High Entertainment

It is every new pilot's great privilege and high honor, as the presenters at award banquets like to say, to give a loved one, friend, or business associate that first ride in a general aviation aircraft. Finally, you are sharing the thrill of flight with someone especially important to you. Finally, the curtain is pulled back on what you have been doing these last few months during those frequent trips to the airport and those evenings sequestered with your books, CDs, and flight gizmos. Perhaps it was a similar flight, with you as the passenger, which brought you to this happy point — that's a time-honored path to pilothood and a credit to the airmanship of the pilot who took you flying. You may even keep the tradition going: Don't be surprised if someone you take flying gets in touch a few days later, or blurts out, right after your flight, "This is for me. Tell me where I can go to sign up!"

The answers to all the questions that will flow can be found through AOPA's Project Pilot. But don't leave it at that. Mentorship beckons, with Project Pilot and its powerful resources there to guide you and the new student pilot as you move to a new level of sharing your love for flying. Eliciting that kind of enthusiastic reaction to your flying isn't something you should take for granted. You earned it with a clear, impressive display of your pilot skills. Of course, the scenery was impressive and the sensations of flight, thrilling. But what truly makes the sale is when a passenger observes the skill, care, and professionalism the pilot brings to the aviator's calling. Here are some thoughts on how you can send that vital message while at the same time providing entertainment that's second to none.

Today's the big day. Sunshine and tame winds reign, so it's time to render that air tour you have been promising friends eager to view the local scene from above. Sounds simple compared with other missions you've flown. Plan a route, preflight the airplane, pile in your passengers, head out to sightsee. A fun trip for you as pilot: no ETA, no destination, easy VFR over familiar territory. You'll overfly the harbor, or circle the mountain, maybe check out that pond that's always full of elk, then snap a photo of the new bridge they're building across the river. Come back in, squeak it on to applause, get taken out to dinner. Nice.

All great fun, but don't mistake a pleasant local outing for a flight undeserving of best efforts. Sightseeing rides can be tons of fun for all aboard, but these passengers make unique demands on a pilot. Your passengers won't have the faintest notion about that. They're thinking "joyride" all the way, and may assume that you share this unburdened state of mind. Doubt that assumption? Frown once and watch everyone aboard frown with you, then ask you what's wrong. To be a successful sightseeing pilot, you learn how to be all business about flying while also keeping that American Idol smile painted on your face as you mind your altitude, airspeed, airspace, terrain, maneuvering, gauges. And all the while you sit ready to whip out and deploy a sick bag faster than Wyatt Earp can draw on a bad guy. (You did pack a sufficient supply of bags, right?)

Only the careless sightseeing captain gets caught up in the passengers' party spirit, giving in to temptation to do something imprudent or dangerous. Piloting for sightseeing boils down to two divisions of your responsibility and attention. As pilot, give a safe and effective ride, based on a plan. As guide, show the folks around in a way that only an airplane can, adding your special knowledge of the local attractions to give your passengers' gazing about some helpful focus.

Some of the most fun flying I have ever done, for money or for the fun of "taking someone up," has been sightseeing runs. I wrote a feature for Pilot about doing this as a working pilot long ago (see " Postcards: Wings for Hire," June 1996 Pilot). It was a reminiscence of when I was a member of the pilot corps flying for-hire tours around Maine's Acadia National Park on bright summer days. All day sometimes, on those bright summer days, and this was the attraction for numerous itinerant young pilots drawn to the work to build time. More than once this circumstance prompted such an exchange as this between a veteran sightseeing pilot and a new arrival on the flight line:

The new pilot, delighted at all the comings and goings: "I think I'll log a lot of hours doing these scenic flights."

The veteran: "You'll log a lot of half-hours."

And now you know how long a sightseeing flight should be.

Yes, they're frequently longer than that — have to be, sometimes, if your scenic destination isn't right off the end of the runway. What proves the rule is that short rides rarely end in discomfort, unless you run into some pirep-grade chop along the way. Get beyond that half-hour, even with a happy crew, and you're pushing it. If you've had to do some ground-reference maneuvering to see the sights and you elect to extend ("look, there's a moose in the next pond!"), now you're really pushing it. Fly scenic rides long enough and you'll develop a feel for this. Sometimes you'll be wrong. And you'll feel bad about it.

All the usual rules about safe flying apply here. No buzzing. No "watch this!" type of stunts. Know where obstacles are; don't be lured into a deviation from your plan. Before you go out to overfly the little island with the puffins living on it, know that you can glide to a dry place.

