388 Fly Farther, Fly Smarter: The Benefits of Getting High
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Have you thought about what altitude you should cruise at for maximum efficiency, safety, and comfort? Today, Dr. Katherine Cavagnaro busts the myth of the straight line route and explains how a little altitude and a little math can make all the difference. From flying over the Rockies to dodging drop zones, join us for a deep dive into smarter, safe cross-country flying. Hello again and welcome to Aviation News Talk where we talk in general aviation.

My name is Max Prescott. I've been flying for 50 years. I'm the author of several books and the 2008 National Flight Instructor of the Year. And my mission is to help you become the safest possible pilot. Last week in episode 387, we talked more about vectors to final and glide path behavior on RNAV GPS instrument approaches. So if you didn't hear that episode, you may want to check it out at aviationnewstalk.com slash 387. And if you're new to the show, welcome. Glad you found us. Now,

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And now let me tell you a little about Catherine Cavagnaro. She's an expert on spins, aerobatics, and upset recovery, and owns a flight school called Ace Aerobatic School, located at the Suwannee-Franklin County Airport on the campus of the University of the South.

In addition to holding ATP and CFI certificates, she's a professor of mathematics at the University of the South and has chaired the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Catherine is the 2020 National CFI of the Year and also serves as a designated pilot examiner. And now here's our conversation with Catherine Cavagnaro.

Katherine, so great to see you again. How's your summer going? Max, it's great to see you. Thanks for inviting me here. And yeah, the summer's been great so far. I had a really busy year at the university. And then after that ended, my son and I went off to Rome for a little over a week. Wow. Yeah, it was great. It was amazing. It was great to have that time with my son, but it's nice to get back to the States and to fly.

Yep, that's fantastic. Yeah, I can imagine as a college professor, you must just live for summer. It's one of the best parts of the job. I love the students. I absolutely love them. But wow, it's very intense during the academic year. So when summer hits and I can switch gears and just work on different projects, it makes me happy. That's great.

I was reading an article that you published for AOPA in June, and you were talking about how you were coming to California this summer, and it talked a little bit about those plans. Talk a little bit about how you would typically plan your route and your altitude and those kinds of things traveling from Tennessee to California. Yeah, so the first thing that I do is probably like everybody else, right? I put in Sewanee.

And I put in the airport in California that I want to visit. And obviously, that's a multi-day trip. I did it last year. I went to Seattle. It took me a little over a day and a half to get to Seattle. So it's a multi-day trip. And then I came down. Last summer, I came down Oregon, California, and then cut across Southern California and went back along the southern part of the United States. And this year, my plan is to actually do that in reverse.

But like anybody else, I put in Suwannee's Airport and the airport in the Bay Area where I want to land. And of course, the straight line distance is not going to work. And then I start to think about maybe some stops I want to make along the way. I've got friends all over the United States, and it might be kind of fun to stop in Colorado and maybe visit some friends and land on a strip that I've never landed there. So I start to tinker with my route.

to make the sections that are more manageable time-wise and that maybe, you know, cross some items off the bucket list, like visiting my cousin in Visalia, California, and visiting some friends in Texas, that kind of thing. And once I have it in those more manageable sections, you know, each one is still just a straight line.

But if I'm going to go, say, from here to, oh, I don't know, Oak City or someplace like that for a certain leg, I'm probably not going to go directly there.

Because I've got to worry about, well, first of all, am I going to go through airspace? I have to worry about legality issues, right? Am I going to be going through any restricted areas, any TFRs, things I want to avoid? Then there are issues with safety. I tend to, for example, I like to avoid drop zones. I live next to a very busy drop zone. And so I always, I don't go straight through that. I'll go around that. And then, of course, there's efficiency issues.

and safety. I love being over terrain where if I had some sort of anomaly, that would give me more options. And so those are the kinds of things that go through my mind. And thanks for highlighting this article today. The article in the June issue covers the thought that perhaps I'd like to invite folks to maybe

think a bit more as they choose a cruise altitude. So that was my June 2025 article. I also have an article that covers choosing a route, and that's in the December 2022 article. So sort of between those two articles, I'd like to

Maybe consider this an invitation to do just a little bit more than putting in your departure airport and your destination airport and thinking that that's going to be your route. As an FAA examiner, I see a lot of people who do...

