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Average number of training hours? Probably fewer hours than one would think. However it should be realized that most every field landing before and after a Naval Aviator receives his wings is done with within the same parameters as is done approaching and landing aboard an aircraft carrier. These field landings are done with the same or similar visual landing aid as is on the carrier, and the hard touchdown is done without any flare to reduce the descent rate just like aboard ship.Before any Naval Aviator may land aboard an aircraft carrier for the first time, or if there has been a certain amount of time since his last “trap” aboard, he will undergo a series of Field Carrier Landing Practice periods, all within less than a two-week period..“A normal FCLP consists of about eight to 12 touch-and-goes and lasts about 45 minutes. Usually, two to four aircraft fly during an FCLP.” Field Carrier Landing Practices -- �The Foundation of Carrier Aviation�Field Carrier Landing Practice (FCLP) = Bounce periodA check of my old logbook reveals the following hours to train to land on a carrier for each aircraft I flew over 20+ years:T-2B, 8 day bounce periods, 52 touch & goes, for a total of 10.6 hours.TF-9J. 12 day bounce periods, 79 touch & goes, for a total of 10.9 hours.F-4J. 13 night bounce periods, 78 touch & goes, for a total of 9.7 hoursF-14A, 15 day & night bounces, 119 touch & goes, for a total of 18.1 hours.TA-4J, 2 day bounces, 9 touch & goes, for a total of 2.2 hours.Note: Some of the flight time included transit time to an outlying field like the dreaded at night, Naval Auxiliary Landing Field San Clemente Island.Regarding the few TA-4J periods, by then I was highly experienced and the LSO signed me off very early to go to the boat.

I know a few things about Davis-Monthan because I’ve flown there many times. As a pilot at Andrews, for some reason generals went there a lot. And members of Congress.And, thirty years later, while visiting the Pima Air & Space Museum I paid for the bus tour that drives through the graveyard. After taking that tour, my answer to you is:The next tour bus guide would call someone and let them know a guy was poking around one of the mothballed aircraft shells out there. I think you’d be whisked away within a few minutes.THE REAL QUESTIONOf course, here’s what you really should be asking:How could I get into Davis-Monthan and to a place where a tour bus guide would spot me standing next to a plane and call base security on me within a few minutes? I just want to touch one of them!Because doing even that is a long shot, with a short lifespan.REVISITING OLD FRIENDSNow you’ve opened Pandora’s Box on D-M, so I will illustrate my answer to your question with stories of what I saw on my recent visit there: two old friends I had flown!And if you’ve paid attention, it’s been more than 30 years since I flew them!CT-39AThis one, tail number 4449, has many entries in my USAF logbook. My most memorable trip in it was taking the Iranian ambassador to the U.S. to Palm Springs to go house hunting for the Shah, after the Shah had been deposed.It’s at the Pima Museum, so, you can get close enough to touch it, but she’s not going anywhere with you. And I don’t think you’re getting in there with a tow tractor to pull out any of those planes. People might notice. Someone might even stop you.YC-15Here’s one I flew that is out in the actual boneyard. Now, you gotta be wondering: How the hell did I get to fly a YC-15? They only built two prototypes.Even though I had flown this exact aircraft personally—and not many people had flown it—the guide would absolutely not let me off the bus just to step outside and get a clear photo of it. Begging didn’t even work.Please, just right outside the bus for a clear shot?No!Can you at least open the door and let me get a clear shot from the bottom step of the bus?No!C’mon! Only a handful of people ever flew that plane and I’m one of them! This is incredible. Please let me get a good shot!No way!All photos I took had to be through the bus windows—note the two heads in the lower corners and the window frame across the top. And I’d flown it!So, good luck getting out there even for a few minutes before you’re caught.

It was my very first flight with passengers on an Air Force jet out of Andrews Air Force Base in Washington, D.C. And I had an emergency. But first, a touch of context.I had decided to become an Air Force pilot exactly four years before that month. I went through two years of USAF ROTC in college, graduated, then went to USAF pilot training.I got a dream assignment out of pilot training—a coveted slot flying the federal government VIPs out of the famous Andrews. I went through the training to check out in the USAF VIP passenger jet to which I was assigned and then—at age 25—came my very first trip with passengers, and it was a big one: all the way to Los Angeles.GO WEST YOUNG MAN!Just to be clear, I had grown up in Oklahoma and I went to pilot training in Texas. I had never been west of Texas—not by car, not by commercial airline—never, no way. My first trip ever to California was going to be in the pointy end of a USAF jet as a pilot with Washington VIPs in back. And this was decades before we flew with GPS.Thinking back over that, it just now hit me: What were they thinking? Damn!To think that the Air Force trusted a brand-new pilot, age 25, with that much responsibility is astounding. Wouldn’t it have been wise to make my first trip something short?That alone would have been a huge memory for my first flight ever in a jet with passengers.Yes, “would have been.”AS FATE WOULD HAVE ITBut on takeoff the landing gear malfunctioned.Instead of switching to Washington departure control and heading west to cross the entire North American continent on a big adventure—with people whose minds might have blown if they had known I’d never been past Texas and that this was my first trip and that this was also my first-ever aircraft emergency—we were going nowhere.I stayed with tower and circled low to the east of the base as I ran the landing gear emergency extension checklist to manually get the gear down and safe.My first trip with VIP passengers at Andrews lasted about 10 minutes and never got more than five miles from the base—and went, technically, nowhere.Maintenance gave me another jet, helped move the passengers and their bags, and then my second flight, ever, out of Andrews with passengers, went to California.Five years and 3,035 flight hours later, I still had exactly one emergency flight in my logbook.