THE BIG IRON

摘要

The view is from on high. It is hard to believe you are even moving. The engines are so far behind you that they produce but a whisper. Richard Rol-land sits to my right in the FO's seat, flicking a few switches and acting all the while as if I'm doing the flying. We're in the 747-400 simulator in Atlas Air's Miami Training Center. Joshua Arnold, an unforgivably handsome (and young) 747 pilot and sim guru, mans the console behind us. Taxi inputs come via a tiller that springs back to the neutral position whenever I let it go. The airplane is so long that you don't follow the yellow line when turning onto a taxiway; you taxi until the centerline of the next taxi-way is over your shoulder, and then you turn toward it. Given the seductively slow scene out of the window, I make my first turn at a groundspeed of 40 knots, skipping the nosewheels on the pavement until I have taxied the airplane into the grass. Everybody is reassuring that this happens all the time.