A mistake as it turned out.

My plan, though better, changed by the hour. I was meant to meet my friend Kip in Middlebury, Vermont, but he called me early that morning to tell me there was a good chance of cloud cover. I was secretly relieved. 

The night prior I found a U.S. Navy site that allowed me to put in the name of any city in the path of the eclipse, and it would spit back the length of totality. The difference between places only 40 miles apart was shocking. One minute of totality for Middlebury, while just a bit farther north in Burlington yielded three and a half minutes. Interestingly, the site also allows for an altitude input in meters. When I put in 2,000 meters over Middlebury, it jumped from a minute to that 3.5-minute mark.

Geometry, baby. 

I considered being in the air for the eclipse, but I knew I’d be distracted and worried about a midair. I wanted to be firmly on the ground watching the skies. But I also wanted the full three-and-a-half-minute whack. So, I kept flying north. The issue was that any airport that had an FBO was chock full—in many cases weeks in advance. I had to find an airport that was small enough to not have an FBO that was also dead center on the path of totality. Kip came through again, directing me to Jackman, Maine. 

• READ MORE: Machines, Like Human Bodies, Do Not Like Sitting Still

No tower. No FBO. Just a breathy line guy who normally does snow removal and other simpler tasks other than deciding where to park the deluge of airplanes coming into his domain. I got there early enough to get a primo spot that would get me out first after the event.

I brought a camping chair, food, reading materials, and the eclipse glasses I bought on Amazon. It was severe clear at Jackman as I set up camp. I did an apron walk, going from one end of the airport to the other talking to other aircraft owners along the way. We nodded solemnly about all the people who drove north from all over the country only to get shafted by cloud cover. Under the surface, though, I detected a certain glee in these pilots’ ability to simply fly a bit farther and find the right conditions. I know I felt it.

An airplane is the perfect tool for chasing an eclipse.

The event itself surprised me in a few ways. I thought I’d be able to see the moon as it approached the sun, but it was nowhere to be seen. Not until it started to encroach on that blazing disc. And then we all waited. The biggest surprise was how bright the world remained all the way up to 90 percent cover. I could not detect any discernible drop in light level. Even the last 10 percent was a slow move toward totality. It’s the last 15-20 seconds that astound. The difference between a 96 percent eclipse and totality is like the difference between a really nice sunset and the galaxy splitting in two.

When totality began, I could hear the entire town of Jackman, almost a mile away, cheer loudly. A second later, it hit us (the shadow travels at 1,600 mph) and a similar cheer went up at the airport. Off came the glasses, and I stared right at the moon as it covered the sun. It’s immediately clear why people for millennia thought this was God’s work. It was the first time in my life I felt like I was on a different planet. 

I looked around and that beautiful orange sky you see in the west after a sunset was occupying every horizon—360 degrees around. It felt like the sun was setting everywhere all at once. The dog next to me started whimpering. I just about teared up. I wasn’t expecting an emotional reaction, but there it was—that feeling of being so small, so entirely insignificant.

• READ MORE: The Wisdom of Keeping Transmissions Short and Sweet

Three and a half minutes, as it turns out, is too short. I found myself wishing it would have lasted longer. There is this brilliant phenomenon called the diamond ring that appears a few seconds before and then after totality. It is a last burst of light on one side of the moon as the glow of the corona emerges from the background and silhouettes the opposite edge. It looks just like a diamond engagement ring, but it only lasts for a few seconds on either side of the eclipse. I can still summon it in my memory at will.

It left a mark on my memory—not my retina.

I thought about all the people that either missed it because they could not move their cars quick enough once they understood the weather would hamper the view, or the many people that would spend hours and hours in their cars driving home. There was something about knowing I was going to fly home that felt like a continuation of the experience. This is why I love aviation so much. The act of getting into that Bonanza and starting the motor still feels like magic to me. A specific, childlike variety of the stuff. Same feeling I got watching the eclipse—wonder.

Once daytime was returned to us by the celestial gods, I climbed in my Bo and started the motor. Buckled up and watched as the three planes in front of me all took to the runway together, back-taxiing to the departure end. I moved up to the hold-short line and watched them soar overhead as I prepared for my turn.

I was airborne in no time and checked in with ATC who agreed to flight following. When it came time to pass me off to Boston Center, I was met with this transmission:

ATC: November 1750 Whiskey, squawk VFR, frequency change approved.

Me: Can I have the next frequency, please? Five-Zero Whiskey.

ATC: Five-Zero Whiskey, Boston Center is not accepting any requests for advisories.

Me: OK. Can you just give me the frequency so I can monitor what’s happening in the sector? Five-Zero Whiskey.

ATC: Yes, but just don’t ask them for flight following.

Me: OK, Mom. I promise. (I didn’t actually say that. Wanted to, though.)

Me: Wilco. Five-Zero Whiskey.

Nothing like being spoken to like an 8-year-old to confirm the childlike state of wonder I found myself in that day. 

This column first appeared in the July/August Issue 949 of the FLYING print edition.

The post Total Eclipse: What a Difference an Airplane Makes appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Succinctness is the single most prized quality a pilot can exhibit when on the radio. It’s almost as if that little push-to-talk button is buried on the backside of the yoke so as to remind you to only use it when necessary. Break glass in case of communication.

This is for a good reason. There are times when multiple pilots are trying to talk to a controller in busy airspace. Without concise communications there will quickly be a backlog of speeding airplanes no longer in their original positions. At some point, this transitions from a nuisance to a danger. And so we are taught to be frugal with our words.

Say who you are, where you’re at, and what you want. Do so using the fewest number of words. Like a chef making a reduction, distilling the information I need to convey to its purest essence is a joyful exercise for me. The sauce just tastes better.

Becoming a writer, and later a pilot, taught me that words are powerful, have distinct meaning, and should be used sparingly. As an added benefit, people will plain like you more when you’re succinct. Certainly air traffic controllers. I remember being at a wedding with my dad when a known yapper in the family took to the podium to make his speech. My father stretched his legs out, slid down in his chair, closed his eyes, and proclaimed, “Nap time.” Even as a 10 year old, I had a conscious thought that I never wanted anyone to have that reaction to me opening my mouth.

