I have a few thoughts for apprentices and the journeymen that work with them that I wrote a while back. It pertains to another part of my life as a professional pilot and Inspector, but also as an EC on the side I think it applies to the 2 well respected apprentices in our business as well. As an aside note we had 3 apprentices that went on to becoming journeymen and we still employ all 3 of them. One has now become a master electrician as well.
Please read the following with the point of view that it applies just as well to electricians as it does with aviation folks ---
Here is to all you new young guys - please keep up your efforts - don't give up::
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At first a lot of new aspiring pilots, like most normal folk, look to take the path to the top that has least resistance. It should just be a matter of getting that Licence and the time.
Simple, isn’t it?
After all, flying is fun.
Just like every other technical profession, including aviation, that point of view does not cut it. (it ain’t fun). At first, it seems like a cruel lesson, but it’s one that must be learned as quickly as possible.
Life is not fair.
Can you make a living at it though?
Especially in aviation.-
It’s best to get over that part as soon as possible. Accept it and get on with things.
The real truth is that it takes a depth of experience to really succeed and feel totally comfortable with aircraft operations. Trying to short circuit the process will lead you to trouble, sometimes years later down the road.
I understand the desire to start fuselage hugging as soon as possible. Don’t get me wrong though. It’s not wrong to do that. Most aspiring new pilots must do it or they wouldn’t be there in the first place, since that really is part of a pilot's psyche.
It gets really frustrating though and here’s why:
After that nice multi-engine Commercial Licence is safely in your pocket, the nice shiny old twin on the ramp starts to look a bit small after a couple of veeeery costly trips down south with the buddies.
Expensive too.
The frustration sets in when there are no jobs out there that want you with that nice newly printed Commercial, multi-engine Licence in the pocket. Nobody can help with a prospect of an employer. Employment people take your information but inform you that there are no jobs listed anywhere in the country.
None.
Except some outfit in the Middle East looking for B767 pilots - totally out of the question). You know that can’t be right though. One guy you know that got his Licence just about a year ago just got a super job as co-pilot on an IFR Navajo operation. But, sure enough, the more you look, nobody is advertising for pilots. That is a major let down. Resumes and telephone calls go no where, so the next step seems to be an Instrument Rating to make things a bit more “saleable”. Another two thousand bucks later you get one.
Finally, a job on the dock in La Ronge, Saskatchewan, shows up on an obscure web site, with a possibility of a flying “opportunity” the next fall. Better than nothing. Sure enough, you get hired to load freight fuel, tourists, beer, food, and fishermen.
Life is good. You spend another thousand bucks and get a “float” rating on a couple of days off.
The Chief Pilot does your last hour and signs your recommend form. You get your Licence a week later. Obviously, you are now a float “Ace” since the Chief Pilot signed you off. You must have an “in” with the Company now.
Your girlfriend shows up for a nice visit too, but has to go after three days, leaving behind your nice (wrinkled) white shirt with the now tarnished epaulettes. Just before she goes, she tells you she has a new job 2500 miles east from her home and now will be in Calgary, but doesn’t know a new address or phone number yet.
You spend the long cooold winter loading freight at the skiplane Base and then get moved to the AIRPORT in March. Finally there is something on wheels that you can relate to as a pilot, and that has some instruments to go “IFR” with and the guys that fly them. You get to talk, mostly briefly, with these old pilots in the Company lounge about the exciting trips to places like Cree Lake, Stony Rapids and Uranium City. Some of them even have a GPS that functions most of the time. They do have lots of experience in the last couple of years that’s worth listening to and look more than 23 years old to you. They do seem to argue with each other though. One night they even invite you to the bar for a few “Brown Pops”. You notice they seem to be able to down a beer at a frightening rate that night and don’t seem to talk to anyone but one on one with each other. One 35 year old pilot talks to you a lot though, and then drops you off at home later.
At this point things go one of two ways.
You have made it with the Chief Pilot or you haven’t.
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You stay for a while or you go on to something else, because either Mom, Dad, the Bank or somebody else needs some return on their “investment”.
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Pilots naturally get frustrated when they perceive others "using" the system to get ahead and wind up getting that nice B1900 job in the right seat when they’re sitting in the right hand seat of a Navajo for 200 hours and two months down the road. That new 1900 person can now (for a few months, at least) carry around that good old perceived ego on the shoulder and let other, former, co-workers know that "he's got it together”, and “how great things are."
All I can say to that is "wow".
I’ve noticed, however, that just about every new guy starts telling me that it ends pretty quickly when the routine starts to set in.
Pretty soon, the only thing that is routine is the boredom of being a sked pilot in a “simple” aeroplane. That seemingly complex piece of mysterious engineering magnificence is no longer a rewarding experience to fly, but becomes only a means to getting those miles or hours to pay the bills at home with the new wife. Not only that, but something always seems busted on the damn thing anyway. The owners won’t fix it because “it’s too expensive right now”, and “you probably don’t need it anyway today”. MEL’s always seem to make the trip go ahead anyway.
So what’s next?
Away we go again, looking for that bigger and better, perfect fuselage that always works right, with that new and “better” company, and the challenges of a newer, nicer and “better” aeroplane.
What a beautiful fuselage.
Don’t get me wrong though,
Pilot’s are always looking for a challenge or they would have never made it as a pilot in the first place. Maybe that’s one of the reasons so many pilots get new wives so often. I can speak from experience. I was no different than anyone else out there. I’m married again, though. This time permanently.
Those of you new to the business, always tell me that you learned a lot from that senior, grizzled old guy with the bad attitude, in the left seat. A year later that same, used to be, new guy, is the senior, grizzled old guy with the bad attitude in the left seat.
