Hiring Again

I've discovered a fantastic interview question.  "Tell me about a time you had to use all your piloting skill to succeed." The answers show me how a pilot thinks about their own limits, what they consider piloting skills to be, what they understand about their aircraft, weather, or whatever the situation was, and a surprising number of times it results in the pilot telling on themselves about how they violated the regulations, and how they feel about that. They just hop into hangar flying mode and pull out a favourite "there I was" story.

There are two things a pilot can learn from making dumb decisions and getting into trouble. Some of them learn that the regulations are there for a reason, and it's better to follow them. And some of them learn that they didn't die the first time, so it's a viable choice. Their stories tell me about that.

And one I interviewed told a marvellous story, that right up until almost the end was almost the same as this joke. (The joke is older than the Internet, but I took this retelling from here).

A bush-pilot drops Bob and Ted, two moose hunters, at a remote lake in Northern Ontario. He tells them that he’ll be back in a week, and warns them that his plane won’t be able to take off with more than one moose.

The next week he returns, and sure enough, the hunters have bagged two moose. The pilot tells them there’s no way they can take off with the two moose. Ted says, “I don’t know, the pilot last year took off with two moose.” To which Bob adds, “Yeah, but maybe he wasn’t a total coward!”

Not wanting to be outdone, the pilot loads up everything and they start to move down the lake. The plane is gathering speed, but the pines on the shore are rapidly approaching. Finally, the plane gets airborne, but one wing clips the top of a tree. The plane spins, crashes into the trees, and breaks apart.

Sometime later Ted regains consciousness and begins searching for his buddy. He finds him, and when he wakes him up Bob asks, “Do you have any idea where we are?” Ted replies, “I think about 200 yards further than last year."

The candidate talked about how insistent the customers were, about how out at the lake there is no actual scale to weigh the cargo. You just have to go by look and feel. He talked about the wind, and the conditions and the geography. I was in suspense. Was he really going to tell me how hard it was to pull that Beaver off the water and then get enough speed in ground effect to clear the trees? Was he going to tell me how many Gs he pulled to avoid the hills, and how he recovered from the ensuing stall?

And then he demonstrated a vastly underrated piloting skill, but one that has kept me alive all these years and that I insist on in my pilots. He said no. The hunting bounty would have to come out in multiple loads. A pilot has to be able to do that.

Funny Way To Make A Living

The potential employer picks me up at the appointed time, well actually a bit later because he forgot about me until his assistant asked if I was coming today, but I spent the extra time sitting in the hotel lobby reviewing their procedures manual, so it wasn't a waste of time. The original plan was for me to go flying with the chief pilot today, for me to see to see how the operation worked and be persuaded that I wanted to join, and for them to see how I work. The flight would also count towards the required training to put me on his operating certificate, but the chief pilot has not come in today, due to a family medical emergency, and the boss is too busy to do the flight, so we're improvising.

So we chat for a while. I'm not sure it counts as an interview, because no one asks me what kind of tree I would be, what my greatest strengths and weaknesses are, or what I would do if the pilot I were flying with stated an intention to go below minima. We're telling each other stories, comparing our philosophies of life, flying and les politiques des deux solitudes du Canada. The smart psychology people amongst my readers are shaking their heads and rolling their eyes at the screen now, saying "You idiot, Aviatrix, that was the interview," but hell then, my whole life is an interview. Remember when I had a line check and didn't know it until it was over? That was awesome, too. We get along amusingly well. I tell him a story that illustrates the freedom and responsibility of being pilot-in-command compared to terrestrial rules. I've probably told it on the blog before, of driving my car on an icy, windy day, keeping my speed at what I judged safe for the conditions, which happened to be below the city speed limit. As I approached an intersection, the traffic light turned amber. On a normal day, I might have braked to a stop, but today I knew the ice would make my stopping distance longer and that locked wheels would make the car less manoeuvrable if it skidded through the intersection, buffeted by a crosswind. I elected to continue through the intersection at my cautious speed. There was no cross traffic. The combination of my low speed and a rather short duration light left me still in the intersection when the light turned red, and I knew that intersection was equipped with a red light camera, where they snap your licence plate and send you a ticket in the mail when they catch you. As far as I was concerned, the red light rule is secondary to safety, and it so happened that I had made a chain of safest decisions that contradicted the red light rule and was fully prepared to defend my decisions in court should I be issued a ticket. And there my prospective employer picked up the baton because he had had exactly the same experience--it's a Canada thing, I suppose--and he had been issued said ticket, and he had defended himself in court with weather reports and diagrams and calmly reasoned arguments, and he won. So it seems I don't need to paint any walls white for this guy.