private exams, instrument exams, commercial exams. And for all of those, they need to prepare some sort of a cross country, whether it's a VFR cross country or an IFR cross country. And what I see is putting in the A to B and very little more thought beyond that in choosing that route and choosing that altitude. And there can be some awfully good reasons. And

to take that extra time. Yeah, I think that that's probably become more common in the last 25 years now that we have GPS. Prior to that, the lines were more crooked, probably because they were navigating via VORs, but also because people thought a little bit more about some of the other considerations that you've just mentioned, such as restricted airspace and things like that. And certainly we've seen some accidents here recently

In the mountains where it's clear that people just decided, oh, I'm going to do GPS direct from South Lake Tahoe to San Carlos Airport. And unfortunately, they end up against the side of the hill because it's just about impossible to outclimb the terrain or the downdrafts without first flying north of the lake, getting some altitude and then heading on course south.

Now, as you think about crossing the Rocky Mountains, there are several kind of generic paths that I think about. Which ones do you think about as you're going from one part of the country to the West Coast? Yeah, last year, again, I went well around them on the northern route through Montana and such. I was going to Seattle and

And then for me, I wanted to hit the Bay Area where I grew up and also Southern California where a cousin of mine lives. So I never crossed the Rockies. I basically went around them to the north when I went out west and then around them to the south.

But even that, I followed significantly lower terrain than if you went around and in the Rockies, but it was still impressive and impressively high. For example, I was flying by the Grand Canyon in...

And I think I was at 13,000 feet there. The winds were pretty, it was pretty gusty. And it was just nice to be high for a number of reasons. And I think we're going to touch on some of those reasons in our conversation. Yeah, I think of three generic routes going east-west. One, which you just mentioned, would be going across the northern states. So, you know, probably Washington, Montana, you know, that area, southern Idaho, and so on.

Another would be crossing Interstate 80, which goes across southern Wyoming through towns like Rock Springs and then Salt Lake City, and then across Nevada by Elko and Reno, and then from Reno crosses the Lake Tahoe area. And that particular route, I think you could probably squeak through it.

10,000, 10,500. Might have to get a little bit higher than that as you go through the mountains around Salt Lake City. And then the other route, as you mentioned, would be the southern route. So that would be crossing through Arizona and New Mexico. And even if you were to try and flight plan a direct route that went across the Rockies, not only are you going to have to be very high, but there's just

huge amounts of restricted airspace that makes it pretty impractical. The only time that I've done a kind of a straight shot over the Rockies was with a gentleman who had a Cessna caravan and we flew IFR right around 15,000 feet and there was a route

They crossed somewhere around Mammoth Lakes, California, and got us to Colorado at 15,000 feet. But I think that just gives people an idea of just how high you have to be if you don't go around the Rockies. Right, yeah. Well, you had a cute title for the June issue, which was called The Benefits of Getting High. Now, I have to assume that you were talking about altitude. Talk about some of the benefits that you wrote about.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm definitely talking about flying at higher altitudes. And, you know, when I first started flying, one of my instructors told me that a sweet spot for the kinds of airplanes that we fly, which are light general aviation piston aircraft,

In terms of efficiency, there's a sweet spot in generally the 7, 8, 9,000 foot range. And so that always stuck with me that, you know, those are the altitudes that are most efficient. So my knee jerk was that. Now I have a Bonanza and of course I'm also really sort of nerdy and I love to get the POH and kind of tear it apart. And I just wondered, okay,

First of all, what did he mean by efficiency? Did he mean time efficiency or did he mean fuel efficiency or some combination of the two? So my POH has what I call a me diagram. And what it is, is the horizontal axis gives you true airspeed. The vertical axis gives you pressure altitude. And for each fixed power setting, there's a curve.

For example, at 65% power at sea level, you get, it looks like about 154 knots. That's what you would get in cruise flight. Using that same power setting as you go up in altitude, by the time you get to between 7,000 and 8,000 feet, you'll max out at about 163 knots true airspeed. And then if you go beyond that,

you are not able, you can keep that 2,300 RPM, but you can't maintain the 23 inches of manifold pressure. And beyond that, as you go up in altitude, your true airspeed goes lower. So what that means is that for 65% power, the sweet spot in terms of time efficiency is about 7,000 or 8,000 feet. And you know, that's where that maximum occurs.

