Sneaky wings...

Pilots!

We missed someone who earned their wings last week, and I did not learn about it until just now!

Please join me in a belated "congrats" for Private Pilot Rick S, who earned his wings on the 8th in Cessna 739!



Nice work, Rick!Sorry we missed ya the first time! :)

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Additionally, some guy named Elian earned his ATP SE and ME last week as well. The boy is busy!

Nice work, Elian!



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Windy today! Hang onto your hair!

Blue Skies,

- Mike

Double upgrade!

Pilots!

I come bearing gifts!

First, please join me in congratulating the newest IFR Pilot in the world, one Blindfolded Pat R., who scored his IR chops yesterday in Cessna 17J with DPE Mark D -- yep, at Chino. Way to go, Pat!

Pat has been practicing things like the SOGGE-1 arrival and the SPLASH-A approach lately. I am especially happy that we were able to get it done for Pat, despite the mess.



An extra Kudo to Elian for pulling out the stops to get this done.

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I have other news as well...

I received this tidbit in the mail this morning:

Today is Thursday, January 6th at 6:00 p.m. The present water level at the Prado dam is 514 ft. The airport will be open daily from 7:30 am to 4:00 pm for tenants and clean-up volunteers only. The runway will be open Friday, January 7th for departures and landings from 7:30 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Inspections of buildings, hangars and structures located on the airport are under way. At this time, Access Only - Yellow Tags have been approved for the following buildings: 1909, 1911, 1913, 1917, 1921, 1925, 1931, 1935, 1939, 1943, 1947, 1951, 1955, 1961 1963, 1967, 1965, 1969, and 1971.

This means... if the news holds, we will be retrieving our flythings today, and the weekend is game on, back to normal -- grab those bookings and let's fly! finally!

If for some reason the runway does NOT re-open, we will remain at Chino, but we will re-instate the schedule and open the planes for solo flights regardless. We will likely just staff an office person there fulltime.



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Rain or shine, we'll see ya this weekend!

Blue Skies,

- Mike

Castaways

Pilots!

Finally a little sanity (a smidge!) has been restored to the airport. Here is what I know, and how it affects our goal of normalcy.

First, the Airport is open to tenants and customers only, daily, from about 8am until the Corona Police decide they've had enough of your face. Really. Our entire office staff is being evicted every afternoon at random points in the day, for no real reason at all.

Our friend Scott was threatened with arrest while he did maintenance at the witching hour of 6pm in our hangar.

It's a weird way to run a business. I do apologize to those left out in the cold who call -- for the moment, the only reliable way to get through is:

1. Call, leave a message, and we will get to it as soon as we can. We are fielding about 50-60 calls daily, and we have a reduced timeframe to return them -- we're doing our best, honest!

2. Email fly@flycorona.com and we'll reply as soon as we can.

I wish I had better information for you, but it seems to change with the wind and the city's mood.



It's not all sour grapes at the ranch, though. I have some good news:

We have successfully extracted Bonanza 11N from AJO and she now sits in Chino at Threshold Aviation. Feel free to book her up and fly her if you'd like. The plane logbook is inside.

Threshhold closes at 8pm nightly, and they have requested that we fly while they are open only -- no night flights.

For those of you who are time-building under a tight schedule (flying appx 60+ hours per month), we have a new Cessna 150 available. We will not train from this aircraft, but our hope is that having access to this one will alleviate schedule strain on poor 630, who is becoming a popular runabout.

This other C150 is only available on a dry lease basis with higher than normal daily minimums. Feel free to inquire if you wish to avail yourself of this aircraft.



Carlos, Fernando, and Kevin have great videos of the water-departure shortfield takeoffs on facebook. Yikes!

The current thinking is that the airport may re-open this weekend. I give this a 25% chance only. The following weekend, however, we plan to return to normal operation at Corona. We hope. 90% chance of that. We are prepared to operate from CNO as long as necessary.

We're almost through this crisis. Thanks to all for weathering it (ha ha) with us!

Blue Skies,

- Mike