At the time this happened back in the early 90s I had some 4000 hours in the logbooks scattered over more than two decades of flying light airplanes. I really should have known better. After all, I had passed many written tests and flight checks, BFRs and the like and certainly knew the importance of researching weather and notams. With the then latest tool -- DUAT -- up and running on my computer, I had everything necessary at my fingertips to help me do the right thing and I usually did.
But this time I didn’t and it nearly cost me the yellow 1969 AA1 American Yankee that I had restored over the past couple of years. In late March 1993 I decided to take my first long cross country in the airplane. I would fly it from home base at Hawthorne airport in the Los Angeles area to visit my parents in Kansas City. I had flown the trip many times previously in our Grumman Tiger and knew the Yankee’s 108 horsepower engine could not take me on the same high-altitude direct route over the Colorado Rockies I used in the Tiger. I elected to make a real adventure out of it by intentionally not landing at any airport I had ever visited previously. The selected route would be decidedly to the south by way of Yuma, AZ, and El Paso, TX before heading northeast toward Kansas. The trip would take two days with an overnight stop somewhere in Texas.
I was airborne from Hawthorne in pre-dawn darkness right at 4 AM just as planned. Earlier yet in the still very early morning, DUATS had advised clear sailing and good VFR weather all the way to Oklahoma. I opted to skip the notam section due to the early morning hour and figured that for severe clear VFR weather it would not contain much of interest anyway. That savings of three minutes on the computer was nearly my undoing.
I had flight planned 110 knots for both true airspeed and worst-case groundspeed on my generally eastbound track. The airplane had only 22 gallons of usable fuel and averaged 6 gallons an hour of fuel burn so I chose two and a half hour legs to have my usual one hour reserve on landing. Trying to find airports about two and a half hours apart in the desolate southwest is not easy but I came up with several nearly perfect legs. One that would be less than perfect was leg two – Yuma, AZ to Lordsburg, NM. I had never heard of Lordsburg but it looked good on the sectional chart and the AOPA airport directory showed it to be full service with a long, paved runway. It sounded like a nice place for a fuel stop even though it was nearly three hours into my three and a half hour fuel capacity. I reasoned that if groundspeed checks did not go well, I’d just drop into a closer airport and refuel there. No big deal.
In the AA1 there is no BOTH fuel selector position so I switched fuel tanks every half hour to keep the lateral balance in trim. And as a precaution on any maximum duration trip I flew, I always burned out one of the fuel tanks so I knew for certain where all of my remaining fuel was. Because I monitored fuel pressure carefully toward the end of the selected tank, I generally caught the fuel pressure drop and knew the tank was empty before the engine actually quit. Now and then I’d miss it but the engine started immediately again once the other tank was switched on. I used this technique as a matter of course on the Lordsburg leg and carefully figured my remaining fuel in the second tank based on the burn time of the first. This was long before fuel totalizers were commonplace in light aircraft.
Lordsburg is not exactly in a populated area of New Mexico. A call to Unicom did not result in any response but that is not unusual for small airports. I thought it strange, however, that despite smoke going straight up from a farm field 20 miles to the west, there seemed to be a lot of dust coming from the general area of the airport. If there was no surface wind, what was causing the dust? I started my descent from 9500 feet, did the pre-landing checks and began a concerted effort to find the field. As I got closer, I saw there was dust near the airport; closer still, I began to make out some type of movement on the runway. As the scene unfolded my jaw dropped as I realized the objects moving on the runway were road graders and the runway, taxiway and ramp areas were all gone!
For a few seconds I was so stunned I did not know what to do. I was short of fuel, in the middle of nowhere and the airport that should have been coming up below me wasn’t there anymore. Reality finally struck as I leveled off, set a low cruise power for my then 6500 feet altitude, leaned the mixture as much as possible and looked at the sectional for the “nearest” airport. Silver City was the closest at 32 nautical miles, but required a climb over high, rugged terrain. Climbing required fuel I did not have and the Yankee’s 76 knot final approach speed was not conducive to surviving a crash landing in the mountains. At least I was thinking. Adios, Silver City.
Only one other choice remained and that was Deming at 50 miles. The route there was over fairly level high desert terrain along Interstate 10. A spin of the E6B showed that fuel exhaustion and arrival at Deming were a flip of the coin in relative probability. If necessary, I could land on the interstate or dump the airplane into the desert alongside it and probably walk away. Deming, here I come.
The next 30 minutes were the most frustrating I have experienced, then or since, as a pilot. There was nothing I could do to prevent whatever the outcome would be as I was literally a passenger waiting for one door or another to open for me. I kept both options available, remaining high enough to reach the highway in the event I could not make the airport when fuel ran out. The airplane and engine were running great and the weather was beautiful. With a few more gallons it would have been a wonderful trip. I did not say anything about my situation to the then FSS operator at Deming and merely asked for an airport advisory. After all, what could he do anyway? Time moved slowly as the fuel level dropped to the empty indication in my only remaining tank. I could see both the airport and the interstate and could only hope fuel got me within range of the former before Plan B needed to be invoked. I just flew, content in the acceptance of my fate one way or the other and happy there would be no fire to escape. I picked a runway with an approach clear of the city and surrounding houses.
The story ended happily. Tire rubber reached the runway before air in the fuel lines reached the carburetor. Refueling showed that a mere one and a half gallons separated one outcome from the other. I visited the flight service station afterwards and learned that Lordsburg had been notamed closed for resurfacing for several weeks. And you can bet that I asked for notams for my next leg to Hobbs!