Orb - Travis

Orb

 

 

'ORB'

 

An Aeronautical Love Story from an Altered World

 

 

Spiritual Sci-Fi / Techno-Mystical Thriller

 

 

franciscorebolloauthor.com

 

 

‘A pilot longing to be a father…

A child with a gift…

An irresistible intruder…

An encounter with the unknown…

the Orb nears.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

F Foe



So many questions…

What does it take for a man to kill?

What does it take for a man to kill himself?

To kill others?

To kill his passengers?

What does it take to make a pilot destroy his aircraft, kill his passengers?

What does it take?

 

Can it really be called suicide though he died while committing mass-murder?

 

But he was only a man, he was alone and he was only human… right?

 

What makes a pilot human?

What makes a man, a pilot?

What makes a man depressed?

 

What does it take to become depressed?

What did it take for him?

 

What does it take?

Take.

Take.

Take.

 

What was that pilot taking?

What was that man taking?

What was he taking?

 

What was he ON?

 

Now, he’s on TV.

 

TV says he was a sick man.

As if, just another victim.

Understand?

 

He was a European, man.

Perhaps even a Christian, man.

 

What if he had been a Muslim?

What if he, had been a woman?

 

What was he taking?

 

The day he took it all away from so many.

 

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2015

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Islands in the Sky.

 

Islands in the sky,

entire microcosms,

humans on another plane;

not just pilots getting high.

 

Islands in the clouds.

Ice-glazed profiles

peeking through shrouds.

 

Above the sheepskin rug

of eternal icecap

we drift above a cotton wool map.

 

On a clear night

I become a space-age kite.

 

I look down on your cities

where locks on bridges

and a myriad of flicked-on switches

make light of the facts…

One day you might

want to fish the key out.

 

My Pa,

crossing black skies like ours

year after year

over tens of thousands of hours.

 

My Ma,

At home, with us or alone

preparing for the next time he’s due home.

 

My brothers,

2 in total

one grounded and content

another shares my view of stars

3 time-zones earlier,

over a different continent.

 

I look down from my thoughts and find

Dublin:

sexy, blue and uncouth;

what a great place to have wasted my youth.

 

Fellow islander,

 

May the fallen angel

of heightened danger

watch over you

as you fly past;

looking up from

his tomb

with a jealous eye.

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2015

MH 017: All Alone

 

          As our hearts go out to the families of the victims of MH017, I cannot but feel deep disappointment –yet again- with the main stream media.

          As was the case with MH370 a few months ago, the MSM seem more interested in turning all of those families’ grief into ratings and newspaper sales, than in asking the difficult and relevant questions.

          Like: Why is nobody talking about the possibility of an air-to-air missile?

          Like: How can this bloody war be stopped at once?

          Like: What’s going to prevent this from happening again?

          Like: What are these ‘world leaders’ marching us towards with their macho talk?

 

          The MSM claim to know who pulled the trigger.

 

          At this point, I distrust anything they seem to state with apparent conviction.

          They turned the previous Malaysian disaster into a circus and they’re doing it again.

          Is it any wonder the MSM is on the backfoot with newspaper sales dwindling and more and more people turning away from corporate outlets?

          It is sickening to see blood-soaked headlines on tabloids seeking to capitalise on this atrocity.

          When it comes to the media asking the right questions, we’re all alone.

          When it comes to governments and the media preventing wars rather than fuelling them, we’re all alone.

          But when it comes to grieving the innocent victims of military brutality, people stand together; because human lives are what really matters to us; and there are many guilty parties and no easy answers.

 

The Motherships are Gathering

Give me Bats

MH 370: Looking for Malice in the Absence of Answers?

 

 

In a post 911 world, it is certainly understandable that the spectre of aircraft hijacking will taint any airliner disappearance mystery; and it certainly seems like the media’s coverage of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 seems to periodically revisit the suggestion that the plane must have been either hijacked or sabotaged by someone.

As a pilot however, it bothers me that the ‘hijacking theory’ has -to some degree- centred on the 2 pilots; as is particularly the case on 24hr news channels on the mainstream media.

These media outlets seem very interested in blowing certain things out of all proportion such as any personal information they can obtain on the 2 pilots: Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah and First Officer Fariq Abdul Hamid.

In the absence of answers, they seem to be hoping that analysing the lives of these 2 men can suddenly explain something as shockingly complex and meaningful as the disappearance of a modern long-haul aircraft.

