Training, Blessing and Curses

[Scudrunner]

Many of us fly professionally and will no doubt be familiar with jumping into ground school and the simulator annually or in the airline world 6 months.

I fly corporate jets so that means annual training with a ride every two years. Being with a small flight department we often need to go by ourselves to training which can be a blessing and a curse.

The blessing is you get an opportunity to see how other pilots and flight departments do the same job. I have had many “dam why didn’t we think of that” moments over the years. This year I was hoping to get paired with a pilots in my ground school who had flown everything under the sun not just airline on AP. He had amassed some 30,000 hours with time in the USAF on A10 (Brrrrrt) and some other jets, but he had me at A10, also flew airliners and a cadre of Business Jets.

Heck I think I learned a few things just having coffee with him on the breaks in ground school. And most importantly he was humble, not the “I’ve got 30k hours let me tell you son” type. Unfortunately he was paired with a fellow FAA licence holder pilot because well Canadians fly different I guess. He didn’t seem to happy with his sim partner and the look on his face coming out of the sweat box said it all. I think his patient and calm demeanour was tested which bring me to the curse.

The curse, and thankfully it wasn’t me this time but the 30k hour guy got to experience being paired up with some noob who takes 30 minutes to find the QRH. Or worse yet some professional FO that the Training company employs who somehow does this daily and can barely operate the flaps.

I suppose it makes me a better pilot watching and second guessing the actions of the guy beside me. (Everyone is trying to kill you). In the real world I fly with a few pilots who I know what their going to do before they do.

This year I got a professional FO from the training company. It was odd he had his checklist ready, almost too ready if you ask me. However he could adapt and it was a pleasure flying with him.

The new guy teaching the ground school had a ton of experience but none on type. Asking me for real world how we did stuff.

Suddenly I realized that out of all the people in the room I had the most time on type and even the 30k hour guy was asking me about the plane he had only flown for a year.

I’m the old veteran now, how did that happen?

I’m only 42, it’s suppose to be the old guys in the back row who greet the sim managers like old friends not me.

Funny how my first business jet ground school everyone had grey hairs and kept saying to me “your captain will”only to see all the old guys jaws drop when I said I’m the captain.

I suppose a 20 something being a jet skipper was a little unheard of at the time. Fast forward a decade (or so) I’m still pretty “young” but dam how did I get to be the old guy.

[Big Pistons Forever]

Hey scud the good news is you have to grow old but you don’t have to grow up.

The one thing I see is that there is a distinct generational shift. The old guys all seem to have had a very diverse set of experiences in their careers and a lot less hand holding. The newer guys seem to have a much more monolithic careers.

The bottom line is the old guys scared themselves and learned, or died. They had skin in the game you don’t see today.

You are also right about how humble most of the been there, done that guys are.

One of my favourite stories was when I was a young and dumb instructor. I was having an argument about the wisdom of flying hard IFR in small single engine piston GA airplanes. The considerably older and much more experienced pilot I was talking to thought I was crazy. Then another grizzled veteran walked in and he said Bob come over here and then asked how many piston single engine IFR hours he had. The gentleman thought about it and then said “I don’t know maybe 10 hours”

This resulted in a shocked expression and then he blurted out, “no I mean single engine IFR in an airplane with only one engine !”

Bob looked shocked and said “no way I am going to fly some single engine bug smasher IFR!”

[Colonel]

Congratulations on gettIng old! You’re winning.

a 20 something being a jet skipper

Well, yes and no. In 1954 Dear Old Dad would have been 22 and at the time, his favorite thing was to climb as high as he could in his F-86 and dive vertically over Moncton to drop a sonic boom.

Fun Fact: some think a Sabre went supersonic before the X-S-1

[Scudrunner]

One of my favourite stories was when I was a young and dumb instructor. I was having an argument about the wisdom of flying hard IFR in small single engine piston GA airplanes. The considerably older and much more experienced pilot I was talking to thought I was crazy. Then another grizzled veteran walked in and he said Bob come over here and then asked how many piston single engine IFR hours he had. The gentleman thought about it and then said “I don’t know maybe 10 hours”

This resulted in a shocked expression and then he blurted out, “no I mean single engine IFR in an airplane with only one engine !”

Bob looked shocked and said “no way I am going to fly some single engine bug smasher IFR!”

That’s too funny!

Think I got 4 hour single engine in a twin but that was VFR. I know many think I’m nuts buying a 337 but I figure my single engine luck might run out eventually and having spare engine even VFR over the rocks or in the middle of nowhere will give me a fighting chance.

I guess those grey hairs do count for something