(3 of 7)
U.S. airlines—and the best overseas carriers—take painstaking care of jets like the 747. Each plane, and each engine on each plane, gets a series of standard checkups. Even if it has no obvious problems, the jet receives an eight-hour maintenance check four times annually. Every year, in addition, mechanics wheel each plane into a hangar for two weeks and tear it down piece by piece, like federal agents hunting for heroin. Ceilings and floors are removed, every rivet and every cable is inspected. Engines are constantly being monitored and overhauled. The maintenance procedures are so complicated and expensive that TWA estimates it has $300 million tied up in spare parts and equipment, enough to buy a whole airline fleet not so long ago.
THE PILOTS. The men who occupy the left—or captain's —seat of jet airliners operated by the world's major carriers are without question superb flyers. They have risen to the top of their profession through a system designed to weed out the incompetent. In the U.S., typically, the captain of a 747 is in his mid-50s, and has been flying for 30 years or longer. He may have joined his airline in his early 30s and served as a co-pilot for seven years or more before making captain.
Whatever his rank, the training never stops. He is constantly practicing instrument landings and emergency procedures, both in the cockpit of a jet and in remarkably realistic flight simulators. Twice a year, the FAA requires the airline to check out his proficiency. In addition, an FAA inspector—completely unannounced—may show up just before takeoff, occupy the jump seat in the cockpit—and "lift" (start revocation proceedings) the captain's license on the spot if he detects a major failing during the flight.
Every six months the pilot must pass a demanding FAA physical, and every year the company also looks him over. His job is one of the few in which advancing age is considered an asset, for it means he has been in charge of a jet for a reassuring length of time. A 747 captain often has 20,000 or more hours of flight experience. He flies no more than 65 to 70 hours a month and is paid as much as $100,000 a year. It is safe to say that few people riding behind him in the passenger compartment begrudge him a nickel.
Despite all of these precautions, pilots do occasionally crack up airplanes, and one of the main reasons—a reason that concerns the FAA deeply—is simply that they let their minds wander. In a term of the trade, cockpit discipline breaks down. One chilling example of this occurred on Sept. 11, 1974, when an Eastern DC-9, on a landing approach, hit the ground near Charlotte, N.C. While descending, the pilot—as the flight recorder later showed—chatted amiably about racial integration, Richard Nixon's pardon and the merits of Japanese cars. The pilot and 71 others died in the wreckage.
Since that disaster—and a few other ones caused by pilots' ignoring the warnings of their instrument panels—the FAA and the airlines have worked hard to toughen up the discipline. Most aviation experts believe the efforts have produced good results.