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Confessions of a New Corporate Pilot
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In the Citation III Confessions of a New Corporate Pilot
Life would be sweet, I thought, now that I’d successfully passed my Cessna Citation III (CE-650) type rating check ride (this was a few years back). It meant I’d be flying my first swept-wing jet. Surprisingly, my first day at the new job at Chicago Executive Airport (PWK) would also be the first time I’d been up close to a real Citation III since all the training and even my check ride happened in FlightSafety’s full-motion simulator.
From my research, though, I knew the 650’s cabin was roomy enough for eight, and its rocket-like performance was nothing short of spectacular with a VMO (maximum operating Mach) of Mach 0.85 and 39,000 feet on a standard day. In its day, M.83 was pretty fast. That meant we could make the West Coast out of PWK with four people in the back. I learned quickly, too, that the 650’s awesome performance meant I needed to stay much farther ahead of the airplane than I’d had to in the much slower Citation II (CE-550) I’d been flying in a 12-pilot charter department.
A privately held corporation owned this Citation III and I was the junior of three pilots. The chief pilot, my new boss, brought experience from several other flight departments, while the other pilot, I’ll call him Tom well, I was never really too sure where Tom had come from because the guy kept to himself as much as possible and wasn’t the chatty type. That made three-hour flights long when the entire conversation at FL390 ended with an occasional shrug of the shoulders.
But who cared what one guy acted like, I thought. I was there to learn how to fit into a flight department that needed another pilot on their team. Just like in charter flying, my job was to keep the people in the back happy. I came to know these passengers much better than we ever did in the charter world. These folks sometimes invited the flight crew to their home on Nantucket when we overnighted there.
The Interview
Looking back on this job now though, I guess the 10-minute interview the chief pilot and I engaged in before he offered me the job should have been a tip-off that maybe something was a little odd. But with a four-year-old daughter growing up at home, the chance to dump my charter department pager that always seemed to ring at 2 a.m. beckoned hypnotically.
Cessna Citation CE-650 Corporate line training began right away with me flying in all kinds of weather, where I regularly rotated flying left seat with the chief pilot and Tom. Having flown left seat on the Citation II, I wasn’t brand new to jets, just speedy ones.
After a few months, however, I began to notice a few operational oddities that started making me a little uncomfortable. Some sketchy flight planning and questions I asked were sometimes answered with annoyed expressions. If I appeared not to agree, someone might ask if I’d finished all the Jepp revisions (In those days there were no electronic subscriptions. Updates were handled by hand). I found the best solution for getting along seemed to be to just shut up and fly the airplane. Ignoring those distractions did help me pay closer attention to the little things that made my flying the jet smoother.
Then again … On one flight back from Cincinnati (CVG), I was flying left-seat with the chief pilot in the right. I wanted to add fuel before we left since the Chicago weather was questionable, but the boss overruled me explaining, “We’re fat on fuel.”I didn’t say anything. As we approached PWK, the ATIS reported the weather had worsened, considerably. The Swiss cheese holes began to align when Chicago Approach dumped us early. We ended up burning more fuel than planned. I flew the ILS right down to minimums, but my scan uncomfortably included the fuel gauges every few seconds. After a safe landing, we taxied in with 700 pounds of Jet-A, not much for an airplane that burns 1,800 pounds an hour down low. What if we’d missed at Chicago Executive Airport and needed to run for Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport I wondered? We’d have arrived on fumes. The boss looked at me after we shut down. “Don’t tell me that whole thing bothered you. It all turned out fine, didn’t it?” (more…)
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Remembering Gordon Baxter: Bax Seat was a Flying Magazine Reader Favorite
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(Reposted by request)
Each time I stand near my desk, my eyes naturally focus on the framed cover of the August 1983 Flying magazine. Below it is page 100, the “I Learned About Flying from That” (ILAFFT), where my first column appeared. On it, the author of Bax Seat, scrawled in brown ink, “To my friend Rob Mark. His story, my push. Gordon Baxter, August 5, 1983.”
Many months before, Gordon Baxter had given me the Flying editor’s phone number. When I rang with my brief pitch, all I heard was “yes.” I suddenly had an assignment for my first column. That 1983 issue was the first, but not the last, time my name and stories appeared in the aviation industry’s iconic magazine. That same issue also ran a pilot report about the then-new Cessna Citation III, an aircraft I later added to my list of type ratings. Looking back, there were so many aspects of my aviation career that came to life around Bax and that August 1983 issue, not the least of which was that we became friends.
