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New Aviator DISCOVERING THE JOY OF FLIGHT
Flying Mentors: Experience Counts
They say you can't teach experience, and if you're a newly-licensed pilot heading cross-country as PIC for the first time, you probably wish that statement weren't so true.
Flying is an ever-changing environment with variable factors like weather, the airplane you are flying, and even your state of mind creating different combinations that make every flight a new adventure. Learning to make decisions about what is safe and what is not is covered in your primary training, but training can only go so far when you’re out in the field and faced with a situation you haven’t run across before.
During the first couple of years after I received my instrument rating, I would frequently call my instructor to get his advice on a weather report or some nagging feeling I had when planning a flight. After all, I wasn’t safe at home where flying is an easy go/no-go decision. I was often on my way to or from an appointment at an airport I was unfamiliar with, trying to interpret weather forecasts in terms of my ability to fly them safely.
I found there was no better sage to seek advice from that the guy who had given me my instrument training. He knew my strengths and weakness, as well as my fears (both rational and not), and often he would fire up his computer from wherever he was to take a look at the weather report and help me make a decision about how to proceed.
For example one stormy summer I was stuck in North Carolina by a foul weather front that I felt uncomfortable tackling. Even though I had an instrument rating, much of my route home (a two-hour and thirty-minute leg in a four-and-a-half-hour airplane) would be IFR above an area of 100- to 200-foot ceilings. As I waited for the morning overcast to burn off, the afternoon sun boiled up a cauldron of thunderstorms and generally lousy weather from Washington, D.C., to northern New Jersey.
This went on for three days. The first day I was content to leave the airplane at the FBO and go play golf. The second day I started getting antsy, and by the third day, I was really looking for someone to give me a way to get home safely, or at the very least, assure me that I couldn’t get home and should go play golf.
All around me pilots were taking off, some were heading in different directions, some had on-board weather, some were just plan stupid. But there I sat, growing more frustrated by the hour, wondering if there was some way I could make it home in weather that my good judgment told me was beyond my skill level.
Finally on the third day, I called my instrument instructor, Sam Carmelli, who checked the weather himself and agreed that I should stay on the ground.
Many pilots, both old and new, seek advice from more experienced pilots when faced with an unfamiliar situation. Heading into the southwest on my second trip across the country, I was surprised to find I wasn’t the only one grilling a local charter pilot about the best way to avoid thunderstorms while trying to navigate the mountains. But be careful who you call.
“If you’re going to call somebody, you definitely want to call somebody who knows you and who is familiar with your limitations ... what you’re comfortable doing and what you’re not comfortable doing,” said Michael Orentzel, a charter pilot and former flight instructor.
Ron Holtzman, a 1,300-hour instrument-rated pilot actually got in trouble relying on the advice of a more experienced pilot shortly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Ron flew a friend to Freeway Airport (W00) under the Washington ADIZ, intending to drop the pilot off and head back to his home base at Farmingdale, NY.
The friend, Ron says, frequently flew to Freeway and knew the area well. During his briefing Ron said the briefer seemed confused about the departure procedures, so when his pilot friend said he only needed to have a flight plan filed and pick up a discreet squawk code in the air, that seemed sound enough advice.
Ron took off, contacted Potomac Approach to activate his flight plan, and flew head-long into a violation that nearly cost him a suspension. “You have to know who you are asking advice from, and you have to trust the person you're asking advice from,” Ron says.
Asking advice doesn’t automatically mean you'll get approval. Sometimes, it’s a sign that you might be contemplating a flight that’s beyond your skill level.
“Most of the time if somebody called me, I’m going to try to convince them not to do it,” Michael says. “If they’re calling me, I’m taking that as a sign that there’s doubt out there, and if there’s doubt, that's not good.”
“People don’t call you when they think they can do something, they call you when they think they can’t do something,” he adds.
This past January, Ron found himself in another situation where he needed advice, only this time, he wasn’t safely on the ground at a local FBO. He had just taken off from Farmingdale when he discovered the landing gear on the Cessna 210 he was flying wouldn’t come down.
Despite the fact that he was in the air and well within range of both ATC and the tower at nearby Republic Airport, Ron knew who to call—his father-in-law Al Mozzor, a well-known flight instructor with more than 20,000 hours in all types of aircraft.
“Al was the first guy I called. Before I even declared an emergency, he was the first one
I called to ask him what I should do. Nobody else,” he says. “I had no cell reception so I found one place over the water where I had reception and I just kept flying around there.”
“Al gave me all kinds of pointers, and I went through everything. Finally he said, `You have to bring it in gear up’, so I did.”
The landing, which was covered live by the local news media, was otherwise uneventful, and Ron said knowing that he had help in the cockpit went along way towards helping him keep his cool in an otherwise difficult situation.
—Sean Fulton
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