• READ MORE: Milking It: How to Extract Every Last Bit from Airplane and Pilot

Flying south from Sullivan County Airport (KMSV), my home field upstate, toward New York Class B during rush hour, things sometimes get a little unruly—at least on the radios. Combine a collection of airplanes all trying to check in at once with a tired controller toward the end of his shift who possesses a strong New York accent, and I will find myself wishing I had popcorn on board.

New York Approach: “OK, everybody stop talking! JetBlue 2073, heading one-eight-five, climb to one-seven thousand. I got two Pipers calling. The one near Kingston, say request. Everyone else, standby!”

Let me tell you, pilots become wonderfully concise when responding to a stern call like that. Everyone just tightens it up. Short and sweet. Good sauce. Nom. Nom. Nom.

Whenever I’m entering the pattern at KMSV, my instructor, Neil, will come on the radio after I’ve made my initial “10 miles from the field” call. “Hello, Ben. How are you?” KMSV is pretty far from anyone or anything, and there isn’t ever much traffic. Yet it still makes me anxious to talk on the CTAF if it’s anything more than calling out my turn to left base. When I answer him with even the shortest pleasantries, I feel like I’m breaking some rule, or at the least, betraying some code. It just feels wrong. My replies are so short you’d think I disliked the man.

• READ MORE: Time Is Ticking on My Youth—and My Airplane’s Too

I sometimes take this quest for succinctness too far. Tail numbers should be read back in full when other aircraft in the pattern have similar numbers as yours. My Bonanza is N1750W. When another pilot calls in with a tail number ending in “four-zero-whiskey,” that is not the time to be signing off with my usual, “five-zero-whiskey.” You spell it out in that case. Common sense.

Altimeter readings are a toss-up. When checking in with a new controller, I don’t repeat back the altimeter numbers unless there’s some monstrous difference from the last reporting station that would signify a weather change I’d want to confirm. Short of that, I just give my trusty “five-zero-whiskey.” It means I heard them, and I’m not gonna take up even one extra second of their precious time.

Creativity is not usually rewarded on the radio, but I will admit I love reading back anything with three zeros as “triple nothing.” Sue me. In life outside the cockpit, this desire for brevity has not served me well. Sometimes in conversation I will understand the point someone is trying to make long before completion. It takes everything in me not to stop them midsentence and say, “I got it,” and then summarize in two sentences what they’ve spent the last three minutes (and counting) trying to convey. This is decidedly not a great way to make friends. And apparently I’m not very good at hiding this aversion because even when I manage to keep my mouth shut, people will ask me if I am in pain. On the inside. Yes. I am.

• READ MORE: The Unexpected Perks of an OCD Annual

Screenwriters are like pilots: We have to get the most information across using the least amount of words. While a novelist can use language without any constrictions to paint a vivid physical and emotional landscape, we are beholden to some basic limitations. Screenplays are generally 120 pages, which universally correlates to one minute per page and yields your average two-hour movie. Reminds me of an old-school timing approach from the FAF to the MAP. 

There are levels, of course. Some of us are merely good on the radio. Some of us are heroes. I have heard recordings of pilots who have just declared an emergency that sound like they’re on muscle relaxers signing up for a meditation class. I am in awe of these pilots. I’ve only declared an emergency once in my 13 years of flying, and I have zero interest in hearing that tape. I was on my heels, scared, and my little brain added a whole bunch of unnecessary words to every transmission. 

I’d like to think my dad would appreciate my radio calls—emergencies notwithstanding. He passed long ago. But if he’s up there listening, I hope he gets to hear me read back a revised IFR clearance departing New York airspace with clarity and an economy of words. That or a really good wedding speech.

The post The Wisdom of Keeping Transmissions Short and Sweet appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

After a few minutes of a steep, rough ride, we emerged into a clearing in the otherwise dense forest. Burn marks surrounded the mysterious, misshapen circle, and the ground was scorched black. Looking around, I could not find the culprit. It looked as if a fiery, pancake meteor had hit the earth, resulting in a non-crater.

Turns out it was an airplane. From the lack of a debris field you could tell the pilot plowed straight into the mountain. They had since removed all of the remains— both man and man-made. Bone and aluminum.

My friend told me the story behind the crash. A gentleman around my age had plans to see his girlfriend in another state. The morning he was set to depart was foggy and near zero/zero. But he was instrument rated and his airplane had a parachute. Let’s go!

From the propeller marks it was later determined the airplane was making power when it hit the ground, so he most likely suffered some type of spatial disorientation— my bet would be somatogravic illusion.

• READ MORE: Conversations in Dispatch Can Get Tricky

I looked around the perimeter and found something in the weeds—a small, melted chunk of aluminum. I stared at the piece of metal in my hand and wondered, “Why didn’t he just wait a few hours?”

I could have titled this column “Pheromones” and made it a more generalized treatise about flying unsafely during courtship. But the truth is women aren’t this stupid. Just us. Men.

A woman would know that a man she liked would still be around in a few hours. They understand the theory of object permanence. Men, we wear blinders. We get tunnel vision. And miraculously, around this one particular subject—unlike, say, mowing the lawn or loading the dishwasher—we never, ever experience mission creep. We never lose the scent, so to speak.

I recently got a full panel of bloodwork done. My doctor called me in and told me that I was generally healthy, but she said the one thing that had changed was my testosterone levels. She explained that they were far lower than they had been in 2016, my last full test. She offered up supplements to bring them back up. I didn’t have to think long… Hard pass. I explained to her that the freedom of not being bound, pinned, and betrothed to that specific hormone was not something I would give up for anything.

In hindsight, if I were given the option to bring my levels down to where they are now back in 1989, I would gladly have done so. I would have made 20 more films, written a hundred more screenplays, and saved a million more dollars on drinks, meals, gifts, and who remembers what else—all working to appease one appendage with an outsized role in my decision-making process.