Gordon Baxter, Bax as he preferred folks call him, helped shape my career as an aviation journalist like no one before him and only a few people since. The author of 13 books, Bax’s own magazine writing career at Flying spanned 25 years. His monthly column, Bax Seat, focused on vivid descriptions of his adventures. It was known simply as “Bax Seat.” Did I mention he was also a long-time radio personality in Beaumont, Texas, another interest we shared.
A Bit of Bax’s Background
I first met Bax in the mid-1970s. He brought his show, his act, or whatever the heck he called his evening of storytelling, to the Stick and Rudder Flying Club at Waukegan Airport. I was a tower controller not far away at Palwaukee Airport. Having been an avid Flying reader since high school, I switched shifts with another controller so I wouldn’t miss the event. Bax captured the audience for over an hour with stories from his flying career and his columns that often alternately “em rollin’ in the aisles” with gut-wrenching laughter and an emotional Texas-guy style that also brought tears to many an eye. Another way to think of Bax’s storytelling night was like an evening of improv but all about flying and airplanes.
Born in Port Arthur, Texas, he learned to fly after World War II following his stint as a B-17 turret gunner. Bax was no professional pilot—just a guy with a private certificate, an instrument rating, and eventually his beloved Mooney. On the back cover of one of his books, appropriately titled Bax Seat, Flying’s Stephan Wilkinson said “Bax tries to pass himself off as a pilot, but don’t believe him. He never could fly worth a damn. But Gordon feels airplanes, loves and honors them in ways that the rest of us are ashamed to admit. And he’s certainly one of the few romantics who can express what he feels so perfectly.” I couldn’t have written that myself, but I, too, felt it.
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Making the Brazilian ATR-72 Spin
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Note: This story was corrected on August 10th at 10:23 am, thanks to the help of a sharp-eyed reader.
Making an ATR-72 Spin
I wasn’t in Brazil on Friday afternoon, but I saw the post on Twitter or X (or whatever you call it) showing a Brazil ATR-72, Voepass Airlines flight 2283, rotating in a spin as it plunged to the ground near Sao Paulo from its 17,000-foot cruising altitude. All 61 people aboard perished in the ensuing crash and fire. A timeline from FlightRadar 24 indicates that the fall only lasted about a minute, so the aircraft was clearly out of control. Industry research shows Loss of Control in Flight (LOCI) continues to be responsible for more fatalities worldwide than any other kind of aircraft accident.
The big question is why the crew lost control of this airplane. The ADS-B data from FlightRadar 24 does offer a couple of possible clues. The ATR’s speed declined during the descent rather than increased, which means the aircraft’s wing was probably stalled. The ATR’s airfoil had exceeded its critical angle of attack and lacked sufficient lift to remain airborne. Add to this the rotation observed, and the only answer is a spin.
Can a Large Airplane Spin?
The simple answer is yes. If you induce rotation to almost any aircraft while the wing is stalled, it can spin, even an aircraft as large as the ATR-72. By the way, the largest of the ATR models, the 600, weighs nearly 51,000 pounds.
Of course, investigators will ask why the ATR’s wing was stalled. It could have been related to a failed engine or ice on the wings or tailplane. (more…)
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How the FAA Let Remote Tower Technology Slip Right Through Its Fingers
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In June 2023, the FAA published a 167-page document outlining the agency’s desire to replace dozens of 40-year-old airport control towers with new environmentally friendly brick-and-mortar structures. These towers are, of course, where hundreds of air traffic controllers ply their trade … ensuring the aircraft within their local airspace are safely separated from each other during landing and takeoff.
The FAA’s report was part of President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act enacted on November 15, 2021. That bill set aside a whopping $25 billion spread across five years to cover the cost of replacing those aging towers. The agency said it considered a number of alternatives about how to spend that $5 billion each year, rather than on brick and mortar buildings.
One alternative addressed only briefly before rejecting it was a relatively new concept called a Remote Tower, originally created by Saab in Europe in partnership with the Virginia-based VSATSLab Inc. The European technology giant has been successfully running Remote Towers in place of the traditional buildings in Europe for almost 10 years. One of Saab’s more well-known Remote Tower sites is at London City Airport. London also plans to create a virtual backup ATC facility at London Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe.
A remote tower and its associated technology replace the traditional 60-70 foot glass domed control tower building you might see at your local airport, but it doesn’t eliminate any human air traffic controllers or their roles in keeping aircraft separated.
