It was during EAA AirVenture at Oshkosh, Wisconsin. John and I were seated at a dinner table when a friend brought up a visitor. We were informed the visitor was a prince of Saudi Arabia—and what ensued is the kind of extraordinary conversation that can happen at Oshkosh. I am sorry to say that I did not do a very good job with the conversation; I had no idea what to say to a prince. I later learned he had been a fighter pilot, as well as an astronaut in a space shuttle mission. Had I known those things, I would have done a better job—I do have some idea of what to say to a fighter pilot and an astronaut. Our visitor was His Royal Highness Prince Sultan bin Salman, an ardent supporter of general aviation and son of the king.

Prince Sultan told us that in order to help promote general aviation, he was planning on inviting us to Saudi Arabia for an airshow. Months went by before we heard anything more. Then a few weeks before the show was scheduled, we received a fax from Saudi Arabia inviting us to the airshow and asking us to speak. Of course, I wondered how, as a female pilot, I would fare in Saudi Arabia. They asked me to send measurements for a coverall robe called an abaya; I took that as a clue that things would be different than I was used to.

The leg on Lufthansa from Frankfurt, Germany, to Saudi Arabia was interesting. As I followed the flight on ForeFlight, it became apparent we were setting up to fly around Syria and Iraq. That seemed like a very good idea to me.

After deplaning in Riyadh, it was immediately obvious this was a place you’d never confuse with Kansas. Most men were wearing the scarves and robes of traditional Saudi dress, and the female inspectors who worked in security had their faces entirely covered by veils, with only slits for their eyes.

At the airport, John and I met many of Prince Sultan’s aviation friends who were gathering from all over the world to support the airshow. Getting to know them was a great experience.

The Saudi Space Commission, which is chaired by Prince Sultan, was officially sponsoring the airshow. The Space Commission employees who served as our escorts and hosts—Hala, Rana and Fawaz—were extremely thoughtful and well-educated. Everyone we met had master’s degrees from either Europe or the United States. They went to great lengths to ensure that, as much as possible, we understood and appreciated the culture of Saudi Arabia.

They presented us with traditional Saudi dress. Both John and I decided to wear it as a sign of respect. It was expected (though not required) that, as a woman, I would wear a covering abaya, but it seemed to be very much a surprise, and very pleasing to folks, that John wore and even flew in his thobe.

On our first full day in the city, our escorts took us to the Saqr Al-Jazira Aviation Museum, followed by a great get-acquainted lunch. Next were stops at a souk (an old market) and the historic Al Masmak Fortress. The evening was topped off with a traditional Saudi dinner at the estate of Prince Sultan. Everyone we met was warm and hospitable.

The airshow was held at Thumamah Airport, located about 37 miles north of Riyadh with a 13,000-foot runway. The airport was recently designated a general aviation airport, and it’s operated by the Saudi Aviation Club. The club was established by Prince Sultan to encourage public participation in aviation, and is a member of the International Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. The airshow included a very informative and motivating set of hangar talks given by the many aviation contacts Prince Sultan had nurtured over the years.

The women participating in the airshow were warmly welcomed. Adwa AlDakheel, the master of ceremonies for the event, was a woman who had learned to fly while attending college in Boston and continued her flying in Saudi Arabia as a member of the Saudi Aviation Club. Several of the Saudi women I met told me they felt it was a wonderful time to be a woman in Saudi Arabia because they are on the cusp of great change. Women had just received the right to drive about 18 months prior.

Read More from Martha King: Sky Kings

John and I gave a talk describing our 50-plus-year partnership to help provide access to aviation knowledge. Afterward, we were told by many people that the talk was inspirational. We didn’t really understand that at first—we were just telling our story. But the next day, a man told us that our talk was all his wife would talk about well into the evening. Then we got it. Women were seeking partnership, including in their flying. But from my conversations with Capt. Ayed Al Kasmi, the CEO of the Saudi Aviation Club, and Capt. Farres Moneer, the managing director, I learned that women in aviation have a long way to go in Saudi Arabia. Of the approximately 3,000 nonmilitary pilots, only about 50 (1.7 percent) are women. It appears there are only two female pilots flying commercially—one flies for a major airline and the other flies jets for a private individual.

The leadership of Prince Sultan serves as a wonderful catalyst for the improvement of general aviation’s prospects in Saudi Arabia, and the airshow, with its hangar talks, represented a greatly needed commitment. Unlike in the US, where aviation started with general aviation, in Saudi Arabia, aviation started with the military and airlines. People there aren’t used to individuals flying around in personal airplanes. It seems to many in the government that private flying is simply in the way. Government there, as in many countries, just doesn’t understand the productive role general aviation can play within the community and for the economy.

Another prince, His Royal Highness Prince Saud bin Khalid, a nephew of the king, has a Mooney that he and his wife, who is also a pilot, keep in the United States. He invited John and me to dinner one evening, along with about 20 high-level government people. Included was Abdulhadi Al-Mansouri, president of the General Authority of Civil Aviation, which is the equivalent of the administrator of the FAA in the US. He was seated next to John and across from the prince, so they could explain how important general aviation is. GACA can profoundly influence many of general aviation’s problems—including the high cost of fees and the complexity of regulations.

Other issues—such as the lack of skilled resources and repair stations, as well as limited availability of avgas, GA airports and FBOs—will take more time to solve. It is a lot to hope for that general aviation in Saudi Arabia will progress quickly, but because of the many very influential pilots we met who care so deeply, there is hope. It is fun to see these passionate aviators in action, and we certainly wish them the best.

This story appeared in the May 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The National Transportation Safety Board has asked helicopter manufacturers Bell, Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo Helicopter Division, MD Helicopters, Robinson Helicopter Company and Sikorsky to require visual and audio data recorders on commercial turbine-powered helicopters. Speaking directly to airframe manufacturers is a first for the NTSB and comes following the FAA’s refusal to address portions of similar Board requests for the devices. Dana Schulze, director of the NTSB Office of Aviation Safety, said, “We are asking that currently available recording technology be put to use in a way that will improve aviation safety.”

The Board said in a news release, “These recommendations are derived from several NTSB investigations of turbine-powered helicopter accidents in which the lack of a crash-resistant or crash-protected flight recording system that records parametric data, cockpit audio, and images hindered our understanding of the accident circumstances and, thus, allowed potential safety issues to go unaddressed.”

The Board originally proposed the installation of data recorders in May 2013 and again in January 2015 and added, “Helicopters meeting specific criteria established by the FAA are required to have crash-resistant systems to record flight data and cockpit audio. None are currently required to have image recording capability. Despite the lack of action from the FAA, some helicopter operators have equipped their aircraft with recording systems, including image recording capability, even though they are not required to do so.” In addition to asking manufacturers to install crash-resistant recorders on newly built helicopters, the NTSB also asked them to provide a means to retrofit their helicopters with crash-resistant systems capable of recording flight data, cockpit audio and images on their helicopters not already so equipped.

The NTSB cited seven helicopter investigations between 2011 and 2017 in which the lack of access to recorded data impeded their ability to identify and address potential safety issues. They also identified five accidents in which investigators had the benefit of recorded data that was critical to understanding the circumstances of the crashes. The findings and analysis of these investigations resulted in three NTSB urgent recommendations and led the FAA to issue an emergency airworthiness directive affecting an entire fleet of helicopters. Two recent stories, one following the Kobe Bryant accident and the second after the report of an air ambulance crash in Ohio illustrate the NTSB’s concerns.

In a strongly-worded additional comment, the NTSB said, “Although the FAA declined to mandate recorders on those helicopters not already required to have them, they said they encouraged operators since 2005 to install the equipment on a voluntary basis. The NTSB, however, said since 86 percent of the 185 turbine-powered helicopter accidents it investigated between 2005 and 2017 had no recording equipment installed, the FAA actions were ineffective.”

The Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization, the aviation arm of the United Nations, this week published a report as well as a number of recommendations about the COVID-19 virus to offer the world a few standardized guidelines to help get the industry back up and running.

ICAO said, “The COVID-19 report and guidelines were produced by the Council’s Aviation Recovery Task Force (CART). They were developed through broad-based consultations with countries and regional organizations, and with important advice from the World Health Organization and key aviation industry groups including the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Airports Council International (ACI World), the Civil Air Navigation Services Organization (CANSO), and the International Coordinating Council of Aerospace Industries Associations (ICCAIA).”

ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu said, ““Restoring public confidence in air travel has very broad benefits. This isn’t only about the operational and economic viability of the air transport sector, but of entire societies and regions having their economic livelihoods and stability restored.”

The CART report, “contains a detailed situational analysis and key principles supported by a series of recommendations focused around objectives for public health, aviation safety and security, and aviation economic recovery. This content is supplemented by the report’s special Takeoff: Guidance for Air Travel through the COVID-19 Public Health Crisis [that] includes guidelines for public health risk mitigation measures and four separate modules relating to airports, aircraft, crew, and air cargo.” Takeoff proposes a phased approach in line with recommendations and guidance from public health authorities to reduce the risk of transmission of the COVID-19 virus during the travel process.

The suggested measures include physical distancing to the extent feasible, wearing of facemasks by passengers and crew, routine sanitation and disinfection of all areas where people might gather, health screening which could include pre- and post-flight self-declarations, contact tracing for all passengers and employees and potential testing when reliable systems become available.

A proposed airworthiness directive stands to affect 6,586 Cessna 180, 182, and 185 models, driven by a report of cracks found in the tailcone and horizontal stabilizer attachment on a 185 that had displayed excessive play while undergoing maintenance. “After a detailed inspection, the tailcone reinforcement braces were found cracked on both sides of the airplane,” according to the FAA’s proposed AD document.

Upon investigation of other related models from the same general age cohort, the FAA found similar cracking on 29 additional airplanes. “The FAA determined that the combination of the attachment structure design and high loads during landing contribute to the development of cracks in the tailcone and horizontal stabilizer attachment structure,” reported the proposed AD. “This condition, if unaddressed, could result in failure of the horizontal stabilizer to tailcone attachment and lead to tail separation with consequent loss of control of the airplane.” Guidance already exists in the most part for the remedy of the AD, as the FAA determined that Textron Aviation Single Engine Mandatory Service Letter SEL-55-01, dated December 7, 2017, calls for inspection and remediation of the same areas on the empennage of those Cessna models.

The action’s comment period ends on June 29, 2020, so pilots are encouraged to weigh in soon if they have valuable information or opinions to share.

What’s one way to ease the pain of the enforced aircraft downtime prompted by stay-at-home orders or other current realities? If an aircraft owner had a panel upgrade planned for 2020, moving that installation up on the calendar clearly proves an effective use of time.

At this time last year, the avionics industry was riding the wave of the ADS-B mandate—and shops were stretched to complete the orders they had on the books. Industry experts generally expected a softening to take place. "With the passing of the January 1, 2020, deadline to equip aircraft with ADS-B Out avionics in the United States, the end to 12 consecutive quarters of sales growth may not come as a surprise," said Aircraft Electronics Association president and CEO Mike Adamson regarding the association’s latest market report. "We also don't yet know the full extent and global impact of the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic near the end of the first quarter and how it will weigh on the industry and our market figures going forward. The continued operations of business and general aviation could provide a silver lining while commercial aviation remains at a near standstill worldwide."

The association reported the first quarter avionics sales have topped $660 million—off from 2019 figures, but not yet registering the full impact of the COVID-19 outbreak and economic slowdown on the sector. The Q1 numbers show a nearly even split between the retrofit and forward-fit segments, at $345.65 million and $314.78 million, respectively. Last year’s Q1 came in at $388.085 million and $336.083 million, off by 10.9 percent and 6.3 percent.

I first flew a Pilatus PC-12 Model 10 back in 2008 and found it made a nice, stable instrument platform. At 270 knots, it was no jet, but a walk through that gargantuan cabin on the ground with the massive rear cargo door open made no bones about the airplane’s ability to carry tons of stuff.

I think I called it an airborne Chevy Suburban. Pilatus chief pilot Jed Johnson offered a more descriptive tag line when I was in Broomfield, Colorado, for a December 2019 visit to Pilatus Business Aircraft, calling it a “turbine Suburban.”

No matter what nickname you give it, the PC-12 is famous for being able to haul a couple of Harleys and a few passengers out to a dirt strip and back. In fact, Pilatus specifically designed the PC-12 with a T-tail to make using a forklift possible while loading cargo through that big aft door. Johnson said, originally, Pilatus just saw the airplane as a robust utility, cargo and military airplane that was only later transformed into a luxury vehicle. Pilatus vice president of marketing Tom Aniello said it was actually the dealers who saw the potential for the PC-12 once the interior was spiffed up.

With 1,750 PC-12s built to date, new NGX owners—about 10 percent of whom will operate it single pilot—can carry a 2,000-pound load on a 3½-hour IFR flight with reserves and feel as though they were operating a light jet, except for the NGX’s 290-knot top speed. Adding to the airplane’s own capabilities is the venerable Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 powerplant, which already has about 8 million flight hours under its belt, and Honeywell’s proven Epic avionics system.

