Page 37 - June 2015 Volume 19 Number 6

Aircraft, our director of flight operations has developed a customized risk assessment form and we require our pilots, regardless of experience, to complete it. This form takes into account weather, aircraft type and equipment, recent IFR experience, time of day, and a health/fatigue self-assessment. It takes but a few minutes to fill it out, but the impartial evaluation it provides is powerful. As PIC, you ultimately make the call to fly or not fly, but the assessment can help you objectively determine whether the cards are stacked against you. (If you are interested in seeing our customized risk assessment, give us a call!)
Many times, we are asked why a pilot must methodically go through steps A, B, C and D to reach their goal. Being gifted – both with piloting prowess and a fat wallet – they wonder why they can’t be the ones who move from a fixed-gear single right into a jet. Certainly, it’s been done. Do we recommend it? Not necessarily. Similar to “What would your mother say?” we’d ask, “What would your transition team say?” Throughout, sit down with each member of your transition team and review your progress, ask what you could be doing differently, and take his or her advice to heart.
Recently, we had a customer develop a strong case of jet fever. He had been casually perusing the light jet listings and discovered what he thought was his dream aircraft.
What does an ideal turbine candidate
realistically look like? If the goal was to fly single-pilot, he or she would have accumulated 1,500 hours total time with equal chunks of high-performance single-engine, twin-piston
and turboprop time. Turboprop time always helps, but is not necessarily an end-all-be-all prerequisite.
What does an ideal turbine candidate realistically look like? If the goal is to fly single-pilot, he or she would have accumulated 1,500 hours total time with equal chunks of high-performance single-engine, twin-piston and turboprop time. Turboprop time always helps, but is not necessarily an end-all-be-all prerequisite. The candidate would have several hundred hours flying behind glass cockpit technology and attended a formal training program to complete the most recent transition.
Your Transition Plan
We recommend writing out your transition plan, with specific goals and a timeline. If you find yourself short in some areas, work out a strategy to bulk up your experience and hours. Be sure to review it with your transition team and incorporate their recommendations.
Develop a habit and mindset of professional aircraft operation. That means striving to perform every flying task – from pre-flight brief to shutdown – with the utmost professional attention and skill. Be detailed, diligent and take no short-cuts. Develop your own set of standard operating procedures and personal minimums that set out how you will operate your aircraft and under what conditions you won’t. If you double as a busy business owner or company executive, this is especially important. Write them down and live by them.
As part of your personal SOPs, get in the habit of doing a risk assessment before every flight. At Kansas
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JUNE 2015
TWIN & TURBINE • 35