And for a lot of the airplanes, I think normally aspirated, light GA, pistons, that's probably about the way it is. So I think he was right. But the type of efficiency that he meant was time efficiency. And I was curious about fuel efficiency. I have really conservative fuel minimums for BFR and IFR flight. I'm more than double the FAA minimums for both of those types of flight.

And so I'm always curious about fuel efficiency. Where am I going to get my best fuel efficiency? And that's not obvious at all if you look at the POH. What I did is I gave the table that gave the breakdown where it talks about for given power settings and altitudes.

your airspeed is and then what your fuel burn is. And what I did is I made a table and what was interesting to me is up until the service ceiling of the airplane, you're actually getting the best fuel efficiency as high as you can go. So while time efficiency maxes out in the 7, 8, 9,000 range, depending on your power setting, fuel efficiency, you should go as high as possible.

And so I set up some scenarios. For one, I set up a sample 650 nautical mile flight. And what I did is I compared going to various altitudes. And I took into account that in order to get to those higher altitudes where you're getting greater fuel efficiency, you're going to certainly burn more fuel getting up to those altitudes. So that's one downside of going to a higher altitude. But even...

Factoring that in, it was more efficient to go to the higher altitudes. Just for example, for that 650 nautical mile flight at 65% power, including the climb up to either 8,000 or 12,000, to go to 8,000 versus 12,000, 12,000 took me 15 minutes longer, but the fuel savings...

meant that I didn't have to land. If I went up to 8,000 feet, I would have had to make a fuel stop because I want two hours of reserve fuel. And so I was cutting too close. I was going slightly over that two hours of fuel reserve. So if I went at 8,000 feet, I'd have to land halfway.

or partway. Whereas if I went to 12,000 feet, I wasn't bumping up against my fuel minimums. So in that, I know it's counterintuitive, but in that case, the 12,000 feet was actually faster because I didn't have to make the fuel stop. So these are some of the considerations that

folks can be making when they're choosing an altitude. If you're choosing a lower altitude for time efficiency, it may not be as time efficient as you think. Yes, I remember initially figuring out that 8,000 feet seemed to be the sweet spot, and I just pulled up a Cessna 172 POH to kind of figure out how did I come to that conclusion. What I could see was

at that altitude, you get the fastest true airspeed. And yet, if you look just a little bit further back in the performance section and you look in endurance or maximum range, guess what? That's driven more by the percent power, lower percentages of power. You can fly longer and further. So in your particular case,

case, what you're telling me is you don't care how fast you are while you're in the air. You care about what your total time is to get from point A to point B. And to make a fair comparison, you've got to count all that time that it would take to descend down, make a fuel stop, climb back up again and be on your way. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So it's just an invitation to take a closer look at

and see if that sweet spot altitude is as sweet as you think it is. And I think you're talking about normally aspirated aircraft. Is that what your aircraft, Nikki, is? Correct, yes. Now, how would it change if she were turbocharged?

So there's going to be an analogous chart in the POH, and you'll just have to check it out. Certainly, if you have a turbocharged aircraft, you're capable of flying at higher altitudes, but the same principles are going to apply. Yeah, and I think the other factor which really applies becomes altitude.

the wind. Right. If you're going, for example, from west to east and you go up to flight level 250 in a turbocharged Cirrus, wow, you might get one heck of a tailwind. And yet if you're going from east to west, you might find it makes sense to stay lower just so that you could beat the headwind.

Right. One of the assumptions I'm making is that there are no wind. Yeah, certainly wind is something that we take into consideration. Although sometimes if, say, I'm headed west and the higher you go, the more wind you have.

You know, there's a point at which I just, I'll eat the headwind and I'd much rather be higher for actually a reason that I point out in the article. So some of the other benefits of being higher are certainly glide area. If you were to have any sort of an engine anomaly, like an engine failure or a reduction in power,

you're going to be able to get to certainly your glide distance. Let's just talk about engine failure. Your glide distance is a function of your height above the ground. So if you're 10,000 AGL versus 5,000 AGL, you can glide twice as far. But given that you might have optimal terrain in any direction, the glide area, if you think about that glide ring on your EFB,

That actually grows in area as a function of height squared. So if you're at 10,000 versus at 5,000, you'll be able to glide to an area that's four times as large. So sometimes I just decide I'm going to eat the headwind because I would much rather have more options if I were to have any sort of an emergency or an anomaly. Yeah, and I think options is just so important as a pilot. Mm-hmm.

