Thursday, January 24, 2008

This Is Your Captain Speaking

My friend the pilot has passed on a few more pictures.

Can you tell what city that is? Well, that's Market Street pointing to the gap between Treasure Island and Yerba Buena Islands, and that's Oakland and Berkeley on the other side of the Bay. The eastern end of Golden Gate Park is on the left.


The north side of the Golden Gate Bridge, and the Marin Headlands. Star Trek fans will note that this is the location of Starfleet Headquarters. Sausalito is in the background.


Point Reyes.


This 747 was 1000' below. The closing velocity was 950 knots.

2 comments:

DADvocate said...

One of the greatest frights of my life was flying into S.F. about 20 years ago.

We had a layover in Dallas where a plane had crashed and burned a few weeks before. As we took off from Dallas we got a great view of the burned spot where 13 people on the plane had died. (97 survived)

Upon approaching San Francisco airport everything seemed normal until we were directly over runway probably no more than 50 feet off the ground. I felt the plane accelerate and immediately knew something was wrong. I braced for impact but there was none.

We climbed out over the ocean and began to circle back. After about 20 minutes the pilot told us that the nose wheel had not gone down and locked into position as it should but that everything was OK now.

There were several nuns on the flight and plenty of Hispanics. During the second approach the nuns had rosaries in hand and we all had a prayer on our lips. We broke out in applause when the plane landed safely.

To this day I wonder if the pilot knew the nose wheel wasn't down but kept trying till the last possible moment or if someone in the control tower was yelling, "Pull up! Pull up!"

Dr Pezz said...

Again, loving the Trek references. LOL!