In the movie Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon’s character wants to “go see about a girl.” He’s very determined. He also has the sense to do this in a sedan and leaves Boston on an unusually sunny day. Well played, Matt. That being said, if he had access to a Bonanza on a typical overcast New England winter morning, I wonder if he would have waited for low IFR to lift before departing. My guess is no.

Most of you know about my incident in Telluride, Colorado, that I have written about extensively in these pages. There was a woman behind that. I had plans to fly to Santa Fe, New Mexico, with someone I had recently met, and whom I did not want to disappoint. Our morning got off to a late start and the winds had picked up. We missed our window. I pushed on. She was very beautiful. I totaled the airplane.

• READ MORE: Some Just Diagnose Problems Better Than Others

In the earliest days of my flying career, when I had only my private pilot certificate and no airplane of my own, I was flying a woman from my home upstate to a racetrack in New Jersey in a rented Piper Cherokee. When we departed KMSV, it was clear and a million, but down at Millville there was a solid overcast about 1,200 feet agl. I looked for a hole. There was none. All my friends were waiting for me just under that shallow cloud layer below us. They had a race bike ready for me to ride. We circled for a few minutes as I weighed the options.

I had the compulsory few hours of instrument training needed for my private under my belt, but nothing more. I knew the terrain fairly well, having flown there on numerous occasions. And apparently that was all I needed to make a horrible (and illegal) judgment call when I decided to slowly spiral down into those clouds. I didn’t even know what an instrument approach procedure was back then.

I kept myself in a steady state turn descending at 500 fpm, knowing/praying the ceilings would spit me out where the ATIS promised. And they did. We landed safely. I explained my drenched shirt as a gland issue. My companion was duly impressed, and I was permitted to mate. But anyone reading this who has flown an airplane knows how easily this could have gone south.

There are other stories. I’ll save them for another time. And no need to call my insurer. With my additional years and commensurate drop in Mountain Dude (testosterone), those days are long behind me. I write about them here so that maybe I’ll reach a young pilot, swimming in hormones who has similar thoughts about what he might do to gain favor in a woman’s eyes.

And I hope no one reads this as anti-female.

Quite the opposite. Ironically, most women would not be impressed by this decision-making in the least. In fact, if they knew the risks you had taken without their consent, you would likely be kicked to the curb. If there were a being on this planet who would understand a flight delay brought on by real safety issues, it would be a woman. Women are patient and understanding and generally risk averse.

And, fellas, gonna let you in on a little secret… If she’s willing to get in an airplane with you at all, you can be sure she already likes you. So, take a cold shower and wait for VFR conditions and common sense to prevail.

To this day, I keep that hunk of melted aluminum in my flight bag. Sometimes I’ll even take it out and hold it. It’s a great reminder of what not to do when you want to “go see about a girl.”

This column first appeared in the December 2023/Issue 944 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post The Things We Men Pilots Do to Impress Women appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

It’s not like I’ve never heard those words before. Things happen at busy airports, and the tower will sometimes throw something at you at the last second. But this was unusual in that I was on short final. No, short final is actually a misnomer in this case. I was over the numbers. Flaps down, gear down, throttle back to 15 inches, trim plus-9 and increasing. I was, quite literally, about to land. Things went a little sideways from there, but let’s back up a minute first.

I was flying a friend to Newark Liberty International Airport (KEWR) so she could catch a commercial flight home. I worked it out so that we’d land before 3 p.m. in New Jersey, avoiding the afternoon rush (and the increased landing fees the Port Authority charges). I filed IFR even though it was clear and a million. Always best to do so when flying into Class B airspace. Many pilots get nervous about flying IFR into busy airspace, but the reality is that it’s far easier than VFR. You’re told what to do and when to do it. It’s actually a great help in regard to workload mitigation. You can’t bust airspace when you’re IFR as they take all the decision-making out of your hands. Well, not all the decision-making. And that’s where my problem was.

It’s a short flight from Sullivan County International Airport (KMSV) in Monticello, New York, to KEWR, and before we even settled into cruise, we were being vectored around for a visual to Runway 11. Approach sent me over to Tower and immediately they asked me to keep my speed up then cleared me to land. I have been in this situation before and, wanting to help out, I do my best to comply. Flying into Newark in a single-engine piston makes you the redheaded stepchild. No way around that. So you do what you can to fit into the fast-moving environment. I maintained 160 kias for as long as I could then had to slow down to get configured for a stable approach. As it was, I did this on the later side. On a 5-mile final, I pitched up and pulled power to get below the 150 kias landing gear actuation speed. We quickly decelerated. The airplane stabilized in no time as I flew my Bo “by the numbers.” In this case, a descent, which means 18 inches manifold pressure and plus-3 on the trim. This setting will always give me a 500 fpm descent with the gear down.

I had heard nothing from the tower since being cleared to land, though I was aware there was a jet behind me. Being just a half mile from the runway, I dumped all the flaps at once and trimmed up to plus-9 to maintain my stabilized approach. Over the numbers I pulled power to idle and was trimming up to plus-12 when Tower told me to go around.

I have been asked to do things on short final before and it’s normally a nonevent. Flying into Van Nuys, California (KVNY), this past spring, I was told to change from 16R to 16L about a mile from the threshold. No problem. Bank left, continue descent, squeak the landing, impress your friends. Like most of us, I’ve also been told to go around more than once. No biggie. But this was different. I looked at my ForeFlight log, and it showed I got as low as 61 feet msl. That’s 44 feet agl at KEWR. This is where that decision-making I mentioned earlier comes into play. I should have simply said, “Unable.” There was no hazard in front of me. I was cleared to land. It was my runway, and I was committed at that point.

I knew full well what was happening: The controller got the spacing wrong and did not want to make the jet behind me go around as he knew I might not exit the runway in time.

