May 2005-
Philadelphia Eagles in Superbowl XXXVIX, which was played for the first time in Jacksonville, Fla. I was there. Not at the game, at Jacksonville. This is what charter pilots do. We take people to and from special events all the time.
Since 9/11, the airspace around these large gatherings has become targets of complex and often totally non-understandable TFRs that would require a Philadelphia lawyer to interpret.
So it was that weekend. In the 16 pages of instructions that constituted the TFR for the Superbowl there were some ominous warnings. I suspect that the average airman would take one look at that and think “I don’t need to fly that badly” and just avoid the entire mess.
But the truth is, getting into and out of the TFR-affected airports can be accomplished by the average airman, even if you don’t have a law degree. The hardest part of the deal is getting an arrival or departure reservation for the airport that you want to go to or leave from.
That weekend, the inner ring of the TFR affected an area 15 miles around the Stadium. That included Jacksonville International (JAX) and Jacksonville, Craig (CRG) airport. They were closed to all arrivals starting five hours before game time, reservation or not. The outer, or 30-mile, ring limited traffic to IFR arrivals and departures on an IFR flight plan, with a pre-approved arrival or departure reservation at the airport of choice.
So you ask, how do you get a “reservation?” Good question. Once upon a time you called on the phone 72 hours in advance and spoke with a human. These days, it is all done on the World Wide Web. You go to a web address, www.fly.faa.gov/estmp.
There you will find a modern, government-produced web site that is the gateway to the Special Traffic Management Program or STMP. It says right in the header that it is designed to simplify the reservation process, although quite honestly I’m not sure for whom.
First, to use it you need to register. It is not difficult, but the system will then e-mail your pass code to your e-mail address and that can take some time. Fortunately, you only need to do this once. After you log on the first time, you won’t need to re-register again.
Once logged in, you go to the “make a reservation” section. A typical application menu will appear. You must pick the event in which you are interested. For example, along with the Superbowl, the 2004-2005 Ski Season in the Denver area was affected by the reservation system.
There, a pop-up screen takes you through a series of questions like which airport, type of aircraft etc….. then the important thing, what time slot do you want for an arrival or departure.
Reservations are made in 15-minute intervals, and become available 72 hours to the minute prior to the slot time you are looking for. So for example, if you wanted to arrive at Jacksonville Craig Field just before the TFR closed it down to inbound traffic, you would want to bid for 1:30 p.m. local. Click on a link and a pull-down menu will show you the available time slots and how many arrival slots exist in that time block.
Typically, there are three to five arrivals every 15 minutes. Unfortunately, EVERYONE wants the best time slots and there are only a few available. So sitting in our charter company office at 1:15 p.m., three days before the game are three so-called professionals, all logged onto the e-STMP website, all requesting the coveted 1:30 arrival slot, and all patiently waiting until exactly 1:30 to hit send.
Do it too early and you will get an error message telling you that that slot time slot is not yet available. Too late, and the three or five slots that are offered have been snapped up. If you’re lucky, you get a confirmation, with a special code number that you will need to put in the “Remarks” section of your flight plan.
You also need to hit your slot within the 15 minutes or lose it. At two-second intervals starting at exactly at 18:30Z, the enter key was pushed on each of the three computers. This went on for two hours before we obtained an arrival slot. Not the time of our choosing, but hey, we were there!
We had two other flights going into two “outer ring” airports, one to Cecil Field, the other to Herlong Field. These are slightly easier to get, mostly because one (Herlong) is a smaller airport thus less attractive to larger business jets with long runway requirements, and the other because of the distance from the event.
But to my surprise, we needed arrival reservations as far away as Brunswick, Ga.! More interesting than that, we still needed them the next day at Brunswick.
Not even considering that I might need a reservation for an arrival the day after the event, it dawned on me that I just might the night before. When I checked with flight service they confirmed it. Going to the web site, I fully expected to be out of luck.
There was not an available slot from 4:00 a.m. local until 6:00 p.m. that evening. After six on Monday, things seemed to open up. Fearing I would need to call a paying customer and tell him he would have to change his plans because we could not get in there to pick him up, I started looking at the other area airports to see if I could find an alternate he might live with.
Not finding anything suitable, I went back to the original airport, Craig Field and noticed one open slot that hadn’t been there a half-hour earlier. A single 12:30Z arrival slot had opened up. I clicked on it, sent my request and bingo, I had a 7:30 a.m. arrival slot reserved at the airport I needed to be at for an 8:00 a.m. departure. Talk about luck. I guess someone must have cancelled a slot reservation they had made and no longer needed.
After that, the flying was easy. Even the forecast possibility of 700 and two in fog seemed easy to take after playing “the reservation game.”
The other two captains, the ones who went to Herlong and Cecil, had two totally different experiences. The Herlong flight went off on schedule, without a hitch, both inbound and outbound. The Cecil flight was number 298 out of 300 to depart after the game.
They started the engines at midnight, but didn’t launch until after 3:00 a.m., arriving at the destination close to 5:00 a.m., essentially wiping out all the available crew duty time. Apparently, they were releasing only one flight every three to five minutes.
My flight, which left base at 5:45 a.m. for arrival at the required 7:30 a.m. reservation time went off well. The forecasted weather never materialized and we shot the visual approach touching down at 7:33 a.m.
The passengers were happy to see us since apparently the company they had originally chartered for this flight had called them to tell them they could not get a reservation, so therefore they were on their own. They called us next, and I guess just showing up was enough to impress them, since they laid a hundred-dollar tip on both my copilot and me.
Is the new e-STMP program a pain in the E6B? Well, yes, but it is an improvement over the old telephone reservation system. TFR’s and Special Traffic Management Programs are here to stay so, like BFRs, you are going to just have to get used to them. It is entirely likely that you are going to find them around all major sporting events, including NASCAR races, college bowl games, you get the idea.
If you plan to fly anywhere near these events, you will need to become at least familiar with the e-STMP program. Can any pilot use it? Again yes, the system is designed for aircraft on an IFR flight plan, so to be technically correct, you would need to be instrument rated and current, and flying an aircraft that is current and capable.
It would certainly help if you were sharp on your radio communication and navigation skills because there are operational letters of agreements between air route traffic control facilities that we as pilots are not privy to and the “usual” routes and approaches will probably be preempted with temporary procedures worked out to satisfy the needs of the special event that is the basis of the TFR.
For the professional airman, this is the way it’s going to be and other than some additional preflight planning, it should amount to nothing more than just another day at the office. But knowing how the system works and getting your boss or your customers in and out of where they want to go with minimum hassle will only make the stripes on your shoulders look bigger than they actually are. For the private pilot, the ability to fly where no merely mortal pilots dare is just not as difficult as it might appear.
Michael Leighton is a 3,400 + CFIIMEI/ATP as well as an A&P mechanic and former FAA Accident Prevention Counselor. He operates an air charter company in South Florida. You can reach him via e-mail at av8tor0414@aol.com <
