Battle tested

During training, Sorrengail endures broken bones and mental torture while she learns hand to hand combat, how to ride a dragon, and the art of wielding lightning from her fingertips. But the training is nothing compared to the cruel mythical creatures she fights in battle. Why am I telling you about my latest guilty pleasure at the risk of you snickering over my reading choices? Because I recently witnessed an exchange between two pilots at the airport that had me thinking about why we love this type of fiction: It explores real-life themes in a way that lets us believe we’re escaping. Yes, training of any sort is usually hard, but the real-world challenges us in ways we never imagined possible.

Enter Kourtney Gillespie (aka our aviation version of Violet Sorrengail). Gillespie was a student, then instructor, in Olive Branch, Mississippi. She graduated our little war college about a year ago and had now returned to tell us of her battle experiences out there flying a dragon—I mean, a Shorts 360—for a Part 135 cargo carrier in Puerto Rico.

Gillespie asked one of our current cadets about how her lessons were going. The instrument student said she had just gotten her first taste of actual IMC (instrument meteorological conditions) and didn’t much care for it. She felt like she was pitching down when her instruments claimed straight and level, and the clouds were just plain scary. The student said she wouldn’t be signing up for that kind of lesson again anytime soon. Our seasoned pilot-warrior responded, “I know it wasn’t fun, but you have to do it again and again until it’s comfortable. You need to get as much actual IMC experience as you possibly can while you have an instructor with you. Let me tell you a story about the hardest day of flying I’ve ever had. We were flying from St. Croix to San Juan…”.

Gillespie proceeded to give us the battle brief. She was flying with a brand-new first officer who still required lots of assistance in the cockpit. (Anyone who’s ever made the jump up to a large turboprop or jet knows it’s a steep learning curve. You feel like you’re hanging on by the tail for a long time.) To make matters worse, the airplane was not equipped with an autopilot, and it was fully loaded with cargo, so they weren’t able to carry much contingency fuel. Then of course, there was the weather. While the forecast looked fine for the 87-mile short hop, weather in the islands is subject to rapid change. Ten minutes into the flight, they encountered what Gillespie calls the “Caribbean Curtain,” a wall of thick gray clouds that turned a beautiful sunny day into low IFR. Then ATC came on the radio saying the words no pilot wants to hear, “Moderate to extreme precipitation at your 12 o’clock. Please advise intentions.”

“Check the radar then tell them what heading we want,” Gillespie, hand-flying through growing turbulence, told her first officer.

“How do I do that?” he asked.

And so the fun continued. Once they were safely vectored around the fire-breathing dragon (aka thunderstorm cell), the Shorts was cleared for an RNAV approach to Runway 8 into San Juan. The airspeed was a chore to manage as wind shear had the pilots hyper-focused all the way down final. Upon reaching minimums with no runway in sight, Gillespie reluctantly called the go-around. With limited fuel, the crew decided to get back in a growing line of traffic to make another attempt at San Juan. While riding the turbulence back up to altitude, a fuel imbalance annunciator came on, making Gillespie wonder if she would have to manage a cross-feed situation on top of everything else. Thankfully, once they leveled off, the fuel stopped sloshing around and the warning light went out. For the second approach, ATC vectored the Shorts in for ILS Runway 10. This time, they got the runway in sight and were able to make a safe landing, walking away with the only battle scar being the memory of the most stressful flying experience Gillespie (and undoubtedly her first officer) had ever experienced.

Gillespie’s advice to our instrument candidate is relevant for all of us who fly. “I know, without a doubt, that I would not have been able to successfully manage the flight that day without the IMC experience I had during my instrument training and my time as a CFI with my own students. Don’t shy away from hard stuff now. It will make you stronger later. And you’re going to need it.”
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