• READ MORE: Misses, Near and Far…

It’s that voice-of-God vibe the controllers have. Sometimes you forget you’re allowed to push back. I did what I was told. And this is where it got a bit rough. My aircraft does not have approach flaps. Practically, what this means for me is that I don’t extend flaps on an instrument approach until I know I have the runway made. Why? Because this is the most dangerous, busiest envelope of flight that exists for a GA piston pilot. You’re close to the ground, and the airplane is about to go through some serious aerodynamic changes because of what you’re about to do. It’s a far simpler affair in a Pilatus or TBM. They have as little as one lever. I have three. For this reason, I don’t use flaps until it’s a sure thing since it means there’s one less thing for me to do when transitioning to a missed approach.

So…I acknowledged the go-around while I pulled back on the yoke to stop the descent. I added mixture, prop, and then throttle in quick succession. I retracted the flaps next. She moved around a little bit, but I kept things together and, as the airplane started to climb, I pulled the gear up. Not too bad, I thought. More than usual but not too bad. Except I had forgotten one important item—trim. At plus-12 with a clean airframe and full power, she suddenly shot straight up into the air.

It wasn’t close. No stall warning, but it got my full attention. I pressed forward on the yoke—hard. Forced the nose down as I spun the trim wheel forward with my right hand (not a time for the electric hat) until I felt the pressure subside and entered a normal climb. For a newer pilot, this is exactly how you enter a stall/spin condition.

Tower then sheepishly asked if I could make a short approach. Affirmative. Pulled back throttle to 18 inches and dumped the gear again. Flaps as well. Dove back toward the runway and squeaked the landing. The controller thanked me. No problem.

This column first appeared in the November 2023/Issue 943 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Conversations in Dispatch Can Get Tricky appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

How do you know if someone is a pilot?

They will tell you.

As aviators we like to let everyone know, not only our own ability but that of our airplanes. We are proud of our dispatch reliability rate, the utility they afford, the ease of travel, and the time saved not standing in a TSA line. And we would love to tell you all about it in great detail.

And yet, for all that talk, we don’t always communicate very well with our passengers when describing risk. We don’t want to scare the deer. Or show our airplane’s shortcomings. Or our own.

But, yes, our little airplanes really do offer up all that utility. Add a Garmin suite of avionics to the already reliable powerplant/airframe in my highly updated Bonanza, and I can get in and out of places that no commercial airliner could ever attempt.

Part 91 takes away whatever remaining restrictions the majors have in getting off the ground. Technically, we GA pilots can take off in any conditions we like. Sure, we don’t necessarily do it, but we all know that we could if we wanted to badly enough. And that’s simply not a helpful framework for our self-deluding primate brains.

• READ MORE: Misses, Near and Far…

I remember once getting a call some years ago on a Saturday morning from my buddy, Dave. He and a friend had to make a wedding in California’s Bay Area that night. Their commercial flight into KSFO was canceled because of fog. He asked me if I could get them to a nearby airport in the next few hours. A part of my brain lit up at the thought of saving the day. It’s fun being the hero. I tried to remain calm and even had the wherewithal to tell him I had to check the weather first. But my mind was already 87 percent made up. I was getting them to that wedding.

Turns out it wasn’t just fog. There was a well-developed low making a ton of rain along with 70 knot winds at 10,000 feet. We flew right through that storm. While there was no convection, and I wasn’t exactly in over my head, it was not a flight that needed to happen. I had just received my instrument rating a few months earlier and was determined to leverage it to its full potential.

I remember this one moment up at altitude when I realized the weather at our destination was not going to lift above minimums. I told the guys we would not make San Jose and would have to land at Monterey. They were concerned with rental cars and ground transportation, blissfully unaware I had not studied our alternate’s instrument approaches—there are six of them at KMRY. Runway 28 was active, and it required a descent toward mountainous terrain and an approach that takes you right past peaks higher than the aircraft’s path. The surrounding terrain there is the real deal, having taken the life of a well-known CFI who had a CFIT accident in 2021 while departing into IMC.

Our flight ended with a successful landing, but I will always remember walking away from the airplane toward the FBO when Dave asked me if I always sweated this much when flying. “Yes,” I replied. “I’m a ‘schvitzer.’” Better that than explain to him that I exposed them both to a much higher risk without ever giving them the option to make a choice for themselves. Had I called Dave back earlier that morning and explained that our desired destination was at minimums and our alternate had mountainous terrain surrounding it on three sides, he might very well have decided making the wedding wasn’t that important after all. More than 50 percent of marriages end in divorce, anyway. But I never gave him that option. I wanted to make it work—for me, as much as for him. And that’s a problem.

In the end, I didn’t even achieve the hero status that was fueling my decision-making process. The guys were scrambling to find a rental car as they tossed a thank-you over their shoulders as they walked to the FBO. I slowly made my way back to the airplane and just sat there in the left seat for a bit and breathed before filing and heading back to LA.

The best example of this noncommunication was also the worst day of my life: that fateful morning in Telluride, Colorado, where I encountered wind shear on takeoff and almost entered a stall/spin, ending with a gear-up landing. My passenger and I could have left later that day or the next morning. That’s when all the “reasons” start flooding in:

• The hotel room in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is booked.
• The restaurant reservation is made.
• The girl is new to me, and I want to impress her.
• My airplane is perfectly suited to the mission.
• I am a pilot of exceptional, bordering superhuman ability.

In hindsight, those seem patently absurd (the last, also being patently false) with the reality I was then served: a totaled airplane, a scarred pilot and his dog, and a woman who ended up being subjected to a terrifying, near-death experience.

Had I just asked her if she was willing to risk the flight at one of the most notoriously dangerous airports in North America because of mountain wind shear and a climbing density altitude, I can almost guarantee she would have declined. But that dialogue never occurred, because I never opened it.

There are times where we really don’t see the danger coming and, as such, a conversation cannot be had. For that, there is no remedy. But I find the vast majority of the time there is that tingling feeling that originates in your brain then migrates south to the back of your neck, where it surfaces, becoming almost topical—like an itch.

We almost always know. We just don’t always listen, and we often don’t speak.

This column first appeared in the September 2023/Issue 941 of FLYING’s print edition.

