Page 26 - Volume 19 Number 11

Who’s the Boss?Staying Safe When There Are Two Pilots In CommandBy Gary “Waldo” PeppersYou’re the professional turbine-meister for a mid- sized company whose owner is also a pilot. He’s legally current and qualified in the company jet, though minimally experienced in type. He likes to fly left seat whenever he can, which is not often, and usually takes you along as his copilot while the other pilot rides in the back.I had a boss like that once, 25 years ago – only I called him “General.” He was the commander of the Air Defense Weapons Center at Tyndall AFB, Florida.Whenever the general had official business, he took a jet from one of the three squadrons of 325th Fighter Wing at Tyndall. He didn’t need a regular pilot – he had eighty F-15 Instructor Pilots to choose from. The Air Force doesn’t allow general officers to fly solo in fighters, even if they’re qualified in the jet, unless they fill a required operational billet. As the 325 FW is not part of ADWC, the general had to fly the “family model” F-15B with a safety pilot.One day the rotation fell to my squadron. I was a flight commander with better things to do than act as the general’s seeing-eye captain. But since I wasn’t on the schedule that day, I drew the duty.It looked to be a good trip, anyway – just a one day out- and-back to Scott AFB, Illinois for a generals’ luncheon. My Aunt Wini was a government civilian working at Scott and would meet me for lunch. The weather was clear all the way. Plus, I’d log four hours of F-15 time that I wouldn’t otherwise.I filed the flight plan as a stop-over with three hours on the ground at Scott, per the general’s itinerary. The Standard Instrument Departures out of Tyndall, designed for fighters, permitted unrestricted climb to the flight levels. Scott’s SIDs, however, were designed for transports: lots of turns, step-climbs, and long legs at low altitude. In the departure remarks section for the return leg, I entered: “Request unrestricted radar climb.”24 • TWIN & TURBINEI greeted the general at thesquadron and briefed him on theflight. We grabbed our flying gear from Life Support and rode out to the flight line in his staff car. I did a quick preflight, having done a thorough one an hour before, while the crew chief helped the general strap into the front office. I climbed into the back seat and the general’s driver drove off to Base Ops to await our call.Procedurally, the general was pretty sharp. He handled both the radios and the flying, just like he was in a single-seat fighter again, while I discretely left hot mike off and spoke only when spoken to, mostly. This was not an exercise in CRM and I wasn’t flying as the general’s copilot. I was the “safety pilot” required by regulation. I prompted him just once, to recheck his outbound radial from Birmingham, but it was otherwise a flawless flight.Following lunch at the Officers Club with Aunt Wini, I checked our flight plan and updated the weather at Base Ops. When I briefed the general on our departure request, he said he didn’t want to fly an unrestricted departure. “I think that’s just showing off”, he said. I tried to explain that “unrestricted” didn’t require an afterburner (AB) climb; it only meant that departure control would coordinate with Center for an expeditious climb instead of stair-stepping us.Normal takeoff in an F-15 is to accelerate in AB to 300 KIAS and then to continue the climbout at 350 – steeply with AB or shallow without AB. Military jets of the fighter persuasion are not restricted to 250 KIAS below 10,000 feet as are lesser mortals. Still, whenever I couldn’t get an unrestricted climb, I limited my airspeed to 300 knots.When I suggested that technique, the general demurred. “That’s not what the tech order says. Just file for a standard radar departure.” Well, at least we wouldn’t have to fly one of those spaghetti-noodle SIDs. I amended the remarks section accordingly.NOVEMBER 2015