I like to think of it in terms of margin. So another way to look at it would be in terms of capacity. And basically it means, hey, you've got spare capacity, you've got spare room if something doesn't go quite the way you were expecting it to. In fact, the people that fly RC airplanes have an expression. They say that you always want to fly at least two mistakes high.

And so all pilots make mistakes, right? And so if we know that we are human and that we are likely to make a mistake, why wouldn't you build in all that extra margin to make

be able to take care of that mistake and still be able to fly. Amen. Well, what are some of the other benefits of being up at higher altitude? Yeah, I was telling you about my flight near the Grand Canyon last year. And I'll tell you, the wind was kind of crazy. It was whooping.

And there was a lot of, you know, turbulence. It's probably light turbulence, but still it was constant and it was for an extended period of time. And as you know, turbulence can hurt an airplane if it's extreme enough. And of course you can't see it, right? So you only know you're in it once you've flown into it. So for a couple of reasons, when I was leaving, you know, the Southern California area and heading across Arizona, I

I wanted to go higher. And there are a couple of reasons for that. The first one is getting into turbulence. For example, my maneuvering speed, if you don't have a gust penetration speed in your POH, you should use maneuvering speed or below for, you know, if you're in turbulent air.

And just for example, in my airplane, maneuvering speed is 132 knots calibrated. And it's important to use the calibrated airspeed. Calibrated is connected to the stresses that are imposed on your aircraft. So my maneuvering speed is 132 calibrated. Now, if I were, say, flying at 75% power at 6,000 feet,

I would be getting 157 calibrated, which connects to 172 true. Okay. So 6,000 feet, 75% power. I'm basically doing 172 knots true airspeed. And again, 157 knots calibrated. So that's a good, what, 25 knots over my VA speed. Whereas if I'm up at 14,000 feet,

then of course I'm not going to be going as fast. But that penalty is I'm at 163 knots true airspeed. So that's only nine knots slower than at 6,000 feet

but that equates to 131 knots calibrated. That's under maneuvering speed. So one of the benefits of flying high is you can get that true airspeed that's connected to a calibrated airspeed that is easier on your airplane. So if I were to

get into any sort of gusts, it's going to weather it much better when I'm up at the 14,000 feet. Yeah, that's remarkable. I don't think I've ever read about that relationship anywhere else. How did you come up with this? Or have you read about this? Or you just kind of went through the numbers and figured it out? Max, I'm a nerd.

I just, yeah, I know that aircraft stresses are connected to calibrated airspeed. And as you go up in altitude, of course, true airspeed gets bigger. So where you can keep that, you can keep a more responsible calibrated airspeed. So that's just something I've always known. And I think there's a lot of people who don't know that. I talk about this on practical exams in the debrief.

When I make suggestions on maybe how they could have chosen a route or an altitude, in this case, an altitude, and it's just something to consider. So it's like you get the higher true airspeed and as a freebie, you get lower stress on your airplane. So that's kind of nice. And then the other factor, when I went out to California last year, it was so hot. When I landed in Visalia, it was 116 degrees Fahrenheit.

It was just beastly. I visited my cousin and then I left the next morning. And even though I left early, it was still really, really hot in Southern California. And at one point I was flying 9,000 and ATC asked me if I could take 11,000. I just said, I'll take 13 because I was so hot. I would happily have those higher altitudes. For

Fortunately, I do have an oxygen concentrator. So that's something that is available to me. If I want to go to those higher altitudes, I can do that. Of course, between 12,500 and 14,000, if you're going to be there for over 30 minutes, you need it. And then 14 and above, you need supplemental oxygen for no matter how long you're up there. But I got to tell you, I use it

when I'm a 9,000 as well. If you have access to supplemental oxygen or an oxygen concentrator, it's shocking how much better you feel after

a trip compared to not using it, even if it's not required. So I'd encourage people to use that even at altitudes where it's not required. Yeah, I totally agree. I find that if I'm at 10,000 feet for an hour, I can tell a difference. I'm just a little dull, a little listless. I'm just not as sharp, I think is probably the best way to explain it. So yeah, I always like to have oxygen anytime at 10,000, 9,000s.

even better. Now, if you would go ahead and explain exactly what an oxygen concentrator is, as opposed to, you know, some other type of oxygen devices we might bring into the cabin with us. Yeah, the traditional supplemental oxygen comes in tanks and you need to go fill those with oxygen. And then of course, when the tank is run out, it's run out. But an oxygen concentrator just concentrates the oxygen that's in the aircraft itself.