The post Pilots Don’t Always Communicate Well When Describing Risk appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

I’ve written in these pages about combining my love of racing motorcycles with aviation, flying to distant racetracks and sometimes even landing on the track itself. Aviation sweetens the pot for any adventure. It’s a simple equation: Anything you like to do + Aviation = A Win.

Food pairs exceptionally well with aviation. In fact, one of the oldest cliches in aviation is the $100 hamburger (now pushing $300 in many modern airplanes) whereby you fly to a semi-distant location and have a burger before flying home. Sometimes the burger is just an excuse for the flight. There is something about a flight being mission-oriented that checks another box for me. I understand why pilots take part in humanitarian relief, angel flights, or dog rescue missions. I would fly just for the sake of flying, but having a reason makes me feel like an airline transport pilot.

Food is one of the last remaining things in this ultra-homogenized country that still has some regional specificity. Take a road trip this summer and stay on the interstates if you want to see hat I mean. It all looks the same. Chain after chain punctuated with superstores visible from the freeway. It’s numbing and offensive. Cracker Barrel does its best trying to masquerade as local fare, but it’s not authentic Southern cuisine by any measure. Waffle House is the only one I find irresistible, but I’m not starting up the big-bore Conti to go there either.

No, you have to exit those thruways and get on some two-lane blacktop, where you can still find the mom-and-pop restaurants that don’t have an HR department or a social media presence. This dovetails nicely with general aviation in that the bulk of our 5,000 some-odd airfields are well off the beaten path. Throw in a free crew car and a little bit of research, and you’ve got the makings of a nice lunch. Sometimes I skip the research, roll into a small town and just ask who makes the best fried chicken. If you were to only fly into commercial-service airports in the hope of finding a similar experience, you would miss a whole lot.

I am writing this column from the patio of La Mama in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It’s a new restaurant housed in what was previously a craftsman home right in the middle of town. Landed in Moriarty (0E0) this morning and dropped the Bo off with Fernie, who is addressing a few leftover squawks, post-annual. Jumped in his truck and drove straight here for a sublime bowl of soup and a sandwich on house-made focaccia. Double mission, double joy.

• READ MORE: Flying for Food: The Butcher Block Edition

I have flown to Catalina Island (KAVX) in California numerous times for what is a decent breakfast (nothing I’d spend time driving to) just to justify the gorgeous trip across the water and the carrier landing on top of a mountain. Camarillo (KCMA) is a close second, where the landing is not as exciting but walking up to the outdoor restaurant on the field a mere 50 feet from your parked airplane is an experience worth burning some 100LL.

I seem to make a cross-country trip in my Bo every few years, and I keep a digital folder of restaurants I want to visit. While a restaurant on the field is the gold standard, there is also something great about borrowing a mid-’90s vintage Crown Vic crew car with the driver’s side spotlight still intact from its previous life as an unmarked police car. I love how people still get out of your way in that thing.

Sometimes, the culinary destination outshines the flight. Rare, but it happens. My buddy Carlo and I flew up from Los Angeles to Los Gatos, California, a few years ago to experience one of the best-ever meals at Manresa. Sadly, the restaurant is now closed (a victim of COVID-19), but I will always remember that flight/meal.

I enjoy the cheap meals as much as I do the high-end cuisine. Aside from an appreciation of all foods, the people are much friendlier in the eateries that don’t come with Michelin stars. I tumbled into PJ’s Rainbow Cafe in Mountain View, Arkansas, a few years back on a cross-country flight. With an actual rainbow on the front glass, this place would absolutely be a gay hangout if it was located in the West Village in NYC. I walked in and immediately noticed the tiles of the dropped ceiling were individual advertisements for local businesses. I’d only seen this done on menus and the occasional tabletop until I entered this establishment. Dining next to me was a woman with an incomplete beard who told me to get the chicken-fried steak. She was with her husband (full beard), whom she met online and who “drove down to Florida to pick her up.” I overheard another woman discussing the eye makeup in the Netflix drama series The Queen’s Gambit and finally had a conversation with a elderly man in full military dress blues who owned a local health food store. He somehow confused me with someone else in the small town (population: 1,700) who apparently I looked like, and we struck up a conversation. He works in the honor guard and buries deceased servicemen and women. These are encounters and meals you simply aren’t going to have anywhere near JFK.

Gonna pick up the airplane in Moriarty tomorrow then head back east for the summer. I haven’t been home in more than a year because of my work. Staring at a VFR map of the country, I am planning my route back. People assume this is a regimented, regulation-fueled exercise. Nope. Taste buds and curiosity are the drivers here. BBQ in Kansas with Sean or a little sandwich shop on the South Side of Chicago with Chris? Not sure yet. Will get airborne and figure it out at 11.5K.

This column first appeared in the July 2023/Issue 939 print edition of FLYING.

The post Food for Flight Is the Way to Go appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Yup. The dreaded words, and just a couple of weeks before the 10-year anniversary of getting my private certificate. It happened earlier this year, departing VanNuys (KVNY) in California.

Below is an excerpt from my ASRS report:

[My] first time departing KVNY, and I was given the CANOGA 3 departure. I misread the chart for my given runway and believed the initial turn was a climbing left toa 253 heading. It was a climbing right turn to 213. I had a feeling something was off while still on the ground and asked tower to confirm my climbing left turn to 253. I was told, “affirmative.”

This calmed me, and I was given a takeoff clearance on [Runway] 16R (16L utilizes the climbing left turn). I was immediately handed off to SoCal approach and seeing that the left turn took me over the parallel runway, I asked again if my left turn was the correct one. The controller told me it was incorrect and had me turn back to the right. There was no other traffic around, but the controller gave me a number to call.

It’s fairly obvious what happened here, what I should have done and will do to remedy the mistake moving forward, so I’ll spare you the mea culpa. What I’d like to talk about is how it snuck past both myself and the tower controller. How did I misinterpret the chart, and how did he not catch my blunder when asked? The answer is age-old: Human beings are highly prone to errors.

