I sometimes describe my airplane as a time machine: in some cases, it lets me get things done in less time, and in others makes possible things I couldn’t do at all without it. One of my recent flights was a great example.
Last year, I learned that the Delta Flight Museum exists. Even better, they have monthly surplus sales, where they sell off all manner of airline-related stuff-n-junk. These range from the desirable (airplane seats! monogrammed coffee mugs!) to the maybe-not (those paper-thin blankets they used to give coach passengers) to who-would-want-that (wooden coffee sticks with the Delta logo). Each month has a more-or-less random assortment of stuff, announced only a few days in advance. The sales are always on the second Friday of each month, but despite knowing well in advance when the sales would be held I hadn’t been able to squeeze in a visit. I decided that the May auction was going to be my first visit and booked the plane for that Friday.
In completely unrelated news, my employer has banned almost all work-related travel. I’ve met exactly three of my coworkers, not including my boss, since the acquisition. My boss happens to live in Atlanta and had to go to Hartsfield to pick up a family member the same day as the auction.
Did I mention that the Delta museum is across the street from the Signature FBO at Hartsfield?
So my trip plan was semi-complete: fly to ATL, visit the museum, have lunch with my boss, fly home.
Then a wrinkle intruded: Matt wanted to come back home for the weekend to attend a graduation party but didn’t want to drive. No problem— Auburn is a 45-minute flight from Hartsfield, so I’ll swing by and pick him up, then return him Sunday.
Plan complete, I filed a flight plan from Decatur to Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Intergalactic Airport. One thing people sometimes don’t realize about aviation in the US is that everyone has (or is supposed to have!) equal access to the National Airspace System. It is perfectly legal for me to fly my little single-engine Cherokee Six into the World’s Busiest Airport. In fact, I did so in the midst of the pandemic-induced drop-off in air traffic last year. However, that ability comes with the responsibility not to a) screw up and do something stupid and b) not to impede the flow of all those big ol’ jet airliners. Because of the way Delta groups flights into blocks, some times of day are less busy than others, so I picked one of the less-busy times and filed for arrival during that time. Atlanta’s airport layout is fairly complicated, with five parallel runways and a maze of interconnecting taxiways. However, they happened to be using runway 8R for arrivals, and that’s the one closest to where I was going.
The airport diagram for Atlanta— if you zoom in you get a sense of how much stuff is going on there
The flight over was completely uneventful— I filed for a direct flight from point A to point B, and flew exactly that until I was about 30 nautical miles outside Atlanta. Then ATC sent me to an intermediate intersection for a few miles, then told me “706 is cleared direct KATL, max forward speed.” What does that mean? Well, in my plane, normal cruising speed is 135 knots, or 155 mph. The absolute minimum airspeed for an Airbus A320 is about 115 knots— so if I’m going as fast as I possibly can, it’s only a little faster than the speed at which an airliner will drop from the sky. So “max forward speed” is definitely a relative concept.
See those little blue arrowheads in front of me? They all have “DELTA” painted on the side
Perfect approach, normal landing, and an easy taxi to Signature. Like most other large airports, there are landing fees at ATL, but it’s only $11 for a single-engine piston airplane— compared to hundreds of dollars at Boston or SFO. Signature normally charges a $39 handling fee, but they waive it if you buy 15 or more gallons of fuel. The downside is that their fuel is ~$2/gallon more expensive than elsewhere, so there’s a little calculus required to figure out what’s cheaper. In this case, it worked out best to buy the fuel, so I did. Signature graciously used their crew van to run me over to the Delta museum area (it’s only about a half-mile walk) and dropped me off right in front of the surplus sale.
The sale? Well, what can I say. It was exactly what I expected. There was an A320 ADF antenna, a bunch of Delta-logo T-shirts, some cocktail napkins, coffee mugs from the Sky Club, and other assorted stuff. I bought a wall-mounted automatic soap dispenser ($5), a 747 farewell tour shirt ($5), a Delta-logo knit cap ($2), a backpack ($10), and a 4-pack of those little cocktail napkins you get in flight ($1). They had retired MD90 aircraft seats, but I reluctantly passed them by because I’m not sure where in our house I’d even put them.
Shopping done, I was able to wander around the museum grounds. Although it’s closed, you can walk right up to the static displays, so I did.
This is a retired 747 that’s been outfitted as an event space— you can rent it for meetings, wedding receptions, parties, and so on. Sadly it’s closed for now.
For some reason I found this hilarious. Why a Mini Cooper? I wish they would showcase the BBQ grill built from a PW2000 jet engine.
I walked back to Signature and stashed my stuff in the plane. I noticed a bunch of black Suburbans and some cop-looking people wandering around, but then my boss showed up and we went to Malone’s to grab a burger. (Excellent choice btw— very solid bar food.) We had a very pleasant lunch, then he dropped me off at Signature to fly my next leg to Auburn.
Side note for some pilot jargon. Normally when you’re getting ready to depart an airport that’s in controlled airspace you need a departure clearance. The traditional way to get this is to call someone on the radio (or, worst case, the phone), have them read your clearance to you, copy it down, and read it back to them. The FAA has slowly been rolling out a program called PDC, where your clearance is automatically generated and sent to you via an app or an SMS message. Not every airport has it, but Atlanta does, so instead of calling them on the radio, I just waited for the clearance message to arrive… except it didn’t, because I was leaving about an hour before my original planned departure time. I called the clearance delivery frequency, told them my call sign, and in about 2 minutes had a poppin’ fresh PDC. I programmed it into my panel-mount GPS and then noticed a flurry of activity off to my right on the ramp— the Secret Service gang was milling around. The reason was the arrival of “Coast Guard 101,” which you can see below. I never did find out who was on it but I assume it was a civilian DoD or USCG official, as military officers don’t usually get Secret Service protection.
In any event, I got my taxi clearance, which was for the second of the five parallel runways. This required me to taxi to the end of one runway, watch a couple of airplanes to land on it, wait to be cleared to cross that runway, and then hold short of the runway I wanted to be on before I could leave. That made for some excellent views.
My departure clearance was pretty straightforward: radar vectors from ATC took me out near the Atlanta Motor Speedway (and its attached airport), then turned me on course to Auburn. I had a completely uneventful flight there, landed to pick up Matt, and flew home again. Within the space of about six hours, I was able to go from home to Atlanta to Auburn to home again, which would take me at least 8 hours of time on the road alone, plus I was able to visit the surplus store, meet my boss, and pick up my kid.
It’s a time machine, I tell you.
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