments:
I still always call them DC-10s (and DC-9s, where appropriate) as they're indistinguishable from the originals when calling traffic. I also always used to call them "three legged tens" or "four legged tens", depending (this one is a four legged ten). From an enroute standpoint, the distinction was important as the four legged ones (the "international" version—Dash 30, I think they were) had INS and we could clear them direct places way down the road. The three legged tens didn't have INS, although pilots (of all types) would sometimes advertise that they were "radar vector equipped". We're talking back in the '70s, here.
LRod
ZJX, ORD, ZAU retired
LRod, the older pilots still will check on to Center every now and then, "American Eight Fifty One, twelve for seventeen, running a little late today, looking for any short-cuts but only radar vector equipped today". It's only the crusty ones with the RNAV out, but there you go.
On a technology note, with new RNAV departure/arrival scheme (OAPM) at DFW now, it has increased the number of VOR flying regional jets. Seems to be because their FMS systems have either run out of storage or freaked out at the number of advanced procedures (E-145's seem most likely to shit their pants at having an RNAV departure loaded) in their database. Some the RJ's also can't fly the fuel saving RNAV arrivals with altitude windows because their FMS isn't advanced enough. Of course, OAPM is just for jets (see the Comrade's post on the Cirrus Jet and why they are making one, and there you go) but they still won't allow us to restrict the underperforming jets below all the others, because "jets"!
For bonus points, these RJ pilots can't fly VOR's worth a crap...if the student pilots around here could do any better I'd laugh at an RJ floundering around trying to fly a departure, but they're not.
Back in the day, when Southwest was just taking deliveries of the 737-300 they were all RNAV equipped. After about a month, they all declared their RNAV was inop. When I questioned a SW pilot once, he stated the 28 day update to the data became due and, as a cost cutting/time saving plan, SW decided not to reload the data on the new aircraft. Just one former controller's memory (which the spouse says is fading).
More than a dozen years ago I saw one of these on short final at FLL. He'd apparently been turned onto the localizer in close and quite high and was working hard at getting it down. He came over I-95 in a steep forward slip just like a Cub might do on a short field. It's sometimes easy to forget those wide bodies are still airplanes.
For those unfamiliar with FLL, I-95 is almost as close to the threshold of 9L as the beach is to the threshold at Princess Juliana in St. Maarten.
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