Chuck Osborne: Detailed Biography
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Early Years
Military Career
Aviation Career
Post-Aviation Career
Family
Education
Osborne Family Genealogy

Aviation Career

Just as I had hoped, my training as a military helicopter pilot opened the door to a civilian flight career — I became a commercial pilot when I was hired to fly a candidate running for Governor of Kentucky around the state of Kentucky in the final weeks of the May 1979 primary election.

A few months later, I accepted my first corporate flight position in the south-central Kentucky town of Somerset. The flight department I headed up consisted of a twin-engine Piper Aztec and a two-seat F-28A Enstrom helicopter (below).

The F-28A Enstrom helicopter was soon replaced with a brand new jet-powered Bell JetRanger III helicopter. The new JetRanger III cost in excess of three-quarters of a million dollars when it was purchased and I thrilled that my employers decided to buy the JetRanger. I completed a three-day, factory-training course and a flight checkout at the Bell Helicopter factory in Dallas, Texas, and then flew the jet-powered JetRanger III helicopter back to Kentucky.

As the company’s only pilot, I also filled the role as the company’s Chief Pilot. This included many roles that are often handled by more than one individual in larger corporate flight departments. These duties included tracking and scheduling maintenance for the aircraft, upkeep of hangar facilities, oversight of the fuel farm and many other details related to the safe operation of a helicopter and a twin-engine airplane for a corporation.

I continued to build on my aviation credentials through the years and moved on to higher paying positions flying larger and faster aircraft. After nearly three years in Somerset, the owners decided to shut down the flight department, and the JetRanger III helicopter was sold. I soon found a position as a First Officer for COMAIR, a scheduled airline out of the Greater Cincinnati airport in northern Kentucky.

I left this position after a few months for a higher paying job flying an emergency “LifeFlight” helicopter for a hospital in Evansville, Indiana. The medevac helicopter was a “stretched” version of the JetRanger III I had flown in Kentucky. It too was manufactured by Bell Helicopter and was called a LongRanger. This helicopter model was used by many hospital-based helicopter medevac services.
 

I flew medevac missions from the sixth-floor rooftop helicopter pad on a wing of the hospital for nearly two years. I transported patients to hospitals best able to treat their injuries. Hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky; Indianapolis, Indiana; and St. Louis, Missouri, were regular destinations. I also made transports as far away as Chicago, Nashville, and Springfield, Illinois. Springfield was quite memorable for me — the helipad was located on the rooftop of a twenty-one-story hospital wing!

A higher salary and an opportunity to fly larger, more sophisticated aircraft led me to accept a flight position in Moberly, Missouri, flying both airplanes and a helicopter. My new employer owned both a cattle ranch and a coal company. The flight department consisted of a Bell JetRanger helicopter, a turbo-prop Beechcraft King Air F90 airplane, and a second twin-engine airplane, called a Beechcraft Baron. The KingAir F90 was pressurized and flew higher and faster than the twin-engine Baron.

While flying for this Missouri flight department, I had the opportunity to fly a number of interesting people. Some of the more noteworthy passengers were Norm Stewart, a well known long-time University of Missouri basketball coach; Willard Scott, weatherman from the NBC morning news program “Today”; Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, Missouri Governor and later senator; John Ashcroft, Missouri Governor and the present U.S. Attorney General; Clayton Yeuter, former Secretary of Agriculture and U.S. Trade Representative; and 1980’s country music singer Lee Greenwood.

A changing business climate led to the sale of some of this flight department’s aircraft, and as a result I was forced to look for a new employer late in the summer of 1985. Before actually receiving a job layoff, I was able to find employment with a large coal company that strip-mined coal in eastern Kentucky.

The new position not only brought me back home to Kentucky but also gave me my first opportunity to fly a corporate jet. The company owned a Sabreliner, Model 40 jet originally manufactured by Rockwell International. Before I could start flying the Sabreliner jet, I first needed flight training and a type rating for the jet, which required two weeks of training at the international training facility, Flight Safety, in St. Louis. The training consisted of classroom and simulator training followed by a check ride in the Sabreliner, which I passed.

The company also owned a jet-powered helicopter called a Gazelle and I was the only company pilot qualified to fly it. The Gazelle built by the French aerospace manufacturer, Aerospatiale, and was used to travel to the company’s extensive land holdings and strip-mining operations throughout eastern Kentucky.

The Sabreliner jet was used for executive transportation throughout the United States and the Caribbean. One of my most memorable trips in the Sabreliner was to the Central American country of Belize. My boss owned an island off the coast of Belize, and periodically would schedule vacation trips to the island. The trips to Belize would generally layover for at least several days and this provided ample time to enjoy scuba diving and snorkeling. Trips to Belize were also a good opportunity to cruise at the Sabreliner’ s maximum cruising altitude of 51,000 feet, which was higher than that of most corporate jets.

To become a captain on a larger corporate jet, I decided in 1986 to relocate to a corporate flight department based out of the Akron Canton airport. The flight crew position began as a temporary copilot position aboard a Falcon 20 jet (Place Link to Falcon 20 – Gadsden, AL) , but soon turned into a permanent position. The Falcon 20 is a medium-size business jet built by Dassault Aviation of France.

Here I am with the Falcon 20 at the Akron Canton Airport

After a few months copiloting the Falcon 20, I received two weeks of flight training to get my type rating for the Falcon 20 jet. All of the flight training took place in simulators at a training facility located at DFW airport in Dallas, Texas, called Simuflite International. Since I already had previous jet experience and a jet type rating, I was permitted to take my check ride in a flight simulator. I completed the check ride in the simulator and received my type rating for the Falcon 20 in January 1987.

I had a particularly memorable flight on September 23, 1987. I flew retired Justice of the Supreme Court Arthur Goldberg back to Washington DC’s Dulles airport and, while waiting for the arrival of Justice Goldberg’s limousine, we chatted.

I learned from Justice Goldberg that President John F. Kennedy had appointed him to a seat on the Supreme Court in 1962. Justice Goldberg confided to me that he missed President Kennedy, even though it had been nearly 24 years since the President’s death. I learned later that the former Supreme Court Justice had also served as the Secretary of Labor in the Kennedy Administration.

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