Page 50 - Volume 15 Number 12

ON FINAL by David MillerIn a PinchIhave created a monster. In all my 44 years of flying, my wife Patty has only reluctantly touched the yoke of our airplanes. She has never accomplished a landing or a takeoff. Her normal procedure is to read me the taxi checklist and retire to the couch and sleep until landing. And when asked if she wanted to fly the plane she refused to take the plunge. She said, “If we go down, I want to go with you.” That’s crazy, I thought, but I figured it was a compliment.Then, two things happened to change her mind. Number one, our grandchildren were born. She was suddenly okay with the concept of my lifeless body slumped over the controls as long as she could get the Mustang back on the ground in time for our weekly Sunday dinner with the grandkids. And, number two, she participated in the Citation Companions Training Program at the Citation Jet Pilots (CJP) convention in Amelia Island, Florida. The program, the brainchild of Jet Aviva’s Cyrus Sigari, began a couple of years ago during the annual meeting of Citation owners.The concept is that many Citations are flown single pilot with a spouse or significant other in the right front seat and maybe, just maybe, that passenger could be trained to get the jet safely on the ground in the event of pilot incapacitation. Cyrus knew that the new breed of light jets were automated enough to make this possible. He began to develop a program to test his theory. Evidently it has worked. To date, they have trained over 75 companions in aircraft including the Mustang, Cessna 525 series, Phenom 100 and 300. “We haven’t had a single companion not want more training after the completion of our training event,” says Cyrus.Starting with a two-hour ground school, he and his instructors created a course that could guide a first timer to take the plane from the Flight Levels to landing. They prepared a laminated four page checklist, specific to each model of Citation from the 501 through the CJ4. Detailed pictures of each control and instruction were included. After the short ground school, Patty was ready for the real thing.With 5,000-plus hours in his logbook, David Miller has been flying for business and pleasure for more than 40 years. Having owned and flown a variety aircraft types, from turboprops to midsize jets, Miller, along with his wife Patty, now own and fly a Citation Mustang. You can contact David at davidmiller1@ sbcglobal.net.She met her instructor Scott Marti at the Fernandina Beach, Florida airport with the airplane keys and an insurance endorsement in hand. I told Scott to take good care of my baby. Both of them. And off they flew on a misty late October morning. I couldn’t stand to watch. He had her manage power, set up an ILS approach, program the Garmin autopilot, you name it. One takeoff, a little air work, and three landings later she was a pinch hitter. You couldn’t get the smile off her face.All the way back from Florida, she critiqued my flying. “Gee, that’s not exactly how Scott taught me to do it,” she said. Unfortunately, I had mentioned years earlier that there were only about four pilots in the world who could fly the Mustang as well as I. Flying with Scott, she found out differently. And he is probably younger than our son.Two days later, back in Dallas, I made an offhand comment about her cooking. She countered, “You know, when I was with Scott I could do no wrong. Why can’t you be more like him?”Great. In one fell swoop I lost my super pilot status and have to keep my elbows off the table too.Fly Safe.48 • TWIN & TURBINE DECEMBER 2011