CVR’s (Cockpit Voice Recorders) have taken a lot of fun out of flying for the cockpit crews. The early ones would only record the last 30 minutes of the flight so you could get your overnight negotiations with the stewardess done early in the flight and there wouldn't be any voice record of it for the desk flying, ground pounding, busy bodies in the flight standards department. But before CVR’s, you didn’t have to worry about what you said in the cockpit unless a fellow crew member ratted you out.
This story is about those days without CVR’s when AA was starting to phase out their magnificent DC-6B’s with the passenger door always on the right side instead of the left like all other airlines. They had just started flying the wonderful Convair 990 on the Idlewild to Greater Cincinnati to Houston route. The redeye schedule for this flight landed at Cincinnati about 3am. One beautiful clear night I had finished fueling the EAL Saint Pete flight about 2:30 and decided to go visit a buddy in the radar room.
The radar room I visited was the home of the Airport Surveillance Radar (ASR) radar. This radar gave heading (azimuth) information but did not have any altitude measuring ability like the Precision Approach Radar (PAR) at a few busy airports and military bases. The ground controller would give the pilot heading corrections right down to the touchdown point. He/she would also advise what the aircraft altitude should be as the aircraft made the approach. The ground controller could not actually monitor the altitude; just tell the pilot how high he should be at that point in the approach. Cincinnati airport had just built a new runway with an ILS (Instrument Landing System) and the pilots preferred that to the ASR approach. The controller couldn’t force the pilot to make a radar approach but they often asked them to do it as a favor so they could stay in practice.
My buddy had never done an approach with a jetliner since they had just been landing at Cincinnati for a few days. Their approach speed was a bit faster than the propliners and that would keep him on his toes. It was a clear night so an instrument approach wasn’t really necessary but maybe the captain would indulge him. I got settled in the radar room in the observer seat where an FAA trainer would sit with a new controller. My buddy called up to the tower cab and asked them to see if AA Flight 2 would accept an ASR approach. We had a monitor in the radar room so we could hear the communications between the approach controller, tower, and ground control. They were all the same person at this hour of the morning.
Soon AA2 was handed off from Indianapolis Center and reported to Cincinnati approach control that he was at the Mount Healthy intersection at 29000 MSL. Lots of captains were stubborn about using the new fangled Flight Level nomenclature. The approach controller asked if he would agree to a ASR approach. He surprised us when he not only turned it down but asked for a visual approach. The wind was calm but they had been directing the little traffic they has to land towards the north on Runway 36. Approach control cleared him out of 29000 and to report over the Dry Ridge VORTAC at 10000 for a visual approach to Runway 36. The captain really surprised us when he came back and asked to land to the south on Runway 18 straight in from his present position. There was really no reason the controller could refuse his request and there was no other traffic. Now Mount Healthy intersection is about about 25 miles from the approach end of Runway 18 and he was about 5 miles high. That meant he was going to lose a mile of altitude for every 5 miles he traveled over the ground. He would be traveling about 200 miles per hour so he would be on the ground in about 7 or 8 minutes.
We were sure the passenger's ears would all be popping with a decent that fast but that was the captain’s discretion. The crew had to walk right by the radar room on the way to AA flight OPS so we propped the door open and waited on them. Soon the captain, who looked like he had just stepped off the set of a John Wayne movie, came sauntering down the hallway. My buddy stopped him and asked him if he had some kind of emergency that he needed to get on the ground so quickly.
The captain grinned and replied. “The copilot bet me $20 I couldn’t do it”
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And that’s the truth!
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