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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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Pay Attention to California School Regs
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Flight schools and instructors nationwide should be paying close attention to California Assembly Bill 48 (AB-48), which imposes new requirements (and fees that pay for their administration by the Bureau of Private Post-secondary Education) on those who educate pilots aspiring to an aviation career. (Schools and CFIs that teach people to fly for recreation are exempt.) This is legislation that could easily travel to other states. If they want to avoid the situation those in California now face, schools and instructors must break out of their aviation cocoons and get proactive.
Breaking out of the cocoon in critical. AB-48 makes clear that flight schools and instructors are not in the aviation business. They are in the education business, specifically post-secondary education, which AB-48 conventionally defines: “Postsecondary education” means a formal institutional educational program whose curriculum is designed primarily for students who have completed or terminated their secondary education or are beyond the compulsory age of secondary education, including programs whose purpose is academic, vocational, or continuing professional education.In response to AB-48 many schools and CFIs say they are already regulated by the FAA. And when it comes to the subject they teach—aviation—that’s true. Nearly three dozen other fields, from acupuncture and auto repair to engineering and veterinary medicine, are in the same situation. There are an estimated 400,000 students paying more than $4.5 billion in tuition to private post-secondary schools in roughly three dozen career fields, and, like aviation, each of them must meet the minimum knowledge and skill standards for their chosen field. AB-48 is all about the business operations at these schools, not the curriculum. (See my previous post on the subject: California Requires Pro Training Standards That Don’t Involve Stick & Rudder Education.)
Aviation was exempt from the old post-secondary regs, and the Initial Statement of Reasons explains why AB-48 “Repeal[ed] section 73470 (FAA Certified Flight Schools) – “This section is obsolete because it is based on the former law.” The same rationale applies to truck drivers and others, so it’s not just about aviation. The tacit reiteration is that AB-48 is not about what a school teaches, but rather the sound operation of an educational institution, which includes protecting students.
Looking at it another way, no matter what their course of study, had private post-secondary schools followed accepted educational business practices, legislators wouldn’t have to impose the requirements on all of them to protect students from the unscrupulous few.
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Steve Wood: Flying for a Record Purpose
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Pilots earn their certificates for many reasons, but it’s been my experience that they only keep flying after the checkride if they have a goal, a purpose for being airborne more satisfying and fulfilling than the empty aeronautical nourishment of the hundred dollar burger.
For some it’s exploring the backcountry. For others it is aerobatics. And for Steve Wood, it is setting FAI world speed records over a recognized course in this homebuilt Glasair Aviation GlaStar, affectionately known as Goofy, for its N-number N600FY. I’ve mentioned Steve before, in Looking Up to Sustain a Future in Aviation, and noted that he’d set 90 world speed records. Just before the three-day weekend I got an e-mail from Steve. He mentioned that he’d just run across the March 9 post, and “I thought you might like to know that on 16 April—yes, I took a day off from Sun ‘n Fun—I provisionally set a further 11 FAI World Records bringing my total to 101 records.”
In his usual manner, he planned the out and back flight to Nassau, Bahamas, with precision and attending to the multitude of details required for any record attempt. The success of any record attempt is determined by the planning, he says. To ensure the accuracy of the overhead times at each of the cities to and from the international destination (Nassau), he flies IFR and talks to each tower before the flight.
Five of Steve’s April 16 city pairs were Daytona, Orlando, Titusville, Vero Beach, and Fort Pierce to Nassau, a total one-way distance of roughly 350 nautical miles. On his way home to Spruce Creek, a fly-in community outside of Daytona Beach, he set another five world records from Nassau to the cities he passed over on the way down. Number 11 was a round-trip record between Daytona and Nassau. His top speed was 240.47 km/h (149.43 mph) between Nassau and Titusville. “Why did I do this? Well, it’s OK having the most records of any British pilot and the most records set in a US registered homebuilt, etc., etc. But I thought I would be the very first to break the 100 world record barrier. Others may set more records than me in years to come, but now at least I will have been the first to break the 100 record barrier—a bit like breaking the sound barrier for the first time!”
And in the process, he brings attention to the causes for which he flies, Flying Scholarships for the Disabled, Able Flight, and EAA Young Eagles. Most who learn of Steve’s accomplishments are, like me, impressed, thankful…and jealous. Others feel threatened for some insecure reason, and they have whispered to me that Steve sets records for personal glory. My only response is a single-word question: So? And if the whispers get a bit uppity and self-important, I pose another question: What keeps you flying regularly and, more importantly, what have you contributed to the world of flight?” — Scott Spangler
Technorati Tags: FAI World Records,City-to-City Speed Records,Recreational Aviation,Steve Wood,GlaStar -
DC-3 Reunion Anchors Reflective Airline Arc
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Reflection is an unintended consequence of a wide interest in aviation, and connecting past with present is the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh reunion of the iconic airplane that earns its keep still, even as it approaches its 75th birthday. Some call it the DC-3, others know it as the C-47 or R4D, and it is remanufactured for 21st century service as the BT-67 at Basler Turbo Conversions, across the airport from the AirVenture Grounds.A mass arrival of this patriarch of aviation is planned for AirVenture’s opening day, Monday, July 25, and an organization—The Last Time—was formed to make it happen, safely and on time. More than 40 of these historic airplanes will gather the weekend before, July 24-26, and a handful of events have been planned at the rendezvous airfield in Rock Falls, Illinois. (The Whiteside County Airport, SQI, is on I-88, the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway, 143 nm south-southwest of OSH.)
My first flight was on a mallard-tailed North Central Airlines DC-3, which carried my mother and me, a mid-1950s toddler, to visit grandma in Battle Creek. Later, I spent uncounted hours reading the exploits of pilots who flew it in civilian and military service. Given its uninterrupted tenure and reliable service in even the most dire situations, the DC-3 embodies the ideals of what commercial aviation should be and it is this spirit with which I measure what commercial aviation has become. And when I read stories like “As Attention Wanders, Rethinking the Autopilot” in the Chicago Tribune and ” Future airline pilots may be less experienced, less ethical, in short supply, NTSB told” in the New York Times, I think of a story Ernie Gann told me, in Hostage to Fortune, I think. He was a new copilot, wrestling with stormy weather through the controls. To simulate lightening, perhaps, his crusty old captain flashed matches to flames before his eyes.
Ignoring these incendiary distractions Ernie concentrated on flying his beloved DC-3. Less than pleased to be so challenged, he was happy to be sitting in that seat, understanding what a privilege it was. Oh, how far aviation has come, how much it has gained—and how much it has lost. Maybe aviation today needs to recapture some of the old spirit or, at least, to be reminded of it. A reunion of former civilian and military DC-3 crews and passengers is one of The Last Time’s Whiteside Airport activities. It will be interesting to hear their reflections on the arc of airline progress. — Scott Spangler
Technorati Tags: DC-3,C-47,R4D,The Last Time,EAA AirVenture Oshkosh,North Central Airlines,Ernie Gann,airline flying
