Some time in the 1980s I had to make a business trip to Boston from my office here in West Windsor. Going to Boston shouldn’t have been a big deal, but on this trip just about everything strange that could have happened did happen. And to make matters more interesting, the trip took place on the day before Thanksgiving.
The trip was with two colleagues from Aeronautical Research Associates of Princeton (ARAP), the company that had originally built and occupied the building at 50 Washington Road back in 1957. (More recently that building was used by Congressman Rush Holt as his local office.) My two colleagues on the trip were Evan — a fellow research engineer — and Coleman, our boss and president of the company.
The trip was for the purpose of visiting the research lab of the Avco Corporation in Everett, Massachusetts, located just a few miles from Boston’s Logan Airport. I don’t recall the technical matter we had to discuss with them, but it was deemed important enough to warrant a trip so close to the holiday. Accordingly, we all arrived at the ARAP parking lot early Wednesday morning and got into Coleman’s Cadillac for the drive up to Newark Airport, where we got on board our Eastern Airlines flight to Boston. That flight was usually not much more than about 40 minutes.
The weather was not bad going to Boston, just a little cloudy and damp, but nothing that would delay us. We arrived on time and picked up our rental car at the terminal. The drive to Avco Everett was only a few miles and routine. We arrived at the lab for our meeting at the expected time.
I believe that the main purpose of our meeting was to discuss a new contract under which we (ARAP) would assist Avco in a new research contract for a government agency, the kind of work ARAP specialized in, probably related to defense research. That was what both Evan and I specialized in, under the direction of Coleman, of course. We were all aeronautical engineers by training and experience and knew something about how intercontinental ballistic missiles worked. Much of our research dealt with how to shoot them down before they landed.
By the time our meeting was over it was time for lunch, and we all went to the Avco cafeteria. On the way we noticed that it had grown very cloudy and dark outside, and that it had started to rain. We heard people talking of a nor’easter approaching the Boston area. But we didn’t give it much attention since we were so close to the airport, and Eastern Airlines was very reliable. But what we found after we returned our rental car was surprising, especially for the day before Thanksgiving.
On entering the airport and checking the departure time for our flight, we found that the approaching storm had caused Eastern Airlines to cancel all its flights to Newark and other northeast destinations. How would we get home for the holiday? Would we have to stay over at the airport in a hotel?
We began to think of the “worst case scenarios.” Would we miss Thanksgiving with the family? Not if Coleman had anything to say about it. Then we noticed that he was talking on his portable telephone. It was something new then, but he had one with him. He was talking to Fred, his “standby” pilot in New Jersey, a guy who lived near Princeton and who sometimes assisted him when he needed a co-pilot in flying the personal plane he kept at the Robbinsville Airport.
Coleman’s personal plane was a Piper Aztec, a twin-engine plane with five seats. He had bought it about a decade before and used it frequently to fly himself on business trips that weren’t too far away. Both Evan and I had been with him on flights in the Aztec before. And Evan himself was a pilot. It was a very comfortable plane. For this trip, Coleman asked Fred to go to Robbinsville, pick up his plane, fly it to Boston, and take us home.
Even though the FAA had declared Logan Airport closed for commercial traffic, we were hoping they would let a private plane land there. It turned out that they would, as long as the flight from central New Jersey went by way of the Hudson River to Albany and then east across Massachusetts to Boston, a flight that might take a couple of hours or more. Then we would have to go back to Robbinsville the same way and get back to the ARAP offices to pick up our cars so we could drive home. At least there was a method to our madness.
The first part of our plan was to wait. We could do nothing to avoid that. Fred had to go from his home to Robbinsville, get the Aztec gassed up — assuming the pump at Robbinsville was unlocked — and fly it to Boston — the long way. The only benefit of the waiting period was that we all had time to call home and tell our wives we would be late. How late we couldn’t tell.
After about three hours we saw Fred walking into the terminal. We had positioned ourselves where we were told “private” passengers could enter the terminal. It was now around 5 p.m., and Fred had to get the Aztec refueled for the return trip. Getting a private plane gassed up under the circumstances took some haggling, and Coleman had to declare that he was responsible if anything went wrong since we were flying against FAA recommendations.
As expected, it was nearly dark outside when we boarded the Aztec, and since he had negotiated the terminal area when he arrived Coleman let Fred get us out to the runway. I think Fred also got us up and into the air and headed for Albany, our first aiming point. Coleman and Fred were seated up front in the pilot and co-pilot seats, with Evan and me in the second row.
The weather aloft wasn’t too bad, a little bumpy and wet, but nothing to hold us up. We actually got back to central New Jersey in pretty good time and started to approach the Robbinsville airport. But then we realized a couple of disturbing things.
First, there were no runway lights at Robbinsville. We would have to land pretty much in the dark. There were a few lights on the roads in the area and in buildings at the airport, but nothing on the runways. We had to rely on Coleman’s and Fred’s experience there to guide us down.
But as we started to descend, we also noticed that the wind was picking up and that it was now a cross-wind relative to the direction of the runway we wanted to use. Landing in the dark in the rain with a cross-wind was a real test of any pilot’s skill — and luck.
Thanks to their skill — and luck — we made it down safely, and taxied over to the usual parking spot. Fortunately, Fred’s car was still where he had left it when he started to come and get us. Now we had to decide on the “getting the rest of the way home” process. The first step was to decide how to get all four of us into Fred’s small car, a VW Beetle, I think, for the trip to the ARAP parking lot — about 10 miles.
Finally, we made it back to ARAP and were happy to see all our cars waiting — except Coleman’s, that is. His was at the Newark Airport parking lot. Since he lived not far from Coleman in Princeton, Evan volunteered to take Coleman home. It was up to Coleman how to retrieve his Cadillac at Newark. We all arrived home close to midnight in the rain. Most of my family had gone to bed by then, and I didn’t give a full report until Thanksgiving morning.
Fortunately, I never had to make a one-day business trip by air again. That one was enough of an adventure for a lifetime.
