Chapter 200

Tuesday raced by like a horse on steroids. I offered the director job to Kelly with a probationary period. The extra ten thousand a year would be the tipping point in getting the house they wanted.

Courtney made the announcement at the site and put him in charge as we had discussed. She also informed the group that the North six were leaving on Thursday and she and her group the first of the week.

I left KCC after lunch. Lorrie and Roseanne were scheduled back at two and we were all going to Easton to watch the arrival of the Bombardier 200 and inspect it. A corporate check for the six month lease was already made out.

Our two chief pilots each had pilot-in-command time on the 200 and our 2 mechanics both had certifications that covered most of the 200, the six of us along with Jeanna and both of Lorrie's administrators were all going.

Not one but two Bombardier 200's did a low pass fly by. Then they did a touch and go with barely 500 yards between them before they finally landed. If the town did not know big jets were landing they did when they finished.

They did this on the 5500 foot 22/4 runway. The delivery pilots had done their research well because there were all kinds of noise abatement approaches at this airport.

Even though this was a small county airport, it had a partially manned control tower. The tower was built during the Bush administration. VP Dick Chaney and several more VIP's had summer houses at St Michaels and flew in regularly. Dick was well known for his goose hunting parties with international VIP'S using the local hunting guides.

The Bombardier's made their way on the taxi way, past the long row of private and business hangers, coming to a stop in front of the terminal building side by side. The terminal had a jockey that directed parking planes in front of the terminal. As soon as the planes stopped moving his job was to place a pair of wheel chocks at the nose gear.

It was then that I noticed the Channel 14 news chopper sitting off to the side of the terminal. The pilot and news reporter who had been eating at the airport café were now outside filming the growing crowd. A lot of the mechanics in those private hangers had watched the events and made their way for a closer look.

We were standing on the tarmac looking at the planes as the pilots, co-pilots and the Bombardier sales rep walked up to us asking for Lorrie Smithfield of JBG. After the normal round of introductions we walked to the planes to look them over. The first thing that I noticed was that both planes had the gold and black circled JBG logo on the vertical tail section.

Both planes had been flown from fresh refitting at the Bombardier factory. The exteriors were polished and waxed. Both were fitted out in the 50 passenger mode but in a different style. The interiors were completely new and they had the new smell. I noticed the tail had the setup for two Flight Attendants.

The pilots, co-pilots and the sales man had each taken one of us and did a walk through describing all the features. They had done the same thing when we walked around looking at the exterior.

Jack Rush - our chief pilot - motioned me from the group and we made our way to the cockpit. When he was the pilot on some of our flights he often let me sit in the co-pilot seat on the G5 and the King Air.

I think it was the instructor in him that did it but he would walk me through all the planes gauges and instruments, explaining what was normal and how they reacted to control input. He even let me have the controls sometimes on long flights.