AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2013 - T-6

This Citation III was owned by a private company and I was the junior of three pilots. My boss and chief pilot had worked in a number of flight departments, while the other pilot—call him Tom—well, I was never really too sure where Tom had come from, because the guy kept to himself as much as possible and simply wasn’t the chatty type. I learned a three-hour flight becomes really long when much of the conversation at FL390 ends with “yes,” “no,” and an occasional shrug of the shoulders. But who cared what the people were like, I thought. I was there as a service employee to learn how to best fit into a flight department that needed another pilot on the team. Our goal, I learned early on, was to always keep the folks in back happy, skills I’d honed as an on-demand charter pilot before accepting this job. Of course, the quick 10-minute interview with the chief pilot before he offered me the job should have been a tip off that maybe the place was a tad odd, but with a four-year-old daughter growing up at home, the chance to dump a pager that regularly rang at 2 a.m. for a schedule beckoned hypnotically. Line training began right off with me flying legs in all kinds of weather, where I regularly rotated flying with the chief pilot and Tom. Having flown left seat on the Citation II, I wasn’t brand new to jets, just speedy ones. After a few months, however, I began to notice things that started making me wonder—sketchy flight planning and questions that were sometimes answered with annoyed expressions. If I appeared not to agree, someone might ask, “Had I finished all the Jepp revisons yet?” The best solution seemed to be just shut up and fly the airplane, although I started paying closer attention as I became more comfortable in the airplane. For instance, on one of my left-seat legs back from Cincinnati, the chief pilot in the right seat overruled my fuel request at Greater Cincinnati Airport by explaining, “We’re fat on fuel.” I didn’t like it, but I didn’t say anything. Back home, I flew the ILS approach to minimums, but my scan included the fuel gauges every few seconds. We taxied in with
T–6 | AOPA PILOT January 2013

We taxied in with 700 pounds of Jet-A, not much for an airplane that burns about 1,800 pounds an hour down low.

700 pounds of Jet-A, not much for an airplane that burns about 1,800 pounds an hour down low. What if we’d missed at Chicago Executive Airport and needed to run for Chicago O’Hare International Airport? We’d have arrived on fumes. The boss looked at me after we shut down. “Don’t tell me that whole thing bothered you. We’re fine aren’t we?” On another trip, Tom and I were headed to Los Angeles from Chicago. Tom was all about going fast, all the time. But on this trip, he pushed it too far when he pulled the circuit breaker on the Citation’s overspeed warning. This allowed the airspeed indicator needle and the barber pole (the striped warning needle on the indicator) to cross in a way that was not intended. The goal of flying jets is always to nudge the airspeed indicator needle just up to, but short of, the pole. Crossing that line meant we’d become test pilots and I didn’t like it one bit. “That bother you?” Tom questioned at FL410 and some airspeed beyond the pole. “Yeah. It does, Tom. Put the #@*&! circuit breaker back in and pull the power back,” I demanded. After a short argument, he complied and didn’t speak to me again for the next two and a half hours of the flight. I told the story to the boss when we got home and he told Tom not to do that anymore, although he’d joke about it from time to time when he thought he could. I’d worked at this department six months when Tom and I took another trip out West, ending in an overnight at San Jose (SJC). The next morning the passengers showed up early. But the weather was good and I’d already started the APU and run most of the checks we needed before startup. Tom was flying from the left seat as I called ground for taxi. As they rattled off instructions for a northwest runway, I heard that the clearance included a standard departure procedure with a tight climbing right turn eastbound, followed by another turn at an intersection down the way. At least that’s what I realized the SID looked like later, because we never briefed the departure procedure before we took off. As we taxied out, Tom’s cellphone rang and he picked up. I’d never watched anyone try to steer a jet on the ground with the tiller, manage the throttles, and talk on the phone at

AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - January 2013