Tokyo Lightning
N35°5.82′ E139°58.21′
0840 ZULU
Storm clouds flicker low and ahead of us, a dark mass periodically pulsing with electric-blue streaks, breaking the desaturated palette of post-sunset colors smoothly stretching across the horizon. From my position on the jumpseat at the back of the cockpit—I’m working as the Relief Officer, the RO, on this trip—I can only see below us by looking out the side windows, although as of now there is nothing to see anyway beyond the pre-darkness murk of ocean and clouds. The Captain and FO are working through the plan for the upcoming approach and landing, periodically trailing off from their discussions, and in the long pauses, staring ahead towards the last embers of the day or fiddling with the distance and tilt knobs of the radar, trying to geographically locate the storms ahead within our flight path.
When I sit up straight in the seat and stare out the front window myself, I can just see the faintly lit line of the coast of Japan sliding towards us, a dim and thin string of orange cutting through the darkness. We’ve been over water since the wheels came up just after takeoff, and now eight hours later, this is our first sighting of land, other than the hazy shoals of Midway Island that we passed some time ago, when the island was still heated by the afternoon sun. I use this opportunity to take a look at the FO’s map display, which shows an angry mass of weather returns just to the northwest of Tokyo.
Fortunately, tonight we are heading for Haneda, Tokyo’s “downtown” airport, which sits just south of the city proper, on the western edge of Tokyo Bay. Haneda was historically a domestic airport, with international arrivals landing at Narita to the northeast, but in the past few years, the airport has expanded to become a busy international hub—apparent this evening by the large number of traffic targets scattered across the map displays and the very busy Tokyo Control frequency. With the winds being what they are, we’ll approach and land from the east, meaning that if everything goes to plan, we will stay well clear of the thunderstorms to the west, which are towering over the city like some kind of Godzilla monster that has wandered out of the Bay.
The approach brief complete, the Captain and the FO now sit in silence, splitting their attention between our descending flight path and the near constant bolts of lightning that are playing amongst the clouds to the west. The steady stream of instructions to various aircraft that is coming out of the cockpit speakers more than makes up for the lack of conversation however. We’d had to deviate several times on this crossing—as we worked our way through the remnants of a tropical low at about 170 degrees east, and then again about 400 miles offshore—but I’m thankful we don’t have to here. It’s one thing to get clearance to go around a storm when you are the only airplane within two hundred miles, but in the confines of this airspace and traffic, it would be a very different thing.
The RO position, although an integral part of the crew, always feels slightly removed from the actual process of flying the plane. It’s rare I bid this position, but when I do, I find myself having to make a conscious effort to stay engaged in the operation. As we turn towards the final approach course, which is almost 90 degrees offset from our landing runway—I slide my seat all the way forward so that my knees are pressing against the back of the center console and watch as the course needle comes alive on the FO’s display. Ahead is nothing but the emptiness of the Bay, and in the distance, the lights of urban sprawl.
We begin to slow so as not to run over the traffic in front of us—just visible as two blinking strobe lights against the mass of city lights. The FO is hand flying now, and the Captain checks in with the tower controller who tells us to continue. We slow further, now with the gear out and the last of the flaps hanging off the back of the wing. In the brief moment of calm between the actions required to configure the plane to land and the rapidly accelerating sequence of events that occurs between 1000 feet and a landing, I look out and up through the front windshield, watching as the circling beacon at the top of the Tokyo Sky Tree tower—now higher than our altitude—sends a beam of light through the night, while lightning continues to play across the clouds beyond it.
