How Ferry Pilot Margrit Waltz Completed 900 Ocean Crossings

this is a tbm-940 turboprop one of the fastest single-engine airplanes in the world it's made here in tarbs france at a factory right at the foot of the pyrenees near the spanish border the tbm is just a tad too large and complicated to disassemble and pack into a shipping container so every one of these airplanes has to be flown out to the new owner some owners pick up the airplanes in france but many more are delivered hello everyone i'm paul bertorelli reporting for avweb with me today is margret waltz she's a professional ferry pilot whose job is to deliver these new airplanes and she has just passed an impressive milestone her 900th aircraft delivery marguerite congratulations on that's a lot of airplanes and a lot of miles and hours let's start at the beginning how did you get into this business well it was more or less a coincidence i had met my american husband and i was a weather girl on television in germany while in america they didn't need really a meteorologist on television or whether girl on television with the german accent they had enough people lying about the weather without an accident so um it was like well what am i going to do if i really stay in america and it was like a big decision for me to leave my job and move to the states and i had just for fun i was able to ferry two aircraft so i don't even want to say ferry them it took a terrible long time three weeks to bring a plane across it was more like a vacation or something but the chance to cross the north atlantic and i had done that twice and ended up visiting also the muni factory and one thing came to the other and i was lucky enough to start ferrying moonies and other aircrafts and we just started the business then and said well forget the weather business this is a lot more fun i mean i started flying with 16 and this was absolutely you know the dream of every pilot at least in my eyes you know you're young you want to see the world and you have the opportunity to do this pretty much on your own pace it's it's fantastic so those 900 deliveries you have delivered just about every kind of airplane haven't you um a lot of single-engine twin-engine piston planes total props i also have a light jet rating for the mustang but that's pretty much it yeah i accompanied a few people on bigger aircraft but i don't really count them in my 900s crossings because i didn't have the rating i wasn't pic or anything and does the 900 is that actual ocean crossings or just deliveries um well all my deliveries are across the ocean i do not do domestic ones so all of my crossings are intercontinental and let's talk uh about the tbm uh tbm is a fast airplane a very capable airplane and the people who buy it buy it for those characteristics what is involved uh in taking one of these airplanes across the ocean so a lot of these uh deliveries have been north atlantic crossings which are typically since they're coming from france are going to be westbound summer and winter i'm sure so what are the things you have to plan to make sure you can do that safely i mean of course i mean since i do this since 1991 for the factory there's a certain routine involved i mean winter crossings are obviously a little bit harder due to weather due to very strong headwinds 100 knots 120 knots i mean i i had the situation that i actually got airborne with an american customer on board and we had a forecast of 150 160 knots possibly up to 200 knots in altitude and we said well we can make it to greenland and you know squeeze it in there get some of you will continue to canada and we got airborne and it was actually 210 knots or so we saw something like 89 knots on on the ground speed and the customer kind of said listen margaret uh i don't want to sit up here forever and you know get on the last drop of fuel into greenland so um he says i offer you we go back i invite you to the blue lagoon in iceland spend the day there and refuel your plane tomorrow morning um i mean winter crossings can be hard you know you land with 70 80 knots on the nose on an icy runway and it's you know you have to make sure your plane gets really secured on the ground i mean there are a lot more little logistics to think about you know what all can go wrong basically because it will go wrong if you don't take care of it summer crossings i think if any pilot wants to do it you can do it i mean i'm normally open to anybody to call me if they want to do it themselves i give them as much as i can on the way and say okay you have to look out for this you have to look out for that but it basically it's flying if you're an average you know pilot and you have a tbm you're quite capable you have the range with the aircraft you go in altitude you're above the weather i mean it's it's just amazing what the plane can do and i mean if it's the autopilot or if it's uh the capability of landing in we cross winds or the plane is just really amazing you know and i was very very lucky i was working for munich when partly you know through the development they had together and ended up being one of the first people that flew the tbm so it it was just uh like a miracle i mean people didn't even know what it was at the time it was like what are you flying because we we hadn't we didn't even have really designated at the time we started with t700 and somebody said well that's not possible it's a web a war bird then we tried tv seven zero so we had all different designators and nobody really knew what we were and controllers would actually ask like what what the heck is this you know are you a jet or no single engine turboprop you know at the time 300 knots now we of course faster by now the development is just amazing i mean every time you get into the aircraft you see something new like it's something small it's something improved it's it's really fantastic you know so i'm a very very lucky person to have dia believing in me all these years and given me the opportunities also to do this let's talk about the tbm range i'd asked you before we started recording if you've ever had to do fairy tanks in those and the answer is no so but you do have to do fairly careful planning on some of these long legs so if we take the the north atlantic absent any exceptional winds you've got plenty of fuel for that and what's the typical route um for the north atlantic i leave tarps i normally go up to scotland i used to go a lot into glasgow in into newcastle which is just northern england lately i go into wick in scotland uh from there i go to iceland iceland i stay the night quite often refuel and then the next day if the wind is not too bad i can easily take kind of a 15 knot headwind overall then i can make it to canada uh occasionally you have to land in greenland but then of course you can also go a little bit further north there the range over to canada if you want to avoid greenland you can make that in general as well so i would say uh probably seven flights eight flights out of ten i do not have to stop in greenland you do the pacific too and we're you're doing these long legs in the on the in the pacific but you since you're not using fairy tales what what route do you use from france to get to destinations in the pacific well it depends if the plane goes to australia if it's uh in france obviously i end up going eastbound so there's not that much pacific there i mean you go from france to malta or greece and then you go into alexandria or shamble shake in egypt from there you end up going to oman occasionally depending on the wind you might have to stop in bahrain for a little bit more fuel or so um then from