So it's just a little unit that I wear and I don't have to worry about filling bottles, which is really, really nice. Yeah, you've got to plug it into the power so that it runs continuously. Well, I made a mistake when I redid my panel. I thought that the old cigarette lighter was just old fashioned and I had it taken out.

That was dumb because they use, they, they go off that power and it won't go off USB power. So what I have is I have three batteries for it and I charge them up and each one lasts a good three, four hours. So, you know, I have enough battery power for the rest of the day, but that's,

The moral of the story is don't be like me. Don't get rid of that cigarette lighter. They come in handy, it turns out. Yeah. So oxygen is one of those important things and certainly a trade-off. And there have been accidents where people have decided to climb to high altitude and

didn't have oxygen with them and that's just not a good thing. Right, yeah. Actually, when I went out last year to Seattle, the first day I think I flew a little over nine hours or so, which is definitely longer than I usually fly in a day.

And I used the supplemental oxygen or the concentrator for a good chunk of the flight. And I couldn't believe it. I landed and I felt great. I didn't feel just good or okay like I might usually at the end of a nine-hour flight. I felt great. Yeah.

So it just, that really hit me. I think that day is where it really hit me how much better you feel and how much better you perform with that supplemental oxygen. Sure. And when you describe that, it kind of reminds me of what it used to be like flying with the older headsets that were not ANR, don't have the active noise reduction. And what I used to find with those old headsets, I'd fly for an hour and I'd come home and I was really depressed.

beat. And yet with the new ANR headsets, I'll fly for eight hours and I feel great. Did you ever fly with the older headsets? Did you notice that? I did. And another thing that's suboptimal about those old headsets is that in order to get decent noise reduction, there's a higher clamping force.

And so you'd end up with just this headache at the end of the day. There's no way I could have flown over nine hours with that old headset. Yeah. Vice grip headsets, not exactly the way to go. Right. Well, let's talk about some other considerations. What are the other kinds of things you think about when you plan longer trips? Yeah. And I alluded to it earlier about, you know, maybe making some bends. It depends.

Going GPS direct, putting in destination and departure airports and drawing a straight line between them, you know, that's the start. But I find that on practical exams, that's often where the thought ends. And as an example, actually, can I tell you a story real fast? Please go right ahead. Okay.

Okay. This is an old, I'm going to put you on the spot here. So yeah, there's an old math riddle that goes something like this. Okay. So you have people who are installing a railroad and I know this is unrealistic. Let's just say there's a section that's a nautical mile long and it consists of two, 3000 foot rails of steel. Okay. So they have put those down in the morning and

So you have two 3,000-foot rails, and they're right up against each other. They abut. And then they go off to lunch, and they come back in the heat of the day. And it turns out that each of those 3,000-foot lengths of steel is now actually 3,001 feet long.

So what happens is, of course, the steel doesn't bend and they buckle up in the middle. And so you get this triangle, right? It's an isosceles triangle. So you can think of it as like two triangles put together. So if you look at each right triangle, the base is 3,000 feet.

The hypotenuse is 3,001 feet. How high is that sticking up in the air? What would you guess? Oh, I think I would do a square plus b square equals c square. No, no, no. I know you would, but just like right off knee jerk. You're asking what is a if we were to solve for that? What is the height of these triangles?

You told me about this a couple of years ago, and I remember that the answer was pretty counterintuitive. I think that I thought it would not be that high. And I think you told me that it would be absurdly high, like 100 feet high or something like that. It's 77 feet high. A lot of times people think, oh, it's going to stick up like two feet or something in the air. It's 77 feet in the air. It's almost an eight-story building. Okay. So how does that relate to flight planning?

It does, because what happens is if you think about the 6,000 feet of steel as just your A to B, and then you think about detouring that 77 feet, maybe to give way to a drop zone or a restricted area, you're only adding two feet to your trip.

