The load master looks suspiciously out his window in the cargo bay and wonders what the clowns up front are doing. The mountains loom and the snow swirls past the window as he pops another antacid tablet into his mouth.
Battling the conditions all the way down I cross the threshold, retard the throttles and struggle to slip back over to the centerline as I bounce slightly upon touchdown.
The 727 has no automatic speed-brake deployment upon touchdown, so you have to manually move the lever to deploy them.
With full reverse thrust and some moderate braking we slow down as we near the far end of the runway; with more aggressive braking we could have used a good bit less runway.
Pulling off the runway a look out of one of the cargo area windows shows the wing with the speed-brakes deployed.
Glancing at the fuel gauges I see we have roughly 8,000 lbs. of fuel left from our original load of 30,000 lbs.
As we pull onto the ramp the clouds are starting to break up and the snow showers are moderating.