Taking off and landing at Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport
PENN TWP — A flight from Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport to Indiana County’s Jimmy Stewart Airport takes about 30 minutes, but pilots may walk through a lengthy equipment checklist before ever leaving the runway.
Aside from just making sure an aircraft is filled with fuel and oil, a pilot checks weather conditions, including air pressure and wind direction, and the status of their own plane before taking a flight. The many parts of a plane have to be functioning properly to ensure a safe flight, according to Mike Walsh, a pilot who lives in Saxonburg.
Walsh is also a member of the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport Authority’s board of directors.
He took a flight between the two county airports Aug. 4 and demonstrated the checks a pilot should go through before flying. He also maintained communication with flight control operators on the ground, who informed him of air traffic in the area and the conditions of his destination airport.
The afternoon flight was routine and saw only light air traffic, but Walsh said the preflight checks and midair communication is important to keep the airways safe.
“I always like to talk to someone,” Walsh said of opening his radio communications. “If anything goes haywire, you have someone to talk to.”
Although much of the air traffic that passes through Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport is personal aircraft that seat only a handful of people, Walsh said they fly like any other commercial craft would.
Stephanie Saracco, manager of the airport, said the airfield surpassed 80,000 operations in 2023 and more than 90,000 operations in 2025. The airport has been accepted by the Federal Aviation Administration as a candidate for its federal contract tower program, which would allow for certified air traffic controllers to staff the tower and be paid by the FAA.
Before taxiing his 2019 Cirrus plane to the runway, Walsh dialed in the radio frequencies he would need to communicate, which included both airports.
The operators Walsh spoke to over his radio were based in other parts of Western Pennsylvania, mainly Pittsburgh and Johnstown, which each have control towers, he said.
Walsh has been flying for more than 30 years and has accumulated more than 25,000 hours in flight time. He regularly takes his plane to vacation destinations over the summer and to DuBois, which he said has an airport with a nice cafe on site.
Through years of owning planes, Walsh has seen the technology and capabilities of airplanes progress as more features were introduced. He even uses a tablet device to track his flight, with an application that shows the air traffic near his own plane, similar to how a ground vehicle’s GPS would. Walsh said the advent of GPS has made flying a little easier, not least for the fact that pilots have a direct view of their planned flight path.
“We used to fly by (visual flight rules),” Walsh said of flight routes, meaning that pilots relied on their own sight and tower communication to maneuver their plane in midair. “Since GPS, mostly everything has been direct.”
A plane the size of Walsh’s has to hit a speed of around 73 knots to takeoff. Once he was on the runway, he hit the gas, accelerating the plane to flight speed down the Penn Township airport’s about 4,800 feet of runway. Once airborne, the plane got to an average speed of about 170 knots, which Walsh said is just under 200 mph.
The sky was relatively clear Aug. 4 as Walsh climbed to an altitude of about 3,500 feet heading east. He said planes are supposed to fly at odd-numbered thousands when going eastbound and even-numbered thousands while going westbound. So the journey back from Indiana would be even higher than the journey to the airport.
“Really, on the East Coast, you don’t need to fly that high,” Walsh said, adding commercial jets normally fly at about 30,000 feet.
When the Indiana County airport rose on the horizon, Walsh began angling his plane toward its runway. As he approached, he got instruction from control on the ground to alert him to traffic on the runway. He had to slow his speed a little in his descent and do a little maneuvering to make sure the plane was approaching the landing site at an ideal angle.
Modern airport runways are outfitted with four lights pointed outward that help a pilot adjust their descent at an angle ideal for landing. As Walsh’s plane approached, the lights would change based on his angle of descent. Once two of four of them turned red, Walsh knew he was safe to make his landing, into the wind, of course.
The plane landed smoothly and there was plenty of runway space left over by the time Walsh’s plane got to taxiing speed.
Before taking off from the Indiana County airport, Walsh once again performed his safety checks, even testing the plane’s oil to ensure he and his airplane would safely arrive back at the Butler County airport.
Walsh said adding a control tower at the Pittsburgh-Butler Regional Airport would further improve the safety of landing and taking off from its runway. He noted airports receive federal funding for maintenance and the FAA even helps staff positions.
“The tower would control airspace for 14 to 16 hours a day,” Walsh said. “The FAA folks fund airport maintenance.”
