The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is Through El-Paso, TX

Ben Zwebner returns with a journal from a ferry flight that demonstrates that getting from point A to point B isn't as easy as it sometimes seems.

So I need to get from Lewiston, Idaho to Gaithersburg, Maryland. That’s what I said to myself as I began to plan my travel itinerary, but instead of clicking the "Find Flights" of an airline website, I opened up an aeronautical chart, checked the weather and started drawing lines and checking performance graphs.

Rewind to a week before. I was contracted to ferry a Cessna 182 from Idaho to Maryland. The client provided me with information about the navigational capabilities of the aircraft; Garmin 530 GPS, fully functional VOR's, a DME and even the ADF worked! A walk in the park I thought, as just the week prior, I ferried a Piper Warrior from Rhode Island that had less operational equipment than a Model-T Ford. I estimated that the trip would take 3 days. The first day being just travel to get to the Cessna and the next two days spent on the actual transport. The client accompanied me on this ferry. He is a student pilot and he was joining me to gain experience on his new airplane.

We left from Dulles (where my client left his car) on a hop, skip and a jump flight to Spokane, Washington that took us through Chicago and Denver. The seller of the aircraft, who is a retired Pan Am 727 captain, picked us up and we drove down to Lewiston, ID. We arrived at Lewiston at roughly 6PM and we went to look at the airplane. This is where the client started to go over the last details regarding his purchase with the seller and I went on to check the general airworthiness of the airplane. The plane is a 1979 Cessna 182Q and is in excellent condition. The windshields were clear as crystal, the paint was good, the interior excellent, and the maintenance logs were flawless. I spoke with the seller to get some tips for flying the area from a local and we called it a night after a very long day.


DAY 2 – March 14th
The next morning I woke up bright and early. I had a goal in mind. That goal was to get the aircraft from Lewiston to the final destination in two days. The aircraft had the range, it had the performance needed to get over the Rockies and I had the oxygen that I would need. What I didn’t have was the right weather. This wasn’t too much of a surprise. I checked the weather the night before and I knew that there might be a problem. I went to bed hoping for the best and I pretty much woke up to the disappointing truth. Right over the Rockies, from north all the way south was a weather system. The kind of weather system that during the summer might not be a problem, however to fly through such a system in the winter would be dangerous if not fatal due to ice build up.

So I need to get from Lewiston, ID to Gaithersburg, MD and I have to get around this system. It's either that or stay in Lewiston for a day or two. I opened up my charts again and I checked the winds aloft. I was looking at the winds and it hit me! Winds around a low pressure system move in a counter-clockwise direction around the center of the system and the way the system was situated, I could take advantage of those winds and use them to swing south and then east and not lose a day. I started looking for fuel stops. Technically the Cessna can fly for 8 hours without refueling but I try to keep my legs to a maximum of 4 hours between rest stops to combat fatigue.

We departed Lewiston around 10AM and we headed out to the west. That’s right, to the west. The reason being that we had to stop at Pasco, WA in order to purchase some charts that we would need as we got further south, also going west allowed us to clear the west side of that weather system. After Pasco we headed south, taking advantage of 30 to 50 knot tailwinds which gave us the great groundspeed that I was counting on. As we climbed through 10,000 feet we turned on our oxygen system and continued to cruise at 13,000 feet. This was my first time flying the Rockies and I am sure that anyone who has flown the Rockies would agree with me, you might be at 13,000 feet but those mountains make you feel like you are flying at sea level. I kept thinking about a Far Side comic strip that I laughed at years ago:


After a little more than 4 hours we put down in Elko, NV. Elko's airport sits in a stunning valley and had little more than a runway, quaint FBO and a Piper Pawnee or two. My client went to arrange to refill our oxygen supply and put fuel in the plane while I went to check weather and plan our next leg. Looking at the options I decided that Phoenix was going to be the best bet, the reason being that the same system that sent us south, moved south with us. We picked up lunch at a local Mexican restaurant and took off on our second leg, an estimated 3 hour flight to Deer Valley Regional Airport just north of Phoenix.


The flight to Elko was uneventful. I was in awe of the beauty of the mountains and at their size and vastness of the mountain range. The flight from Elko to Deer Valley was very much the same but very different scenery. About an hour after we left Elko the terrain changed. The snow covered mountain range gave way to red sands, canyons and deserts. The clouds were gone, so was the chill in the air and it was replaced by haze and warmth. Now, when I say warmth that’s all relative, I pretty much mean that the temperature was at freezing rather than below freezing.


As we proceeded south the sun started to set, painting the terrain with an orange glow that just added to the natural red of the desert. The next thing I knew I was that I was over the Grand Canyon. I never imagined that this trip would take me over the Grand Canyon and this was the first time that I had ever seen it. It's for times like these that I love aviation. The Grand Canyon at sunset from the air, what more could I ask for?


As the skies changed from orange to purple we made our descent into Deer Valley Regional Airport. The lights of Phoenix twinkled in the distance and silhouettes of mountains painted the darkened horizon as I turned the airplane from base to final. Touch down was roughly 3 hours and 20 minutes after we left Elko. We pulled in to Cutter Aviation, ordered fuel and I went to check the weather again for our third leg of the day.

