Pretty interesting show... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT5gUKJidi0 Looks like there is four episodes on youtube, I'm sure there is some journalistic license involved , but the airports (if you can call them that) are beyond belief..... After seeing some of these places, I for one wont ever be pissed again when the tower at Whiteman asks me to do a short approach from a right base.....
When we lived on San Juan Island in the early 70's I flew a little bit there and went to some of the strips on their routes and they weren't quite as spooky but almost. A couple of stops were challenging like a rocky beach and along the spine of an island. One had a cliff at each end and undershoots on landings were simply not even mentioned. One required an approach under some telephone and power wires at the south end and a full power uphill runout to the pad at the top. Take off was a hilariously short run downhill where the ground sort of dropped away from you. Then there was fog, rain, and wind while they were side-slipping into a short strip surrounded by tall firs. They did this 30 to 40 times a week. San Juan Airlines was operated with some great pilots then.
That type of flying and the clean white Sporty's pilot shirts seem out of place. Sitting behind a PT6 doesn't look that bad either. Considering, there was a time when pilots did that type of flying behind engines that had a habit of (to loosely quote Bob) "not making their beautiful sound." And with no GPS nav either. Sign me up today, but not back then!
I noticed the incongruity of the white shirt and epaulets too. The guys that I knew flew in well used greasy jackets and ragged pants and usually smoked Lucky Strikes from green color packs and couldn't say one sentence without at least three 4 letter words interspersed with other two lettered words. And that was when they were usually on the ground because they never said much when they were dodging grease spraying back from an old radial up front.
Seems the title of the video is incorrect. At least as far as the flying part how could you not like it. Pure seat of the pants raw piloting skills. And in some pretty cool equipment to boot.
I was thinking more about the old crop dusters and airmail guys. They did not realize that there was another world around them that was populated by non-fliers. I knew several pilots, one was my late brother-in-law, who flew the Hump and they DID have some stories.
That is so cool. So it got me thinking, I detest commercials and regular TV/Cable in general. I need to look at how to get the computer set up on the big tvs. Seems everything should be on demand, create your own channel etc. This would be on the list.
PM Sent. I have watched another episode, do kind of enjoy it. The name of the show just sounds terrible! Will catch a few more as I can barely ever turn down clips/video's/shows aviation related.
I noticed that too. I figured it was just "Suzi" trying to feel like a "big" professional airline... There is a Flight school at Van Nuys that makes all the instructors wear those shirts... I laughed so hard at them when I saw the crap they where flying....
I've watched 4 episodes... don't see a 5th. They seem to wear the shirts with the 'civilized' flights with pax in the Caravans, not so much with the loads of rice to a mountaintop in a Porter.
When I was flying King Airs all around Gabon, Zaire, and Camaroon, I just wore combat boots, jeans, and a tee shirt...those were the days! Still, I admire these young guys going out to do this around Indo. Who cares what they wear! Ciao! Hannibal
Watched a couple episodes. Sure looks like a lot of fun. Of course an engine failure would be a very bad event.
