#747 cockpit from outside windows#

Nothing abnormal to be seen from this high up, though I know my elevated perspective can be misleading.

A handful of ferries are still running their schedules, but the streets are mostly empty. Hard to imagine this metropolis is in a state of emergency and total lockdown when looking at it from up here. Passing 12,000 feet (3,660 meters) with a stunning view over Manhattan and Central Park from my right-hand window, I gaze at the familiar city I’ve come to know so well. I close the thrust levers to initiate our descent and soon we’re gliding down along the pre-programmed arrival path. Villages, towns and rivers pass by while we slowly drift closer towards one of the busiest cities in the world: New York City. Long regarded as the “Queen of the Skies,” the 747 is writing a new chapter of its history during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolated between the deep blue ocean and the deeper depths of outer space. Without exception we get any altitude and speed we want we’re the only ones out here anyway. On some airplanes you have to pass through the passenger cabin to reach the bunks or lavatories on others, like the 747, you need never leave the cockpit area and can move freely between the bunk and the bathroom in your pajamas.Estimated reading time 9 minutes, 26 seconds.įive hours of empty Atlantic pass with no one else to be heard on the radio. (When I started to fly 747s, the cockpit lavatory, a standard airplane fitting, contained a most unlikely feature: a baby changing table that was only later removed to save weight.) Many long-haul planes have pilot bunks. Some airplanes have a bathroom inside the cockpit for this reason the 747 is often called the ensuite fleet.

#747 cockpit from outside windows#

Some planes have windows that open, a blessed feature when you’re dining in the cockpit between flights and wish to feel the breeze on your face, especially if you have flown from somewhere cold to somewhere warm and have only three-quarters of an hour until you must fly home to winter. Airbus cockpits are beloved for their foldout tables, an enormous enhancement to the pilot’s quality of life when completing paperwork or a meal I also found the cup holders and sun visors were more intuitively located on the Airbus.

Other differences between aircraft are so small in the context of such Earth-crossing, mile-vanquishing vessels that it feels ungrateful to dwell on them. Before moving the flaps, he turned to me, with a clearing of the throat and a smile-from over the glasses resting halfway down his nose-that said, What are these youngsters coming to?

Once, soon after I switched from Airbus to Boeing, flying with a senior captain, I mistakenly asked him to select flaps zero. On the 747, the same position is called flaps up. On the Airbus, the fully stowed position of the flaps is called flaps zero. There is a friendly rivalry between the pilots of Boeing and Airbus aircraft, which in addition to everything else are two competing realms of language. In a phenomenon called type reversion, a pilot inadvertently refers to a term or procedure from a previous aircraft type. Acquiring these words and their correct usage is a significant part of the work we put into a new type rating. Indeed each aircraft type or family has its language, or at least its own dialect, and analogous devices and procedures often have different names on different aircraft. The bond between a pilot and his or her current type of airplane is hard to pin down.