The Bottom Feeders of Aviation

WARNING: This is a rant and rave more than anything else, and is the result of frustration with a situation and system.

Being forced to go back to work from the bliss that was financial security and early retirement, I have had to take on a role with which I am not so familiar; rookie job seeker. I am in the position of changing careers late in life at a time when I did not expect to have to do so, in a market that, well, as I have said before, sucks. As a result, I have been introduced to the bottom feeders of aviation employment.

My first encounter with the suckfish of aeroservices was a small charter operation that flew back and forth to the Bahamas on an irregular, as-needed schedule. They got my resume via email and were quick to contact me, allegedly based on my unique position of maturity and command experience that would allow me to make better decisions regarding whether to fly or not fly. You see, the Pilot in Command (PIC) is the absolute last auhority on whether a plane leaves the ground or not (I will not get into the argument of what role the Almighty plays in this). If the Captain says no, the plane don't go. Well, in theory, at least. There is a lot of pressure from the people making the money off the flight to make the flight regardless of the conditions. So youthful, inexperienced pilots have a tendency to fly in any weather and with their lesser experience, and no seniority, are often placed in a position of feeling they have no choice.

This particular charter service, initially had me convinced that I merely had to go to school in Colorado to get the necessary training and certification to fly the kinds of planes they fly. Of course, I had to pay for the school myself, including travel and lodging. After several back and forth discussions of how to get the charter company to pay for the school, it was clear, they ain't gonna. So, I called the school, having decided to pay for the school on the grounds that education is never a bad investment.

I was surprised to discover that the program the school had agreed to with the charter service required that I be given almost two weeks of ground instruction by the charter company prior to going to the school in Colorado. The school made it abundantly clear that the liklihood of passing their course and receving the necessary certificates was slim and none without the previous ground school. The program called for the charter service to give me ground training and flight training prior to attending the school. The school's purpose was to polish my skills in a flight simulator and do final preparation for a written and practical exam, then sign off on the certificate based on their being a licensed flight school. When I brought this to the attention of the charter service, the charter service people claimed to have no knowledge of this, said they would look into it, and, shortly thereafter, stopped returning my phone calls and emails.

Ultimately, the scam would have worked out like this... I was to have attended the school at my own expense. If I somehow passed, the charter service had a qualified pilot. If I did not pass the course/tests/exams, having not received the requisite training from the charter service, the charter service was out nothing and I was certain I would be told, sorry about your luck.

The second scam is the aeroservice that offers an aviation "job fair" where companies can interview prospective pilots and, covnersely, pilots interview with prospective employers. The way this scam works is that the prospective employers in attendence have such high standards that any entry-level applicants can't qualify. The aeroservice then takes the relatively demoralized unsuccessful job applicant and offers (hard sells) a training program in their flight simulators and training classes that will allow the applicant to meet the minimum requirements. They have successfully created a receptive and somewhat captive audience for flight training that will cost in excess of $40,000. In most cases, by the way, this will qualify you to a low $20,000/year job. In spite of representations to the contrary, this aeroservice/school does not have any contractucal relationships with any airlines or charter companies that will guarantee a pilot a job after graduation. Thus, you can be out the money and unemployed and, once again told, sorry about your luck.

My faith in humanity takes a blow from time to time, but I am starting to figure out that aviation, at least in the entry-level realm, is full of bottom feeding suckfish and grifters. I am well aware as to why I am concerned about this, but I am surprised that the public is not more aware. We are talking about the schools that train pilots for the airlines and charter services that fly you around so many thousands of feet above the Earth. Unless that guy in the cockpit of the aircraft you are in knows what he is doing, and is REALLY GOOD AT IT, or you can figure out how to fly by flapping your arms, look down, because that will be the place you die, right there below you.

Second Chances For All But The Dead

Life is a wonderful thing in that it always allows for what we called as kids, “the Do-Over.” All mistakes, all errors, all transgressions could be repaired, resolved and then eliminated by simply stating the words, “Do Over!” When playing “Army” as a kid, when there was a disagreement as to whether you really did “kill” your opponent, a “Do Over” would be called, the game would be reset at some point prior to the disagreement and the game proceeded from there. In sandlot baseball, when there was a close call regarding a pitch being a ball o strike, a “Do-Over” would handle the problem.

