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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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Airport Survey: AirVenture Edition
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When the buzz of airplanes heading east to Oshkosh overpowered the humming air conditioner, it seemed a good time to wade into the humid heat for an airport survey. For decades, I’ve wondered how the small town airports fared just before and during EAA AirVenture, and this year I promised myself to find out.
Piper Cherokees of all vintages covered the ramp and upper reaches at Waupaca Municipal Airport (PCZ), a 42-mile drive northwest of OSH. A decade ago, Terry Hawking and his wife, Karen, decided that they would like to fly 50 Cherokees to the 50th Oshkosh, said Dwayne “Ferg” Ferguson, director of air operations for Cherokees to Oshkosh, also known as C2O. The group got close. “We had 50 signed up, and we have 41 making the flight tomorrow. Every year, about 25 percent of those who sign up can’t make it for one reason or another and this year it was just 20 percent.”There are four other mass arrival groups, said Ferg, and they all muster at and depart from airports south of OSH. There wasn’t a lot of choices for the Cherokees, so they started looking to the north and Waupaca’s airport manager at the time, the late Pete Anderson, “always took care of us like family; we are a family, and Waupaca is home.”
Pete’s daughter, Beth, continues as airport manager, and the Cherokees are not the airport’s only AirVenture activity. “Later in the week, the Red Star warbird group will be here for an activity with the residents of the Wisconsin Veterans Home in nearby King,” she said. Until then, C2O fills almost every corner of the airport, including the conference room where the leaders are briefing the final details of mass arrival on Saturday, July 20.Waupaca actually works better for us, said Ferg, because we are arriving from the north. “Groups coming from the south affect the individuals flying the Fisk arrival path. We can fly along the east side of Oshkosh and enter a right downwind to land on either end of the Runways 18/36 or 9/27. That’s what the three-ship elements were practicing today.”
Cherokee pilots need about 500 hours and must attend a formation clinic, which Cherokees to Oshkosh holds across the nation during AirVenture’s interstitial months. But that’s not set in stone, said Ferg, an ATP, CFII, A&P-IA with 22 years flying C-130s for the US Air Force, followed by some airline work. What matters more is currency.“I’ve had pilots with 200 hours, but they logged it all in the last year, so they are very proficient. I’ve also had 1,500-hour pilots, but they logged it over 20 years. They were not very proficient, and it showed,” said Ferg. “Most people are trainable. If your objective is to get into Oshkosh, this is the safest way to do it. You know who you’re flying with; you know exactly when you’re going in; and the sky is clear for all 41 of us.”
And they have to be on the ground at 1000 on Saturday, July 20.
Wautoma Municipal Airport (Y50) is a 43-mile drive due west of OSH, and it is a popular waypoint for those heading to AirVenture, said Richard Jorgensen, co-airport manager, who was talking to Jeff, a Cessna 180 pilot from North Dakota who stops for fuel and a break before getting in line for the Fisk arrival. Sean Curry, the other co-airport manager, explains that it is an unpaid position, and that the two have been sharing the responsibilities for a decade.How much activity Wautoma sees depends on the weather. Last year, when ATC closed the door to arrivals on Saturday and Sunday, “we had 85 airplanes here,” said Richard, tucked between all the hangars and herringboned on the ramp so they’d all fit. “We opened some hangars, hauled people here and there in a 12-passenger van, and the pizza place in town was making constant deliveries.”
The airport’s EAA Chapter 1331 puts on breakfast the Sunday before AirVenture officially starts. “We tried having breakfast every morning, but we just didn’t have enough people camping here,” he said, adding that the campers really fell off when EAA increased it airplane camping acreage a few years ago.And then there are the regulars. Some stay here in town and drive in. “We get rental cars for them, and a number of airplanes fly in, spend the night, and then go to OSH.” One of them landed and taxied in as we were talking, a pristine 1934 Waco YKC in the livery of the Ohio National Guard. I followed Sean to the ramp, where he greeted the pilot and his wife by name, and pointed at the hangar that would be the airplane’s overnight home.
Brennand Airport (79C), in Neenah, Wisconsin, is, depending on your mode of transportation, 10 nautical miles direct, or a 15-mile drive from OSH. When I dropped in on Friday afternoon, there was an older Cessna 210 tied down on the grass, and the airport facility was dark, empty, and locked. While I was looking for someone to talk with, a Van’s RV-6 landed, but it taxied past me and stopped at the far end of hangar row. With the heat index in triple digits, it wasn’t worth the walk.Thanks goodness for the Internet. Brennand’s website offers EAAers a place to park, refuel, and camp. It welcomes ultralights, LSAs, single and multiengine pistons, and helicopters to its paved, lighted 2,450-by-30-foot VFR runway. “There is an “unofficial’ parallel grass runway.
