Stephen Keshner: Cockpit Confessions of an Airline Pilot

Jet engines don’t just quit for no reason. Fuel starvation should be the only cause, yet all our fuel boost pumps are on, still feeding from the 85,000 pounds of aux-tank fuel, direct to all engines. We have “source"-"force"-and “course"… there is nothing wrong, which leaves only the possibility of contaminated fuel from Manila. Anything can be in the fuel we got in the Philippines, the place is an aviation joke, but this is no joke.

As we start our drift down, we go through the emergency engine failure checklist methodically, as we are trained to do, yet terror has gripped my heart. If we do have contaminated fuel, since all three engines have been feeding from the same tank, we are only minutes away from disaster. No way will we survive the loss of another engine.

Roy Steele, out of his own anxiety, asks me if I’ve “been fucking with the fuel pumps?”

“No, Roy! Are you nuts?”

Chuck confirms that all the switches are as they should be, and have not been touched since takeoff.

I’m burning mad at Roy’s question. “How can you ask me something like that?”

“Sorry. In the Air Force I had a guy fuck with the switches out of boredom, I was just checking….” (this said with a twinge of embarrassment.)

We attempt an air restart of the number two engine, and it lights back up, shit-hot. Back in business, we divert, making a bee-line for Guam. The Chamorrons we have working for us in maintenance cannot find any reason for the engine failure. The fuel filters are clear, no metal shavings or other contaminants. Houston Maintenance Control clears us to continue to Honolulu, and so we leave Guam for Hawaii, with the remainder of the flight uneventful.

Next day, I return to Guam on a new pairing, with Captain Stan Poyner, a truly class guy. Stan had worked for MacDonald Douglas as a test pilot, and he listened with interest to my story about the engine failure.

Checking in at the Tumon Bay Hilton, one of my buddies from another crew comes over, wanting to know if I’ve heard about the shitbird second-officer who had been fucking with the fuel system, almost causing us to lose a DC-10?” He was talking about me, though he didn’t know it, and Guam based mechanics had been spreading this bullshit.

Furious, I am ready to confront the entire maintenance crew at Agana, when another friend, Captain Craig Chapman, gives me some good advise. “Forget it. If you go out there and create a scene, it will only make it worse.”

Flying from Tokyo to Saipan, Stan Poyner tells me that “turning off the boost pumps would not shut down the #2 engine, anyway. Its a myth. That engine would still suction feed fuel, even sixty-feet up in the tail.”

On our climb-out from Saipan to Guam, Stan turns and indicates to me with his fingers (so that no words get on the cockpit voice recorder) for me to shut off the #2 fuel boost pumps. Aghast, I shake my head “No!” He commandingly gestures this order again. I reluctantly shut-off the engine #2 fuel tank boost pumps. We fly all the way back to Guam with the #2 switches and pumps off, yet the engine keeps running, not even a hiccup… but who could I tell it to?

Stan had taken this chance with his rank, and his career, just to make me feel better, to make me know that even had the switches been turned off, I could not have been responsible.

There are some wonderful and insane people in this business of aviation. Stan Poyner is one of them.

Captain Eddie Levine, an Israeli-American with dual citizenship, and with seven different opinions on any given subject, is a former New York Air pilot, now working for Continental.

He’s a very hard person to get along with, another way of saying he’s a total asshole in the cockpit. There are stories that followed him from his New York Air flying days. He so alienated the co-pilots at New York Air, that the Chief Pilot called him into his office one day saying, “Eddie I have a problem, perhaps you can help me with?”

“Sure, boss, what’s up?”

“Well, I either have to fire two-hundred co-pilots who refuse to fly with you, or I have to let you go, what do you think I should do?” the Chief Pilot advised Captain Levine.

Eddie became a more tolerant human being for a while as a result of that conversation. Now with Continental, he’s reverted to form, invariably chewing somebody out, every leg along the way. Either he’s yelling at Air Traffic Control, at one of the crewmen, or at some ground handler. Eddie needs to show everyone who’s boss.

Anyway, we have a wonderful First Officer, Dan Johansen who lives in Miami, and commutes to fly out of the Honolulu base. Johansen, was once Mr. Teenage Norway — he’s a huge, physically fit fellow, but as are most men who don’t find it necessary to prove themselves, he is a pussycat of a guy. We’d recently flown together for a month, and I came to really like Dan Johansen as a class act.

For this last trip of our month together, there’s been a Captain change. Dan and I are to fly with Captain Eddie Levine. Though neither of us have ever met or flown with Levine, we know him by reputation.

Dan and I show up at the Ops (Flight Operations) office an hour before the flight, as we’re supposed to, and there’s no Captain. We wait some more, still no Captain Levine. Finally, we can wait no longer, so Dan grabs the paperwork, and I go running out to the airplane to do the “walk around,” the exterior airplane inspection. As I get up into the cockpit, there is Captain Eddie Levine. I stick my hand out to introduce myself. Disregarding my hand, he asks “Where’s that son-of-a-bitch First Officer, he’s got my paperwork.”

I explain that we were trying to cover for his late arrival, since he hadn’t shown up at Operations….that Johansen was still at Ops, doing all the paperwork for him.

He blasts, “Well, if you guys had bothered to check with the Dept. of Agriculture, you would have known that I was within the airport environment!” This guy’s a fucking maniac…Agriculture?… Jesus Christ, everybody’s first and only stop is at Ops, for check-in. Keeping my mouth shut for a change, I know that Dan is in for a tongue-lashing when he turns up with the flight plans and weather.

Dan enters the cockpit, and sticks his hand out to introduce himself. I have no time to warn him, and I find it painful to watch as Captain Eddie just rips Dan a new asshole. Smart, Dan just keeps his mouth shut.

That’s the way this four day trip from Honolulu starts, and it goes downhill from there. Its a very cold working environment, and my stomach is in knots for four days.

On the ground in Newark, the plane is being refueled for our non-stop return to Honolulu. We calculate that we’ve received a few thousand more pounds of fuel than the Captain ordered. So, Captain Eddie points at the guy on the ramp, you know, the fella in the greasy green overalls. He waves for him to come up to the cockpit. Complying, the guy comes running up the ladder.

Foaming at the mouth, mad-dog Eddie reams this guy’s ass for five minutes. “….how come you gave us too much fuel, I’m the Captain, not you, and the Captain’s words and wishes are golden, they must be obeyed exactly!” and he demands an immediate explanation. “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” he screams, infuriated by the man’s calm silence.

Finally, the guy says, “Hey, I’m not your fueler, I’m the baggage handler!”

Johansen and I almost pee ourselves, trying hard not to lose it. Captain Levine has added to his shining legend. During the last leg of the trip, flying from San Francisco to Hawaii, Captain Eddie lets us know he’s been a hero of the Israeli 1967 war. Proudly he exclaims that he was shot down three times, during the six-day war.