Buckle Up - It's Gonna Be a Heck of a Ride!
Posted: Wednesday, May 02, 2007 6:37 PM by Jaclyn Levin
Filed Under:
Where in the World
(From Mark Atterbury, Director Flight Standards and Safety, NetJets Large Aircraft Co.)
My name is Mark Atterbury and I am one of Matt’s pilots on this year’s tour. This is my second assignment on "Where in the World." Last year I flew the legs from Innsbruck, Austria, to Shanghai and Shanghai to Helsinki, Finland.
Innsbruck is classified as a “special airport” meaning that the aircrew must undergo specialized training and be specially certified to operate into and out of the field. About two weeks prior to last years trip, my crew and I underwent training in the simulator to qualify for this tricky approach, landing and departure.
This years “special” destination makes getting into and out of Innsbruck seem like a walk in the park. The skill set required to get Matt and his team safely to Wednesday's destination are more closely linked to a tactical military operation combined with crop dusting.
About six weeks ago I traveled half way around the world to meet the chief pilot of the tiny airline that serves this community. I rode in the cockpit of one of their planes while he showed me the nuances of the arrivals and departures. I then spent two days in a four-wheel drive vehicle driving around the area to get a good “lay of the land.” About a week later my co-captain and I traveled to a military base in northern England where British Aerospace operates the only flight simulator in the world with an accurate visual model of our target airport. NBC wanted to accompany us to film the training but the Royal Air Force denied them access to the base. My flying partner, Jim Lucore, and I spent four hours being instructed by a retired RAF pilot who had been into our field many times.
In the meantime, back at my companies headquarters, a team that included our chief pilot, Rick Weeks, and our performance engineer, Pat Chiles, were busy gathering as much information as they could and crunching numbers to be sure that we could operate safely into and out of this airport under any conceivable conditions. Armed with these numbers, we went to our own simulator and validated what we had on paper.
If you saw today's show, you know we made it Bhutan, no problems!