oman or fujira you can go over to india you do a refill stop in mumbai down to sri lanka from sri lanka you have a long leg like max range long leg five hours plus there you really have to monitor the wind but in general the wind is very very weak on on that part because you're close to the equator you're getting quite quite far south so you don't have these tremendous winds um over to medan in indonesia that's a real long leg and then from indonesia um well from medan i should say in general i make bali every now and then i might have to stop in singapore for a little bit of fuel but i try to just go to bali because the the less landings you have the less overflight permits the less landing permits of course the less cost for handling for everything else so you try as a fairy pilot not to stop if you don't have to and then from bali into australia uh do you handle all that the permitting and overflight uh administration yourself or do you have someone do it um partly i do it myself partly i it depends what country some countries are more difficult than others some countries who need diplomatic clearances and things i have some um handling company that helps me out there it's like a company in germany what what do you think is the biggest challenge in doing this kind of flying in in the tbm uh is it weather or is it uh overflight administration kind of stuff it's probably the paperwork to be honest i mean it's not the flying itself uh the plane is is just so forgiving and and i mean it has all the possibilities like i say you you have range you have speed uh you're sitting pressurized you're in comfort i mean you you have everything going for yourself there but in the end it really is very important that on some of these lakes especially if you go out of europe east you need all these permits and stuff and something is not in place and for this permit you need this for this permit you need that some people then they want the maximum takeoff weight that's okay so you send them this already in anticipation that they will want to know these things but then for example this aircraft i'm right now on route with is going into saudi arabia so saudi arabia all of a sudden what are the limitations of the aircraft and i'm thinking by myself who cares why would they want the limitation of the aircraft that's a new question i haven't had that before so but it's it's not your turn to ask why do you want this it's just do because otherwise it's not going to happen then comes the next thing i mean they're working very often five to seven working days before you can actually get a permit back so you have to really plan ahead and make sure everything is in place or no of course with covet it has gotten a lot more complicated because this country wants 48 hours before a covert test this country wants 72 hours a coffee test if you're alone you're normally exempt if you only stay as crew and quarantine the one night you are in a country test and i feel like you know somebody's starting to poke my brain a little bit too much i'm getting tired you know i mean i don't blame you um have you encountered uh any kind of uh uh weather that's unfliable with regard to ice you mentioned winds you will hit winds where the fuel gets a little tight how about ice the tbm has is approved for known icing yes it it is and uh in i would say i have not been stopped because of icing conditions and obviously uh it can get pretty about i mean there's i guess in the end a little bit of common sense if i see they have um like severe freezing rain on on departure on landing obviously i'm i'm trying to avoid that but so far it really hasn't stopped me from going anywhere i wanted to go you know i mean the the only time i think i got no i got twice really stuck for weather and this did not have to do with icing it was a situation that the next airport was five days underwater because of some tropical depression in australia and i ended up being stuck five days in in bali but this did not have anything to do with the tbm because it wasn't even my decision the airport was so closed kind of uh emergency survival equipment do you typically carry on these uh flights well i have a raft with me i have a survival suit which is like a dry suit that i wear i know some guys start wearing some other things figuring they get saved fairly fast maybe i still go with the old style survivor suit where i basically can survive three days in it they at least say the first day is comfortable not that i can imagine that it's comfortable if you lay in the north atlantic and don't know if you get found and you have the big waves around you but they say it's comfortable temperature-wise the second day is kind of getting a little nippy cold in the suit and the third day is pretty much survivable so they might pull you out you might be a little bit hypothermia or whatever but it's so valuable and i figure after three days of no food i will die anyway you know so i mean i i really like that they would find me within three days and i mean today with gps and everything you can give a pretty exact position report and you have an elt with you and um there's a very good chance of survival if you you know do decent ditching but in 900 crossings you've never had to test that equipment i take it no i have had it on a few times thinking i might need it um i had in the 80s i had a moonie with a problem of non-pressurized magnetos they were installed by mistake and the engine quit over the north atlantic and i put out an emergency and pan am at the time was still around and they were relaying and the pilot was rather shocked he asked me actually what bit he said what my problem was i said my and my engine quit and he said uh which one did quit obviously he was sitting in a 747 and couldn't imagine that you would be out there around 30 west with uh you know one engine and i was i have to say in spite of all the the stress at the moment i was rather annoyed and said the only one i got the one in front and he answered oh my god you know so but it started around three thousand i kept trying to start her and around three thousand feet she started rumbling again and i finished the flight over to shannon in ireland in 3000 feet i just thought i don't want she's running in 3000 feet later on in 3000 feet you know don't descend don't climb don't challenge as long as she runs in 3000 feet i mean i have to admit i was finishing that leg on the edge of my seat waiting for her to quit again but she she brought me over and that's all it takes you know in in those type of situations my planes turn into girlfriends and i relate to them as she's and and she did a good job you know she brought me over to ireland you know well that and and 900 crossings that's a that's a pretty good record i i i think we would all envy it uh margaret walsh thanks very much for talking to us uh it's a very interesting business fairing these airplanes well i love it and like i say i just hope that somebody can step into my shoes and enjoy it as much as me it's a full commitment there are no holidays anywhere that you ever stop and um i mean dahi was wonderful to me all these years and i'm like i said before extremely happy that they believed in me and i try to give hundreds 120 they need me on mother's day anniversary birthday christmas well that's when you go all right thank you very much uh you've been listening to avweb's vodcast with marguerite waltz i'm paul bertorelli reporting for avweb thanks for watching

Channel: AVweb

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Id: IOGaOrtCKdM

Length: 16min 28sec (988 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021