Last Flights
N35°12.99′ E140°4.35′
0745 ZULU
As we start our descent, the sun begins its final drop towards the horizon, projecting hues of orange and gold on the undersides of the clouds high above us. Below, visible through a scattered layer, the windswept ocean’s surface is a deep but fading blue, marred only by the claw-like slash of white-capped waves. Despite the tumult down there, our past eight hours of sliding westward over the Pacific have been mostly smooth and I fight to break through the kind of fatigue that can build up under the weight of an afternoon that seems to stretch into the forever of backwards-moving time zones.
A large weather system has been slowly working its way up the Japanese Island chain, throwing out gusty winds, turbulent skies, and bands of thunderstorms well outside of its rain-soaked core. Our planned arrival time into Haneda had us landing just after the weather’s forecasted passage., As we drop through 15,000 feet, a look ahead into the dimming light shows a clear horizon above the low, flat layer of clouds that is broken only by Fuji-San’s cone-shaped peak, visible on the far side of Tokyo. To the north, ragged clouds punch upward into the troposphere, but our timing seems to have been impeccable and the weather will no longer be an issue for us at all.
Haneda is famous for switching their landing runways at the drop of a hat. Over the past three hours we’ve been tracking the airport’s weather reports and updating our flight computer as appropriate. Now, with the last of the mileage clicking down on the display screen, I begin a briefing for a planned landing to the south. Midway through the brief, a plane that we’ve been following for the past few hours gets a clearance towards a fix that will set them up for a landing to the west. Suspecting change, the RO quickly requests another weather report and moments later, I’m updating the flight plan to accommodate the new runway.
With the correct—for now anyway—approach briefed, and the ball of sun now fully beyond the horizon, we get vectored into a series of 120 degree turns to fit us into our spot on the final approach. We’ve descended to 4000 feet, just offshore of the Chiba Peninsula, and the controller seems to be taking perverse pleasure in timing our vectors so that we bounce through every cloud out here. Of course, he can’t see them from his darkened cave in the Tokorozawa, north of Tokyo proper, but as we lurch through the fourth straight buildup, it begins to feel that way.
We are finally given a clearance down to 3000 feet and a turn towards the airport. This gets us below the clouds, finally, and out of the bumps. Below us, the wind-driven surf breaks against the sweeping coastline of the beach resort town of Kamogawa. We follow a valley north-westward, towards the calmer waters of Tokyo Bay and the airport beyond. At our altitude, the wind is whipping out of the south at almost 60 miles per hour. The airport is calling for calm winds, but at the refineries just coming into view on the eastern edge of the bay, smoke is scudding northward just as soon as it belches out of the stacks.
Off our right wingtip, the northern end of the Boso Hills—not quite given the stature of a mountain range—stretches out towards the distant farmland just barely visible under the darkening purple face of the coming night. Closer in, it becomes apparent that the hills are blanketed in a thin layer of fog that flows around their tops, leaving small, misshapen green islands in a translucent stream of gray and white. We are now low enough to see details on the ground, and while just below our nose, a single car carriage of the Kominato Railway winds its way through the undulating rural landscape, in the distance, the contrasting hard, urban shapes and lines of Tokyo begin to materialize out of the distant murk.
We go feet wet following the Aqua Line—the fifteen-mile bridge/tunnel combo that crosses Tokyo Bay—towards the now fully visible city sprawl. I call for flaps and gear as we start a slow descent towards 1000 feet. The engines spool up accordingly to counteract the increased drag. We’ve got plenty of time to get down, and I’m enjoying this approach as it will be my last in the right seat of the plane. I’m heading to upgrade school in a week, and assuming everything goes well, I’ll be sitting five feet to my left when I next fly. On the surface of the bay, the sail-shaped ventilation tower of the tunnel slides underneath our right wing while in the far distance, the lights on the exterior of Tokyo Skytree start their nightly spinning dance.
Haneda is landing on parallel runways this evening. We are going to the left side—and a short taxi to our gate—while other traffic is landing on the right side. Less than a mile to our north, an ANA 787 banks to the right to join its own final approach course, the blue and white tail reflecting the very last of the daylight while the two red LED beacon lights pulse on and off in a steady rhythm. Ahead, in the now near distance, the city continues to darken, the lights of the buildings and streets taking on the yellow and white glow of nighttime, while below us and drawing closer with every foot we descend, the waters of Tokyo Bay still maintain clarity despite the quickly dimming light.
A minute later we pass through 1000 feet, and I turn off the autopilot. As advertised, the winds have mostly died off and the surface of the Tama River, which runs along the southern boundary of the airport before it dumps into the bay, is smooth. It’s in rare moments like this, with the plane fully configured for landing, the winds light, and the aviation gods smiling, that I almost feel that I am directing the plane by thoughts, and not just the slightest of finger twitches on the control stick. I take one last look at the city to our north and west, the distant blur of its skyline broken only by the brightly illuminated twin pillars of Tokyo Tower and—dwarfing its smaller cousin—Skytree Tower, before bringing my focus back to the fast-approaching pavement ahead.
As I shift my gaze up from the runway numbers, there’s still enough daylight left for me to see the full length of the runway ahead and then back into the mid-distance to judge our height above the ground for the flare. The plane counts down from 50 feet in intervals of 10. At 40 I start pulling back on the sidestick so that by 30 feet above the ground I’ve got the nose mostly where I want it. At 20 feet I take a quick breath and then start pulling back on the thrust levers, moving them for the first time since I set them for climb power just after departing Honolulu nine hours ago. Ten feet passes in a blur as I feel for the ground with the tips of the landing gear some 90 feet behind and 40 feet below me. I find it slightly more suddenly than I’d planned but quickly switch my focus to the rapidly slowing runway edge lights on either side of us to keep the wheels centered on the pavement as we slow down.
By the time I hand control over to the Captain for him to taxi us to the gate—something that I won’t be doing again as I’ll be the one doing the taxiing—and we exit the runway, it’s become nighttime. Ahead, the international terminal is lit up from within, a warm glow escaping through its glass walls. A dual line of blue taxiway lights leads us through the darkness towards our gate, where the hulking shape of a Turkish Airlines 777—the former occupant—is being towed away to make room for us. I reach down and retract the flaps, turn off the radar, and reset the transponder, a flow so familiar to me, that I do it without thought while simultaneously requesting a taxi clearance and thinking about what I’m going to eat for dinner once we get to the hotel.
Now secure at the gate, the Captain gives the ok to shut down both engines and calls for the parking checklist. In the sudden quiet I let out a slow breath and lean back in my seat, my right hand resting on the control stick. With my left hand, I grab the checklist card and power through the litany of call and response that has become so burned into my brain that I can—although I wouldn’t—read the checklist with my eyes closed. Behind me, I hear the RO pack his bag and head for the door, no doubt quite ready to be off the plane after all the hours of confinement. With the checklist completed, the Captain glances over at me and then stands and heads for the door as well, pulling his bag behind him.
In the stillness of the now-empty cockpit, I too stand, slowly gather my things, and make to exit as well. Then I pause, turn back around, and place my hand on the back of the right seat for a moment, smiling slightly. This has been my home for the past four years, and my introduction to so many elements of aviation that in my nearly two decades of flying I’d never experienced before: heavy aircraft, international operations, and very long flights. I take my hand off the seatback and reach out to the left seat headrest, resting my hand on my soon-to-be new home. I then flip off the cockpit overhead light and exit the now darkened cave of the flightdeck into the bright glare of the forward galley with a smile still on my face.
