Different Circles

“Too low and too tropical for icing concerns,” Suzie advised him. “So don’t worry about that.”

“Okay,” Jake said. He actually had not been worried about that until she mentioned it.

They broke out of the clouds at eleven thousand feet, bright sunshine now filling the aircraft. Both pilots put on their aviator sunglasses to combat it. Jake looked around nervously, seeing nothing but cloud cover as far as the eye could see in every direction—cloud cover that extended well into their destination and would not break up until some fifty nautical miles north of the coast of Venezuela. He had absolutely no visual references other than the possibly misleading cloud horizon. No mountain peaks, no cities, no terrain at all. Even though he had trained for this and knew what to do, he had never been behind the controls in such a situation before, having always avoided it as a matter of course.

His confidence grew, however, when the plane and its navigation system kept him exactly on course, making turns when they were indicated, the little airplane on the GPS map and the navigation screen tracking exactly along the line, even when the line angled in another direction. His VOR navigation tracked as a backup, offering even more reassurance.

“Nothing to it,” Suzie told him. “If fact, when you do it as much as I do, it gets a little boring. Sometimes I hand-fly in IFR just to break the monotony.”

The nervousness came back when it was time to descend. They dropped back into the cloud cover and Jake knew they would not break through the ceiling until they were just a minute or two from touchdown.

Suzie talked him through it.

“You’re doing great,” she said, her posture relaxed, her hands to her side, well away from the controls. “Everything is just the same as a normal landing except the autopilot is flying it and you can’t visually confirm your references.”

“That’s a big difference,” Jake said, watching as they made the last turn toward the runway and started final approach. Outside, there was still no visibility whatsoever. He could barely even see the wings and the engines.

“All right, there you go,” she said. “We’re at forty-six hundred and on the line. You should be able to catch the glideslope any minute now. Switch to approach hold mode and watch for capture.”

Jake hit the button for approach hold and watched as the nav radio switched to the ILS frequency. They continued forward for another minute or so, still traveling at 220 knots indicated on auto-throttle (the auto-throttle was something that Jake had already embraced with enthusiasm. It was one less thing to concentrate on during climb and approach). Finally, the horizontal indicator started to move upward. The entire plane lurched a little, the nose going down as the autopilot followed the electronic glide slope.

“That’s capture,” Suzie said. “Now just do everything else like normal. Reduce speed when indicated. Drop your flaps when indicated. Drop your gear when indicated. All just like on a manual landing. The only thing you’re not doing is steering and manually descending.”

“This feels so weird letting the plane fly when I can’t see,” Jake said, chewing his lip a little, his eyes staring intently at the glide slope indicator. It was perfectly centered.

“Like I said,” Suzie told him, “you have to learn to trust it. Once you do, you’re home free.”

Jake nodded and continued to concentrate on his instruments. And then, just 1300 feet above the ground, they dropped out of the cloud cover and he saw the airport a little more than a mile ahead. He was perfectly lined up for Runway 09, could see the big number painted on its surface, directly ahead. He breathed a big sigh of relief and then reported to Barquisimeto Approach that he had the runway in sight. They acknowledged. He had already been cleared to land.

“All right,” he said happily. “Back on familiar ground. I’m taking over now.”

“No,” Suzie said. “Don’t do that.”

“Why not? I can see the runway now.”

“It’s part of learning to trust the ILS,” she said. “Let it take you down to just before touchdown, to two hundred and fifty feet AGL. That’s when you take over.”

Jake gritted his teeth and did as she asked. His left hand rested on the yoke and his right on the throttles, but he made no inputs. He now had the flaps fully deployed and the gear down. His speed was set at one hundred knots indicated. The glideslope indicator was still perfectly centered. The thing really did work. Who would’ve thought?

He shut off the autopilot at 250 feet, just as they were crossing over the highway that ran past the airport. He made a few minor adjustments to the yoke and the rudder, throttled down just a tad, and touched down neatly on a centerline that was slick with rainwater. The plane hardly made a thump.

“Very nice,” Suzie told him as he deployed the reverse thrust and retracted the flaps. “Almost like you knew what you were doing.”

“Almost,” he agreed.