Aero Commander flight to SA
For Michael Johnstone the easiest way to bring his newly acquired Aero Commander 695B from Yukon, Oklahoma to Johannesburg, South Africa was to fly the great circle route of about 9 600 nautical miles over a period of five days logging some 34 flying hours.
Johnstone flew to the US on scheduled airline flights and joined up with ferry pilot Anthony Maitland for the flight from Legacy Aviation Services in Yukon on 13 December 2017 and five days later landed at Lanseria International Airport. “The trip was an amazing experience for me as it was my first flight from the US through Europe, Africa and finally home to South Africa, said Johnstone. “Temperatures ranged from -40C to +37C with large snowfalls in Canada and Greenland. We saw Mont Blanc in Switzerland, the desert in Egypt, the Nile River, Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Lake Malawi bordering Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique as wonderful sights.
Michael Johnstone’s aviation career
This trip was the culmination of a long process for Johnstone to progress from the Cessna 402C he had owned and flown for 10 years to a more advanced and capable turboprop aircraft to travel throughout southern Africa. In 1984 Johnstone and his brother founded Cranbrook Flavours, a successful sweet and savoury foodflavouring manufacturing company based in Johannesburg. Johnstone has been flying for 21 years and he started by renting various single engine aircraft. Later he progressed to a Cessna 210, which he owned for seven years. In 2008 he earned his multi-engine rating and purchased the 402C. Two years later Johnstone completed his Commercial Pilot’s Licence followed by an Instrument Rating.
Johnstone says “I regularly fly from Lanseria International Airport, because my business is based in Johannesburg to my home in Knysna, so I land at Plettenburg Bay airfield, which is 550 nautical miles. I like the idea of flying above the weather or closer to the top of the weather, because the Highveld region of South Africa often has thunderstorms. Avgas is expensive and not always available in African countries, whereas Jet A is available at almost any African airport.”
The decision to purchase an Aero Commander
Johnstone was considering the purchase of a King Air 200 or a Cessna Conquest II, but he had a discussion with his maintenance provider, Skycare Maintenance’s Dave Bellingham at Lanseria international Airport. Bellingham has been through formal Commander technical training and he had an unequivocal recommendation for the Model 695 Commander 1000. “Dave told me that the Commander was a great aircraft with amazing power delivered from its two Garret turboprop engines.
With Bellingham’s strong endorsement, Johnstone began researching Commanders, often consulting with Commander 1000 owner Ken Clarke, who owns the South African soft drink company Twizza. Eventually Johnstone settled for the fourth last Commander to come off the production line, a 609B being brokered by Legacy. When compared to the earlier Commander models, the B-model’s extra gross weight and fuel capacity especially appealed to Johnstone.
The flight to South Africa with ferry pilot Maitland was the first real experience Johnstone had in a turboprop, which was excellent for foundation learning. This was followed with flying training with Mark Waberski, an experienced Commander pilot in South Africa. In February 2019, Johnstone returned to the United States to undertake formal Commander training at Simcom in Orlando.
Soon after arriving back in South Africa, Johnstone had his Commander repainted, which coincided with the new South African registry marking applied. The Commander’s avionics suite was then upgrader by Century Avionics to include a Garmin 750, whilst interior work included the installation of a rear bench seat and new carpeting.
When all the upgrades were completed, Johnstone started using his Commander regularly to fly into Africa for his business. However, now with his sons now involved in the business, Johnstone describes himself as ‘semi-retired’ so he can use his Commander to fly leisure flights to wildlife parks in Mozambique, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
History of the Aero Commander
The Aero Commander 500 family is a series of light-twin piston-engined and turboprop aircraft originally built by the Aero Design and Engineering Company in the late 1940s, renamed the Aero Commander company in 1950 and a division of Rockwell International from 1965. The initial production version was the 200-mph, seven-seat Aero Commander 520.
An improved version, the 500S, manufactured after 1967, is known as the Shrike Commander. Larger variants are known by numerous model names and designations, ranging up to the 330-mph, 11-seat Model 695B / Jetprop 1000B turboprop, which is the subject of this article.
Design and development
The idea for the Commander light business twin was conceived by Ted Smith, a project engineer at the Douglas Aircraft Company. Working part-time after hours throughout 1944, a group of A-20 engineers formed the Aero Design and Engineering Company to design and build the proposed aircraft with a layout similar to their A-20 bomber. Originally, the new company was going to build three pre-production aircraft, but as the first aircraft was being built, they decided to build just one prototype. The final configuration was completed in July 1946 and was designated the Model L3805.
Registered NX1946, the prototype first flew on 23 April 1948. The L3805 accommodated up to five people and was powered by two Lycoming O-435-A piston engines. It was an all-metal high-wing monoplane with retractable undercarriage using components from a Vultee BT-13 Valiant. The market segment planned for this aircraft to be sold to small feeder airliner firms and was originally designed to carry seven passengers, but instead found use in the private business aircraft and military market. Walter Beech test flew the aircraft in 1949 and expressed interest in buying the project, but instead he decided to develop the Beechcraft Twin Bonanza. Fairchild Aircraft also evaluated the prototype at its Hagerstown, Maryland, headquarters.
The prototype flew successfully and the company leased, at no cost, a new 26,000 square-foot factory at Bethany near Oklahoma City to build a production version, certified on 30 June 1950. Nearly 10,000 hours of redesign work went into the model, including more powerful Lycoming GO-435-C2 engines, with a combined rating of 520 horsepower. The production model was named the Commander 520. The first Commander 520 was rolled out of the new factory in August 1951. Serial number one was used as a demonstrator, then sold in October 1952 to the Asahi Shimbun Press Company of Tokyo.
Operational history
In military service, it was initially designated the L-26, though in 1962 this was changed to U-4 for the United States Air Force and U-9 for the United States Army.
Bob Hoovers Shrike Commander on display
Under ownership of Rockwell in the 1960s, World War II pilot R. A. ‘Bob’ Hoover demonstrated the Shrike Commander 500S for decades in a variety of ‘managed energy’ routines, including single-engine and engine-out aerobatics. His Shrike Commander is displayed in the colours of his last sponsor, Evergreen International Aviation, at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian
Air and Space Museum. Bob Odegaard continued the tradition in 2012, flying a 1975 Shrike 500S in a Bob Hoover tribute routine. One U-4B became a presidential transport aircraft for Dwight D. Eisenhower between 1956 and 1960. This was the smallest ‘Air Force One’ and the first to wear the now-familiar blue-and-white livery. As of 2004, Shrike Commanders remained in service with the United States Coast Guard and United States Customs Service. A single 560F was operated by the Belgian Air Force as the personal transport of the late king Boudewijn from 1961 to 1973.
The unpressurized, long-fuselage 680FL was operated as a small package freighter by Combs Freightair in the 1970s and 1980s and by Suburban Air Freight in the 1980s and 1990s. The aircraft was popular with pilots, because it was extremely ‘pilot friendly’ and with its 380 hp supercharged engines did well in icing meteorological conditions. A number are still operated on contracts for cargo and fire control applications, as their piston engines offer good fuel specifics at low altitudes and longer loiter times.
The turboprop twin-Commanders, with much more powerful engines (and most with longer bodies, allowing greater rudder leverage, critical for single-engine control came out on the opposite end of the rankings, with one of the lowest rates of engine-failure accidents of all ‘light’ twins examined, at only 0.4 per hundred-thousand hours.