The large air-conditioned building offers restrooms, showers, laundry, and kitchen facilities. Guests have access to a computer and Wi-Fi. “If the building is locked, just call the phone number and we can give you an access code.”
Transient and overnight aircraft can park on the grass, and visitors are welcome to pitch a tent under their wing. Brennand charges nothing for parking or camping. It does ask that pilots bring their own tie downs and stakes. There are five permanent tie downs on the west side of the airport south of the 100LL fuel area. There are no reservations; it’s all first-come, first-served. For more information, contact Brennand’s owner/manager, Keith Mustain.
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87 Steps to the Moon
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Journey to Mission Control Enriches Memories of Apollo 11
A half century ago, I was one of the millions worldwide who watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bounce and bound across the surface of the moon. But I didn’t fully appreciate their accomplishment until July 10, 2019, 10 days after NASA and the National Park Service dedicated Apollo Mission Control, refurbished to its 1969 lunar landing configuration, as a National Historic Landmark, and 10 days before the 50th anniversary of the fulfillment of the team’s goal.This journey back to 1969 started at Space Center Houston, the civilian portal to the Johnson Space Center campus. More than a hundred of us climbed into the open-air tram for the flight through Houston’s humid heat to Building 30N, the Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. Mission Control Center . On the way, our guide, Jerry, pointed out the home for the Orion program and the Astronaut Training Center, available for tours with separate tram rides.
Closely clustered in 30N’s lobby, Jerry itemized a rather lengthy list of rules, and mentioned more than once, that we would need to climb 87 stairs to the restored mission control. There’s an elevator, he said, but it, too, is original, with room for six 1960-sized humans, “and it is slow.” Cell phones didn’t exist then, either, he said, so turn them off or silence them now. And keep them in your pockets or bags, he said, reemphasizing his repeated warning that we could take no photos or make any video or audio recordings until the presentation was over.And we should not lean on the counters in the viewing area and, please, to move to the end of the row to theater-like seats in the observation area. It, too, is in its 1969 configuration, right down to the small ashtrays on the back of every other seat. Most of the visitors had no idea what they were for, and many opened the lid and probed the recess with their skinniest finger. Apparently, the restoration was not total because no one I saw found a 50-year-old cigarette butt. Finally, we must be quiet as we climbed those 87 stairs because they passed an active second-floor mission control room, and we must not disturb them.
The presentation played on the two 19-inch CRT TVs mounted at the intersection of the ceiling, outside walls, and full-width window that separated the spectator seating from mission control proper. There were color TVs, and I wonder if the originals were black and white sets. The narrator was Gene Krantz, the flight director who told the Apollo 13 mission control team that “failure is not an option.” And on this journey, I learned that he was the flight director for the Eagle’s lunar descent leg.Ghosts who lived on the other side of the glass did most of the presentation’s talking through original audio recordings. Krantz introduced every phase of the flight, each one illustrated by different images on the big screens that spanned the front wall of mission control. On the rows of consoles that faced them, indicator lights danced and twinkled like some holiday celebration and smaller screens displayed another array of data unreadable from our seats.
The presentation was a déjà vu situation for me; not from a half-century ago (for the commercial TV networks never broadcast the “boring” mission control environment), but from the night before, when I watched the Apollo 11 documentary produced by CNN Films. This opportunity was serendipity. Visiting family who live in Houston, they were showing my wife and me how they cut their cable TV coax with online apps, and Apollo 11 led the list of new content on YouTube TV. (The content was so similar, I wonder if they edited the film into the shorter presentation, and added Gene Krantz.)
If you haven’t yet seen this film, don’t miss it. It reveals previously unknown (at least to me) aspects and insights to the mission that for too many of us is summarized by the lackluster video of Armstrong taking his first step off the LM. Buzz Aldrin gives us a crisper, better view of this step from his perch in the Eagle. This and other footage, not seen since it was shot a few days short of a half-century ago, separates this film from all the rest. And this, too, was serendipity, when the filmmakers found 160 reels of large format 70-mm film and more than 11,000 hours of uncatalogued original audio in the National Archives.
And then the filmmakers digitally scanned and enhanced this large format film to 4K, 8K, and 12K resolutions. At this level of detail, when you stare into the unblinking eyes and set faces of Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins as they suit up, you can viscerally feel their focused apprehensive anxiety. They know that this could likely be a one-way trip. You can see it in each of their faces. In a 2013 TV interview, replayed during this week’s Apollo mania, Buzz Aldrin said they gave themselves a 60 percent chance for success.
