RWY 8L Departure

With runway 8R (Reef Runway) closed for monthly maintenance, 8L now is busy with "heavy" departures. Here is a shot of a Hawaii Air National Guard C-17 departing and flying directly over my office.

Serving in Far Off Distant Places

When you get a chance, click on the attached link and read two great reports from Michael Yon.
Michael Yon is a freelance journalist who has spent more time imbedded with our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines out in the field and writing about them and brings a real no BS sense of reporting.

The two stories are titled Special Delivery and SEVEN. Please take a moment to read them and to view his site. Here's the link: http://www.michaelyon-online.com/

Photo courtesy of: Michael Yon

Happy New Year

Here's wishing you all a very healthy and prosperous new year in 2010!!

Look for more updates this year.

"Old School" Dispatching

If you're an aircraft dispatcher nowdays, you probably use all the latest in dispatching software and tracking devices to make your job easier. Well, where I work at, since we're a small outfit, we don't need to use all the high speed, high tech gadgets that the bigger airlines use. Sure we have computer's and we've designed our own programs to make our releases and figure weights and burns out, but what I really like about how we do things is we interact with the crews. Every morning, crew arrive in dispatch and we give them a briefing and discuss things person to person. Makes for better dispatch resource management.

So here the dispatcher station. Briefing counter to the right and a great view (when the aircraft is not parked there) of HNL/PHNL and RWY 4R/22L

A little closer look shows the important stuff like ICED COFFFEE!!!

If I didn't have one of these in the morning, I'd be dead in the water!

 Up on the far left screen screen we have weather-

satellite loops and printed weather reports, on the center screen
releases and fuel slips and more weather via Pilot Brief on the far right.

Here's what the release look like. Three copies printed ot per crew. Our releases are are done for the whole trip line and are amended as necessary during the days ops. New release are faxed out to crews (No ACARS system here)

Flights throughout the day are tracked via the GANTT. Alot of airlines use a computer based system to track flights, but since we have a smaller ops this works just as great. Since the islands are within a 30 minute flight time (the exception being the Big Island of Hawaii) we can contact the aircraft via the base radio (air to ground) or if further out, via AIRCELL.

Crossing the "puddle"

After spending a few days in SFO, I jumpseated back to HNL on UA. I love jumpseating on UA because I have never had a problem with them and the crews and staff are really great.  My departure was on a UA 777-200

Here were are departing SFO/KSFO on the San Francisco Eight Departure.

San Francisco is in the distance with the peak of San Bruno Mountains just over the F/O shoulder

With San Francisco behind us, we continue our westward climbout over the Pacific Ocean

After five hours over the Pacific, the north east shore of Oahu comes into view. Here's a view of Marine Corps Base Hawaii in the foreground and Kaneohe Bay. Off in the distance is Kahaluu, Kualoa and Kaaawa.

Passing just east of HNL/PHNL on the MAGGI3 arrival

Turning base for a visual to RWY 08L. The Ewa plains in front of us

Power set. Flaps extended. Gear down and locked. Landing checklist complete. 08L in front of us. Almost home

Back home in HNL!

Thanks to the crew of Flt 73!