FAA "Flight Check" pilot - ask me anything

How does the physical identification of obstacles work during inspection approaches? Is this based on RADAR or some other remote sensing, or just visual inspection during the approach?

How often do you find obstacle issues on approaches, and how often are those severe enough to affect safety of flight?
 
TCABM said:
Okay, off the wall one. Have you ever checked TNX?
Click to expand...
I have not. That would be our Sacramento office.

I have checked many other USAF and Navy bases though. Get to taxi all around them checking TACAN receiver checkpoints and such as well. Have to taxi over the arresting cables very carefully with all our antennas hanging down!
 
Velocity173 said:
The last aircraft I ever talked to in ATC happened to be a FAA Flight Check back in early February 2000. It was a strange day too. I got asked at the last minute to do a PAR to get the station tactical ATC system certified. I wasn't even in the unit but I was the only one at Miramar at the time with experience in the Marine Corps tactical PAR (MATCALS). I grabbed the ops truck, drove across 24 L/R to the south side of the field. It was an HS.125 and I did two approaches for them. After the second approach, they said they were done and the pilot stated “those were the two best PARs I’ve ever gotten.” I thanked them and switched them to SOCAL.

Funny thing was, all the guys in the station radar room (base of tower) were listening to it. When I came back and walked into the radar room, an applause erupted and I got a bit of razzing over it. A fitting end to 8 yrs of service.
Click to expand...
Great story!

As a prior fellow ATC who used to run PARs, I do like flying PARs when the controller is good, and I do make sure to pass on my appreciation. I do always wonder if it causes some good-natured harassment!
 
RyanB said:
Drop me a line if you ever come to CHA or nearby and have some time!
Click to expand...
That's our Atlanta office's area, but you never know!

I was not too far away (relatively) last night and this morning, we did an airplane swap with our office at RYY so I was there overnight. So we do get over that way.
 
KCGS, College Park, MD had a very active and nasty complainer at the SE end of our runway. One day she called up the direct line to the Washington FAA office to complain of the worst buzzing she had ever had, and by a twin engine plane. She had the N number. It was flight Check for the Instrument approach.................
 
Eric Pauley said:
How does the physical identification of obstacles work during inspection approaches? Is this based on RADAR or some other remote sensing, or just visual inspection during the approach?

How often do you find obstacle issues on approaches, and how often are those severe enough to affect safety of flight?
Click to expand...

It's purely visual for the most part. We do have a procedure where we fly close by the obstacle at its altitude, mark the GPS coordinates and estimate our lateral distance, but we don't have to do that very often anymore, as the obstacle databases are 1) pretty good and 2) "they" can get more accurate position and elevation using photogrammetry these days.

The scenario where we find old Bob's ham radio antenna he just put up on 1 mile final is really, really rare, although that has happened (or any other similar undocumented building or tower). Further study would be conducted and the MDA/DA raised as appropriate. But mostly the obstacles we find are trees in the visual segment on an approach. Since trees grow, sometimes this becomes a problem over time. With LIDAR surveys, more and more trees are being entered into the obstacle database, but that's not universal and certainly isn't at all the smaller airports (and they still grow anyway). Sometimes these trees/obstacles are indeed severe enough to warrant "NA at night" or "Visual Segment - Obstacles" notes.

EDIT - I should flesh out this answer a bit. When the procedures are developed, they use an obstacle database that is really pretty good (and has gotten much better since I started on that side of the business in 2007). So on a flight inspection, we are mostly verifying that yes, the obstacle identified in the procedure package is the tallest/worst, it seems to be in about the right position and height, and that there aren't any others around that could be more of a problem. If there are, then the procedure gets sent back and we would try to provide as much data on the worse obstacle that we could. That would take a bit of research, and fortunately doesn't happen very often at all - except for the trees as mentioned above.
 
Last edited:
geezer said:
KCGS, College Park, MD had a very active and nasty complainer at the SE end of our runway. One day she called up the direct line to the Washington FAA office to complain of the worst buzzing she had ever had, and by a twin engine plane. She had the N number. It was flight Check for the Instrument approach.................
Click to expand...
I can completely believe that, and have wondered how often that happens. We do tend to fly much lower than most people fly such airplanes, and sometimes we have to hang out there for a while. One of our routine inspections has us at about 500 AGL, and others have us flying final well below normal glidepaths. So it doesn't surprise me at all.
 
