Annecy France with the French Alps in the background.  One of the best stops in the world.

Five or six hours later I was sitting sideways in the Seneca’s cockpit reading a book and munching on bridge mix when a desperate voice came in over the radio. It was the young upstart pilot in the 172. His GPS had lost the signal while he was flying in the rain and even though he was currently out of the rain he was still flying under a cloud layer and couldn’t get it to come up again.

I slapped my head; this was just what Pete and I were talking about! Without a working GPS or an ADF backup he was screwed! Pete got on the radio and told him to maintain the course and speed he had flight planned for while we tried to think of something.

Pete called Gander Control, told them what the situation was and asked for an updated forecast for the Azores. The original forecast called for clouds and rain with five miles of visibility. Gander came back with the bad news, the forecast was unchanged. Trying to find one of those islands visually in good conditions during the daytime would have been hard enough but hoping to spot the faint lights on one of them at night with only five miles of visibility would take a miracle. The lost pilot might be able to get close using his compass and the winds aloft forecast but close just wasn’t going to cut it.

At the time of his first mayday transmission the pilot of the 172 was approximately fifteen or twenty minutes ahead of Peter Borberg, who was the same distance ahead of Pete Demos who was maybe a half an hour ahead of me; however having the fastest plane in the bunch I was steadily closing the gap. We’d launched in that order, slowest to fastest, in order to not only arrive at Santa Maria about the same time but to be able to provide mutual support to each other along the way in case one of us had an emergency, like now.

But what could we do? We could talk to him on the radio for hours and hours until his fuel ran out and not do him any good. The only way the lost pilot was going to be able to find Santa Maria was for one of us to spot his plane and guide him in. That was easier said than done. Spotting another plane in flight is hard to do, just ask any pilot who is given a traffic advisory about another plane from Air Traffic Control but couldn’t spot the plane despite having been given the bearing, direction and altitude of the target. What we needed was a landmark to meet him at; unfortunately landmarks are few and far between over the Atlantic Ocean.

On my first trip Pete and I had met up over Flores Island in the Azores when he’d lost his vacuum pump. But that island was under the overcast that covered the area. I was looking at the various cloud buildups trying to see if one of them was distinct enough to use as a landmark before he entered the solid area of overcast when I had an idea. What if he held his course until he reached what he guessed was the limit of the clear area and waited for us there? We were all on the same course and altitude and should hit the area of overcast at approximately the same point. When each of us reached the limit of clear sky we could start flying back and forth along the face of the clouds and try and spot the little 172. If nothing else we would all be buzzing around the same general chunk of sky, maybe we’d get lucky. I got on the radio and outlined my plan to everybody and they said it was worth a shot.

A little while later the 172 pilot called and said he’d gone as far as he could go on his current heading and was starting to circle. I noted the time on my knee board and estimated I would be in his area in under an hour. Peter Bourberg, who was flying a Piper Cherokee far ahead of me, would be there in fifteen minutes. I sure hoped it worked because even though he was a cocky young know it all, I’d gotten to like him while waiting for the winds to change with him in St. Johns.

Fifteen minutes later Peter Bourberg radioed that he had reached the clouds and was going to head south for five minutes before turning back north. Pete reminded everyone to make sure all of their lights were turned on to help us see each other. The minutes ticked by as Peter searched south of his course. Then just before the five minutes were up an excited voice blared out in my headset.

“I SEE YOU! I SEE YOU!” The 172 pilot yelled over the radio. “Rock your wings so I can tell that it’s you!” he said.

I shook my head at that one, who in the hell else would it be in the middle of the Atlantic? But I decided to cut the poor guy some slack, having just cheated death and all.

The lucky young man formed up on Peter’s plane and followed him all the way to Santa Maria. Later that night the four of us were having dinner at the hotel when one of us asked the 172 pilot why he wasn’t drinking.

“Because as soon as I’m done eating I’m going back to the airport and heading off for France.” he replied.

