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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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Learning From the Decisions of Others
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Aviation safety, when you get right down to it, is an endless round of risk assessment what ifs. There is much to learn when what ifs become real life right now. If you survive, that is. Another way to learn is from the decisions made by others. Call it aviation erudition, extensive knowledge acquired from books or other written materials, such as Callback, the monthly publication from NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System.
This fine and free publication is must reading for any safety conscious pilot, and the issues I most look forward to, because they keep my head in the risk assessment arena, are those like April 2023, whose headline poses this question: What Would You Have Done? Because no pilot can make (let alone survive) every manner of aeronautical mistake in every category and class of flying machine, Page 1 of this issue presents the essential facts from the spectrum of ASRS Safety reports, and then poses the headline question. Page 2 presents The Rest of the Story.
This issue presented three situations.
Dominoes in The Pattern set up a potential midair between a CFI doing pattern work with a student with an inbound flight aiming for the same runway and another plane departing on a crossing runway at a nontowered airfield.
Unmarked in Plain Sight recounts the situation where a UAS operator and commercial pilot who was training a new pilot for infrastructure inspections realized, after switching drones and taking off, that he’d forgotten to affix the FAA registration sticker to the airframe. The scenarios that introduce unfamiliar situations are risk assessment gold because they challenge you to logically distill the fundamental wort of your aviation knowledge.
The final scenario, The Wind in the Windows, presents a situation many general aviation pilots have faced, but when was the last time you heard a Boeing 767 captain writing about a cockpit window popping open at 110 knots on the takeoff roll. Not having a clue, I immediately scrolled the page for the rest of the story. Not wanting to spoil the lesson, you can read them all at the link above. Enjoy, and happy flying safely. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL; ON-DEMAND FLYING IN THE OLD DAYS
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Since there’s no statute of limitations on dumb, I present to you a flight that was not one of my finer moments. My co-pilot’s name has been changed to be certain he doesn’t receive any head-shaking comments from his flying buddies. RM
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A long, long time ago I flew a Cessna Citation 650 for a company that no longer exists. The people I flew with have all scattered to the four winds by now, too. So much for the disclaimer.
By today’s standards, a Citation 650 might seem like old technology. However, it was Cessna’s first swept-wing jet and could smoke along in the high 30s at 450 knots. It was my first swept-wing type rating, too: proof I’d made it to the big time. We flew the airplane on demand pretty much everywhere west of the Rocky Mountains. Day or night, good weather or bad—even a zero-zero takeoff or two—and the airplane never let us down. After six months or so in the left seat, I felt pretty comfortable—perhaps a bit too comfortable.
On-demand flying always seems to happen in the middle of the night—or in this case early one morning. It was just past midnight when dispatch rang. My co-pilot, Jerry, and I were to fly the Citation empty to Atlanta, pick up four people, and deliver them to Orlando Executive Airport. “OK,” was about all I could think to say at first since dispatch had just woken me out of two whole hours of deep sleep. “Can you tell me about the trip again?” I asked. I climbed out of bed and got a quick shave and shower before climbing first into my uniform and then my car headed to the hangar.After takeoff, we climbed southeast from Chicago under a brilliant moon and stars and touched down at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport about an hour and 30 minutes later. Jerry assisted the passengers while I dealt with the fuel. It was only then, as I stood on the ramp watching the fueler hook up, that I began to yawn. My watch said it was about 3:30 a.m. Chicago time. The line guy had to ask me twice before I acknowledged the fuel load, but I shook my head to snap out of it and climbed aboard for the leg to Orlando. Before the engine start, I looked over at Jerry as he was fastening his shoulder harness and slapped my face a few times gently to let him know I was sleepy. He just nodded and began to run the before-starts.
Once airborne, the barest beginnings of dawn were appearing. Jerry asked for lower and we saw Orlando from about 20 miles out. The controller cleared us for a visual approach. “The tower’s closed, so you’re welcome to stay with me for advisories all the way down.” I nodded approval, but Jerry just sat there. I watched him for a minute before Orlando asked if we’d heard the clearance.
“Hey, Jerry, approach is calling.” He snapped up as if he’d been dozing, except his eyes had been open. He answered approach, we landed safely, and soon we were helping the passengers transfer their bags to a waiting car.
As they left, my dispatch pager went off. I yawned again as I headed inside for the phone. “You guys have another trip,” said the same dispatcher when she answered my call.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I replied. I was exhausted just thinking about the trip back to Chicago from Orlando. She confirmed the next leg was up to Savannah to pick up three folks and drop them at LaGuardia before returning to Chicago. I sighed. It was already light in Orlando, but just before 6 a.m. in Chicago. I’d had two hours of sleep in the last 24 hours and Jerry about the same.