TCABM said:
I don’t think I knew that. Did the prior ATC experience play a role in getting your current job?
Click to expand...
Well it sure wasn't just because of my bad-a$$ pilot skillz... :D

I obviously can't say for certain, but I have to believe it helped. It certainly helps do the job and work with ATC. I was USAF ATC for 11 years, although only at the unit level for about the first 6 of those. But did get tower and radar certifications at multiple facilities, home station and deployed.
 
Last edited:
This question comes from me witnessing a flight check aircraft about 22 years ago that was on short final for runway 18 at MSN, less than 100 AGL, with the gear up.

Do you still fly approaches with the gear up, and if so, what do you do to make sure that the gear really is down on that last time? :o
 
RussR said:
That's our Atlanta office's area, but you never know!

I was not too far away (relatively) last night and this morning, we did an airplane swap with our office at RYY so I was there overnight. So we do get over that way.
Click to expand...
Cool, I didn’t realize there was an office at RYY. I’m a frequent visitor there. :)
 
  • Like
Reactions: WDD
Is KPWA a training airport for you all? It seems they have flight check notams more frequently than every 18 months. I think I’ve seen 2-3 in the last year alone.
 
RyanB said:
Cool, I didn’t realize there was an office at RYY. I’m a frequent visitor there. :)
Click to expand...
Say…….. since you have an office at KRYY, see what you can do to get their PAPI lights working :).
 
Last edited:
RussR said:
Great story!

As a prior fellow ATC who used to run PARs, I do like flying PARs when the controller is good, and I do make sure to pass on my appreciation. I do always wonder if it causes some good-natured harassment!
Click to expand...
Well to be fair, while I had more GCA experience than anyone in the radar room, the MATCALS PAR (page 5) was pretty darn accurate. It was state of the art back in the 80s but they got rid of it in 2014.

One thing I was wondering about. I seem to recall in Thailand they were checking our TACAN, PAR and SA but don’t you all check radar coverage as well? I seem to remember that in order to chart our MVAs we needed confirmation that the Flight Check was still under radar coverage.

 
Last edited:
Good article on the AF Flight Check guys. I remember we could use non FAA Flight Check with our tactical gear but we could only control military aircraft IFR. No civilian until we got an FAA Flight Check.

www.airandspaceforces.com

This Little-Known Air Force Team Flies Dangerously In the Name of Safety

The Air Force 375th Operations Group Detachment 1 performs a little-known mission that military aviation depends on: combat flight inspection.
www.airandspaceforces.com www.airandspaceforces.com
 
flyingcheesehead said:
This question comes from me witnessing a flight check aircraft about 22 years ago that was on short final for runway 18 at MSN, less than 100 AGL, with the gear up.

Do you still fly approaches with the gear up, and if so, what do you do to make sure that the gear really is down on that last time? :o
Click to expand...
I can't speak to what they were doing 22 years ago, but SOP is to be configured with gear down and partial flaps (depending on airframe) for every low approach.

This does means we go through a LOT more gear and flap cycles than the average King Air or Challenger. It would not be uncommon to have 15-20 gear extensions and then retractions in a single sortie. Sometimes we just stay "dirty" depending on the operation.

Putting the gear and flaps down does reduce (but not eliminate) a lot of EGPWS warnings.
 
Last edited:
Sierra1 said:
Is KPWA a training airport for you all? It seems they have flight check notams more frequently than every 18 months. I think I’ve seen 2-3 in the last year alone.
Click to expand...
Two answers - PWA is part of our regular flight profile when we need to recalibrate our own equipment. So we are in there fairly regularly. But those flights do not use the Flight Check call sign and as far as I know NOTAMs are not sent for those (since it's just a receiver calibration, not an actual flight inspection, we do not get any kind of priority handling).

Second answer - the 540 day periodic inspection isn't for the airport, it's for each approach and NAVAID. PWA, like many airports of its size, has 2 ILSes, a VOR with 3 approaches, several RNAV approaches, and a RADAR approach. It initially seems like it would make sense to match them all up, and sometimes it does, but often that doesn't work out or is undesirable for many reasons:

- Half of doing "everything" is opposite direction.
- We clog up the airspace for much longer.
- If we did everything tomorrow, and then 4 months later the ILS needs a new antenna due to lightning or something, we have to go back for that ILS. Do we then do everything again? Nobody likes that, so now the inspections and recurrent requirements are staggered. Which actually generally works better anyway - spreads out the impact.

