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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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Moving Past the Loss of MH370
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Malaysian Boeing 777 – @jetwhine There’s no small amount of irony in today’s announcement that the search for MH370 has officially been called off nearly three years after that Boeing 777 disappeared on a flight from Kuala Lampur to Beijing and the accolades being shared at Aireon HQ in McLean Virginia over Saturday’s successful orbiting of 10 Iridium satellites needed to begin creating the first global aircraft tracking network.
SpaceX Iridium launch @jetwhine The idea of knowing exactly where on earth the airplanes we purchase tickets on are actually located at any given point in time is a no-brainer conceptually. In fact, if you tell international travelers that while over the ocean or in remote areas of the planet, their airline has only the tiniest notion of their airplanes precise location, they’re shocked. The airlines essentially know where their aircraft should be, but as we’ve seen with the loss of MH370, the words “should” and “are” translate into two very different views of the aviation world.
So thank goodness for Aireon’s foresightedness back in 2011 to begin the effort to create the network that’s expected to be operational by summer 2018.
And no thank you at all to most of the airlines around the world that have not lifted one finger to improve the tracking of their airplanes since the loss of MH370. Sure there have been meetings and proclamations and opportunities through companies like Inmarsat and FLYHT, and certainly ICAO jumped in to the discussions, but not many airlines actually signed up to use any of the tracking technologies.
The reason was simple, money … the airlines couldn’t justify the cost to their shareholders. But let’s be patient and not forget that the poor airlines must make money to stay in business.
I guess some of traveling bumpkins are still naive enough though, to think that the airlines that are all too happy to grab our money, might also be thinking that looking after us a bit more when we’re their prisoner, sorry, I mean guest, might actually turn into a little value added service.
Rob Mark, Publisher
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Deciding Aviation Into an Uncertain Future
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Happy New Year!
As it has been for millennia, the year ahead is a blank diary in which we will write history with our daily decisions. What direction this uncertain future will take depends on how we make those decisions, especially those with zero-sum consequences, where one side gains at the expense of another. Ultimately, the decisions we make, support, and share will determine the future of aviation and the world in which is it exists.
Making decisions based on our gut, decisions that serve only our personal interests and ideology, rather than a logical assessment of the “facts” involved in the issue will have critical consequences. This is especially true for aviation, which is struggling to find its footing in the 21 century. Based on past ideas, such as the attempt to privatize air traffic control, 2017 will surely be a defining waypoint in aviation history.To different degrees, everyone involved in civil, commercial, and military aviation communities make decisions that will shape their individual and collective futures. From the cockpit to the control tower, those answers decide the winner, short-term benefits to a few or long-term benefits to the industry as a whole.
As it does at an operational level, making informed decisions will span the gap of uncertainty, but making them requires research and effort, as well as an understanding that information and knowledge are not the same thing. Information is data. Knowledge is the accumulation of information and how it all relates to the question at hand. Only then can we acquire the wisdom needed to make a decision.
In this effort we must be pragmatic, concerned with actual practice, not theory, conspiracy, or speculation. And we must be skeptical, which is to say we must not be easily persuaded or convinced. We must doubt every source of information and ask questions when data from different sources does not add up. Regardless the source, question its authority.
Finally, we must be cynical. In any zero-sum situation, where someone gains because the opposing side loses, the cynic knows that the people involved are motivated only by their selfishness. Naturally, in the post-truth world, this reality is buried in echo-chamber propaganda.
For example, if ATC goes private, and is funded with user fees, who will ultimately pay those fees? And what happens to the airline ticket and GA fuel tax system that’s been funding America’s aviation infrastructure for decades?
Be aware of each decision made in 2017, because it will tacitly reveal our true motivations and hopes for tomorrow. — Scott Spangler, Editor
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Airport Archeology & Airport Infrastructure
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On the cool, gray morning I parked before the terminal at the Alliance Municipal Airport (AIA) in northwestern Nebraska, I didn’t expect my airport archeology effort to be a lesson about the airport infrastructure that serves the nation today.The layout of the airport’s three runways suggested that it started life as an Army airfield built during World War II. There were remaining signs—four brick chimneys standing at the head of concrete foundations—that confirmed this, but they didn’t register until later. Getting ready to put the quiet airport behind me, a TSA agent, on his way to empty a terminal trash can, asked if he could help me.
After explaining my aviation geek-quest, he said the airport started life as the Alliance Army Airfield. Pointing to the evenly spaced pillars of brick, he said the hangar chimneys were all that remained. “They trained glider pilots, paratroops, and airborne infantry here,” said the blue-shirted man. “If you’re curious, there’s a display inside that tells all about it.”Alliance was one of 11 airfields the Army built across the state of Nebraska during World War II. Nebraska’s weather allowed for year-round flying, and it’s sparse, dispersed population made for wide open spaces, perfect for bombing, gunnery, and other training ranges.
Selecting the site in spring 1942, 5,000 construction workers nearly doubled the population of Alliance in July 1942. When they finished work in August 1943, they’d built 775 buildings and four 9,000-foot runways, long enough for C-47s to tow CG-4 gliders, full of airborne infantry, into the Nebraska sky.
After the glider troops left for their debut at D-Day, Alliance was a B-29 training base for awhile. It was declared surplus in 1945, and most of the buildings were sold at auction. And this is where the story gets interesting, as my later research into the airport revealed.Of the 11 airfields the Army built more than 70 years ago, nine of them play an integral role in the national and state airport infrastructure. Six of them are municipal airports: Ainsworth, Alliance, Grand Island, Kearney, Lincoln, and Scottsbluff. Three are public airports, Fairmont, Harvard, and Scribner. (What is now Omaha’s Offutt Air Force Base was built before the war began.)
The National Plan of Integrated Airport Systems (NPIAS) counts 72 airports in Nebraska. These airfield veterans represent all but one of Nebraska’s five commercial service, primary airports. Alliance is one of three airports with scheduled passenger essential air service. All the rest are public-use fields.To give context to this contribution to the national airport infrastructure, imagine how we’d meet a similar need for training today. How much of it would be digitally simulated by civilian contractors at top dollar fees? And if we needed to build anything, whether it floats, flies, or is a home to anything that does, how long would it take, considering todays military-industrial corporate bureaucracy and political environment? Maybe we all owe the Greatest Generation a debt of gratitude more nuanced than giving them a casual thanks for their service. — Scott Spangler, Editor
