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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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EAA AirVenture 2023: Change is the Only Constant
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In decades past, back when its moniker matched its location, one of Oshkosh’s primary draws was learning about new products and programs that their creators debuted on aviation’s primary stage, where an eager audience hungrily consumed every word and image. For those of us for whom Oshkosh was work, every day started at Press HQ, where we structured our day while looking at the week’s press conference matrix. Every available block of presentation time was filled with strips of paper announcing who and what, with each day’s primary announcements ensuring good attendance by offering a meal, either breakfast or lunch.Time has diminished those days. It started around the time when Oshkosh became AirVenture and the internet started to replace Oshkosh as the deadline date for introducing a new product or program. Now these creators have a direct digital connection with curious consumers and we working press who help pass the word on what’s new. The press conference matrix for AirVenture 2023 was somewhat busy on Monday and Tuesday, but thereafter it was mostly barren, except for the end-of-day EAA briefing and Q&A session.
Most of the press conferences talked about things already announced online. In many cases, they might be considered footnotes that added or further explained the subject product or program, with the opportunity to ask questions and not have to wait for an answer by return email. If there was a surprise that united these media gatherings, it was that each of them, airframers, powerplants, props, avionics, and accessories, all addressed their efforts to develop and support their workforces.
Companies like Garmin and Piper have dedicated facilities for employee well-being and health services for employees and their families. Daher has an internship that sent two American college students to its TBM facilities in France and two French interns to its Kodiak facilities in Sand Point, Idaho. And Daher gets bonus points because it chose interns never interested in or involved with aviation. A journalist asked one of them, Alison Margarita, who’s pursuing an industrial engineering degree in Pennsylvania if she was now considering a career in aviation. Enthusiasm doesn’t begin to define the sincerity of her affirmative answer.
When exploring the grounds, many exhibitors clearly were trying to grow their respective workforces. Most of the major airlines, from Delta to Southwest, set up substantial chalets and in each of them, they were recruiting pilots, technicians, and dispatchers. Perhaps the biggest change among the exhibitors was Boeing, which erected a huge, air-conditioned chalet adjacent to the West Ramp, aka Boeing Plaza, that the company recently signed up to sponsor for some AirVentures into the future.The Boeing chalet was also home to companies the aviation behemoth has purchased over the years, Jeppesen and ForeFlight, which has contributed to the trend consolidation of the industry. Financial realities and the retirement of baby boomers who founded aviation companies whose offspring are disinterested in taking over the family business are also contributing to the shrinking industry trend. And each year at AirVenture one sees the changes, some of them subtle, noticeable only by those who have previous experience with which to compare them.
An easy one was the move of the Federal Pavilion from a dedicated structure (which was one of the dedicated exhibit buildings before EAA built the four massive exhibit hangars) to cover a third of Exhibit Hanger D. The more subtle examples are positional juxtapositions one would not have seen a few years ago when an exhibitor had to be an aviation company to get a booth, especially one of the double-wide exhibit spaces at the end of a row. And this year a mattress company was offering its restful wares at the end of one row, and Pratt & Whitney was touting its latest PT-6 turboprop one row over.Please do not misconstrue these observations as a curmudgeon’s rant, they are anything but. They are observations that give context to the passage of time and the inexorable changes that come with it. AirVenture this year celebrated several airplane birthdays, and more than once I heard “I can’t believe the RV-10 [or the anniversary airplane they were looking at] came out 20 years ago!”
This exclamation is usually followed with a question, “Where’d the time go?”
Socrates answered this question long ago when he observed that “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Bluntly put, it means people who pose this interrogative have not been paying attention to the life that envelopes them. They have not taken the time to recollect their experiences, taken the time to collate them and compare them in context, and contemplate what these examinations say about the future. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Updated AC Reiterates Nontowered Airport Procedures & Responsibilities
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Back in the day, airports without air traffic controllers working to maintain order and predictable behavior from the pilots flying to and from it were often referred to as “uncontrolled” because they did not have an air traffic control tower, or the tower was outside its operating hours. Because “uncontrolled” implied chaotic, unpredictable aircraft operations at these aerodromes, the FAA and attuned educators started referring to them as “nontowered” airports. They supported this more precise moniker because the FAA proffered operational guidance to pilots that, if followed, would bring some predictable order to this chaos. In its never-ending effort to achieve this goal, the FAA issued on June 6, 2023, an updated Advisory Circular 90-66C, Non-Towered Airport Operations.Most of its 28 pages reiterate the regulatory requirements, recommended operations, and communication procedures pilots should embrace when flying to and from nontowered airports. The changes to this guidance “reflect current procedures and best practices” when pilots are not directed by a tower controller. (Not that a controller ensures failsafe airport operations, given the recent spate of runway incursions and frantic calls to abort takeoffs and landings at various terminal hubs.)
