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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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Noise NPRM Proposes New Supersonic Airplane Category
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As most of us are coping with the geographic constraints of staying at home, one hopes the FAA did not schedule the release of the NRPM proposing Noise Certification of Supersonic Airplanes [FAA-2020-0316] for March 30, 2020 as an Easter egg or aviation irony. Bu then again, with much of the FAA working from home, which surely gives a greater sense of freedom than when confined in their office cubicles, one never knows.What is certain, however, is that reading the 65-page NPRM was truly enjoyable because it offered a concise narrative arc on the reawakened interest in civilian supersonic flight. In proposing the noise certification standards, the NPRM proposes a new category of airplanes, Supersonic Level 1.
Add SSL1 to your dictionary of aviation abbreviations and acronyms. It has a maximum takeoff weight of 150,000 pounds and a maximum operating cruise speed of Mach 1.8. And the proposed noise certification requirements apply only to the subsonic landing and takeoff (LTO, another one for your dictionary) cycle standards. This proposal does not change in any way the §91.817, which prohibits the creation of sonic booms over the terrestrial United States.
Irony aside, the NPRM’s timing is important because several companies, such as Aerion Supersonic and Boom Supersonic, are developing supersonic aircraft. And their quest for type certificates cannot proceed without first meeting the supersonic noise requirements, which do not now exist.
Many right now are recalling finger-plugged ears as they watched the Concorde take off for its fly-bys at EAA Oshkosh and asking “Huh?” The NPRM explains that Part 36 still includes noise standards for the Concorde, and the Concorde alone. Even though the Concorde retired from the sky decades ago, its type certificate remains valid.
The proposed noise certification regulations are not in any way related to the Concorde standards the FAA issued in 1978. Aviation technology has come a long way since then. Like the military fighters of the era, supersonic flight depended on the fuel-guzzling roar of afterburners. The F-22 introduced the ability to cross the supersonic threshold to supercruise without using afterburner, and that was in the late 1990s. The advancement of airframe and powerplant technology has continued it forward march.So, what are the proposed SSL1 noise certification standards? The limits are quieter than Stage 4 LTO requirements met by most subsonic jets flying today, but they are a bit louder than the current certification level of Stage 5 for the same aircraft weights. This is an allowance for “the unique technologies and design requirements for supersonic aircraft to maintain long-distance supersonic flight.”
When this all will come to pass is unknown. A safe assumption would be that the NPRM is in the cue for its debut in the Federal Register, and that once published, the public will have 90 days to submit its comments. A speedy conclusion is one thing we can count on. Let’s hope we can once again leave the house before the FAA issues its regulatory decree. — Scott Spangler
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Bob Crandall Upfront on Industry Bailouts
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Bob Crandall retired in 1998 as chairman, president, and CEO of AMR, parent organization to American Airlines and while many people today might not remember his name, they’ll pretty quickly recognize what he created while he was at the helm.
Bob Crandall (L) with another industry giant, the late Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines. Crandall is the often combative, no-nonsense finance-marketing focused guy who, while at American created American Advantage, the industry’s first frequent flyer program. A strong opponent to deregulation before it took hold in 1978, Bob Crandall is also the brain behind modern-day yield-management that pointed to the path other airlines followed to squeeze every last penny out of an unused airline seat, right up to the moment the tug pushes the airplane back from the gate. He was also created SABRE, the first robust airline industry reservation system.
Crandall became the scourge of unionized airline pilots though in 1983 when he created the notorious B-scale pay system as a tool to fight the flurry of then evolving emerging low-cost airlines. He managed to convince pilots the airline could never afford shiny new aircraft if they didn’t figure out how to cut their labor costs. The move essentially put airline pilots everywhere on a war-time footing with their own management teams and facilitated the 1985 pilot strike at United.
Bob Crandall Today
Because Crandall always been a notorious industry pundit, Bloomberg.com on Tuesday probed him about airline bailouts, as well as Boeing’s push for cash for the aerospace industry in the wake of the economic downturn created by the Coronavirus. Boeing CEO David Calhoun said his company would only accept bailout money on the company’s terms and would not allow the government to take an equity stake in the aerospace giant. With the 737 Max debacle still fresh in people’s minds, some interpreted Calhoun’s mention of a bailout itself as nothing short of heresy. In fact, Boeing board member Nikki Haley resigned last week because she did not believe in offering cash to one industry giant while ignoring others.
Keeping Crandall’s comments in context, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) on Tuesday said, “Owing to the severity of travel restrictions and the expected global recession, IATA now estimates that industry passenger revenues could plummet $252 billion or 44% below 2019’s figure.”
