The Flying Tenor on Flying

I lied. I promised an all music blog, but this is pretty fun too, and in the end very important.

This past August, after a super quick 4 hour visit in San Francisco to see family, my wife and two boys – 14 and 8 years old – and I piled back into our 1986 Socata Trinidad at San Carlos airport. We had flown down from our home in Chico – a 185 mile trip by car – on our way down to San Diego for a week of vacation. It was already 7:30pm by the time I received my instrument clearance, and i knew we’d be in for a dark flight. Taking off to the north, climbing above Foster City, I pulled Trina’s gear into her belly and nose, pulled in the flaps, and began my right downwind turn towards the south, paralleling the runway. Over the radio we all heard “November Two Zero Foxtrot Romeo, remain within 2 miles of San Carlos Airport, contact NorCal Approach, have a good evening.” Heading off into the hills of Woodside, California, as the last flicker of sunlight settled behind the mountains separating the peninsula from the Pacific Ocean, I contacted Approach, and by the time I reached 6000 feet, my passengers were out cold from a busy day of packing, flying, dining, and playing with baby cousins.

AIr Traffic Control cleared me to my final cruise altitude of 11,000 pretty quickly, so I put on my oxygen cannula (not legally required, but not a bad idea, especially at night as it improves vision substantially) and settled in for the two and a half hour flight to San Diego. Prior to leaving San Francisco, I had checked the weather in San Diego, and it was overcast at 1000′ with ceilings around 4000′. Sounds like an actual instrument flight, which while legal for me, I had never done this

a) With my family in the plane and
b) Without an instructor

The whole way down I was thinking about the approach, looking over the procedures, and patting myself on the back for spending 1.5 hours with an instructor practicing approaches just two days prior to our trip. Being legal and remaining current is one thing, staying alive, well, that’s all on the pilot. I chose to play it safe and grab a lesson before the big trip, just in case, and was glad I did.

We were some 1.5 hours into the trip when we were heading over The Grapevine into Los Angeles, and my wife woke up in time to marvel at how pretty Los Angeles is from 11,000. I pointed out planes coming from our left, that were aiming towards LAX, and she saw LAX off to the right as well. It’s really interesting to see this three dimensional ballet hovering above Southern California while people were enjoying dinner a Spago, Canter’s Deli, or McDonald’s down below, but while she was looking out the window, I was looking dead ahead at the way the lights disappeared under the gray puffy stuff. The entire coast from just south of Los Angeles all the way down to Mexico was covered in a layer of low-lying clouds and fog.

I started checking the weather up ahead, and realizing nothing was going to change with the weather, began making plans to land at my alternate airport, just in case. We began our first of several descents from 11,000′ down to 9000′ and continued meandering our way down to San Diego, eventually settling at 6000′, just above the marine layer blanketing the San Diego area. Realizing that the ceilings were still pretty high at 1000′ (at least from a legal perspective) I resigned myself to the fact that I was about to make my first solo approach in the clouds. Except that I wasn’t alone, and it was dark.

It was about 10pm when SoCal approach cleared me for the runway 2-8 Right ILS approach – an almost 4700 foot of runway that’s too short for heavier, and faster approaching planes to land at night – followed by “change to advisory frequency approved.” Switching over to the tower frequency at around 10:05pm, I began calling out “Trinidad November Two Zero Foxtrot Romeo on final approach for runway 28 Right, 10 miles, descending through 4000 feet.” My wife was awake now, looking into the darkness, which got a little grayer as we descended into her first instrument approach in the clouds, and at night to boot. She hesitated before saying “Final approach to what exactly? And who are you talking to?”

“Well,” I said, “the tower is closed, so I’m making calls for any traffic in the area, but there shouldn’t be anyone that is not on an instrument approach. We’re in solid instrument conditions.”

“Where’s the runway?” she added.

“Uh, it’s about 9 miles ahead of us, about 3000′ below. We should break out at 1000′ feet above the runway, which is plenty safe. I’ll take us down to 800′ before making a missed approach and flying to an alternate airport.”

You could hear the tension in her voice, accompanied with her confidence in my piloting skills, as she added her standard bit about breaking off and landing somewhere else if I don’t feel comfortable. I continued to make a couple more calls, double and triple checking my navigation equipment to make sure I had at least two independent indicators telling me I was on course, and continued my descent into the foggy abyss. I made sure to call out altitudes to my wife every few hundred feet or so to make sure Nerissa knew I was aware of things like how high above the ground we were, and said “If I don’t see an airport when we’re 800 feet above the runway, or 1200′ indicated, we’re out of here (the airport itself is 400′ above sea level, and altimeters read in feet above sea level, not feet above the ground).

At thirteen hundred indicated, or 900′ above the ground, Nerissa saw a veritable light show splashing up from the tarmac, with blue and white lights guiding us towards the runway, and that tension I had been sensing all went out the window, as it were. I called out once again to the area traffic that we were on “Short final with the runway in site,” and landed without incident.

What pilots do while we’re in the air – often with friends or loved ones peacefully sleeping in the back – can be considered rather dangerous, but it’s our constant training that keeps us “greasy side down” in the clouds. However, the trust in our abilities not only as pilots, but even as drivers taking our kids to their ballet class is a grave and serious commitment to deliver our passengers safely to their destinations, smiling, bouncing, and ready to enjoy wherever life may take them. I don’t fly blithely through the air not contemplating the “what ifs” in life, nor should you drive down the road with that mentality. Remove the panic from your routine, try to have (almost) everything ready to go before you go, and don’t freak out if something’s not right – “where’s my other point shoe mommy?” – and instead focus on what’s really important in that instant. Because what can happen in an instant, can permanently change someone’s life.