So I can easily see 2-3 flight check NOTAMS a year at somewhere like PWA.
 
Last edited:
Velocity173 said:
One thing I was wondering about. I seem to recall in Thailand they were checking our TACAN, PAR and SA but don’t you all check radar coverage as well? I seem to remember that in order to chart our MVAs we needed confirmation that the Flight Check was still under radar coverage.

Click to expand...

We do check RADAR coverage during a commissioning of a new system. It's fairly rare, and I have never done it, so I can't speak to specifics but that sounds about right.
 
Velocity173 said:
Good article on the AF Flight Check guys. I remember we could use non FAA Flight Check with our tactical gear but we could only control military aircraft IFR. No civilian until we got an FAA Flight Check.

www.airandspaceforces.com

This Little-Known Air Force Team Flies Dangerously In the Name of Safety

The Air Force 375th Operations Group Detachment 1 performs a little-known mission that military aviation depends on: combat flight inspection.
www.airandspaceforces.com www.airandspaceforces.com
Click to expand...
Our offices are on the second floor of the hangar, theirs are on the third. We fly with them regularly, they work into our crews just like our own people. I've flown with most of the people in that photo. It's a pretty decent article.

We leave the flight inspections of stuff in combat zones to them, though!
 
Last edited:
are job openings across the different regional offices handled/posted independently, or is the hiring "centralized" and then people have to accept a job offer based on what's available at the time of job offer?

What's the demographic blend/composition of your workforce? 121 career changers, post 65 retirees, .mil retirees, civilian 135 or ATP min types? I'm told ex parte it's a 50+ age group dominant, just curious.
 
RussR said:
Two answers - PWA is part of our regular flight profile when we need to recalibrate our own equipment. So we are in there fairly regularly. But those flights do not use the Flight Check call sign and as far as I know NOTAMs are not sent for those (since it's just a receiver calibration, not an actual flight inspection, we do not get any kind of priority handling).

Second answer - the 540 day periodic inspection isn't for the airport, it's for each approach and NAVAID. PWA, like many airports of its size, has 2 ILSes, a VOR with 3 approaches, several RNAV approaches, and a RADAR approach. It initially seems like it would make sense to match them all up, and sometimes it does, but often that doesn't work out or is undesirable for many reasons:

- Half of doing "everything" is opposite direction.
- We clog up the airspace for much longer.
- If we did everything tomorrow, and then 4 months later the ILS needs a new antenna due to lightning or something, we have to go back for that ILS. Do we then do everything again? Nobody likes that, so now the inspections and recurrent requirements are staggered. Which actually generally works better anyway - spreads out the impact.

So I can easily see 2-3 flight check NOTAMS a year at somewhere like PWA.
Click to expand...

Ah awesome. I wondered why I saw them so often there, noticed one just the other day and saw your thread. Thanks for the answer!
 
hindsight2020 said:
are job openings across the different regional offices handled/posted independently, or is the hiring "centralized" and then people have to accept a job offer based on what's available at the time of job offer?
Click to expand...

The jobs are generally listed on usajobs.gov as "multiple locations", which means one ad and one pool of eligibles to fill whatever openings are available. During my interview, near the end they asked me to rank my preferred locations. For me it was easy, since I wasn't about to move and I told them that. And fortunately there was an opening at my location. But had there not been, I would either have had the choice of accepting whatever location came in the job offer, or to turn it down.
hindsight2020 said:
What's the demographic blend/composition of your workforce? 121 career changers, post 65 retirees, .mil retirees, civilian 135 or ATP min types? I'm told ex parte it's a 50+ age group dominant, just curious.
Click to expand...

Pretty much all of the above with the exception of post-65 retirees. We don't have any of those at our office, it's possible there are some at the other offices, but I'm not sure. We definitely have former furloughed airline pilots, retired military, corporate/GA folks, etc. Pretty good mix. The largest group is definitely the former military pilots though, especially as we have the Air Force Det that does the same job right upstairs and flies with us regularly too. Easy job transition.

You're pretty accurate on the age range. 50-65 is most of the pilots in the group. Although we do have some younger (one in my hiring class was probably mid-30's), a lot of those guys have (with the recent airline hiring boom) decided to go the airline route after spending a while with us.

The people that seem to stay around are those that like the work, which is different (and more complicated) than flying people and stuff from A to B.
 