He has work to do, so sets me up with another task, something amusingly familiar. I'm writing company exams. "Writing exams" sounds stressful, but in ten years of writing them at least once a year I can only remember one occasion in which it was a timed, competitive, closed-book event (and in that case I scored so well that the chief pilot teased me about it). It's really just an exercise in demonstrating that a pilot has reviewed all the company manuals and is familiar with their contents. You typically complete the exams as you read the manuals, noting the speeds, baggage arms, wingspan, fuel capacity, and other items that the chief pilot has chosen to test you on. There are similar manuals for icing, ground handling, the ops manual and other special aspects of the operation.

The boss pulls up an example of something on his computer. I can't not notice that it's in Xxxxxxxx. There's a chance of me flying in Xxxxxxxx! I know it's probably just like Témiscamingue or Deep East Texas with different accents on the radio, and squiggly letters on the airport terminals, and people excited about buzkashi instead of hockey or football, and mares' milk instead of poutine or barbecue, and ... oh face it, it would be totally different from Témiscamingue and Texas, and I would wrestle on horseback over possession of a goat carcass for the opportunity to go there.

I go back to writing exams, figuring out all the details of the company deicing rules. I hear the boss next door fielding a call that implies that a client has urgent need of his services in Yyyyyyy. He's telling them he has an airplane and a pilot ready to go, and can dispatch them today if need be. Replace buzkashi with surfing, and mares' milk with little drinks with umbrellas in them. The boss's assistant comes into the room where I'm writing and hisses excitedly, "hurry up and finish those exams!" gesturing with her head towards the Yyyyyyy conversation. I grin and nod, but voice reality, "That's not a mission the new hire is going to get." I'm more likely to get the mission to Qqqqqq that I think I heard him negotiating for fuel for. But hey, replace buzkashi with the knuckle hop, and mares' milk with seal blubber. I don't have to leave my own country to find an exotic culture.

If this is all a test, or some sort of set up, who cares. If someone wants to fly me to somewhere in the world, put me up in a hotel and buy me a few meals in order to have me write exams and then be told that I'm not needed after all, I'm okay with that. It gets me out of the house and gives me travel, new people to meet, and at least the opportunity to feel like I'm going to get a cool job.

I finish all the exams and get a tour of the maintenance hangar. There's a garishly-painted partial airplane in there, but I'm assured that it's the parts plane, and not representative of the appearance of the fleet. We'll try again for flying the next day.

Back at the hotel my card doesn't work. I go back to the lobby and tell the desk clerk. I always feel that in someone else's territory you should at least attempt to speak their language. Although I usually waive that rule at service points in highly traveller-oriented places like hotels and airports, I know that this clerk is francophone, so I say, "le clef ne marche plus." The key doesn't work anymore. He says the same thing I've heard a hundred other times I've experienced this, it happens, you need to keep it away from your telephone. I pull my telephone out of the same pocket and display it guiltily. I knew that. I'm clearly out of practice for hotel living. He remagnetizes the card. And then I realize that he continued the conversation in the same language as I started it. Usually bilingual Quebeckers switch into English right away in response to my French. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt and presume that they are being polite and accommodating rather then implying that my French is too execrable to listen to. I haven't been here for a while though. Is it a political wind shift, or just that this guy really prefers to speak French, even at the cost of having to listen to my accent. (The word Quebeckers looks so wrong written down, but lots of people say it aloud. I've almost decided that it's the anglo pronunciation of Québecois). I know it doesn't represent any great improvement in my ability.