Today, single-engine turboprops are almost commonplace with Daher’s TBM series, Piper’s M350, M500 and M600, and Cessna’s Caravan in addition to the PC-12. None can carry the load of the PC-12 except the Caravan, which is 100 knots slower. Only the Cessna Denali still in development might give the PC-12 a run for its money. Aniello mentioned that possibility but quickly added that the fact alone that Textron is building a PC-12 clone adds credibility to the role played by Pilatus’ airplane that’s been flying for a couple of decades.

What Happens in Vegas Is No Secret

Pilatus kept development of the new NGX under wraps until the official unveiling at the National Business Aviation Association’s Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition in Las Vegas in October 2019, with EASA and FAA certification already in hand. “The NGX includes the biggest package of updates at a serial number that we’ve ever seen,” Aniello said. The NGX comes standard with a Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6E-67XP with full authority digital engine control—a first for a single-engine turboprop—that includes an autothrottle and 10 percent more usable horsepower.

In the cockpit, pilots will find updated Honeywell Epic avionics that include four 10.4-inch high-resolution screens and greater processing power. Pilatus brands their cockpit as the Advanced Cockpit Environment. The cabin windows—10 percent larger than previous models—significantly increase the amount of ambient light flooding the cabin. The cabin also includes a new air-distribution system, better lighting, heating and cooling, and significantly increased maintenance intervals to reduce operating costs. BMW Designworks created more-comfortable seating reminiscent of that automaker’s ground-based products.

Johnson told me: “Putting a fadec on the PT6 is much more complicated than on a jet because of the need to control the prop. But you also need the avionics to take advantage of the autothrottle. With [the fadec], we can now operate the engine closer to its margins for better performance.” For those who worry about the effects of electrical failures, Johnson said, “If every single electrical bus on the airplane died, you’d still have backup instruments and engine control thanks to a backup permanent- magnet alternator available just to run the fadec.”

Sitting next to the PC-24 at the Pilatus booth, the shell of the PC-12 NGX physically looked like the Model 10 I’d flown more than a decade earlier. But the outside surface of the NGX seemed to glisten. I couldn’t explain why I felt I was looking at something special with the NGX, at least not at first. Eventually, I realized it was a bit of a déjà vu moment taking me back to my high school years when the coolest muscle cars on the planet not only were capable of burning rubber at the change of a traffic light but also sported paint jobs that made them stand out from 50 feet away. We called those specialty paints “candy apple,” a mix of rich, bold colors that seemed to include a pinch of glitter.

I asked Aniello what Pilatus had done with serial number 2001, the first NGX, to create an iridescent blue scheme with a variety of brilliant accent colors. He matter-of-factly mentioned that the company was using an entirely new color palette with eye-catching Alumigrip paints that made the airplane sparkle, with names such as Titanium Silver, Silver Lake Bentley (a lighter blue), Blue Met and Snow White.

The airplane was so packed with potential buyers in Las Vegas, my first opportunity to climb aboard came during my visit to the US Completions Facility in Broomfield, Colorado (KBJC), a few months after the show, when Aniello and Johnson brought me up to speed on what was really hiding beneath the NGX’s cool paint scheme. All aircraft bound for North or South America—about 60 to 70 percent of Pilatus production—pass through Broomfield. Aniello added that all the 2020 NGX airplanes are sold. Reflecting the solid pricing stability of the PC-12 over the years, Aniello said: “The biggest impediment to selling a new PC-12…is a used PC-12. But that’s what drives us to continually improve and innovate.” Pilatus is currently building about 80 to 85 NGXs each year with a new one selling for $5.39 million, about $300,000 more than the NG.

Aniello said new NGX customers come from the ranks of Bonanza and Cirrus owners, PC-12 operators ready to upgrade to the new aircraft, and government and fleet operators. Speaking to the new features, Aniello said the quick-release, fully reclining seats are somewhat narrower but certainly taller than the originals, and they have been redesigned to make it easy to switch them out when the demand for cargo space outweighs the need to carry passengers. Each of the old seats was held in place by four bolts and required a mechanic to change out. No longer. The natural European leather covering is highlighted by pragmatic features such as new optional footrests. There’s a ground-serviceable toilet near the cockpit.

The NGX cockpit comes with a profile button like the seats in many new cars, so each pilot can customize and return the cockpit displays to just the way they like them. The NGX comes with a massive envelope, capable of carrying 400 pounds of cargo plus a 1,000-pound pallet with one pilot aboard and still remaining safely within in the limits of the CG.

NGX pilots will like the single-lever power control that eliminates the need for fussing again with the propeller, while the fadec completely automates an engine start. The new engine monitors at least 100 channels of data that help eliminate the wild-guess operating margins of the past. High-time operators will love that the all-new engine monitoring helps Pratt & Whitney increase the engine’s overhaul time from 3,500 to 5,000 hours, with a 600-hour interval between maintenance inspections. Because the NGX’s fuel passes through an oil-to-fuel heat exchanger, there’s no longer a need to add Prist to the mix on the new aircraft. Unbutton the cowling, and operators will find that most mechanical linkages to the PT6 have been eliminated, which also means adios to many possible failure points. All owners are now enrolled in the Pratt & Whitney ESP Platinum service program for the new E-series engines that covers just about any possible problem. That enrollment should also prove its value with an accurate history of the airplane when used NGXs go on the market one day.

Additional NGX items include TCAS II with resolution advisories, data link and an emergency-descent mode. The emergency-descent mode requires the autopilot to be on and helps protect not only against rapid decompression—that seldom occurs—but also the slow onset of pressure problems that are more of a concern. When the aircraft is above 20,000 feet and the cabin reaches its limit of 10,500 feet, the EDM restricts the throttle, turns the airplane 90 degrees, and accelerates to VMO until reaching a breathable 15,000 feet. Because the airplane knows where it is at all times, it won’t simply dump the airplane into any nearby peaks.

The TCAS identifies nearby aircraft and color-codes them green, brown or red, highlighting the potential threat level. The NGX also uses a stick shaker-pusher combination to provide flight-envelope protection. The airplane’s flight-guidance panel is now the same as that on the PC-24 jet.

Flying the NGX

Jed Johnson, Tom Aniello and I headed out to fly serial number 2001 the afternoon I arrived in Broomfield because the weather forecasts looked ugly for the following morning, which turned out to be accurate. Our weather for the flight at KBJC turned out to be severe VFR with light winds.

After a walk around, I hopped into the left seat as Jed introduced me to the cockpit and coached me through a start. I found the cockpit light-jet comfortable without being cramped. Cockpit visibility is excellent. Should the NGX’s windshield heat fail, a triangle-shaped, direct-vision window on the left side offers the pilot enough of a view ahead to land. I tried to imagine I was flying the airplane single-pilot as I reached for necessary switches and buttons. The only item not within easy reach was the cockpit voice recorder and the flight-data recorder which are only checked before the first flight of the day.

Pilots of older PC-12s will be in awe at the automated start sequence. Turn on batteries one and two with all buses on, as well as the generators, avionics master and bleed air. Check for 24 volts and turn the engine switch to run. Briefly touch the start button, and once Ng (gas generator rotation speed)climbs above 13 percent, the fadec adds fuel. At 50 percent, the starter kicks out. That’s all there is to it.

Jed added a flight plan to the Epic system to take us to Garden City, Kansas, and ATC cleared us via the Plains One departure to Flight Level 270. The NGX is certified to FL 300. Before I taxied to the 7,000-foot-long Runway 30L at KBJC, the ATIS warned of potential slick spots along the way. There’s an interconnect between the rudder and the ailerons on the NGX, and because the nosewheel is so far in front of the mains, ground steering can take a little time to get used in order to keep the nose gear on the centerline—at least, it took me a few zigzags along the way. The beauty of Epic during taxi is its SmartRunway’s feature, which not only pinpoints the taxiways and runways but also shows ADS-B traffic. Brown targets are on the ground and blue ones are airborne. Most important are the red targets; pilots need to worry about those right now.

With an empty weight of 6,636 pounds, three people and a couple of hours of fuel, N47GX—as the airplane would soon be known after losing its Swiss registration number—weighed about 9,496 pounds. Maximum gross takeoff weight is 10,450 pounds. Jed calculated rotation speed at 78 knots. At the runway lineup, two chimes reminded us the outside air temperature was low enough to demand the probe heat on takeoff. Next came windshield heat and the inertial separator. As I brought the throttle up about halfway, the technology took over throttle movement and stopped once it reached the optimal takeoff power. As light as we were, the airplane demanded less than 2,000 feet of ground run before we were climbing away from the Rocky Mountains. Once the gear was in transit, the airplane climbed quickly through 400 feet agl, and Jed retracted the flaps. I engaged FMS speed, and the Epic selected a speed of 130 knots as I followed the flight director. Once the yaw damper came on, the NGX autotrims the rudder which makes the airplane handle like a jet—something I confirmed because I was hand-flying the aircraft.

Almost immediately, Denver Departure cleared us to 12,000 feet and turned us south toward DIA. A climb to FL 230 quickly followed as the FMS speed called for 140 knots to deliver a climb rate of about 1,600 fpm while burning 518 pounds of fuel per hour. We could have increased the climb rate, but that would have given us a steeper deck angle. For a cruise climb, 140 seemed to work fine.

Passing through FL 180, I engaged the autopilot. Johnson said the NGX uses the same autopilot guts and features as the Embraer 175. Climbing through FL 200, the NGX indicated 126 knots, with a rate of 1,400 fpm on 456 pph. Leaving FL 240, I saw 1,400 fpm on 400 pph. The book said we should be burning 404 pph. That gave us three more flying hours with a reserve. Johnson said a 500-pound reserve is normal, and the minimum he’d feel comfortable landing with in the NGX was 350 pounds, or about 60 gallons. At FL 270, the cabin settled on 7,600 feet.

Along the way to Garden City, Johnson spoke about another Honeywell Epic capability. He said if he lost the engine, but feathered the propeller, he would feel perfectly confident setting up a visual approach with an 8-degree glideslope to a mountain airport at night and letting the autopilot fly the entire procedure down to the ground. That would sure beat the guessing and wandering around the sky most pilots would face after such a failure.

We canceled IFR to maneuver a bit west of KGCK. I flipped off the autopilot but left on the autothrottle. Johnson said within 20 miles of the destination airport and below 5,500 feet the AT will automatically slow the airplane to 150 knots—just right for gear and flaps—within 20 miles of the destination airport and below 5,500 feet. We tried a number of steep turns along the way with banks of 60 degrees in both directions. The NGX’s envelope protection quickly rolled the airplane back to no more than a 30-degree bank every time. The NGX seemed like a graceful airplane without a mean bone in its body.

Johnson suggested we try a visual approach to Garden City and watch the autopilot fly a precise traffic pattern as the VNAV brought us down a 3-degree slope to 500 feet, where I’d punch off the autopilot. Abeam Runway 35 but still away from the airport, I lowered the gear because we were still 4,000 feet agl. Our weight was relatively light, so Johnson suggested flaps at 30 degrees.

The NGX turned itself smartly onto the downwind and the base as it slowed to 110 knots. I confirmed the gear was down and selected flaps 30. The airplane slowed to 100 knots and eventually settled on ref plus 5, or about 85 knots. At 500 agl, I switched off the autopilot. As the radar altimeter counted down from 40, 30, 20, I eased the throttle back and pitched the nose up ever so slightly. The touchdown was nice and smooth. I tried to go easy on the brakes, and despite a little more zigzagging, we cleared the active and taxied into Saker Aviation Services, another PC-12 mission accomplished.

A Little PC-12 History

When Pilatus—then maker of the famous Turbo Porter single-engine STOL aircraft—announced the PC-12 in 1989, it saw the design as a highly efficient workhorse perfect for the utility, cargo and commuter airline, as well as air-ambulance segments. The first PC-12 prototype flew on May 31, 1991, with certification by the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation on March 30, 1994. The FAA’s nod followed on July 15, 1994. Three decades later, it would be tough to look at the more than 1,750 PC-12s produced as anything other than a dream come true.

The PC-12 was certified to Part 23 standards to ensure the aircraft would be marketable in the US. That regulation demands a stall speed no greater than 61 knots: a problem easily solved with the PC-12’s big 70-percent-wingspan Fowler flaps. The PC-12’s wing was machined specifically with the thick pneumatic deicing boots in mind, so they fit flush to the airfoil for minimal drag. The aircraft was the first single-engine turboprop to offer a huge rear cargo door to more easily allow the cabin to swallow thousands of pounds of cargo in a single gulp. Even with six seats in the rear of the original airplane, the cabin offered an aisle wide enough for half a dozen people to move around without climbing over each other. Some critics saw the PC-12’s lack of a stand-up cabin as a drawback, but sales numbers seemed to indicate almost no one cared.