That’s now you.
How much did you, the new guy, really learn that first tour of duty in the right seat? How much of that command decision making REALLY got learned properly?
In my opinion, not much - I know though. I’ve seen it all before.
Particularly with simulators.
New guys ALWAYS tell me it’s better, from the right seat, to observe the senior pilots making the decisions, since for some reason, unknownst to me, they think they’ve now gained that power of the almighty from those observations. A simulator almost always proves the pilot to be human.
Sure guys learn from others by watching, observing, doing and sometimes getting yelled at too. That’s how life, even outside aviation, is, anyway. We learn from experience and interaction with other people.
How much really got absorbed as a potential Commander however?
Aircraft, regardless of size still conform to the laws of physics. Little ones or big ones. What does change with size are the rules.
If anyone hasn't noticed, you can go out by yourself and get killed in a little aeroplane and only the local media makes much mention of it. Kill 9 folks and it's still just air taxi. Mere news on page 1 or 2 of the local major newspaper and a word or two on the suppertime local TV news. Commuter however, with up to 19 on board, will get national attention and maybe a public inquiry headed up by some famous notary(ity) public lawyer. Crash an airliner and the whole world knows right away. Anyone care to be the centre of that kind of attention?
From a physics point of view, what is the difference that size makes? - - None!
So let’s get down to brass tacks here.
What DOES make a difference though, and what does make Operators pay attention to those seemingly stupid little things like your depth of experience and command decision-making is really two things. Media coverage and insurance. Owners and/or Operators don’t want either one of those two going up. - Particularly when someone smashes up one of their planes. And both of those will go up if you crash their aeroplane. Those two facts will either make it or break it for you as a pilot. You have to prove you have the ability to avoid both of those issues or you are out of the picture.
You satisfy both and you have a job.
By the time you sit in the left seat you know that, not by simple mindless knowledge, but it is now instinctive. I hope its part of your life by the time you get in that Command seat.
That’s why operators seem so damn picky when they are looking for pilots to hire.
It ain’t you.
It’s those two things that qualify you or not. Will you keep a low profile with the media and insurance company or not? Is there a chance you will crash the plane? If you are experienced and/or qualified and show you have slim, to no, chance of creating a media or insurance “preventable event” you get the job. If you can’t prove that to the operator - forget it.
That’s where the experience and command time is so very important. Most good operators can sense it somehow. Trying to BS an operator is kind of like tricking a TC Inspector into flying a powered parachute. It just ain’t gonna happen. (Now, before you get me wrong, some poor TC buggers do get ORDERED to go out and do that, but not without protests. They usually request transfers to a different branch right away after that however). (If they don’t, their peers razz them mercilessly).
If, for some reason, you make a mistake with a big aeroplane later in life and take out 100 people with you, and you had not gone through the proper “apprenticeship” period making decisions the right way in the past, you can guarantee yourself a place in(famous) history, unless you have an extremely lucky angel sitting on your shoulder.
Crash a big aeroplane and the uneducated public will know every single detail of your life, right down to whether or not your mother breast-fed you when you were young. ---RIGHT away. --Within minutes or hours, with no holds barred. You, if you live, will get media surrounding you like gold diggers circling a new millionaire.
What are you going to say? My mother died in childbirth? My upbringing was abnormal? My father beat me all the time? My wife is a lesbian? What? How about “I was just a normal kid”? Just what can you say?
Most of us know about the seemingly “stupid” mistakes that other guys have made. They get publicized very widely in our circle of folks.
Every active Canadian pilot gets the Aviation Safety Letter and I’ll bet when some folks read about the “accident of the month”, are sure that the command decision that the poor bugger made and then got written about, would never happen to them. I’ll just bet that most of those that did make the “wrong” decision read the Letter too. Did they make those “mistakes” on purpose? 99.99999% of the time, - no. (There have been those that just had to get even though. That accounts for the .000001% that did do it on purpose. For those, I have no cure or answer. They’re just nuts).
I also know that many of us have heard the A.T.C. tapes and have seen the C.V.R. stuff from the major crashes. Just remember that you might be a voice on one of those some day. Even “little” aeroplanes like BE-100’s might have them. Bigger stuff even records the mistakes you make with the aeroplane while you handle it on the Flight Data Recorder.
This entire dissertation is really meant to say to you young, new freshly scrubbed faces in aviation - - Don’t try to short circuit the command time on the basic machines. You really do need it, even if right now, you see that shiny new fuselage sitting there inviting you to go along and get those “invaluable and “priceless hours”.
Later on you won’t regret getting those instructor or bush times and you will discover the really and truly priceless days that I still think were the best time of my life. I learned about Commanding an aircraft from those days. True Command!
Experience as a Pilot-in-Command on your own, leads to maturity that is NOT obtainable any other way. There is just no simple way of doing it while you become a professional in the aviation business of driving that aluminum tube around the sky. It takes time. Time - in terms of calendar time - not only hours in the air. I wish there was another way you could learn the stuff that’s needed to become a true professional. I wish that I could give all of you the benefit of my experience and knowledge by osmosis somehow. Right now, there isn’t a way to do that. Until evolution changes the way we all learn, it ain’t gonna change.
It’s up to you to get the time. On your own! I think most of you can do that.
Please don’t be lured by the “fast track”. You really must, on your own, get that command time on your own, and go the “old” way to really be able to happily retire (I know, that’s the last thing on your mind right now, but) without becoming a part of world wide (infamous) aviation history.
And finally:
Everything in the company manual - policy, warnings, instructions, the works - can be summed up to read, ‘Captain it’s your baby.’
Signed:
An old TC pilot.