Oh and did I mention that potential employer number one wants me for that operation? I've stalled them while I check out this opportunity. I find that stressful.

Busy Calendar

A blog reader who flies a Citation XL is going to be in the next town over, and we've made a date for me to meet him at the FBO there at 10:30. As soon as that was confirmed, I received an e-mail asking me if I'm available for an interview, at the same airport, "late morning." The request acknowledges that it's short notice and assures me another time would be fine, but I figure a job interview is a chance for me to show my willingness and flexibility as well as my knowledge and personality. Yet I spend so much of my life ditching my friends for work that I don't want to just cancel the other meeting so I suggest earlier.

"Would nine a.m. be alright? That's late morning for a pilot," I joke.

Nine it is. I'll spare my mainly male audience the "what do I wear to a casual interview for what will be a fairly casual job just before going out to meet a friend?" agonizing and affirm that I put on clothes and drove out there. This is the "Facebook job."

The working conditions are good, the pay okay, the company small but professional, the aircraft well-serviced and the work within my capabilities. I think I will be offered the job. And I think I would take it. But I have to check out the other possibility, too.

I head over to the FBO. I'm a bit early, and I know my friend has to land, clear customs, look after the passengers, and complete all his postflight duties. An FBO is like an airport terminal, but for private aircraft, so (so far, thankfully) there's no security screening or ticket counters, just a lounge with big windows and a counter behind which sit people who will sell you fuel, rent you a car or help you provide services to your passengers. I walk up to the counter and talk to the guy there. He's a retired flight engineer, doing fuelling, towing airplanes and chatting to people like me. I tell him I'm waiting for someone, and recite the tail number. He looks the flight up on Flight Aware and notes that it's just a few minutes away. He laughs that I know the aircraft ident. He says a lot of people show up here to meet a flight not knowing even the aircraft type or point of origin.

We see my friend's airplane (of course it's my friend's boss's airplane) land and then it taxies past to go to customs. They get held up at customs for a while but eventually come back to the FBO and after my friend sorts out an appropriate rental vehicle (a Canadian "full-sized" car isn't big enough for four men and bags) for his passengers. I get a quick tour of the airplane then help him and his FO put in brand new engine plugs. Brand new. The pilots have no more experience using these things than I do. I did had this exact same experience last winter when the boss bought shiny new monogrammed (okay not technically monogrammed, but with the aircraft ident on, just like these) wing covers and engine plugs. These ones fit oddly. The FO announces he's done the other side, then realizes that the ribbon streamer on his is marked "LEFT". We're on the left side. And ours is marked RIGHT. We just assumed the streamer said REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT. We swap sides and they fit better.

Someday I'll stop being amused by the way aviation experiences are more the same than different despite radically different operations. They have the same plastic bin in the rear cargo space I had on my last job, and the same products in it: leather wipes, Mr. Clean Eraser, Febreeze and other products for keeping the airplane shipshape. Before we leave, the captain disconnects the aircraft battery. The airplane is only going to be parked for four days. I've left an airplane for months before with the battery connected, but not this sort. Apparently it's a weakness of this type: so many services on the hot battery bus that parking it for a few days can drain the battery.

This is the point at which I should have a fabulous restaurant recommendation, stuff the three of us into my definitely not full-sized car and go find it. But I'm uninspired so we just walk to one on the airport. It's more about people than food, anyway.

I enjoyed meaning the captain reader friend. He too was recently unemployed, when his previous jet charter company stopped operating. He was assigned to take a company jet to Wichita for refurbishing by Cessna for its new owner, and ended up working for the new owner.

He's actualy originally from Canada, with more northern piston time than I have. He tells me that when his first American co-workers found out how much time he had, they thought he must be an idiot. U.S. career progression is different. The newly PPCed copilot on this jet, for example went straight from flight instruction to jets. He knows how lucky he is, though.