Last edited:
RussR said:
Well you do need the 500 multi hours. There are no waivers I am aware of.

usajobs.gov, search for job series 2181 with the FAA, that should return the correct results. I think they're just posting them under "Airplane Pilot" right now, so you have to read the description.
Click to expand...

I should add a big addendum here that I usually remember to when talking with interested pilots, but forgot here.

The pay range reflected on the usajobs.gov add is technically correct, but not usefully correct. For the "multiple locations" ads, they do not include locality pay or (in our case) special duty pay. This causes the pay range to seem far lower than it actually is.

The current job opening https://www.usajobs.gov/job/789893800 lists the pay as:

  • Salary​

    $88,520 - $135,987 per year

    The salary listed does not include special rate pay. Special rate pay will be determined by the location of the selectee.


  • Pay scale & grade​

    FG 13 - 14

Which is all technically correct, however the statement about not including special rate pay is really super important. Special rate pay for the GS-13 level is a minimum of 45%, and is higher in some areas. For GS-14, the special rate pay is 35%, higher in some areas. This obviously makes a huge difference.

So the pay range in OKC, for example, which has the 45%/35% special pay rate, is really about $130,000 (GS-13 Step 1) to $186,000 (GS-14 Step 10).

I know more than one person who has passed on applying for Flight Check because they thought the starting pay was $88k. $130k might have made the difference.
 
This one time, at Freeway... Flight Check flew an approach. That was cool. :cool:
 
pburger said:
Have you ever flight-checked a IAP or SIAP to a turf runway?
Click to expand...
I had to think about that for a minute. No, I don't think I have. There aren't very many anyway.

I've done plenty of private approaches to private airstrips/airparks and such, but they were all paved.
 
Was talking to a member about my work trip coming up on Monday, and he thought it would make good posting here as an idea of what we do day-in, day-out.

This is a Monday - Friday trip, which is rare, most are Tuesday - Friday, but when we are working at the larger airports sometimes that has to flex some. It is in a King Air 300. Memphis is a slightly unusual major airport. Most major airports we inspect as much as we can in the middle of the night when they're not busy. Memphis, though, has Fedex flying all night long, so we do our inspections in the day there, during slow times coordinated with ATC.

Monday morning we'll head out from OKC to Memphis where we have a standard periodic check on the MEM ILS 36C. An ILS check like this takes about 1.5 hours, because we have the ground techs put the facility in various de-tuned configurations, right up to where the facility would start alerting ATC and shutting down, to make sure it's still usable up to that point with various "failures". Then after fuel/lunch we'll head to ARG, Walnut Ridge, AR for a quick check of their LOC 18 and all of their RNAV approaches for new obstacles, lighting, etc. Then Jonesboro, AR has an amendment to their RNAV RWY 31, we'll check that out, then we will check out the NE quadrant of the GQE VOR at a distance of 70 nm, make sure it's usable (signal strength, etc.) with the VOR MON program. Back to Memphis for overnight.

Tuesday morning is a periodic check on the MEM ILS 18C. Lunch, fuel, then over to Batesville AR for their LOC 8 and RNAV 8 and 26. Back to MEM for overnight.

Wednesday is going to be a challenging day. MEM ILS 36R had their localizer shack replaced - we're still getting data on what we'll need to do there, but it may be a more involved inspection to tighter tolerances. They also replaced the ILS 36R DME with a new type of DME system, so we need to verify that's usable throughout the service volume of the Localizer. MEM ILS 18L is next, where they replaced the lower antenna of the glideslope (I don't know why, storm, earthquake, godzilla attack maybe) so this requires some in-depth evaluation and possible adjustments to the antenna. I can see the combination of the two being a 4-hour sortie, especially if they have to make some adjustments on the ground. This is all before lunch and our brains will probably hurt. Then lunch, fuel, and over to Corning, AR where they put in new PAPI lights - we have to check the angle, left-to-right visibility, and clearance below the glidepath in case you're a little low. Finish the day with a periodic check of the New Madrid, MO RNAV 18 and 36. Back to MEM overnight.

Thursday morning is pretty easy, periodic checks of the Marks, MS RNAV 2 and 20, El Dorado, AR RNAV 4, 22, and -A, then new PAPIs at Mena, AR RWY 17. Probably lunch and gas in Fort Smith or Bentonville. Then on to the DGD VORTAC for a periodic check which consists of flying one reference radial for about 10 nm, and flying the one approach off that facility, recording the signal parameters and comparing to tolerances. Over to Lawrence, KS for amendments to their RNAV 15 and 33. Overnight probably at MKC.

