Typical choices for a young pilot include taking the airline route or pursuing a career in business flying. Some pilots, like Eric Walden, try both before carving their own path in aviation. For Walden, the freedom and other benefits of launching his own single-pilot charter operation with a Daher TBM 850 proved irresistible, and he happily traded in his business jet career for life as a small business owner. Now Walden’s company Little Hawk Logistics flies charter customers all over the U.S. in his TBM 850. Walden is here at the NBAA show at the Daher exhibit (Booth 4882 and static display).
Walden’s family aviation history started with his father’s pioneering grandfather, Henry, who built and flew the first monoplane on Long Island, N.Y., shortly after the Wright brothers logged their famous first flights. Walden’s grandfather Al Ueltschi introduced the young lad to the pleasures of flying, with frequent trips in small airplanes and inspiring tales of Pan Am piloting adventures before launching training company FlightSafety International. Ueltschi’s first airplane was a Waco OX-5 biplane, and he bought it by pledging his small business, a hamburger stand, as collateral for a loan from a local bank. The name of the hamburger stand was The Little Hawk, and it thus inspired the name of Walden’s charter company.
The seeds for Walden’s venture were planted after 11 years flying NetJets Citation XLs and XLSs. Out on medical leave for a pinched nerve and too much stress, he found that he enjoyed being home with his young son during Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, which are busy travel times for fractional operations like NetJets. “NetJets was an amazing job,” he said, “I flew everywhere in the western hemisphere.” But years of seven days on and seven off duty were wearing on him, and the job was no longer much fun.
At the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wis., in 2013 Walden was on the flight line when a TBM 850 came “ripping across the field at 200 knots and made a tight turn over show center,” he recalled. “I got that in my head; maybe there’s a way to fly for myself.”
After the show, Walden began to run the numbers, using the Aircraft Cost Calculator (ACC, Booth 4736) to refine his assumptions. Walden’s uncle had been flying a Pilatus PC-12 for a dozen years and had plenty of data that he could use to assess the accuracy of the ACC numbers, which would give him confidence that the TBM figures were accurate too. “I compared them to the real world PC-12 numbers, and they were within a couple of percentage points,” he said. “That gave me confidence in the TBM numbers. Plugging the numbers into ACC, it was immediately clear that I could, if I flew 25 hours a month, clear the payments, fixed costs and have some extra for incidentals.”
There was one other challenge, and that was whether to seek his own charter certificate, or work with a management company that would allow Walden to be the sole pilot for the TBM. He contacted Meridian Air Group in Charlottesville, Va., a charter operator that flies larger aircraft, but also had significant unfulfilled demand for a TBM-size airplane. “They were turning away business for lack of metal and lack of pilots,” Walden said.
The agreement looked like it would benefit both companies. Walden had little spare time to chase down FAA inspectors for approval of a new Part 135 operation, scheduling maintenance and keeping up with the accounting and billing, while Meridian already had that infrastructure in place. “All that stuff I have no desire to deal with,” he said. “It’s a good partnership. Meridian gets a small monthly management fee and a percentage of my gross.” Walden flies trips for customers who might not need Meridian’s more expensive Pilatus PC-12 or Embraer Phenom 100.
Now all Walden needed was an airplane. He consulted with an experienced TBM ferry pilot who found an ideal TBM 850 in the U.S. Walden arranged the financing, resigned from NetJets, then closed on the airplane on April 14, 2014. He was ready to start flying, but there was a long delay caused by the local FAA FSDO to get the TBM onto Meridian’s charter certificate, and it wasn’t until 11 months later that he was finally cleared to take off. Walden flew his first trip in early March and flew almost 300 hours that year.
Charlottesville, where Walden was born and lives, turned out to be an ideal market for single-engine turboprop charter in the speedy TBM 850, with plenty of potential customers working in the local medical and high-tech industries, plus new talent bubbling up from the University of Virginia business school and law school. “My target is to reach out and find people who had never considered charter before,” he said. And the TBM’s relatively low cost per mile makes it an attractive steed compared to the higher priced twin-engine turboprops or light jets that are typically available.
Once he is able to show customers the benefits of chartering the TBM, they are sold. “They are proof that what I’m going after exists,” he said. One couple flew in August to Nashville and enjoyed the 1.5-hour trip for a little more than the cost of first-class airline tickets. Driving would have taken eight hours, and flying on the airlines would involve an unproductive stop at Dulles or Charlotte. “There are a lot of people who have flown charter and are put off by the cost, or never have flown because they never considered it possible,” he said. “This year we’re actively marketing via Google, radio ads and CharterHub to reach our demographic, and it’s working. We’re getting a critical mass together, and word of mouth accounts for a third of our new clients.”
With steady business in hand, in April Walden upgraded the TBM with a new Garmin G600 panel, with dual touchscreen GTN 750 GPS/com/navigators, GTX 345 ADS-B OUT and IN transponder and Flight Stream 210 wireless gateway. After the installation, Walden’s FSDO suddenly decided that he needed to take another checkride because of the new avionics, instead of just proving that he had done the differences training. This caused a three-week delay in getting back into the air and about $40,000 of lost revenue, but since then, business picked back up nicely. “Eventually I’m going to add another aircraft,” he said.
Having flown so many years as part of a two-pilot crew, switching to relying solely on himself was “initially very difficult for me,” Walden said. “I came from 17 years of a two-crew environment. But all those years gave me confidence. I know the airports, the controllers, how to deal with FBOs, passengers, et cetera.” He also learned a long time ago how to prioritize tasks and also when to say no to ATC. “I’m the one in the storms. It’s a lifesaver when they say, ‘you can’t deviate 10 degrees right,’ and I say, ‘how about I do, and you move everybody. I’m not flying into a thunderstorm. Deal with it.’ Even without a two-pilot crew you learn how to run a cockpit and use all available resources.”
The new avionics help, too, he added. “The plane makes it pretty easy, it’s an amazing piece of hardware. Now with the avionics upgrade, my bubble of situational awareness is massive.”
Walden did rewrite all of his checklists and built his own cockpit flows that are more efficient and add to the safety of flying as the sole pilot. “This all came from my professional experience,” he said. “I rearranged the checklists so they match the flows. The checklist from Daher is extremely verbose and repetitive. We spent lot of time streamlining the checklist, then had to get it certified.”
Walden believes he made the right move to start his own business. “I need to make sure this is real and not a flash in the pan,” he said. “I’m being cautious. This is my investment. I borrowed the money, and I am all in on this thing. I have all the upside, but also all the exposure. I’m confident it will work.
“It’s been a blast, and I have no regrets about leaving NetJets. I run into friends all the time at FBOs, and they say, ‘we’re on our fifth leg, and it’s going to be a 14-hour day. I say, ‘I’m going to go home right now.’ It’s a huge difference, I’m at home with my boy.”
Meanwhile, with an airplane that can fly to many more smaller airports, Walden is flying trips that he never did before, such as a flight in September to Saint-Pierre and Miquelon, the French islands off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. “That’s fun stuff,” he concluded, “not just Teterboro shuttles.”
