Howard makes daring flight across North Atlantic
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It was an adventure that took a some pretty daunting preparation for Howard, who recently made the trip as co-pilot in a single-engine Swiss-made Pilatus corporate aircraft.
Howard is currently a senior corporate pilot for Mastercorp Inc., a Crossville-based company which operates a resort housekeeping service. He was asked to travel to Stans, Switzerland and fly back in a sleek and speedy Pilatus turboprop PC-12, like the model his employer will be purchasing for its corporate fleet. The trip allowed him to get in some hours in the aircraft he will be piloting for Mastercorp.
Howard was hired out of retirement to fly for Mastercorp due to his old friend David Goff, executive vice president of the company, who had flown with Howard before.
In order to prepare for the flight, which took him over some of the most frigid ocean on the planet, the 71-year-old had to attend a rather challenging training program.
“I had to go to water survival school,” Howard said. “The insurance people required it and the Pilatus people required it. Funny thing is, I didn’t know about all that stuff until I got involved in it.”
But once he found out, Howard dived right in, literally. The school took place in Panama City, Fla., and Howard’s fellow students included a group of Fed Ex pilots, most of whom were half his age.
“We went out in the ocean,” Howard said. “There was shark survival school. We stayed eight hours out in the gulf, four of those were in the water. Now that’s a scary feeling. Two hours daytime in the water, and two hours nighttime in the water. Then we did the life raft two hours in the daytime, and two hours at night.
“They taught us the rules of survival. We had to purify our own water. We had a little pump that purified the water, it didn’t taste very good, but it didn’t have any salt in it. I came through that fine.”
But it didn’t end there, Howard discovered.
“Then they put you in the tank,” Howard said. “They dump you in upside down, and you have to undo your seatbelt and swim out of this thing like the cockpit of an airplane.”
It gets worse.
“That wasn’t too bad,” says Howard. “Then they put goggles on you and you can’t see and you have to feel your way out of the tank.”
Howard was the oldest member of this group, but he wasn’t amazed at his performance.
“Well, I’m in pretty good shape,” Howard said. “I do five miles a day. I feel great. The funny thing was, all these Fed Ex boys, we came back in that night, we went in at 7 o’clock in the morning and came out about 10:30, and about half of us went to the bar and had a few drinks,” he added with a grin. “Got back up the next morning and did the tank thing. But anyway, I was real proud of myself that I could stay in there with those 35-year-olds.”
The North Atlantic flight isn’t the only thing this intrepid flyer has been up to recently. After losing his beloved T-34 warbird in a well publicized crash when the plane’s crankshaft broke in flight last year, Howard began looking for a replacement.
He found it in a Cessna L-19E Bird Dog, which he recently purchased and had restored. Howard will base the airplane at Warren County Airport and plans to fly it recreationally. The crash, which Howard walked away from and gives God the credit for, didn’t diminish his love for warbirds.
“I got to missing my baby,” he said with a grin. “And now I’ve got another one.”
So how long does the 71-year-old plan to fly?
“As long as they’ll let me,” Howard said.