PC-12 updates have included engine and avionics changes to the original PC-12/41 airframe, as well as the Model 12/45 and the 12/47—which, for some unknown reason, became known as the Model 10. Others include the PC-12 Spectre for paramilitary and government operations and the US Air Force version known as the U-28A Draco. Pilatus began offering the model 47E in 2008, which was marketed as the PC-12 NG, the predecessor to the NGX.

This story appeared in the April 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

The crewed SpaceX Dragon module positioned atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 39A at NASA Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, successfully launched on May 30, at 3:22 pm EDT. The crew, NASA veterans Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, completed docking with the International Space Station on May 31 at 10:29 am EDT and boarded the ISS at 1:02 pm, becoming the first astronauts to do so from a commercially made spacecraft. The mission also returned crewed space flight to US soil for the first time since the end of the space shuttle program in August 2011. Since the beginning of the program in 2010, SpaceX has completed 21 uncrewed trips to the ISS.

The mission—actually planned as a minimum-crew demonstration flight and dubbed Demo-2—saw another component hit its mark. The Falcon 9 returned to Earth safely—and re-usably—landing on the ocean-borne droneship Of Course I Still Love You following its separation from Crew Dragon. The launch proceeded on the day of its second weather window, after convective activity delayed the previous attempt.

A highly detailed matrix governs the go/no-go decision for a launch. If key metrics are not attained—or specific incidents occur during the countdown sequence—the mission aborts. As Hurley recounted in a tweet, “On my first flight STS-127 on Shuttle Endeavor, we scrubbed 5 times over the course of a month for technical and weather challenges. All launch commit criteria is developed way ahead of any attempt. This makes the correct scrub/launch decision easier in the heat of the moment.” Behnken also recalled his experience: “Scrubs are a part of conducting spaceflight safely and successfully. During my last mission to @Space_Station weather caught us too!” During the crew’s travel in orbit to ISS, they revealed that they had named their capsule Endeavor.

Crew Dragon has been designed to be fully autonomous but pilots can take over when needed. You can try your hand at the controls and see if your next mission might just be ISS-bound.

Among the issues identified during a 2018 overrun investigation was, “The rules governing instrument approaches in Canada are too complex, confusing and ineffective at preventing pilots from conducting approaches that are not allowed, or banned, because they are below the minimum weather limits,” according to Canada’s Transportation Safety Board. In other parts of the world, a flight crew is not allowed to begin an instrument approach if the reported weather is below published minimums for a given approach except in Canada, where “flight crews are permitted to conduct approaches in visibility conditions that are below what is published.”

The TSB recently issued these findings as part of its report of a February 2018 accident in which a chartered Beech King Air A100 ran off the end of the runway at Havre-Saint-Pierre, Quebec. The airplane was substantially damaged but luckily all occupants escaped with only minor injuries—or none at all. As part of the report, the TSB asked Transport Canada to simplify approach and landing minima as presented in a TSB video.

The King Air A100 was conducting a charter flight under instrument flight rules, from the Sept-Îles Airport, Quebec, to the Havre St-Pierre Airport, Quebec, with two crew members and six passengers. “Prior to departure, the weather at Havre St-Pierre aerodrome indicated a visibility of 3/4 of a statute mile in light snow…enroute, the crew received updated weather, which indicated the visibility had deteriorated to just 1/4 mile in heavy snow—well below the minimum visibility allowed to conduct the approach. However, the pilot believed he could continue the approach safely.” When the pilot did manage to catch sight of a small patch of runway, he continued the landing, touching down just 700 feet before the end of the runway. The aircraft overran the end and came to a stop in a large snowbank approximately 220 feet beyond the end of the runway.

The TSB said, “Flight crews have to consult multiple reference documents and consider a variety of factors to determine if an approach is allowed. The current rules also make it difficult for ATC to determine whether an approach is authorized. As a result, ATC will clear an aircraft for an approach regardless of the published minima, leaving the ultimate decision to conduct the approach to the flight crew.” The TSB added that, “based on the pilot’s interpretation of the various factors and exceptions relating to the approach ban, the pilot incorrectly believed he was allowed to conduct the approach.”

Electric propulsion designer Magnix, working alongside engineering and flight test specialist AeroTEC, said the Magnix Magni/500-powered Cessna 208B Caravan they launched last week is now the largest all-electric, zero emissions, passenger or cargo aircraft ever to fly. The Caravan test bed aircraft lifted off from Grant County International Airport in Moses Lake, Washington, for a 30-minute flight with the Magni 750 hp electric motor that AeroTec installed to replace the airplane’s standard Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6 turboprop that generates 867 shp.

The two companies said their modified Caravan confirms aircraft of this type and size can feasibly operate over short routes. They believe the electric Caravan could be ready for the marketplace by late next year. A story in the Seattle Times on Friday however, took a slightly more pragmatic look at the aircraft. “The flight does not herald the near-term introduction of all-electric, passenger-carrying Cessnas. The cabin of the plane was obstructed by two tons of lithium-ion batteries and cooling equipment, with little room for passengers. It certainly wasn’t a cabin setup that would make any sense commercially.”

Magnix also last year powered the first all-electric seaplane flight when a Magni/500 powerplant was mounted on a deHavilland Beaver owned by Vancouver, British Columbia-based Harbour Air.

Garmin International announced last week that it has joined a broad aviation industry coalition in urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reconsider its “Report and Order” to repurpose C-band frequency spectrum nearby to the frequency band that is used by safety-critical FAA-certified radio (radar) altimeters, including Garmin’s GRA 5500 and GRA 55. Joining Garmin to express concerns were a coalition of “aviation petitioners” that also included the Aerospace Industries Association, the Aerospace Vehicle Systems Institute, the Air Line Pilots Association, Airbus, Aviation Spectrum Resources, the General Aviation Manufacturers Association, Helicopter Association International, Honeywell International, the International Air Transport Association, and the National Air Transportation Association.

The Aviation Petitioners asked the FCC to reconsider, in part, its March 3, 2020, Report and Order to take into account critical record evidence of the potential for harmful interference to FAA-certified radio altimeters operating in the 4.2 to 4.4 GHz spectrum allocation from prospective flexible use operations in the newly created 3700 to 3980 MHz range.

In the 35-page petition, the coalition stated “radio altimeters are essential to safe airplane and helicopter operations, allowing pilots to safely land and avoid terrain, particularly during poor weather conditions and low visibility. The industry coalition is working to ensure radio altimeters are appropriately protected from prospective flexible-use applications, including 5G operations.”

The coalition stated that “despite assurances by the FCC Chairman to Congress that the C-band Report and Order would be carefully designed so that aircraft are able to use radio altimeters in a continuous and uninterrupted manner, it fails to do so. The industry coalition does not seek to block repurposing the C-band spectrum. Instead, the coalition seeks a path that will make the C-band spectrum available for purposes such as 5G, while ensuring full protection of radio altimeters.”

Authors of the coalition’s petition emphasized that FAA-certified avionics must adhere to a very high established standard. “In the realm of aviation,” the petition stated, “ensuring safety in reasonably likely scenarios to a significant degree is not sufficient: the reality is that FAA-certified avionics tasked with keeping lives safe, such as radio altimeters, are held to standards as stringent as one chance for error in one billion flight hours.”

While the FCC Chairman and the Report and Order both expressly recognize that radio altimeters must operate without harmful interference, the petitioners argue that the FCC has placed the protection of radio altimeters from interference on the industry. “In stark contrast with the draft Report and Order made available to the public by the FCC just three weeks earlier—under which the Commission would have welcomed further studies and promised to take action as appropriate to protect safety-of-life radio altimeters—the FCC has placed the burden solely on the aviation industry to take account of the RF environment that is evolving below the 3980 MHz band edge and take appropriate action, if necessary, to ensure protection of such devices. The Report and Order requires the aviation community to solve any interference problems caused by new entrants who are disturbing the radio frequency environment in which radio altimeters have operated and benefitted the flying public for decades.”

The SpaceX launch of the crewed Dragon module atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on May 27, was scrubbed 17 minutes before ignition/light off because of severe weather in the area. The next window for the historic mission will be Saturday, May 30, at 3:22 pm EDT. Another window takes place the next day, May 31, if needed.

While the mission has been 9 years in the making, a delay of even a couple of days heightens the level of anticipation—as Flying contributor Les Abend found as he waited during the last 59 minutes of the run-up to the launch, in the midst of celebrating another special occasion:

“Pleased that Elon Musk had made the decision to celebrate my birthday by launching astronauts to the International Space Station, my wife and I had driven to Cape Canaveral, bike rack and bicycles attached. After examining satellite photos like a CIA analyst, I had devised a strategy that involved positioning ourselves on a shoreline area with an unobstructed view of the event.

“The bicycles would allow us the mobility to park almost anywhere. Of course, no one but me had considered that plan. Within a minute of our arrival, a very polite law enforcement officer with a bona fide sense of humor informed me that he was the “fun police,” and that my strategy was not allowed. We accepted his advice that it was best to consider a libation while viewing the launch via the restaurant decks that lined the south shoreline of Port Canaveral.

“When I had awoke that morning to the sound of a Level 4 thunderstorm, I analyzed the Florida radar picture that was pixelating across my phone’s screen. My airline pilot brain told me that a launch had a marginal chance of happening. So, at T minus 59 minutes, I was surprised that the countdown was continuing. I found myself juggling between my radar app and the live NASA feed. Surely, someone at Mission Control would call me for advice. Infatuated with NASA of the 1960s—and geeked out on its trivia—I recalled the lightning strikes that had disabled Apollo 12’s navigation platform during its launch. That crisis was averted by some quick-thinking engineers, but it left enough of an impression where the current policy was established that if convective activity is within 50 miles, the launch does not occur.

“Though communication between Mission Control and the Dragon capsule held the standard monotone, airline-like demeanor, no doubt the astronauts were feeling the stress of the moment, probably wondering if mother nature was going to foil the day’s plans. At T-minus 30 minutes, my radar analysis indicated that the last band of weather needed to vacate the area more quickly to the east. If the band moved away, the next batch of convection to the southwest might just remain 50 miles away. I was amazed that propellant was still being added to the rocket.

“With approximately 17 minutes remaining, a dry humor comment from mission control that another 10 minutes was needed indicated to me that the launch was scrubbed. When the abort sequence was announced, it was time to beat the crowd. Despite the numerous TVs in the restaurant that were broadcasting NASA Live, it seemed that the other patrons hadn’t quite got the abort message. Surely, we would be the first to exit the parking lot. Once again, my strategy wasn’t an original thought.

“Though enduring the traffic was painful, I could have only imagined the frustration of NASA, SpaceX, and the astronauts. That being said, the appropriate decision was made to abort the launch. After being presented with a career of similar decisions, I had a tremendous appreciation for the protocol that was followed precisely. Thanks anyhow, Elon! Maybe next year’s birthday?”

The US Air Force still needs more pilots, despite the effects of the COVID-19 virus on the rest of the aviation industry. Last week, the Air Force removed one more barrier to recruiting the pilots it so badly needs by eliminating the height requirement for applicants. Under the previous Medical Standards Directory requirement, a pilot applicant was required to stand between 5'4" and 6'5" with a sitting height between 34 and 40 inches. While the service said its goal in dropping the height requirement was to attract a more diverse group of candidates, it admitted in a news release, “The previous height screening criteria eliminated about 44 percent of American women between the age of 20 and 29.”

According to the Air Force Times, “Instead of a blanket height requirement, the Air Force said that it will apply an ‘anthropometric screening process’ to figure out which specific aircraft applicants would be able to fly. These measurements, in addition to standing height, also measure an applicant’s eye height while sitting, buttocks-to-knee length, and arm span, are entered into a computer to determine which aircraft the applicant could and could not safely fit in.”

Pete Bunce said, “While the year started off strong, the health and safety restrictions put in place to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic began to significantly impact global operations, supply chains and deliveries towards the end of the first quarter.” Bunce’s remarks were part of the General Aviation Manufacturing Association’s report of first-quarter aircraft shipments—Bunce serves as CEO of GAMA. “Many companies then supplemented ongoing activities with the production and transport of health-care materials needed by front-line health care workers and communities across the globe,” actions Bunce said serve as a testament to the adaptability and resilience of the industry’s workforce.

During the quarter that ended March 31, piston airplane deliveries declined 11.7 percent, with 219 airframes; turboprop airplane deliveries dropped a whopping 41.8 percent, with 71 airframes; and business jet deliveries declined 19.1 percent, with 114 airframes when compared to the same time period in 2019. On the rotorcraft side, turbine helicopter deliveries declined 18.3 percent with 85 airframes, while piston helicopter deliveries declined 43.9 percent sending just 37 machines out the door. Of the 404 total delivers in the first quarter, the majority–294–went to North America, 98 to Europe and nine to South America. Second quarter delivery numbers that should appear in late August are expected to reflect the full force of the COVID-19 virus on the industry.