“Are you crazy?” Pete asked “You just got done flying a thirteen hour leg,”

“That you almost didn’t make.” I interjected.

“Exactly that, you almost didn’t make it. And now you want to leave on another leg without any sleep?”, Pete continued.

“It’s just ten hours to France and I’ll be there first thing in the morning, de-tank the plane and be on the way home that afternoon.” he said in-between the bites of the Paella, he was shoveling down.

“Didn’t you learn anything today?” asked Peter Borberg. “You almost died because you didn’t listen to more experienced pilots and now you want to take off for France in crappy conditions, fly all night when you’re tired and your GPS still isn’t working?”

“Finding France is a little easier than finding Santa Maria. And I’ve flown all night before, I’ll be ok.” he announced.

The three of us spent the rest of the dinner trying to talk him out of it, but when he was done the 172 pilot thanked us for our help that day and headed for the airport. We just shook our heads and wished him luck, some guys you just can’t reach.

The unfortunate loss of another very experienced ferry pilot.

– Rescue Mountain Rescue and 118 have reached the Piper dispersed in the Apennines and in the cabin they found the dead body of the pilot, the ‘ German man of 58 years who was at the controls . The recovery of the body is very difficult because the plane ended up on a steep ridge of the mountain. The National Agency for the safety of the flight ( ANSV ) opened a safety investigation to identify the cause of the accident at the Piper 30 went missing on Friday with only the pilot on board and found today in an inaccessible area of Mount Casarola . The ANSV also willing to send its own investigator on the spot ” to gather the first evidence useful investigative activities .” His name was Hardy Kalitzki , was 56 years old and lived in Berlin the pilot died . “It ‘ died on his birthday, he was born April 4 , 1958 ,” says Joseph Ottonello , a manager of Genoa who had sold the Piper crashed in the Apennines to an American businessman . The manager is the last person to have seen the German pilot alive Friday morning before taking off from the airport of Genoa and of the crash on the mountain. ” Hardy Kalitzki was a professional pilot , an expert , with assets of 12,000 hours flight 990 Atlantic crossings and well – says Ottonello – . Had flown all types of aircraft and boasted an impeccable resume .” “It was a ferry- flyes , as they say – adds the manager – he had the task of transporting the Piper in New York through the route used by these airplanes that have a flight range of about 5-6 hours. Had to get to the airport of Ebeswald near Berlin and then through airports in Scotland, Iceland , Greenland, Canada arrive at the final destination of New York. The plane had sold him a year ago. He had arrived in Genoa with a scheduled flight from Berlin and then Piper took off with the Friday ‘ morning. was quiet and safe , as always . “

Sunset Alps.

Most of the lessons that ferry pilots passed on to one another were written in blood sweat and tears. So it’s frustrating to run into a young or inexperienced pilot who didn’t want to listen to what the old timers had to say.

Pete and I ran into such a pilot one winter while stuck in St. John’s. Pete was taking a turbine Cessna 206 to a skydiving school in Switzerland while I was taking a beautiful twin-engine Seneca III to a wealthy businessman in Rome.

Flying another plane on this trip was one of Orient Air’s oldest pilots, Peter Bourberg.  Peter was a cheerful old German who’d served in the Luftwaffe in World War II as a mechanic and was now delivering planes for Pete on a part-time bases.  I think the crazy old kraut was flying small planes over the ocean just for kicks and to get away from his wife for a week or two every now and then.

The three of us had been stuck in St. Johns for two days due to strong headwinds over the Atlantic.   The plane I was flying had the range to make the crossing to the Azores despite the high winds but I was also waiting for a new ADF (Automatic Direction finder) antenna for my plane.  The antenna broke on the way to St. John’s and even though I had a handheld GPS with me I wasn’t leaving land without it.

The introduction of the GPS was having a dramatic effect on the ferry business at the time, and not all in a good way.  Where ferry pilots once had nothing but a compass to navigate with, now we had a newfangled contraption that would tell us exactly where we were, how fast we were going, and when we would arrive.  We’d been using the GPS system for about a year at that time and although a wonderful device, they had not proven to be one hundred percent reliable.