Here's what's different from other flying: Sightseeing flights may call on skills you may not consider your sharpest. I mentioned maneuvering. Assuming you're in the left seat, your single passenger in a two-seater or two of the three passengers in your four-seater will be in right seats. Unless all you want to show them is the top or bottom surface of a wing, you'll be circling to the right a lot, sometimes while descending to an effective (but respectable) altitude for a better look. Practice beforehand. Also recall that you'll be flying heavier than when you did ground-reference maneuvers in training. A scenic flight is no time for extra Gs, or naughty altitude excursions followed by penitent, pre-emptive pull-ups. Shallow banks! Anything that makes a passenger exclaim is not shallow. Ideal scenic rides are big-picture flights — panoramas, seascapes. Requiring more pilot proficiency and passenger care are trips to survey small objects on the ground.

A historical ratio we scenic pilots observed was that for every three passengers, there are two cameras aboard, meaning that on most flights, someone took pictures. Here are some quick rules about flying as a camera platform: Work out the plan before you leave the ground if specific objects are to be photographed. That's less important if folks just want scenery shots for the vacation scrapbook. Brief your passenger, who may have never done this before, on technique, including any hand signals. Open windows are just about mandatory for quality pictures; make sure the photographer is in an appropriate seat. Suggest that he or she hold the camera with a gloved hand. Airspeeds a tad slower than cruise are helpful when shooting something small; so is the occasional slight slip to stay on your point an extra second or two, if you can sneak it in without bothering anyone. Old maxim: A zoom lens always trumps a climb and a descent, and saves time. Summing up: You may be slower than cruise, maneuvering in an unaccustomed direction, so take care. You're watching for traffic, maintaining altitude and ground track. Stay focused. You're steering for the passenger with the camera, but also keeping the eye in the back of your head on the others. Stay aware. Whenever you're low, stay legal. You're large on fuel, oil pressure is superb, and it's cold with the window open.

Because this is sightseeing, entertaining your guests is appropriate. Headsets for all, and an intercom, are important. If headsets are not available for all, offer the other folks earplugs. Tell them how to know when your attention is on external voices. While flying to and from your sightseeing objective, help the sightseers become oriented by pointing out major landmarks. The same ones you use for your local-area pilotage will do. En route and when in your sightseeing zone, pointing out the small stuff that only the locals know about adds interest. In our coastal zone this included showing off such oddball delights as the clusters of circular retaining ponds floating on the bay: fish farms. We'd fly over and watch the salmon flopping around. Historical landmarks, water falls, private airstrips, and tourist attractions found in most areas also are worth a glance along the way. If possible it's best to start orienting the folks after you have heard the words, "Radar service terminated, frequency changed approved" come over the air. If that's not going to happen, keep your lectures short and your ears open.

Being a good guide is a more important ingredient in this kind of flying than you may think, as I was reminded in a nonaviation context recently. A professor who teaches at a local business college was recounting a weekend bus trip he took with his students to New York City. That's about a 10-hour drive from here. What marked the difference between the ride down and the ride back, he said, was that one bus driver was extraordinarily entertaining, virtually banishing the tedium of traveling. The other driver was, well, just a driver. Acting the part of guide may not be your style, but you'll enjoy it after a while. For those of us who flew the same sightseeing run day after day, half-hour after half-hour, around a national park with numerous individual locales to inspect, a short spiel on each became a show biz routine. Big-city dwellers often compared us to charismatic cabbies. If your passengers are figuring things out without your help, great. Fly. But be ready for that tap on the shoulder, probably just as you are picking up opposing traffic or noticing an incoming blanket of ocean fog.

And speaking of that, although this is a flight to nowhere, just out and back, do you have an alternate? Does that question catch you off guard? I never had to divert to another airport during my summers giving scenic rides, but once I came close. The combination of a busy traffic pattern and an offshore fog bank suddenly being shoved landward by a vigorous afternoon sea breeze nearly made it happen. A thunderstorm could do it. So could another airplane landing gear-up on your runway. Running out of gas or having to land on a golf course at the end of a scenic flight is considered bad form.

You've given thought to your passengers' endurance and the risks of exceeding it. What about your own? Another odd thing about these seemingly simple flights is that they can put you in situations you have avoided before. Like mountains. One day the phone rang and an inexperienced private pilot inquired if I could ride along with her on a "rehearsal" ride for a scenic flight she proposed to give a friend around a 5,200-foot-high mountain. Rehearsing was an excellent idea. Even so, mountains are meteorologically mysterious. What you get tomorrow may not resemble today. Turbulence when none is forecast is common. Convection, clouds, even dark clouds that throw sparks — bet on them. Safe flying near mountains can mean prolonged climbing and descending. Watch out for inner-ear issues and engine temps.

So, is sightseeing just routine stuff, entry-level grunt work, or is it something else? Nothing is more fun on a beautiful day. Nothing presents general aviation to the masses quite as stylishly. Fly the mission well and you'll make it look easy while showing everyone a great time.

What it takes for a pilot to provide such top-notch entertainment can stay our little secret. But as an AOPA Project Pilot Mentor, go ahead and share it with the next guy.

Dan Namowitz is an aviation writer and flight instructor who lives in Maine.