Pilots

Traci DeWilde’s route to a flying career lies over the Grand Canyon, as does that of her 13 fellow tour pilots at Lake Powell Air Service in Page, Arizona.

It’s not for everyone, of course. Pilots must first have excellent people skills, because the pilots of Lake Powell Air Service meet tourists from all over the world. The problems range from anger over departure times to fear of flying. "How should I put this for a national magazine?" DeWilde asks delicately. "There have been uncontained events." There is also "…an occasional screamer," she recalls. Once, a hysterical passenger resulted in her returning to Grand Canyon National Park Airport. And she gets nutty questions. One tourist wanted to know if "the Indians live in the house boats on Lake Powell" next to Page.

The pilots must also have excellent VFR skills to thread through the tour corridors between large blocks of restricted airspace. DeWilde’s turnpoints are nearly as specific as "that picnic table with the squirrel on it," she joked. Still, flying the Canyon has been a great adventure, and has boosted the 27-year-old’s hopes of an airline career. A pilot only four years, she has amassed 1,800 total flight hours.

Piloting skills of those who fly the Canyon must be impeccable. The winds can be nasty; downdrafts have reached 1,500 feet per minute. Runways at remote sites and at Monument Valley, Utah—another stop along DeWilde’s scenic route—are short, sometimes crooked, narrow dirt strips. They are high-altitude runways as well, and the summer days are hot.

A flight last October was typical of her sunup-to-sundown workday. She was up at 5 a.m. with a required "show time" at work of 6:30 a.m. Takeoff in a turbocharged Cessna 207 was set for 7:15 a.m. to deliver a company official to Tusayan’s Grand Canyon National Park Airport near the south rim of the Canyon. There, a tour bus brought four visitors from Austria at 8:30 for a scenic ride. "You’re the pilot? You are?" an Austrian asks in broken English. He was expecting a, well, a man. DeWilde hears that a lot. The Austrians are early, and want to start the tour right now. DeWilde musters her people skills, which include the fastest smile in the West and a quick laugh, and lets her passengers know that the Canyon isn’t officially open yet, due to noise restrictions.

She beams as the passengers climb aboard. "Austrians are the best. The bumpier it is, the better they like it," she said. Takeoff is at 9 a.m. when the Canyon opens to tours. She quickly dodges a circling hawk during climbout and heads for a sightseeing corridor.

DeWilde’s passengers listen to a taped narrative while she monitors other tour pilots reporting their checkpoints. The Austrians have paid for a grand tour. After the Canyon, passengers are treated to the sight of ancient Indian dwellings on the way to Monument Valley.

There, the passengers depart on a two-hour bus tour while DeWilde grabs a bite at a Navajo-operated restaurant, Goulding’s Lodge. When her passengers return, she flies them over part of the 186-mile-long reservoir, Lake Powell, and shows them Rainbow Bridge—a spectacular natural rock arch. Then it’s back to Page.

She caught the flyiing bug early. "My grandmother worked for Boeing and would take me to the airport where we would sit all afternoon and watch airplanes," the Oregon native said.

One year after college she got an introductory flight as a birthday gift. "From that point on, I said, `Sign me up,’" she recalled.

Then she rationalized her way through a fistful of ratings. The instrument rating would make her a better pilot, and hey, the commercial certificate is not that much more work. "By that time I had gotten a part-time job at Sunbird Flight Services in Chandler to help support my habit," she said. There, she saw instructors actually getting paid to fly. So she became a full-time instructor for Sunbird.

Then she heard that Air Grand Canyon at Grand Canyon National Park Airport was hiring tour pilots. She sent a resume, but thought she lacked experience. "A friend—Geoff Schaefer at Sunbird—convinced me to follow up. I ended up getting hired over the phone."

She worked as a tour pilot in Tusayan, Arizona, in 1998, returning to Sunbird for the winter as a general manager. During that time, she began to plan her future flying career—one that would "pay the bills." DeWilde was eating a lot of Ramen noodle soup to save money (12 meals for a buck). That’s when she made the switch to Lake Powell Air Service.

"They ask newly hired pilots to put in at least one season on the Part 135 side [the tour flights] in singles, and then be upgraded to their Sunrise Airlines and the British Aerospace Jetstream," she said.

Has the career path worked for DeWilde? When last heard from, she was pursuing multiple opportunities to realize her dream of becoming an airline pilot.

It could be that her Ramen-noodle days are coming to an end.