So what's deceiving is that we think that going from A to B along a straight line is by far the fastest, and of course it is, right? No wind. But you can actually deviate a significant way from that and you can add almost nothing to your trip.

So I'm going to now jump to an example. A few years ago, I gave an instrument practical exam to a candidate and I had assigned him an IFR flight from Portland, Oregon, so Papa Delta X-ray to Yakima, Washington, Yankee Kilo Mike. And what he did is it's not a terrifically long flight. He put it in his EFB and it's 104 nautical miles straight line distance.

And he planned this flight. I think he was flying a Bonanza. And now the Arocas in the area are 16,800. So if to fly from A to B, if you're just going to use the Aroca, he would be up in like the 17,000-ish foot range.

And he did some careful checking and he found that, you know, the objects that are the terrain and that quadrant was away from the route. But he justified that 15,000 would would be OK. And his airplane could do that barely. But his airplane could do that. He planned for 47 minutes and taking 3.4 gallons to make that trip.

Okay. And then in the debrief, I said, okay, how, why don't you consider this route? Instead of going direct, just go to the Battleground VOR, go Victor 468 to the Yakima VOR, and then Yakima, it adds 15 nautical miles to the route. But here's the thing, the MEAs are 9,000.

So if you're going to do it at 9,000, okay, first of all, you don't need the supplemental oxygen that you would have if you went at 15,000. It was exactly the same in root time because you're not climbing as to the 15,000 where at this Bonanza, that's getting a little high in terms of climb rate, but it used less fuel.

So I know it seems like going straight is the way to go, but this also followed lower terrain. So it was safer. You had more options if you were to have some sort of an anomaly. So I'm just hoping that folks, instead of just the knee jerk, put in departure destination, straight line, pick an altitude that optimizes winds,

And that's where it ends. I'm just hoping folks will take this as an invitation to think a little bit harder and they could increase their time efficiency, fuel efficiency, safety. Yeah, we've talked about something related to this in the past on the show, and that is that it would be nice to flight plan a route that keeps you always within gliding distance of an airport. And yet that's no longer going to be a straight line unless you're extremely high.

And yet, as you just described, doing a little zigging and zagging can allow you to get within glide distance of all these airports. And yet, it's barely going to add any time at all to your flight.

Right. And, you know, folks think that VOR navigation is, is old fashioned. But, you know, those old Victor Airways, the Victor Airway routes are often, they follow, they often follow lower terrain than the direct route. And, you know, VORs tend to be closer to airports as well. So you're probably going by more airports if you do that. And of course, you

you know that you don't have to use VOR navigation as your primary source if you're going to fly those routes. You're welcome to use your GPS navigation, but I'm hoping people will give those Victor Airways another chance. Well, I just have to ask, as an examiner, are you required to test people on the use of the VOR? And if so, are you finding people having difficulty using it? Yeah, well, the regulations have changed. So, you know, for example, on a practical exam,

We don't have to do any ground-based navigation anymore. It can be 100% GPS, which again, GPS is awfully nice. I certainly spend a lot of my time flying GPS navigation, but it's important to know

the VOR navigation, the ILSs and localizers and such. So I find that people are pretty flat-footed on that, unfortunately. So you talked about the leg that was nine hours of flying. I'm guessing there's a fuel stop in there as well too. Yes. And I certainly noticed over the years that there have been a number of accidents where people have bought a new airplane and they're flying it coast to coast to bring it home. They fly really long days. They end up

having an accident toward the end of the day. As you think about your long legs that you've done for these kinds of trips and you think about I'm safe, any of those letters kind of stick up for you and become significant on these trips? Yeah, I think certainly the, and this is not just for these long trips. For me, the one that I need to examine the most carefully is the F, the fatigue. That's the hardest for me to assess because

How well rested am I? And you're right. That's certainly a long day of flying and it involved two fuel stops. So yeah,

And at each point, that's something that I need to reassess. Sometimes it can be surprising. I think I got great sleep and then I'm dragging at 3 p.m., which indicates that maybe I didn't get the kind of sleep that I thought I did. But I felt very good that day. And again, that supplemental oxygen really, I think, really helped and made a difference. But I think whenever we are landing, we need to pre-flight for that next flight.

