Table of contents for June 2019 in Flying

The growing pilot shortage is obligating airlines to increase wages for newly hired first officers from about $24,000 a year on average a few years ago to nearly $60,000 a year today. The basic laws of economics being what they are, higher starting salaries have translated to a surge of fresh-faced—and, well, not-so-fresh-faced—aviators scurrying to amass the 1,500 flight hours they need to earn Airline Transport Pilot certificates and start their new careers at pilot-hungry regional carriers. Some airlines say the 1,500-hour rule, enacted by Congress in 2013, is only exacerbating the pilot shortage. That might well be true, but any attempt to alter the rule that’s rooted in increased profit margins at the expense of the safety of the traveling public is headed nowhere fast. Still, it’s fair to…

It is a beautiful night at 35,000 feet over the fields and sleeping towns of the American Midwest. A wispy undercast, dimly lit by the rising quarter moon, flits here and there, alternately hiding and revealing the glow of distant cities as we pass. There’s a healthy jet stream on our tail, a last vestige of rapidly retreating winter, and our groundspeed hovers around 530 knots. The captain has turned down the cockpit lights, a rarity on red-eye flights where the usual protocol is to leave all lights blazing in the interest of wakefulness, night vision be damned. The dimmed cockpit suits me just fine; it fits my mood, and the captain’s too, I think. The radio is mostly silent, and so are we. It’s just as well, because we…

I was doing a play in Chicago in the early 70s. Two of the cast members were William H. Macy and Mike Nussbaum. Macy’s dad, Bill Sr., had flown B-17s in World War II, 306th Bomb Group, 423rd Squadron. Thirty-five missions in Europe, recipient of the Silver Star. Bill Jr. inherited his dad’s flight jacket, and wore it to the theater. Painted on the back, Lt. Macy’s noseart mascot “The Paper Doll”—“A sexy young brunette with a few buttons popped and red lipstick,” notes W.H. Macy Jr. The jacket went missing during rehearsal, recalling George Burns’s answer to: “What’s the most important thing you learned in 60 years in show business?” “Always take your wallet onstage.” Nussbaum also wore his A-1 jacket to work. He’d worn it throughout the war,…

Every afternoon my partner Nancy and I walk around Echo Park Lake. Two miles from downtown Los Angeles, it is not Walden Pond. It is man-made, cement lined, shallow and ringed by a paved walk on which multicolored streams of people, old and young, some strolling, some rolling, flow in at least two directions, maybe more. On the other hand, its banks are grassy and tree-shaded, and at its northern end is a picturesque island densely forested with tall palms. A few years ago, the lake, which contained a huge bed of lotus plants, was drained, revealing a deep layer of muck. For some time, Asian women slogged thigh deep in it, hunting for lotus roots, a culinary delicacy. The lotophagous ladies were followed by tractors and trucks that scraped…

ONE OF A KIND I just finished reading Martha Lunken’s article on Stan Brock [“We Won’t See His Likes Again,” April 2019], the DC-3-flying founder of Remote Area Medical (RAM). In December 1999 I was between gigs and saw a one-paragraph note in the back of AOPA Pilot announcing that RAM was looking for volunteer pilots. On a whim I called the number and was surprised that it was answered by someone with a posh English public-school accent. It was Stan. He immediately accepted my offer to fly my Malibu wherever he needed it. He asked me to pick up a nurse and another volunteer in Boston and come down to one of RAM’s clinics in Tennessee. I did, and there began the start of a 19-year friendship. I ended…

The hill was not particularly steep nor particularly tall nor particularly close to the runway—so nondescript, in fact, that pilots probably barely took note of it. In daylight they would maintain the runway heading while climbing and the hill would sink harmlessly below and behind them. At night it could be a different matter. That the hill was a potential hazard had been recognized, and a row of red lights on 30-foot stanchions had been erected, some distance from the side of the runway and parallel to it, to remind pilots not to drift to the left. The instrument departure procedure instructed pilots to “climb visually over airport, to cross airport at or above 1,500 feet, then proceed on course.” The phrase “cross airport” was unclear; it was later changed…

It’s been said that there is no such thing as a perfect flight. I know I’ve never come close. On most flights I can admit to some minor imperfection even before engine start. Though I’d like to think that none of these common omissions or out of sequence commissions are dangerous, I can think of some that could have been. Will I ever get the hang of this? Humble-bragging, you say. All pilots make small mistakes and you (me) are just looking for praise. Fair enough, but I have witnessed some great piloting by some really smooth pilots and I know they are in a different league than I am. I have a 30,000-plushour friend who still remarks about the time he left the chocks in after he had loaded…

Look closely and you’ll notice there’s more to a packet of Jeppesen charts than just approach plates, SIDs and STARs. A typical download includes the all-important airport taxi chart created to orient pilots before they start engines and to help them find their way after landing. Taxi charts also will highlight airport “hot spots,” pointing to areas where the risk of runway excursions is high. Until fairly recently, taxi charts were only used by IFR pilots, but thanks to digital media it’s easy for even VFR pilots to have one at the ready, such as this one from Chicago Midway Airport (MDW). A. MAP ON THE GROUND Think of a taxi chart like a road map, assuming you’re old enough to remember one of those. Without charts on their kneeboards…

The instrument rating requirement for commercial pilots created a hullabaloo in Juneau, Alaska, that was just an early episode in the ongoing dialog about the qualifications a commercial pilot should have. For the commercial seaplane pilots in the area, it was unhappy times. The FAA had just mandated that all commercial pilots must have an instrument rating, or accept a limitation on their certificates prohibiting flying passengers for hire on flights of more than 50 nautical miles or at night. This requirement was especially galling for these seaplane pilots, because the communities they served had no instrument approaches. And flying seaplanes on instruments in the prevailing icing conditions was a really bad idea anyway. Today, the commercial pilot certificate is changing again. What you can do with the certificate, the…

Like many before me, as a child I wedged a baseball card (that’s what doubles were for) into the spokes on my bike to make it sound like a motorcycle. The result, from what I am told by those that had to listen to it, was expertly annoying. But it was an auspicious moment in that it marked the first modification I ever made to a machine. Engineering the card to remain in place using a clothespin and a rubber band felt like a minor triumph. No: major triumph. Elon Musk, SpaceX-size triumph. So began my life as a customizer. After the card trick I went on to install a rear rack on my Schwinn. Next came the generator headlight, its dynamo mounted on the rear frame so that it…

For what seemed like forever—OK, so it was four weeks—I was housebound late last winter, hobbling around with a humongous cast on my right foot. Weather was consistently gray, cold and brutal in the Ohio Valley and moping around the house isn’t my style, but I got through, reasonably sane, thanks to some great memories. I’d flown my Cessna 180 and a magnificently dirty, oil-dripping, belching DC-3 in the fall. And in January, I mingled with the “beautiful people” at the Living Legends of Aviation Awards event in Los Angeles. Life is very, very good when you can move easily from oil-stained T-shirts and jeans flying a ’Goon in Knoxville to a “smasher” evening gown, rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous of the aviation world in Beverly Hills. Which…