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The up-and-down weather of the past week limited flying activity, as fall cold fronts draped across the map. Plans for flight activity had to be rescheduled as the forecasts didn’t always work out. It’s all part of late-fall meteorology. There’s even talk of a polar vortex dipping down from the arctic before the month’s end.
Some folks were wondering about the airplanes they heard flying during the foggy mornings last week. There were clear conditions in Kansas City that allowed instrument training flights to easily depart at Downtown or New Century airports, flying on top of the clouds to practice approaches at Butler without worrying about seeing the ground.
In the absence of trip-taking, many local plane owners resorted to working on their aircraft last week. Chris Hall is rebuilding his 1956 Cessna 182 “Maude”, Travis Briscoe had his Piper TriPacer opened up for inspection, and the Club Skyhawk underwent landing gear service. Jeremie Platt managed to get aloft in his Grumman Tiger at one point.
The week’s news of the national aviation scene included the death of William Rataczak, the pilot who was flying the Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 hijacked by D.B. Cooper in 1971, the infamous parachute robber who took over the flight and demanded $200,000 in exchange for the passengers’ lives. Cooper’s demands were met and after the airliner left the ground again, he jumped off the retractable boarding stairs over Oregon, never to be found. Capt. Rataczak was 86.
Over at the Dubai Air Show in the Middle East, the crowd observing the aerial demonstrations of military and civil aircraft being showed off for buyers watched in horror as a home-grown Indian Air Force jet crashed right after takeoff. Fortunately, no one was injured on the ground, but the pilot of the Hindustani Aviation Limited fighter plane didn’t survive.
Confirmation was received last week that Raytheon Aviation, corporate owner of Beech Aircraft, is ending production of Beechcraft light airplanes, concentrating only on turbine-powered business aircraft. The famous Bonanza design, first flown 80 years ago, of which only four were delivered last year, and its twin-engine Baron sibling, notching two 2024 sales, have become economically unviable. With sticker prices of over $1 million for a Bonanza G36 and $2 million for a Baron, nobody can afford them.
Australia is the latest country to jump on the Sustainable Aviation Fuel greenie bandwagon. Environmentalists always point to those nasty old airliners as climate ruiners, so in an effort placate the protesters fuel companies try to make jet fuel out of most anything but petroleum. The Aussies are going to squeeze sugar beets to get something that’ll burn, which will probably work, if not financially successfully. Other stuff tried has been waste cooking oil, soybeans, and palm oil. None beat hydrocarbons.
The weekly quiz wanted to know what company built the FG1-D Corsair WW-II fighter plane. Some readers googled up Chance Vought Aircraft, creators of the bent-wing bird seen on the Baa Baa Black Sheep TV show, but that was the F4U. It was also license-built by Goodyear Aircraft, designated the FG1. For next time, tell us how long a Private Pilot’s medical certificate is good for. You can send your answers to kochhaus1@gmail.com.