Steve Berven captured the essence of his dad's job well: "He was out
there trying to break the planes."
Les Berven tried to break a lot of planes in more than 30 years as a test
pilot. And if you've ever taken a flight on a Boeing jet, chances are his
efforts helped you arrive safe and sound.
A renowned pilot with a mischievous sense of humor and a voracious
intellect, Mr. Berven was an all-star in the small but close-knit community
of fliers who routinely put their lives on the line to make airplanes safe
for the rest of us. He died Dec. 14 at the age of 59, after complications
from heart surgery.
Mr. Berven was chief test pilot for the Federal Aviation Administration's
Northwest Mountain region for more than 20 years before retiring in August.
He flew every Boeing model built since the late 1970s before certifying them
to shuttle passengers around the globe.
"Every Boeing airplane has Les' fingerprints on it," said Steve O'Neal,
an FAA flight-test engineer who first flew with Berven in 1978.
Though he lived and worked far outside the public eye, Mr. Berven's
day-to-day routine demanded the same white-knuckled risk-taking that made
military test pilots like Chuck Yeager heroes.
John Cashman encountered Mr. Berven's skills and intestinal fortitude
often. As Boeing's chief test pilot, Cashman flew alongside Mr. Berven
during many regulatory reviews of Boeing jets.
Mr. Berven was especially adept at stall tests — piloting a jet at the
slowest possible speed until it stopped flying and started falling.
While testing the 777 in the mid-1990s, Cashman recalled, Mr. Berven once
performed 54 stall tests in a single day.
Another typical test involved loading a commercial jet to its maximum
weight, accelerating down a runway at 200 miles per hour and slamming on the
brakes — just to see what happened.
A plaque in Mr. Berven's Woodinville home boasts a chunk of blown-out
tire from a 757 that he'd ground down to its landing gear in 1982.
In a rare public moment, Mr. Berven was called upon in 1995 to assist the
investigation of US Airways Flight 427, a Boeing 737 that had crashed near
Pittsburgh the year before.
When investigators suspected a wake vortex from another jet may have
triggered the disaster, Mr. Berven purposely flew into wake vortexes more
than 200 times to test the theory. (The National Transportation Safety Board
concluded in 1999 that the crash was caused by rudder malfunction, and the
FAA subsequently ordered Boeing to redesign the 737 rudder mechanism.)
Mr. Berven thought little of such stomach-churning thrills.
"Somebody's got to stick their neck out, or we don't fly," explained Burt
Rutan, chief executive of Scaled Composites in Mojave, Calif.
Rutan and Mr. Berven met while testing fighter jets at Edwards Air Force
Base in the 1960s and 1970s. Rutan achieved fame in 1986 for designing and
building the Voyager, the first aircraft to circle the world without
refueling.
Rutan recalled Mr. Berven as a "phenomenally great stick-and-rudder
pilot" whose passion for flying was unrivaled.
Rutan added: "The thing you've got to include if you do a story on Les is
his quote. 'The purpose of man's existence on Earth is to fly. Time not
spent flying or preparing to fly is wasted.' "
Getting his wings
That passion for flying was born early. Raised in tiny Loyalton, Calif.,
in the Sierra Nevada, Mr. Berven could distinguish planes by the sound of
their engines by age 6. His stepfather, Gordon Berven, himself an Air Force
test pilot, took Les for his first flight in a Lockheed P-80 Shooting Star,
the military's first jet fighter. Les Berven had his pilot's license by the
time he was 14.
After earning a degree in aeronautical engineering at California
Polytechnic University in San Luis Opisbo, Calif., in 1964, "there was never
any question what he would do," said Carol Berven, his wife of 38 years.
Carol Berven never tried to talk her husband into a safer line of work.
Instead, she said, "my job was to learn not be nervous."
Mr. Berven helped the cause by downplaying the often harrowing nature of
his job, such as his work flying the BD-5.
Bede Aircraft was a maker of experimental planes in Newton, Kan. Mr.
Berven followed Rutan to Bede in 1972 and become the company's test pilot.
The company's tiny BD-5, which weighed less than 900 pounds and had an
18-foot wingspan, developed a cult following for its radical design. But it
was sometimes unstable.
"It was only years after the BD-5 testing that Les told me he would kiss
each of the (three) kids before he left in the morning because he wasn't
sure he'd come back that night," Carol said. "It was good he waited."
Notes from one of Mr. Berven's BD-5 flight tests typifies the mix of
humor, technical expertise and placidity he brought to his work.
"I touched down on the road at about 85 mph and an 800 (foot-per-minute)
descent, folded the main gear aft and ran off the left side of the road down
into a 10-foot ditch, up the other side and came to a stop in a small cloud
of dust," Mr. Berven wrote. "The only injury sustained was to a field mouse
I mashed at the bottom of the ditch."
Respected middleman
Mr. Berven also had the political skills to thrive in a bureaucracy like
the FAA while building mutual respect among his peers at Boeing, despite the
ever-present tension between regulator and regulated.
"That adversarial relationship would raise its head on a daily basis if
we're talking about a big program like the 777," said his colleague O'Neal.
"He could be diplomatic, but a lot of time diplomacy wasn't called for and
he'd just say, 'This is the way it's got to be.' "
"Sometimes you could change his mind, and other times he wouldn't budge,"
agreed Boeing's Cashman. "He represented the FAA and the public extremely
well in that role."
To the end of his life, Mr. Berven's enthusiasm and curiosity never
flagged. Upon leaving the FAA last summer, he purchased a 22-foot Catalina
sailboat and began reading everything he could get his hands on about
sailing and the latest navigational gear. He spoke excitedly about long
trips to tropical islands, though "we were going to start small, in Puget
Sound," said Carol.
Mr. Berven's family and the Seattle flying community are now coping with
his loss.
"You never expect a guy like that to go away," said Fred Griffith, a
longtime contract FAA test pilot.
Mr. Berven was honored by family at a private service Friday. In addition
to his wife, he is survived by his sons Steve, 35, of Spokane, and Andrew,
34, of Seattle, and his daughter Anne, 32, of Santa Fe; and two
grandchildren. The FAA, family and friends are planning a public memorial
service, which will be held at 7 p.m. Jan. 4 at the Museum of Flight, 9404
E. Marginal Way S., Tukwila.