Yeah, I think pilots get a little overconfident about fatigue. And I don't know if part of that's just Superman syndrome where we think that we are really excellent at everything we do. And so, of course, therefore, we must be excellent at managing fatigue. And yet, you know, just being a really great pilot or being a really smart person doesn't really mean you can get around fatigue. Right. And, you know, I think the key is to have outs in whatever you do. For me personally,

I stopped. I went from Sewanee to Billings, Montana that first day. I didn't know I was going to end up in Billings, Montana. I didn't have a room. I didn't have anything that would make me feel like I had to get to Billings. And even if I had had a room and I had to eat the cost of that, it's okay. Right? So I think it's important to always have an out. And for me, it was always

I was going to fly as long as I felt fine.

And then when I got to Billings, that was, you know, good place to stop. Yes. And one time I was bringing my little seaplane back from Minnesota toward California and I landed at Reno. I'm sure there were prior stops as well during the day. And I took off. It's late in the day. I started climbing up and I thought, oh my goodness, this is a mistake. This is an accident waiting to happen. I am exhausted. I don't think I'd even left the tower. And I just said, hey, you know what?

I'm coming back. And it was one of the smartest things I did was just to realize, hey, even though I started this flight, there's no reason why I have to continue this flight. I could just make a 180 and go back and do what the smart thing was, which is to get some sleep at that point. Right. Yeah. So, you know, whenever I feel like I have to be someplace and there's sometimes I do, right. I have to be someplace. Right.

And if I plan on flying myself there, if I have to be there, then I always have backup airline tickets. Always. In fact, for this trip to out west, my sister took some time off for me. And, you know, I feel really obligated to be there while she's taken time off. So I have backup airline tickets. Yeah.

And I'll cancel them if the stars align and I fly myself. And if not, then, you know, I've relieved that I've taken that pressure off myself. So for me, general aviation flying is all about taking the pressure off yourself so that your flights are as safe as possible. It certainly is a lot more fun when you're not worrying about, hmm, am I running low on gas or, oh, is that...

Storm cloud in front of me going to cause me trouble. And gee, how much ice am I picking up? I totally agree. I want to be completely bored when I'm on a long trip.

Right. Now, let's see. There's one other F that I think comes into play. I'm surprised at the number of people that will go on even a three-hour trip and they don't bring any food along, no snacks, nothing. And yet everything I've read is that using your brain consumed glucose and that later on you're going to start making poor decisions. What do you do for food on these long trips? Yeah.

You want to know what I did on my trip out west? Sure. Actually, this was great. I actually went to Seattle to take a bread baking class. Oh, wow. So hats off to King Arthur that's near Seattle, Skagit, Washington. But they sent me home with so much of my bread that I had a bunch of croissants.

So I have actually a picture of myself eating a croissant passing by the Grand Canyon, and I cannot recommend that enough. But if you didn't just go to a bread baking class, then yeah, granola bars, I think are really good because they keep a long time. They're small. And that sort of thing is what I like to bring. Yep. That has been my go-to historically. I'd usually have a

fairly good-sized box of them in the car that I can just grab two of them and stick them in my flight bag or pocket or something like that. So, yeah, I think that makes total sense. But a chocolate croissant is better. Yeah.

Clearly, clearly you plan your flights better than I do. Catherine, thanks so much for spending time with us here today. Where do people find out more about you and your work? So I write the Flying Smart column monthly in AOPA Pilot Magazine. So you can always find me there. And I love reader feedback. I get a lot of feedback on my articles and I appreciate that. I

I'm in every other issue of AOPA Flight Training Magazine. So you can find me there too. I run Ace Aerobatic School in Suwannee, Tennessee. So aceaerobaticschool.com. Those are probably the main ways that aviation people find me. That's excellent. It sounds like this is a good start to what's going to be a fantastic summer for you. I hope that our paths cross while you're here in California and hope to see you again soon. I hope so too. Thanks for having me, Max. It's always a pleasure.

And my thanks to Dr. Catherine Cavagnaro for joining us again here today. You can find out more about her and her aerobatic school at aceaerobaticschool.com, and you can find more of her work in the pages of AOPA Pilot Magazine.

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 support.com.

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. You can always go around.

Coming down. To your side. Baby sliding upside down. You can all.