I remember those days now very fondly because I m not sure we live in a “Do-Over” world anymore. We are free to make mistakes, make errors in judgment and even do some really stupid things, but the consequences are now permanent. There really is a “permanent record” on which everything gets written. It is in all aspects of our lives; credit histories, criminal records, drivers license records, marriage and divorce records, even our medical records. The problem is that there is no longer any such thing as a “Do-Over”. Once your record is blemished, you have been marked with the modern day equivalent of a Scarlet Letter forever. The ultimate example of this is the sexual predator. Imagine your are 18 years old and you meet a 16 year-old girl. You engage in completely consensual sex . When you break up, she is pissed off and tells Mom and Dad how you “used” her. Mom and Dad now call the cops, you go to jail and get labeled a sexual predator…FOREVER !!! How many of us men are searching our pasts and saying, “Thank God. There but by the grace of God, go I ?” I was on the opposite side of that equation. I was 16 and my girlfriend in high school was 18. She is legally a sex offender in this day and age, and I thank the good Lord for her taking that chance with me (Thank you Kathy as well...)

When I was in high school we had this really cute blonde, blue-eyed chorus teacher. She was, in the vernacular of the common hordes, “HOT!!” If she had decided to grace me as a teacher’s pet with sexual favors, I would have been a hero with my classmates, at least the men in the class. I certainly would not have been damaged by the experience and I would still think about it and sigh deeply at the memory of it. I certainly do at the fantasy.

When I was younger, I did things that would now be felonies. I did not get caught for the most part and when I did, I was given a good scolding by the authorities and then sent home to be beaten within an inch of my life by my Mother followed by the same when my Father got home. A lesson was learned and no permanent damage was done to my future. I was talking to a guy the other day who, about 40 years ago drove around in a large black Cadillac bought for him by his Father. It looked like some sort of gangster-mobile. One day, he and a couple of his friends, in a pre-arranged scenario, had a friend walk down the street in front of a movie theater. My friend and his friends screeched to a stop in front of the movie theater and fired a gun loaded with blanks at their other friend, who fell to the ground. Two guys dressed in trench coats and gangster-style hats jumped out of the Caddy and put the “body” into the car and sped off. This of course caused a manhunt by the police, but even if they had been found, which they were not, it would have resulted in one of the stern “talking too’s” and not a felony police record. Today that would have lead to prison time, and a lot of it, probably.

I, myself, engaged in similar stunts as a kid. We would have a boy in the back of a pick-up truck lying down with one leg hanging over the side, sticking out from under a tarp. At a red light, with plenty of traffic as “witnesses”, the passenger would get out of the pick-up, look around furtively, and then tuck the leg under the tarp, quickly getting back in the truck which would then speed through the intersection when the light turned green. This would eventually lead to a stop by police who would throw back the tarp to have the s**t scared out of them by the now very alive “dead body” in the back of the truck. Yes, I know that the guy in the back of the pick-up was lucky he did not get shot, but it was in a day and age where cops did not have their guns drawn when went into an empty restroom.

The other situation in which we rarely get “Do-Overs” is in relationships. Sure we can have an on-again, off-again relationship, but that is not the same as a real break-up, an extended period apart and then a re-discovery of the relationship. As a matter of fact, some of the most romantic stories are about couples that were young lovers that parted ways, met and married other people and then, by divorce or death, became single again, to discover that long, lost love of the past and rekindle the embers that must have been dormant for all those years. It is very rare, however, so I really consider it the exception rather than the rule.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to make a mistake, discover you made a mistake and then be able to correct it in a “Do-Over?” Wouldn’t it be nice to not have a permanent record follow you around everywhere you go, for the rest of your life? I guess there is no such thing anymore as forgive and forget, but everyone should get a second chance every now and then, well, for everyone but the dead maybe.

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Sometimes...It Is Just Who You Are

I have had the great fortune in life to have had careers that were not so much what I did as much as they were who I was. There are many such careers; Priests, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers and the like. All seem to be characterized by a calling to the profession or vocation.

In my case, I developed a seeming endless need to help people in some way or another. I learned this as a Boy Scout, eventually becoming an Eagle Scout. At the tender age of 53 my Eagle Scout Certificate hangs on the wall of my study, with pride, I might add, for it taught me values that have served me well in life. A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Words that remain with me as they have been burned into my very soul. These words have served me well as a Police Officer, a Military Officer and a business owner.

I decided I wanted to be a policeman when I was about six years old when the local Chief of Police let me ride in the police car (the front seat, by the way) in our small suburb outside Chicago. I got to turn on the red lights and push the button that made the siren whine. I was hooked from that day forth. My Father, the retired military Judge and lawyer, never forgave the man I called Uncle Earl until I was a teenager.