My new friend gave me a book, which I'll read and report on later. It's a novel and he says it was a favourite of his years ago, but he hasn't reread it lately. It's foolproof though, he tell me, because either I will read it and enjoy it or I will read it and say "I could write a better aviation novel than this!" and then I will.

The end of the day brings encouraging e-mail from both potential employers. Even after all the times employers have led me on, I feel like two-timing scum talking to both of them.

Spring Rains

Now not only have I made progress towards the aforementioned job opportunity through a blog reader, but another opportunity came up through an arm's-length Facebook contact, a friend reported that a business owner posted a status of "I really need to hire a pilot!". Vive social media! They are both jobs similar to the one that I have so enjoyed these last four years, both with interesting new challenges and different things to recommend them. I have spoken to both potential employers by telephone and both want to talk to me in person.

I'm trying to simultaneously be prepared, be calm, not get my hopes up high enough to hurt should they be dashed, but be enthusiastic about something I know I can do and that employers should have no trouble seeing that I can and will do. I'm trying to decide now which job I would want if offered both, but it's hard to say without more information. Some I have sought from friends and some from personal research. Both people want to show me their operations and let me meet them, so I'll keep an open mind. I'm driving to meet one and then the other is flying me to another city. I still haven't heard from the company that most recently interviewed me, but it's two weeks past the date they said they expected to make their decision by, so I think that ship has sailed. It seems odd, but people in aviation can be that callous towards the candidates they don't want. I'm sure the non-aviation people are starting to think that there must be something terribly defective about me, but what are you going to do? Airplanes ask tough questions with no warning, and they don't give you a chance to say goodbye if you answer incorrectly.

It's always the job you want less that calls you back first, but of course it is, because the employers know the pecking order just as well as the pilots.

The post title is with reference to the expression "it never rains but it pours," with a reminder that rain can be a good thing. My thoughts go out to those of you suffering from floods this season. There seem to be more than usual this year. Everything is turning green here as spring arrives. In fact right across Canada, and even as far north as Whitehorse, temperatures are creeping into the teens. That's a big change for the prairies and a smaller change for the coasts, but for a fortnight or so everyone in the cities has comfortable light jacket weather. I wonder if spring is perhaps my favourite season. I do like beginnings, and new opportunities, and it's a great time for hiring in aviation.

Never Enough

I've played some more phone tag, called some more people. I'm not working as hard as I should be working in order to be working. I'm going in spurts. I make a lot of contacts, then slack off, but while I'm slacking off the previous contacts pay off. Then when the dust settles and I still don't have a job, I go back to applying for work.

I'm glad I took the break to learn some linguistics. It was interesting and complex but showed me that I can still jump in and learn things. I'm not stupid. I feel stupid sometimes, and unfortunately sometimes I act stupid. I had an interview for a job I really wanted and the questions showed that the employer really cared about the same things I did.

He threw in some technical questions on the aircraft I've been flying lately. Really easy questions and for some reason I sounded like this woman. My brain was full of Screaming Weasel numbers and I either couldn't answer, or worse gave incorrect answers to basic questions about my own airplane. Please Mr. Chief Pilot, please, please overlook that and somehow see though to someone who will do a good job for you. What's the use of being smart and knowledgeable if I can't even look like someone who is when it counts? They weren't hard questions. It wasn't like the sixth guy story from these interviews.

I got my very first job on technical questions--I know because I sucked on the HR questions. Now I have learned how to act like a human being on the HR side but apparently I don't know anything. I'm so disappointed in myself. They said they might take two weeks or so to select the candidates, but it's been longer and still no reply. I kind of like it when an employer has the decency to tell you they don't want you. Unfortunately this kind of thing is common in aviation.

Somewhere, in a parallel universe, there's a copy of me that didn't screw up that interview. Maybe there's a copy that put a lot more work into the right things in the right place and is an astronaut. An astronaut went to my school, a few years before me, and had a lot of the same hobbies.