To hammer the point home: there have been no less than three major incidents at JFK, Boston Logan, and Austin in as many months. These all involved professional pilots flying big iron. All three have human error at their core.

The January 13 event at KJFK involved two airliners. An American Boeing 777 crossed the wrong runway, and an already-departing Delta Boeing 737 had to haul on the brakes to keep from plowing into the taxiing 777. This could have been a major catastrophe with hundreds of casualties. The controller caught it in time, but he could just as easily have taken a sip of coffee and missed it. In my view, the American pilots appear to be at blame. What was happening in the cockpit at the time? Idle chit-chat? Fatigue? Clearly a distraction of some sort.

• READ MORE: Close Call at JFK International

In Boston on February 27, a Learjet took off after being given, and even reading back correctly, an instruction to line up and wait. That is an error only a human could make. The approaching JetBlue captain saw the Lear and went around. They came within 530 feet of one another. Reading back instructions correctly, then doing something else entirely, illustrates the highest level of distraction. Was it internal or external in its inception?

The Austin incident on February 4 seems to be an air traffic controller error in which two aircraft were cleared for the same runway. A FedEx Boeing 767attempted to land while a Southwest 737 prepared for takeoff. The FedEx pilot abruptly pulled up as the Southwest 737 had already taken the runway. The 767 descended to just 150 feet before initiating the go-around. Close calls, all of them.

• READ MORE: FAA Investigates Close-Call Situation at Austin Airport

We humans are flawed machines. Full stop. Our training has tried to make us aware of these limitations, but we are as complicated as we are flawed. All that stuff we learned in class about fatigue and mental state seemed so silly to me at the time. I breezed past it like a driver’s ed remedial course after getting a speeding ticket. Who really stops themselves before a flight and goes through the I’M SAFE checklist? If you do, congrats. The rest of you can read on.

I have never done it and doubt I ever will. If I’m heading to the airport, I’ve already made a decision about my well-being and ability. It may not be a great decision, but it’s a decision nonetheless. Goingthrough that checklist before you leave the house makes more sense, but who is doing that in their living room?

Let’s speak plainly here. Unless something is obviously wrong with your physical or mental state, you aren’t going to be running through that check-list. And if something is substantive enough to grab your attention, then you don’t need the list to begin with. The hard part is admitting/recognizing something creeping up on you—not noticing something that already has your attention. Using my example, I was sitting on a taxiway, having just flown in congested airspace in IMC. The airports I was flying between are all within minutes of one another and are all in Class D and C airspace, with Class B right above them. I was about as busy as I’ll ever be in an airplane without introducing some sort of emergency. It was tiring and gratifying.

I flew a SID departing Burbank and was in the clouds in no time. Next, an RNAV approach into Camarillo where I flew the missed and went right back into the clouds. I then flew a new-to-me ILS into Van Nuys. I was tired. Not so tired that I would call off a flight back to the airplane’s home in Burbank, seven nautical miles away.

So, what then? What should have happened? It’s about noticing the slightly different feeling I had sitting on the taxiway. I wasn’t exhausted, but I was fatigued. Had I used the I’M SAFE checklist, I would have breezed right through all six criteria. What happened is more nuanced than that. It’s more akin to noticing a vibration coming from up front. I’m tuned into my engine at all times when it’s running. My sensitivity to any change in that Continental feels super-human. I feel like I can detect variations in its operation that even a mechanical instrument could not. My passengers never notice the slight frequency changes I am describing. To me, they feel/sound like fog horns at close range.

In this example, that “engine vibration” was me asking the tower to confirm the direction of flight on a departure procedure. The red flag should have waved right there. That is simply not a question I should have been asking. That is a vibration that should have made me check my body’s engine monitor, followed immediately by the chart for the CANOGA 3 departure.

What were the pilots and the controller in those other incidents feeling or thinking in those moments just before their decisions were made? Could it have been confirmation bias, or expectation bias? Marital issues? A slight cold? Only they can tell us, and it’s fully possible that any one, or all, of them weren’t even feeling off in the slightest. Sometimes we just make mistakes apropos of nothing. At times we just fumble the ball.

I spoke to ATC when I landed. The gentleman was from New York, and his accent made me feel like things would be okay. They checked the tapes, and I was cleared of any penalty or wrongdoing, but I still filled out the ASRS report. Felt like penance. Reprimanded or not, I made a mistake, and I’d very much like not to do it again.

This article was originally published in the May 2023 Issue 937 of  FLYING.

The post Misses, Near and Far… appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“Hey, Fernie…what happened here? I didn’t ask you to do this.”

“I know,” he replied.

“So, why’d you do it?”

“Because it was driving me f–king nuts.”

This was when I learned that while obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) may be a pathology you do not wish in your life partner, consider yourself blessed to find it in your A&P. Fernie Nunez is the owner of New Mexico Aero Services. I met him a few years ago while stuck in New Mexico during the pandemic.

He’s a Bonanza specialist who studied under Bob Ripley at one of the American Bonanza Society Maintenance Academy workshops. Incidentally, Bob has been doing my annuals for years, but the trip down to Griffin, Georgia (6A2), is a stretch for me. As I am always on either coast, I decided to make a change that factored heavily on convenience. Ripley is known as Mr. Bonanza and has a waiting list for new customers, so this was no light decision.

• READ MORE: The Final Airplane in This Life of Mine?

While I was stuck, Fernie installed a crankshaft gasket (my third) that managed to seal properly. Finally. I’d seen other mechanics use microwaves and hot water to make the gasket pliable. Some said a prayer. Fernie had a specialized tool and a healthy dose of compulsion. Done and dusted. Another time, in a perfect example of confirmation bias, I told Fernie I had a fuel leak in the cabin as well as fading brakes. Turns out those issues were one and the same, and your faithful author can’t discern the smell of 100LL from brake fluid. With the size of my schnoz, this is troubling. Fernie removed the brake master cylinders and rebuilt them both (no co-pilot brakes on my bird). After throwing a few problems like these at Fernie and seeing them thoughtfully solved, I felt comfortable giving him a shot at the annual.

