379 Ferry Pilot Flying, Everything Explained with Sarah Rovner + GA News
01:09:00 Share

Would you like to get paid to fly airplanes to exotic destinations across the country and around the world? It sounds like a commercial, doesn't it?

Well, one way to do that is to ferry aircraft. And today we're talking with Sarah Rovner about her experiences from tail draggers to the Arctic while working as a global ferry pilot. And we've also got an analysis of the helicopter that crashed into the Hudson in New York and discussion about two Honda jet accidents that occurred this week. Hello again and welcome to Aviation News Talk where we talk in general aviation.

My name is Max Trescott. I've been flying for 50 years. I'm the author of several books and the 2008 National Flight Instructor of the Year. And the mission of this podcast is to help you become the safest possible pilot. Last week in episode 378, we talked about engine out scenarios and best glide strategies, including your emails. So if you didn't hear that episode, you may want to check it out at aviationnewstalk.com slash 378.

And if you're new to this show, welcome. Glad you found us. And now in whatever app you're using to listen to us now, touch the subscribe key. Or if you're using Spotify or the Apple podcast app, the follow key so that next week's episode is downloaded for free. And my thanks to these two people who've signed up this week to support Aviation News Talk. Mike Romeo Lima has signed up to make a monthly donation through a Patreon. And Thomas King is doing the same thing through PayPal.

If you'd like to hear your name next week, sign up now to support the show by going to aviationnewstalk.com slash support. Coming up in the news for the week of April 7th, 2025, there was a tragic helicopter crash in New York on Thursday. FAA requests unleaded fuel Pyreps. And there was an odd helicopter crash in South Africa that involved a penguin. All this and more in the News Starts Now.

From CBSNews.com, six people died when a helicopter crashed into the Hudson River on Thursday afternoon. The incident happened around 3.17 p.m. near the Holland Tunnel ventilation shaft in Jersey City. Three adults and three children were killed, including a family from Spain and the pilot.

The helicopter involved was a Bell 206 operated by tour company New York Helicopters. It took off from Lower Manhattan around 3 p.m. After takeoff, it flew over Governor's Island and then near the Statue of Liberty before heading up the Hudson along Manhattan's west side before turning around just past the George Washington Bridge and flying back down along the Jersey side of the river before coming down near Jersey City.

Witnesses described helicopter parts coming apart in midair before plummeting to the water. And I've looked at a couple of videos of the aircraft falling into the river, and you can clearly see that the tail boom of the helicopter has been cut off by the main rotor, and that the main rotor and its transmission had ripped out of the helicopter and were falling separately. Now the Bell 206 has a two-blade teetering rotor system, similar to that in the Robinson R-44s that I fly.

These rotor systems are mechanically simpler and lighter weight than other types of rotor systems, but they are susceptible to mass bumping that can lead to the rotor blades cutting off the tail boom. This can occur when a pilot pushes a cyclic forward aggressively in a low-G condition. It can also occur in turbulence and in mountain wave conditions. Weather at Newark Airport at the time was winds 10 knots gusting to 25.

I've looked at the ADS-B data. On FlightAware.com and FlightRadar24.com, it doesn't show the last few seconds when the aircraft is dropping to the ground. However, ADS-B Exchange does show those last few seconds. It shows the aircraft essentially level at 360 feet, and then in just two seconds, it goes into a steep climb gaining 250 feet with a climb rate of thousands of feet per minute.

It then drops to the ground at over 10,000 feet per minute. If this data is correct, about the only thing I could imagine that might have caused it would be if the pilot spotted a bird or a drone and pulled back hard on the cyclic. If he or she then pushed forward hard on the cyclic, that would set up a classic mast bumping scenario. Of course, there are other possible causes of the accident, and we'll learn more about this in the weeks and months ahead.

From AOPA.org, the FAA is asking aircraft operators, FBOs, and others to report their experiences, good or bad, with unleaded aviation fuel. A special airworthiness information bulletin issued March 28th seeks reports of service difficulties or abnormal maintenance issues related to the use of unleaded fuel. The FAA is also interested in hearing from operators who have transitioned to unleaded fuel without issues.

The FAA notes there are several unleaded fuels currently available, and additional fuels are likely to be available soon. The FAA issued a long-awaited ruling in March ordering Santa Clara County in California to reverse its 2022 ban on 100 low-lead at two county airports, agreeing with AOPA's argument that the ban and related moves by the county violated various federal grant assurances.

And from FlyingMag.com, the FAA winding down flight service. The FAA is considering applying to decommission the flight service station network of communication frequencies throughout the contiguous U.S., with the exception of those operating in Alaska. Flight service stations and the in-flight advisory service was established in the 1980s, and according to the FAA, the infrastructure of 936 frequencies has had little or no modification since.

According to the FAA's notice of intent, flight service received 22,000 service requests per day across the network in the 1980s, while today they receive fewer than 300 per day.

The agency noted that 40 years ago there were 350 flight service stations with over 3,000 employees. Today there are two with fewer than 200 flight specialists. As portable cockpit technology, such as electronic flight bags or EFBs, has evolved, pilots have turned to other sources for the acquisition of information and filing of flight plans. Therefore, the number of pilots using the radio-based FSS has decreased, and according to the FAA, there has not been an impact on safety.

From PalmBeachPost.com, the FAA wants to make Palm Beach County skies safer after a string of near-misses between private planes and commercial jets.

Too often, the FAA says small aircraft have nearly crashed into commercial planes descending into Palm Beach International's runway in the past few years. In a presentation in December, agency officials said that ATC reported 110 close proximity events that triggered the agency to consider the problem. The solution, they say, is to increase the size of the Class C surrounding the airport.

Currently, aircraft flying within 10 miles of the airport must contact ATC for permission to fly any closer. Under the proposal, that area would extend about 15 miles west. It would also extend several miles east, covering more than 10 miles over the Atlantic Ocean. The FAA focused on the airports east and west because most commercial planes fly in and out of the airport in those directions.

From AINonline.com, Unither achieves first hydrogen-powered helicopter flight. Unither bioelectronic test pilot Rick Webb lifted off in a Robinson R-44 helicopter powered by a hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system in Bromont, Quebec, Canada on March 27th.

Unither, which is a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, is developing hydrogen-powered helicopters, including a hybrid electric R-66, that it plans to use to transport manufactured organs for transplants.

The flight of the proof-of-concept R-44 demonstrator achieved several firsts, including the first flight of a hydrogen-powered helicopter and the first such flight in Canada. It also validated the proton-exchange membrane fuel cell technology, which Unother said is proving its capability to provide the demanding power requirements of a vertical takeoff and landing lift profile.

A tank mounted under the R-44's tail boom stores gaseous hydrogen, but Unithor will replace it with a liquid hydrogen storage system later this year to demonstrate longer-range capability. The electric motor is manufactured by MagniX. United Therapeutics Chairman and CEO Martin Rosenblatt said, We look forward to using green hydrogen to drive the membrane fuel cell power plants in our R-66 Oregon delivery electric helicopters.