I'll go back to some technical aviation posts, to try and be ready. In gratitude for your tolerating all those linguistics posts, I'll respond to your requests for technical subjects.

First Man in Space

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's orbital flight, when he became the first human being in space. Even today I am amazed that there are people up there on the International Space Station, eating their lunch, cutting their toenails, and sending e-mails. I can't imagine the excitement of a person doing it fifty years ago. We got humans into space before flying cars, videophones and ray guns. Looking out at the Earth, Gagarin reported something that has been more or less echoed by many space travellers since.

Облетев Землю в корабле-спутнике, я увидел, как прекрасна наша планета. Люди, будем хранить и приумножать эту красоту, а не разрушать ее!

Translation: "Orbiting the Earth in the satellite-ship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and enhance this beauty and not destroy it!" I have a poster of Gagarin, with that written on it in his handwriting. It was visible on the wall behind me during a recent Skype video-interview, and the interviewer recognized him. I'm pleased. There were a lot of things that were right about that company and I really hope they call back this week with an offer.

Sadly, Gagarin's human achievement was both driven and marred by rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, so I understand that it engendered fear instead of wonder in many Americans to know that it was a Soviet 'Kosmonaut' who was leading the way. Some animosity still lingers between the two countries, even though they are now working together on the International Space Station.

The American space program was conducted more openly than the Soviet one, with their first manned launch broadcast live on television and no chance to hide their failures. Consequently, I believe the US had higher safety standards than the USSR during the 1960s. The Soviet space agency knew their programme was dangerous, and held Gagarin back from participating in subsequent missions, not wanting to lose their poster boy. There's are rumours that the ill-fated Soyuz-1 flight that killed Vladimir Komarov departed with many unresolved problems, responding to pressure to fly over desire to be safe.

That's a lesson that gets learned over a lot. For safety to be maintained there has to be a high standard and keeping it has to be not a priority, but the priority. The maintainers have to have the knowledge, the resources and the time to do it right and everyone in the operation needs the authority to say "no" if the situation isn't up to standard. Whether you're going to into space or just to Wetaskiwin.

Update: Sarah just commented that some cities have Yuri's Night celebrations of the anniversary.

Comic Strip Airplane

There's a humour website where I spend too much time these days overanalyzing comic strips. The current plot in Mark Trail involves the hero being shipwrecked on an island of drug smugglers, and trying to escape in an old airplane. It kind of looks like a Cessna 170 but the wing struts go almost to the wingtip and the C170 has a semi-cantilevered wing. I was willing to accept that as an art error, but I keep reading and wondering.

I think the artist Jack Elrod is working from photographs, because there's too much that is accurate compared to what you see when someone just makes up an airplane. He's clearly cutting and pasting older artwork, too. Notice how in the QUICK GET IN AND BUCKLE UP! panel he has forgotten to draw the foliage between the two wing struts. There are some details like what appears to be a change in the cowling paint scheme from day to day that suggest he's working from different airplanes, but comic colouring is often bizarre, so let's discount that.

Combining the QUICK GET IN AND BUCKLE UP! panel with the THE SHED--IT'S ON FIRE! one, we see that the aircraft registration begins in N2 and ends in 171. That makes it a US-registered airplane. Not counting the N, a US aircraft registration mark is not more than five characters long and only the last two may be alphabetic, which they are not. So the aircraft depicted is -- or is pretending to be -- registered as N2?171 where ? is either nothing, or a digit 0-9. That's eleven possibilities, all listed in the FAA database. Can I perhaps discover the actual airplane that has been immortalized in this very silly plot?

