An airplane works in the sky and sleeps in a hangar. The hangar’s owner is called a Fixed Base Operator, or FBO.
Our airplane lived in the same FBO for six years. Their mechanics were dedicated, licensed and customer-oriented. We paid for fuel, hangar and maintenance without question, and happily referred student pilots and other customers to our FBO.
One day our operator put up strange posters declaring “We May Not Be The Best, But We Are The Best Among The Worst.” Then, last May, a joint CAAP-ICAO audit team found that our FBO was not authorized to maintain airplanes.
I began to look for a new home.
In September, ‘The Best Among the Worst’ accused us of writing “blogs” (we didn’t) that caused them “embarrassment and obvious harm” (I thought it was their failed audit that caused them embarrassment and obvious harm).
A day after my birthday, the operator sent me a letter asking us to leave. After six years and tens of thousands of dollars in maintenance, fuel and hangar fees, we got a letter! They wrote that our marriage had gone sour. I didn’t realize we were married. I thought I was in a customer-contractor relationship. I was mistaken.
That same day, we found damage on our airplane’s tail. Later the FBO’s lawyer explained to me in a letter burdened with bad grammar that the tail is not as important as “its engines [sic] or other more important parts”. Clearly he was some kind of expert. I was learning a lot.
It was time to go. Carlo and I had made that decision months before.
Carlo and I had flown many times over the immaculate grass runway of Woodland Airpark, home of the Angeles City Flying Club. Often we saw ultralight aircraft touring placidly near the airfield. We marvelled at the stick and rudder skills of pilots who took to the air with fabric wings.
Last January, I drove to Woodland for a visit. “Herr Hauptmann” Helmuth took me flying in his Little Red Fokker!
Ultralights are mostly fabric wings stretched over aluminium airframes, powered by small, efficient engines, and often assembled by their pilot-owners themselves.
Many of these aviators spend as much time tenderly caring for their airplanes on the ground as they do flying them.
Many of the airplanes boasted of GPS and glass cockpit systems, ballistic recovery parachutes, aviation-grade hardware.
Six months after that first visit, Carlo and I flew into Woodland’s 550-meter grass runway, manicured like a golf fairway and smooth as a putting green.
This visit was important – we wanted to see if 1513 would graciously step in and out of a short grass airstrip and make friends with other airplanes.
Tony Willis, the club’s General Manager, toured us around their hangars and workshops. My favorite restoration project was a Boeing PT-13 Stearman biplane dating back to the 1940s. Polished wooden floorboards, classic broom handle joystick, cloth wings, BIG radial engine (REAL Men fly round engines!).
That’s one of its fabric wings, mounted on a rotisserie for painting!
We marvelled at a Dallach D4 Fascination – German-built, moulded composite airframe, retractable landing gear. Nearly twice our speed, with less horsepower and half our fuel burn.
Another interesting visitor is the German-built Rotorsport gyrocopter of cancer survivor Norman Surplus, of Northern Ireland.
Norman has flown across Europe, the Mediterranean, Middle East and Asia. His aircraft is now at Woodland Airpark, awaiting clearances to fly to Japan. This will be the first gyrocopter to fly around the world!
Elsewhere in the hangar, we met Paul – he was taking a break that weekend from his job at Cathay Pacific to work on his X-Air’s engine.
At lunch, Carlo and I snickered at Herr Hauptman Helmuth, the Austrian, and Tony, the ex-British military General Manager. Their opinions on the Great War and overall merits of each other’s sovereignties were, er, not aligned. An old married couple.
Wandering around the hangars, where craftsmen were working on wooden wing spars and fabric fuselages, we began to understand that Woodland was an airfield, an aviation museum and an airframe and power plant workshop, all rolled into one.
Every club has a clubhouse, restaurant, swimming pool, rooms for rent, function rooms. Woodland has them all. There is no golf course, but the Manila Golf Club has no runway. Besides, golf is a dangerous sport.
Finally, in October, we packed our logbooks (non-authorized maintenance entries and all 😦 ) and left our old FBO for the last time. At Woodland, the General Manager himself marshalled us to the ramp behind an ultralight bedecked in the national colors. The town mayor was even there!
Some very nice people welcomed us. Rolf, who owns a glider and a D4 Fascination, waved at us from his cockpit.
Mike, who I have always wanted to meet, owns the big Stearman biplane.
Herr Hauptman quizzed us on their traffic pattern procedures.
We got our own key to the fuel shed, where four drums of avgas and a brand new pump awaited us, arranged by two of the club members weeks before.
We felt right at home on the first day. For luck, we brought rice, salt, money and water with us in the airplane. Important for good feung shui, when moving into a new house.
The mechanics at Woodland fabricated a tow bar for us. Helmuth put barber pole tape around it, and I spent the weekend waxing the airplane.
The airplane looks pampered now. I was turning OC, like Herr Hauptman.
We are so lucky. Not just in discovering new friends, but in finding who our friends are really meant to be.
Posted from Bangkok, November 12, 2010
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haven’t been there so far.
maybe I should !
/Timo
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Hey, Timo! You of all people would love it here. There are engineers who could put wings on a dining table and make it fly, and who probably would think that as no more than a minor engineering exercise. They would rebuild the table to a more ergonomic height for eating, while they were at it. That kind of folks.
I actually get embarrassed that my airplane is o, er, ordinary. Maybe I’ll put winglets on the horizontal stab, or something… 🙂
.
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Timo, you should go and visit. Let me know when you are next in the country. Then I can pay it forward. 🙂
.
