Pilotage

A former editor of AOPA Pilot, Mark Twombly now lives — and flies — in Florida.

"Dallas," she said. "He wants to go to Dallas." Dallas is a big place, especially when you look at the big picture, which takes in Fort Worth. Got lots of airports there. Have to pick just one.

"Fine," I answered. "Any idea which airport he wants to go to?"

"DFW," she said.

That was not the answer I expected. The guy I am to fly has a series of meetings to make in Dallas, and he wants to go into Dallas/Fort Worth International? Doesn't make sense. Plenty of general aviation airports are more convenient to the many business centers in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Surely one would be more suitable for him than the gigantic expanse of asphalt, concrete, and terminal buildings that is DFW.

I'd flown into DFW once before, maybe nine or 10 years ago. I was in a new Mooney, and for some reason I can no longer recall, my passenger and I flew from Kerrville, Texas, to DFW, arriving late at night.

Picking up the airport visually was no problem in the clear Texas night air. I drew an imaginary line between the lights of downtown Fort Worth and downtown Dallas, and just north of the midpoint looked for the dark patch big as a city. Closer in, the rotating beacon and a 30-square-mile carpet of runway, ramp, street, and building lights guided me to the airport. We spent the night at the midfield hotel, and were on our way east early the next morning in VFR conditions. Piece of cake.

Now it looked like I might be headed back to DFW, although I was convinced my passenger would opt for a more convenient airport if I could help determine which one. This was to be my first trip as a paid contract pilot, and in the high-priced words of modern management consultants, I wanted to "exceed expectations." I made a suggestion to his assistant.

"Why don't you ask him where his meetings will take place, and I'll pick the nearest airport," I offered.

She agreed. The trip was scheduled for a couple of days away. The boss was on a cruise and out of touch, but when he checked in she would call me back with the information. Meanwhile, I worked some preliminary flight planning and monitored the long-range forecasts.

She eventually called. "It is DFW," she said. "He's meeting someone who is flying in on the airlines. And he needs to be there at 9 a.m."

Yeow! The DFW part was OK, although I'd rather have heard her say Addison, Arlington, or any number of other suburban Dallas-Fort Worth hot spots well served by excellent general aviation fields. No, it was the arrival time that made me wince. To make 9 a.m. in Dallas, we'd have to be climbing out of Fort Myers, Florida, at 3:30 a.m. That would give us sufficient time to make the 934-nm one-stop journey in the Cessna 340A, with a few time-consuming off-course vectors built in.

Truth be told, a 4 a.m. departure would suffice, but I added a 30-minute fudge factor in case the passenger showed up late.

Which he did. At 3:30 a.m. I was standing by the open air-stair door watching fog precipitate out of the heavy, moist air and roll lazily across the airport. It was thickening; I was fidgeting. Fifteen minutes later my cell phone rang. "I'm on my way. Be there in 15 minutes."

As quickly as the fog formed, it began to dissipate. By the time we settled into the cockpit — he is a student pilot and likes to sit up front — the lights on the ramp across the field were visible again.

We watched the sun pop up over the horizon as we made the turn west at Tallahassee. We saw it a touch before the early risers 16,000 feet below us.

Actually, they couldn't see the sunrise. The entire Gulf Coast was fogged in. The forecast for Jackson International in Mississippi, my planned fuel stop, hadn't called for such dense fog, but when I tuned in ATIS the news was bad.

I informed the center controller that we might have to go to Plan B and divert, but he speculated that the sun would quickly burn off the fog. "It'll probably be OK by the time you arrive," he said.

It wasn't OK. The fog was low and thick as I was vectored north on a downwind to intercept the localizer landing to the south. Two scheduled air carrier aircraft had landed earlier using Category II minimums, but at the published Cat I decision height we were still immersed in milky fog. I saw nothing. Missed approach.

The fog dissipated just to the north and east of Jackson. Approach vectored me to the GPS final for Runway 16 at nearby Hawkins Field. I called the field in sight, and a Baron pilot who also missed at International told Approach he'd take Hawkins, too. A Citation followed him in. With tanks full and bladders empty, we were soon on our way again.

DFW handles nearly 2,300 flights a day, plus unscheduled operations. Airplanes land and take off on any of seven runways served by 39 instrument approach procedures and one published visual approach procedure. All of that adds up to a need for an orderly flow into and out of the airport.

Order is achieved through the use of VORs that encircle the Dallas-Fort Worth area. These VORs are the basis of 17 arrival and 11 departure procedures, each one published in FAA and Jeppesen approach manuals. Propeller-driven air$lanes get their own to keep them underneath the higher, faster jet traffic.

My clearance was for the Dumpy Two Arrival with the Gregg County VOR transition. The start point for the arrival procedure is the Jackson VOR. That meant almost our entire second leg constituted a published arrival procedure into DFW.

The procedure is defined by nine fixes between Jackson and Dumpy, the final waypoint before receiving vectors to the DFW final approach course. At times like this one appreciates a good GPS flight-plan function, and the 340's muscular combination of a Garmin 530 and 430 did not disappoint. The databases were expecting me, and at my command the units promptly loaded and activated the Dumpy Two Arrival as well as the ILS to 18 Left, which is what DFW Approach said I should expect.

I was established on the final approach course when we broke out and saw the airport ahead. Approach had requested that I keep my speed up, so I landed long. Why do otherwise on an 11,388-foot runway?

The general aviation ramp is on the west side of the center terminal area of the airport. The FBO is a nondescript low metal building. It's functional, but a far cry from the bustling, well-equipped standard that business jet operators have come to expect. I was neither in a business jet nor interested in hanging around the FBO — a soft bed was my goal for the day. A taxi took me to a hotel on the north side of the airport, and after a Mexican buffet lunch I was out for the count.

The boss's assistant called in the late afternoon from her office in Florida. "He'd like to leave at 5 a.m. the next morning and come back home," she said. I set multiple alarms for 3 a.m. and was at the airport by 4. At 5:30 a.m. the assistant called and said she had just noticed two cell phone messages from the night before. The first was for a change in our departure time to 8 a.m. The second moved it back to 9.

I dozed in a recliner, languished in the flight-planning room, and rummaged around in the cabin of the airplane. He showed at about 8:45, paid the gas bill, and we walked out to the airplane.

The clearance was for the Hubbard Four Departure — a low, eastbound, get-outta-town procedure. The Garmins were easily up to the task.

Ground instructed me to taxi to 35 Right, which meant crossing to the east side of the midfield complex via a bridge over road traffic. At the top of the bridge I had to switch to an East Ground Control frequency, then make a series of turns and taxis to the runway. The ground controllers seemed happy to take me by the hand and lead me to the run-up area.

We stopped in Mobile for fuel and lunch, and to take a good look at the radar depiction of the extensive storm activity in the Florida Panhandle extending out into the Gulf. It looked like my planned overland route would be best, so I stuck to it. The 340's Stormscope and radar got a workout, but we barely got wet.

The meetings in Dallas were successful. The airplane performed well. I got along fine with the boss, and he with me. He said there would be more flying to come: St. Louis, Chicago, Pennsylvania, and back to Dallas. I haven't asked yet if that means more red-eyes to Lambert, O'Hare, Pittsburgh International, and DFW.