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The Makings of a Good Captain
by Kevin Ware
One of the benefits of the professional pilot contract flying I do is that I occasionally fly as Second in Command (SIC) with a wide variety of other pilots as the Pilot in Command or Captain. They come from diverse aviation backgrounds with most (but not all) having more than my 11,000 hours of flight
time. In an FAR Part 91 environment, where flight operations are not standardized airline style, how “things are done” can vary quite a bit with each individual captain – which just makes what I do even more interest- ing. Here is one example.
It is my turn to fly, and while we are listening to the AWOS, Mike sitting in the left seat of the Lear says, “Looks like you got the rough leg.” And that indeed appears to be true with the winds gusting 16 to 28 knots from 250 directly across the runway as we taxi out to Runway 34 in Minden, Nevada (KMEV). And though conditions on the airport itself are VFR with the ceiling at 9,000 feet and a visibil- ity of six miles, immediately to the north over Reno, there is a thunderstorm which is blocking our way home back to Seattle.
Mike briefs the published departure procedure, but also notes it will take us right through the weather then gives me a questioning look. I tell him I intend to depart VFR (the airport is non-towered) then make a right turn to the northeast to take us away from the weather, during which time he can coordinate with the departure controller and get our IFR clear- ance. He nods and says, “good idea.” He makes the Unicom announcement as I taxi out, carefully line up the airplane on the runway, with the nose wheel exactly on the white line, then push the TFE 3500s up to take-off power.
As the airplane accelerates and just as Mike calls “airspeed alive,” a big gust of wind from the west hits the vertical stabi- lizer which changes the airplane’s direc- tion slightly making the nose wheel move about 18 inches to the left of the white center line before I can fix it. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see this immedi- ately gets Mike’s attention, so much so that
he misses the “80 knots, cross-check” call out. I do a little tailwheel type footwork on the rudder pedals and soon have the nose wheel back on the white line where it belongs. But then hearing nothing from the left seat, I finally say, “You going to call out some numbers for me Mike?” He immediately replies with, “V1, rotate,” and we climb into a very bumpy sky.
By the time we get to 18,000 feet, Mike has coordinated with departure, and we have an IFR clearance and have worked our way around the thunderstorm now lying off our left wing. Once things settle down, I ask Mike, “What happened back there Mike – you forget to call the num- bers?” He replies, “No, I was actually pay- ing more attention to you keeping the airplane on the white line.” And then adds, “...as a good captain should.” It is a point well taken, and I make a note to remem- ber it. In the end, the safety of the flight is the PIC or Captain’s responsibility, and he needs to be paying careful attention to the most pressing issues, of which keep- ing the airplane on the runway during a takeoff roll would certainly be one.
Mike is one of those pilots I always learn something from when I fly with him. He has 27,000 hours, was trained to fly by the Navy and then spent a ca- reer flying heaving metal with a highly regarded U.S. airline on mostly interna- tional routes. He brings a certain mature, grey-haired discipline to the cockpit that some might find irritating, but I actually appreciate. If he is the trip captain and the
pilot monitoring (PM) while you are the pilot flying (PF), you can guarantee he is watching what you are doing and expects you to do likewise for him. When he is in the left seat, challenge and response checklist work for every flight regimen is a given – as are sterile cockpit rules below 10,000 feet.
Another thing he watches closely is speed control. As you come down to 10,000 feet, it is certain he will start say- ing something if you are not exactly at or below 250 knots. If you are at say 280 knots while descending through 11,000 feet, he will definitely provide a helpful hint like “speed brakes will help.” Such compulsivity could be degrading if it did not go both ways, and a good captain al- ways welcomes comments from the SIC regarding his particular flying, which he does. Usually, these exchanges are quite short like “speed 260, 9,000 feet, Mike,” to which his reply would almost certainly be, “slowing, thanks.”
That kind of courteous collegiality is what makes flying as a crew fun. But, it can vary a lot depending upon the cap- tain/pilot’s background. I commonly find that pilots who have flown for airlines (Part 121) have a very standardized way of conducting things. Interestingly, their “standardization” can vary a lot depending upon what airline they flew for; something they themselves often do not recognize. It is not uncommon to hear, “Well, that’s how we did it at Delta,” only to find someone else do something completely different
January 2019
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