A quick glance at some of the manufacturers showed Textron Aviation delivered 48 Cessna 172s, six Beechcraft King Air 250s and seven Cessna Citation Latitudes, while Robinson Helicopters shipped 50 airframes, including 15 R66s, 14 R44 Raven IIs, 10 R44 Raven Is, six R44 cadets and five R22 Beta IIs. Piper shipped 25 aircraft, the vast majority being Archer IIs. Pilatus shipped 11 PC-12s and seven PC-24s, while Icon Aircraft shipped six airframes and Honda Aircraft delivered seven HondaJets. Cirrus Aircraft delivered 85 aircraft in the first quarter, eight SR-20s, 20 SR-22s, 39 SR-22Ts and 18 VisionJets. Embraer shipped nine aircraft and Gulfstream delivered 23. More specific details of all delivers is available at GAMA.

ForeFlight released its 12.4 version of the multifunctional flight planning app on May 26, 2020, with a selection of new features that bring feedback from customers into reality. Among the updates: multitasking for iPad, and global traffic (via internet) from FlightAware.

New iOS multitasking allows users to run apps side by side on the display, in a splitscreen mode—but it is only supported on the iPad, not the iPhone version. To view two apps side by side, both must support multitasking—such as Safari. While running the another app, the user swipes up about an inch to open the iOS dock, which is normally seen on the home screen. By tapping and holding the ForeFlight icon, then dragging it to the side of the screen the user wishes to view it on, the user will open the app in splitscreen mode. If the app doesn’t open this way, the underlying app doesn’t support multitasking. Though it may seem like a small thing, the mode took a lot of effort on the team’s part to get it in play—and it makes a big difference when looked at from the viewpoint of cockpit logistics. One projected use? To run the timer on the clock app side by side with ForeFlight. A demo video from ForeFlight demonstrates this and other new functionality.

Other new features include the availability of Internet Traffic from FlightAware to stream live global air traffic, allowing the pilot to analyze airport activity and check on flight status. According to ForeFlight, Internet Traffic is tied to the same Traffic map layer used to display ADS-B traffic, and that layer is now accessible any time the user has an internet connection on the ground. The layer will automatically switch to showing only ADS-B traffic when it’s connected to an external ADS-B In device.

The team also applied a layer of simplification to a number of commonly (and infrequently) used features on the app, including the development of a compact menu that can be accessed via the More tab, and which keeps you on the page you’re currently viewing. Other, less-frequently-used tabs now appear as “modals” the pilot can quickly dismiss by swiping down from the top—such as Downloads and Settings. Checklist and Logbook tabs now open into a full-screen, double-column layout to better utilize the screen real estate. The Frequencies, Services, A/FD, and More tabs have been combined into a single Info tab, and the Forecast Discussion is now nested under the TAF section.

All updates noted are for both the non-European and European versions. For more information, visit ForeFlight.

Tecnam announced a new version of its P2010 4-seat, single-engine airplane, with a new Continental CD-170 diesel engine, ready for certification by EASA. The 170 hp engine builds on the success Continental has had with the previous -135 and -155 hp models of its liquid-cooled, turbocharged, fadec-operated diesel engine series. The type certificate is expected by July 2020.

The P2010 came previously with the Lycoming IO-360 engine, at 180 hp, and its IO-390 engine at 215 hp. According to Tecnam CEO Paolo Pascale, the diesel engine enables the new P2010 to outlast its predecessors in range because of the up-to-50-percent reduction in fuel burn—with a top range of 1,050 nm possible. In a news conference streamed on YouTube on May 27, Chris Kuehn, vice president of sales, support, and services for Continental, elaborated that the new engine-airframe combination will make up to 136 ktas at 75-percent best power operation, burning about 6.5 gph (in jet-A or other approved kerosene fuels) or back down to 4.5 gph at 55-percent power, enabling the jump in range from the 660 nm previously posted by prior versions.

The P2010 comes equipped with the Garmin G1000 NXi flight deck, in a modular format that allows customers to make adjustments and updates based on future developments. The €375,000 standard price extends to the initial deliveries that Pascale projects will come in September or October 2020, to launch customers in Africa and Asia. Kuehn reiterated that the new P2010 was based on feedback from operators around the world stymied by the lack of avgas or its cost. “There are a number of potential buyers,” he said.

Sun ‘n Fun’s Home Edition Online Airshow live event on May 30 will benefit the Aerospace Center for Excellence, to try and make up for funding lost with the cancellation of the Sun ‘n Fun Aerospace Expo in Lakeland, Florida, earlier this month.

The nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization has lost an estimated 80 percent of its funding, which puts many of the scholarships and STEM programs delivered by the center—plus expansion of the center itself—on hold for the foreseeable future.

The Online Airshow benefit promises to be packed with a lot of the airshow entertainment that folks have come to expect from the Aerospace Expo it replaces this year—including live interviews with aviation personalities and pilots, and live commentary on show performances by the US Air Force Thunderbirds, US Navy Blue angels, F35 Demo Team, and performers such as Patty Wagstaff and Michael Goulian. The live stream starts at 1 pm EDT on Saturday—or you can catch the archived footage from this and other Sun n Fun Home Edition sessions on Flying’s Virtual Air Show

During the event, participants can join into the silent auction in order to be eligible for prizes that will be distributed. These include trips and tickets to #SNF21, gear donated by Bose, and other pilot-focused giveaways. Registration is free—you don’t have to bid on anything to win.

In September 2018, a Canadian-registry Cessna 340A attempting to land at Port Huron, Michigan (KPHN), crashed a half-mile past the departure end of the runway. The airplane was destroyed, and its 690-hour private pilot, the only person aboard, was killed. The accident occurred in darkness and rain, just before midnight, but in VFR conditions.

The pilot, on a business trip to Wisconsin, had left Carp Airport at Ottawa, Ontario (CYRP), around 7:30 p.m. after waiting four hours for a truck to arrive and replenish the airport’s fuel supply. En route at 23,000 feet, he encountered thunderstorms and diverted to St. Thomas, Ontario (CYQS), where he waited on the ground for an hour before continuing to KPHN. He remained at 4,000 feet for the short IFR flight and, on nearing KPHN, was cleared for the GPS Runway 22 approach.

When the Cessna was about a mile outside the final approach fix and 6 miles from the runway, its right engine quit. More than a minute later, the pilot, now inside the FAF and at 2,550 feet agl, advised the controller of the problem. The controller asked whether the pilot would continue with the landing approach. “I’m gonna work on it,” he replied.

When the airplane was at 1,050 feet agl, the pilot reported that he had not been able to turn on the runway lights, which are activated at the nontowered airport by mic clicks on the common traffic advisory frequency. The runway was invisible.

At 650 feet above the airport, the pilot said, “I’m right above the airport on one engine, so I’m gonna make a slow turn…to reshoot the approach.”

The pilot’s last transmission came a few seconds later. “There’s nothing lit up here, sir,” he said. The last radar return from the 340 had it at 450 ft agl and beginning a right turn. Evidently, it stalled out of that turn, descending almost vertically to the ground.

In the morning, airport personnel checked the runway lights. They operated normally.

Teardown of the right engine revealed nothing amiss. The airplane was equipped with an electronic engine-monitoring system, however, and it showed an abrupt loss of fuel pressure at the time of the engine failure. There was nothing apparently wrong with the engine-driven fuel pump, and the auxiliary-pump switch was on. Accident investigators concluded that the pilot had mismanaged the airplane’s somewhat arcane fuel system, and the right engine had quit because of fuel starvation.

The 340 had three fuel tanks for each engine: the 50-gallon wingtip tank, which was the main, a midspan auxiliary tank of 31.5 gallons and a 20-gallon wing locker tank in the aft part of the engine nacelle. The locker tanks did not feed the engines directly; transfer pumps moved their fuel into the main tanks at a rate of about 13 gph.

The standard fuel-management procedure was to use the main tanks for the first 90 minutes after takeoff and in all phases of flight except while cruising at altitude, when the aux tanks could be selected once the fuel levels in the mains were below 180 pounds. The locker-tank transfer pumps were to be switched on after takeoff and run until the locker tanks were dry. Because their flow rate was less than the engines’ consumption, the fuel level in the main tanks would slowly decline. The 180-pound rule was intended to preclude overflowing the main tanks.

Most of the fuel tanks broke open in the crash, but 14 gallons remained in the right locker tank. It should not have been there. The airplane had flown about three hours since full tanks, and the locker tanks ought to have been empty after 90 minutes. The amount of fuel found in the right locker tank was consistent with the duration of the final flight, however, if the transfer pumps had been turned on, as required, shortly after takeoff. Investigators hypothesized that because the wing locker fuel had not been transferred to the mains, the pilot had switched to auxiliary fuel prematurely and then inadvertently run the right aux tank dry. The right engine’s fuel selector valve was found with the main tank selected; the investigators’ theory was that the pilot recognized his error and tried to restart the right engine but failed. Consistent with this scenario was the fact that he had not feathered the propeller or taken any of the other steps needed to secure a dead engine.

The hypothesis that the pilot tried and failed to restart the engine—and became fixated and distracted by the process—is also consistent with his gravest error: He left the gear and flaps down. Like most piston twins, the 340A won’t climb unless cleaned up. The POH makes no bones about the single-engine performance, emphasizing the “immediate action” steps needed to secure an inoperative engine and suggesting they be committed to memory. This airplane enjoyed the advantage of 50 extra horsepower thanks to a RAM conversion, but even that could not overcome gear, flaps and a windmilling propeller.

Read More from Peter Garrison: Aftermath

In addition to failing to clean up the airplane, the pilot allowed its airspeed to bleed away. His groundspeed at the FAF was 100 knots, but at the last radar return, it was 72.

The pilot’s actions and omissions may reflect the state of mind of someone who is arriving at an airport of entry five hours later than he intended to. He is tired; he wants to land. The fact that he delayed reporting the engine failure for more than a minute suggests that he recognized the cause was nothing more than fuel starvation and thought he could remedy it without first climbing back to a safe altitude.

The radio settings were lost in the crash, but he had evidently made a mistake selecting the CTAF frequency to activate the runway lights. Now his problem was more urgent; he could not land even if he did get the engine running again. And yet, he still failed to clean up the airplane and start climbing, most likely because he was convinced that the engine would restart at any moment, and he would then turn his attention to other things.

The National Transportation Safety Board’s analysis listed four causes, all pilot errors: improper fuel management, inadequate flight planning, failure to secure the right engine after loss of power, and failure to configure the airplane for a go-around.

I’m not sure what aspect of his flight planning was considered inadequate—unless, by flight planning, they meant in-flight decision-making. To me, the crux of this accident is simply the pilot’s failure to take what seems to be the only sensible action, namely, to get the hell out of there. Less than 1,000 feet above the ground, no airport in sight and one engine windmilling—how much worse can it get? At least he wasn’t on fire. But that’s not the time or the place to attempt a restart. The POH had it right: feather, clean up, maintain climbing speed—it’s 100 kias—and get to a safe altitude. Then diagnose the problem, try to restart or fly to an airport at which landing is assured.

It’s all very clear—in hindsight and my easy chair.

This story appeared in the April 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

Whether you’re flying to the Maine coastline to add your name to the list of the 3 million annual visitors to Acacia National Park or to try to decide which restaurants really are the 10 best for lobster in the region, you might come face to face with the RNAV (GPS) Runway 22 for an approach into Hancock County-Bar Harbor Airport (KBHB).

Coastal influences here usually prevent winter temperatures from dropping down into the single-digit range common in the rest of Maine, but pilots should keep in mind that KBHB receives an average of 60 inches of snow. In May and June, there can also be dense coastal fog to plague unwary pilots.

A. Standard T-Bar IAF points

Whenever possible, GPS approaches are developed using a “T-Bar” shape. In this case, the final approach course is 224 degrees inbound with initial approach fix points CARDA and DIRNE to the northwest and southeast that require no more than a 90-degree turn inbound and eliminate the need for a turn around the holding pattern.

B. Differing Glideslopes

Note 7 warns pilots that the visual glideslope indicator and the RNAV glidepath are not coincidental. That means if you are flying the glideslope on the instruments, and break out of the clouds, the lights indicating the visual glidepath will not match up with the one you are flying using your instruments. This becomes a decision point for the pilot. If you are confident you can continue the rest of the approach visually, you could transition to using the visual glideslope indicator; if that isn’t certain, you may be better off continuing use of the glidepath on your instruments.

C. Do Step-downs Matter?

The answer is: It depends on the weather and if a pilot is flying the LPV or LNAV version of this approach. After passing BECRA, the pilot is authorized to descend from 3,000 feet to 2,100 feet until crossing CDLAC, the FAF. To the untrained eye it may look as if there may be additional step-downs at JESUL, 2.1 nm to Rwy 22, and perhaps even at 1.4 nm. These would not be applicable to a pilot flying this approach to the precision-like LPV minimums. But for a pilot flying the approach to the non-precision-like MDA minimums, JESUL denotes a minimum altitude—780 feet—the pilot could be at when crossing that point. That altitude is likely because of the 303-feet-tall obstacle noted in the overhead view. The 1.4 nm point to Rwy 22 denotes the visual descent point, a location from which the pilot would use normal descent maneuvering if they have the runway environment in sight.

