This “whale” (what we call 747s in the business) is headed to Tokyo this morning. It’s also dubbed “City of Tokyo”, aircraft #6313. The “6” is the designation for all 747s in the company. You can also see that we’re boarding passengers through the #2 door, which is between 1st Class and the main cabin.
It also is flying in the old livery colors. It’s not due for the new paint scheme until early in 2005. When it comes back in tomorrow, I’ll get some snaps of the flight deck.
Well, we can put 30 LD-3 containers, each holding about 3,000 pounds (though they’re allowed to have more weight, we don’t try to go above that), so that gives us an average 90,000lbs (45 tons) of baggage etc. in the cargo hold. Plus, we have a bulk bin with about 5000 or so more pounds. That, plus freight mixing etc., and we usually leave with about 110,000 pounds of stuff.
400 or more people, fuel, etc. It can lift a lot of weight and fly pretty damn fast with it.
I have “fleet service personnel” (their official title is Aircraft Cleaner) that do what we call “lav service”. It’s a relatively painless and very efficient operation.
The “lav truck” will pull up under various receptables under the fuselage and empty out the stored up waste. Once that’s done, fresh water is cycled through each tank in each lavatory until the water runs relatively clear. After that, the lav service person will pump in new, fresh “blue juice” (the blue stuff we use that neutralizes fecal coliform bacterias etc. and gives you that nice, fresh smell
Each lav, which is connected to one of 2 central collection, holding and transfer (CHT) tanks gets anywhere from 20 to 40 gallons of a mixture of fresh water and “blue juice”. My Honolulu cleaners have the highest cleaning service scores in the company, and they take pride in their jobs. I treat them with respect and always, always solicit their knowledge base and recommendations for how we can do our jobs better.
Here are some pics of the fleet service of a DC-10:
 Sorry, I can't figure how to rotate it in this forum ;-) Anyway, this is a fleet service truck, with about 10 cleaners, going up to the back of a DC-10. They roll onto the aircraft and begin the interior clean.  The interior of one of my fleet service trucks. Can you tell that I'm retired military? Everything is neat, orderly and clean ;-)  The lav truck, parked under the DC-10, with Bill, my lav service guy, getting ready to hook-up and start pumping blue juice! :-)  Bill, flushing out the central CHT tank. You can note the old waste. Note also his observation of proper protective equipment precautions. I'm really, really big on making them wear all their gear. Bill's pretty good, so he can do the whole operation in less than 15 minutes. Before anybody gets to feeling sorry for these guys, they make about 42 grand a year in straight-time pay. With proferred O.T., some of 'em can get up past 80 or even 100 grand. We all should have it so tough ;-) K
Nope. I just feel so close and personal with you guys now, I’m slowly opening up and “sharing” with you
Ahhh…I just felt like taking the old digital camera out and gettin’ some snaps of the guys and gals. Plus, I’m starting to get the hang of posting photos to this site :-))
Besides, we’re gonna have to have something to talk about once all this nonsense is over on November 3rd. Or December 3rd. Or whenever the Supreme Court get around to deciding this election ;-))
The company standard for a 747-400 is 2 hours to park, unload, deplane, clean, recrew, restock, reload, board passengers, do flight checks etc. and push out of the gate. We’ve turned one in less than an hour on a couple of occasions, though the line maintenance aircraft mechanics don’t like to work that fast, for obvious reasons.
A DC-10, like what’s pictured, is usually a 75 minute turn. A 757-300/200 is given a minimum 50 minutes, An Airbus A320/319, 40 minutes and a DC-9, 30 minutes. The new Airbus A330 is between the 747 and the DC-10.
These planes don’t make us any money sitting on the ground. It’s in our best interest to keep 'em flying as much as practicable and safe, always safe. That DC-10 pictured above came in from Osaka, Japan, this morning and will depart to Minneapolis at about 6:30PM tonight. Once it’s been cleaned and serviced, it’ll be towed off the gate and taken over to a holding pad, where it’s secured and locked up. The mechanics will do any deferred maintenance on it over there, too.
Because of the way these planes are scheduled, this one flies a Osaka-Honolulu-Minneapolis-Amsterdam-Minneapolis-Honolulu-Osaka route. DC10s are gas suckers and maintenance hogs, so we pretty much only fly them on the more lucrative international routes. We’d lose money on them if they just flew domestically.
DC10s are gradually phasing out, but we’ll have them on Pacific routes until '08. The plan is for the Airbus A330. Right now, Boeing is trying to give us a deal on the new Dreamliner, and will throw in the 717 for almost nothing.
No plans, as yet, for the “superwhale” that Airbus is building.
Wow, thanks. Awesome. I am going to arrive a bit early to try for exit row seating. The extra legroom is luxurious. It is the poor man’s first class.
There are few experiences in life as exhilerating as sitting in a big 747 when the engines run up and it begins its take-off roll. For an object that large to accelerate that fast and then so gracefully become airborne is an absolute marvel.
Also, the incredible reality of being 37,000 feet- more than 7 miles- above the ground cruising in absolute comfort and security at over 500 miles per hour is astounding. I never take it for granted.
I really enjoy flying. Especially with you guys. Thanks for the photos!
Our load factor, seating wise, out of the Honolulu and to Tokyo and Osaka, has been running 99% on the 1 747-400 and the 2 DC-10s. Basically, we sell every seat we’ve got, and we’ll be adding another Tokyo for the Christmas season.
Domestically, right now, our load factor has been about 94% for the DC-10s and 96% for the 757-300 ETOPs planes out of Seattle and Los Angeles. We’re adding 757-300 ETOPs service from Portland, OR and San Francisco, starting December 15th, also. Plus a 757-300 out of Anchorage in Februrary. There’ll be a short 3 week DC10 flying roundtrip between Detroit and Honolulu in December, too. It usually flies at 98% or better.
We’ve managed, in the past, to “cube out” (completely fill) our cargo bins with bags, freight, mail and other stuff. My station actually is a decent money-earner, system-wise, compared to domestic mainland stations. I use an aggressive operations science model to predict current and future capacity moves.
The Airlink flights, if on a CRJ (small two-engine jet) are through our Pinnacle Airlines partner. Since they’re now a fully separate, but captive, entity of NWA they seem to be doing well. The intricacies of how much we pay them to fly a flight segment for us involve a separate flat fee and additional $ for other issues.
The larger ARJs (four-engine jets) and SAABs (2-engine prop jobs, which we call “weedwhackers”) are flown by our Mesaba Airlines partner. We own the ARJs and let Mesaba fly them. They own their SAABs. Again, a flat fee is paid to them for each flight segment, along with certain other fees. They’d go under if we pulled the ARJ fleet back to full NWA authority, though.
Pinnacle is doing better than Mesaba, but neither are hurting right now. Different business models, with different labor cost and facility cost structures, helps them out. We’re working on reducing our labor cost model across all employee groups at the present time. Plus, we’re sitting on about 2.8 bil of unrestricted cash to tide us over and we’ve just come to an agreement with our pilot group about paycuts.
Things will be fine, and you’ll get a chance to upgrade to Platinum in no time