Max Trescott photo Inside a Remote Tower Operation
In place of a normal control tower building, the airport erects a small steel tower or even an 8-inch diameter pole perhaps 20-40 feet high, similar to a radio or cell phone tower. Dozens of high-definition cameras are attached to the new Remote Tower’s structure, each aimed at an arrival or departure path, as well as various ramps around the airport.
Using HD cameras, controllers can zoom in on any given point within the camera’s range, say an aircraft on final approach. The only way to accomplish that in a control tower today is if the controller picks up a pair of binoculars. The HD cameras also offer infrared capabilities to allow for better-than-human visuals, especially during bad weather or at night.
The next step in constructing a remote tower is locating the control room where the video feeds will terminate. Instead of the round glass room perched atop a standard control tower, imagine a semi-circular room located at ground level. Inside that room, the walls are lined with 14, 55-inch high-definition video screens hung next to each other with the wider portion of the screen running top to bottom.
After connecting the video feeds, the compression technology manages to consolidate 360 degrees of viewing area into a 220-degree spread across the video screens. That creates essentially the same view of the entire airport that a controller would normally see out the windows of the tower cab without the need to move their head more than 220 degrees. Another Remote Tower benefit is that each aircraft within visual range can be tagged with that aircraft’s tail number, just as it might if the controller were looking at a radar screen. (more…)
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Parachute Museum Is Pioneer Gold Mine
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Jumping from any elevation, even a knee-high footstool, has never been something I have eagerly anticipated, which makes my lifelong fascination with parachutes hard to explain.It all started in the early 1960s, I think, with my godparents, who fed my existing airplane addiction with a visit to ParaGear (and it’s still in business!), a sky diving shop near their Chicago home. It sold mostly surplus military gear modified for civilian sky divers. The owner answered all of my elementary school questions and gave me a catalog. It was my bible for making GI Joe-sized canopy’s, harnesses, and containers with elastic opening bands, just like those in the catalog, which he tested from ever higher elevations, from trees to a box kite.
Over time my hands-on fascination calmed down to a persistent interest, which led me to the Aviation Trail Parachute Museum, part of the National Aviation Heritage Area in Dayton, Ohio. Filling the better part of the Trail’s visitor center, I didn’t expect to spend all afternoon there, but I didn’t expect it to introduce me to the pioneers who were behind all of the equipment that captured my attention more than half a century ago.
Given his many contributions to aerospace, I’m ashamed to say that I’d never heard of David Gold, in whose honor the Parachute Museum was established. As a 13 year old, Gold was inspired by an exhibition jumper at Queens, New York. He visited local parachute factories and became acquainted with parachute pioneers Floyd Smith and Colonel Edward Hoffman at the McCook Parachute Branch (two more people I need to learn more about).Gold became a parachute rigger, designer, developer, and fabricator of specialized parachutes for personnel (including patents for a parachute riser system and the “guidable” parachute) and missile recovery systems, including the Apollo spacecraft. Think, for a second, about that last one. Walking on the moon is one thing, but without Gold’s Apollo parachute work…
Among the parachute pioneers I met at the next exhibit, only one—General William “Billy” Mitchell—was familiar. He was behind the McCook Field Parachute Branch, which commenced operations in October 1918. One member of this team, Floyd Smith, a former circus acrobat, race car driver, and test pilot, made a radical proposal, pilots should wear the parachute, not be connected to one mounted in the airplane, which would allow the airman to open the chute once clear of the airframe. This was radical because in those early days, everyone believed that freefall was a sure cause of unconsciousness.
Harold Harris was the first to save his life with McCook’s freefall parachute when he bailed out of malfunctioning Loening PW-2A monoplane. He landed at 403 Valley Street in Dayton, and when his rescuers reached him, he said, “I’m not hurt, just excited.” I’ll say. Besides preserving his life, Harris became the inaugural member of the Caterpillar Club, named for the insect that spun the silk fiber used in early parachute canopy’s. Membership is earned by employing a freefall parachute when an aircraft ceases safe operation. By the 1950s the club had more than 80,000 members, including Charles Lindbergh, General Jimmy Doolittle, President George H.W. Bush, and two Ohio boys, John Glenn and Neil Armstrong.For dessert, the Parachute Museum served two succulent morsels of aviation trivia. First, most aviation geeks know that Operation Paperclip was the U.S. operation that scooped up the German rocket scientists who were the foundation of the U.S. space program. Paperclip also brought German’s top parachute designers to the United States, and most of them, went to work at Wright Field’s Parachute Branch Equipment Laboratory. And they tested their new designs in a vertical wind tunnel (who knew?), built in 1945 and still in use today. And a vertical wind tunnel might be the only way I’ll ever willingly experience freefall. But if I’m wearing a chute in a plane that breaks… — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Made-to-Order GA & Economic Exclusivity
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Economically, Piper Aircraft’s recent announcement that that it has gone totally made-to-order, makes sense. Unsold aircraft, commonly called “white tails” (a term that first described unsold airliners, identified by vertical stabilizers unadorned by an airline logo or livery paint scheme), can sequester needed finite financial resources redeemable only when the aircraft is sold. Only manufacturing new aircraft to each customer’s order preserves scarce resources in a more liquid form, ready to irrigate some aspect of business in need of financial hydration.But making anything to order says something more than efficiently using financial resources. It implies exclusivity, a degree of access or acquisition available only to those with the requisite supply of money, time, and dedicated determination. Consider, a synonym for made-to-order is custom made. Clothing is a common consumable that costs more when custom-made than purchased off the racks.
