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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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Redbird Migration: Technology as Teacher
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Deciding which breakout sessions was a vexing challenge at the Redbird Migration Flight Training Symposium held at the EAA Aviation Center in Oshkosh between October 10 and 18. Participants could pick six of 17 breakout sessions, with only four repeats: Redbird R&D; ATDs: FAA approval, Certification & Regs; Best Practices for Teaching in a Redbird; and Bringing Redbird GIFT into Your Flight School.GIFT—Guided Independent Flight Training—best articulated the sessions’ common denominator, technology as teacher. Learning to fly through self-study in a simulator is an interesting concept with a number of benefits. First, with an insufficient number of CFIs interested in exercising their teaching certificates, it allows one who teaches to supervise the education of more students. More importantly, it introduces more consistency in the presentation, practice, and evaluation of the of maneuvers GIFT teaches.
Pilot proficiency is the next step, and expanding the efforts and success of EAA AirVenture’s Pilot Proficiency Center is an ongoing goal. Proficiency is an ongoing challenge for pilots who fly 50 hours (or less) each year for their own pleasure. Working with an instructor in a sim, pilots chose from a wide selection of VFR and IFR scenarios. Few will disagree that the sim is a better—and more affordable—classroom than an airplane. In addition, like GIFT, each scenario provides consistency that levels the teaching field.Everyone agreed that increasing the benefit of this pilot resource depends on access and frequency. Billy Winburn of Community Aviation and Charlie Gregoire of Redbird Flight discussed ways sim-equipped flight schools could offer the scenarios at Pilot Proficiency Center on a Local Level.
A secondary benefit of all the simulator-based efforts was the growing ability to document a pilot’s progress from student to certificate to sustained proficiency. This was one of the topics Redbird’s Jerry Gregoire discussed at the Redbird R&D session. The proactive and interactive feedback pro and con about possible systems and their enhancements was an unexpected example of a diverse group working toward a common goal.
But maybe it was not that surprising, given the cautionary words of Bill Ayer, the retired pilot, chairman, president, and CEO of Alaska Airlines and the Alaska Air Group, one of the Migration’s featured speakers. Asking for a show of hands of those who measure and track their student completions, an isolated and lonely handful of arms reached to the homebuilt airplanes suspended above them.Therein lies one reason why only a small, guessed-at percentage of students conclude their training with a successful checkride. Recounting the challenges he addressed in revitalizing Alaska Airlines, Ayer made it clear that “what you measure gets done.”
Indeed. Imagine what the population of active pilots would number if just half of the students over the past three decades had realized their dreams of becoming a pilot. If the combination of dedication, innovation, and integration of practical technology glimpsed at the Redbird Migration spreads to just half of the nation’s flight schools, that outcome is entirely possible. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Redbird Migration Looks Back at the Future of Flight Training
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For the past six years, Redbird, which has developed a family of aviation training devices, has sponsored a flight-training symposium attended by a hundred or more of the land’s leading aviation educators. Known as the Redbird Migration, in the past this flock congregated at Redbird’s roost in Texas. For its seventh season, it met in Oshkosh, hosted by EAA.
For many of the participants, it was their first time in Oshkosh outside of EAA AirVenture, and the dearth of aircraft, people, and traffic disoriented them. Fortunately, Sean D. Tucker, the keynote speaker at the opening dinner on Monday, October 16, helped acclimate them. And talking with the educators reacclimated me with a community I was once intimately a part of, which I found disorienting.On one hand, they were exuberant about the future. With the airlines hiring and the entry-level positions now paying almost enough for students to repay their loans and put a roof over their head and food in the bellies, enrollments in their training courses was growing. And new and evolving technology (like a Redbird sim) enabled schools to make the most of their customers’ time and money.
At the same time, however, this migration was, for me, a groundhog day. Like the background soundtrack that provides continuity to a movie, the flight school educators discussed the same problems we were talking about nearly 30 years ago.
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Presidential Aircraft: Standing in History
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Following Interstate 70 from one assignment in Indiana to the next in Maryland, a sign announcing the approach of Dayton inspired a deviation. I could spare a few minutes for a quick walk through the fourth building at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, which opened in June 2016. Parking and admission are free, but my quick walk through turned into a nearly 3-hour investment because I didn’t expect an absorbing inside look at history in four presidential aircraft.Visiting before lunch on Wednesday in the final week of September, I had time to stand in the aisle of each, unsuccessfully trying to comprehend that I was following in the footsteps of Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower, each identified with a specific airplane powered by four robust piston engines, and SAM (for Special Air Missions) 26000, the VC-137C (a Boeing 707-320B). During its 36-year career, it served eight sitting presidents: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, and Clinton.
Of the aircraft in the museum’s Presidential Gallery, SAM 26000 is the most significant to Baby Boomers because they lived through its history. It is the airplane that carried Kennedy to Berlin in mid-1963 and his body home from Dallas six months later. You can think about that while reading the placard in the cabin where the crew removed a partition and seats to make room for his coffin. Pile on top of that the knowledge that this airplane carried Johnson to Vietnam and Nixon to China.
