Saturday, January 13, 2007

THROTTLE BACK!

You may remember that I recently took a new CRJ900 out on its first voyage. I was the forward flight attendant on that one, and have been every time I've gone out on a 900. This last trip, I was the aft FA, which, for those of you not in the Navy, means I am in the back of the plane. And for those of you not a flight attendant, it means I am in the back of the cabin, jammed into a jumpseat in the aisle between the last row of passengers, having to hear questions like, "Are you a flight attendant?" I'm also an inch from the lavatory door, and if it hasn't been serviced lately, I am the first one to detect it. Also, if there is an unhappy dog in the cargo hold, I am the one who goes deaf the fastest. But I digress. Being in the back and nearest the engines this time, I got to experience in a new way what pilots call the 'throttle back.'
When you take off, your engines are pretty much on full blast... you're having to accelerate a multi-ton aircraft to 500 nautical miles an hour. And this stays true through most of the initial ascent. But when you level off, you throttle the engine back down so that the plane doesn't keep going up. That results in the tonal pitch of the engines winding down, and you go forward in your seat a bit... you can tell the plane is slowing. Now I have been in the back of the 700 before, and have heard this happen several times, but apparently it's a lot more crisp in the 900. And I talked to the pilot afterwards, and he said that he did throttle back about as hard as you're allowed to that particular time. So that, and the crystal clarity of the 900 cabin, resulted in a very Millenium Falcon-esque hyperdrive failure sound throughout the back half of the cabin. For the second time in my four-month career, it occurred to me that I might die.
If I ever quit this job, on the last day, I'm going to have the forward FA kill the lights at that exact moment and see what everybody does, heh heh heh.

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