Planes of My Past - In The Beginning

I was recently reminded by a friend that I forgot one of my previous planes.  In truth, he was only partly right.  I had forgotten 3 planes from my past.  The Piper Navajo Chieftain, Beechcraft Baron 58, and the Cessna 310.  I flew these airplanes for a company called AirNet Express, based in Columbus, Ohio.

To get to the airlines, a pilot must have many hours of flying experience.  When you think about job experience, you probably think of how many years someone has been doing something.  In aviation, it is all about how many hours you have.  There are only a couple of ways for an aspiring pilot to gain his flying hours.  One is the military, and the other is the civilian route.  The military is pretty self explanatory, but the civilian route takes a little more explaining.  In the beginning, you have to get your pilot certificates and ratings.  You can go to a local airport and take flying lessons, or you can do what I did, which is go to a university that has an aviation program. I went to the University of North Dakota, in Grand Forks, North Dakota.  It is a regular four year university with the normal majors, but it also has an aviation degree program.  I took all the same core classes that everyone else took, but I also took classes that specialize in aviation subject mater, like weather, aerodynamics, aviation safety, performance, and many others.  I Would spend the mornings in class, and the afternoons flying at the airport, putting into practice the things I had learned in the morning,  earning all of my pilot certificates.  Upon graduation, I received a Bachelor of Science degree.

My dream as a child was to fly for the military.  I had hoped to get my experience paid for by the government, but they had other plans.  I had knee surgery when I was 15 and the military was concerned that it would affect my ability to be a fighter pilot.  They told me that if I ejected from an airplane, there would be a good chance that I would re-injure my knee when I parachute landed.  Therefore, I was rejected and had to find another way to get my hours.  I decided that I would teach people how to fly.  They say there is no better way to learn, than to teach.  

My first job was in Leesburg, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC.  I was Flight Instructing during the day and working on the ramp at night for Atlantic Coast Airlines, a subsidiary for United Airlines. That job entailed loading baggage and marshaling airplanes in and out of their parking spots.  It was also a way to help pay the bills because flight instructors normally only make about $10,000 a year.  I flight instructed in Leesburg for about 3 months, and during that time, I had flown 24.8 hours (but, who's counting).  That is not enough time to rapidly gain my experience, let alone pay the bills in Northern Virginia.  I decided to get a job back home in the Chicago area that looked very promising.  They said that I could expect about 1,000 hours a year, which is exactly what I needed.  The quicker I could get my flying time, the quicker I could get to the airlines.  There was only one downside to the job in Chicago, they did not have a multi-engine airplane.

I told you that hours of experience at the controls of an airplane was what was required to get to the airlines.  Hours of flying are weighted by employers by whether the planes have one engine or two.  Two engined airplanes are more complex and are looked at more favorably by prospective employers, and the airlines want lots of twin-engine flying hours.  I wasn't getting twin engine hours teaching in Chicago, so I needed to get some as quickly as possible.  One way to do that is by flying freight.  I applied for a job at a company called AirNet Systems.  They fly canceled checks and small freight using Lear Jets and small twin-engined propeller airplanes.  The catch is, all the flying is done at night, by yourself, and in any weather conditions.

What are canceled checks, you ask?  These days, they are almost a thing of the past.  The government is requiring banks to clear your used checks electronically, but in the old days, they would ride on a plane.  When you wrote a check to your credit card company, the United States Postal Service would take it to them.  When it arrived there, that company would deposit those checks in their bank accounts.   In order for those check to clear, they had to make their way back to your bank.  They did this on airplanes like those used at AirNet Express, flown by young aspiring pilots trying to build their hours.  It was usually the most scary, risky, and dangerous flying a pilot will ever do.  He doesn't have to worry about passenger comfort, because the checks don't complain about turbulence.  Therefore, it doesn't matter what the weather is like, the pilot is going to fly it to it's destination.  To give you an example of how time critical these shipments can be, we had a bank charter one of our Lear jets to fly to Tampa, pick up one check, and fly it back to Columbus.  To charter a Lear Jet is about $2,300 an hour and to do this trip was about 6 hours of flying.  I know you are asking yourself, why would a company pay almost $15,000 to fly a single piece of paper?  The answer is simple, it's about economics.  The check was for 454 million dollars and if the check didn't make it to the home bank by 7 am, the bank would stand to lose about $70,000 interest for that day.  Now back to the story...

When I got the job at AirNet, I did my training at the company headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.  Pilots were based where their airplanes were located.  AirNet had planes located in cities all over the country, but I was assigned to be a Floater, based in Columbus.  A Floater was a pilot who was trained on 3 of the 4 airplane types we had.  Other pilots were trained in just one type.  He would fill in for other pilots when they were on vacation or sick, or if a new route opened up and they didn't have another pilot to take the position yet.  Essentially, I was flying different airplanes every night to cities I was unfamiliar with.  We had to do all of the fuel planning ourselves, but this was complicated because I never knew what the weight of the cargo was.  If I took too much fuel, I couldn't take as much cargo, so you can see that my job was fairly complicated.   The unfamiliarity also can make it dangerous.  I used to joke that I did things in airplanes I thought I would never do, and things I hope never to do again.  I am amazed that I never got an FAA violation and that I never had an accident.  I will say though, that the experience I gained at AirNet would help me get through anything else I would ever see or do in my aviation career.  The experience was invaluable.

Cessna 310

I spent a total of about 15 months flying for AirNet.  By that time, I had 2,357 total hours of flying experience and of that, 1,200 of them was flying multi-engine airplanes.  I flew the Beechcraft Baron 58, the Piper Navajo Chieftain, and the Cessna 310. Here are pictures of each:

Beechcraft Baron 58

Piper Navajo Chieftain

If you stayed with the company long enough to upgrade, you could fly the Lear Jet.  We were the largest operator of Lear jets in the world.  When I had gained the hours I felt were necessary to get me a job with the airlines, I started sending out my applications.  In September of 1999, I interviewed with and was offered a job flying for Atlantic Coast Airlines, the same company I had thrown bags for just a few short years earlier.  Little did I know that I would one day return to that company as a pilot.

Here is a video that shows a little bit of what it was like to work for AirNet Systems:


Well, I think that will be all for today.  As we approach our destination, please return your seat backs and tray tables to their fully upright and locked positions and Flight Attendants, please prepare the cabin for arrival.