From CambridgeNews.co.uk, pilot who died in Duxford plane crash was inexperienced. A pilot who died in a Cirrus SR-22 plane crash at Duxford Airfield last year was quote, inexperienced in terms of flying hours, a report has found. The death of the pilot who crashed on March 26, 2024 has prompted recommendations to improve the safety of planes similar to the one he was piloting.

According to a report by the Air Accident Investigation Branch, the pilot was carrying out his third circuit and planned to land and take off again. The plane bounced while landing, and he applied full power but lost control. The pilot was 58 years old and had 115 hours of flying experience when the crash took place. However, he had not piloted an aircraft at all in the 28 days before the incident,

He'd flown for only nine hours before the 90 days leading up to the crash. The report concluded that he was inexperienced in terms of flying hours. From GeneralAviationNews.com, failure to discontinue unstabilized approach leads to crash. On April 13, 2023, an RV-14 was substantially damaged when it was involved in an accident near Faulston, Maryland. The private pilot was seriously injured.

The airplane crashed in a cornfield about 50 feet from the approach end of runway 4, which is 2,200 feet long, at the Falston Airport in Maryland. The pilot reported that due to his injuries, he did not recall the final approach. The airplane was equipped with a Garmin G3XI flight display system. Flight engine and systems information was downloaded by the investigation team.

The data indicated that the airplane circled the field at Whiskey 42 and then flew two approaches to runway 22. After the second approach, he commenced a climbing left at 270 to return to a right base leg for runway 4. He turned on to final approach about a quarter mile south-southeast of the runway threshold at about 200 feet AGL. The G3XI data showed that the engine speed increased during the final phase of flight,

peaking at 2,580 RPM about one second before ground impact. The airplane's heading and roll parameters indicated a right turn in the five seconds before impact, with a roll angle increasing from about 18 degrees right to 54 degrees right two seconds before impact, before decreasing to 8 degrees right one second before impact.

The vertical speed decreased from 160 feet per minute descent about five seconds before impact to a 1,017 foot per minute descent one second before impact. Probable cause? The pilot's failure to discontinue an unstabilized approach, resulting in an aerodynamic stall and collision with terrain.

From GeneralAviationNews.com, pilot seriously injured on third flight in new airplane. And this is something that we've talked about before. Pilots often get in trouble in newly purchased airplanes. In this case, the pilot had purchased a Vans RV6 the day before the accident.

After the purchase, he completed two flights in the airplane uneventfully. The next day, during the third flight, the engine lost all power and he performed a forced landing to a cornfield near Eaton, Ohio. During the landing, the aircraft nosed over and came to rest inverted. The pilot was seriously injured in the crash. Examination of the wreckage revealed substantial damage to the left wing and vertical stabilizer.

An FAA inspector noted that there was a faint smell of automotive gasoline and that the airplane was equipped with a Honda Civic engine. Subsequent examination of the wreckage by a recovery crew revealed that both fuel tanks were absent of fuel and there was no evidence of a fuel leak in the field. When asked how much fuel was on board, the pilot told investigators that he had flown early in the day uneventfully and started with about 35 gallons. He also stated that when the engine lost power, the fuel gauges indicated that about 8 to 10 gallons remained.

When asked specifically how much fuel was on board the airplane when it was delivered and how much was added to it, the pilot responded that he did not know. The previous owner told inspectors that the airplane was delivered with approximately 3 gallons in the right fuel tank and 10 gallons in the left fuel tank. Probable cause? The pilot's inadequate fuel management, which resulted in a total loss of engine power due to fuel exhaustion.

And finally from BBC.com, unsecured penguin caused helicopter crash in South Africa. How's that for a headline? The story says that an unsecured penguin in a cardboard box was the cause of a Robinson R44 crash in South Africa. The penguin, which had been placed in the box and on the lap of a passenger, slid off and knocked the pilot controls just after takeoff from Bird Island off the Eastern Cape on the 19th of January.

The South African Civil Aviation Authority said the impact sent the helicopter crashing to the ground. No one on board, including the penguin, was hurt. The authority said the, quote, lack of secure containment for the penguin was responsible for creating the situation. According to the report, the flight had been conducting an aerial survey of the island. After completing the survey, the helicopter landed where a specialist then requested the transport of one penguin back to Port Elizabeth.

The aviation authorities said the pilot conducted a risk assessment, but omitted to include the transport of the Penguin on board, which was not in accordance with civil aviation regulations.

When the helicopter was about 50 feet above ground, the cardboard box slid off the lap of the specialist to the right and caused the cyclic pitch control lever to move to the far right position, causing the aircraft to roll. Unable to recover, the main rotor blades then struck the ground and the helicopter ultimately crashed on its starboard side, approximately 60 feet from the point of liftoff. While the helicopter sustained substantial damage, both pilot, passenger, and penguin were unharmed.

Well, that's the news for this week. Coming up next, a few of my updates, including a discussion about two HondaJet accidents in this past week. And then we'll talk with Sarah Rovner about what it's like to ferry aircraft around the world. All right here in the Aviation News Talk podcast. ♪

And let's get to the good news. Congratulations to Drew Anderson. He writes, since we last made contact, I've passed my commercial checkride and my CFI written, and my CFI checkride is next week. He also writes, thanks for your help and encouragement, as well as the personal call and all the emails. I would not have purchased a new SR-22G7 if it were not for you. It just arrived and I'm thrilled. Going through transition training now with Sweet Aviation at KSMD. The

the airport where my father learned to fly. Thank you for all you do to advance a safer GA environment. I hope to do mountain training with you at some point. Well, congratulations, Drew, and I'm glad my advice and encouragement helped you. And for anyone else who's listening and just starting to think about maybe buying a new Cirrus SR20 or SR22, please call me well before you get to the point of placing a purchase order. Best way to do that is to go to aviationnewstalk.com and click on Contact at the top of the page.

And now let me tell you about our video of the week. You may have seen this already, but this is of a Cirrus that is bouncing on the runway at Tampa as the pilot lands extremely flat and then immediately gets into a pilot-induced oscillation. Fortunately, he correctly decides to get out of there and go around.

So if you want to see why landing flat is a really bad idea, check out this video. And by the way, I think what happened was not only did he land flat, but he probably released back pressure after he touched down and that dropped the nose wheel just a few more inches, which started the whole sequence. And the links for all of our videos of the week are on the same page with links you can use to become a supporter and start supporting the show. So

So when you go to view the videos, look at the bottom of the page for the video links. And at the top of the page, you'll see four options listed for supporting the show. So to see all of our videos of the week and or to support the show, go online to aviationnewstalk.com slash video. And if you've thought about donating, this would be a great time to do it as I'm totally flummoxed.

that a $96 speeding ticket I got in Rhode Island a year ago has caused the insurance on my Toyota to double from $1,200 a year to $2,400 a year for the next three years.

So I'll be paying over $3,000 to the insurance company, and I've spent hours talking to everyone from the court clerk in Rhode Island to DMV in California and to my insurance agent. And guess what? Every one of them was very sympathetic, and not a one of them had any power to change the situation, which I found very disheartening. Well, thanks for letting me complain.