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Good luck and good speed to 1513 and it’s new home!:D Woodland looks very nice,cozy and hospitable and ooohh it even has a pool hahaha!:)
tama pala hula ko hahahaha
-Kit
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Hi Kit, yes, very hospitable. To be honest, I still have to try the pool, because just wandering around the hangars talking to airplane owners and restorers takes up all my time!
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‘moving house’ is always a time of mixed emotions. there is sadness and excitement at the same time.
1513, who have touch many a fledgling, really belongs to a warm club environment as against the cold floor of an FBO hangar.
i wish you happy times ahead in your new ‘home’.
tonet, may i recommend a spin with rolf in his Ka7 glider when you can spare the time. puts real meaning to ‘seat of the pants’ flying, gliding.
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Hey, Louie! Rolf tried to get me to fly with him on Saturday in his Fascination. It was something I had wished for, for so long. I really wanted to do this!! But I had to take my Mom home (she likes small airplanes and went with me to the November fest — 84 years old!). Rolf’s glider airstrip will be fully usable again after the rainy season, and perhaps in December we can take a spin in the Ka7!
.
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Hello again Mr. Tonet, after a while of not visiting your blog and finally getting an update just now, this is just too good to be true, hearing about finding your new home for your 1513. I’m so glad your plane is now based in Woodland. I joined the club last year and had a go at one of the Ultralights there. Was one of the best time in my vacation.
Tomorrow will be the club’s November Aero fest and I told my family to go there so that my folks would see what I flew in the last time i was there.
Hope to meet you in person next year for the Balloon fiesta.
All the best. Blue skies always.
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Hello! I thoroughly ENJOYED the November Fest at Woodland last weekend. Flew in from Bangkok for it. Terry asked me to be his bombardier on the flour bombing flight, and it was a blast. The ribbon-cutting was a revelation to me — there are some really good pilots there, able to hold altitude to within six inches of the ground, in total control every inch of the way.
But the best part was really just talking to people, getting to know the members, some of whom are readers of Flying in Crosswinds that I am meeting for the first time. I had a permanent grin on my face, and it hurt after two days!
Let’s make sure to meet up at the Balloon Fiesta!
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Good Morning Sir,
Glad that you’ve found a new home for your plane. Good lord, figuring out your ‘ex-spouse’ or illegitimate partner is not rocket science.
Everyone knows, even from Malaysia. If one really follows your blog.
Finished my CPL/IR with ME. Now hunting for jobs. Not getting lucky yet. Gotta make do with anything that comes now to pay the bills and impress future in laws *ahem* even though first option, I would like to stay in the industry.
God’s willing, I’ll make my way to Pinas next year.
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Hi Amirul, nice to hear from you again.
This article has had the second highest number of hits on a single day. There were a lot more comments on Facebook, too! I guess a lot of people in the genav community were aware of what happened, and curious about where I would end up.
I really wish the outcome was different. It’s tough to leave an FBO where the mechanics are clearly dedicated and capable. But I just can’t take chances with an outfit that isn’t managed well enough to comply with regulatory requirements, especially in aviation.
And when their ‘general manager’ quickly dismissed what was obviously ground-handling damage, despite the fact that the airplane was in their custody in their hangar, without a trace of genuine concern or even professional curiosity over how those two deep dents got on the planform of the tail (not the leading edge, mind you), then that is the wrong outfit to give your airplane to. My first-born son flies that airplane.
One of my former FBO’s chief instructor pilots from my student pilot days has been teaching in Malaysia for several years now, btw.
Congratulations on completing your training! Man, CPL already! You really went at it. I remember when you first visited Flying in Crosswinds, you were worried about instructors. Well you could build up flying time by teaching as an instructor. You would be an expert on what makes a good (or bad) teacher, huh!
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Hi Tonet.
Sounds like a bit of denial going on @ the former FBO. Such a pity when they worked so hard to build it out of the lahar.
Are you in Manila over xmas? I’m there next weekend for 2 months this time, staying in Makati. Would love to catch up. I got an email for PFSG 10th party, I was thinking I might go. Take care.
Dave.
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Hi Dave,
Yeah, and denial is one of the worst traits in aviation. I paid premium prices for what I thought was customer loyalty, but I see now that ‘customers’ were seen purely as sources of profit, and relationships went no further than a handshake. Genuine concern for customer well-being, a fundamental tenet of any business, was skin deep — their board’s reaction to a legitimate customer complaint was to evict the ‘enemy’, lest he uncover more secrets.
I would almost feel better if the agenda was to screw customers, but I genuinely think that it wasn’t because they didn’t want to keep loyalties and relationships, but because they didn’t know how.
——————
We should meet up! Home leave in the last two weeks of December. I wish it could be more, but lots of developments at work, exciting new arenas. Carlo is hard at work too, teaching at the Ateneo. They are all growing up too fast.
Come to the party! People would love to see you, really. You know my number, right?
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If it’s the same old number where the last 3 digits is ‘505’, then yes.
And aviation is the worst industry for denial, so many unfortunate test cases to prove it. If someone’s in denial about some hangar damage, how can you really be absolutely sure about trusting the life & death tasks like servicing to them? Very few second chances up there.
Anyway, I’ll text you, & I’ll go to the party.
Hey, did you ever drink the contraband? 🙂
Dave.
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[…] A New Home Flying in Crosswinds the FBO referred here is omni. just thinking, if they treat this guy like that, what more to students? Two words. STAY AWAY […]
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This is a ‘trackback’ of a third-party comment on a Philippine forum at PPRuNe. Philippine forums on PPRuNe are cesspools of rumors, urban legends and just plain wrong information, and I generally don’t comment on them.
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