I dropped the airplane off in late December and was about to call an Uber to take me back down the hill to Albuquerque, where I was flying commercial back home for the holidays. Fernie told me he’d be happy to fly me there.

“Didn’t know you were a pilot.”

“Yup. Commercial, multi, instrument.”

“Oh…”

I flew us there in the left seat and watched him taxiout and depart. I had never let anyone fly that airplane. Not with me in it, and certainly not without. Trust is that witches brew of finite data points, mixed with gut feelings and a dice roll.

Fernie stayed in close contact with me over the break. There were things he could not control in this back-ordered, shipping-delayed world we now live in. A throttle cable would take a week. An aux fuel pump rebuild, 10 days. In years past, I have had minor squawks that Bob didn’t have time to fix during the annual. This is normal. He runs a busy shop.

If it’s not a safety-of-flight issue, then I come back and make an appointment later. This is where Fernie’s OCD diagnosis can pay dividends. He attacked every squawk I could throw at him. Leaving anything unresolved gives him agita. 

Returning to Moriarty after the holidays, I found Fernie had addressed every single item I had on my exhaustive list. When I arrived in the morning to pick her up, Fernie told me the Bonanza had an additional hour on the tach. He had flown it and tested every system, making sure everything worked as it should. The first flight after an annual is always the most dangerous. Things have been futzed with. The interior has been removed, bolts undone, then re-torqued. My Electroair ignition system was finally installed correctly—the remaining mag firing the top plugs with the Electroair firing the bottoms (it had been backward for some time).The new aux fuel pump whirred loud and true. The landing gear was rigged properly. These are not small things. Fernie’s willingness to be the first up after all of this work is confidence-inspiring, to say the least.

• READ MORE: Redefining What it Means to Be a ‘Lazy Pilot’

But there was also a smile creeping out from the corner of his mouth. The truth is, it doesn’t really take an hour to check all these things. He just loved the airplane and wanted to stay up there a bit longer. He had one of his employees, Dustin, with him. They both just love airplanes. Still. The love has not waned, and I believe it finds its way into the work, making mine that much better cared for. 

I took a trip this past weekend to KSLC, Salt Lake City International. I had a United flight booked, but a few hours before departing, I checked in online. It was then I was told that my snowboard bag would cost $400 round-trip to make the journey with me. It was 2 inches too long. It was 4:30 p.m. at this point, but I was so annoyed that I canceled the flight, drove straight to Burbank, and fired up my airplane. It was going to be a night flight over mountains. I made sure the route followed Victor airways and filed IFR, but still… What gave me extra courage was knowing Fernie had completed my annual. Following that, I trusted her to get me there, and she did.

Back during the pandemic, there was one issue Fernie could not fix. My new Whelen taxi light kept rotating in the housing, causing the name to turn 15 degrees askew. Mind you, this had zero impact on the pattern, direction, and efficacy of the light. Like my wing walk, it just drove Fernie nuts. It was fixed when I came to pick up the airplane in January. I got a five-minute explanation of how there was no retaining tab, but he had fashioned one himself to seat it permanently in the housing. I was overcome with joy and tried to hug him goodbye, but he wasn’t having it. All good. OCD swings both ways. I’ll gladly trade a no-cuddle policy for a perfectly-working airplane. All day. Every day.

This article was originally published in the April 2023 Issue 936 of  FLYING.

The post The Unexpected Perks of an OCD Annual appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

My beloved V-tail Beechcraft Bonanza has, for years, had a looming issue that is now finally coming to a head. Not just mine. Every V-tail ever made. It concerns its exotic magnesium ruddervators. The gauge and stock of the alloy used by Beech all those years ago is no longer produced. Anywhere. Spares have become impossible to come by, and we have arrived at a place where a minor hangar-rash incident can be determined a total loss by the insurance company.

In comes Tom Turner of the American Bonanza Society, offering an incentive to whatever brilliant minds are sleeping out there to come up with a solution. He created the ABS/ASF Maciel Ruddervator Prize with a $500,000 cash award to the first person who “designs and obtains FAA certification of an alternative to original ruddervator skins or a replacement for the entire ruddervator assembly…”

Half a million dollars got more than a few individuals’ attention. People began thinking, then talking, and then doing. There are currently a few different solutions coming down the pipeline (as of this writing, even Beech has jumped back into the game, fabricating the skins once more. The contest seems to have sufficiently shaken Textron Aviation enough to make them see their customers’ needs).

Along with Rosie, another woman I became infatuated with as a youth was Ayn Rand. I got swept up in her ideas of individualism. I’ve since come to understand the flaws in both her philosophy and personal views, but let’s separate the artist from the art for a moment. The idea she planted in my head was that an individual (read: American) could do whatever they (read: he) dreamed of.

I responded strongly to this idea, and though I started my career as a public servant, I knew I wanted to one day create something original and be the master of my own destiny. I wanted to marshall others to help me in my endeavors. As a filmmaker, I start with a kernel of an idea. I play with it and shape it, and ultimately turn the idea into a screenplay. After that, I need help. Lots of it. Making a film requires hundreds of people to help me execute my vision. I don’t see it as any different than starting a business or coming up with an invention that then needs to scale up to production. It starts with me but becomes something much bigger.

George Braly of General Aviation Modifications, Inc. (GAMI), has been telling me for years that he has an unleaded fuel replacement for 100LL. If I’m honest, I doubted him. I’d been to his shop in Ada, Oklahoma, and seen his expertise firsthand. His work on detonation and the entire combustion process is unparalleled. I swear by his GAMI injectors. But I assumed only a major petroleum company could pull off something as big as a 100LL replacement, and even they seemed unable to do so. My rationale was that if it could be done, someone would have already done it. How could George pull this off in an airplane hangar in Oklahoma? I didn’t see any glass beakers lying around when I was there. Not even a single lab coat.