D. Holding Patterns Are Slightly Different

Should a missed approach become necessary, the pilot climbs straight ahead to 2,900 feet proceeding directly to WHAME intersection to hold. But unlike traditional 1-minute legs, this hold uses 4-nm legs, which are common on modern GPS approaches. Most GPS systems connected to an autopilot will fly these for you. If you’re hand-flying the airplane, don’t let old habits convince you to fly 1-minute legs.

E. Minimums Increase Without The Local Altimeter

Pilots unable to receive the KBHB altimeter must increase their landing minimums—numbers that can found on the bottom of the plate. Sometimes, the change in minimums can mean the difference between a successful arrival and a missed approach. On this approach for instance, minimums with the local altimeter are 283 feet and 3/4-mile visibility. Using a Bangor altimeter setting, those minimums would climb to 366 feet and 1-mile visibility. If you typically round up minimums to the next 100 feet to avoid busting minimums, it would mean a missed approach at 400 feet—instead of the 300 feet—for pilots without the local altimeter setting. So that extra 100 feet can make a big difference.

F. Got the Lights Yet?

Pilot-controlled lighting is fairly common when there aren’t any folks nearby to turn them on or raise the intensity. Just click your microphone button on the right frequency to light up your life. If want to control them at a nontowered airport like KBHB, what frequency would you use? If you answered quickly and said CTAF, you’d be wrong. CTAF is often a great answer, but in this case, Note 8 says the PCL is operated through 122.7.

This story appeared in the April 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

Bearhawk Aircraft, based in Austin, Texas, announced its newest airplane, the 6-seat Model 5, on May 21. The airplane adds to its line of 2- and 4-seat airplanes, with a difference: It will be powered by a series of engines, including a spec-built 315 hp Lycoming IO-580 engine. The new airplane is Bearhawk’s largest to date, designed by Bob Barrows.

The Model 5 made its first flight on May 3, and the company reports that the prototype had 5 hours on it at the time of the announcement. Bearhawk test pilot Rollie van Dorn pronounced its flight characteristics “excellent,” and further testing will establish the aircraft’s max gross weight at 3,000 pounds. The smallest engine to be used in the Model 5 will be the six-cylinder 250 or 260 hp Lycoming O-540. The Model 5 can also use the heavier angle-valve cylinder Lycoming O-540 (300 hp) and IO-580 (315 hp).

Bearhawk has been working on the new airplane for two years—and it’s just a bit wider and longer than its predecessor, the original 4-seat Bearhawk. The prototype was built in collaboration with longtime Bearhawk builder Collin Campbell, of Bolivar, Missouri, who adds this to his fleet of high-end Bearhawks that he’s completed.

Bearhawk Aircraft president Mark Goldberg recounts the genesis of the design. “A friend of design engineer, Bob Barrows, requested he create a larger version of the Bearhawk 4-Place as this friend is a big guy. Bob did the drawings for his friend who began construction on it. However, health issues forced him to quit working on the project and it sat for about a year. One day I was talking to Collin Campbell who told me he was getting bored now that his Bearhawk LSA was finished and flying.” Goldberg said a light bulb came on and, thus, a plan was made for Collin to finish the Model 5 project. “Truly, there is no one in the world, except Bob himself, more qualified to have built this prototype than Collin,” Goldberg said.

The Model 5 is expected to cruise at 160 mph, with lower speeds of 145 to 150 mph that could be achieved with an economy fuel burn of 14.5 to 15 gph. Takeoffs will come in around 220 to 300 feet, with landings under 650 feet.

To help aviation start-up ventures gain financial footing post-pandemic as they develop new commercial applications that rely on ADS-B data, a partnership has been announced by AirNav Systems and BrightCap Ventures to offer funding to selected start-ups. The goal is to address the various challenges in the field of flight safety, ground and flight operations enhancements, aircraft health monitoring, aircraft operating conditions, UAV operations, and anti-UAV systems as the industry moves on from the COVID-19 crisis.

AirNav Systems is a global flight tracking and monitoring company based in Tampa, Florida, with a research and development center in Europe that provides related data to aviation service providers worldwide. BrightCap Ventures is an early-stage, tech-focused VC fund registered in the Netherlands with its main office in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Called the “Kitty Hawk Challenge,” the partnership aims to identify start-ups worldwide via a rigorous selection process that includes an in-depth review of each potential company to launch a new funding program for start-up ventures anxious to leverage ADS-B data and technology solutions.

Selected startups will receive up to €200,000 (approximately $218,000) equity funding from BrightCap Ventures. In addition to the capital and mentoring/oversight of BrightCap, these startups will also be given the opportunity to collaborate with AirNav Systems LLC to utilize the company’s available historical and real-time tracking data to best develop the technology solutions that exhibit both engineering maturity and go-to-market capabilities. Upon further progress with product commercialization, BrightCap Ventures can invest up to €3,500,000 (approximately $3,815,000) in selected startups as part of further Seed/Series A rounds.

“The aviation industry is being faced with challenges we have never seen before,” said Oleg Rakhimov, vice president business development and sales, AirNav Systems LLC. “It became obvious that conventional methods and approaches would not be enough to deliver the fastest recovery path. Broadly accepted paradigms mostly failed. The industry is looking for new solutions with non-standard algorithms embedded. AirNav Systems wanted to step in and help encourage aviation enthusiasts and professionals to share alternative views encapsulated in not-from-the-shelf software. The Kitty Hawk Challenge will stimulate new ideas that can be turned into robust anti-crisis tools to bring the aviation industry back to its highs. The AirNav Systems and BrightCap partnership are eager to use this momentum to add fuel to the startups and help them fly to save aviation.”

“Access to domain-specific, production-quality data has always been a challenge for startups,” said Georgi Mitov, Managing Partner, BrightCap Ventures. "The customers provide such data, but many of the early-stage startups don't have customers yet and can't use such data to develop and test their product, so this becomes a ‘catch-22’ situation. Our partnership with AirNav will allow selected startups to leverage our entrepreneurial and domain-specific experience, combined with access to production quality ADS-B data, to develop next-gen solutions for the aviation industry. This setup makes us very enthusiastic about the Kitty Hawk Challenge and our partnership with AirNav.”

BrightCap Ventures’ Mitov explained, “Many successful companies are born during turbulent times. The new economic outlook will encourage companies to look for smart and cost-efficient ways to run their operation. Our partnership with AirNav will allow startups to benefit from our entrepreneurial experience and leverage the benefits which Bulgaria has to offer as an R & D destination, helping startups develop world-class products with excellent talent at a competitive cost,” he said.

For more information, visit radarbox.com/challenge. Companies interested in being considered should submit their investor pitch decks to info@brightcap.vc.

On January 29, 2019, a Bell 407 helicopter operating as an air ambulance flight by Batesville, Arkansas-based Survival Flight crashed near Zaleski, Ohio, killing the pilot, the flight nurse and the flight paramedic.

The helicopter impacted heavily forested terrain just before 7 am local time in deteriorating weather while enroute to transfer a patient from one hospital to another. In a synopsis of its final report, the Board explained, “Night visual meteorological conditions existed at the departure location, but available weather information indicated that snow showers and areas of instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) existed along the route of flight.”

The NTSB said the probable cause of the accident was “the pilot’s inadvertent encounter with instrument meteorological conditions, failure to maintain altitude, and subsequent collision with terrain.” The report also cited Survival Flight’s “inadequate management of safety, which normalized pilots’ and operations control specialists’ noncompliance with risk-analysis procedures and resulted in the initiation of the flight without a comprehensive preflight weather evaluation. Contributing to the accident was the FAA’s inadequate oversight of the operator’s risk management program and failure to require [this and other] Part 135 operators to establish safety management system programs.” The Board said, “Although sufficient information was available to the evening shift pilot and the operations control specialist to identify the potential for snow, icing, and reduced visibility along the accident flight route, their failure to obtain complete enroute information precluded them from identifying crucial meteorological risks for the accident flight.” Additionally, the NTSB delivered a dozen specific findings following the accident investigation as well as 14 recommendations to Survival Flight, the FAA and the National Weather Service, some focused on management issues, others on operational topics such as requiring the use of improved weather technology in the helicopter and on the ground.

Coincidental to the release of the NTSB’s report, the Flight Safety Foundation published a white paper called Commercial Passenger-Carrying Helicopter Safety. Foundation President and CEO Hassan Shahidi said, “Statistics show that for-hire and air taxi helicopter operations have a higher fatal accident rate than the industry has as a whole. It is clear that more needs to be done to drive down helicopter accident rates, improve crash survivability and develop industry-wide improvements in managing aviation risk. It also is clear that there is no single solution. Instead, a mix and of short- and longer-term strategies involving operators, manufacturers, regulators and consumers is required to improve the industry’s safety performance. And there needs to be a sense of urgency.”

What We Know About the Flight

In the pre-dawn hours of January 29, a nurse at Holzer Meigs Emergency Department contacted two other helicopter air ambulance operators requesting transport for her patient to OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. Both companies turned down the request citing poor weather conditions. When Survival Flight was contacted, the dispatcher contacted the evening pilot on call to check the weather and decide if he could accept the trip which he did a minute later. Since the evening pilot was about to go off duty, he suggested the dispatcher reach out to the day pilot who was reportedly just five minutes away from the base. She arrived and climbed into the helicopter that was already running.

The Board said, “There was no record of the accident pilot receiving a weather briefing or accessing any imagery on the weather application (Foreflight). Additionally, neither pilot completed a preflight risk assessment for the flight, as required by Part 135.617.” The evening shift pilot said he expected the accident flight pilot to complete the assessment after she returned. The weather was marginal VFR when the helicopter departed the Survival Flight base with gusty surface winds from the west and visibilities down to three miles in light snow. The forecast called for a 30- to 60-percent chance of light snow while two airmets warned of possible moderate turbulence below 10,000 and moderate icing below 8,000 feet.

Recorded weather radar and flight data monitoring (FDM) information indicate the helicopter departed about 6:28 am local and climbed southeastward to about 3,000 feet. During the next 22 minutes, the helicopter flew through two snow bands on the way to the destination hospital. The Board believes the pilot ran into IMC in the second band shortly after which the helicopter began a 180-degree descending left turn. Investigators believe the pilot might have been attempting to escape from the inadvertent IMC. However, the helicopter continued descending until it impacted trees. The report did say however that neither the pilot’s qualifications, medical conditions or impairment by alcohol or other drugs or the airworthiness of the helicopter were issues in the accident. There were no facts mentioned to indicate why the pilot was unable to complete the escape turn while maintaining altitude.

In the synopsis of the final report, the NTSB specifically pointed to a number of additional safety issues including the lack of a positive safety culture endorsed by Survival Flight management, the lack of helicopter air ambulance (HAA) experience for principal operations inspectors assigned to HAA operations; the lack of accurate terminal doppler weather radar data available on the HEMS (helicopter emergency medical services) weather tool and the lack of a flight recorder.

The Board’s called Survival Flight’s risk assessment process inadequate as illustrated by consistent failure by the company’s operational personnel completing a risk assessment worksheet before every flight, including the accident flight, as well as the accident pilot’s decision to conduct the flight without a shift change briefing, including an adequate preflight risk assessment. The Board added, “If a recorder system to capture cockpit audio, images, and parametric data had been installed, it would have enabled NTSB investigators to reconstruct the final moments of the accident flight and determine why the accident pilot did not maintain the helicopter’s altitude and successfully exit the encounter with inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions.” The report also took the FAA’s principal operations inspector to task for not knowing Survival Flight’s flight risk assessment (FRA) was inadequate and that it failed to meet the requirements of Part 135.617 or comply with the guidance in Advisory Circular 135-14B. The Board believes POIs assigned to helicopter air ambulance would benefit from helicopter experience or specific experience with HAAs.

The Helicopter Association International responded to the NTSB’s report on May 20, 2020, saying it “supports many of the NTSB’s recommendations and suggestions but believes that the NTSB overstated some solutions while overlooking other potentially valuable programs.” James A. Viola, president and CEO of HAI said, “We agree that flight-data monitoring equipment can be valuable. But, as indicated in the hearing, industry follow-through with programs that use the data to improve operational safety may be inadequate. We believe this data should be shared with programs like the government-industry Aviation Safety Information Analysis & Sharing (ASIAS), which anonymously compiles information from participating operators’ flights to provide a snapshot of how our industry is doing and where improvements are needed.

