Lights in the Gray

N42°20.59′ W70°58.77′

1048 ZULU

I slide my seat forward towards the cool, blue glow the instruments display—until it hits the stops. The plane calls off 1000 feet, the radar altimeter’s beam pinging off the dark waters of Boston Harbor, unseen in the mist and fog that surrounds us. We are flying an Autoland Approach, and as per company policy, the Captain is “flying,” although with the autopilot doing all the work, his sole jobs are to monitor the displays and take over if the flight computers fail, and to bring the thrust to idle when commanded to by the airplane after it flares over the runway. To his right, the FO is backing him up and making any callouts that the airplane fails to make. I’m the Relief Officer on this flight, and despite being only three feet away from both the Captain and the FO, I have no official duties right now other than being another pair of eyes.

Over the last nine hours, our little pressurized can world has been steadily shrinking as we’ve moved eastward across the surface of the actual world. The bright, sunlit sky and puffy clouds over the Pacific Ocean gave way to the dimming light of dusk, and then full night, lit by the stars and an iridescent, nearly full moon, its light providing expansive views across the snow-capped peaks of first the Sierra Nevada and then the Rocky Mountains. As we moved onward, the sky with the moon pinned to it rotated westward above our heads, its color fading into a deep inky blackness broken only by the pinpricks of stars, while the lights on the ground slowly thinned and vanished as a thick blanket of clouds began to cover the earth below.

Milwaukee had passed under our nose as its residents peacefully slept at three in the morning. The scattered towns of Michigan faded in and out of view, seen as fewer and fewer blotches of light between the endless tracks of gray cloud tops. The last lights we’d seen had been those of Cleveland, visible through a ragged gap in the layer, perched on the edge of Lake Erie. Since then there had been nothing more than an endless, two-dimensional landscape of clouds sliding by. A descent clearance, given some 200 miles from our destination, had started us down through gray mists that seemed to climb to meet us, until our whole world turned oppressively gray as we descended further into the layer.

Now, thirty minutes later, our landing lights drill holes through the water vapor of the bubble we are flying through. It’s four degrees above freezing up here and the latest weather information reported only two degrees warmer on the ground. Droplets ping off the glass of the windshield and the fuselage in a constant clatter, sounding like uncooked rice being poured into a bowl. These are prime icing conditions, and despite nothing forming on the windshield wiper bolts or the ice probe mounted between the two center windshield panels, the Captain has turned on both the engine and wing anti-ice, resulting in three comforting blue lights glowing on the overhead panel.

The cloud bases were reported at 800 feet, but as we descend through 600 feet there is nothing to be seen beyond the glowing orb of reflected landing lights that surround us. Finally, at 400 feet, a single light appears out of the gloom off to our left. Seconds later, as the plane calls out two hundred feet, the approach light system emerges from the wet darkness ahead. The FO flips on his windshield wiper, which struggles to keep the glass clear as we fly into the deluge. The Captain follows suit a moment later. From my perch on the jumpseat, neither cleared patch of cockpit glass is directly in my line of sight, so all I can see outside is a blurry, rain-streaked view of the rapidly approaching lights and a vague form of the runway beyond them.

The mist thins and the runway takes on a more solid form, stretching out into the rainy distance. The clock reads 5:50am… sunrise is still an hour or more away. I see the Captain’s right hand flex slightly over the thrust levers, and I know that his left hand, which I can’t see, is doing the same over the side stick. The wheels are about 10 feet off the ground when the flight computer makes a few adjustments to the controls before it starts raising the nose to flare. The last 10 feet pass in what seems like hours but are probably only seconds, and as the glossy, wet pavement of the runway slides underneath us we settle to the ground, slightly left of the centerline. The Captain pulls the thrust levers back on command—his only physical action during the landing. The autobrakes kick in and as we start to slow, the windshield wipers gain more and more ground on each pass across the glass.

We exit the runway downfield and turn towards our gate, the orange wands of the marshaller visible through the wind-driven rain. We can clearly hear each droplet splatter against the glass now that the engine sounds have quieted to their ground idle rumble. I check the timer that has been running since we took off and see we’ve been in the air for just less than ten hours. I roll my shoulders against the pull of the seat belt harness and, in my head, start another timer counting the minutes until I can be in bed sleeping.