We’re Not Just in Kansas Anymore

"No. No, I'm fine. Really."

"But your bottled water's gotten warm," she said. "Let me get you a cold one?"

It's hard to resist an offer like that. She took the warm water bottle and made her way to the galley at the back of the Gulfstream IV to get me a cold one.

Flying on a Gulfstream business jet-particularly with an attentive flight attendant-is a real reminder of how far general aviation has come and can go-if the powers that be let it. The flight on the Gulfstream was the second leg of a trip from Columbia County Airport (1B1), my home base at Hudson, New York, to Deer Valley Airport (DVT) in Phoenix, Arizona. The first leg was in my much smaller-and less well staffed, equipped and appointed-Cessna Cardinal from 1B1 to Morristown Municipal Airport (MMU) in Morristown, New Jersey, where I met Honeywell's GIV for the leg from Morristown to Deer Valley.

The Gulfstream was pretty well packed with reporters working-or at least pretending to work. One of the things Honeywell was demonstrating to the aviation press was a wireless network for accessing the internet. At any one time, as we cruised along at 43,000 feet, there were probably five or six people on board sending and receiving e-mail or checking websites. Others were watching satellite TV displayed on screens on the bulkhead and sidewall or on individual screens at each seat. We looked a lot like an ad for the "office in the sky."

We took turns standing in the aisle behind the pilots, Al Brennan and Dave Cherniak, watching the large panel displays on which they were monitoring the Gulfstream's progress along the airway. The capability of the Honeywell avionics system makes flying the GIV more a management exercise than a test of a pilot's skills in manipulating the controls. Many of the interactions between the pilots and their airplane are through various keyboards. Program an arrival procedure in the system and it's a matter of checking that you selected the correct one so the airplane knows precisely what you want it to do. Then all you have to do is monitor whether the airplane actually does what was asked. If the controller wants you to descend to a specific altitude at a certain distance from a waypoint it's no problem. Just tell the autopilot what you want. I've known intellectually how capable flight management systems are, but, like most of us, I don't get that much opportunity to experience them. They're impressive.

The visit to Honeywell went well with demonstrations and descriptions of the RAAS, a razzmatazz software upgrade to Honeywell's EGPWS (enhanced ground proximity warning system) that provides aural warnings designed to reduce the seeming epidemic problem of runway incursions (see Reporting Points page 42, August 2003); a progress report on the AS907 engine that is flying on the Bombardier 300, née Continental, and should enter service in the fourth quarter of this year; and a computer program that's a "rehosting" of the Primus Epic Flight Management System that makes it "think it's on the airplane" and allows training companies-and individuals-to learn to program and "fly" the system before they get in the simulator or the airplane.

While still in Phoenix, I called Flight Service for an outlook preflight briefing for my flight home after the Gulfstream dropped me at Morristown. According to the briefer, there was a possibility of thunderstorms reaching Columbia County about an hour after I expected to arrive there; otherwise it promised to be a reasonable IFR flight.

One of the advantages of general aviation is being able to set your own schedule. So given the choice of the initially scheduled oh-dark-thirty departure or an extra hour's sleep, we opted for a later departure time. The delay would mean I would be racing the approaching storms to see which of us would arrive first.

On the flight back from Phoenix to Morristown-during which we made a wide swing to the south to avoid a swirling mix of weather in the Midwest, I asked Al Brennan if the proliferation of uplinked and downlinked weather had made it to the Gulfstream's cockpit. He said it hadn't-yet-and suggested I tune the satellite TV to The Weather Channel. The forecast hadn't changed, so I tuned back to the aviation-related story that ran all that day, the one about President Bush on his made-for-television Viking flight to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. It didn't occur to me to go to DUAT or other online weather providers. Instead, I checked e-mail on a laptop connecting to the wireless network in the airplane. With all the reporters filing stories (yeah, right) or checking e-mail (more likely) or even visiting some sites they wouldn't at home, I was still able to get on with a baud rate of something on the order of 53,000 bps. Not bad. Then, when Karen Anderson brought me lunch, I realized, "Gee, Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore"-or on what most people think of as a general aviation airplane.

The wide world of general aviation was even more obvious when I climbed back into my Cardinal at Morristown. Even though I was about an hour later than I had filed for, the weather was still far enough west that I would be able to get home before it arrived. The clearance wasn't the one I had filed from Phoenix and pre-programmed into my GX60 GPS during my trip down to Morristown the day before. Loading a return flight plan-or the flight plan for the next leg of a trip-into the GPS on the preceding or outbound leg is one more way to stay ahead of the airplane. Sometimes it works. I spent a couple of minutes on the ramp entering the new waypoints. I used a yellow marker to put a splash of color next to the waypoints on the en route chart that defined the new route. Turned out the new routing was exactly the same as the one I had programmed except an initial fix (that wasn't part of the departure procedure) was added, as well as a VOR that the airway crossed. No accounting for routing changes.

The autopilot in my Cardinal needs some hands-on attention from the factory, so I haven't had its help on several recent flights. The "inop" placard is a constant reminder of how alone I really am when I fly solo, but the idea of being without the airplane for the time it will take to pull, return, repair and reinstall the autopilot has been hard to schedule. So, as I hand-flew through the New York metropolitan airspace, changing frequencies and checking the chart, I found myself envying Al and Dave-and every one else with a functioning autopilot.

Richard Collins has been chastised by readers for suggesting that an autopilot should be considered required equipment for single-pilot IFR. I agree with him. Sure, as long as everything's working the way it's supposed to, any competent instrument-qualified pilot should be able to function safely-albeit at a higher workload-in the air traffic control system. It's when things begin to go wrong that someone-or something-else to keep the wings level and the airplane from straying becomes desired and, I think, required equipment.

It always impresses me how quickly an airplane can get off course. Look down at a chart, tune a radio, copy a change in routing, re-enter a flight plan into a GPS, and when you look up the airplane has decided to go off on its own by about 30 degrees. But even more concerning is that, although the airplane takes itself off course quickly, it seems to take forever to get back to the desired heading when you take control.

It's probably a good idea-if you are dependent on your autopilot-to occasionally turn it off and remind yourself what it's like to fly without "George" helping out. It'll sure help sharpen up your scan and remind you how useful an autopilot can be. And remember, knowing how to turn off or disconnect the autopilot if it decides to stop helping and starts making demands of its own can be critical.

The trip to Phoenix was instructive-as much as for what I learned about Honeywell as for the chance to sample an airplane at the higher end of the general aviation spectrum in terms of speed, range, altitude capability and cost. The public doesn't realize the scope of our general aviation segment of the aviation industry. It ranges from the business jets and turboprops that can span the country and make a real thing of the "office in the sky" to the piston twins and singles that make a pretty good argument for not traveling on the airlines even for trips that cover half the country, to airplanes that my mother would describe as zaftig: "Built for pleasure, not for speed." Airplanes like the Husky, the Decathlon and the Pitts are designed to bring smiles and not-necessarily-to go somewhere. Whether you're flying a GIV or a J-3, getting there is much more than half the fun!