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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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Artificial Intelligence: The Perfect Pilot?
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On the eve of the Paris Air Show, Boeing announced its next step in developing an autonomous airliner. With artificial intelligence (AI) making the decisions of a perfect pilot, said a number of different sources who covered the Boeing media session, the initial experiments will fly simulators. Because Boeing will conduct further experiments in a real, live, flying airliner next year, my guess is that the sim flights will be final confirmation of existing AI technology.Reading the various reports of Boeing’s announcement, the Seattle Times’ report was the most thought provoking. Acknowledging that the technology for block-to-block flights already exists, the aerospace reporter, Dominic Gates, said the AI challenge was considerable: “Think about a machine that could do what US Airways Capt. Chesley Sullenberger did in New York City in 2009.” And he posed other challenges the AI perfect pilot might have to address, such as diverting a flight in response to a passenger facing a medical emergency.
There’s no denying the challenges the AI programmers face, but if they orphan the emotional cousins of ego and hubris, they will achieve their goal and aviation AI has a better than even chance of success in achieving a perfect pilot safety record. (The aviation pros I feel for will be the technicians who maintain these systems, because the onus of safety will be largely on their shoulders.)
I’ve never had the honor of meeting Capt. Sullenberger, but judging him by his decisions that day, he is an uncommon aviator who ruthlessly deals with conditions and situations as they are, not as he might hope them to be. Drawing on his knowledge of aircraft performance, his altitude and position, and an uncountable number of other factors, he turned final approach to the best option available to him. There’s no reason to believe that AI’s decision making in similar circumstances wouldn’t be as logically pragmatic.The AI outcome for a medical emergency could be even better. After the flight attendant conveyed the particulars of the passenger’s medical emergency to AI cockpit, the perfect pilot, which always knows exactly were it is, would quickly search some database for the nearest airport served by the hospital best suited to deal with it and then notify everyone involved of what was needed when and where.
When this system is certificated, I would happily fly with an AI perfect pilot, but only if the airlines change course on their coach class accommodations. After reading Paying the Price for 8 Days of Flying in America, I have no doubt that if this ever happens, it will be ages after AI’s perfect pilot took its place at the pointy end of the winged cattle car. — Scott Spangler, Editor.
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Father’s Day 2017
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Micah (R) with his pop Father’s Day is special to me for a couple of reasons.
My own dad is gone, but of course I’m a father myself so it seems like the idea’s certainly living on in our family.
But my talented buddy Micah – you might know as our Maine Man from the Airplane Geeks – sent this to me a few weeks back and asked if I’d like to give it a listen. I did and realized it’s absolutely worth sharing with other folks whose own pops, dads, or fathers have passed on, because Micah’s sense of story telling is worth spending a few minutes of your Father’s Day on.
Here’s Micah’s piece called My Six-Foot Father.
Happy Fathers Day everyone.
Rob Mark
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Erudite Aviators Provide Solace & Solutions
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Looking at the challenges aviators face foretells of a seemingly insurmountable struggle to sustain our beloved avocation that is, for a lucky few, also an occupation. What makes this situation worse is that most of these challenges pit aviator against aviator.The summit of challenge mountain is the proposed privatization of ATC. Supported by airline aviators, the user fees that would support it would, it is safe to assume, eliminate the ticket taxes the airlines pay on each passengers base ticket, which does not include the plethora of additional fees. In its place, the airlines would add the ATC user fees to their ticket prices. Business and general aviators would have to make life-changing financial choices if they want—or need—to continue flying.
Other challenges are more insidious because they are unintended consequences of aviation’s technological solutions in its ceaseless quest to improve safety. Take, for example, FAA Safety Alert for Operators (SAFO) 17007, Manual Flight Operations Proficiency. It urges aviators to maintain and improve “the knowledge and skills” they first mastered as students, manipulating the stick and rudder for a safe flight.
The challenge here is not mastering the necessary knowledge and skills. It is finding the appropriate balance between the contribution technology makes to safety and the aviators ability to realize when he or she needs to take over, and to have the current stick-and-rudder muscle memory essential for maintaining that safety.When considering the logical and disparate possible outcomes becomes morbidly oppressive, I seek solace from the erudite aviators who live on my bookshelves. From them I intuit solutions to today’s challenges, should aviators today choose to make the changes necessary to achieve them.
To many, Nothing By Chance, Richard Bach’s 1969 book is a nostalgic tale of a group of aviators who spend the summer living the barnstormer’s life. But it is so much more, if one reads carefully. It shows how a group of aviators, with different needs, achieved a shared goal financed by an unpredictable number of $5 flights. Naturally, these humans had their disagreements, but in the end they worked them out to the benefit of all. A similar outcome is possible if the spectrum of aviators unite in opposition to a privatized ATC system funded by user fees and agree on possible solutions that benefit all of aviation, not just one of its communities.
Any aviator who manipulates an airplane’s controls should sit down with Wolfgang Langewiesche at least once a year, just to remind themselves that the fundamentals of flight he analyzed in Stick and Rudder are universal to all fixed-wing aircraft regardless of size. Then sit down with Michael Maya Charles who melds hands-on manipulation with the human metaphysical factors that play a critical role in their acquisition, sustainability, and employment.Beyond solace, spending time with these erudite aviators may also inspire solutions to the challenges that the industry—and its individual participants—today face. But they will not be explicitly clear on the page, they will grow in the reader’s mind, especially one prepared for the implantation of new ideas by a sufficient supply of imagination unbounded from what was and what is, freed to consider what could be. — Scott Spangler, Editor