“Let’s get one thing straight. There is a big difference between a pilot and an aviator. A pilot is a technician. An aviator is an artist in love with flight.” So said Elrey Borge Jeppesen. As I try to migrate from pilot to aviator, I’ve discovered, or I should say rediscovered, an important truth. It takes a lot of effort to become a competent pilot or surgeon or journalist, and it takes an equal amount in addition to become an aviator, a master surgeon or a reporter worthy of a Pulitzer. A competent pilot is safe and so is a competent surgeon; neither will cause undue harm — usually. But a master surgeon knows the landscape of his domain. He knows which patients will benefit from his careful knife and which ones won’t. He knows how an operation can flow, with expedient, even elementary-appearing moves that propel the case toward a quick and respectful conclusion.
An aviator never grips the throttles with clenched fist. She holds them like a glass of fine Bordeaux. An aviator flies as if she were sitting in her living room, comfortable in a large easy chair, occasionally flicking the remote to will the airplane around a thunderstorm or back slightly to the left onto the localizer as the minimum descent altitude is softly approached on glideslope.
I’m working on it. With 350 hours of CJ3 time at JetSuite, I have mastered the basic steps, though I forget some of them from time to time. The perfect flight is a long way off, I know. Just like expertise in any field, flying well is more than just flying. My education is progressing at the hands of some whom could be accurately called aviators.
Capt. Martin Parker showed me a few things on a recent five-day rotation. We started at home base in West Palm Beach, Florida, with two passengers for Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Martin was in the left seat for this day, and the weather was good. We had never flown together before.
Eager to show my willingness to do almost anything to signal my appreciation for the privilege of flying the CJ3, I jumped on lavatory cleaning duty just after we landed on the island. I approached a young lineman, who sat up high in his fuel truck. He was big, had a shaved head and an earring, and radiated a certain air of calculated indifference. With my closed-up detachable lav hanging by my side, I felt like a supplicant before a priest. “We don’t service lavs,” said the man. “Take that over to the FBO; they have a guy to do it.”
After cleaning the rest of the CJ, I picked up the garbage and the lav and, struggling with the door, flopped into the FBO. Bobby, apparently the lav cleaner, was not around. I emptied the lav in the men’s bathroom. I will spare you the details and my apologies to the poor SOB who had to clean the bathroom.
Martin came in. “Let’s get lunch next door — there’s a pretty good restaurant here.” Turns out Bobby was the cook. Note to self: Life on the line is full of surprises.
We took on only modest fuel for a repositioning leg to New Haven, Connecticut, just 104 miles away. A short flight, down low with good visibility, is a gift when you are on the radios and the other guy is flying. I was admiring all the boaters in Long Island Sound when the satellite phone rang. Operations wanted to know if we could divert to Teterboro, New Jersey. It wasn’t that much farther as a crow goes, but the routing over New Haven is often 60 miles longer than a straight line. Martin checked with New York about delays, which we could not abide given our fuel. In a minute, he decided we were good for Teterboro.
Once there we greeted our passenger, a delightful man who told me we were going to Boston (KBOS), not Bedford, Massachusetts (KBED), because “Obama’s in Worcester and everything else is shut down.” And so to Boston and then, now tired, we headed for New Haven, for which we had been destined three hours previously when the phone rang. That day I learned an important skill: making judgments as plans change — in the air.
The next day was mine. New Haven to Nassau, Bahamas, is just the perfect trip for the CJ3 with its range and its raft. I knew the clients — a really great family and kids so well behaved I wonder how they do it. There was a thunderstorm off the end of the runway in Nassau, so we had to rely primarily on onboard radar and what Martin calls the “Mark One Eyeball.” We recalculated the approach numbers for a wet runway, and I got the benefit of that cushion with a smooth landing. I relearned that in some places onboard radar and your own eyes are critical parts of the safety equipment list and can be more useful than Nexrad or a controller’s advice.
In Nassau we boarded two passengers bound for Wilmington, North Carolina, for customs and then on to KFOK in the Hamptons. I knew one of the gentlemen — he had done me a big favor on a previous trip by accommodating my desire to visit a very sick premature granddaughter in Boston. I remembered his concern. Suddenly the passengers wanted to fly directly to the Hamptons and clear customs there. I watched as Martin outlined the problem: international flight plan, change in destination, arranging customs at a new destination and taking on additional fuel. He finished by saying, “It is probably going to be quicker to stick to the original plan.” Well done, I thought and filed this thoughtful approach in my “things to remember when I am captain” file.
The next several legs gave me good experience with radar. Tilt is an important function and is especially useful in a jet that hangs out 45,000 feet above the earth. By comparing the Nexrad radar images, cloud top images, onboard radar and the Mark One Eyeball, it was often apparent that what looked hideous on the weather channel was easily topped in the CJ3. As we descended into Teterboro from the west, we negotiated a high altitude until well past the weather, then “slam-dunked” down into New York airspace. I have now concluded that thunderstorm avoidance is an art unto itself: Nexrad is helpful for long-range planning, but when up close, its images often don’t jibe with what we see on the radar or out the window. I knew this and now I knew it again.
On another “out and back” from Teterboro to Saginaw, Michigan, bands of weather extended across New York and Pennsylvania like lightning bolts on the side of a high school football helmet. On the westward flight we climbed around the big stuff, but on the return we pretty much had to fight our way through. At one juncture, I hit my head on the rail that tracks the sun visors. Though I had never considered it before, this trip made one certain fact obvious. There are more degrees of freedom when departing from an airport than there are when flying to an airport. There are lots of ways to disperse from one location, but there is an inevitable funnel when flying to one. You’d think I would have already figured that out in 47 years of flying. No aviator yet.
Though these examples are gleaned from summer flying, I learned a few new tricks last winter too. On a trip form Stuart, Florida, to Westchester County Airport, New York, Paul Leeder and I grappled with fuel concerns, ice and low visibilities. As is customary, we were sent down low early on the arrival, exacerbating our fuel status. The airplane burns more fuel per hour in the 20s and 30s than it does at Flight Level 450. In cloud, we had to have all anti-ice and deice equipment on, which requires a small power price to be paid. Finally, our destination was iffy. When KHPN went below minimums we wrestled with diverting to Stewart, New York (KSWF), or to Albany, New York (KALB). The weather in Albany was VFR; in Stewart, it was low IFR, but legal and doable — for the moment. We agreed that we didn’t have the fuel to do both. Paul selected Stewart because our passengers could get a rental car and be home at a reasonable hour. He shot the approach to minimums and we had some happy passengers. Paul’s decision was validated as we watched a steady stream of airplanes arrive — they had diverted from Teterboro and White Plains. His quick thinking made us first in line for deicing once we all got the snow off of our shoes. “Always have an out,” say the ancient pelicans.
And so it goes: a little tip here, a small pearl there, as I study to make the transition that will make all the difference. When you think of it, the difference between Michael Jordan and a guy playing pickup ball in Pittsburgh is small. Both are terrific athletes, much better than I am. But what a difference that small difference makes.
I will empty any lavatory, put engine covers on in freezing rain, vacuum the carpet and get the coffee so that I might gradually learn. I aspire to be an aviator. I have the love part down — it is the artistry I’m working on.
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