That was the reason none of the pilots at Orient Air would attempt a crossing without a trusty old ADF in the instrument panel to help us find our way, especially when going down to the Azores with the powerful NDB beacon located on the Lajes Air Force base.  The beacon at Lajas could be picked up three hundred miles out which effectively gave you a six hundred mile wide target to hit, a good thing because if you missed the Azores your next stop was Africa, far out of reach.

It took four days for the winds to change but finally Pete, Peter and I at the airport getting ready to make the 1500 mile crossing the Santa Maria Island in the Azores.

While waiting for the fuel truck to finish topping off my plane I wandered over to a small Cessna 172 sitting on the ice covered ramp next to me.  The plane was being ferried to France by a young pilot we’d met the night before at our hotel’s bar.   When I looked inside the cockpit I noticed that there wasn’t an ADF receiver in the plane.   Concerned, I went back inside the pilots’ lounge where he was doing his flight planning and asked him about it.

“Do you have an ADF in that 172 out there?” I asked, pointing my thumb over my shoulder out at the flight line.

“Nope, plane didn’t come with one.” the young pilot replied, “No big deal though, I’ve got this new GPS last month and it’s been working great!” he said holding up the new handheld unit.

Pete looked up from across the plotting table covered with maps, computer printouts, coffee cups and the ever present over-flowing ash tray. “Ok, smart guy, what are you going to do when your fancy new GPS craps out on you?”

“Not a problem, I haven’t had any trouble with it so far.” he replied rather smugly, “the only time it doesn’t work real well is in clouds and rain.”

Pete and I looked at each other in dumbfounded astonishment.

“Didn’t you get the same route forecast as we did?” I asked reaching for one of the blue weather packets each of us had received less than an hour before. “The whole second half of the trip is going to be in clouds and rain!”

“I’m not worried, I’ve always managed to get it working again every time the GPS has crapped out on me.” he said

Pete and I spent the next fifteen minutes trying to convince the young pilot that he was making a mistake.   I pointed out that I was flying a much more capable aircraft than he was and there was NO WAY I would fly to the Azores without an ADF.  But try as we might the young headstrong just wouldn’t listen.   Having flown the Atlantic it once before seemed to make him an expert in his opinion, and nothing a bunch of washed up old has beens could say seemed to matter. A typical cocky young know-it-all who didn’t want to listen to the advise of more experienced pilots.  He reminded me of someone but I couldn’t think of who.   As he gathered up his maps and walked out to his plane Pete and I shrugged our shoulders and told each other that at least we’d tried.

To be continued:

Shiv was a long time ferry pilot, if not a very good one, and the source of many great stories. One of the most legendary took place when he was flying from the Faroe Islands off the northern coast of the Scotland en route to Iceland. According to the story Shiv had gotten himself lost and was flying under a low cloud deck in hazy conditions. He was in contact with Reykjavik ATC at the time but was flying too low to be picked up on radar and until he either made it to land or started receiving a navigational aid he was on his own. In and out of the clouds Shiv finally saw a shoreline through a small hole in the haze. The controller informed him that if he was approaching Iceland from the south all he had to do was turn left and follow the shoreline and it would lead him to Reykjavik. Shiv dove down through the hole, banked left and started following the shoreline like he had been told.

After an hour Shiv called Reykjavik wondering how far it was to the airport because he hadn’t even seen the city yet and shouldn’t he be there by now? The controller agreed that he should have started to see the city by now even with poor visibility. Being a local the controller was very familiar with the area and asked Shiv to describe what he was seeing. Shiv told him that he only saw a few homes on the shoreline and a lot of white churches. When the controller asked him what he meant by a “lot of white churches” Shiv told him that he was passing a white church every five miles or so. The controller was confused because he was unaware of any churches on the southern coast of Iceland and asked Shiv to describe the next church he flew by. When Shiv described the church the controller thought he might have figured out where he was and asked Shiv if the next church was built exactly like the last one. The next church came into view and sure enough it looked exactly like the previous one. Shiv asked the controller how he knew what the church was going to look like before he got there. The controller told Shiv that was because he wasn’t really following the coast at all but was instead flying around an inland lake and was passing the same church over and over.

