It’s How, Not What You Fly
By Richard L. Collins
February 2007
 A while back I related a tale of making a low visibility IFR takeoff right behind a Cessna 150. It happened again and this, along with the fact that I had heard the 150 using the call sign “commuter,” made me look into the matter. I did remember that one model of the 150 was called an Inter-City Commuter in the 1960s, much as a gussied up 172 came to be called a Skyhawk, so the call sign is certainly legitimate.
Turns out the IFR 150 pilot is a real commuter, flying between Hagerstown and College Park, Maryland, most every day. That he is doing this in the most complex airspace in the country makes it even more noteworthy. The Camp David airspace is just east of Hagerstown and College Park is under a fold of fat on the Class B, in the ADIZ, and in the FRZ, or flight restricted zone. It is one of three Washington-area general aviation airports that require special permissions and procedures.
Dave Wills, the 150’s owner/pilot, is in the commercial real estate business near the College Park airport and he lives in Hagerstown. The straight line distance between the two points is 57 nautical miles so it isn’t a long haul in a 150. The highways are a different matter. Highways 70 and 270 and the Washington Beltway are a formidable obstacle for car commuters every day and drivers hang on every word of the traffic reports. “An overturned tractor trailer” can mean hours of delay.
Dave’s 150 is equipped for the task with a nav/com and a GPS plus a digital transponder. He recently replaced all the flight instruments and uses Bose headsets to make things quieter in what is a pretty noisy cockpit. The airplane looks great inside and out despite the fact that it is 46 years old. Dave has airframe mods like VGs and gap seals on his airplane.
The 100-horse Continental engine now has 2,300 hours on it and he plans to run it to 3,000 before a major overhaul. That can work well in an airplane that is flown almost every day. The airframe has 9,000 hours on it and he flies it about 250 hours a year, virtually all on his commute.
I asked Dave about the foggy takeoffs. He said he will launch if he can see one runway light but that he likes to back-taxi before takeoff to make sure there’s nothing there to get in the way. At the other end, at College Park, the weather has to be pretty good because the minimum descent height is 673 feet and the required visibility one mile.
Dave makes the trip VFR about 95 percent of the time and doesn’t have a lot of cancellations, though in a week last October it required IFR for all five days. His schedule is flexible to a point, and some days he works at home. His surface wind limit is 25-30 knots with the main concern ground operations.
 The trip usually takes about 35 minutes and the longest on record is one hour even for the 57 nm. It takes an hour and 45 minutes to drive it (with no tie-ups), so even a 150 headed into a post-cold frontal wind can save time. Ice, low ceilings at College Park and thunderstorms can put him behind the wheel of his car but it just doesn’t happen too often. Also, there are airports along the way and he can quickly be on the ground if the flying gets too bad. There are a couple of ridges along the way and as you might imagine he has had some turbulent trips. When IFR he goes to College Park at 5,000 feet and returns at 6,000.
His commuting started in 1987 using other people’s airplanes. That wasn’t ideal so he bought the 150 in 1993. He found it in a Washington Post classified and paid $10,000 for it, and then fixed it up to meet his needs. One item he added that has been a big help is a carburetor ice detector.
Because College Park is in the FRZ, he had to be vetted to use the airport. The details on that are in the notam if you are interested. The procedures are also in the notam and he has those down pat. The most important thing is to be squawking the assigned code any time the wheels are off the ground and to be in communication with air traffic control. The Class B has a base of 1,500 feet over College Park so no clearance is required for that, but the ADIZ and FRZ procedures have to be followed. The controllers have at times bugged him on departure about flying the shortest route out of the FRZ, which is one interpretation of the rule. That means he has to go a bit out of the way to shave off a few FRZ miles, but all the controllers don’t make him do that.
He has no plans for a faster airplane because it just wouldn’t make that much difference on such a short trip. And anything faster would cost a lot more than the $600 a month he is now spending on his aerial commute. So, it’s not what you fly but how you fly and at least one person is taking up what Cessna suggested when they put the word “commuter” in the name of their smallest airplane.
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