Viola added, “HAI also agrees that safety management systems (SMS) have a place in business operations. However, we also recognize that voluntary SMS while supported by the FAA, is not being fully optimized and implemented because of limited resources.” HAI said it believes that requiring the FAA to hire and train helicopter-specific POIs will not adequately address the issues identified during the NTSB hearing, and may instead lead to delays in implementing safety initiatives. “The safety issues attributed to the POI during the hearing were irrelevant to their specific aircraft training or expertise. Helicopter-specific experience does not significantly improve a safety professional’s ability to monitor the use of a risk assessment or SMS program,” according to Viola. “HAI’s concern is that rotorcraft operators will end up waiting for their specific rotorcraft POI, who is suddenly backlogged or otherwise unavailable, and safety initiatives will lag as a result.”

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University announced that it would return to face-to-face instruction on June 30. The next phase in re-opening is planned for ERAU’s Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona, campuses. In doing so, the university will follow all local, state, and federal guidance, including the following measures: limiting classroom capacity, optimizing class schedules to minimize contact, pre-screening returning students, requiring cloth face masks in all common areas (indoors or outdoors), and daily wellness checks. If students have recently been sick, they are not allowed to come back to campus until they have met any quarantine and testing requirements. Any visitors will need to check in at designated welcome centers—Henderson Welcome Center in Daytona, and the Visitors Center at Prescott.

“We continue to review all progress and monitor every phase of the strategy,” said Mori Hosseini, chairman of ERAU’s Board of Trustees. “We believe that a structured, cautious return to normal operations will provide a platform for our institution’s long-term success and better prepare us for the fall semester. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is well positioned for this next step. Our safety focus is unparalleled and our board is unanimous in supporting this decision.”

“We have resumed flight and housing operations on our campuses,” ERAU President P. Barry Butler said in making the announcement. “Beginning face-to-face classes on June 30 will mark the next critical milestone. Our plan focuses on statistical risk testing, risk mitigation, support for contact tracing—and most importantly, education. We are continuing to educate our community on the risks, create redundancy across all of our safety standards, and finalize our testing protocols.”

Procedures in flight check-in and aircraft sanitization provide guidelines to follow that other flight training organizations may emulate. A total of 1,747 Eagle graduates celebrated the occasion virtually in May.

The expedition to take 15 Douglas DC-3 and C-47 variants across the Atlantic Ocean to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion was a monumental undertaking. As the D-Day Squadron looks back a year ago on those efforts, there’s a strong understanding of how fortunate they were to be able to fly there at all.

To continue the commemoration of the end of World War II in Europe, four of the D-Day Squadron aircraft plan to participate in an event more readily manageable under the current conditions—a Memorial Day flyover in southern California, on May 25. The “SoCal Strong” event honors veterans and frontline healthcare workers in the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.

This week, the crews recall that a year ago, on May 19, 2019, they practiced the formation and tribute flight skills needed to commemorate the D-Day missions as a group assembled in Oxford, Connecticut, before striking out over the North Atlantic on their way to Duxford, England. The Memorial Day flyover features California-based aircraft from that group: D-Day Doll, a C-53 from the Commemorative Air Force’s Inland Empire Wing, will lead the formation, joined by the Flabob Express C-47, Betsy’s Biscuit Bomber C-47, and Spirit of Benovia C-53. Also filling out the group is What’s Up Doc?, a C-47 from the Palm Springs Air Museum, Condor Squadron’s T-6s, and possibly other World War II-vintage aircraft.

“Our mission flying World War II aircraft over parts of Southern California for Memorial Day is to salute our veterans who sacrificed so much for the freedoms that we enjoy today. In addition, we will acknowledge the many medical personnel, first responders, and citizens who have provided unwavering support in caring for the local populace during this pandemic,” said Steve Rose, IEW wing leader, and pilot of D-Day Doll. “To join again with fellow squadron members is an honor and we appreciate everyone volunteering their time and aircraft to participate in this flight.”

The flight will target two national cemeteries, VA medical centers, airports, landmark piers and harbors, and the ships the Queen Mary, and the USS Iowa battleship. They’ll airlift a host of veterans from World War II, and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. The D-Day Squadron continues its mission as part of the Tunison Foundation, a charitable organization devoted to promoting the continuing airworthiness of the Douglas DC-3 type family, promote static and flying displays of historic aircraft, and educate and involve future generations in flying freedom and understanding aviation history.

I feel the pull of the Cessna 182’s changing lift vector as I turn to orbit just south and east of KPHL at 500 feet. We’re observing the changes along the New Jersey banks of the Delaware River—a very different “Jersey Shore”—and marking them with a string of photos across the water from the Philadelphia International Airport. At the same time, Philly Tower asks us to stay east of the final approach to Runway 35 for traffic, a landing Embraer 145, and we’re all watching for power lines, cell towers and birds. We brief the emergency bird-avoidance maneuver—if the bird appears motionless and grows larger, pitch up hard because birds tend to dive—and we almost use it.

LightHawk volunteer pilot Steve Kent negotiated our low-level path along the river as part of our environmental-survey mission for the Coalition for the Delaware River Watershed, which brings together more than 140 groups to advocate for the future of the watershed. The CDRW is just one of the many partner organizations that collaborate with LightHawk, a charitable aviation organization focused on conservation. Our low-level journey won’t have us above 1,200 feet msl for the entire 3.3 hours we put on the Hobbs. And it’s made safer in many degrees by the amphibious floats on the 182 we’re flying; everywhere we fly near the river, there’s a potential runway weaving past the settlements, marshes and myriad industrial operations.

The Mission

LightHawk started as one man’s vision: Michael Stewart was flying over the desert southwest and saw the open pit mines and encroaching developments below, and he found an application for flying to help illuminate the conservation issues at hand. Stewart launched the program in 1979 specifically with a flight to show the effects of building a coal-based power plant on the doorstep of the Grand Canyon. The mission quickly evolved into a loosely organized project based in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Aspen, Colorado; and then in the San Francisco Bay Area. “It allows a person to be informed so that they can make better decisions,” says Ryan Boggs, current chief program officer and interim CEO for the organization, regarding LightHawk’s role in conservation efforts. “It provides a freedom of choice based on having good information.”

Leveraging donated aircraft from one of the founding contributors, Will Parish, after moving to California, the group began flying conservation missions in the US Mountain West through the 1980s before it ventured farther afield to Central America. The group worked directly with government officials in Costa Rica, Guatemala and other nations in order to go where the need was greatest—battling deforestation and other large-scale issues.

Skip Slyfield became involved with the organization in 1990, and he contrasts the early days against the current, more-structured approach that evolved. The first missions, particularly in Guatemala and Honduras, had a distinct air of flying closer to the bone—and he witnessed the change to an organized approach. “I was one of the check pilots who flew with prospective volunteer pilots in their airplanes on their initial check rides,” Slyfield says. “We had an [operations manual], a safety program, and the director of ops was a furloughed airline guy and USAF pilot who also managed the fleet of staff aircraft.”

“Volunteer pilots who would fly the established programs in Central America had a good ground-support crew that arranged the missions and communicated numbers, locations and mission objectives to us daily,” Slyfield continues. “There was a sense that, as a pilot, you were on your own in a foreign place, and LightHawk leadership strove to ensure that the volunteer pilots they sent down had the right mix of experience and personality to function. You operated as your own dispatcher, scheduler, safety officer, flight planner, flight attendant and mosquito-abatement officer.”

Still, there remained a feeling of true backcountry flying. “We flew with the doors off,” Slyfield says, “looking for timber theft—mostly mahogany trees.” Thieves on the border between the two countries would cut down a single tree and drag it home through the forest—impossible to locate from the ground but easier from the air. “The mahogany chips were bright red,” Slyfield remembers. “They looked like trails of blood.”

For operational safety, the pilots and their government agents made standard procedures of sweeping runways for animals and people before landing at backcountry strips. The outreach did more than help governments deal with illegal logging and the like, as Slyfield recalls. “The indigenous folks in Belize, Honduras and Mexico—for many of them, it was the first time they got to see where they live,” and put it in the context of the world at large.

That intersection remains at the heart of what LightHawk does, four decades later. On the surface, the missions might appear to focus on photography, capturing the ever-changing landscape and the human imprint upon it from the air. But the larger goal lies in changing the hearts and minds of those exposed to this view of the Earth for the first time.

Stephanie Wells, a former Air Force instructor pilot and FAA operations inspector in Colorado, has been flying with LightHawk for several years. Wells retired from the FAA in 2010 and then worked for Mountain Aviation in Broomfield, Colorado, as a charter pilot—but she wanted more. “After leaving the FAA, I thought, ‘What can I do as a volunteer pilot?’ One of my passions is the environment, climate change. I Googled it, and I found LightHawk.”

Wells owns a Van’s RV-7, and because LightHawk pilots can’t use experimental aircraft in their missions, she had to wait until a more suitable mount presented itself. In the western region of the US, LightHawk was doing some of its flying in a Cessna 185 that the organization could access. But it was in Boise, Idaho—too far away to make sense for Wells to use—and then it was sold. “A few years later, I got a call from Greg Bettinger [now retired from the organization], and he said ‘We have missions in Mesoamerica in our [Cessna] 206.’ That caught my interest right away.” Wells attended the annual volunteer fly-in for LightHawk in 2012 in Fort Collins, Colorado, and began flying in 2013. “I put a lot of time on that 206. I have ferried it down [to Central America] and back. I spent a lot of time in Guatemala. I had taken Spanish back in college—one year of college Spanish—and after one trip, I found I was pretty lost without it. So, then I made an effort to become fluent in Spanish, including doing some Spanish immersion classes in Guatemala.”

She found enough fulfillment flying for LightHawk that Wells sought a partnership in a Cessna 182, which is considered an optimal airplane for the kinds of flights routinely made. She’s tallied around 300 flights for LightHawk total as of 2019. Wells also took her participation to the next level, serving on LightHawk’s board of directors for three years at a time when they were transitioning to a new CEO, Terri Watson. “Watson thought they needed more written details for pilots, and I agreed. [Because] my background was in training and standardization, I assisted. They now have a manual, a handbook on how to do LightHawk missions and [a] whole bunch of safety information and LightHawk policies.” She continues to serve on the advisory board.

With challenging flight profiles, the education of a new volunteer pilot—even one with a lot of experience in the mountains or low-level flight—remains paramount. “The handbook is on the LightHawk website,” Wells says. “It’s available at any time, to anyone. It has advice on how to take photos, how to fly in the mountains, how to fly surveillance-resource missions, flying over coastlines—it’s a resource all pilots use.”

In places like Colorado, it really pays to have mountain flying experience—in fact, it’s pretty essential. “Some missions go out east of the Rockies…but I’ve done a lot of ‘headwaters of the Colorado River’ flights, and you have to get up over Corona Pass to get anywhere. There are [peaks above 14,000 feet] everywhere. Even in a 182—it’s not turbocharged—it takes some planning, and you have to really know what you’re doing.” Other key topics include knowledge of microclimate weather, aircraft performance and oxygen requirements.

Though it’s not required by LightHawk, the volunteer pilots interviewed say it is highly recommended to have an instrument rating to fly the missions in Mesoamerica with an extra margin of safety.

Flying the Map

To become a LightHawk pilot, the process begins by going to the website and reviewing the minimum qualifications to join. Then you fill out an initial application, which triggers a call from a volunteer mentor pilot chosen by the organization for their experience flying missions and safety ethic. “It’s a qualifying call, essentially,” Boggs says. Then, you’re invited to fill out the full application on the site, along with several references. The mentor will call those references to check specifically on your own safety ethic. “It’s one part of our safety management system,” Boggs says. The mentor will verify that you’re the kind of conservative pilot they wish to have in the program. After a successful orientation call with the prospective pilot, mentor and program staff, you’ll join the pilot ranks with a full understanding of what that means—to both the organization and you.

Once you’re on the pilot roster, the regional coordinator will contact you regarding an upcoming mission and determine if you’re able to accept the assignment. If so, you receive a trip kit from the regional office that helps you create a manifest and mission plan. The coordinator takes care of a host of administrative duties, including ensuring that all those participating in the flight have signed a waiver and understand the basic safety parameters expected for the flight. Both Kent and Wells note the high degree of organization demonstrated by LightHawk, both overall and as compared with other volunteer aviation groups.

The pilot remains pilot in command and can call off the flight at any point. The safety culture runs deeply through the organization, and Boggs is happy to relate that in 40 years of operations, they’ve only registered three accidents—a pretty good run considering the low-level and confined-area/mountainous flying that comprises most missions. “One of the great things about a LightHawk flight: It’s incredibly important, but it’s never urgent,” Boggs says, so the pressure to complete a flight on a particular day just doesn’t exist from the organization’s point of view.

On our mission to survey the Delaware River, eastern-region program coordinator Jonathan Milne put us in touch with Kent and gave us an overall brief on the flight. Then, Kent sent out a proposed flight route, which took us from Wings Field Airport northwest of Philadelphia, down to Cape May, New Jersey, then back up the Atlantic coast. On the day of the flight, having clear skies and warm temperatures, we modified the flight-plan route to stop for lunch at Cape May Airport and circle the wetlands and landfills at Burlington Island near Fieldsboro and Trenton, New Jersey, on our return.

