A changing view of pilots

[Mitch Cronin]

If you'd asked me for my thoughts about pilots... over time...

30 years ago I was 17, living on Salt Spring Island... Pilots were lucky bastards! They were born into luck. Their daddy had an airplane, or flew someone else's for big bucks and helped them into it. They had to have access to big money to get their jobs.

A couple years later my cousin started flying and suddenly I realized even lowly schleps could access the skies! ...provided they could free up some cash for lessons... Hmmm? Pilots could be guys just like me?

By the time I was 21 I was married, driving a cab in Toronto, and spending as much as I could on flying lessons myself... Pilots were one of two kinds: Either born into money and good fortune (like Daddy had an airplane), or schleps like me who worked hard for their coin and tossed it all into the promise of a future in aviation...

A year later I'd parked the cab in favour of a job at a little airport... I worked as much as I could to pay for all the flying I could get.

As more time passed I listened to the gripes of the instructors... and watched as their hopes were dashed... One who'd graduated from Seneca College with all sorts of tickets and hopes for a bright future at Air Canada... He waited for their call and grumbled about all that time in the right seat of a C150... [last I heard, he was writing for a magazine and not flying] Another - the CFI of the little flying school, with all kinds of time and experience in several types, who also lamented the lost opportunities, and the lack of any real money [last I heard, he worked for TC]... Another who was waffling about where he'd go... wound up getting out of flying [last I heard, he'd gone to Mexico to sell water skiing rides at a resort or something?] ... and another, who tried hard to build his time ( and grumbled a bit as he went through the pains of teaching schleps like me )... [last I heard he was flying for WJ ] ... Pilots were either lucky bastards or worked very hard to eventually find they were not.

Having eventually solidified the notion that I was not a lucky "Naughty Word", and discarded the notion of taking that bad luck north to fly for free in overloaded junk-wagons with wings... I settled for a career in aircraft maintenance... I found myself in Centennial College being taught that pilots were stupid arrogant bastards who knew next to nothing about the machines they loved to wreck. [no, I'm not kidding... that was the attitude many of our instructors there had]

20 years ago I worked for Wardair. Pilots were something of an unknown to me... they seemed to come in 2 varieties: Those who'd lower themselves enough to talk to schleps like me when they had to, and those who wouldn't. I listened to tales from other more senior mechanics - who all seemed to agree with the College instructors - about how some of those lucky, overpaid, arrogant sods did some truly remarkable things... Like wearing gloves to fly; or blasting off in a 747 with the park brake set; or refusing to talk to the dirty mechanic, instead directing the FE to be the go between; or not following marshalling direction and taxiing into parked containers...

As time went on I continued to wonder about the discrepancies between what I figured I knew, and what I heard ... I knew, of course, that there was some serious jealousy between some of us ground-bound schleps, and the very wealthy lucky bastards that got to take these magic machines up into their element, to where it was always a sunny day... I knew some of them had worked really hard to get where they were. I watched as kids appeared in the right seats of our brand new A310's... some of them fresh out of high school (or so it looked), and some of them fresh out of the Air Force (couldn't then understand what could possibly possess a man to give up a chance to fly F-18's for a right seat in a living room with wings?)... But I knew that for every one that had made it to that position, there were hundreds more who were still slugging it out in frozen waste lands, flying those overloaded heaps of hope for next to nothing... and some of them had eventually made it into these winged living rooms...

Pilots were an assorted bunch... some with silver spoons still sticking out of their mouths, some with a four leaf clover hovering over their heads, and some with well worn fingernails and battle scars.

Then I found the AEF...

By now I've learned what I reckon is the truth... Just like any other field of endeavor, there are all kinds... From the brilliant to those a little dimmer; from great guys to shmucks; from battle scarred old curmudgeons to candy-assed young pups; from those who'd eat their own young to get that next seat, to those who'd offer their last dime to help a fellow in need.... and everything in between... Products of circumstance... of their environment... of fortune... of chance... of hard work... just like the rest of the human race.

All... Red, Blue, Teal, left seat, right seat, ex-this, ex-that, ex-pat, flying winged mountains or puny little weed whackers... still lucky bastards!

Say hi to the sky for me will ya? I miss it.

Cheers,

Mitch

[Kip Powick]

Shleps or rich guys????

You forgot those of us that just wanted to get away from where we were as a kid so joined the Air Force.....as it looked like a good way to get 3 square meals a day and have someone provide your clothing at no cost...and get paid.

Once we did get a taste of flying, many of us were hooked and dedicated a large portion of our lives to wearing the Countries uniform, some used the "free" training merely as a stepping stone to bigger and higher paying flying jobs.

Pilots come from a wide variety of backgounds, some with the silver spoon syndrome and some who were stacking bales of hay and just wanted to get away.

