Professional Pilot, May 2019

Aviation Maintenance Mgr Greg McCann joined SEL in 2007 and currently has 3 additional technicians helping keep the fleet safe and ready 32 PROFESSIONAL PILOT May 2019 Director of Aviation Mark Wray has been with the SEL flight department since its inception and has led it for the past 15 years The company now employs 15 pilots who are busy flying nearly 3000 hrs per year Not being one to enter into something without research Schweitzer then began studying how aircraft ownership could benefit his company After a short period of chartering planes to gain 1st hand experience the value became clear At that time we were driving an hour and a half to Spokane waiting an hour for a commercial flight that usually wouldnt take us right where we needed to be then maybe taking another flight and repeating the whole procedure to get home Schweitzer states Recognizing the inefficiencies of this process SEL established its flight department in 1999 Began with Citation Bravo The 1st aircraft that SEL selected was a Cessna Citation Bravo Schweitzer says the Bravo was a great plane but they soon realized that they needed more seats more range and more speed Being quite happy with the Cessna brand in 2002 they added a Cessna Citation X The great advantage of the X is the speed When nearly every trip begins from Pullman WA you want to climb up as high as you can and go as fast as you can to cover the great expanse of distances out west Schweitzer explains The X proved so beneficial that in 2005 SEL purchased another Citation X Looking for additional short field capability in 2009 they welcomed a Citation Sovereign which was assigned to SELs newly opened base in Charlotte NC 2012 saw 2 more Sovereigns added as Schweitzer sold 1 of the Xs Continuing to evaluate its needs in 2015 SEL closed the Charlotte base and brought the Sovereign home to PUW Pullman Moscow Regional WA That same year SEL traded in its last X and upgraded to a Citation X By 2016 seeking commonality across the fleet the original Bravo and all 3 Sovereigns were sold to make room for 3 new Citation X twinjets This brought them to a total of 4 identical aircraft all based at PUW We could not be in Pullman without business aviation Schweitzer proclaims Weve got great people in our organization which is 100 employee owned and business aviation is right in line with our dignity of work value Weve had 3000 different employees fly at least once in our airplanes We have engineers going to meet with customers business and finance people traveling manufacturing employees going places We make very efficient use of these airplanes They save people time and we work hard to get the most out of this asset Leading the charge In 1999 Mark Wray found himself in a difficult situation His position as captain of a Cessna 310 and King Air 200 for a small charter operation was being eliminated and he needed employment This was before the Internet was what it is today so I went to the library looked up pilot jobs and SEL was advertising for a copilot I flew out here interviewed and they offered me the job Wray remembers This was quite a stretch from his days growing up on a hunting and fishing lodge in northern Ontario Canada I was 10 years old living on the edge of a lake watching the bush planes come and go One day one of them made a pass that was so low I could see the pilot From then on I knew that was what I wanted to do At 12 years old Wray joined the Royal Canadian Air Cadets a youth branch of the Canadian military and by 15 he had earned his glider pilot license In 1993 Wray graduated with his Aviation Technology degree from the prestigious Sault College in Ontario 1 of only 19 to do so from over 800 applicants He left school with his multi engine commercial and instrument ratings and 250 hours in his logbook While most of his fellow graduates joined Air Canada Wray made his way to Traverse City MI where he replicated his Transport Canada ratings over to FAA ratings This led to a right seat position in a Mitsubishi MU 2 for that charter company in Sault Ste Marie MI in 1994 He worked his way up through the ranks eventually flying the 310 and 200 and serving as copilot in a Learjet 25 After tragedy struck and took the life of the owner the company closed down and Wray decided to move to Pullman WA I went from Michigan to Wichita to get typed then flew SELs brand new Citation Bravo home to Pullman Wray recollects That was the beginning of SELs flight department and within a year they were already hitting 500 hours of flight time We realized pretty quickly that we needed some relief Not only did we fly that plane a lot but we also took it to some faraway places From that point on expansion began as the flight department progressed through various aircraft eventually settling on the 4 Citation X aircraft operated today Training at FlightSafety Along the way in 2004 Wray took over as Aviation Manager and was instrumental in the growth of the flight department to its current complement of 15 pilots Having a standardized fleet makes recurrent training much easier When we had the mixed fleet we would have to send pilots in groups of 2 or 3 at a time to different training facilities It could get complicated This fleet simplifies things and saves us money explains Wray