Doug Liman Blog: New Year’s Return From Florida Through Snow, Ice and Hail, Part 2

Share on Facebook posted 01-05-10 by Doug Liman

As I mentioned in Part 1, every year I fly down to Florida to visit with my mom. Below is my journal which I’m just getting to posting now.

December 31

After what was a relatively relaxing trip to Florida, sleeping ten hours a night to catch up on a year of not enough sleep, it is time to return to the Northeast for New Year’s at the sheep farm. It wasn’t all play down here; I did screen Fair Game for an audience of my mother’s friends in the screening room of a wealthy (read: Republican) friends. “Well, that’s one way to look at the facts” was the screening room owner’s response to the film.

This is a new kind of movie for me, and one of the side benefits of it is that suddenly I am being invited to all sorts of events and people’s homes. After Mr. & Mrs. Smith, I started getting invited to all sorts of parties by publicists. Free BlackBerry party? Sure. Go to the home of the Hiltons and watch the pilot of Who wants to be a Hilton? with Paris Hilton and Donald Trump? Sure. But now, with Fair Game, I am being invited to events not because of who I am, but because people want to hear what I have to say. It is enormously flattering.

Now, getting back to flying my ass up to the sheep farm, which is about a hundred miles north of New York City. After what was arguably one of my most stressful flights ever coming down to Florida, I feel I am owed a nice easy flight home. Not to be — a big winter storm is blanketing the entire northeast from Washington to Boston. This means the need for a fuel stop so that I’ll have plenty of fuel when I get to the Northeast (normally the tail winds mean I can go non-stop on the way home). The entirety of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia are blanketed in low fog, ceilings between 100 and 300 feet (I need at least 200 feet to land). My plan is to aim for Charleston, South Carolina, and if the weather renders a landing impossible, I will still have plenty of fuel to deviate 200 miles inland, to better weather.

December 31, Noon

I just landed in Myrtle Beach again — couldn’t get into Charleston, but Myrtle was reporting 300 foot ceilings for the past two hours so I decided to chance it that they would hold up — which they did. The same line guy is here from Christmas Day. “You made it,” he says, reminding me that the last time he saw me I was taxiing out in a thunderstorm, waiting for a momentary break to launch — another signal that maybe I am pushing things a little too hard. The weather in the northeast is improving slightly so maybe the good weather I am owed is finally arriving. I spent the two and a half hours from Palm Beach to Myrtle Beach mostly on the satellite phone arranging the dinner for that night: dealing with the transportation of eight friends from the city to Hudson, New York; what we were going to serve; who was going to buy what food; fielding calls from friends in Fairway Market in New York; and giving driving directions to cousins.

My airplane is certified for flight into known icing — which is the only way the final leg of the flight is going to be possible.

December 31, 3 p.m.

Land in Hudson, New York. The flight was uneventful. I was above the weather, flying at 15,000 feet, so I only had to deal with the snowstorm during my descent to land. Plus, my mom had packed me a care package for the return flight, so Jackson and I really traveled in style (read: ate pizza). The only hairy part is that when I broke out of the clouds, instead of staring at the runway, I was staring at a field of white snow — it was almost impossible to tell where the runway was. It is a small airport, and they hadn’t plowed yet. I’d never landed on an unplowed runway, but I brought it in real slow and was very gentle with the brakes. It worked. My producer friend Avram, who is also a pilot, told me that in Alaska the Air Force guys’ method for landing on an unplowed runway is to slam on the brakes and do a 180 with their aircraft, then gun the engine to stop.

I’m not gonna try this.