It was the big NCAA Final Four games in Indianapolis.We flew the boss and his friends there for the big show in their little KingAir E90. Going into Indy the place was mobbed with business aircraft. We get put into a holding pattern, which is really quite rare these days. We're in the hold, doing the standard right turns as instructed. We can see others below us doing the same thing. Then we see this big Global Express, about as fancy as a corporate jet can get, slowly pass a thousand feet above us in the holding pattern. Very beautiful lines, neat to see. At the holding fix the Global jet, with all it's high tech navigation gear, the absolute latest electronic equipment, starts a turn to the left. As we begin our right turn I remarked "Where's he going? I guess he entered a wrong letter when he programed the hold in his computer." Funny, you can be Mr Fancy Corporate Jet Pilot but still screw up a holding pattern.
The ramp was a zoo. Jets parked as far as you could see. We got a space way in the back. Vans would drive endlessly around, picking up any pilots or passengers that waved to them. Inside the FBO they had a large spread of catering for all the pilots. Even a free massage room! I signed up Rachel and she got what she described as a "bruising rub down" by the woman masseuse. We enjoyed some terrific chicken wings and shared a small table with a nice guy flying by himself. Several hours later the games end and everyone starts returning. Vans are running non-stop. They're well organized and pretty soon we are boarding our little E90. We start up and taxi out. We're given a spot and get in line. Some guy in his Gulfstream V is carrying on, all upset, because he is burning up fuel just sitting there waiting his turn. So I play nice and let him in front of me. Right or not, at least he shut up.
We taxi slowly down the taxiway at night, number 14 for takeoff, and that's just on our side of the runway. There are many more on the other side too. Adding to the problem was the weather. A huge storm was sitting just south and west of the airport, right where we wanted to go. Just after 11 pm we saw a Cessna 414 take off. "Guess we're the smallest plane here now," I remarked. Gulfstream IV, Falcon 90, Global Express, one by one they thunder down the runway. Finally, a long time later, we are next in line. We get cleared to go and takeoff, getting a heading that keeps us out of the way of those big jets behind us blasting off. We stagger up to 14,000' and with our ancient radar begin dodging the weather. Two things helped. The moon was full, making it easy to see the clouds, and the clouds all had lots of lightning inside of them, making them also easy to see and avoid. We fly a zig zag course way down south, then way over to the west, and eventually back up north. Our destination is Harrisburg but there is a giant red cell right over it so we elect to land at Benton instead, around 1:00 AM. We fly the best RNAV approach I've flown in a while and she spots the runway right at the missed approach point through the dark, dense fog. We land, drop everyone off, then head home to MVN, ten minutes away. It was a hard trip, because you are constantly moving forward at 220 kts and you need to pick a new route often, constantly coordinating with ATC, while keeping track of fuel and weather and just flying the airplane.
Later we learned that the Cessna 414 we saw takeoff crashed while landing in Bloomington IL, not far from our destination. He flew the ILS approach to runway 20 but his heading and altitude were "erratic". He crashed, killing all seven on board. Sad ending it was, for most likely we had at one time or another shared the buffet with the pilot. You never know what might be the fate of the guy you're sharing chicken wings with. It's just a fact of flying. People die. You never hear about the small plane crashes. You can relate because you know how quickly things can get out of hand, how fast a seemingly well in hand approach can suddenly go tragically wrong.
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| N789UP the morning after the crash |
