This Sao Paulo - Santa Cruz flight is just cursed for me. It is an interesting flight if anyone wants to try it. Start off with a ridiculously short runway. As you speed toward the end, you have to have total faith that your VR speed and the laws of physics will get you in the air before you run out of runway. (Take a full load, said management. On paper that runway is long enough!)

Then it's a perfectly straight line through intersections with lovely names like "MUCUS" ("sorry, all the good names have already been taken, Brazil"). Then a crazy-complicated (for me) procedure at the end.

Once I ran out of fuel fooling around trying to follow the procedure. Another time I tried to show my son my 727 and managed to change my 757 into a 727 in mid-flight! With no engines! That didn't end well. Another time I just bailed out of frustration. ("This is your Captain. I'm leaving. Good luck.")

"The Curse of Flight 812." But break it will I. And, Mark, yes, that was a nice-looking but lite MD-80. It still tempts me once in awhile, but it is just a pretty model bolted onto the default autopilot.

I am hoping really hard that they will get the FMC lined out. From my perspective, the 757/767 are perfect and don't need anything new. Just FMC fixed.