And it's also been a lousy week for HondaJets, with two separate accidents just a few days apart. Fortunately, everyone survived. The more serious accident happened early Monday morning at the North Bend Airport in Oregon. That aircraft, November 826 Echo, took off from the St. George Airport in Utah just after 5 a.m. It flew to the North Bend Airport, arriving at 6.08 a.m., which was after sunrise but before morning civil twilight, so it was probably still a little dark.

The aircraft landed on runway 5, which is almost 6,000 feet long, went off the end of the runway and ended up in the water of Coos Bay. Four passengers and one crew member were transported to the hospital and three days later, all have been released. The winds reported 16 minutes before the crash were from 190 at 8 knots, which would have been a quartering tailwind.

Light rain was reported 45 minutes after the accident, so the runway may have been wet when the aircraft landed. I've looked at the ADS-B ground track, and here's what I see. The last data point was captured 875 feet from the threshold, which would be 0.15 nautical miles from the threshold. At that time, the aircraft altitude was 130 feet, which was 113 feet AGL.

Now that is a little high for being that close to the runway. A typical 3-degree glide slope loses 320 feet per nautical mile, and the aiming point the jet was probably headed for is about 1,000 feet from the threshold. So at that last data point, we would expect the aircraft to be at 98 feet above the runway. This plane was at 113 feet AGL, so it was a little high, but only about 15 feet.

The ground speed at that point was 124 knots. Now, different sources I found give different VREF values for the HondaJet, and they range from 106 to 112 knots. With the winds at 190 at 8, I computed a 6 knot tailwind. So the aircraft's airspeed would have been around 118 knots, which is still 6 to 12 knots faster than the various VREF speeds I found. Now, you might wonder why this aircraft landed with a 6 knot tailwind.

Well, it turns out there is no instrument approach to runway 23, so it's clear why they chose to fly an instrument approach to runway 5. If they'd been slightly lower and slightly slower, things might have worked out. But with a tailwind and possibly a wet runway, this plane ended up in the bay. Hindsight is, of course, 20-20, but this may have been one time where it might have made sense to fly the runway 5 approach and then circle to land on runway 23.

Two days later, another HondaJet, November 4-8 Hotel Mike, went off the runway at Naples, Florida. ADSBExchange.com shows the aircraft touching down on runway 5 at 108 knots. However, as it decelerates to 83 knots, the aircraft is starting to track left of the centerline. It exited the left side of the runway at 71 knots. The winds 25 minutes before the accident were 350 at 9 gusting to 16, so a left crosswind.

So perhaps a strong gust of wind hit the tail from the left side. That would yaw the nose to the left, which might explain why it went off the left side of the runway. The following day, Thursday, AOPA published a story that said, quote, HondaJet owners seek to stem runway excursions with training. It talked about the incidents I have mentioned and said that these are the latest of more than two dozen similar incidents.

The Aviation Safety Network has recorded 35 incidents and accidents involving the HA-420s since the aircraft was certified in December 2015, of which 29 involved runway excursions during landing or takeoff. The Honda Jet Owners and Pilots Association, an owners group, analyzed the runway excursions in 2023 and concluded that they can be traced to techniques that pilots learned while training for their private pilot certificates in light piston trainers.

Many pilots are taught to increase approach speed during gusty conditions. In many aircraft, a side slip may safely be used to maintain runway alignment in a crosswind. Pilots generally seek to extend the flyer for a soft touchdown and hold the nose wheel off the ground after the main wheels touch to maximize aerodynamic braking.

According to David DeCurtis, safety chair of the organization, in a HondaJet, those are all techniques to avoid. Quote, adding half the gust of V-raft is absolutely the wrong thing to do in a HondaJet, DeCurtis said, adding that the aircraft was designed to handle adverse wind and weather conditions, short of wind shear, at its prescribed landing speed, so pilots must trust the techniques taught during type training and forget about trying to grease the landing.

your target is VREF period, end of story. Rather than adding a margin of safety with extra speed during gusty landings, you are adding a margin of risk to Curtis said. So I think the key message is regardless of what you fly, fly the plane the way it's supposed to be flown and don't automatically use advice you were given when you were training it for your private. And I've mentioned before that I started writing a column for Flying Magazine called Max Impact and

And there is now a link available if you want to see the February column. In that column, I mentioned that late last year there was a fatal accident in a Cirrus SR-22 in Bar Harbor, Maine, in which the pilot's choice of an ILS versus an RNAV approach had a direct impact on the outcome. And in the February column, I quoted safety expert Todd Conklin, who wrote in his book Pre-Accident Investigations that, quote,

aviation accidents are the unexpected combination of normal aviation variability. In this accident, if some variables were different, there could have been a more positive outcome. Instead, as you'll see, the challenges this pilot faced kept stacking up. So if you want to see that article, check out our show notes at aviationnews.com slash 379. And just a quick reminder that if you still haven't signed up for our Lightspeed giveaway, you

Lightspeed is going to be giving away a top-of-the-line Delta Zulu headset worth $1,200 to an Aviation News Talk listener.

So it's not too late to go out on the web and sign up now at aviationnewstalk.com slash giveaway. And I've included a link to that in our show notes. And of course, whenever you buy a new headset, please consider a Lightspeed headset. If you do have the Lightspeed, we'll send a check to Sport Aviation Newstalk. But only if you first go out to the special link we've set up for you to get to their website. So when you buy, go first to aviationnewstalk.com slash Lightspeed, which will take you to their website where you can make your purchase.

And last week in episode 378, among other things we were talking about, if it's possible to stop the prop of an airplane to try and increase your glide ratio, one listener sent me an article, and I'm sorry I looked, I can't find who it was, but I thank you for sending me the article called Stop the Prop by Barry Schiff.

This appeared in 2011 in AOPA magazine. He wrote in part, I first heard about this many years ago when Bill Thompson, the chief flight test engineer for Cessna, told me that stopping the propeller of a Cessna 172 improved its glide ratio by 20%. I decided to perform a flight test by using a Cessna 182. The 182 has a glide ratio of 9.3 to 1, which is typical. Most singles have glide ratios between 8 to 1 and 10 to 1.

I closed the throttle, pulled the mixture control to idle cutoff, and pulled the propeller pitch control all the way aft to reduced windmilling RPM. I then raised the nose until the airplane approached a stall. This is when engine compression overcame windmilling forces and the propeller shuddered to a stop. I then lowered the nose and accelerated to the best glide speed of 70 knots.

The tail buffeted slightly. With the propeller in the horizontal position, it interfered with airflow across the tail. This was easily resolved by tapping the starter and flicking the prop to the vertical. This also is the minimum drag position of a stop propeller and results in the maximum possible glide ratio. Three-blade propellers should be positioned with one blade in the vertical position, and four-blade propellers should be positioned to form an X, not a cross.

Once the burbling across the tail stopped, it was glass smooth and very quiet and peaceful, much like flying a sailplane.

Using the time required to descend through 2,000 feet of altitude and the average true airspeed in this descent, the glide ratio was 11.12 to 1, a 20% increase in glide performance. Thompson was right, not that I ever doubted him. Great article, and we'll include a link to that in our show notes. And if you ever have anything you want to send to me, just head on out to aviationnewsdoc.com and click on Contact at the top of the page.