Checking the weather I was disappointed to discover that the favorable winds that I had seen that morning were no longer, furthermore, the weather was still less than friendly to the east. That and seeing that it was already night and we were after a 10 hour day, I decided to make Deer Valley our home for the night.

DAY 3 – March 15th
Yet another early morning, we grabbed breakfast at the hotel and headed for the airport. I got to say, I tip my hat to the controllers in the tower at Deer Valley. Deer Valley, like many other airports around Phoenix is home to a flight academy. Just like clockwork these guys start their engines. It's like a finely tuned machine. One after the other they start their engines and taxi for departure. Piper after Piper, a Warrior, a Seminole, another Warrior and so forth line up for departure short of runway 7R, in each plane an instructor and their student from somewhere in the Far East. The controllers work the radio in a manner that would make those who wrote the AIM sound like slackers.


We took off in the early morning sun and headed yet further south on our way to El-Paso, TX. Phoenix is green this time of the year and it looked like a tropical island from the air, minus the ocean of course.


We continued towards El-Paso with air temperatures slightly above the freezing mark when we entered the clouds. There forecasts showed areas of strong precipitation and thunder storms to the north of our routing but besides that, the weather wasn’t supposed to be hazardous. That proved to be wrong. The minimum en-route altitudes allowed for us to fly below the freezing level but for some reason ATC did not allow us down that low. It wasn’t long before I started to notice the first traces of ice forming on the landing gear and wing struts. We were roughly half way to El-Paso, TX when I asked the controller for lower altitudes where the temperatures were warmer. ATC gave us lower but not enough. After about 10 minutes we still had a respectable rate of ice build up. I asked again for lower and the controller wasn’t of much help. Don’t get me wrong, I am not blaming him. I am sure that he had his reasons. So, if we can't get to warmer temperatures, we need to climb out of the clouds. We were cleared for a climb and we just managed to break out of the clouds at around 11,000 feet. Once in the clear I started to assess our situation. From what I could see we had about a quarter of an inch of rime ice on the leading surfaces and landing gear.

We stayed above the clouds as long as we could. I asked for a block altitude and was cleared for one between 9,000 and 11,000 feet. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, Block Altitude allows me to make altitude changes at my discretion between the altitudes assigned to me. This allowed me to dodge cloud tops. The good thing about being on top of the clouds was that it allowed the sun to heat up the aircraft surfaces a bit and started to melt some of the ice. We were instructed to descend again as we closed in on El-Paso and we found ourselves back in the clouds and rain. The ice began to accumulate again but luckily enough, just as we were vectored over Juarez, Mexico, we broke out below the cloud deck and the temperatures were finally warm enough to melt the ice that glazed my wing. I flew the localizer/DME approach that brought us through the mountains and the landing was uneventful. Total flight time to El-Paso was 3 hour and 40 minutes.

After we taxied to yet another Cutter FBO (their service is excellent by the way), and parked we noticed that there were signs of an oil leak. We rationalized that the oil was leaking out of the breather tube but we got a mechanic to check it out anyway. The only problem with that was that it ate up 2 hours of our day.


Trying to make up for the lost time, I filed a flight that would take us from El-Paso all the way to Texarkana, AR. We departed and found ourselves in solid clouds the whole flight. This was fine because the temperatures kept us well in the clear of any danger of ice. As we punched along through the clouds, the tailwinds from the day before were no where to be found. After 4 hours of flying in near solid clouds, we needed a rest. We diverted to McKinney, TX just north east of Dallas. Now this wasn’t planned but we found ourselves parking at yet another Cutter FBO. We found ourselves a Holiday Inn and decided to call it a day after flying for about 8 and a half hours.

DAY 4 – March 16th
Guess what? Yup, another early morning! Today was the day, the day we finally get the plane back into Maryland. We left McKinney and heading east on our way to Parsons, TN. Why Parsons? Because it had the best fuel prices in that area, at least that I could find. At this stage of the trip there really wasn’t anything too extraordinary. 4 hours later, we landed in Parsons, KPVE. If you haven’t been there yet, they are a small top notch FBO. They are very friendly people and have a small town atmosphere. They let us use the crew car to get some lunch and warned us of the local sheriffs' favorite speed trap and sure enough, the sheriff was right there, just as they described!

The last two legs were also uneventful. The first of the two brought us into Dulles so that my client can go pick up his car and drive it back to Gaithersburg to meet me. The second leg had me flying solo from Dulles to Gaithersburg, MD. By the time I got in to Gaithersburg it was 7PM and dark outside. The landing at Gaithersburg was normal but it had a bittersweet feel to it. I felt great that I successfully ferried another airplane safe and sound but that feeling was mixed with a slight sadness that the adventure was over. Yes, I do this for a living, but that’s not why I do it. I do it because every leg, every airplane poses unique challenges and every ferry that I do is an adventure in its own right and I know no better way to make a living, than by waking up early in the morning, not knowing what lies ahead except that it's going to be an adventure.

Written by
Ben Zwebner

Ben Zwebner is a commercial pilot and flight instructor with over 1500 hours of flight time and an active ferry pilot. His website is www.theferrypilot.com.