Friday morning up to St Joseph, MO for a periodic inspection of their PAR to RWY 17. These are kind of fun inspections, we are making sure the on-course, on-path depiction on the radar scope matches what we're seeing in the cockpit and properly lines up on the runway. It helps to have good controllers when we do these! We'll fly it in a few different configurations of radar settings as well. While there, we'll do a periodic inspection of all the RNAV procedures there as well. Then a comparatively long leg down to Ponca City, OK for amendments to their RNAV 35 and VOR-A procedures, and then back to OKC to end our week!

It will be a busy week, but nothing here is very out-of-the-ordinary except for Wednesday morning's work which is a little unusual. All of this is subject to change with weather, ATC traffic, and other issues that arise.

Oh, added to that, this trip is a checkride for the mission specialist, meaning a mission specialist-evaluator will be on board watching him work. "Checkrides" in this job last all week. Our pilot jobs up front are basically to not screw things up and make life harder for the MS!
 
I'm trying to remember if I've already asked this question of you, so if I have I claim CRS.

When doing obstruction evaluation, is that something simply done visually or is the aircraft equipped with any kind of sensors to better help detect and determine the actual proximity of an obstruction?
 
midwestpa24 said:
I'm trying to remember if I've already asked this question of you, so if I have I claim CRS.

When doing obstruction evaluation, is that something simply done visually or is the aircraft equipped with any kind of sensors to better help detect and determine the actual proximity of an obstruction?
Click to expand...
Which leads to my question …

What are your weather minimums for flight checks?
 
midwestpa24 said:
I'm trying to remember if I've already asked this question of you, so if I have I claim CRS.

When doing obstruction evaluation, is that something simply done visually or is the aircraft equipped with any kind of sensors to better help detect and determine the actual proximity of an obstruction?
Click to expand...

It's visual. If we see something that we think might be a problem, we have a few techniques to try to get a reasonably close lat/long and elevation, but then we send it over to the obstacle team for further analysis. We may take pictures of it, or note "north of the road, east of the mall" to assist in finding it in the database (if it's in there) or aerial imagery if it's not.
 
iamtheari said:
Which leads to my question …

What are your weather minimums for flight checks?
Click to expand...
Depends what we're doing. If it's something where we don't need to be visual (like, checking an airway at the MEA), then it can be IMC. But most of our inspections we do have to be visual. Normally we do most of our checks VFR, so normal VFR minimums apply, specifically cloud clearance is usually the limiting factor. On an ILS inspection, for example, most of our work is done at 1500 AGL, so a ceiling of 2000 is usually required. But if ATC's MVA and traffic load permits we can do those IFR as well and not worry about cloud clearances.

For obstacle checks on procedures we normally want to be visual from the FAF inbound, but can accept an IFR approach clearance and cancel once we break out.

As you can imagine, the worse the weather is, the less ATC wants us clogging up the airspace, so sometimes we could probably do it but it's better to just reschedule and come back another day (or even later that day).
 
RussR said:
Was talking to a member about my work trip coming up on Monday, and he thought it would make good posting here as an idea of what we do day-in, day-out.

This is a Monday - Friday trip, which is rare, most are Tuesday - Friday, but when we are working at the larger airports sometimes that has to flex some. It is in a King Air 300. Memphis is a slightly unusual major airport. Most major airports we inspect as much as we can in the middle of the night when they're not busy. Memphis, though, has Fedex flying all night long, so we do our inspections in the day there, during slow times coordinated with ATC.
Click to expand...
What the N-number? I'd love to see what your week looks like. :oops:
 
donjohnston said:
What the N-number? I'd love to see what your week looks like. :oops:
Click to expand...
N84, operating as FLC84. Our flights are blocked from public visibility on flightaware and flightradar24, but you can find us on adsbexchange (either N84 or FLC84 will work).

Fun fact: N66 - N84 are King Airs. N85 - N95 are Challengers. (Some numbers are skipped in each.)
 
I’m thinking you can claim “most iaps conducted” of all pilots, all aircraft, in this country, ever.
I wonder if there is something powerful there that could be shared with us average users of the system.
I’m sure you have nailed down all your entries to procedures, configurations, airspeeds, button pushing to an exact science - and have handled enough unusual occurrences (conflicting traffic, equipment drop-outs maybe?) that you could teach us a thing or two.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top