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NEWS FROM CNN
Interview With F-14 Pilot John Suazo
Aired June 27, 2003 - 14:51 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: It's definitely hard to forget, March 21, over Baghdad the world watched. It was an incredible night, truly a shock and awe campaign.
Well, I was lucky enough to meet someone and he became a very good friend, Flight Officer and Lieutenant Commander John Suazo. He was there. An F-14 aviator, he is here to talk about it. Answer some of your questions. And I guess this is sort of pay back because I was embedded with all of you on the Lincoln and now you're embedded with all of us here at CNN. What do you think?
LIEUTENANT COMMANDER JOHN SUAZO, F-14 PILOT: It's definitely a different experience. We had a great time with you out there and it's kind of neat to see the different way people work and coming out here to see the whole CNN experience.
It's a little bit different than I expected. Little bit more crowded and everyone is kind of compacted in here. And it's kind of like being in a casino. A little bit of saturation.
PHILLIPS: It's overload.
SUAZO: Exactly, it's like a sports club no less.
PHILLIPS: Well, here you were flying over Iraq, you had AAA and everything coming up at you. I mean quite a light show. I mean, you come in here, it's the same thing, a lot of to absorb. Were there any surprises for you? Were you kind of shocked at how we operated? Or what it was like in here?
SUAZO: A little bit. A couple things that grabbed me from the get go, was how close everyone works and you know, the small desks and your little teams and so it was kind of neat to see that. I expected it to be a little bit more spread out and everyone have their own office, for some reason, you know, my preconceived notion.
Another thing, I was kind of surprised to see, like the meeting this morning, how much leeway -- well not leeway -- but liberty that you guy had to decide on what would come on the show and decide what was important and what you thought the readers would actually want to see.
I kind of expected it to be, kind of, you know, come down from above and be more dictated than it was actually. So that was kind of interesting.
PHILLIPS: That's a neat process, we all kind of mingle and discuss the topics. And, you know, it's kind of like you guys in the ready room. I mean, you are -- it's open discussion.
Alright, well, as you can imagine, we have received a ton of e- mails. So are you ready for this?
SUAZO: Sure.
PHILLIPS: Alright, this one comes from David, and he says, hey there. Is it true that the F-14 is so sophisticated that the aircraft can land by itself, if necessary? He also adds, thank you for keeping the world a safe place to live.
SUAZO: Well, David, thank you very much. Actually, technically, it is true that the F-14 can land on the ship aided -- aided -- without pilot interaction, as well as the Hornet, the other aircraft on the ship. It's probably safe to say that most guys will actually, at least, break out of that at about three quarters of a mile and fly it down to touchdown from that point.
There are cases where some guys will do that in bad weather, but the majority of the time the guys will not touchdown with the F-14.
PHILLIPS: Did you have to do that during operation Iraqi freedom?
SUAZO: Some of the pilots and flight officers actually had situations where the weather was pretty bad. In fact, there was a couple times...
PHILLIPS: I remember.
SUAZO: right -- pretty miserable. In fact it got down to about 0/0 weather, which is, you know, 0 visibility for the most part, and guys would take it down pretty close to the landing threshold before they broke out. Take it all the way down to touchdown doesn't happen all that much, for the most part -- at least in our aircraft, it doesn't.
PHILLIPS: Alright, that's true. Alright, This one is adorable. This comes from Morgan from Boulder, Colorado. Morgan is 5 years old. Dear F-14 Tomcatter. My name is Morgan, and Papa is a pilot. He flies a frontier airbus at Denver International Airport. How high do you fly in your F-14 Tomcat? How fast are you going when you land on your aircraft carrier? When I grow up I want to be an F-14 Tomcat pilot and a firefighter and a teacher and a Papa. How can I be an F- 14 Tomcat pilot?
SUAZO: Is it Morgan?
PHILLIPS: (LAUGHTER) Yes.
SUAZO: Morgan, you're going to be a busy guy
PHILLIPS: (LAUGHTER)
SUAZO: As far as how high we fast, rarely go about 50,000 feet. That's probably a good general rule. And when we land on the boat it's usually about 135 knots is a good speed.
As far as getting ready to be a Tomcat pilot and a teacher and a firefighter, and a Papa no less, you probably have to pick between a couple of those. At least I would recommend that. Probably the Tomcat stuff, study hard in school, play some sports and have a good time and work hard and you should be able to make it.
Unfortunately the Tomcat probably won't be around by then. You will be flying something that's even more impressive than what we do now, so.
PHILLIPS: Lt. Commander John Suazo, thanks for being with us.
SUAZO: Thank you, it was wonderful.
PHILLIPS: Yes, that was pretty easy. No classified information. No strike briefings.
SUAZO: No it was okay.
PHILLIPS: Alright, thanks, John.
SUAZO: Bye, now.
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