AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - April 2015 - 79

At Leadville, airport manager and
mountain flying instructor Brown has
just purchased a Cessna 182 Skylane for
his new flight school, the Blue Manx.
(The owners are from the Isle of Man,
where the people are called Manx.) He
plans to offer a mountain flying course
that includes two to three flights, including visits to nearby airports such as Aspen.
Aspen is only 24 nautical miles away, but
there is a 13,400-foot mountain in the way.
(The highest mountain near the airport is
14,400 feet. FAA regulation 91.211 requires
a pilot to use oxygen when above 12,500
feet for more than 30 minutes.) Brown
says we not only fail to understand density altitude at his airport, we flatlanders
argue against it.
Aircraft owners tell him their airplane won't start, and he tells them to
lean the mixture. It works. They land but
their engine quits at taxiway Delta. "I
drive out and tell them what's going on,"
Brown said. They lean the mixture and it
works. A Cirrus owner taxied to the end
of the runway and came back, saying there
was something wrong with his engine.
Brown told him to lean the mixture and
he replied that couldn't be it. He called
his mechanic. The mechanic said, "Lean
the mixture." It worked. "They look confused when I tell them their mixture is too
rich," Brown said. It happens twice a week
all summer, he said.
"They get scared when they see they
are not getting a climb of 500 feet per minute," Brown said. The pilots turn on course
before reaching 500 feet and discover a
new problem-terrain slopes upward to
the north.
Standerfer noted that when you're in
a single-engine airplane in the Rockies,
you're flying in the terrain, not above
it, and GPS Direct is not a good idea.

Nowhere is that more true than at
Aspen, where mountain flying instructor Kraft operates Aspen Aero-Aspen's
Mountain Flying School. Kraft's numberone concern is that flatlanders won't look
at their charts because out the window,
"Everything looks the same," Kraft said.
Flatlanders get lost in the back valleys.
Within 10 minutes of taking off from the
Aspen airport, Kraft can show you some
valleys that will curl your headset.
Once lost in the Rockies-and that is as
scary as it sounds-many flatlanders have
no escape plan. "Have a Plan B and C," he
said. If there is a Plan B to return to safe
terrain, flatlanders seem reluctant to use
it early enough to escape their problems,
which include wind and rapidly changing
weather.
"Be up on gusty crosswinds and rapidly changing airport conditions," Kraft
said. When I flew with him years ago,
our training flight was wisely delayed by
higher-than-forecast winds. The weather
was sunny and beautiful. What could possibly go wrong?
You may find winds are too dangerous
to land, but you can't safely go around for
another attempt. "For an underpowered aircraft, a go-around is not an option," Kraft
said. "At Aspen, when strong spring winds
are out of the southwest you have to land to
the south on Runway 15. There are strong
downdrafts around the hills. One day we
were barely able to out-climb them in a
Cessna T210." Imagine flying at Aspen on
that day in a less-powerful aircraft.
"Knowing the winds aloft is critical,"
Kraft said. "If it is 20-plus knots, pay attention to the ridgelines."
Fellow flatlanders, seek a higher education.
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Mountain pass weather

Many of the Colorado mountain passes have automated weather reporting stations in
them. On the day this was written, winds at Berthound Pass were 39 gusting to 47
miles per hour, while winds in Monarch Pass were 44 gusting to 50 miles per hour.
To see all the Colorado mountain pass reporting stations, go online (www.fly
colorado.org/index.php/mountain-passes/mountain-awos).
-AKM

www.aopa.org/pilot AOPA PILOT | 79

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AOPA Turbine Pilot Magazine - April 2015

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