FIRST FLIGHT, LAST FLIGHT
By Ron Fox
When John first appeared one afternoon
at our offices in Brownsville, you couldn’t tell if he
had the right stuff for flying south or not. Bushpilots
come in all colors, sizes, shapes and looks. You were
usually proved wrong if you tried to size up a pilot by
his looks. John was fairly nondescript. He wasn’t
ugly, but he wasn’t handsome. He didn’t have a physique
that would turn women’s heads, but he wasn’t fat, wasn’t
skinny. He didn’t have a particularly outgoing
personality, but he wasn’t shy either.
As was our custom, Gus and I tried to
give him a pretty good idea what flying south was all
about. We described the conditions under which he would
be flying, namely, for the most part, in unforcasted
weather without adequate navigational aids, into
unprepared strips with no lights other than highway
smudge pots, with only enough fuel for a round trip with
no delays enroute or at the strips trying to get in.
The rules of descent without current altimeter settings,
the rules of knowing just what a particular aircraft
could carry and how it was loaded, the way different
aircraft acted when close to the edge of the envelope of
their capabilities, the procedures for clearing a strip
before landing, the etiquette concerning dealing with
foreign ground crews, the carriage of weapons, the
risks, the penalties, and the stress; all were discussed
exhaustively. We also would usually provide the
details of past pilot mistakes and their disastrous
results in an effort to open the eyes of a prospective
contrabandito. Some never came back after their first
interview, but John did.
It just so happened that Gus had just
received an old Piper Navajo from persons unknown to me.
Its registration number was N3WN and it was purported to
be Wayne Newton’s first aircraft. It was a small twin
engine cabin class twin which could carry around 2,500
pounds, I really don’t remember now. The actual weight
is not important. Had not the arrival of this aircraft
coincided with the arrival of John, we probably would
not have taken him on, but demands for more trips were
high. After a few trips as first officer on the DC-3,
Gus thought he was ready for his first solo; the milk-
run to Vera Cruz.
This trip was considered to be the easiest
trip a pilot could make. The route was straight south
to Vera Cruz, with a circle flown west around the most
populated sections of town. A VOR instrument approach
was available and on short final we were even given the
runway lights. If a pilot couldn’t handle this trip, he
wasn’t what we were looking for. It was the safest way
we knew to break in a pilot. It was my unforgettable
first trip.
Gus sent John out with a light load in
N3WN. The weather was good and John seemed at ease with
the operation. He had accompanied one of our DC-3
captains into Vera Cruz International just the week
before and had performed his duties as well as any. We
thought he was ready.
John never arrived at the Vera Cruz
International Airport that night. N3WN was never seen
again. We were to find out a few weeks later that three
days after his disappearance, a body washed up on the
beach near Vera Cruz. We managed through a contact of
ours to obtain a copy of the autopsy that was performed
upon the remains. It was not a pleasant article to
read. Neither was it possible to determine for sure
whether the remains were those of John, but we figured
they were.
No one knows what happened to him that
night. Was it an aircraft problem? Did he get too
close to the water without realizing it? Had he landed
at another location to sell the electronics and been
double-crossed? Perhaps the body that washed up in Vera
Cruz was not that of John. Maybe he had crashed along
the way. Maybe he was down somewhere waiting for
rescue.
For the next week or so, all of our
pilots who had enough fuel, searched along the coast on
their way back from their trips. On several of my trips
I flew around mountain tops and through valleys along
the coast, looking for a place an airplane in trouble
might set down. There was nothing.
John had become what was to be one of
the four pilots we lost that year. N3WN had become what
was to be one of the seven aircraft we lost that year as
well. These were the reasons we made so much money
doing what we did. They were also a big part of why we
were doing it.
Copyright 1998, BUSHPILOT, all rights reserved.