The trio presented much happier faces from their Airstream isolation on the USS Hornet (CV-12) which plucked them out of the Pacific. Some years ago, I saw an interesting display of this recovery, and that of Apollo 12, in the hangar bay of the Hornet, now a museum floating in San Francisco Bay. At the now-closed NAS Alameda, you’ll find it moored at the same pier where its predecessor, the USS Hornet (CV-8) loaded the Tokyo-raiding B-25s. It seems a safe bet that the faces of those 80 men might have mirrored those of the Apollo 11 crew.One of history’s many and ongoing rewards is how it transcends time, connecting past and present, as those who pursue it reveal new information that gives it new life and deeper meaning and context—and fuller appreciation. A half-century ago, my impression of our inaugural arrival on the moon focused on three men. Now, it encompasses the hundreds of humans who climbed those same 87 steps every day to make that arrival possible. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Flyboys World War II Perry Flag Flight
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One of history’s many rewards is discovering little known stories that enrich the significance of its mass market events, such as the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Bay in September 1945. There are a number of them, including the saga of the Perry flag, awaiting the curious in Flyboys: A True Story of Courage by James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers.The book’s core is about the fate of the flyboys, naval aviators, including George H.W. Bush, who attacked the Japanese radio station on Chichi Jima. Situated between between Japan and Iwo Jima, it was the communication link that would warn of approaching flights of B-29s from islands to the south.
Looking at the photo, you’ve likely guessed that shows General Douglas MacArthur at the surrender ceremony on the Missouri. If you look closer at the framed flag in the background, you’ll count 31 stars on it. The Perry flag, Bradley explains on page 303, is the linen US flag that Commodore Mathew Perry carried ashore when he stepped ashore in Japan in 1853. (Equally interesting, the Missouri was anchored in approximately the same position as Perry’s flotilla). But that’s not the really interesting part.
Until just before the surrender, the Perry flag was on display at a museum at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Someone thought its display at the surrender was significant enough to entrust it to a courier, Lt. John Bremyer. Starting from Annapolis, he took off from Iwo Jima on August 29, 1945, “the last leg of a record-breaking120-hour, 9,500-mile-long trip that had taken him through 12 time zones.”
Led astray by the record-breaking aspect of his trip, I expected to find some description of a flight on par with the Truculent Turtle, the Lockheed P2v Neptune that flew nonstop from Perth, Australia, to Columbus, Ohio—11,235 miles—in September 1946. Finding no joy, I went after Lt. Bremyer. There are a number of them, and the obituary of John K. Bremyer, a lawyer who died, at age 88, on April 17, 2008 in McPherson, Kansas, where he was born on April 5, 1920, mentioned that he’d carried Perry’s flag back to Japan.But there was no mention of a dedicated flight. Surely there must have been one because, Bradley wrote, Bremyer completed his mission when he handed the boxed flag to Admiral Halsey on the Missouri. “Then the weary lieutenant slept for two days.” The tantalizing details eluded me, and I couldn’t quit searching for them. Then I found Bremyer’s oral history at the Nimitz Education & Research Center at the National Museum of the Pacific War.
It turns out that there was no dedicated flight, which was slightly disappointing. On the other hand, I learned about a Priority One (or One Priority) World War II military travel voucher, which guaranteed a seat on the next airplane, regardless of type or what passenger got bumped, going in the right direction. When he reported to work that morning, he didn’t expect the assignment.
Bremyer was in the air that evening, headed to San Francisco. From there he took the next plane to Hawaii, then Johnston Island, Kwajalein, Guam, and then Iwo Jima. There “they were going to to put me on a destroyer, but that would take too long, so I got on a Black Cat PBY” that took him to Tokyo Bay, where a whaleboat from the Missouri collected him and Perry’s flag.Watching the proceedings from the above the main deck, Bremyer carried the flag, as well as news releases, photographs, and motion picture film of the surrender back to Washington. “I got on a PBM [Martin Mariner seaplane] back to Guam and basically followed the same route back to San Francisco,” the 85-year-old veteran remembered.
Perry’s flag is back on display at the Naval Academy Museum, and it is No. 89 in “A History of the Navy in 100 Objects.” It gives more background on the decision-making process that sent the flag to Japan, and it mentions Lt. Bremyer’s “record-setting” trip. But like Bradley in Flyboys, it doesn’t explain what record Bremyer’s trip set or surpassed. — Scott Spangler, Editor.