Despite 20 years away from the airline industry, Crandall’s thoughts on Bloomberg shocked some and surprised others. Early on, he said he didn’t believe the airline industry needed a bailout, but that “it does need support” calling the airlines one of America’s most basic forms of transportation. “You can’t simply let these companies go away,” he said. “But these companies need to understand there needs to be some kind of controls put in place. It probably needs to be regulated like some form of utility.”
Crandall pointed out that, “In the last six years, the industry has spent more than its total free cash flow buying back stock and took on a mountain of new debt. So now we’re saying to the public, we used a lot of our free cash flow to buy back stock, which in a business like the airlines, I would say you should never do. And now we need some support. The airline needs to realize it can’t use its other resources in other ways.” Crandall warned that support might be needed for quite a while since it’s going to take time for people to willingly gather in groups again.
Remembering that Crandall is the dean of yield management, he was also clear about the fact that the airlines can no longer, “continue jamming seats onto an airplane and making the public unhappy. And they can’t spend their free money buying back stock.”
Does he think Boeing needs saving? “We don’t want to lose our leadership position in aviation, therefore we need to help Boeing … whatever it needs to sustain Boeing.” He was less certain about whether the Seattle plane maker might be headed for Chapter 11. “But when we put public support into a company, the public has the right to expect that once you [Boeing] recover, part of the rewards of recovery come to us. These companies need to be ready to give up being completely unrestricted.”
Will people travel less once the virus is under better control? “All the research we’ve ever done says consumers want to travel more. Five years from now, I think travel will be as robust as it is now.” But Crandall admitted the road to that recovery could be pretty rocky, especially in the near term. “Right now, I think we might be underestimating the near term effect of the virus.”
Does that mean returning to a time when the government set routes and pricing? While Bob Crandall thinks nationalization is probably overkill, he believes the government may need to make a substantial investment in the airline industry. He said, “We all need to decide what conditions we want to impose on the airlines until they pay us back.” He was adamant that during this recovery period, “an airline can’t just walk away from a city if that means they lose all airline service.”
With Congress having just passed its initial bailout legislation, we won’t need to wait much longer to see what happens next.
Rob Mark
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Pandemic Opportunity for a Safety Stand Down
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When things go chronically wrong in aviation, a safety stand down is an efficient and effective treatment because you stop all operations and dissect what you’ve been doing and how you’ve been doing it to ferret out—and fix—the root causes of what’s been going wrong.
As we socially distance ourselves to temper the spread of Covid 19, conducting an individual safety stand down would be a productive use of our time isolation. We should start with an honest assessment of our cultural, social, and political practices, focusing on their contributions to the medical, social, and economic challenges we now all share. And if they exacerbate the problem rather than remedy it, we should consider changing them.
A safety stand down assessment is straightforward. What is most important to you? Start with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. The foundation is the basic needs of food, water, warm, dry shelter, and security. With the pandemic putting many around the world out of work, these essentials are daily questions many are looking to government to answer.Look at the solutions our elected officials are putting forward. Who do they benefit, and to what degree? What would benefit individuals more, corporate tax cuts, or a robust program of paid leave that would help employers see their employees through the pandemic’s shutdowns?
Some might say another tax cut would enable employers to do that. Perhaps. In our safety stand down assessment, we should look at how well that worked for employees with the trillion-dollar tax cut of several years ago.
Being aviation companies, one might expect the airlines to have used aeronautical decision-making, used their government-given tax bounty to make life better for their customers and employees, and prepared for a rainy day by paying down their debt and putting come cash aside for emergencies. Instead, they increased ticket-tax exempt fees, shrank seats, and used most of it to buy back stock that enriched their shareholders and the executive. And now that the rainy day will be around for an unseen period, they are lining up for a bailout. If they get one, we should implore our elected officials to include some conditions that benefit customers and rank and file employees.Preventing problems from reoccurring is the ultimate goal of a safety stand down. Like the outbreaks of bird flu, N1H1, and Ebola that preceded it, Covid 19 offers another learning experience of preventive procedures. During our safety stand down assessment, we should support those who promise to heed that lesson and support it with focused preparation and funding.
And we should be open to related revelations. For example, parents who become home schoolteachers might realize, when they present their children with a structure, academic goal, that maybe they were wrong to blame teachers, and that maybe they have underpaid and under-supported for way too long. Consider this: Depending on how long it takes us to corral the corona virus, many people may not have jobs to go back to, and home schooling may become the new normal.Given this perspective, as a society, we can only hope that any beneficial change resulting from a safety stand down assessment has an eternal self-like, not one of a New Year’s resolution. — Scott Spangler, Editor
