Page 26 - Twin and Turbine June 2017

needs to be, taking us a good 30 minutes before we get to the engine start section. When we call for the clearance, we are assigned the GABBE ONE departure, Greensboro (GSO) transition. This will take the airplane well to the west of the direct course to Freeport, which is out over the Atlantic off the Georgia and Florida coasts. Apparently, there is some NASA type activity going on near Cape Canaveral, which keeps us over the central part of the state with its frequent building and bumpy cumulous clouds
until in the Miami area. Not my problem I remind myself. I am sitting in back.
With engine start I return to my very comfortable leather seat curious as to how much of the flight plan we laboriously entered into the FMS was going to work out. From where I am sitting, it looks like we get as far as GSO before a completely different and even less favorable routing gets punched into the keyboard, as the airplane at that point makes a slight right turn, and heads somewhere
toward southern Louisiana. Seeing that the airplane is heading off for a time- consuming dog leg to the west, I take a walk to the nicely decorated bathroom, wash my hands and face with warm, running water, then leisurely return to my seat and fall asleep – all perfectly safe and acceptable when sitting in back.
An hour later I wake up to hear the engine sound changing, and look over the side and see we are leaving Florida’s east coast headed in a southeast direction, and making a slightly bumpy descent through the expected cumulous clouds. In another 20 minutes, we are passing through the broken layer that usually seems to be at about 4,000 feet over the Bahamas, as the whine of the flap motor activates. This is followed by a firm clunk and slight jarring sensation as the landing gear go down. All clues to the folks sitting in back that we are approaching the destination. The airplane enters what appears to be a left base entry to Runway 06 at MYGF, and shortly thereafter crosses the island's shoreline on final. The landing is followed by the now expected flurry of arm and hand movements by the guys in front as we taxi to the customs office. A couple of 90-degree turns, followed by a 180 are required during the taxi over to the customs office, during which I note from my fine leather seat that the view out the front windshield just seems to whip by horizontally. Yet I know the guys up front are very conservative and always their keep their taxi speeds low and turn rates quite modest, so I conclude it is another one of those odd perceptual distortions that occur, when sitting in back.
The next day we are out at the airport and preflighting the CJ2 at 0800 in preparation for our return flight to Seattle. We board and squeeze our way past the center console to the sheepskin covered seats in front. As I tighten the five-point harness, I think this location is clearly not as comfortable as the seat in back I came down on yesterday. The seat movements are quite limited, up, down, forward and back. Seat back angle or firmness not quite right? Sorry, those amenities are reserved for those sitting in back. We run the checklist in what by comparison to my mental images from yesterday is actually a very simple business, and the turns as we taxi out
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