If there would be a champions or premier league for pilots, flying into OSHKOSH during the AirVenture would be it.
Imagine the following situation; you just flew for 4 days straight across the Atlantic, already flew roughly 4.5 hours and 3 legs that day from the very north of Canada to the US, had a very rushed lunch on a little island, took off within 8 minutes from arrival at the airport by horse carriage together with 5 other planes all heading for the same destination.
And now you still have to fly another 50 minutes to Fond du Lac and do the following: Over Fond du Lac in 3600ft MSL, you need to listen to the Oshkosh arrival ATIS to get the active runway information, find the correct tower frequency in the 37 pages NOTAM document and then perform a visual at 150 knots from Fond du Lac to “Warbird Island” a small Island in the lake where you need to hold and orbit around the island at 1800ft surrounded by other fast planes while the TCAS (Anti Collision System) constantly screams “Traffic” at you.
You need to watch out for traffic (which you actually see out of the windows in all directions around and on your TCAS monitor way too close), avoid it, maintain radio communication with Oshkosh Tower, fly the plane, work down arrival checklists and navigate. Once called in by the tower (or not like in our case as the tower obviously was overwhelmed by 5 same type planes coming in at the same time), you only have 2 minutes to fly to the base of RW 36R which in reality isn’t a runway but a taxiway used as such – running in parallel to the actual runway.
While turning base 36, you have one other plane right behind you and another directly in front of you – all calling themselves “Red Blue TBM”. As the tower obviously did not expect five same type planes all approaching within 5 minutes, the guidance you are getting does not make sense, so you just continue hoping the famous Oshkosh tower knows what they are doing and got everything under control. The frequency doesn’t allow for involved questions and there really isn’t any good way to get out of the approach traffic so not a lot of options. Now another plane coming from the left and below you (one our our group we later realized) which you are sure is about to approach runway 36 left suddenly gets very close, undershoots you and places itself in front of you. Now you are 3 TBMs on a taxiway and your chances of surviving suddenly appear slim. The tower now finally seems to have noticed that there is one more airplane than expected and advises you to “land on the blue dot (one of four painted position markers on the runway to separate the planes) – if you can still make it” as you are still very high. You decide you can make it, dive down, getting brutally close to the plane that just landed which is advised to “perform a high speed taxi and not slow down” so you don’t hit it from the back (as slowing down yourself is not possible because you would stall). You dive down, flare, touch down and immediately get the same instruction to keep speed up to not have the following plane which is also a TBM hit you from the back. So you race down the “runway” at 60-70 knots trying to keep the plane on the ground. At the same time you need to place a printed piece of paper in you windows so the marshallers on the ground can guide you to your parking position. That’s Oshkosh arrival and probably the most stressful situation a pilot can voluntarily get himself in. But – we are alive. And happy. We just flew from Europe to the US. What an experience.
