What's a Turbo Anyway?

Thought For The Day

I accepted a job offer late summer 1979 to work in the computer field. The job would involve a lot of travel. I would be expected to travel to California and other points west on a pretty regular basis. It was an exciting proposition, full of promise and I was looking forward to the opportunity. There was much to do to get up to speed on the computer side of the job since up to that point I had been in the insurance business. I spent the next few weeks in training and learning a new language that used words like hardware, software, integrated, baud rates, disk drives, processors and so on. The weeks drifted into months and as the year drew to a close it was decided that I was ready to be turned loose and after the Christmas holiday I would be taking my first solo trip to California. But first Christmas with the family and holiday galas with our friends.

January 31, 1979 I went to a New Years Eve party at a friend's house. Among the other guest at the party was an air traffic controller. He was new to me but quite an interesting chap and we ended up sitting next to each other at dinner. As we got to know each other more and more information flowed and I offered that I would be hitting the airways soon. He offered encouragement and only a bit of advice but he was firm in his admonitions. He said, "Avoid O'hare and never fly on commuters." Sound advice I thought without any experience or knowledge of such things and so a few days later provided with tickets from the travel department of Citicorp I boarded a commuter to Chicago at 7:05 AM.

I had flown in small planes a fair amount and had quite enjoyed it. The prospect of being on a commuter en route to O'hare was lost in the excitement of the journey ahead. It was about a twenty passenger plane with twin engines and I noted that they were turbo props. I didn't know what that meant but it struck me that it was high tech engine stuff and were probably jet powered or something. 

About halfway into the trip, somewhere over Lake Michigan on a very cold and icy morning in January one of those turbo props stopped turning and it was conveniently just outside my window. I watched it stop and then began to wonder what turbo prop meant. Was the turbo now actuating the engine? What was a turbo anyway? Could this possibly be a problem? I am not a good swimmer and I wondered how long I could last in the icy waters below. Then, the announcement suggesting seat belts and a calm disposition. I was transfixed with terror but not making loud noises and gesticulating wildly. The plane was teetering a bit but not falling and that seemed enough to be thankful for at the moment and so I tried not to focus on the motionless turbo prop outside my window.

The captain said we had a straight in to O'hare and so we glided in on foam, not a real confidence booster but while messy it seemed good they were thinking safety. I had never shaken quite like that before that landing but thoughts of never flying again and renting a car to go back to Flint entered my mind. But I weathered the incident and prepared for the next leg which was a direct to San Francisco. And if you think the loss of an engine was bad, you have no idea what turbulence is and I can't tell you now but sometime I will if you are interested. That Delta flight I was about to take was the most amazing flight I ever took.

©Herb Ratliff, February 23, 2012, All Rights Reserved