The conspiracy theory centred on the 2 stolen passports used by the Iranian teenagers on board lead to nothing; and what a big deal that was made into at the time...

I would even suggest that the MSM would not have this level of interest in the pilots’ personal lives and potential for past misdemeanours if the pilots involved were not natives of a predominantly Muslim country.

So what are they 'revealing'? That the FO smoked in the cockpit and invited Australian girls into the cockpit to show off; and that the captain owned a flight simulator and had his own Youtube channel… nothing too sinister so far; and the 24hr news networks must be disappointed.

What I’m saying is this: Let’s not get distracted from the fact that 239 people are missing. They all have families who love them, they themselves love their own families and friends –Several of those passengers are children- this is a terrible thing that is happening...

...and the pilots are 2 of those missing people.

It seems to me much more likely that the pilots were faced with a depressurization than a  hijacking. Maybe the pilots were faced with a sudden depressurization which partially or fully incapacitated them both, or an insidious one where even the warning systems were ineffective for some reason.

 

Maybe they made a mistake; maybe they didn’t.

Maybe they were faced with a situation which is unimaginable to the rest of us just sitting at home.

Perhaps it is easier for the MSM to report on how someone ‘may have done something’ rather than reflect on the reality that in spite of all the technology available, a huge aircraft with 239 people on board can disappear for well over a week -so far.

To face the implications of this would mean to accept that the power structures which we trust, have less proficiency and capability than we thought they did.

To accept this would mean that the next time we get on a long-haul flight, we all could be quite literally flying into the unknown; truly putting our lives in the hands of those men and women in the cockpit, which we call pilots.

 

All I’m saying is: let them be innocent until proven guilty.

Now, I’m off to try and help in the only way I can. 

I'm off to see if I can do something helpful rather than look at the appalling 24hr news MSM coverage.

See you there?

http://www.tomnod.com/nod/challenge/malaysiaairsar2014/map/424437

Edited on 14 June 2014 for typos and syntax

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2014

The ‘First Officer’: last line of defence.



First Officer, Co-pilot, and Second in Command, last line of defence.
 

Stuck in the right seat of every aircraft is a person known as the ‘First Officer’. Most people know this but it seems a lot of the media don’t. Anytime there happens to be an aircraft incident on the news, it is reported that ‘the pilot did this….’ Or: ‘the pilot told the passengers that’, as if there is only one person operating the aircraft –i.e. the captain.

Well, passenger aircraft are designed to be flown by 2 flight crew members. They are ‘multi-crew aircraft.’

I remember being an ‘FO’ once. I remember being an ‘FO’ for a second time also. In a pilot’s career progression there may be a lot of ‘musical chairs.’

One may start as an ‘FO’ on a regional turboprop, and then become a captain on the turboprop, then move on to a jet and be an ‘FO’ again.

The one thing that always remains the same is that often, the ‘FO’ is the passengers’ last line of defence, an insurance policy, and the unsung hero.

How?

Well, if the captain has a heart attack or food poisoning –for instance-, then the ‘FO’ has to land asap. It is a full emergency.

If the captain loses perspective because she or he is a human being, there is an ‘FO’ to ask questions like:

‘Hey captain, can we really do the flight with the ‘brakes hot’ light on?’ Whilst knowing full well that we cannot even taxi like that, and that we should look in the checklists and be safe.

Or make comments like:

‘Listen skipper, the cabin crew are saying that the passenger is quite sick. We won’t be at the destination for another hour and a half… do you want me to get you some weather for the nearest alternate airport? Just in case you decide to go there…’ (hint, hint.)

And in extremely unusual cases warn:

‘If you continue to buzz the runway, I will have to make a report.’

And even though I’m not making any of these up; the last case is thankfully rare.

One thing is for sure though…

The ‘FO’ is in a very difficult position. With less experience and more youth (generally) she or he is also less jaded by the industry and more in love with his profession.

The ‘FO’ and aviation are in the honeymoon period. The captain is probably stuck in a secure but dull long-term relationship.

 

 

 

'God is my co-pilot'

But above all else, the ‘FO’ has to master the art of being a chameleon.

If she is flying with a technical captain, she has to show perfect discipline, and superior systems knowledge.

If he is flying with a laidback skipper, he has to relax too; but keep his eyes open.

If she flies with the ‘union rep’, she has to wear her union pin and worker’s face.