I had to ask: Are drones going to put LightHawk out of business? The short answer is no, according to Boggs. “We’re about the human experience of being in the air and seeing something with your own eyes. Most people never have the experience of walking out on the tarmac to an aircraft, sitting next to the pilot—all those things are part of a LightHawk flight.” That view of the Earth from the air is rightfully precious.

Be a Lighthawk Pilot

• Private pilot certificate with a current third-class medical (could be BasicMed depending on aircraft and passengers)
• Instrument rating desired but not required
• Mountain flying experience highly desirable
• At least 1,000 hours PIC
• Access to aircraft (can be owned or rented) through which you can donate to the mission by paying for the aircraft costs

If you don’t have the total time yet, but you’d still like to contribute, LightHawk accepts cash donations at lighthawk.org.

This story appeared in the April 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

I wasn’t looking for nice. I was a 14-year-old, eagerly flipping through a vintage Playboy magazine I found in a thrift store in upstate New York while my parents looked at an old rug in the next room. But still, the illustration—a carefree blonde, a man in uniform, both astride a Honda motorcycle carrying them forward out of frame—caught my eye. The girl, huge smile on, rode pillion with her arms wrapped around his waist. The ad promised a whole world of opportunity. I wanted in. Five years later, I bought my first motorcycle. I quickly found a community, fervent in their unique love for the sport. I thought I’d found my religion. But much later on in life, I found another, even more imperative subculture: aviation. Compared to motorcycling, aviation promises and delivers equally, minus the arms wrapped around you in flight. That would just be dangerous.

In my last 28 years of riding, nearly every motorcyclist I have passed has waved to me. I’m talking about a 95 percent rate of salutation here. No judgment either. Ducati riders wave at Harley bikers. Goldwings wave at Ninjas. It makes no difference so long as you are on two wheels. Pluralism in action. Imagine if every motorist you ever passed waved to you: You’d get carpal tunnel syndrome just trying to be polite. Why, then, do bikers all greet one another? It’s partly the diminutive size of the motorcycling population. By definition, you need small numbers for a subculture to exist. But beyond the census, an essential criterion is a unique love for the activity. The more fervent, the better. When the fervor approaches religion, you start waving.

Aviation is a religion. We as pilots possess the ardor. We have the dedication. We keep the faith (in our A&Ps at least). One could argue that any serious subculture has a religious quality to it. But what elevates aviation (and motorcycling to a degree) above your neighborhood ceramics club is the inherent risk. It may not feel like it to a competent pilot, but unlike pulling a car or bike over to the side of the road for a timeout, we pilots don’t have that luxury. An airplane in flight is coming down at some point, controlled or otherwise. No timeouts. That shared risk makes for a connected community. This is the house of worship I belong to.

When we meet another person who drives a car, we are not moved to conversation. “Wait, you also drive an automobile?” Yet any pilot can and will talk to another pilot at length. Politics and actual religion be damned. A crop-duster stick and an A380 captain will have plenty to discuss—because both abide by the same laws of aerodynamics. Our church cares only for lift, not useful load.

Beyond conversing, pilots maintain the ubiquitous quality of simply wanting to help. I experienced this firsthand when I flew my V-tail Bonanza across the country this past September. The first leg was from New York to Atlanta to have my esteemed mechanic, Bob Ripley, go over the plane. I completed a top-down restoration over the six months prior. When that many things have been touched, it’s best to have a good, long look by an expert third party, and in fact, there were a few omissions/discrepancies. We (well, Bob) corrected them, and I made my way west.

After landing in Monroe County, Mississippi, I walked into the FBO to find Cecil Boswell, a 77-year-old veterinarian who still regularly flies his Piper J-3 Cub. It was more than 100 degrees outside; neither of us were in any hurry to head back out. A few minutes later, his 89-year-old friend, Aero, showed up. Close friends since childhood, these two repeat this regimen five days a week. They meet at the FBO then saunter over a few hundred feet to their man cave: a corner T-hangar with its additional appendage converted into a little clubhouse. Aviation photos everywhere. TV on but no one watching. They don’t talk all that much as Aero can’t hear very well. But then, most of what’s needed to be said has already been said: the telltale sign of a lifelong friendship. I watched them drink vodka out of Styrofoam cups while they laughed a bunch. I abstained from the vodka but engaged wholeheartedly in the laughs. They hammered me with questions about my journey and regaled me with stories of their own flying adventures. When it got quiet, I explained I still had many miles to go.

Read More from Ben Younger: Leading Edge

As I stood up to leave, Cecil offered to show me Aero’s hangar. The sun was setting as he walked me over to a much larger hangar. Inside the dark, cool space was Aero’s own J-3 Cub: a yellow 1946 model in perfect condition. Aero can’t fly anymore, Cecil explained. He tried a few years back (with Cecil flying copilot) and realized he just didn’t have the faculty for it any longer. His time was up. I asked why Aero was holding onto the plane. Cecil shrugged. “He just likes to see it when he opens the door.” With no kids to inherit the Cub—Aero’s son died in Afghanistan flying for Blackwater, and his daughter recently died of pneumonia—who knows what will become of it. But I hadn’t detected any anticipation of that loss in Aero’s disposition. The man laughed and talked excitedly about all things aviation. You take hold of the joy wherever it comes, he seemed to say. And when able, you share it.

In the early evening, with the heat finally retreating, I took off for Oklahoma. Up at 10,000 feet, I asked for and received 30-degree deviations in both directions at pilot’s discretion. No, there weren’t any buildups. Just a benign collection of cumulus clouds floating up there like building-size cotton balls. They weren’t bumpy inside, and I was on an IFR flight plan. I could have easily just flown through them, but that wasn’t what this was about. I switched off the autopilot and made coordinated, swooping turns between the clouds, at times shooting small, wing-wide gaps. I felt Luke Skywalker levels of exhilaration. This is why kids want to be pilots when they grow up, I thought. The speed you normally have no sense of in cruise is revealed when passing a well-defined cloud 20 feet off your left wing at 184 ktas. See above for instructions on joy.

A night in Ada, Oklahoma, was followed by a short visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Halfway through my last preflight of the cross-country journey, I found the left aileron stuck in a full up attitude. I had moved the right aileron up and down with no resistance. But when moving the left, it froze solid. I went back inside the FBO. My dog, Seven, followed, euphoric that I had changed my mind about flying. I was not as excited. A stuck aileron is not a minor squawk. I made some calls, but this was a Saturday, so my hopes were not high for a result.

I was wrong. Thirty minutes later, I was watching Gerard Ontiveros from Santa Fe Aero Services climb up underneath my panel where he quickly found a ventilation hose that had come loose and become bound up in the aileron cable. “So that’s why there’s been no defrost heating,” I thought. Mystery solved. But also, lesson learned: Always preflight. The airplane was in a climate-controlled hangar overnight. Aside from a quick visual inspection for any hangar rash, one might think they could truncate the full preflight. But I did not. I went through every step, and thank God. If that aileron had frozen in flight (think 400 feet agl as I turned on course), it would not have been pretty. Not only did he save me, but Gerard refused payment. Flat out. I persisted—multiple times. He said he was just glad he caught it. I wished I had the Honda ad to show him.

Of all the departures I’d made crossing the country, this was the one I was most nervous about. By the time I was ready to depart, the density altitude was over 8,000 feet, and there were reports of low-level turbulence—conditions very similar to my crash in Telluride, Colorado, back in spring 2018. Nerves jangling, I called up Eric Eviston, my instructor, who is always happy to discuss things. It helped. Thankfully, the more I fly, the more opportunities I have to reciprocate for other pilots. When my friend Demian, a new pilot, calls to talk about New York (Class B airspace), it is no chore for me to spend 30 minutes on the phone, our charts open on both ends of the call, dissecting the sectionals with their esoteric markings. In this house of aviation worship, these are no less useful than scriptures—and, at times (certainly in flight), far more so.

Nerves calmed, I completed a near-perfect flight to Santa Monica, California, that afternoon where I began a 3-month-long work stint. I had been seeing slight traces of oil on the windscreen the whole trip, and my friend Howard pointed me to Kim Davidson Aviation to get it sorted; it turned out to be a leaky crank seal. When I went to see him, Kim walked out onto the tarmac and met me at the plane, his hand extended and a broad smile on his face. “Welcome to California,” he said, shaking my hand as if we’d been friends for years. He didn’t even know my name. All he knew was that we both love airplanes, and that was enough. You meet the nicest people.

Follow Ben Younger on Instagram: @thisisbenyounger

This story appeared in the April 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

While it’s certainly not time to claim victory of any sort for airline travel over the COVID-19 virus, data released this week does at least offer a bit of encouraging news to people who depend on air carriers. Transportation Safety Administration data is a good place to begin since that agency keeps a close eye on the number of passengers who pass through its security screening checkpoints at airports that offer airline service.

A month ago the numbers were grim—and surely set an industry low-point record—when just 87,534 passengers passed through security checkpoints in the US in a single day. A year earlier, pre-COVID-19, TSA recorded 2,208,688 passengers—indicating the numbers last month showed a 96-percent decline in passenger traffic. Just a few days ago on May 18, 2020, the TSA recorded 244,176 passengers through its checkpoints. That increase is nearly triple the daily count for the month before.

Southwest Airlines said on May 19, according to a Reuters story, that “it recorded positive bookings on a net basis so far this month as passenger reservations outpaced trip cancellations, helping the company slow its cash burn rate.” The word from Delta Airlines was, “While the June schedule is significantly reduced in comparison to last year, customers will see the return of several major routes previously suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The airline listed dozens of cities to which Delta will be increasing flights for June in the Caribbean, Latin America, Canada and across the Pacific to Asia. A story posted on The Street.com looked at United Airlines data. “United expects its scheduled capacity to fall 75 percent in July from a year earlier. Scheduled capacity for May and June 2020 was reduced by approximately 90 percent from 2019 levels.”

Like statistics however, raw numbers alone can sometimes mask the good news. Rather than claiming the TSA checkpoint numbers are down 91 percent from last year, a more optimistic perspective claims screenings are eight percent of last May, but that’s up from four percent last month. While United in April of this year was only booking about 10 percent of the business they did in April 2019, those numbers were up so far in May and are expected to be in June. By July, United expects to fly 25 percent of the schedule it did last summer. That’s at least a step in the right direction.

A possible squeeze point, however, is pressure on the FAA from the Air Line Pilots Association who this week continued asking the agency to take a stand on how carriers should handle the healthcare guidelines recently issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ALPA says at the moment each airline is deciding on its own, with some requiring passengers and crew to wear masks and some merely recommending the procedure. Most airlines, however, seem to indicate that cabin crewmembers are the last group who should be trying to solve the problem. Southwest Airlines said it won’t deny boarding to passengers who fail to wear a mask, though they encourage passengers to don them out of concern for other passengers, while American said in a note to crew members, “The flight attendant’s role is informational, not enforcement, with respect to the face-covering policy.”

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) recently released an annual summary of reported laser strike incidents in 2019 showing there were 6,136 reports of people on the ground shining easily-obtained laser pointers at aircraft. According to the FAA, the availability of inexpensive laser devices for sale in stores and online is contributing to the problem, with lasers having stronger power levels giving lawbreakers the ability to hit aircraft at higher altitudes. Many of the reports were green-colored lasers, which are more visible to the human eye than red lasers.

The 6,136 reported strikes in 2019 was about 8-percent higher than the 5,663 reported strikes in 2018, and less than the 7,398 reported strikes in 2016. Laser incidents took a significant jump in 2015 with 7,346 reported strikes, up from the 3,894 reported in 2014. All of these numbers are up from the 385 strikes reported in 2006.

“The FAA is continuing its awareness campaign and working with law enforcement to reduce laser strikes throughout the country,” the agency said. “The FAA wants to let people know that pointing lasers at aircraft can create a serious safety risk to pilots and damage their eyes. It is a federal offense to point a laser at an aircraft. The substantial number of reported incidents clearly show that laser strikes on aircraft remain a serious threat to aviation safety.”

FAA works closely with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to pursue civil and criminal penalties against individuals who purposely aim a laser at an aircraft, and it takes enforcement action against those who violate Federal Aviation Regulations by shining lasers at aircraft, imposing civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. Civil penalties of up to $30,800 have been imposed by the FAA against individuals for multiple laser incidents.

In one such case where enforcement action was taken, a 26-year-old man in Kansas City, Missouri, was sentenced in federal court in 2017 for shining a laser pointer at a Kansas City Police Department helicopter. The man was sentenced to three years in federal prison without parole after hitting the helicopter three times with a green laser light. He twice hit the eye of one of the pilots, causing eye strain that lasted for hours after the incident. In sentencing, the federal court found that he “recklessly endangered the safety of an aircraft, which was flying over a residential neighborhood.”

