“Just for a bathroom?” Austin asked, amazed.
“Seems like a good reason to me,” Greg said.
The bathroom was tiny and cramped, about half the size of an airliner bathroom and much shorter. But it had a mirror and a sink and a toilet that could be flushed (presumably anyway, once the engines were on).
“All right,” Jake said, smiling as he saw it. “I like it.”
He closed the door, made sure it was firmly latched, and then they walked forward again and took in the flight deck. All of the instruments were currently dark since the power was off, but it was only slightly more complex than that of his chancellor. There were the yokes and a bank of analog instruments that would back up the digital display instruments in case of failure. There was a map screen and, something that his aircraft did not have, a Garmin GPS.
“Is the GPS linked to the autopilot?” Jake asked.
“Hell yeah,” Austin said. “I love that thing. I still use the VOR signal as a backup, but it keeps you steady as a rock on course once you program in your flight path. It’ll take you all the way to the landing threshold if you want it to.”
“Nice,” Jake said, envisioning himself behind the controls.
He did not have to envision for long.
“I already filed my flight plan,” Austin said. “Let’s roll this bitch out of here and head to Denver.”
“Let’s do it,” Jake said enthusiastically.
Greg was not quite as enthusiastic—he was, in fact, starting to look like he regretted his decision to come along—but he echoed the sentiment.
They pulled the aircraft out of the hangar and Austin started going through the preflight checks. Jake followed him around happily, watching everything he did, but asking no questions, not wanting to distract the pilot from this important duty. In all, it took the better part of fifteen minutes before the exterior check and the interior check were done. Austin then radioed for a fuel truck to come pump eleven hundred pounds of fuel into the tanks.
“That’s all?” Jake asked. “For a flight to Denver? That’s about six hundred miles, right?”
“Six hundred and eighteen on the route we’re taking,” Austin said. “And we already have four hundred pounds aboard, but yeah, that’s all we need.”
“That’s not that much more than my Chancellor would need.”
“This baby is very fuel-efficient,” Austin said.
“It runs better than a Fiat though, right?” asked Greg from the seat behind them.
“A little bit,” Austin assured him.
After fueling, Austin went through the final preflight check and everything was copacetic. He activated the IFR flight plan he had filed (since they were flying above eighteen thousand feet, they had to fly IFR) and then received permission to taxi to Runway 25L, the longer of the two runways.
“What’s the takeoff roll on this thing?” Jake asked, technically violating the sterile cockpit, but it was a minor infraction.
“Thirty-three fifty at this temperature and altitude,” Austin said mechanically. “Thirty-one at sea level.”
That was the first bit of bad news. If he bought one of these, he would not be able to fly into or out of Oceano any longer. Its runway was only twenty-three hundred feet in length. He would have to base out of San Luis Obispo Airport, which was another fifteen minutes away from his home by car.
Austin pulled up to the hold line and had to wait for one aircraft to take off and two to land. While he was waiting, he configured the aircraft for liftoff, setting the flaps to fifteen, setting his airspeed bugs for V1 and VR. Finally, they were given clearance to depart.
“All right,” Austin said. “Let’s fuckin’ do it.”
“Hell to the yeah,” Jake said enthusiastically.
“Please don’t say that,” Greg said.
Austin turned onto the runway and slowly pushed the throttles forward. The engine noise increased but remained negligible. You could still converse without headsets if you wished. The aircraft accelerated nicely down the runway. At 94 knots, Austin pulled gently back on the yoke and they broke contact with the ground.
“Nice,” Jake said, feeling the thrilling moment where the miracle of flight was achieved. He always enjoyed it.
“You gotta be careful with a pusher on takeoff,” Austin said, his hand pushing the gear lever up. “You pull up too sharply, you don’t get a tail strike, you get a fuckin’ prop strike, which is infinitely worse.”
“That makes sense,” Jake said. Destroying your props as you were lifting off the runway was not just a recipe for disaster, but an absolute guarantee of it.
They climbed rapidly through three thousand feet and Austin pushed the nose down a bit and retracted the flaps. They began to pick up speed. He then turned and looked at Jake.
“All right, my man,” he told him. “Take it.”
“Take what?” Jake asked, genuinely confused.
“The aircraft,” Austin said. “Take it.”
“I’m not checked out on this plane,” Jake said.
“I’ll talk you through it, bro,” Austin told him. “It’s easy. Not that much different than your Chancellor.”
“But...”
“Uh ... this sounds like a bad idea,” Greg added nervously from his seat behind them.
“Naw, it’s a good one,” Austin said. “Come on, Jake. Take it. Just follow the line on the GPS display.”
Jake took it. And that was the moment that he passed from lust to love.
“My aircraft,” he said.
“Your aircraft,” agreed Austin.
Chapter 19: Hearts Can Break
Jacksonville, Florida
December 22, 1995
Jim Ramos, personal paramedic for Matt Tisdale, was buckled into the first-class seat immediately behind his boss/patient as the Boeing 737-300 lifted off from Jacksonville International Airport at 11:30 AM. It was to be a five hour and ten-minute flight, nonstop, to Los Angeles International—pretty much the maximum range of the aircraft. Though the plane was owned and operated by United Airlines, it was not a regularly scheduled passenger flight. It was a charter, arranged for by Matt himself. The tour had finished the last show of this leg the night before in the Jacksonville Coliseum and they were now on Christmas break until January 5th, when they would start the next leg in New Orleans and then work their way through the south and southwest during the winter months.
National’s plan had been to fly Matt, the band, Greg Gahn, and Jim himself home by commercial air but leave the road crew and all the support personnel in Jacksonville and house them in cheap motels until it was time to head to Louisiana. Matt, upon hearing about it, had declared this plan “fucking bullshit” and tried to get National management to pay for the charter they were now on so everyone could “be home with their fuckin’ families and tappin’ their primary gash”. National refused, so Matt, in a rare display of Christmas spirit (aided by a half a bottle of Jack Daniels and several lines of Bolivian cocaine) decided to pay for the charter himself. Thirteen thousand dollars for each hour of flight time (or fraction thereof) was how much it cost to charter a 737. That was seventy-eight thousand dollars (plus applicable taxes and booking fees) for the flight to LA and then another seventy-eight thousand (plus applicable taxes and booking fees) for the flight back after the break was over. Matt did get National to kick in about twenty-five thousand of that—the amount it would have cost them to house sixty-eight roadies, techies, truck and bus drivers, and other support staff in double occupancy Motel 6 level accommodations for two weeks—but he paid for the rest out of his own pocket. He could have simply paid for everyone to have round-trip commercial tickets to LA and back for much less—around fifty-five grand total—but elected to go charter instead because it was pretty much impossible to get everyone booked on the same flights to and from. He even let Greg Gahn come along for the ride, despite the fact that Gahn was the one who kept passing along National’s denials to him.