<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="350" height="301" id="soundslider"><param name="movie" value="http://www.eastoregonian.biz/slideshows/053010_seaport/soundslider.swf?size=1&format=xml&embed_width=350&embed_height=301" /><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always" /><param name="quality" value="high" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="menu" value="false" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed src="http://www.eastoregonian.biz/slideshows/053010_seaport/soundslider.swf?size=1&format=xml&embed_width=350&embed_height=301" quality="high" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="350" height="301" menu="false" allowScriptAccess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object><br>Staff photo by Kathy Aney

SeaPort pilot Dan Costello once followed bad guys around town as a Portland police officer high in the sky.

As Costello piloted the plane, another officer communicated with units on the ground. The chases got dicey at times. Following a drug dealer to the K-Mart parking lot near Portland International Airport, for instance, can be a tad complicated considering that air traffic on the fringes of an airport is heavy and multi-layered.

By comparison, Costello’s current job piloting commuter SeaPort Airlines flights between Pendleton, Portland, Seattle and Astoria seems an idyllic vacation to Costello, who retired from the Portland Police Department in 2008 after 25 years in law enforcement.

He was retired for all of two months when he got a tempting offer from SeaPort founder and former CEO Kent Craford who told him, “We’re starting an airline.”

Costello had bumped into Craford as the CEO measured for new offices at PDX. The meeting was serendipitous. When Craford mentioned that SeaPort pilots would fly Pilatus PC-12s, Costello’s interest was piqued. SeaPort offered him a job a week later.

“I wasn’t going to sit around and watch Oprah,” he said, “and here I was being offered a job to fly my favorite airplane – I grabbed it.”

Costello climbed into the cockpit again as one of SeaPort’s flyers, this time piloting a Pilatus PC-12 single-engine turbo prop plane.

“I love the Pilatus,” Costello says. “If I won the lottery, I’d buy one in a heartbeat.”

The plane, he said, is big enough to get up to 27,000 feet, cruise at 250 knots and land on a relatively-small 3,000-foot landing strip.

On a recent morning, his plane stood idle, chock blocks in place, as Costello started his day at the pilots’ quarters, an old farmhouse located about 50 yards from the Pendleton airport’s front door. After breakfast, he beat his co-pilot Kelly Wiprud out the door at about 4:15 a.m., wheeling his suitcase through the darkness.

Inside the terminal, he cheerfully greeted customer service agent Peggy Weightman and set about filing a flight plan and checking the weather. On the tarmac, Co-Pilot Kelly Wiprud began conducting a pre-flight inspection.

Inside, Costello reviewed the flight manifest which listed weights of five passengers plus the two pilots (1,367 pounds), cargo (46 pounds) and fuel (1,000 pounds) and plotted the center of gravity.

The pilots greeted their five sleepy passengers in the terminal waiting area.

“We’re now boarding for Portland,” Wiprud advised them.

“I thought we were going to Las Vegas,” Costello quipped, drawing a giggle and a guffaw from a couple passengers and eye-roll from Wiprud. As the passengers got to their feet, Costello predicted “a gorgeous flight.”

The pilots, who double as baggage handlers, stowed several suitcases aft. SeaPort planes carry assorted baggage: animals in carriers, frozen seafood, live fish for a pet store, guitars, banjos, water samples for a Portland lab.

Costello slid his tall frame into the cockpit, a snug fit for the 6-foot, 5-inch, 275-pound pilot.

“The other pilots,” Costello says, “have learned I have to get into the cockpit first.”

The two pilots donned headphones. Costello started the plane’s engine and the duo worked their way down another pre-flight checklist. Wiprud contacted the nearest air traffic controller.

“Sasquatch 21, westbound from Pendleton,” he intoned into the mic.

The Pilatus gathered speed. As the plane cruised along the runway, the line of white lights along the edge turned to red. Once airborne, the plane rose 3,000 feet per minute to 20,000 feet. Among a collection of gauges, the GPS screen showed a tiny plane floating along a red line. Outside the plane, a sky tinged in pink cast a rosy glow on Cold Springs Reservoir and dozens of crop circles below.

Between radio transmissions, Costello and Wiprud chatted about their upcoming weekend. Out the window, the rising sun set Hood, Adams, Rainier and St. Helens aglow. Before long, the pilots began their slow descent to PDX.

“It’s like riding a sled down a hill at 1,500 feet a minute,” Costello said.

Below, semi-trucks and morning commuters traveling Interstate 84 grew larger as the pilots executed a smooth landing and got ready to start their weekends. Claire James, 2005 Pendleton High School graduate and customer service agent, greeted the pair cheerily as they entered the lobby before running off to brew espresso for a contingent of waiting Pendleton-bound passengers and restock a box of Voodoo doughnuts

After some paperwork, Wiprud donned his red flame motorcycle helmet and roared off on a Honda Intrepid 500 to his Tualatin home to spend the rest of Friday, Saturday and Sunday doing his own thing.

Costello sat back with a cup of coffee and took a few minutes to decompress and talk about life according to Costello. The Portland native is an adrenaline junkie who took flying lessons as a young man for $900. He is in his third career.

He started in sales, selling “everything from helicopters to a million rubber bands.”

After a ride-along with his brother, a deputy with the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, however, he made a switch from sales to law enforcement.

Over the years, Costello worked every precinct and every shift. He led PPD’s Traffic Investigation Unit for a time, examining fatal accidents and serious injury accidents. He worked on the Tri-Met Unit, patrolling bus and train lines. He was a domestic violence investigator and taught other officers how to use firearms.

Costello’s sales experience later came in handy as a cop and a SeaPort pilot, whether trying to coax a cat out of a tree, imploring a 300-pound drug dealer to put his hands behind his back or making SeaPort passengers feel comfortable and relaxed.

During his time with SeaPort, Costello has gotten to know regular Pendleton commuters, chatting with them pre- and post-flight. On late night Wednesday and Thursday flights to Pendleton, Costello and Wiprud shepherd their passengers off the plane, make sure they have transportation and even lock up the terminal, before heading to the pilots’ quarters for soup and sleep.

Costello often uses humor, recently warning passengers not to smoke, that Wiprud was a crack shot with the fire extinguisher if they tried. When a couple F-16 fighter jets pulled alongside one day, he joked to passengers, “If you hear the radar lock on, please let me know.”

Costello is serious about one subject – safety. He and his fellow pilots go through rigorous bi-annual testing of their flying skills, he said, and are ever-vigilant. That said, he doesn’t worry about mishaps.

“If you follow the rules, if you follow your training, if you do what you’re supposed to do,” Costello said, “you’re not going to have an incident.”

He rolled his eyes about an incident recently in which two Northwest Airlines pilots overshot their destination of Minneapolis, possibly falling asleep in the cockpit.

“That’s ridiculous,” he said about the missed destination.

Costello said he will continue to fly even after his eventual retirement, being unwilling to give up the three-dimensional freedom of flying. He owns quarter interest in a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. His wife Connie isn’t a fan of long-distance flying, but he often talks her into short flights for “hundred-dollar hamburgers.”

Retirement, however, isn’t on the radar just yet.

“As long as it’s fun,” Costello said, “I’m staying.”