FAA’s guidance for agency investigators and attorneys is clear and stresses that laser violations should not be addressed through warning notices or counseling. “The agency seeks moderately high civil penalties for inadvertent violations, but maximum penalties for deliberate violations. Violators who are pilots or mechanics face revocation of their FAA certificate, as well as civil penalties,” the administration said. FAA strongly encourages people to report laser incidents, whether they are pilots, air traffic controllers, or members of the public.

To report an incident, complete the short version FAA Laser Beam Exposure Questionnaire on your mobile device. FAA will then email you the full questionnaire for you to complete and return with additional information. You can also download and complete the FAA Laser Beam Exposure Questionnaire (PDF) to your personal computer, with completed questionnaires saved and attached to an email to laserreports@faa.gov, or printed and faxed to the Washington Operations Control Center Complex (WOCC) — (202) 267-5289 Attn: Domestic Events Network (DEN).

Starr Aviation, part of Starr Insurance Companies of New York, New York, has introduced its Starr Gate app tailored for renter pilots. The iPad-based program allows pilots to buy insurance on a month-to-month basis, as well as annually, and they earn discounts for participating in the flight scoring option offered through a partnership with CloudAhoy.

Jim Anderson, a Cirrus pilot based at Deer Valley Airport near Phoenix, and senior vice president of Starr Aviation, saw the opportunity to align a pilot’s current skill set and activity with the coverage they require, using the tools available. “With CloudAhoy data, we can write coverage in high definition. It’s customized insurance that can make you a better pilot,” said Anderson.

The program incorporates a flexibility in coverage previously hard to find—and it comes at a time when general aviation’s total flight hours are down, but important aviation activities—such as flight training and recurrency flights—must continue.

Steve Blakey, president and CEO for Starr Insurance Holdings, commented in a call to brokers in which the company announced the program on the potential resilience of the general aviation segment of the aviation industry—especially when contrasted with that of the commercial aviation market. Continued improvement in light aircraft will make GA safer and more cost effective. So, this may be a good time for growth in this segment of the industry. “Maybe the events will demand a renewed interest in GA,” said Blakey. “Maybe people will want to fly in smaller groups.” He related that he saw from his backyard an airplane towing a banner congratulating a neighbor on a baby shower—there are many applications for innovations that lay ahead.

The app will be available through Starr’s brokerage network, with co-branded websites for brokers to use—so pilots have the option to continue with their current broker relationship by downloading the app on their broker’s site. The app is designed to streamline the insurance application and renewal experience, reducing paperwork in the process. It’s also available on Apple’s App Store, and pilots can use it in concert with CloudAhoy’s app—leveraging its CFI Assistant tool for flight scoring if they choose. By challenging pilots to improve on each flight, Starr Gate is intended to help pilots form better flying habits. Ideally, the app would help drive improvement in segments of flight such as stabilized approaches, and thereby leading to improved statistics in loss-of-control in-flight accidents.

JetBlue announced in January that it intended to become a carbon-neutral airline. To reduce its net carbon footprint, it would begin purchasing carbon offsets—credits generated by sponsoring activities and investments designed to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. Its flights originating in San Francisco would use a low-emissions substitute for jet-A refined from a mess of pottage that includes used cooking oil, animal and fish fat, tall-oil pitch (a byproduct of pulping wood), and—get ready—“spent bleaching earth oil.”

The announcement was not shocking. Other airlines, and the US Air Force, are already using several million gallons of biomass fuel a year on an experimental basis, and way back in 2008, Virgin Atlantic staged a publicity event in which one of its Boeing 747s flew on such a brew, blended—as experimental fuels usually are—with a good deal of the real thing.

So, you might have expected little hostile reaction to the new policy, which the airline promised would have no effect on safety or ticket prices and was probably just intended to enhance its cred with environmentally concerned customers. Nevertheless, it ignited the highly combustible fury of commenters on a Fox News site. Sustainability in aviation, it seems, is more of a political matter than a technological one. Sustainability is connected with resource depletion and climate change, and for many people and corporations, both are hoaxes inimical to commerce and profits.

While we argue, however, energy pours down from the sun. Finding ways to capture it and convert it to usable forms is what sustainability means, and I don’t see why this should be controversial.

Two-thirds of US oil consumption takes place in pursuit of transportation. Jet fuel represents about a tenth of that; aviation turbines consumed about 100 billion gallons of fuel in 2018. Less than two percent of aviation fuel consists of the boutique cocktail known as avgas, and so practically all discussion of sustainable fuels for aviation focuses on renewable replacements for jet fuel.

Fortunately, turbine engines are not so finicky as recips, and the magic of industrial chemistry can turn all sorts of energy-containing stuff into liquids of tolerably digestible viscosity and volatility. There are collateral issues, however—land and water use, environmental impacts, cost, and (in the case of corn) diversion of a needed foodstuff from human and animal consumers—so the best avenue to a sustainable fuel remains uncertain.

Plants convert sunlight into organic-chemical structures that can in turn be transformed into so-called biomass liquid fuels. The process is inefficient and requires large amounts of arable land. Current feedstocks such as corn, sugar cane and switch grass yield only 400 to 1,100 gallons of fuel per acre and consume vast amounts of water; at one point, corn grown for ethanol in Nebraska was slurping up 780 gallons of water per gallon of fuel produced. Ethanol, currently the most commonly used biofuel, is already blended into most road-vehicle gas sold in the US. Ethanol can also be blended with jet fuel, but it has only two-thirds the energy content of petroleum-derived fuels, so you have to carry more of it for a given trip.

Bacteria, in the form of algae, yield five times more energy per acre than plants, and even higher yields are theoretically possible. Unlike plant feedstocks, they produce fuels similar in energy density to petroleum. They are also easy targets for genetic manipulation; maybe some 17-year-old with a Crispr genome-editing kit will figure out how to make them ooze flight-ready jet-A. But bacteria are fussier about their living conditions than switchgrass, and their exploitation on an industrial scale is distant.

The piston-engine situation is less hopeful. Even the relatively modest project of developing a lead-free 100LL replacement has stumbled. High-octane gasoline works in medium-performance engines, but it is not a renewable fuel; and a leadless 100-octane fuel for high-compression or turbocharged engines, fungible with avgas, has proved elusive.

This is where electricity comes in, with a brave flourish of trumpets.

Set electric airliners aside. Even if battery energy density doubled or quadrupled, it would still fall far short of that of the liquid fuels on which the entire structure of long-range air transportation is based. The most likely route to sustainability and emissions reduction for medium- and long-range jet airplanes is a new fuel, not the creation of a completely new flight technology.

Read More from Peter Garrison: Technicalities

Nevertheless, hundreds of startups are feverishly pursuing electric propulsion. Most will fail for the usual reasons: lack of financing or lack of talent—or both. Some airplanes suitable for carrying small loads on short routes will be created; speed, which is a great devourer of energy, is less important on short routes.

Electric power is particularly appropriate for the new paradigm represented by the autonomous VTOL multicopter, whose fixed-pitch (therefore, simple and cheap) fans respond rapidly to changes in power and make self-stabilization possible. A much-simpler and more-modest

application is already here: the small electric trainer or sport aircraft rechargeable from an electric outlet or, in a slightly more utopian vision, by a patch of solar cells on the airport.

Hybrid-electric power systems are getting a lot of study, even by the likes of Boeing and Airbus. They consist of one or more electric motors driving propellers or fans, a sustainer engine, and a battery whose size, and share of the work, is optional. The sustainer engine—diesel, turbine, turbo-compound rotary or whatever else you may have handy—is sized for cruise and optimized for economical operation in a narrow band. It runs on a sustainable fuel. It drives a generator to produce voltage, which in turn drives the electric motor. For takeoff and climb, and possibly for short cruise segments, the battery contributes extra power.

Hybrid systems are compromises. There are significant inefficiencies between their stages. The supreme mechanical simplicity of the battery- driven electric motor is sacrificed. Whether the versatility and small size of electric motors lead to compensating aerodynamic advantages, for instance from distributed or vectored thrust, is now being studied.

For small, medium-range airplanes, a possible alternative to the complexity of a hybrid powertrain is the fuel cell, which is a kind of battery that is continuously recharged by a chemical fuel. The fuel of choice is hydrogen. Hydrogen is three times as potent, per pound, as gasoline, and it’s clean; the main exhaust product of a hydrogen fuel cell is water. So far, so good. But unfortunately, hydrogen is a very light gas. Even compressed to 10,000 psi, it is less compact, as an energy reservoir, than gasoline. This is not an insuperable problem for road vehicles—several models of hydrogen-fuel-cell cars and buses are on the market—but it’s inconvenient for airplanes. Still, cylindrical high-pressure tanks could be integrated into airframes, some perhaps doubling as spars, and certain nanomaterials may be found to soak up and hold hydrogen like sponges.

Aviation technology has remained essentially static—or, at best, very slow-moving—since the jet engine came into use in middle of the past century. Fresh attention to new fuels, including electricity, and new configurations for using them, opens the door to interesting and exciting innovations. They will be decades in development, but we ought to welcome them, regardless of our politics.

This story appeared in the April 2020 issue of Flying Magazine

On March 8, 2020, I stepped out of G-SWAY and onto the soggy British mud at Damyn’s Hall Aerodrome an hour east of London. G-SWAY is a Super Cub that belongs to one of Britain’s most famous and historic flying clubs—the Tiger Club. I was the newest member of the Tiger Club, having completed my checkout with an instructor and then soloing an EU-registered airplane for the first time since completing my EASA pilot license in Iceland. At the time, I was flying to London every few weeks with my job as a Boeing 757/767 pilot for a US airline. The future was bright and the skies were clear; but a rumbling was developing throughout the world of a new virus that would threaten our very existence.

A mere 3 days later, the first of many restrictions upon travel was announced. Initially, this excluded the UK. However, only days after the first European travel restrictions, the ban spread to the UK and Ireland. I was still flying back and forth as a pilot for the airline, and I immediately noticed the effects. Our flights going to Europe started to become empty, and citizens overseas were rushing to return home. The first time I came back to the US as a crewmember on the 767, it was like a scene out of a post-apocalyptic movie with full-gear representatives from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and customs screening passengers for any sign of the virus. The world was starting to change before my eyes.

My last flight on the 757 was to Las Vegas, Nevada, a town near and dear to my heart. At the time, the Las Vegas tower had closed down because several controllers became ill. The captain that I was flying with hadn’t been to a non-towered airport in a while, so it was a good learning experience for him. The casinos on the strip were closed and the strip itself was abandoned, making for an eerie sight on our drive to Henderson where there was an open hotel. We had barely 10 paying passengers on the flight. We had gone from full flights to 10-percent occupancy in a few days.

With the drawdown of international flying, I soon found myself with more time off than I wanted, so I returned to ferry flying. While most overseas business had shut down as countries closed their borders, I still found myself ferrying within North America. Canada had become nearly militant with their restrictions, often claiming that general aviation flights and ferry flights were not essential until fully explained to customs officers. Uber drivers had become scarce and the few that continued driving created plastic barriers in their cars to separate passengers. Hotels had put up plexiglass barriers like bank tellers, and there were no longer courtesy shuttles. People would jump back if you accidentally got too close, as if a ghost had crept up on them unexpectedly. The fear spread like wildfire, and not even the experts had devised a strategy to put it out.

Between March 7 and April 1, I flew almost every day as a ferry pilot or as a commercial airline pilot. Some states would make passengers fill out quarantine forms if you arrived from certain other states. I landed in El Paso, Texas, to find the National Guard waiting and asking for paperwork stating where I would be self-quarantining. I found that many FBOs were closed or had different procedures in place in order to follow CDC guidelines. After landing in Texarkana, Arkansas, in a Cirrus, I was told that I had to fill out a form to tell them how much fuel to add, and then had to give my credit card number verbally from across the room since they would not touch credit cards. Some cities, like El Paso, mandated that everyone would wear a mask in a public building. I started to keep one in my pocket for local restrictions. Some notams would show closures, but often you would either hear it on the AWOS (such as at Midland Airpark) or see a sign posted on the door that an FBO was closed, making logistics challenging. At one point, I was told I could not use the bathroom in the FBO because of local restrictions while the employees sat inside, which made for an awkward scene!

I did find that the experience differed dramatically between states and even US customs stations. Some states are starting to open, and after a recent delivery I had an excellent steak dinner with my student in Omaha, Nebraska. It was my first time eating at a restaurant in 2 months, and one of the most exciting moments of my recent adventures.

Meanwhile, the flight school that I’ve been occasionally instructing at is also starting to open but taking precautions for student training. I’ve started to find that fear is moving more toward reason and mitigation of risk, and human resilience has become the motivation for our decisions. While for now the future seems uncertain for pilots and the aviation industry, the unwavering commitment to recovery and strength that I’ve witnessed shows that together we will overcome the obstacles presented by this calamity. This is only a temporary setback. The industry will continue to rebound and I have no doubt that we will see the same or even greater prosperity in time as we relentlessly pursue our passion for aviation.