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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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Defensive Pessimism & Aviation Experience
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Pursing my eclectic interests, the library emailed a curbside pickup notice for David Rakoff’s Half Empty, as in the pessimist’s assessment of a glass vessel whose volume is divided between some unknown liquid and the ambient atmosphere. On the cover, a sunburst subtitle boldly says, “WARNING!!! No Inspirational Life Lessons Will Be Found In These Pages.”From his satirical perch and using examples from his own life, Rakoff devotes 224 pages to thoughtfully dismembering our sunny delusional culture, but the subtitle warning is a lie. On page 9 is an important life lesson, especially for pilots of all aeronautical genres who approach aviation with an optimistic outlook. An optimist is naïve he writes, supporting this evaluation with the words of a Prohibition-era newspaperman, Don Marquis, who wrote in 1927, “an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.”
Experience is important because, in most cases, it “shows you how much more you have to learn.” How well people, pilots especially, learn (and apply) experience’s lessons subtly refines their pedagogical inclinations, how well they perceive—and retain—what the situation is trying to teach them. Given the repetitive causes of most aviation accidents, what too many pilots seem to get from first-hand experience is the self-centered joy, if they survive.
If they don’t, aeronautical Darwinism guarantees that they won’t again forge the error chain that anchored their demise. But the resulting accident report shares the lesson with other aviators, if they are so interested. Whether they learn from the misadventures of others and how to avoid following in their flight-path or dismiss this shared experience by silently acknowledging that THEY would never do this, depends on how they see that aforementioned glass vessel.
With a pilot-appropriate weather example, Rakoff writes, “Where a strategic optimist might approach a gathering rainstorm with a smile as his umbrella, a defensive pessimist, all too acquainted with this world of pitfall and precipitation, is far more likely to use, well, an umbrella.”
He wasn’t writing to or for pilots, but this one fits. “Defensive pessimism is about sweating the small stuff, being prepared for contingencies like some neurotic Jewish Boy Scout, and in so doing, not letting oneself be crippled by fear.” It is, perhaps, the step before one becomes a pragmatic realist who, upon seeing the aforementioned vessel asks if the person responsible was adding to or draining away the liquid it contains. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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A Glimmer of Light Ahead for the Aviation Industry
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Boeing 737 MAX 7 For the thousands of us who call the aviation industry home, 2020 turned out to be a year we’ll be glad to see the end of although the change of calendars won’t wipe away many of this year’s problems. The highly-contagious coronavirus wreaking havoc on our planet stuck its ugly tentacles into nearly every aspect of life on Earth this year. The result has been people fleeing airline travel and anything related in unprecedented numbers. Airlines around the globe reacted by parking thousands of airplanes and furloughing employees as demand dropped to rock bottom levels. Thousands of others lost their jobs as commercial aircraft production nearly ground to a halt with the fallout moving downstream tearing the hearts out of many industry suppliers as it went. And all this in addition to the grounding of Boeing’s 737 Max back in March of 2019.
The much hoped-for follow-on aid from the US government recommended by economists on both sides of the aisle never materialized once paycheck protection funding ran out. Except for the stock market, the US economy sank into the worst recession since the Great Depression with food banks overwhelmed by the millions of other Americans out of work. Congress, at each other’s throats most of this year failed to be of much help. First-line health care workers, noble enough to risk their lives to help back in March, are now exhausted with no relief in sight.
Within a few months of the virus’ emergence, the commercial airlines made their best efforts to trim transmission by demanding everyone who did fly should wear a mask. The FAA decided such a rule was beyond the scope of their mandate. Interestingly hundreds of people have been permanently banned from some US airlines for refusing to don a mask claiming their right to personal freedom trumped any airline or public health demands.
Business and general aviation picked up some of the travel slack this year as people wealthy enough to use private aviation switched to a sector where they had better control over the potential transmission of a virus that is currently killing between 1,500 and 2,000 Americans each and every day. But without a permanent solution, like a vaccine, or something to absolutely convince people it’s once again safe to climb onboard a commercial airplane, the airlines and the rest of the industry are expected to spend years digging their way out of the billions of dollars in losses they’ve already experienced. (more…)
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Flight Operations in the CAR Era
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Many an aviation scribe has described what flying was like in now bygone days. Little did I suspect that the Civil Aeronautics Board was among them, or that Part 60 of the Civil Air Regulations (CAR), Air Traffic Rules, would paint such an effective word picture of what flight operations were like in the 1940s.The modern offspring of these Air Traffic Rules for flight operations are today enumerated online in 14 CFR Part 91, General Operating and Flight Rules. It, at my count, contains 281 boldface sections in 14 capital letter subparts, A through N, the last of which is dedicated to the Mitsubishi MU-2B special training, experience, and operating requirements. I didn’t count the seven appendixes.
Printed on uncoated paper with the texture and weight of the durable copy paper we fed into manual typewriters in the basic news writing class at Missouri’s J-school, the Superintendent of Documents at the Government Printing Office sold the 10-page document, “Effective October 8, 1947,” for 10 cents. I found it, quarter-folded, in the back of my dad’s last logbook.
It was a quick read, with 29 flight operations regs in four sections: 2 General 60.00 rules; 14 General Flight Rules (GFR, 60.1); 4 Visual Flight Rules (VFR, 60.2); and 9 Instrument Flight Rules (IFR, 60.3). I started in section 60.9, Definitions. Most of them would fit comfortably with today’s CFR 1.1. A number of them were, however, a necessary to understand yesterday’s airspace.60.913 said a Control Area is “airspace of defined dimensions, designated by the Administrator, extending upwards from an altitude of 700 feet above the surface, within which air traffic control is exercised.” I knew what a control zone was because airports still had them when I learned to fly in 1976. And that was it for airspace. Either you were in it, or you were not, and when you were in it, you followed the ATC instructions.
60.905, Airspace Restrictions, is another example of how flying used to be so much simpler and more enjoyable. Part 60 defines just two types of restricted airspace. “(a) Airspace reservation. An area established by Executive order of the President of the United States or by and State of the United States.” And “(b) Danger Area. An area designated by the Administrator within which an invisible hazard to aircraft in flight exists.”
VFR weather minimums and cruising altitudes is where Part 60 gets interesting.
At above ground level altitudes of more than 700 feet, pilots needed 3 miles visibility in control areas and control zones, and 1 mile everywhere else. In all airspace they needed to be 500 feet vertically and 2,000 feet horizontally from clouds. The same cloud clearances apply below 700 feet in control zones, and pilots still needed 3 miles visibility. “Control areas do not extend below 700 feet above the surface. Therefore the “elsewhere’ minimums apply.” Elsewhere, below 700 feet, pilots had to remain clear of clouds and have at least 1 mile visibility.
Cruising altitudes, in 1947, were divided not into two hemispheres, east or west, but quarters! When flying a heading of 360° to 089°, pilots flew at odd thousands of feet, 1,000, 3,000, etc. Between 090° and 179°, they flew odd thousands plus 500 feet, 1,500, 3,500, etc. Continuing around the compass, from 180° to 269° they cruised at even thousands, 2,000, 4,000, etc. And from 270° to 359° they flew at, you guessed it, even thousands plus 500 feet.
Finally, when cruising IFR, 60305, Right-side traffic, required “aircraft operating along a civil airway” to fly to the right side of that airway’s centerline, “unless otherwise authorized by air traffic control.” The reason, I’m guessing, is for the same reason the Strategic Lateral Offset Procedure (SLOP) is always on the right-side of the trans-oceanic routes. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Scott Spangler, Editor
