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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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EFX Illuminates Aviation Danger Zones
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Aviation danger zones exist in all phases of flight, and they most often catch people on the ground, especially when another task attenuates their situational awareness. Almost walking into a stationary prop protruding from the Innovation Showcase booth is how I met EFX Applied Technology at EAA AirVenture 2019. Instead of watching where I was going in the crowded venue, I was scanning the booths as I walked at the edge of the aisle—until a brightly colored flashing light in my peripheral vision stopped me short. Outlining a prop safety perimeter on the concrete, it said “We Save Lives.”When I stopped and focused my attention, it seemed clear that given my proximity and direction of travel, one of the propeller blades was reaching for one of my more sensitive anatomical components. When I slowed my heart rate—and vowed to pay more attention to where I was going—I picked up some literature on the company whose tagline is “[DANGERZONE] See the light—Save a life.”
Unfortunately, the innovative coolness of EFX’s Interactive Personnel Alert Systems (iPAS) got lost in the multitude of my AirVenture memories. And then, little more than a week ago, I read about a woman who lost her right hand and two toes when she tried to remove the nose wheel chock of an idling Cessna 172 at Key West, Florida. According to reports, she and her husband, the pilot, were preparing for takeoff and got out of the Cessna to find out why it was not able to taxi.My first reaction was one that many have but few readily admit: I would never do anything like that! (And, so far, I have, along with similar self-inflicted calamities of landing gear up and running out of gas.) But then I remembered my near encounter with the EFX display, and my heart started pounding as the memory snipped played in my mind’s eye.
It made sense that iPAS saved me because humans rely first on their vision, and our neural warning system has learned over the eons to pay attention to movement in our peripheral vision because it means some other member of the food chain might have us for lunch.
Identifying the threat is the first step in any fight-or-fight situation, and the small, lightweight laser system that outlines an aircraft’s danger zones does that, as well as laser painting the threat’s boundaries on the ground, day or night. Apparently the FAA was interested in the system as well, adding that it would fit well with the non-essential equipment path to certification.Only time will tell if aviation will adopt this patented system that seems to be an effective last line of aviation safety. Safety training and reminders to never lose situational awareness are all good and necessary, but they will never overcome the blinders we wear when we’re addressing a more pressing problem. That’s when we need an alert of an imminent threat to break our narrow focus and preserve our safety. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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If It Ain’t Boeing, I Ain’t Going …
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An Aviation Minute Editorial
by Rob Mark
Years ago when I was still flying for a living, I remember seeing a cool little yellow sticker slapped on the side of another pilot’s Jepp bag. “If it ain’t Boeing, we’re not going.” The slogan was a nod of professional respect for the Seattle aircraft builder that brought America into the jet age with great airliners like the Boeing 707, or the three-engine 727 that followed.
Air traffic controllers called the 72 a three-holer and it was visible from miles away on final with black smoke billowing from its P&W JT8s, triple-slotted wing flaps the size of barn doors and the ability to get down and stopped on relatively tiny runways. And who could forget the world’s first double-deck four-engine jumbo, the 747? Boeing built nearly 1,500 of those.
Boeings were known for their ability to take a beating and bring everyone home safely. Pilots who flew Boeing’s B-17s during WWII knew that, as did B-52 drivers when that airplane started flying 70 years ago.
Then there’s Boeing’s 737 with slightly more than 10,000 built, an impressive number by any measure. Within the variants, of course, there’s the now-infamous 737 Max, an airplane Boeing originally created to give the Airbus A-320 neo a run for its money.
While it looked like that might happen a few years ago, the grounding of the Max last March pushed the idea of a profit on that airplane pretty much out of sight to the folks at Boeing’s HQ.
Boeing 737 MAX 7 First Flight – Boeing photo The problems for Boeing, of course, began in 2018 when the crew of a Lion Air 737 Max lost control of the airplane and crashed shortly after takeoff.
It was only after 189 people died on that Lion Air flight that airplane had been created using a software update called the MCAS, a system designed to make pilots believe the Max handled like earlier 737s, even though design-wise that wasn’t really the case.
What really shocked pilots after the first accident was the realization that Boeing never mentioned the existence of MCAS to anyone, not in the POH or even in training. Boeing was that sure MCAS’s flawed software would never kick in. Those odds dropped precipitously though after the crash of a second 737 Max in March 2019. The entire Max fleet was grounded shortly thereafter, with the U.S. being one of the last to take action.
Each week, the news about what Boeing is doing or what it should be doing, or what Boeing engineers and management knew and when seems to reveal something new. Let’s not forget the FAA played a significant role in this mess too for its lackadaisical oversight of the Max certification.
Boeing first thought the Max fleet would be back flying soon, but as more and more uncomfortable and unbelievable facts have emerged about the design and execution of the Max, the date for the next flight has drifted further and further into the future.
The company has been hit by hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of lawsuits from the families of accident victims. The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association just sued Boeing for back wages due them for the 30,000 flights that have been canceled now that the airline’s 34 aircraft have been sitting on the ground for seven months.
SWAPA’s lawsuit claims Boeing, “abandoned sound design and engineering practices, withheld safety-critical information from regulators and deliberately misled its customers, pilots and the public about the true scope of design changes to the 737 MAX.” Ouch.
Then there’s the Boeing whistleblower case from a company engineer who told Boeing the MCAS would never work. The stories go on and on and on … and they’re not getting any better.