What reading each of the AC’s 28 pages makes clear is that flying to and from a nontowered airport is significantly more involved and complex than radioing the tower (or approach control) at the appropriate time and place and then letting the controller lead you by the hand, so to speak, to a safe landing. Absent this guidance, pilots should read the 28 pages, follow its guidance, and remember to keep their respective heads on traffic-scanning swivels to see—and avoid!—those pilots who have not bothered with the necessary nontowered airport preparations. They should not become complacent and depend on other pilots to announce their positions and operational intentions. Not all nontowered airport denizens are equipped with radios.
To ratchet up the nontowered airport complexity, add ultralights, gliders, and parachute jumpers to the mix of traffic. When you get right down to it, flying to and from a nontowered airport is the ultimate test of a pilot’s aeronautical knowledge, aeronautical decision-making, and ceaseless see-and-avoid searches of the surrounding airspace. Put another way, towered and non-towered operations are akin to VFR and IFR flight. Perhaps, one day, if pilots don’t fully accept the responsibility involved, the FAA will establish a nontowered airport rating to operate at them. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Risk Assessment & Responsibility
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The North Atlantic compaction of the Titan submersible on its Titanic adventure has generated some interesting media efforts that approach the mishap from various angles. It has a lot in common with airborne adventures. The only difference is the viscosity or density of the fluid of its environment. The fundamental risks are the same. And so are the responsibilities.Ultimately, each of us is responsible for the consequences of our decisions be they prosaic or once-in-a-lifetime. People, it seems, often forget this when the consequences turn out oppositely from what they expected. They start looking for someone or something to blame, assuming they survived, but this does not change the outcome, especially when the decision includes the possibility of fatal consequences.
Every aspect of life is a calculated risk, and every decision could have fatal consequences if one does not consider every aspect involved with the forthcoming risk. Consider crossing the street. You need to look both ways. But you also need to look in the correct direction first, into the oncoming traffic of the lane you’re about to step into. In many parts of the world, that is to the left. But if you employ this rote risk assessment in places where they drive on the other side of the road, looking left could be the last thing you do as you step in front of a truck bearing down on your vulnerable six-o’clock posterior.
Risk assessment is simply the process of pragmatically searching for everything that could go wrong. This process is the same whether you’re crossing the street or buying a six-figure ticket for a ride into space or the Titanic Deep. The price of the forthcoming adventure in no way guarantees its degree of risk or level of safety. Another immutable reality of life is that nothing is 100 percent safe. Whether aiming for Darwinian notoriety or just trying to make it through the day, we humans continue to make decisions that lead to fatal consequences.
In making decisions, acceptance of the potential risks is a factor to go forward or return a no thanks. A related responsibility is not taking others with you without giving them a full accounting of potential consequences so they can conduct their own risk assessment while there is adequate time to say no thanks and decide to do something else. Pushing forward when the fuel gauge tickles E or the ceiling and visibility merge into a seamless grayscale puts pilots in the unconscionable position of deciding the future of others’ lives.
Adventures into fluids thick (water) or thin (air) usually involve complexities beyond the comprehension of nongeeks, but that doesn’t mean the prospective adventurer can’t ask questions, starting with “What outside agency or organization has examined the pertinent details and tools of this adventure and found it reasonably safe.” And does this examination list the potential unwanted outcomes and how the operator has prepared for them?
Pragmatism and skepticism are life-sustaining traits key to any of life’s risk assessments, and if the adventure being offered seems too good to be true, no matter the price, a bold slug of cynicism is an excellent filter for any sales pitch. — Scott Spangler, Editor