READ THOSE CHARTS CAREFULLY

“But he told me to do it,” whined the pilot as he sat before the Administrative Law Judge. 

As pilots our tendency is to follow ATC’s instructions…sometimes without taking the time to carefully analyze what you’ve been asked to do.  On my last flight, I almost fell into that trap…until I READ THE FINE print.

Flying along V12 from DRK (Prescott, AZ) to PMD (Palmdale, CA) I was a bit surprised to receive a reroute from ATC changing my clearance from V12 to PMD, V386 to FIM, Direct KWANG, KSBA.  I knew the new airspace restructuring a few years back had added new arrivals to our SoCal Tracon area, but recalled not thinking much about them as they pertained to high altitude arrivals and I’m a low-altitude B55 Baron…definitely not a high-flyer.  Matter of fact, to keep my brain clear for the instrument approach I knew lay ahead, I even had on my “nose hose” as I’d been flying at 10,000’ for over an hour and knew that my personal oxygen saturation dropped quickly below my 90% minimum when flying above 8000-9000 feet MSL.  I was already planning for a lower enroute altitude after HEC where the MEA dropped down to 7900…so I could take off the O2. 

To my surprise, I got a call from ATC telling me he had a reroute for me after HEC, “Advise when ready to copy.”  Hmm, I thought, that’s strange, not much in the way of alternatives out here in the desert, I wondered what they had in mind.  The clearance read: “After HEC, you’re cleared to KSBA via the PitBl 1 Arrival, Maintain 10,000.”

After spending some time figuring out how to add an Arrival to my Avidyne 540 FMS screen (I ended up going into Heading Hold on the autopilot, deleting the rest of my flight plan and then adding the Pitbl1 routing and reentering my destination.  I’d asked for lower, but ATC wanted me to stay at 10,000.  Hmm, what to do? 

A few minutes later, I began to recall another flight where I was saved by my copilot checking carefully the chart and so I decided it was time to get out the “real deal”  (read: actual textual description of the procedure, not just call it up in the FMS) and look carefully at what had been assigned to me…not just type it into the “box” and figure that was the way it would be.  I looked at the routing and was glad to see that the Pitbl One Arrival did, indeed, go over KWANG intersection, the IAF for KSBA. The altitudes were all very high, but I’d been told to “Maintain 10,000” so that was an acceptable deviation from the printed word, but a bit strange given how much lower I would be than some of the altitudes printed on the chart (FL240, 17000). 

And then I began to read those All-Important Notes.  Number 4 was the red flag:  “Turbojet and turboprop aircraft only.”  Yep, that’s why I’d never received this arrival in the past and why I’d disregarded studying it several years ago when it first appeared in the KSBA charts.  Now I knew why this procudure had seemed wrong to me. ATC had goofed.  They either thought I was a turboprop or hadn’t read the fine print themselves. 

Armed with my newly discovered information, I asked LA Center to return to my original route, given my mere lowly status as a light piston twin.  They fumbled for a moment, but returned shortly with a “75KG is cleared to KSBA via V12 PMD, V386 FIM KWANG DIRECT.”  Now that sounded better and a whole lot more like my kind of low-level flying. 

Had I been closer to my destination I would probably have questioned the clearance sooner, but given the extra time between me and landing (almost an hour) I figured I had time to do some research.  After fixing the problem, I recalled how another flight from KSNS (Salinas, CA) to KSBA had almost got me in trouble on a departure.

That time, the turn after takeoff on the Chalone Three Departure showed up on my FMS as “leaving 500 feet fly heading 084.”  I was departing off Runway 31…and if you were given a “fly heading 084” you’d normally turn right (the shortest way around) to 084.  Fortunately, my copilot that day was a good stickler for details and he pulled up the chart for that departure.  We were both amazed to see that they wanted a LEFT turn to 084 (the long way around) and, even more surprising, the FMS had said nothing about turning LEFT…just “fly heading 084.”  Sounds like a violation waiting to happen.

So for all you IFR pilots, keep reading those charts carefully, particularly the Notes and the fine print.  Things aren’t always what you expect…and NOT reading the chart carefully beforehand is no excuse for a pilot deviation and going to sound might poor at a possible (NTSB) hearing!