General aviation is no different in this regard than a suit of clothes, and the Brits employ a term that connotes perfectly the exclusivity of anything custom-made: bespoke. Born in the 16th century, it derived from the verb “bespeak,” whose definition is “to order or arrange in advance.”
Before the Industrial Revolution and the miracle of mass production, almost everything was bespoke. Affordable mass produced products created the mass market that turned the surviving made-to-order artisans who catered to those who could afford their prices unreduced by any economies of scale.
Changes in market desires can have the same effect, and this certainly seems to be the general cause of general aviation’s decline. Just as the average person turned away from the critter-powered wagon when self-propelled modes of transport became affordable, the average person has turned to other recreational and professional activities that require a substantially less significant investment of time, money, and effort than aviation.Still, there are connoisseurs of animal-powered wagons, and if they don’t possess the necessary means to invest in the custom-made recreation or the restoration of the vehicle that is their passion, they will make the sacrifices needed to achieve their goal. It seems clear that this is where aviation is today.
For myriad reasons, both financial and emotional, aviation is not for everyone. The resulting reality is that rather than pining for what was, we aviation aficionados should accept and work within the new normal. For those who’ve been flying through this transition, bespoke GA is way more expensive, but such is the price of participation.
There are alternatives, but the ultimate made-to-order airplane, the amateur-built experimental aircraft, is another subset of the fraternity of aviation geeks. For those not ready to bust a knuckle now or in the days after, Piper’s decision to make every airplane to order will ensure general aviation’s future for as long as there are individuals with the dedicated interest and ability to pay the price of their passion. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Forget the Cost of Learning to Fly, Think Value
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Forget the Cost of Learning to Fly, Think ValueYou’ve obviously thought of learning to fly or you wouldn’t be here right now. Spend a little time reading Richard Bach’s classic Jonathan Livingston Seagull and I guarantee you’ll be putty in the hands of any flight instructor who offers you a demo flight. You may not even need an airplane.
OK, back to reality … where everyone remembers how damned expensive it is to learn to fly. Blah, blah, blah.
Really?
Cost Vs. Value
Forget what everyone else has told you about why no one learns to fly anymore and prepare your mind for a few fresh ideas.
When you stroll around a new-car showroom or troll the Internet for a set of wheels, is cost the only thing on your mind? I doubt it. If it were, how could Toyota, GM, Honda and the rest have sold all those electric cars? They’re way more expensive than my gas-driven Mini Cooper, the one I’ve been driving for 10 years now … with no payments for the last six. If you’re outside the 1%, you probably think about buying a car in terms of the number of monthly payments before that baby’s yours.
Consider school today. The cost of our daughter’s college is enough to melt the brains of people who don’t have kids. Luckily she’ll only be 22 when she graduates which means she’ll have many years ahead to add her two cents to the entertainment world she loves based on her education.
When we talk flying though, everyone zeroes in on the cost per hour and little else.
But what if we treated learning to fly like a college education or a new car and amortized the cost … spread it out over a few years. What happens next is simply magical. The price of learning to fly begins to look affordable as the raw dollar issue slips to the back of your focus much like minimizing a tab on a browser. You know it’s still there, but it’s just not staring you in the face every moment of the day.
AOPA’s Reimagined Cessna 152 Jim Knollenberg told me the other day that earning a private pilot certificate today, start to finish, probably runs between $10,000 to $12,000. He’s president of Pilot Finance Inc., an Illinois-based company that finances both the private pilot certificate and the instrument rating for the short of cash. (more…)