Coming up next, our conversation with ferry pilot Sarah Rovner, all right here on the Aviation News Talk podcast. And now let me tell you a little about Sarah Rovner. She's an experienced ferry pilot and the owner of Full Throttle Aviation LLC, which has a team of pilots that offer ferry services. She's also a captain with a major U.S. airline, a designated pilot examiner that gives check rides, an A&P aircraft mechanic, and a Gold Seal flight instructor. And now here's our conversation with Sarah Rovner. Sarah Rovner

Sarah, welcome to the show. So good to have you here today. Thanks for having me. So we're going to talk about ferrying aircraft and you're an expert in that. You've done a whole heck of a lot of it. Tell us about how you got into the business. So I got into ferry flying kind of on accident.

I was asked to deliver an airplane with a customer that was learning to fly. And we went out to Show Low, Arizona, picked up a Cessna 175 Skylark that I eventually ended up owning. We flew it down to Houston and that was my first ferry flight.

After that, my second ferry flight was with, well, was for somebody that is fairly well known. He was around the social aviation circle for a long time. And he had a Satabria that he needed moved from Houston to Las Vegas. And I delivered that airplane for him. Following that, I had my third ferry flight, which was a request to ferry a Cessna.

Cessna ag truck all the way from Canada to Belize. And I said, Brazil, that sounds really far. I said, no, Belize. I didn't even know where Belize was.

And I ended up doing the validation process and flew the plane all the way from Lethbridge to Belize, where I met some of my very close friends down there. So you said the validation process. What does that explain that for us? So in order to fly an aircraft that is not FAA registered and is not N-registered, you have to go through a validation process for that country. You can either do that for like a short-term validation, so you can get like a 30-day validation with Canada, Europe, any

any of these IKO participating countries, or you can go through the full process of getting a license. In the case of the ag truck, I just did a 30-day temporary license to ferry the airplane. I see. And that's because the aircraft was not an N-registered numbered aircraft?

Well, in the United States, you're allowed with an FAA certificate within the boundaries of the United States to fly an aircraft of foreign registration. Most countries allow that. But in order to fly a Canadian aircraft in the United States, fly a Canadian aircraft in other countries, you have to have a Canadian license or its equivalent. Did you have prior experience in this kind of ag aircraft that you flew? Yes, I had been towing gliders at the local soaring club for a while, and I had a lot of tailwheel experience, and they use

a lot of old agricultural aircraft and tow gliders. And so I would have to imagine that flying through Central America down to Belize involves a lot of rules and regulations. How did you become familiar with those for your first flight? For my first flight, I was very fortunate to have a mentor who was originally going to do the job, but I ended up doing the job and she had done it before. And so we kind of went over all the different procedures. Now, what I will say is that back in those days, it wasn't even that long ago. I mean, it was coming up on maybe 11 years ago.

I did the flight. There was not nearly as many regulations in Mexico as there is in the United States in the sense that the airspace is not nearly as complex. The requirements are not nearly as strict. It's not like you have all these different classes of airspace. So a lot of it's very similar. So the things that are different are going to be what the kinds of customs that you have to deal with on the ground and things like that? Yeah, you have to still do the EAPIS with the U.S. Customs. And then you also now Mexico has an APIS requirement.

It's very similar to what the U.S. does. Back in the day, you just filled out a customs form and emailed it to the right people, and then they processed you upon arrival. So I would imagine that flying here in the Americas is very different than crossing the Atlantic. Tell us about your first flight across the Atlantic, and how did you come to do that flight?

Well, I found that I actually had a very specific skill set that not a lot of people had. And I would love to say it was flying, but it wasn't. It was paperwork. And I actually had somebody reach out to me who needed assistance with the paperwork on the route. And I had done all this research. I'd already been working a lot with the Canadian government. So I did all the research and said, I'll provide handling for the flight. And he said, well, why don't you come with me? And we ended up becoming pretty good friends after that. But

I pretty much offered for the same price as a handler would charge per leg was my daily rate. I ended up going with them across in a King Air. So talk about handlers and rates they charge and things like that. What is the function of a handler and what do they charge? That depends. At the time, Universal was charging for a King Air per leg, which is probably one of the biggest handling companies. It was about $700 per leg.

for a King Air, for ocean crossings. And a lot of what they would do is they would follow your flight plans. They would do all your customs paperwork, do your Gendex if you had them. They would notify the country that you were coming. There's no, really no FBOs. Well, there is an FBO now in Iqaluit. There really wasn't back in the day.

I think maybe Frobisher Bay Touchdown Services, but they didn't even offer Avgas at the time. So I pretty much acted as the FBO and the liaison, and I did all the paperwork on behalf of the flight and the owner for the flight across. So one doesn't really need a handler. If they're really savvy, they can do all the work themselves, the paperwork? Yes and no. I've seen it bite people before where they don't hire a handler and they miss something and it causes either a significant delay or a possible fine.

So if you're unfamiliar with it, I definitely recommend reaching out to somebody who's done it before or hiring a handler because then the liability isn't necessarily on you as much as it is the other person to make sure everything is done correctly. And these days with your company, do you use handlers in some parts of the world that you're less familiar with, but then do the paperwork yourself in other parts of the world? Well, for all of Europe and Central America, we do all the handling ourselves. Okay.

But I could imagine in certain countries where you have to have specific permits, like for example, if I wanted to fly in Russia, if I wanted to go westbound, let's say to deliver an airplane to Malaysia or Korea or something like that, then I would need to have, I would probably hire a handler for those particular legs. And that's just because you're not doing those trips as often? Even if I did them as often, certain countries have specific requirements where you have to have like

Like, for example, in Mexico, you have to have a Mexican insurance policy. So even though your insurance policy in the United States may say, hey, we're going to cover you in Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, you actually have to hire a Mexican. You have to have a Mexican insurance policy for that particular flight. Different countries have different requirements. Some of them say that you have to use a handler that's sanctioned by the government. Other ones say that you can't do it by yourself.

It just depends on the country and what the requirements are. We had talked a while back, and you mentioned something about a Cessna 210 crossing. I think that was the Atlantic. Tell us about that. So this Cessna 210 was fairly well known. I believe that it was flown around the world not too long before I did my flight. And the plane was flown around the world. It had ferry tanks installed. The ferry tanks were removed.

And the airplane was sold to a buyer that lived, I believe it was, I delivered that one to the Netherlands. And I picked the plane up from a broker in Oklahoma who had done all the work on it that the new owner had requested. And I started flying north.

And, you know, it was in the middle of winter. It was my first time doing a crossing in the middle of winter. And the old Cessna 210s is a T210, but it had actually been converted to an IO550 conversion. The original ones back in the 1970s were actually certified for flying to known icing.

They had boots, they had heated windshield, of course, doesn't even meet the modern certification for flying to known icing. It wouldn't meet the today's standards, but they did back in the day. And it was quite, quite the journey in the middle of winter, really cold temperatures, really bad weather. Upon landing in Iqaluit, which is on the far northeast side of Canada, about 487 miles from Greenland, where I normally land over at BGSF or King or Loosewack.

It's kind of a lot of letters in that one. But Kinger Lusselaak, which was the old military airport, Sunderstromfjord.