N2171 is assigned to an amphibious ultralight called a Searey. I've flown one, and can confirm that it's not suitable for long-range drug smuggling operations. The same registration was previously assigned to a small helicopter.
N20171 is assigned to a helicopter, and before that to a balloon.
N21171 is a 1972 C182P registered in California. Nice airplane, but newer than the one in the cartoon.
N22171 is a 1939 Aeronca 65C and that's very close to the mark. Still not a great drug smuggling airplane, but plausibilty isn't a forté of this strip.
N23171 is a 1939 model Piper J4B cub, so right era but the owner is female and women are never evil in this comic strip, so this can't be our smuggler.
N24171 is currently a helicopter, was a different helicopter before that, but in 1940 it was a brand new Akron B75L, also known as the Funk B. The cowling is wrong, but could have been modified for a different engine.
N25171 is a 1939 Luscombe 8A that the FAA says is in questionable condition, but what do they know about Drug Smuggling Island maintenance procedures?
N26171 is a Grumman Cheetah, a low wing and destroyed in 1994.
N27171 is another Piper Cub, this one a 1940 J5A.
N28171 is also a 1940 Piper Cub, a J3C-65. Different state, different owner, registered ten years apart, just happens to be a popular airplane.
N29171 was a Cessna 206, now deregistered.

I'm amused that six out of the eleven candidates were built in 1939-1940. I'm not sure how representative of overall US airplane ownership this is, but it's true that there were a lot of good airplanes built before the Americans even entered World War II, and lots of them are still flying. If we ignore the logistics and payload issue, it's plausible that Otto would be using one of these airplanes in his operation.

After I wrote the above, the later strips gave a clearer view of the airplane. It's clearer here that the registration is N2171, and we get a better look at the airplane. Also, judging by the apparent size of Mark inside the cockpit, it's doubled in size, but we'll ignore that.

So what do you think they're flying? And will they make it to safety? And how will I do on the phone interview scheduled for tomorrow for a really good company, I'd be happy to make the long move to join?

The Airplane Moves Even Faster

If you're looking for a job right now, take heart. The incubation period for resumés can be long, but eventually things start to happen. My life is like popcorn right now. Within twenty-four hours I've had a "come and see" type groundschool invitation, a phone interview, another interview scheduled somewhere else, and a job offer for a job I didn't apply for. Imagine that all going past in a montage now, me at a groundschool, and you hoping I'll have time to explain how I got here in a flashback, later.

This industry is fast. So is the airplane I'm learning now. I shall dub it the "Screaming Whippet," because it is loud, fast and needs attentive management or it will escape and start digging holes. (I think the dog sort of whippet is more likely to chase cars than dig holes, but all metaphors get snagged somewhere). Some of you will recognize the aircraft, and I will much appreciate both your e-mailed advice and your not naming it or providing further hints to its identity or that of its operator in the comments. You all know the drill.

My other comment for the day is "Oy, new employment ... so many forms!" The provincial, and federal tax forms, confidentiality forms, payroll deposit forms, emergency contact and all would be terrifying in themselves, but they pale next to the brain flattening terror of the draconian training bond. The lizard part of my brain tells me the correct response to risk is to curl up under a rock and hold really still, but its input is not really applicable now that I am no longer a lizard. I'm climbing out from under my rock to do this right.

General Aviation Woes

General aviation hassles. This time it's not security regulations, airspace restrictions, or exorbitant airport fees. It's just small town council that doesn't want to invest in public facilities. It's nothing that hasn't happened to small airports across Canada, and even one so large that it was a designated alternate landing strip for the NASA space shuttle, but this one includes a personal angle from a Cockpit Conversation reader.

Julian, whose story this is, passed the Transport Canada instructor ride in December and went out and applied everywhere, in person for the nearby schools and by e-mail for places further afield, like Kawartha Lakes Flight Center in Lindsay, Ontario. Julian describes the thrill of that first don't-know-what-to-expect aviation job interview.

A few weeks later, I got a reply and I had my first interview! I wasn't sure how to dress though because so many schools are so laid back in their attire, but I thought I'd dress to the nines anyway. When I got there I was way over dressed. The interview went well and we went for a little .5 flight. Then he said you got the job if you want it. I said, "There is only one thing: I have a volunteer job from the 12-28 at the Olympics in Vancouver."

