The Cape Air Experience, Volume 1
I had the time of my life flying for Cape Air for 2 years, during the difficult period of July 2001 to June 2003. At a time when most of the major airlines were struggling with bankruptcy and furloughing pilots left and right, Cape Air was operating in the black and sharing this good fortune with the employees through a fair and equitable ESOP plan.
The events of 9/11 kicked our butt like everyone else’s, but the company stayed flying, management took a pay cut, and not a single pilot was furloughed.
Cape Air’s business plan is similar to that of Southwest Airlines, where you operate in a small niche market and carefully grow into other lines that show a potential for profit. Like Southwest, we operated only one type of airplane, so the training of pilots, keeping an inventory of spare parts and the maintenance of the fleet were greatly simplified. Cape Air operates the Cessna 402, which in its Regional configuration, seats the pilot and 9 passengers. There are no cockpit doors or flight attendants and your co-pilot was always one of the passengers. Basically, the Captain did it all. You were expected to fly, interact with the passengers and keep to a nice tight schedule. When I was there, the company had 50 airplanes and 100 Captains, 10 of whom were women. Our President and CEO was an ATP with plenty of experience, and took a checkride every spring so he could fly some lines in the summer and, “keep his hand in”.
The Cape and Islands area of Massachusetts was a great place to fly, the routes were short and the passengers (for the most part) were friendly. Flights were typically conducted at 1000 to 3000 feet, so seeing the whales spouting, or the seals playing on Monomoy, were frequent occurrences. Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard are beautiful places to visit and flying in and out of there, sometimes 6 times a day is truly awesome. In the summer, Nantucket is the second busiest airport in New England with only a few operations less than Boston’s Logan. Most of the lines I bid were the Nantucket to Boston round trips, the Vineyard / Boston / Vineyard legs or the Vineyard / Providence sequences.
The weather was uniformly beautiful on the Cape, however, when things were occasionally “down”, they were really DOWN. Nantucket, or the Rock as we lovingly called it, is officially nicknamed, “The Grey Lady”. This is in reference to the fog that sometimes blankets the island, and during these conditions, approaches to minimums in “indefinite 100 and 1800 RVR” were commonplace. We operated our piston powered Cessnas in a single pilot FAR Part 135 environment. These are raw data, steam gauge airplanes with no glass or GPS, and we consistently got in when the corporate and fractional jet jocks missed and diverted to Hyannis or Boston.
At Cape Air we honored the jump seat agreements of all other airlines, even if they wouldn’t allow us to jump on their flights. It was common to pick up an airline Captain or F.O. for a major carrier who finished his duty period in Boston and was going to spend a few days in Nantucket. Naturally we’d put them in the right seat for the 35 minute trip down to the Rock, or 45 minutes if it was IFR. It was always cool to sneak a peek out of the corner of your eye at these 3 and 4 stripe superstars while you hand flew the ILS when the weather was down and snotty. They had just completed what they considered a “tight” approach into Logan, which consisted of monitoring the autopilot and “autoland” function in their Airbus or Boeing. Now they’re sitting next to you with one eye watching the altimeter unwind to sea level, and the other eye frantically searching for the approach lights. Sorry Captain, but you never really “see” the approach lights when it’s that foggy. However, that vague pulsing in the windshield when your needles are centered at the Decision Height can only be one thing over the otherwise dark island of Nantucket. The next instant an indistinct image of what could be a line of centerline lights seems to appear in the murk and the gentle bump of another landing lets the poor soul know he can start breathing again. Oh yeah, those landings were a lot of fun.
By the way, if you are from the FAA and wish to take exception with that last paragraph, my lawyer wants you to know that:
The preceding description is NOT the policy of Cape Air…
The preceding description is solely my opinion, with appropriate poetic license taken…
Every single approach light, individually and in sequence, was always positively identified, every single time, on every single approach that I’ve ever conducted…
FAR 91.175 (c), FAR 135.225 and Company Ops Specs always governed…
Kid, don’t try this at home…
More fun and semi-truths will follow in future installments.
Rob Belisario