Trying to get the Max flying again has become a huge distraction to normal business at Boeing. The company has lost orders for the Max as well as some for the 787. The company’s 777X project has also slowed considerably.
In case these weren’t enough problems to keep Boeing busy, the company recently reported finding cracks in the pickle forks on dozens of 737 NGs (edited 10-19-2019 with thanks to my commenters). The pickle fork attaches the wing to the fuselage BTW.
And because the FAA played a role in the Max dilemma for its poor oversight of the airplane’s certification,
EASA in Europe and a number of other regulators want Boeing to perform tests especially for them before they’ll recertify the airplane because they’ve lost confidence in the FAA’s assessment of the problem.If I was still teaching at Northwestern, the Boeing Max story would easily become a quarter-long case study into what happens when people within an organization refuse to talk or listen to each other. It would also look at what happens when the people who sell things take over from the people who design and build things in a bureaucracy, like when insiders saw this coming long before the Max ever flew. But that’s how bureaucracies operate.
Looking ahead, no one’s even asking whether airline passengers will ever believe the Max is again safe, no matter what Boeing and the FAA say. Plenty of people refused to ever climb aboard a DC-10 decades ago when it was released from its grounding after a number of fatal accidents.
Think for a minute … in less than a year, Boeing, one of America’s largest single exporters, trashed a reputation that took more than 100 years to create.
I have no doubt the 737 Max will rise from the ashes next year because Boeing and its lobbyists have way too much power to keep it on the ground forever, technical issues or not. Boeing’s Dennis Mulinberg lost his Chairman seat in this mess, but the damage has already been done.
One of the next stories to watch for will be precisely how Boeing and the FAA rollout their plan to convince pilots, flight attendants and maintenance technicians the Max is now safe to fly again, a plan that of course won’t include any simulator time for pilots to get a close up look at MCAS before their next flight.
But I think the really big story will be how Boeing and the FAA convince paying passengers and regulators around the world that there’s nothing to worry about when they climb aboard a Max. Maybe Boeing will change the airplane’s name.
But if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck … well you know.
Or will it be a slick TV commercial, maybe something that sounds like … “We’re Boeing and every time you climb aboard a 737 Max, you can absolutely, positively trust us our product because we’re pretty darned sure we got it right … THIS time.”
I’m thinking those stickers will need an update too before pilots slap them to their carry-ons … “If it ain’t Boeing, we’re not going … probably.”
For Jetwhine.com and the Airplane Geeks, I’m Rob Mark in Chicago. We’ll see you next time.
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Why is World War I Little Appreciated?
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To the aviation minded, interest in World War I stops at the aerodrome because that’s where aeronautics’ voice changed as its technology matured. But interest in the conflict in which it fought—the War to End All Wars—never captured the interest of most Americans, whose attention and adulation focused on the Great War’s offspring, World War II. A visit to The National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City was an eye-opener that posed the headline’s question and others that wonder why?If someone asked me to name all of the World War I memorials I knew of, it would be the Liberty Memorial and the mass-produced Spirit of the American Doughboy statue in Lord’s Park in Elgin, Illinois, not far from my boyhood home. I learned about the Liberty Memorial when I moved to Kansas City in 1989, but I never visited because the two halls that flanked the memorial tower were rarely open, and the whole thing closed in 1994.
It wasn’t until I visited it earlier this year that I learned that two weeks after the war ended on 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the civic leaders discussed the need for a lasting memorial to the men and women who served and died in the war. The city raised $2.5 million in 10 days in 1919. More than 100,000 people, including the five main allied commanders, attended the site dedication in 1921.
After three years of construction, President Calvin Coolidge delivered the dedication speech to a crowd of more than 150,000. On Veteran’s Day 1961, former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower delivered rededication addresses to a crown of 60,000. The citizens voted to restore the memorial and expand the museum in 1998. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in October 2006. On the 2014 centennial of the war’s commencement, Congress finally recognized the Liberty Memorial as the national World War I memorial, renaming it.America’s lack of appreciation for World War I is probably rooted in its short tenure of combat. The war started in 1914 but America didn’t get involved until April 1917, when unrestricted submarine warfare and the publication of Zimmerman’s telegram to Mexico promising the return of Texas and other states if it would attack America on behalf of the Axis.
Another factor is the scope of America’s participation. Slightly more than 4.7 million men and women served in the armed forces during the war. Of the force, only 2.8 million served overseas; 53,402 of them were killed in action. More than 63,000 died from diseases, mostly in the influenza pandemic, which claimed 50 million people worldwide, 675,000 of them in the United States. Unlike World War II, in which more than 16 million Americans (11 percent of the US population) served during the four-year conflict, during World War I more families were affected by the flu than the war.
Related to the number of affected families is generational depreciation, where interest wanes with the arrival of every new generation—unless the surviving hardware and history satisfies a niche curiosity. Aviation leads this list. And World War II is first on it because of its expansive generational proximity and because its hardware is still airborne. In the Great War, America didn’t really have substantial aerial forces let alone combat aircraft. Those that served fly fixed from museum ceilings. And the same is true for most aircraft that served the conflicts that followed World War II.A lack of appreciation for the sacrifices of those who served in World War I is superseded only by the universal disregard for the socioeconomic and geopolitical causes of it and the resulting consequences that plague the world today. Another way to view all military memorials is, perhaps, as monuments to human hubris and disability to learn from the past. — Scott Spangler, Editor
