The mission sounded simple: James Benham needed to fly from his home base in Bryan, Texas, to San Diego, where he was scheduled to give a presentation the following day. Fortunately, Benham doesn’t have to rely on the airlines because he owns and pilots a CitationJet.
Traveling by general aviation isn’t always ideal, however, and there usually are constraints that could affect such a trip or even make it impossible to complete without spending extra time at the destination.
In the original CitationJet, there is no way Benham could make it nonstop from his home in Bryan to San Diego with safe fuel reserves, unless the prevailing winds shifted 180 degrees to blow east to west. And on this particular day, Benham had already spent a few hours flying friends back from a vacation in Colorado, dropping them off in Tyler, Texas, before returning to Coulter Field in Bryan.
Benham’s original plan was to stay overnight at his home, then depart the next day, with me joining him in Bryan for the trip to San Diego. This would have worked fine if the weather had cooperated, even if it required an intermediate stop for fuel, which would have been the case for a stock CitationJet...
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