While I never expressed any of my doubts to him, I imagine they would not have made one bit of difference. George was undeterred. He knew what he wanted to do, and he did it, detractors be damned. His formulation is the first to pass FAA muster and is on track to be the primary fuel replacement for all of us in the spark-fired piston world of GA. His solution will benefit all of us and, I imagine, himself—handsomely—as well. As with the ruddervator prize, money continues to be a strong incentive for creative minds everywhere. And that’s okay, as the ends really do justify the means here.

It all begins in one primate’s brain. That moment when you’ve closed your eyes and are about to fall asleep or are in the middle of a shower, hair full of shampoo. You’re not even working on the problem when it happens. Not consciously. You may have even given up on it entirely. And then the lightbulb goes on. The solution appears magically, the brain having done all that beautiful work in the deep background. The moment is so out of our control that we feel we had no part in it—as if it happened to us. Once the idea enters consciousness, the creator will not stop until it comes to fruition. It doesn’t matter how many people say it can’t be done. This is what innovation looks like.

It is then that the Rosies of the world come in and help finish the job. This might sound reductive and romanticized, but it seems to me that when there is a common problem and value alignment over it, even the most disparate groups of people can come together to find a solution. As a species, we are very good at problem-solving, so long as we don’t get in our own way.

In the final scene of my last film, Bleed for This, boxer Vinny Pazienza explains to a reporter that the biggest lie he has ever been told is, “It’s not that simple.” In his case, he is referring to people’s doubt about his attempt at a long-shot comeback after a broken neck he suffered in a car accident. He tells the reporter: “If you just do the thing they tell you you can’t, then it’s done. And you realize that it is that simple. And that it always was.”

This article was originally published in the February 2023 Issue 934 of FLYING.

The post Inspired Individuals appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

“Are you a CFI?”

“No, I’m not. Why? What’s going on?”

“I’m trying to figure out which runway to depart from.”

First off, I was flattered that he thought I was a CFI. Quickly moving past that, it occurred to me that it might be because I looked old. Slowly moving past that, I realized I needed to be careful in advising him. Catalina is tricky in that the single runway has a pretty good slope to it. But departing downhill on Runway 4 during a busy weekend when everyone is landing on 22 has its own risks. When winds are calm, it’s worth waiting for a break in traffic. With a 6-knot quartering tailwind, it’s not so clear. His passengers were eagerly watching this exchange as we discussed the pros and cons of both. I found myself smiling widely and trying to sound as casual as possible so as not to worry them. They simply didn’t have the knowledge to weigh in on the decision. They could only hope their pilot made the right one. The balance changed the moment the young pilot asked me for help. I could see it on their faces.

The decision-making process for the layperson who is deciding whether to fly with a friend is a complicated one that reveals a lot about the individual. It illustrates the internal algorithms that take place inside the passengers’ head. It’s a balance of practical need and risk assessment. But the information being used makes me think of the old adage about computer science: Garbage in, garbage out. This refers to the idea that inputs of poor quality will always produce a faulty output.

With people who have little understanding of aviation, these are entirely emotional decisions. I’m not necessarily suggesting they aren’t effective, but they are certainly not based on empirical data. It is a decision largely based on appearances. I present as responsible and confident, and have been flying for a number of years. But they don’t know enough to ask about total hours or currency or maintenance on the aircraft (or the pilot). All of those things get folded into their sense of “me” and their judgment of my capability to keep them safe.

A fellow pilot will have a specific set of criteria that are measurable—data points that they can use to gauge the current faculty of both me and my aircraft. They might drill down and ask how old the oil is, or who did the last annual and when. If we are going to fly IFR, they will likely ask when the last time I flew an instrument approach was. I know I would. 

But how much more effective does that really make the decision? If someone knows you well, and has observed a years-long pattern of decision-making outside of aviation, then perhaps their judgment isn’t quite as arbitrary as it seems. Recently, I read about two professional pilots who were drunk on a commercial flight. They were current and the aircraft was in perfect shape. But there were personal issues at play that only a close friend or family member would be in a position to see. And maybe not even then.

That same day on Catalina was my friend Kelli’s first flight with me. We know each other from work where she is a stunt woman. She’s professional and meticulous in her craft. I trust her on set. She’s seen me work as a director, and there exists a mutual appreciation between us. So, at lunch, when another pilot brought up the incident that totaled my first Bonanza in Telluride three years earlier, I felt a small lump appear in my throat.

Kelli didn’t flinch. She barely asked about the incidentand showed no reticence in her decision to fly with me. She knows me and knows that I learned from the experience, thereby making me an even safer pilot. She’s studying for her private pilot certificate herself and made her decision based on both data and observation. So far, so good.

Sometimes practical needs will supersede fear. My friend Dave recently told me his wife was returning to Los Angeles from Ireland and that he didn’t know how to get her up to Paso Robles—where he would be for a long weekend—when she arrived back with their 11-month-old son. I offered to fly her up, knowing there was no chance he’d take me up on it. Why? Because she won’t let him fly with me since they had their baby. It seemed like an easy offer that I’d never be called on to execute. Wrong. She found out the drive was four hours and very quickly reassessed my ability as a pilot. I flew her and the baby up with no issues. On a side note, breastfeeding helps with pressure-related issues on descent. For the baby. 

I have other friends who would rather eat a glass casserole than get into an airplane with me. And some of them don’t even know about Telluride. It matters not how good I am. The math simply doesn’t work out for them. I use the term loosely because in reality there’s no math at all. Fear is the ultimate decision-maker, and it cares not for data sets.

My ex-girlfriend was the complete opposite. Her appetite for risk was substantial. She was far more confident in my ability than I was myself. It was confidence-boosting at times, scary at others. When telling her I was concerned about a weather system I was looking at on Nexrad, she said it was fine and that I could easily navigate through it.

The kid on Catalina made the right decision. I saw him lift off below me as I made my way back toward the mainland. Was it close? Could it have gone another way? Who knows? But I’d like to think the people flying with him had a better read than I did. They know him. I don’t.

From the December 2022/January 2023 Issue 933 of FLYING

The post Trust But Verify appeared first on FLYING Magazine.