And anyway, I landed and I noticed that there was a bunch of grease around the wheel on the nose wheel. And upon further inspection determined that the axle had not actually been installed. So it was the front nose wheel was riding on the spacers and the bearings and it ended up failing after a few landings all the way up the Arctic. And so what did you have to do? We had to get a new axle overnighted.

as well as new bearings and spacers. And we were able to change it out there on the snow in negative 30 degree weather. So that was my first exposure to having to repair an airplane on the ground outside of a hangar. The further north you go, you find that hangars are less and less popular.

Well, they're very popular. They're just not very prevalent. And I'm guessing these parts aren't just overnighted to you at that remote location? No, we had to overnight the part to Ottawa, get it in special care. And then we had to deliver it over to the Canadian North hangar and then get it on a Canadian North flight up to Iqaluit. So overnight shipping takes about three days up in the Arctic. And that's if you want to pay a lot of money. Wow. And I'm just kind of curious as a ferry pilot.

Are the jobs bid based on the number of days that you're flying or is it a fixed price? So in other words, if you're stuck on the ground for three days, do you get paid more? I wish. Unfortunately, most of the ferry flights are done as a flat rate. So the great thing is, is that you have the potential to make a bunch of money if you pick a really good weather window and you don't have delays and you're kind of a little bit more on the frugal side with some of your expenses and hotels.

then you can definitely save money and make a lot of money on these jobs. But unfortunately, with a lot of them at the flat rate. Now, there's usually a clause built into the contract that says if we have mechanical issues, that that does incur an additional daily rate, but it's not nearly the same as a flying day. So you can't bill the customer $1,000 to be sitting there. So you end up losing money whenever you have mechanical issues. Understood. And I'm just kind of curious, is

As you think back over all the flights you've been involved in, what percentage would you say involved in some kind of mechanical issues or large unforeseen delays where you're stuck on the ground for multiple days? I would say to be optimistic, 50%. Oh, wow. It's really, really common. Yeah. So especially with the international ones, it's a lot more

more expensive for them to get the work done in their home country because of all the duties and stuff like that. So even they might not have the expertise. If you want to do a panel upgrade, it can be highly unlikely you can do a panel upgrade in the country of Belize, for example. So a lot of people get all this work done to the airplane before it gets flown overseas. And it rarely gets a test flight before I get there. And there's a lot of major maintenance that's been done on it. Major upgrades,

major repairs. Just like we do in the United States. We say, hey, there's a plane in Canada that's half the price of what it would cost if I bought it here. They're trying to save money on it. And so they're finding these airplanes cheap, doing some upgrades, and then bringing them overseas. So most of the time you're doing fair flights, these are planes that have just been acquired by somebody? I would say about, yeah, probably 95% of the time it's a new purchase and we're hired by the buyer. So one of the things I wanted to ask you is,

How do you assess the safety of an aircraft before you take off? You must have a process to try and minimize the odds of stepping into an aircraft that is a little sketchy. So a few years ago, we actually implemented a clause that said if the airplane has not been flown for six months, and now this works on the honor system, that we will charge them for a test flight. And during the test flight,

It's a very thorough pre-flight inspection. Now that I'm an AMP mechanic, I probably, I don't know if I'd go through an entire 100-hour inspection, but something very close to it. You know, a very detailed pre-flight inspection. And then I would have a checklist and I would check all these different things on the test flight. Check to make sure all the radios work, make sure all the avionics work, make sure the approaches load, databases are current.

And then, of course, a very thorough pre-flight inspection. So for the newer aircraft, a lot of times the manufacturer requires you do an oil change within the first eight to 10 hours or so. So before I'd go overseas, I would do an oil change somewhere in Canada along the coast to determine whether or not the engine was making metal before doing the final flight over the water. So I can see that being an AMP is extremely helpful for you when you're assessing these aircraft.

But you have a number of pilots who work for you, and I'm guessing many of them are not ANPs. How does that work when they need to assess the safety of an aircraft? That's a good question. And each pilot, obviously, it's very subjective what their determination of airworthiness is, just like it is with anybody. There might be a plane that your friend flies all the time that you probably wouldn't get in and vice versa. So it's very subjective in that sense. In

In the end, the pilot in command is determining whether or not the aircraft is airworthy. So the way I do it with my business is that I trust the judgment of my pilots. If they say that they're not comfortable with it, I don't care what my opinion is as a mechanic, as a pilot, or anything like that. I never pressure them, and we get whatever needs to be fixed resolved at that time. So might it be the case that they would be flown out to a location not like the aircraft, and then you just fly them home, and that's the end of the story because you're not going to move that aircraft?

it has happened, unfortunately. And that obviously, as a business owner, puts you in a little bit of an awkward position. But I always want to make sure that my pilots are comfortable with what they're doing. So I usually stand by them pretty strongly. I'm curious, are there any flights that stand out in your mind? Because, oh my gosh, it was so much fun. It was so pleasurable, either because of the location or some other factor. Oh, yeah. I've made some of my closest friends in the world from doing ferry flights. I've got

I've got friends all over the world. It's hard to say any particular experience, but it's been an absolute blast meeting so many different people, experiencing different cultures. If I could say that there was one ferry flight that really stuck out that was super enjoyable,

It would probably be when I flew the Super Cub up to Alaska. I ended up flying a customer Super Cub up and I believe we had a flight of two and I just had a blast coming up here. The weather was great and the camaraderie was great. Sometimes if we could do, especially some of the longer ferries, if we could combine the ocean crossings, like for example, we'd try to do two aircraft at once or two aircraft to Alaska that can oftentimes save expenses because you can split expenses like hotels and it's just a lot less money if, you know,

transportation and things like that. And how many countries would you imagine that you've flown to at this point? I don't know exactly, but I know that when I, a while ago, it was 25 different countries. Wow.

And I'm curious, the business, do you find that overseas flights is what percentage of the business versus staying here in North America? Are you talking about financial-wise or are you talking about time-wise or the amount of jobs? Well, yeah. Talk about all those things. So financially speaking, overseas jobs obviously pay a lot more. It requires a higher level of expertise. And a lot of times I lump all of the paperwork in with the price of the ferry. So in that...

amount that they're getting, they're paying for both the paperwork and the ferry flight, as well as all the expenses. For the domestic flights, it's very different. For domestic flights, we do it as a day rate. And the pilots usually make a percentage of that day rate. And then on top of that would be the administrative fees that we would charge the client. So the

If we were going to do, for example, when I was doing a lot of ferrying, I would say our go-to rate was anywhere from $400 to $500 a day. That's what it was going for 10 years ago. And

pilots would make a percentage of that. And the flights on average would be three to four days long. To put it into perspective, the amount of profit that you can make on a domestic flight is just so much lower than that of an international flight. On an international flight, you're looking at $5,000 to $8,000 for the week, depending on how involved you were with the paperwork and the airworthiness and everything like that. For a

For domestic flights, the profit margin, at least to the business when somebody else was doing it, was an absolute fraction of that. So I would say that most of the money is in the overseas flights, whereas the volume comes from the North America flights. That's what I was curious about was the volume. So let's talk a little bit about the people that you have on your team that fly. When you're hiring somebody in to come on and join the team, what are you looking for in terms of minimum hours and other kinds of qualifications?

