News: Sky High Charters: "San Juan Sortie" released

Posted Friday, August 31, 2018

PilotEdge has launched the third scenario for the Sky High Charters program. Launched in June of 2018, Sky High Charters is a simulated Part 135 operation providing one new assignment per month, including a dead head assignment to the starting point for the next month’s mission.

The first assignment, Hello Newbie! is a simulated indoctrination flight within Socal, focusing on a short, but complex enroute segment quickly followed by two back to back approaches. The mission materials are available to the public without an active PilotEdge membership. Subsequent assignments require an active login to view the material.

The second assignment, Tumultuous Taos is a multi leg trip from Albuquerque to Taos and then on to Durango, utilizing a short range VFR-on-top clearance, a quick VFR segment, then picking up IFR for the last portion of the flight with a localizer approach via a DME arc.

The current assignment, San Juan Sortie is a 3 leg juggernaut featuring an NDB-based graphical obstacle departure procedure and NDB approach into Friday Harbor in the beautiful San Juan Islands. The second leg features an RNAV approach into nearby Orcas Island. The last leg is a 160nm trip across the Seattle class Bravo into Pangborn Memorial where pilots face the option of a tailwind ILS, or quick introduction to RNP approaches for a runway that is more aligned with the wind.

Each assignment generally consists of a textual briefing, a short video brief, a longer video briefing, a cockpit video of the entire flight and a textual.debriefing. Pilots can view as much or as little of the video material as they feel is necessary to prepare for the flight. It is anticipated that proficient IFR pilots will view less of the video material in advance while newer or less current pilots might take advantage of more or perhaps all of the video material before undertaking the flights.

Sky High Charters pilots must have completed the venerable I-Ratings program to be eligible to take part in the Sky High Charters program.