I was based in Parkersburg, West Virginia and was Station Manager for Piedmont Airlines at the Parkersburg. West Virginia and Marietta, Ohio airport. It was a small airport with only Piedmont and USAir (known as Allegheny Airlines at that time) served the airport. “Red” (I have long forgotten his last name!) was manager of the local operation that serviced small airplanes that visited the airport. Red and I became good friends and he would let me do a little flying for him. I occasionally would take people out for a scenic ride ($15.00) or fly some charter flights for him. I didn’t get any pay, I just did for the fun of it.
I remember one couple that came out to the airport and wanted to fly around for about 15 minutes on a scenic ride. The particular plane I had been flying, a Cessna 172 was not there when I went over to the hangar, but a new airplane had just arrived, a Debonair, a 165 horsepower, sleek and fast and beautiful plane. Red was supposed to check me out but we hadn’t got around to it. Red was that way.
There was no way I was going to let this fine, young couple get away without their ride and making the 15 bucks for Red. I pulled the airplane out of the hangar and loaded the couple in it. This was a fancy airplane. The landing gear went up and down. I had never flown anything like it before. All of my flying had been done in fixed gear aircraft. In order to make sure I didn’t overlook anything, I get the manual out and go through the manual checklist. It took awhile but I got the couple out on their ride (and got Red his 15 bucks!).
Funny thing was - - I bumped into that couple a few months later at a social gathering and they confessed to me how scared they were. They told me that they could tell that I didn’t really know what I was doing since I kept referring to the plane’s manual. In looking back it was a pretty dumb thing to do. You don’t fly an airplane unless someone checks you out in it!
I flew a lot for Red. I flew some regular runs up to Detroit, Michigan taking some papers up there. That was a lot of fun and a great way to build up flying time.
Late one day Red called me and asked me to fly some people up to Wheeling, West Virginia. There were about 6-8 of them. Red said he would take the Twin Bonanza, a small twin-engine airplane, and take some of them on and for me to bring three others and he would meet me in Wheeling. I questioned Red about whether we could be there before dark since I had no night landings training. At that time the FAA required you to make three night takeoffs and landings with an instructor
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