So it used to be that ferry flying was really for time builders. It was kind of the go-to job when you were looking to bridge the gap from being a new commercial pilot to getting onto the airlines with 1,500 hours. And obviously that was after the ATP ruling came out that raised the minimum hour requirements to the airlines to 1,500 hours.

And before that, it just was whatever the airlines wanted. But now it's been always this, like I said, bridging the gap from 250 to 1500. A lot of people do that from instructing. Some people do it pipeline patrol, flying skydivers. In the helicopter world, they do it flying tours until they can get a job flying bigger aircraft that pays more money. But with ferry flying, it was time builders for the longest time. But the industry has changed and the insurance companies do not like ferry flights for a

And so now it's becoming more so people who are a little bit higher time, probably at least a thousand hours was what the insurance company mandated. And then you could probably get covered to ferry different aircraft. And could somebody reasonably make a career out of flying ferry flights or would that have to be a side job to some other job that they have? It's definitely possible to make a career out of ferry flying, but it's not very attractive for a variety of reasons.

First of all, a lot of it's very seasonal. You start getting into the northern climates, there's not a whole lot that moves across the ocean or up to Alaska in the wintertime. The second thing is that there's a lot of competition in the field. So it can be really hard to get jobs unless you have a very specialized skill set. And whether it's tailwheel or flying big jets, and the pay could be there, but once again, it's a lot of time on the road. And then when you look at the amount of money you can make

ferry flying versus the amount of money that you can make flying for the airlines. A lot of people just choose the airline route because of the benefits. I know that you had at one point said that you used to have some younger time builders and now you've actually got some retirees. What's attractive about ferrying planes to retirees or older folks that might be on a second career? The flexible schedule and the pay as well as the adventure. So depending on what their career has been,

It definitely can be a lot of fun. It's a big adventure. It's an absolute blast flying, ferrying airplanes. I mean, you get to meet so many new people. You get to fly so many new aircraft, explore so many new places. So it can be a lot of fun. It's a very flexible schedule. If somebody says, oh, I need to have a plane moved from Atlanta, Georgia to San Francisco, California,

You can often choose the time when you're available. Say, oh yeah, I'll be available next Tuesday. And you get to kind of pick your hours. That's attractive. And obviously the pay, depending on what you're flying, is pretty good compared to any other type of part-time job where you can control your own hours. So if you would, tell us about any of the scarier moments you may have had while ferrying aircraft. There was quite a few, uh...

scarier moments for sure, especially when flying across the ocean. I once had ice bridging on an airplane, which is where you inflate the boots and the ice just bridges. I've had lots of mechanical issues. I mean, I've declared emergency on more than one occasion for...

all kinds of different issues, whether it's engine trouble, rough running engines. I've had to do emergency gear extensions. There's a lot of mechanical issues that come up with ferrying aircraft. So it's hard to pinpoint one exactly, but I've had quite a few. How often do you end up having ferry tanks installed in an aircraft for overseas jobs? For the North Atlantic, you really don't need them.

Sometimes, obviously, it makes it a lot easier because the weather can be really challenging on some of the smaller fuel stops along the North Atlantic. But if you really wanted to take your time and hop from place to place, you only really need 300 miles of range. You can hop, you know, you can hop all the way from, let's say, Iqaluit. You could go over to Sunderstrom and then down to Nassar Sawak and then up to Kulasuk and then you could go up to...

Iceland from there or even like the northwest part of Iceland and then hop over to the east side of Iceland, the Faroe Islands. So you really don't need a whole lot of range to go across. So pretty much any I would say any high performance aircraft that has approximately 400, 500 miles of range, you wouldn't need ferry tanks.

But ferry tanks can definitely be helpful because the kind of the running joke with the North Atlantic is that if you need the Faroe Islands because of weather or performance, that it's probably not good enough to land there. So having extra fuel to bypass a lot of the airports that have particularly bad weather, such as the Faroe Islands and the east side of Greenland, is always helpful. It seems to me there must be some additional risk with ferry tanks.

I have never researched this, and yet I can think of in the Pacific where there were problems with the ferry tanks. One, fortunately, the person was able to ditch somewhat close to Hawaii and get picked up by a cruise ship. In another case, they had just left California and weren't more than one or two hours offshore and didn't make it back. Unfortunately, that was a fatal crash.

Talk about ferry tanks and some of the issues. Why are people finding that these are sometimes not working on their long flights? Well, there's two types of ferry tanks that you can install. And one is definitely preferred by mechanics and DARs when you're getting your approval for those. There's two types of ferry tanks. There's ferry tanks that'll feed from the tank to the wing and then the wing to the engine normally. There's other tanks that you feed directly from the tank.

Now, they've really tried to put a stop to the tanks that feed directly from the fuel tanks to the engine. They want you to put it in the wings or wherever the auxiliary fuel tank is and then have it go to the engine normally. That way you don't have as many design issues. As far as the ferry tanks are concerned, if you do a ferry fuel system, it's supposed to be approved.

It's supposed to be something that you go through this process. You have to get the approval. It gets installed. It's not supposed to be this, you know, you just throw something in the backseat and you go to AutoZone and get a fuel pump. It's supposed to go through this approval process. Some of those tanks that I've heard, I don't know about the recent ones, but some of the older stories were with tanks that would definitely have not been approved had they gone through the legal process of doing it.

As far as tank malfunctions, it's just like any other mechanical system. You're putting in a, usually it's parts that aren't necessarily certified for aviation. You're increasing the complexity of a fuel system. And there's always risk involved with that. You can mitigate that risk by testing those fuel systems or using fuel systems that had been previously approved designs that were more aviation-centered designs.

that account for issues that aircraft encounter, which can be like temperatures and pressure changes and things like that. But in the end, like I said, it's a mechanical system. It's good to check all that out early on and have a backup plan if something doesn't work. And are there some portions of some ferry tank setups that you wouldn't be able to test on the ground and so you'd need to test it once you got in flight?

Yes and no. A lot of it would be, like I said, the pressure change is one of the things that could occur. Or let's say, for example, you've got hopper fuel or you have an auxiliary, like a belly pod or something that has fuel on it that might be exposed to a different temperature. But the only two things that really change in flight are pressure and temperature. You said hopper fuel. Are you talking about ag aircraft? Yes, agricultural aircraft with hopper fuel. So explain that to people. So in agricultural aircraft,

Usually the hopper is made for putting chemicals in there, whether it's like insecticides, herbicides. And you can instead clean the hopper out really well and you can put fuel in there and then you can plumb the fuel to either your selector or your fuel pump or you can plumb it up to the wings. There's different ways of doing it. And then you have, instead of 500 gallons of insecticide in there, you'd have 500 extra gallons of fuel. We'd all like to have that. That's for darn sure. Yeah.

Well, there's no autopilots and your feet are kind of stuck to the rudder. So, I mean, especially as you get older, you kind of like the comfort of being able to stretch your legs every once in a while or even move them. Ah, good point. I hadn't thought about that. The aircraft are not going to be probably certified for flying IFR, for example. I mean, I did ferry flights where we did seven, eight-hour legs with no autopilot in the airplane. I was a little bit younger then, but it's...