Police Officer is not something you do. It is a calling. It is something you become. I wanted to help people, my first, last and only goal, during my entire career. I did well and was able to retire having never used deadly force in a way that anyone got killed. I once shot at a guy, but I missed every time on purpose because I just wanted him to be so busy running from the crazy guy shooting at him that he would not turn around and fire another shot at me. It worked, but when I got back into the patrol car some hours later, with him in the back seat under arrest, I found the bullet hole in the windshield just above the steering wheel and the .32 calibre bullet lodged in the head rest of the driver seat. Get in your car and draw a straight line and see where it goes if you are sitting in the car behind the wheel. I was getting out of the car when he fired his only shot, so I was lucky, I guess.

Years later they gave me an award, "Police Officer of the Year." It was not for anything in particular, just being good at what I did, I guess. I got a check for $1,000 in addition to a nice little trophy. The night after the award ceremony, I went to the local cop bar where all the cops hung out, handed the bartender $500 and said, food and drinks are on me for all the cops tonight. When that runs out, I got more. They only managed to eat and drink about $400 of it, and I think there may have been some pretty ticked off wives that night, but I did not earn that award alone, I was part of a team of people that deserved recognition too.

I served my country in the military, managed to stay alive and get a piece of a lot of warfare for which I was ill-prepared. Not for lack of training, but because I just saw no point in the violence sometimes. I issued orders that got young men killed, some I knew well, some I just knew and some I never knew personally. I have lost endless hours of sleep knowing that, but take comfort in the fact that they did not die for no reason. The fact that they died, allowed others to live or live better lives, and that is enough for me. I suppose when I die, I will find out how they feel about it, and I hope I do.

I am a pilot now. I learned how to fly late in life and, all I can say is that their was a woman involved in my decision to learn how to fly. Men do things for very strange reasons, but never underestimate what a man will do to try to be with a woman. I have found that flying has become a passion and it is not just what I do, it is, once again, what I am. It permeates my life, my schedule, my reading and my budget. I own a plane. I fly planes for a charter service and I teach people how to fly, as I am a flight instructor now as well. If I go to a party, I invariably find the other pilot in the room and we slink off to a corner and speak in that language of pilots...V-speeds, MTOW's and fuel flows...you get the idea. You would have a lot easier time understanding the conversation between two doctors at a Cardiologist Convention.

I will admit that there are certain ego-food kinds of things associated with flying. It is not just about the flying, although that is HUGE! It is also about knowing, deep down inside, that once you become a pilot, you can do something that only .002% of the population of the United States can do, fly an airplane. As a flight instructor, I represent .0003% of the U.S. population. Now, if that does not give one cause for a little pride, you really need to seek professional help. No wonder pilots can be just a bit cocky, and those guys that do it in the military (which I did not), while someone is shooting at them, they are an entirely separate breed of human being, and have my absolute and unqualified respect.

Well, there are my random thoughts for the day. Tomorrow, I will teach a young man how to fly by reference to flight instruments alone. There are only about 325,200 of those in the U.S., so they represent about .001% of the population or half the people with pilot licenses of any kind. Just FYI, since I am talking statistics.

I guess, when you have to go through the education, training and experience to learn how to do something, you kinda feel special, and it isn't really just what you do. It becomes who you are.

High Flight

by Flying Officer John Gillespie Magee

Oh I have slipped the surely bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter silvered wings.
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun split clouds
and done a hundred things you have not dreamed of,
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.

Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind aloft
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up up the long delirious burning blue,
I've topped the wind swept heights with easy grace
where neither lark nor eagle flew.

And there with silent lifting mind
I've trod the high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Written by Flying Officer John Gillespie Magee when he was a 19-year-old British fighter pilot during WWII - as he soared into the atmosphere during a high altitude test flight of a Spitfire V. Magee died three month later in a mid-air collision.

Impressions of a Pilot

Flight is freedom in its purest form,
To dance with the clouds which follow a storm;
To roll and glide, to wheel and spin,
To feel the joy that swells within.

To leave the earth with its troubles and fly,
And know the warmth of a clear spring sky;
Then back to earth at the end of the day,
Released from the tensions which melted away.

Should my end come while I am in flight,
Whether brightest day or darkest night;
Spare me no pity and shrug off the pain,
Secure in the knowledge that I'd do it again.

For each of us is created to die,
And within me I know,
I was born to fly.