The New York area weather was calling for thunderstorms and rain by late morning when we’d arrive, so I called dispatch and acted like a captain, explaining that my co-pilot and I were both exhausted and probably shouldn’t be flying back to Chicago. I explained that we sure weren’t going to make three more landings, one of which was going to be in marginal weather when I’d had very little sleep in the past 30 hours. She agreed and told us to gas up and come home.
Jerry and I were relieved to be on our way home 20 minutes later and, because we were almost empty, we climbed northwest directly to FL390. On autopilot, there wasn’t much to do except sit back and wait to be cleared for the arrival in a few hours.
We talked to keep each other occupied because even ATC seemed a little slow, as most everyone else’s morning was just beginning. Then we started talking about how good our beds would feel when we got home. That was a mistake because a few minutes later we were both yawning hopelessly. I wished we’d added some fresh coffee before we departed Orlando, but we had skipped it to save time. There we were in cruise, watching the miles click off knowing we still had an hour and 30 minutes before we’d start down. Jerry and I both ran out of things to talk as I found myself staring ahead through the windshield.
Suddenly, my head snapped forward as I heard some kind of animal grunt. I blinked two or three times before I realized I’d been asleep and the animal was me. I shook my head and said to Jerry, “Wow, I’m really sorry, man. I must have been way more tired than I thought.” I looked over at my co-pilot and realized his head was resting against the right cockpit window as he softly snored. I looked out ahead and around the cockpit, but all seemed normal, so I gently shook my co-pilot to bring him back to life. I told him what had just happened, and his eyes grew wide as I’m sure mine already were.
I keyed the microphone and asked Atlanta Center for a time check. The controller responded nonchalantly with a hack confirming it was about 8 a.m. back home. Apparently, they hadn’t needed us for anything. Jerry and I could only guess at how long we’d both been out, but we had no trouble at all staying awake for the rest of the trip.
Rob Mark is the publisher of JetWhine.com
This story has been reprinted by permission of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.
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Commercial Pilots and the CFI Crossroads
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Talking last week to a 30-something professional pilot about his journey to a Gulfstream cockpit, he brought my interrogation to a dead silent stop with his answer to one question. After he summarized the chronology of his pilot certificates and ratings, I asked about the one he didn’t mention, the CFI—certificated flight instructor.Like a lot of younger pilots striving for paying careers, he said, given the pilot job market, the CFI is a crossroads between spending a lot more money and time to earn the most demanding and challenging pilot certification in all of aviation, and getting a job that pays money. The answer is clear, he said, especially if a new commercial pilot also has a multiengine rating.
In three decades of interrogating professional pilots, the only ones who typically didn’t have a CFI earned their wings in the military (but many of them earned their CFI after they transitioned to their airline life). I’m sure there are some professional pilots who clawed their way up the civilian ladder who skipped the CFI rung, but I don’t remember ever talking to any of them.
Talking to one who might be an exception does not define a new rule in today’s training and professional pilot markets without some quantification. Absent the resources to survey today’s population of pro pilots, I turned to the FAA’s U.S. Civil Airman Statistics. Among the many tables in each year’s spreadsheet is one that gives a 10-year look at initial certificates issued.
Here is the table of the initial issuance of commercial and flight instructor certificates earned in 2013 to 2022. (I added the yellow to remind me of the pandemic disruption.) At first glance, the numbers don’t seem to support that the CFI crossroads is trending no CFI. And without a doubt, the pilot job market is much better now than it was a decade ago.
What’s interesting is that the number of commercial certificates peaked in 2020, the year the CDC shutdown the nation on March 15, a shutdown that continued through the end of April 2020. The initial CFI issuances peaked last year. Equally interesting is the shared trend of increasing totals of issued certificates, which only took a short step back during the shutdown.
The low numbers in the early teens are surely the nagging consequences of the Great Recession of 2007-2008. But an equally important trend is the difference between those issued a commercial and a CFI. It was roughly 50/50 in 2017, the year my subject graduated from college. Naturally, this isn’t the best measure of a pilot’s crossroads’ decision, but it’s the best one readily available.
The number of commercial pilots who didn’t earn a CFI trended higher until the pandemic, so maybe there’s something to my pro pilot’s crossroads observation. Certainly, this topic might make an excellent survey and statistics project for someone now enrolled in an aviation degree program. What decision did you make at the CFI crossroads. — Scott Spangler, Editor