They were really supportive and said something like, "This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!" And it really is. So they let me have the time off whenever I wanted to leave. Cool.

So in January, Julian moved to Lindsay, a farm town of 17,000 people an hour's drive north east of Toronto (assuming you're not trying to leave Toronto in rush hour traffic). The school itself has four two-seater Cessna 152s two four-seater Cessna 172s and a twin-engine Piper Seneca. The school owners were upfront about winters being slow with little flying. The first week he did a bunch of rental checkouts and logged six hours of flying. He was so delighted to be flying at all, that he kept up his spirits through a few days of unflyable weather and then as much flying as he could handle for the rest of that week.

The first fine weather weekend brought Julian his most amazing sight ever: little Lindsey was swarmed by more airplanes than he had ever seen fly into an uncontrolled airport. Even a C130 did a low and over. People would fly in and go to the restaurant or come and talk to them at the school. His students were keen and doing well, with one scheduled to solo the weekend before Julian left for the Olympics.

The school had an instructor meeting, about an approaching Transport Canada inspection. These are regular occurrences at aviation businesses of all kinds. Julian had questions which were discussed and answered. The owner came and told him that he had flown more than all the other instructors despite not having any students to start. The other four instructors have second jobs and instruct only part time, but Julian is putting everything he has into it, and it's paying off. As the only instructor there with an instrument rating he also has some multi-engine instrument flying to look forward to, a lucky coup for an instructor so early in his career. But every opportunity in aviation seems to have a stumbling block laid across its threshold. It's not just my stories that read this way.

Julian came into school early the morning after a snowfall to prepare for for an eight a.m. flight. As he looked out over the ramp to see how much deicing he would need to do, he noticed pink ribbons on the props of the Seneca. "Geeze TC is here already," he thought. He walked into the office and there learned that the City of Kawartha Lakes had put locks around all the propellers and were seizing the aircraft for unpaid bills.

You never know whose story to believe as a peon in this industry, but the school's story is that yes, they do owe for rent and fuel but not anywhere near the value of the property seized, that the city has gone about everything illegally, as they should have only seized something of equal value not seven aircraft and the school's only means of producing revenue. I can tell you that December and January are the worst revenue months for a flying school, and as this was the beginning of February with a quasistationary high was parked over the area, giving clear skies and perfect training conditions. Julian alone would have flown over twenty-five hours that week, bringing in revenue for the city, but the airplanes stayed parked.

The locks were supposed to come off Friday, but they didn't. They were supposed to come off Monday. But they didn't. As far as Julian knew while he was on the bus up Whistler mountain they were still on. The school is suing the city for damages. Word is that the city is trying to close the airport so they can put in a new subdivision across the street on the approach for runway 31. There is not a shortage of usable land in the area.

Julian managed to have a blast at Whistler, meeting athletes, celebrities and other young people. He said it was kind of a mood kill for someone spending money and enjoying the mountain scenery when he could and should be trying to find work. But it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. He still has a good attitude, as he wrote me offering an Olympic postcard (which I told him to send to Elizabeth) and I had to talk the tale of woe out of him.

It's a typical 'getting started in the industry' story, unfortunately it's typical right down to the setback just as the solos are approaching. (Solos are important for a new instructor, as he needs to teach three students to solo and three to licence before he can upgrade his instructor rating). I was going to make this into an ad for Julian's services as a Class 4 instructor, but the school reopened and he'll be able to go back to work.

One-Way Lungs

Once upon a time at a job interview I was asked "What is the difference between a turbine engine and a piston engine?" This was before I understood that a question like that really means, "Demonstrate to the interview panel that you are a pilot who knows how things work on the airplanes she has flown, by describing the components of these two types of engines." I accepted it instead as the more interesting challenge of identifying the fundamental contrast between the two basic means of powering an airplane.

I was very pleased with my answer, as after only a moment of thought collection I stated that a piston engine represents a batch process, whereas a turbine engine is a continuous one. Concise and correct. Much of the work of chemical engineering is scaling chemical processes proven in a test tube (or perhaps--except in Texas--an Erlenmeyer flask), into much more efficient large scale continuous ones.