Lesson learned: I’m not really sure what the lesson was there. Don’t get lost in a lake I suppose.

Sometimes after a hard day in the cockpit you get end up someplace nice, like Aruba.

  Back by popular demand, OK maybe demand is too strong a word, is another ferry flying story from my book.  And speaking about my book I’ve made some really good progress by finding and agent to represent me and help get published.  Finding an agent was a lot harder than I thought, apparently there are a lot of pilots who think their stories are worthy of a book.  Really?  A lot of pilots want to talk about themselves and think their flying stories are the most interesting things in the world? Who would’ve thunk it?  Anyway here’s part one of a chapter of my book that might get cut from the final, damn editors!

I SUPPOSE THAT WAS YOU

There is an old saying in aviation, “Learn from the mistakes of others. You’ll never live long enough to make them all yourself.”

That saying is certainly true in the business of ferrying small aircraft across big oceans. Since New York hotel owner Raymond Orteig offered a prize of $25,000 to the first man to fly across the Atlantic from New York to Paris in 1919 men had been making mistakes over that big cold ocean. Mistakes that other pilots could learn from. Mistakes that often cost them their lives.

Whenever ferry pilots run into each other on the road the first question might be “Where you headed?” or “how was the weather?” but it’s always followed by “Did you hear what happened to so and so?” The story of some brother ferry pilot’s misfortune would then be brought forth and examined, not just for its entertainment value but for any lesson it might contain. Ferry pilots are dedicated students of other’s mistakes, even if they didn’t think they would ever make such mistakes themselves. All pilots hold to the belief that they are masters of their own destiny but ferry pilots even more so. No sane man would willingly strap himself into a strange plane his career as a ferry will be a short one.

A ferry pilot’s attitude about accidents is that the superior pilots that they are, would have done things differently and survived. That is of course if the pilot in the story was killed, which was not always the case. You could learn a lot from the things that happened to pilots that didn’t kill them, sometimes more because the pilot is around to talk about it.

Shiv Shivany was a Pakistani ferry pilot in the 80’s who was a never ending source of entertainment and great stories. It seemed like every time I landed in Greenland or Iceland I’d be treated to another story of how Shiv managed get himself into some crazy predicament or other. Like the time shiv developed engine trouble over the Greenland icecap. Unable to clear the 10,000 foot mountain of ice barring his way Shiv made a successful crash landing on the ice cap but not before radioing for help and being told that a rescue helicopter was on the way.

Owning to the fact that helicopters aren’t very fast and Greenland is very big, Shiv was expecting a wait of a few hours or more before he could expect to be rescued. With nothing much to do until help arrived, Shiv decided to go for a short walk to check out the ice cap while he waited. He got about 100 yards from his plane before he broke through a thin snow bridge and fell into a crevasse. Luckily Shiv landed on a ledge thirty feet, uninjured but trapped like a Pakistani rat in an ice cage .

A few hours later a Danish search and rescue helicopter arrived at the downed aircraft. The Crew Chief got out and ran through the blowing snow from the helicopter’s rotor wash over to Shiv’s plane only to find it empty. He looked around but couldn’t see the pilot, which surprised him because the Greenland icecap is as smooth as a billiard ball and he could see for miles in any direction. Then the Crew Chief saw tracks in the snow leading away from the plane and followed them to a pilot-sized hole in the snow. Carefully lying down on his belly the crewman inched up to the hole, peered into the crevasse and saw one very cold Pakistani pilot staring back up at him.

Shiv was half frozen because he wasn’t planning on being out of the plane for more than a few minutes so he was dressed in only dress shoes, slacks and a light windbreaker. It wasn’t long before the helicopter winched Shiv to safety and into ferry pilot history.