Personal Fuel Minimums

#5 of my series Behind the Cockpit Door

Everybody’s got their own personal fuel minimums, but as a new captain it’s sometimes hard to figure out just what that number should be for a specific flight on a specific day for a given city pair, particularly if it’s a new destination for you or you’ve not flown there  in the recent past.

For many years I avoided flying into Newark (EWR) as we were constantly cursed with the dreaded “OPEC One” arrival: a low altitude, circuitous routing that seemed to take forever as New York Approach had to vector airliners arriving from the south and southwest to a position North of the airport in order to make a southerly landing.  Just when you could see the airport, they would vector you away from the field and start a long lazy circle that seemed to be an endless chain of follow-the-leader.  Flying at 6000 feet for most of the route, you watched your fuel gauges decrease from a comfortable margin as the Jet A was consumed at a great rate, probably 2-3 times the rate we burn at the higher cruise altitudes.

Adding extra fuel for landings at EWR was part of my insurance policy, particularly if they were landing to the South and I knew my arrival route would have me flying that OPEC One procedure.  My biggest concern was to land with enough fuel to keep my heart rate normal in case of an unexpected go-around, an airport closure or some other unforeseen anomaly.  Consequently, the first thing I always looked at on the flight plan was FOD or fuel over destination. 

If the weather was bad and I had an alternate airport listed (and the fuel to get there, make an approach or 2 as well as extra holding fuel) I would normally rest easier, knowing the dispatcher was required to put on extra fuel required by FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations). I just needed to check the holding fuel to make sure we had enough “hang around” time before we called “bingo” and headed off to the specified alternate airport, or chose a different more weather-friendly one.  

It was almost contradictory how having a cloudy weather forecast at the destination could  actually be a relief.  That way I didn’t have to think about all the possible problems which could occur on a nice clear day, when the azure blue sky can produce a rather false sense of security. Instead, the regulations dictated lots of extra fuel and I could easily justify adding more if I thought it necessary with my reasoning that the more time we had to hold, the more likely we were to get the passengers to exactly where they wanted to go. 

Fuel: How much is enough?

#1 of My Series: Behind the Cockpit Door

“You never can have too much fuel, unless you are on fire.”  That’s what pilots jokingly tell each other until they realize that there’s a point at which having more fuel goes from being a good thing to being a big problem.  

Returning to my Boeing 757-300 in Las Vegas one day after checking our flight plan for the return trip to Houston, I was approached by a terrified fueler who confessed to me that he had confused my airplane with the one parked at the gate next door which was headed for Newark, NY.  Horrified at having put almost 3 extra hours of fuel in my plane, he explained that the flight to Newark always parked at this gate and it was his mistake in not reading carefully the ship number painted on the nose gear door before he started to fuel the airplane to be sure he had the correct airplane.  

Now it would be a critical issue as to whether we could make the flight without having to defuel the airplane since we had both a maximum takeoff weight (which was no problem on this relatively short flight), but more importantly, a maximum landing weight concern.

You might think that fueling an airliner for an upcoming flight is akin to refueling your car but precise fuel planning and then verifying that the airplane has the fuel on board (FOB) which you requested is another crucial concern and is definitely at the top of every pilot’s critical preflight list. 

When considering fuel for a flight, pilots thoughts range from do I have enough fuel, to will I have to fight with the dispatcher (sitting in his comfy office many miles away) for extra fuel, to am I Iegal to begin or continue the flight, to do they have enough time to get me all the fuel I will need, to will the airplane actually be heavier than planned and burn more than the forecast fuel or possibly need to land overweight (which will require a time-consuming inspection at the destination)? All these issues influence how much fuel is actually boarded for any particular flight. In this case, the key word was one small digit. The fueler had put the fuel load for ship 868 on ship 861 and created a real problem.

Landing overweight has many ramifications, not the least of which are required inspections, decreased tire and landing gear life as well as expensive schedule delays for all involved.  We did fly that flight with the fuel load as wrongly boarded, spending the full flight time carefully calculating how to burn up as much fuel as possible in order not to land overweight. We had to decline any short cuts or expeditious vectors that ATC kindly offered us, explaining that we may have been in the fuel-saving mode yesterday, but today it was a case of needing to burn the excess before reaching Houston to prevent a possible overweight landing.

Having had a career filled mostly with the opposite problem (not enough fuel on board, rather than too much), it was eye-opening to see how the reverse problem could also consume much of one’s focus on what should have been a routine flight.