The ergonomically, it's not the most comfortable to not be able to move. Yeah, I can imagine. So you kind of bring up an issue, which is, I think for some kinds of fairy work, it's going to be just a lot more comfortable for younger people than it is going to be for older people to do it. You get used to it, though. It's...

I wouldn't say that it's necessarily younger or older that makes a good ferry pilot. I've had absolutely excellent ferry pilots who are incredibly young, and I've had absolutely incredible ferry pilots who are very old. So age doesn't really matter. I would say that their experience, and even more than experience, judgment. I always was a firm believer of hiring the best people that I could train to be the best pilots.

I was more hiring a personality and somebody's judgment than I was necessarily their stick and rudder skills because we can train people. I can sit there and get an instructor out there and I can train somebody how to fly a Super Cub or a Cessna 180, but sometimes some things that you can't train are demeanor, judgment, what's somebody going to do in a situation. Although it sounds like there are probably flights that you would prefer not to do now that you're a little bit older that you gladly did when you were younger just because I'm guessing they

They were physically demanding where you were stuck in the seat for many hours or things like that. I'm still pretty young, so I don't think I would turn down a flight necessarily due to the comfort level of it. But I definitely liked flying the airplanes that were a little bit faster and had nicer avionics, that's for sure. Yeah, flying Spartan airplanes for long distances just doesn't seem particularly attractive to me.

Well, if you would, tell us a little bit about your company, Full Throttle Aviation. So right now, we still do ferry flight referrals. So if you were to buy an aircraft, let's say somewhere else, that we could find a pilot who could fly it for you. We're also offering, through the partner company, Canadian Aircraft Imports, if you find an aircraft that's in another country, in Canada or even other countries, and you're interested in buying it, we can do all the paperwork, all the airworthiness inspections for you and bring it

to you pretty much unregistered. So that's kind of a service that we're offering in addition to the flight exam. So we're still doing, I'm still doing check rides as a DPE and that all runs to the business as well. And how many folks do you have available that you can call upon to do a particular ferry flight? We have a network of about 20 different pilots that have quite a bit of experience and we usually refer them to those people. Now you mentioned that you're a DPE and you give check rides for

For people who might be interested in flying with you, what areas of the country do you do the check rides in? Primarily in Houston, Texas, but there's been a few times that I have traveled to other locations to do check rides. What other kinds of things have we not talked about that people would be interested in knowing about the ferry pilot business?

My best advice is that if you think that you want to get into it, the best way to be competitive is to fly as many aircraft as you can, as many different types of aircraft as you can. That would be the best way of doing it. It used to be back in the day that if you had similar experience, let's say, for example, you wanted to fly a Cessna 170 and you had a lot of Cessna 180 time.

the insurance would cover you to fly that aircraft. But nowadays, the insurance companies have really cracked down on their pilot requirements. So you would now have to have time and type prior to being able to ferry those aircraft. Yeah, super. Now, I'm curious. We had talked earlier about some of the other failures you've encountered on trips. You mentioned an oxygen failure. Talk about that and how that was significant for that trip.

So in the airlines, we have something called ETOPS. I'm sure you've heard of ETOPS before. It has the unofficial moniker of engines turning or people swimming, but it's pretty much what we go by whenever we're taking bigger planes across the ocean. And the premise is that you either have to have enough redundancy and enough performance to

in order to make it across the ocean safely or to an alternate in the event of a failure. So in the event of an engine failure, you have to have the performance to make it to a safe location on one engine because obviously you have a big performance loss there. You're going to have a pressurization loss. You have to have enough fuel and the ability to make it to a suitable alternate within your range and everything like that. So

We didn't have anything like that when I did ferry flying and it wasn't even something I thought of. So a lot of times we would take advantage of the higher true air speeds and the higher altitudes to reduce fuel burn and to increase our true air speed. And so a lot of these small planes, they might have oxygen systems installed, really old type systems, or we'd bring our own oxygen. I'd go get a bottle and bring my own. And in one of the cases, we had an aircraft that had

Had no problems making the flight from Greenland to Iceland at 20,000 feet or 18,000 feet. But we didn't quite have the performance to do it at 10, not that day because of the way the winds were. And I remember having an issue with the oxygen and, you know, I'm wearing a pulse oximeter and watching it. And normally when you're wearing supplemental oxygen, your oxygen is still in the high 90s. And I took a look at it and I was like, oh, wow, this is starting to get a little bit low. Yeah.

And at that point, I realized that the oxygen system, this bottle that we had was not working. And so we ended up having to descend down to a lower altitude.

which we went all the way down to 12,000 feet. And now the GPS at one point was showing like negative 20 minutes landing in Iceland because of the loss of airspeed and the headwind. And luckily I pulled all the charts out and I plotted it out and it looked like the wind was supposed to turn from a headwind to mostly crosswind, which is pretty common depending on where the weather system is.

And we made it in and we landed with about 30 minutes of fuel, but it was definitely a pucker factor. After that, I started making sure that the weather and the performance was suitable for flight at different altitudes. Like make sure you have the performance to fly across if you have to do it at 10,000 feet or, you know, on the event of only having one engine. So it sounded like you very much are into having plan A, plan B, and plan C to deal with potential problems that might occur. Yeah.

And plan D, E, F, G just might as well go all the way to Z when it comes down to fairy flying.

So tell us, what advice would you have for people who are interested in doing ferry flying? The first step in the process is determining what your motivation is to be a ferry pilot. I always make the joke to people who are getting into aviation. I say aviation is for people who just can't see themselves doing anything else. I would almost venture to say that ferry flying can be like that too, because as much as it is a glorious, wonderful, fun experience that I wouldn't trade the world for the experiences that I had.

It's a hard way to make a living.

It's not easy. It's long hours. It's really challenging flying. Lots of mechanical issues. I say, well, why do you want to get into flying? If the answer is literally, I just want to build time to my 1500 hours, then yeah, that could be an answer. But you're putting yourself through a lot in order to get to that point. If the answer is this is something you want to do long term, well, then yeah, it can be a great career. What you got to do is you got to get into more specialized types of aircraft because they pay more. Then you can be more selective on

on what you fly. Getting into it though, I mean, a lot of poor young pilots get roped into flying some of the most junky airplanes out there that nobody else would touch. So be really careful about it because some of these aircraft, if you have certain mechanical issues or you end up flying or ending up in emergency situations, could potentially impact your career.

I've had ferry pilots who've had, you know, they get in trouble for nobody that worked for me. But I've heard of stories of people getting in trouble for having mechanical issues and that they knew about or violating airspace because of different types of failures or avionics failures.

So you have to be really careful with the types of aircraft you fly. My best advice, though, is that if it's something you want to do, fly as many different aircraft as you possibly can and just realize that it can be a wonderful, fun thing to do, but that there's a lot more involved than what meets the eye. And I would imagine that there's also a tradeoff in terms of time spent home with family. Talk about that.