If he flies with the chief pilot, he has to be the biggest company man.

When he flies with a friend he sometimes has to become his enemy.

When she flies with an enemy, she must become his friend.

Because for the duration of the flight, the poor ‘FO’ will have many difficult things to face: Like grumpy tones, boring stories, and bad jokes.

But every captain knows: if you have a good ‘FO’, you don’t need good luck.

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2014

'Dog is my co-pilot'

 

Image used with permission

 

On training

 

Before you start flying, you do a lot of looking up.

After you start flying, you do a lot of looking down.

Life as a pilot shows you a great variety of views. I started flying in country where airport's elevations of over 5,000 ft are quite common, with minimum en route altitudes of 20,000 ft all over the charts.

 



Iztaccihuatl
 

 

 

Where I've been flying for the last number of years, we cruise around 15,000 ft regularly; If you tried to get over this mountain at that level, you wouldn't make it. Flatter is safer, but I miss the views.

 

 

 

I trained from an airport elevation of 4,000 ft amsl. There’s nothing like the early training days on a Cessna or a piper in my view.

The freedom of building hours flying visually as low as 500 agl (above ground level), doing ‘touch and go’s’, etc. You’ll get that again as a professional pilot. You’re always constrained by regulations, standard operating procedures and the dreaded ‘Flight data monitoring’; the digital black box which companies now download regularly to spy on you.

 

 

 

Even worse, if you fly a bigger plane they know what you’re doing in real time through ACARS. Like everything else; used for good, it enhances safety; conversely, it can -and does- get used to snoop on pilots.

 

 

 

I was thinking that it’s a shame those training days go by so quickly. We all want to get onto the bigger birds asap.

If you’re training right now, take it all in; enjoy. This may be the purest part of your career.

 

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2014

 

Propdogs

Emirates 777
 

Here's something I wrote before I was grounded:

I’ve always thought that it doesn’t really matter what you fly. Maybe that’s why I’m not flying a 757 or an A 330. Maybe I just suck. Us regional turboprop drivers exist in a plane of our own. Without the glamour of long haul flying or the performance of a jet aircraft, we fly at the worst flight levels, in relatively underpowered birds for much less money. We fly without a lot of the bells and whistles, we are plainer pilots.

We are propdogs.

 

But the interesting part is this: we do a lot more hand flying than the jet guys and gals do. We still have actual metal wires connecting our controls to the ailerons and elevators, so we feel every turn and every pitch change in our hands, and: ‘Auto-throttle?’ It’s called ‘knuckles’ on my aircraft.

Crucially, we also land and take-off a lot more often. In a 6 hour block duty we will have landed at least 4 times; in long-haul you would barely complete a single leg in that time.

Regionals have traditionally been seen as a stepping stone to the jets, in some places they still are; but for one reason or another, more and more pilots are spending more of their flying lives on board turboprops.

Do we love the flying? Most of us do.

Do we complain about everything else? You bet we do. Most of the time, we have good reason to.

I'm a regional pilot, have been for a while. I want to present the beauty I still see in what I do for a living, and I also want to share some of the things people won't normally hear about but which do happen in my job.

I think it doesn't matter what you fly, as long as your eyes are open the beauty is there; but equally, we can't close our eyes to what's happening to our industry, not matter what we fly.

 

I became a pilot because I wanted to fly, not because I wanted to 'be a pilot'. There’s a big difference.

Considering that I’ve been ‘made redundant’ or ‘furloughed’ twice in my life, I consider myself lucky to have had the career that I've had so far. I'm grateful for every day I can continue to fly for a living; I accept that after all, aviation is all about ‘ups and downs’; but when it comes to Safety, that’ll never be something that I’ll be willing to compromise on.

Now that I'm not up there everyday, I'm glad I saw the beauty in it.

 

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2014

Leg is on fire

Had a dream,

I was trying to evacuate the plane.

A fire on the ground,

people sat around.

Doing nothing.

I can't walk very well,

but I'll get them out.

There's babies in here,

scream at people!

get them to leave.

Leg is on fire

 

Copyright © Flycisco 2013



Runway Lights
 

 

 



 

City at night
 

I'll miss looking at things like these, drifting past my window.

Copyright © Flycisco 2013

Hi

flying sunset
 

Flying, getting grounded, philosophizing, living.

 



Copyright © Flycisco 2013