Troubleshooting By Selfie

Dear Pilot,

While it is excellent that you communicate with company when you have in flight issues, please note that you have a commercial licence and something like 2000 hours of experience. Consider the fact that Captain Sullenberger and crew do not have any photographs of their landing in the Hudson River, and did not text their dispatcher for help. When they experienced a problem, they used their knowledge of the aircraft systems and their checklists to manage the problem. If you have time to take photos, you have time to pull out the checklist.

The reason we spent hours in groundschool learning how our electrical system, flaps and gear work is so that when something goes wrong you are immediately cognizant of what it could be, what systems will still be reliable and which are not. Also when maintenance pulls the data recorder, we can see exactly when the affected system failed, so when I ask you when it failed, I'm actually asking you how long it took for you to notice, so it's a good idea not to lie about it.

We will speak more.

- Aviatrix

Dear Diehard Remaining Readers,

My abject apologies that the few times I blog these days are exasperated diatribes at job applicants and pilots.  I don't get to fly the airplanes very much anymore, and when I do, any adventures I have immediately result in paperwork that is my problem, leaving me without time or inclination to write about them again in a more amusing way.

I complain about pilots not learning things, but I have to face the fact that I myself persist in not learning that I cannot expect a pilot with a commercial pilot licence to possess the knowledge taught in commercial groundschool, nor the knowledge taught in our own annual groundschool. This is especially depressing because it is my job to develop curriculum, teach and assess this learning.  So when I learn that a pilot cannot identify the cockpit indication that his ammeters are online, it is on me.  No tragedy occurred, but imagine if it had, and I was left with text messages that suggested I had not done my duty as a trainer.

I still 'think in blog' sometimes, making poor situations better because I'm imagining interesting blog entries, and I even take photos sometimes, thinking I will blog them. Like this one from a hotel.




I did not think to go to the front desk and ask for details of the unregistered guests. I will just imagine a bear wandered in and started pushing buttons on the lobby pop machine.

love,
Aviatrix