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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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UAV Pilot Shortage & Military Intelligence
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A recent New York Times’s article, “Drones Are Weapons of Choice in Fighting Qaeda, ” added to the mounting evidence that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are changing the face of military aviation. This is especially true in the U.S. Air Force, an organization run by pilots for pilots. Herein lies the problem: with a growing number of missions (they’ve nearly tripled over the past three years), there’s a shortage of UAV pilots.
This is where the military intelligence comes in. The Air Force says UAVs must be flown by pilots who are trained to fly manned aircraft. (I’m not sure why; I’ve tried flying remote-controlled models, and nothing I learned in the cockpit helped me.) So it has been re-equipping squadrons, like the NY ANG’s F-16 flying 174th Fighter Wing, with the MQ-9 Reaper. (I imagine the the pilots were thrilled to hear they’d soon be trading a cockpit for cubicle with a joystick and computer screens.)
On the one hand, this makes sense. UAVs, made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, cost less than F-16s and other flying hardware like it. Powered by a Rotax 914F, the MQ-1 Predator is 27 feet long and ca cruise at 25,000 feet for more than 20 hours. With its ground control station, it costs $7.6 million. The Reaper is slightly. Powered by a TPE 331 turboprop, it’ll cruise at 50,000 feet all day long. It costs $13.4 million (and unarmed versions now patrol U.S. borders from bases in North Dakota and Arizona.)On the other and, retraining fighter pilots to fly UAVs makes no sense at all. A recent article in the Air Force Times, “UAV pilot career field could save $1.5B,” showed why. It takes more than a year and $2.6 million to train a fighter pilot. It takes 20 weeks and $135,000 to train a UAV pilot, who doesn’t need to be a fighter pilot, hence the savings.
To be fair, the Air Force is considering this option, as a FlightGlobal.com story explained in “USAF tests non-aviators for unmanned air system operations.” But it seems clear that the generals in charge (all of whom are, most likely, pilots) are trying to sustain the heroic status earned by 20th century pilots. Training non-pilots to fly UAVs could be a solution, they say, but “it raises debate around issues such as whether operators will be awarded wings and earn flight rates of pay.”Like it or not, 21st century aviation is all about clinical and economic efficiency: technology rules and our master is the bottom line. You train to do the job at hand, no more, no less. It’s time to face reality. Professional pilots today, military or civilian, are systems operators. UAVs are just the next step in this process; they move the system operator from the cockpit to the cubicle. The military gets more bang for its bucks. Pilots give up g-forces–and the chance of a hostile death.
It will be interesting to see how the UAV pilot shortage shakes out in the short term. The long term seems clear, however. UAVs will be flying an increasing percentage of military missions, and as the need for UAV pilots grows, the bottom line will ultimately issue the training orders. — Scott Spangler
Technorati Tags: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,UAV,Predator,U.S. Air Force,Pilot Training,RC models,Reaper,military aviation -
EASA Taking Aim on U.S. Flight Schools
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Measuring the health of U.S. flight schools is easy. Grab the latest General Aviation Manufacturers Association Statistical Databook and see how many student pilot certificates the FAA issued last year. The most recent number is for for 2007: 66,793. If you think that’s dismal, look at 2005: 53,576, the all-time low since the first number on the list, 1978’s 137,032. The list is full of wild fluctuations. In 1979 the FAA issued 135,957 student tickets. The following year it issued 102,501, a drop of roughly 25 percent. 1981 was the last time the total had six figures. You have to admire flight school owners for sticking with such an unpredictable business.
If the European Aviation Safety Agency doesn’t make any changes or sign any new bilateral agreements, flight schools can expect the next big hit to enrollments in 2012, when EASA makes it more difficult to convert a pilot certificate earned in the U.S. to its European equivalent. That’s the effective date of EASA’s proposed “Requirements for the Acceptance of Licenses Issued by or on Behalf of Third Countries,” on page 159 of the larger body of proposed licensing and medical certification regs. Those “requirements” are above and beyond those required for earning the same license in an EASA member nation. Although the EASA proposal doesn’t come out and say it, the “third country” where Europeans most often learn to fly is, you guessed it, the United States of America, the land of inexpensive flying (for the time being, anyway). A good percentage of the student certificates the FAA issues go to Europeans, as do the follow-on private pilot certificates, and more than a few instrument ratings.
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ImagineAir Brings SATS to Life in Southeast
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In the spirit of my last post, Share Thumbs-Up Moments With Everyone, I just discovered a new air taxi company, ImagineAir, founded by two flight instructors who met at Georgia Tech. Based in Lawrenceville, just outside of Atlanta, ImagineAir made its first flight in early 2007. With a fleet of five Cirrus SR22-GTSs and 15 employees, the company nearly doubled its business in 2008, and in 2009 it hopes to double the size of its fleet. Not bad for a couple of 25-year-old pilots.
Originally, Aaron Sohacki and Ben Hamilton thought about starting a flight school. And then they discovered the air taxi model that grew out of NASA’s Small Aircraft Transportation System. You remember SATS, don’t you? In efficient airplanes, travelers avoid hub-and-spoke delays by flying directly to and from the GA airport closest to their home and destination. So the duo started making their business plans in 2004, while still in school. (Several other companies also fly the SR22 using the SATS model, there’s SATSair, South Carolina’s “air cab”, and Hopscotch Air, New York’s “air limo.”)The SR22 provides the efficiency. Using ImagineAir numbers of 200 mph cruise at 16 gph, the Cirrus delivers 12.5 mpg, much better than your Escalade, and passengers travel in the same level of luxury. In the SATS model, the average American business trip is one to three people driving several hundred miles. Deciding between an hour flight or three or four hours on the road isn’t a difficult choice, the founders knew. (more…)