Like AMEs, FAs and any other trade there are pilots who really care about others, want to know more about others jobs, their familys and then there are those that worry only about themselves ....such is life...takes all kinds and I guess we're lucky it does cause if we all came out the same cookie cutter it would be pretty boring being on this planet.

I will agree that the vast majority of pilots are have "A" personality traits...but as they get older, they "should mellow" when they realize that it is just a job...a great job...but really...just a job.

Have a nice weekend Mitch

[Don Hudson]

Mitch;

A wonderful post and a good reminder for "the lucky ones".

I have wanted to fly ever since I was a small child...two, in fact. I played with airplanes from then on and thought of nothing but. At the Aero Club of BC and later Altair at Pitt Meadows I bought my Private Licence, Multi-engine endorsement, Instructor's rating, IFR rating (Class I first time out) and taught flying while going to university. I taught Elementary School because I knew how insecure flying was and would have made a happy career there but for circumstance and I quit to try for the brass ring. I have somewhere around thirty rejection letters, had had interviews with P-Dub and CP here in Vancouver and finally after constant pestering, AC asked me in for a medical some six years after I had spend those thousands of bucks (and today its TENS of thousands!, as you know). I know the ache of rejection, the huge ache of wanting to fly for a living and seeing others achieve it and when the call came in the world changed for me overnight. While I always remain independant enough to criticize where warranted, a pilot's sacred duty and the first principle of flight safety, I have an unbridled, unblushing gratitude to my industry and to my first and only employer Air Canada for the singular great fortune of flying their airliners for a living. Along with every pilot who ever earned his living this way, I am the proverbial "luckiest guy on earth" because I have spent an adult lifetime doing what I love doing, flying airplanes. I would give this gift to all who desired, if I could! The flight safety work is evolving from that love and as I look at the final 19 months of my "formal" career in aviation, I look back without a single regret and boundless gratitude for those who make pulling my 340 into the air possible. There are dozens, if not hundreds of people "in my cockpit" when we rotate and take a planeload of people 14 hours to their destination, all in great safety. This is an alter upon which I shall humbly and forever pay homage. Yes, I am here because of hard work, well-spent thousands, a university education and timing but I never forget those with dreams of doing the same. Even with the warts and the huge changes that have occurred over the past 2 decades to our business and to my profession, "in the cockpit" is the only place to be!

Thanks for starting this...we all have those dark moments when we wonder if the smell of kerosene and the whine of turbines was worth it. Man...is it ever.

Don

[RFL]

Very well said Mitch.

I would like to add a note of remembrance for those who lost their lives working their way up the hard way in "the bush". Recent events in BC have shown us that it is still "risky business".

Thanks

[planett]

Well said RFL,

Six that I knew would confirm it can be risky business.

[Guest V1]

Mitch,

Thanks for taking the time to sort that, well said!

[Guest Skirt]

Mitch,

Great post. Here is a poem I love, and says it all for me. BTW, I'm one of those lucky bastards born with a clover leaf over top of him! (no silver spoon though...)

Because I fly...

...I laugh more than other men,

I look up and see more than they,

I know how the clouds feel,

What it's like to have the blue in my lap,

to look down on birds,

to feel freedom in a thing called the stick...

who but I can slice between God's billowed legs,

and feel them laugh and crash with His step?

Who else has seen the unclimbed peaks?

The rainbow's secret?

The real reason birds sing?

Because I Fly, I envy no man on earth.

- Unknown

[Kip Powick]

Because I fly...

...I laugh more than other men,

How politically incorrect.. Probably be a few complaints about this posting eh ??

[Guest Skirt]

Main Entry: 1man

Pronunciation: 'man, in compounds "man or m&n

Function: noun

Inflected Form(s): plural men /'men, in compounds "men or m&n/

Etymology: Middle English, from Old English man, mon human being, male human; akin to Old High German man human being, Sanskrit manu

1 a (1) : an individual human; especially : an adult male human (2) : a man belonging to a particular category (as by birth, residence, membership, or occupation) -- usually used in combination <councilman> (3) : HUSBAND (4) : LOVER b : the human race : MANKIND c : a bipedal primate mammal (Homo sapiens) that is anatomically related to the great apes but distinguished especially by notable development of the brain with a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning, is usually considered to form a variable number of freely interbreeding races, and is the sole representative of a natural family (Hominidae); broadly : any living or extinct member of this family

[Kip Powick]

Nice try...but no banana .

[GDR]

Great thread. Now that I retire I sit here at my computer desk and look out my window at YYJ airport which is one of the reasons I purchased this lot, and the reason that I built so that my den is situated the way it is.

I still enjoy looking out and watching the airplanes coming and going. I run out on the deck every time a CF-18 or some other exotic type is around.

There never stopped being something magical about climbing in a big beautiful piece of machinery at the gate, feeling the power of the engines, looking down at the earth from 39,000 feet and then realizing that you're half way around the world and having supper with the greatest people you could imagine working with in LHR or HKG.

I sure am one of life's fortuate ones.

Greg