The lead pilot for NASA’s DC-8 Airborne Science Laboratory, Bill Brockett has logged tons of hours on Operation Ice Bridge, flying low over the polar ice caps and Greenland and Iceland to measure changes in their ice levels.
WHO: Bill Brockett
OCCUPATION: NASA pilot
HOURS: Around 18,000
EXTRA: Brockett has owned a Grumman Yankee in which he would commute 90 miles to Moffett Naval Air Station.
STARTED IN AVIATION… My dad was a World War II pilot. I went to the U.S. Air Force Academy, then active duty in the Air Force for five years. I joined the NASA research program and I’ve stayed in for 23 years.
EARLY CHALLENGES…Early in the Vietnam War I had to wear glasses. They told me, “Find something else to do in the Air Force—you’re not going to fly.” Then Vietnam escalated. I would have had to make a case to not go to pilot training, so I got lucky there. When I graduated from pilot training the most exciting airplane I could fly was an AC-47 gunship, and while en route to Vietnam all those airplanes were transferred from the U.S. to Vietnam. I was reassigned to C-141s in Travis, California. By the early ’70s I was in the C-130, but I got to see the world and learned a lot about international flying.
FAVORITE ACTIVITY…I love flying low and sightseeing. The most spectacular is Antarctica. We take our DC-8 down to Antarctica, a two-and-a-half-hour to four-hour flight from the southern tip of Chile, with no place to land along the way. You go up to altitude to cruise, and over the continent you descend to 1,500 feet for five to six hours, flying through mountain ranges, glaciers, and canyons and across the sea ice measuring ice caps. I’m totally absorbed.
ADVICE FOR STUDENTS… Flying is something that most of us who do it would pay to do it. You have to know why you want to do it: pleasure, relaxation, recreation. You need to do it enough to stay safe and understand when you need to go get more training. I got a seaplane rating a couple of years ago. It was the hardest thing I’d done in the last 30 years, forcing myself to do what the instructor told me to do rather than what my instincts told me to do. Flying seaplanes, I would get a refresher from an instructor who has a good track record. If you’re not up to speed in an airplane you could hurt yourself.
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