It's not really much better as an airline pilot, I will say that. I think you have slightly more time off if you're an airline pilot, but I guess it depends on what level because at the regionals it was probably very equivalent. The majors, you definitely have more time off and you can be a little bit pickier about your schedule, but you do end up spending a lot of time away from home. In essence, being a pilot is just that. You're trading your time for compensation.

If you're an airline pilot, you're still going to be on four or five day trips. It's about what ferry flights are. It's really not much different than that. So trying to find a career in ferry flying is really no different than flying for the airlines. You're going to be spending a lot of time away from home and trying to manage that with a personal life can always be challenging. And are most ferry flights solo single pilot?

Yes, I would say that 90% of it is solo. I was looking at my logbook the other day and I was like, wow, 2000 hours of solo time. It was a very high number. And that's because of ferry flying. A lot of times you're by yourself. And a lot of that is just the economics. The customer doesn't want to pay for two pilots. It's an airplane that only has one pilot. Now with my business, we ended up having an internship program where people would pretty much then pay their own expenses, but they would get

pre-instruction and pretty much a free flight across the country. And that was really popular. But most of the time you're by yourself. And you're not doing that anymore at this point, right? I still do a few here and there, but I've really, I'm not really doing very many anymore myself. Sure.

What kind of things do you bring along with you on ferry flights? And part of what I'm thinking is just entertainment. What are the safety items you bring with you and what things do you bring to keep yourself from not falling asleep on a long flight? I've never had issues with falling asleep on a long flight. Different things that I'd bring, I mean, it would be whatever the survival gear is required for the country. Like different countries have different survival gear requirements. Canada has specific requirements. For example, Alaska has certain requirements for

If you're flying over water, there's requirements for that too. If you're going to bring a raft, you're going to bring a life vest. When I would fly over the ocean, I would wear a rubber suit. People call it a poopy suit. I don't know where that name came from. But I would wear an immersion suit so that you would have a little bit longer time to get inside a raft if it was really cold water.

So it just depends. Definitely, I try to bring basic tools with me when I go on ferry flights, just so that I can do some basic troubleshooting, make a determination of what's needed a little bit sooner than later. And obviously, you know, all of your pilot gear, I'd always have backups for backup. So if you're going to use an iPad, have a second iPad as a backup in case that one fails. And yeah, you stay really current. If you're going to be flying IFR, making sure that, you know, current proficiency are two different things.

making sure that you're very proficient is important.

And other than that, just the basic flying gear. Do you bring along any supplemental avionics, for example, a portable GPS, handheld transceivers? Sometimes. It really just depended on the flight. Like, for example, on the ag planes, sometimes I would ferry them down from wherever they were, whether or not it was somewhere outside of Texas. And then we'd get the hopper fuel installed, either at the air tractor factory, for example, or specific mechanics.

And they might not have any type of radio installed. So obviously you'd bring a handheld in that particular situation. But as far as portable avionics, I used to carry a Garmin...

AERA and stuff. But nowadays, EFBs do 99% of what your avionics on your panel can do. So it almost eliminates the need for those. And we're lucky here in the U.S. to be able to have services like SiriusXM Weather. Do you find that you're able to get any type of in-flight weather capabilities outside the U.S., or are they just prohibitively expensive?

I wouldn't say they're prohibitively expensive. For a while, I think you still can. You can use either like a Garmin InReach or like an Iridium Go. You can get different types of satellite-based weather forecasting. They weren't necessarily the best for aviation, but it would give you something. Flight service has always been a great resource in route, whether or not it's radio or call up, you know, Nuke FIC or Reykjavik radio or something like that.

then you could probably get good information from them. But it's kind of the further away from the U.S. you go, the more old school you have to get. And when you're over the water, are you monitoring any particular VHF frequencies or are you chatting with airline pilots that fly by? What kinds of things are you doing? Yeah, you can. I will say this. The ADS-B coverage has become amazing. It used to be you had no...

service well i don't want to say service that they couldn't see you you'd start crossing the ocean and you'd be at 10 000 feet they just can't see you but nowadays with adsb the surveillance is absolutely amazing all over the world and so they can usually see you the technology for vhf radios has gotten a lot better there's still some places you really need an hf radio but

Nowadays, there's been crossings that I did in single engine aircraft that I had VHF coverage the entire way. And if you don't, obviously you can relay with in route frequencies to different airliners who are flying overhead.

However, depending on when, oftentimes my flights would not overlap with the airliners because they tended to fly later in the day or at night. And I was leaving at 5 a.m. in the morning from Greenland, which is, I mean, what flight leaves to Europe from the U.S. from the East Coast at 2 o'clock in the morning? So a lot of times I wasn't really overlapping with them, but every once in a while I would be.

Yeah, those times when you've installed an HF radio, do you rent one or how do you come up with an HF radio for those flights? You can rent them. Some people will invest in them and they'll install them before you go overseas, but there are portable setups that you can rent. Speaking of renting, for people that are doing one-time flights and they're interested in the rafts and as you described, the poopy suits, can you rent those?

I believe that you can rent all of it. I'm not quite sure if you can rent an oxygen bottle, but I know that in Goose Bay and then I believe up in Wick, you can still rent survival gear for your trips across. But you have to be in a certain route and you have to drop off the equipment and things like that. So it

it decreases the flexibility. So I invested in my own gear. Do you have any scheduled ferry flights coming up that you can tell us about? Well, I just finished one all the way from Montreal to Alaska in the middle of winter. And there's a few that are kind of in the works for some overseas flights coming up. And what kind of plane was that? I'm quoting a Brit Norman Islander, which I've already taken one overseas before. So we'll just see how that one plays out. A little bit on the slower side, but you've got like 10 hours of gas. So that's kind of nice. And

What kind of plane did you fly from Montreal to Alaska? Cessna 185. We did the import and actually just got our airworthiness certificate issued on it a few days ago. Sounds like fun. Well, Sarah, thanks so much for spending time with us here today. Where do people go to find out more about you and your work?

On my website, it would be fullthrottleaviationllc.com. I'm a very strong believer in mentoring. So if you have any specific questions, I'm always glad to be a mentor. And I make it a point that regardless of how many emails and calls that I get, I try to return every single one of them because I know what it's like to be on that receiving end where you're reaching out to people and they're not responding. So I really try not to be that person. Sarah, this has been fun. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having me.

And my thanks to Sarah for joining us here today. You can find out more about her and her work at FullThrottleAviationLLC.com.

And just a reminder that I love hearing from you and I read many of your emails on the show. If you'd like to send me a message, just go out to aviationnewstalk.com, click on contact at the top of the page. That's absolutely the best way to send me a message. And of course, I also want to thank everyone who supports the show in one of the following ways. We love it when you join the club and sign up at aviationnewstalk.com slash support.

To support the show financially, you can also do that at aviationnewstalk.com slash PayPal. We also love it when you leave a five-star review on whatever app that you're listening to us on now. And of course, if you're in the market for a headset, please consider buying a Lightspeed headset and using one of the links in our show notes, because if you use those links, they will donate to help support the show. So until next time, fly safely, have fun, and keep the blue side up. And remember that you can always go around. Go around.

coming down to your side baby sliding upside down you can always