Red Star Pilot Association holds formation training at city airport
Workshop teaches aviation students how to become better pilots It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman. Well, if you’ve noticed large flying objects in the sky it is safe to say that it probably wasn’t a bird, and definitely wasn’t Superman, but yes, it was indeed a plane, a number of them actually.
But not just any ordinary, modern-day planes. They are Eastern Bloc Aircrafts manufactured in the late-1970s and early-1980s. Some of them were built in the mid-1950s.
One of such planes, unfortunately, crashed at 2 p.m. on Thursday east of Bakersfield killing a 75-year-old man who was en route to the Porterville Municipal Airport for the Red Star Pilot Association’s weekend training event, which is known to be the largest formation training gathering in the country. The man was identified as Gilbert Gutierrez from Phoenix, Ariz.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane was an older-model, single-engine aircraft called a YAK-18A. The cause of the accident is under investigation.
Hartley Postlethwaite, the president of the Red Star Pilot Association, said he and over 40 pilots who flew in to Porterville for the training workshop, are deeply saddened by the tragic event.
“We lost a brother, a friend,” Postlethwaite said. “We are sad for him and his family.”
Postlethwaite said some time today a group of pilots will perform a missingman formation, where several airplanes fly in formation with one pulling up and flying west.
“That is the highest honor we can give a pilot,” Postlethwaite said.
In the meantime, Postlethwaite said he and his crew will continue to train because “that is what he would want us to do,” he said.
Postlethwaite said dozens of pilots from all over the country, such as Washington state, Utah, Arizona, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles, started arriving in Porterville on Thursday. He said they will stay in town until Sunday. During that time, Postlethwaite said pilots will instruct aviation students on safety formation training and camaraderie, which Postlethwaite said is the best part of the workshop.
“This event is as much about the community and seeing our friends in Porterville as it is the people that are flying the airplanes that get together,” Postleth-
waite said, adding, “We just have a good time with a squadron-like lifestyle and go out and challenge each other by flying together and holding one another to a high standard.”
Holding one another to a high standard is something the Red Star Pilot Association’s training workshop has been doing for the past 10 years at Porterville’s airport, and the 16th year overall.
Why Porterville of all places?
“Because the city’s airport manager is fantastic,” Postlethwaite said. “He is very welcoming, the airspace around here is free so there is not any other airplanes that we have to worry about when we fly around, and we have lots of open fields out here.”
Postlethwaite said he and the pilots stay at local hotels, eat at local restaurants, utilize the airport’s fuel services and maintenance tools and whatever else to “help support the economy.”
“We are big on wherever we go that we bring dollars into the local economy,” Postlethwaite said.
In terms of the firstclass training pilots receive, Postlethwaite said there are three main steps.
The first, a safety briefing, starts at 8 a.m., which is followed by an hour pre-flight, an hour flight and then an hour debrief.
“We use the idea of brief what you want to fly and fly what you brief,” Postlethwaite said.
He noted that students are only allowed to travel within 50 miles in any direction.
Byron Fox, one of the lead pilots at the workshop, has been an instructor since the training workshop started 16 years ago.
Fox, who flew fixedwing jets and helicopters in the U.S. Air Force, said he enjoys not only training students, but just being around others who share his passion.
“For us it is challenging, it is exciting and the camaraderie is what I love, I really do,” Fox said, adding, “Flying is like driving on the freeway, as long as everybody stays in their lane, you just add a third dimension into it.”