Fortunately, for the sake of the interview, I expanded on my thesis to explain that in a piston engine vapourized fuel is mixed with air and drawn into a cylinder where it is burned, produced power and is exhausted over and over again in discrete parcels, each power stroke contributing to the turning of the crankshaft as well as of the propeller, while in a turbine engine the fuel and air are continuously mixed and expelled. I think they were a little surprised by the initial angle of my answer, but satisfied that I knew my stuff. Later on, another interviewee said that his answer was that a piston engine is most efficient at low altitudes, while a turbine engine is most efficient at higher altitudes. I of course knew that, but such an operational difference hadn't occurred to me, even though it was equally true and relevant.

It was with that context that I learned how bird lungs work differently than humans. Somewhere between elementary school science class and basic first aid, you probably learned that when humans breathe air through our trachea, and so on into our lungs, it passes through tiny tubes called bronchioles which dead-end in clusters of tiny aveolar sacs. We inhale, filling the sacs with a mixture of mostly nitrogen and oxygen. Some of the oxygen diffuses through the walls of the aveoli into the capillaries surrounding them, in exchange for waste carbon dioxide. We exhale, expelling most but not all of the air, which now contains nitrogen unaffected by the process, somewhat depleted oxygen, and some carbon dioxide. Blood flows continuously through the capillaries, but during at least half the breathing cycle, the air in the aveoli is already partly depleted of oxygen. So it's not the most efficient process if you're interested in extracting all available oxygen, but it works pretty well for us, and our fellow mammals.

Birds, however, do it differently. They still breathe in though their mouths and noses into their trachea, but instead of bronchioles that end in aveolar cul-de-sacs that have to be filled and emptied, birds have parabronchi, tiny tubes which are surrounded by capillaries and have an intake at one end and an exhaust at the other. They're not called "intake" and "exhaust" because this is biology not engine design but you get the idea. Birds still breathe in and out in individual breaths, so to keep the air flow through the parabronchi continuous, birds have air sacs in addition to their lungs. While the bird is breathing in, outside air is going into the posterior air sacs and through the bird's lungs, the air going through the bird's lungs exits into the anterior air sacs. While the bird breathes out, air flows from the posterior air sacs through the lungs and out of the lungs and the anterior air sacs to the trachea. In other words, through use of temporary storage facilities, the bird is drawing fresh air through its lungs at the same time as it is exhaling stale air, and is expelling stale air from its lungs at the same time as it is drawing breath.

The bird method is more efficient at lower concentrations of oxygen, such as that found at the altitudes used by large migratory birds (see the figures at the end), or that of the Triassic era.

This is the coolest thing I learned all week. Look at the bird respiration link for more bizarre bird breathing stuff, like the fact that that air sacs are integrated into their bones, or that some birds have looping tracheas, way longer than they need to be.

Left Out of the Love

In a combined effort with other aviation bloggers, I promised a post that ties in with the holiday some people will be celebrating today. Not the New Year's celebration, but the other holiday. The one with hearts instead of dragons.

There's a wide societal expectation that your romantic life will follow a certain pattern. You'll date a few people who turn out to be inappropriate, or just not long term prospects for you. You then get more serious and fall in love with Mr. or Miss. Right. There's a proposal, an acceptance, engagement, wedding plans and then happily ever after. It's considered polite conversation with near strangers to ask if they are married. And if you don't seem to be on that path, there are confused questions.

Friends try to set you up. And you think you want that, so you accept and thank them, then never call the number, or call but accept flimsy excuses, and fail to follow up if they don't call back. You go through bursts where you rededicate yourself to believing that this really is something you want. You carefully craft a personal ad. You are thrilled but also terrified when you get a response from someone who seems right. You're not sure if you're dreading the date itself--because there have been some terrible ones, and they can be so humiliating--or the inevitable rejection. You gloss over the reason for your previous break ups, trying to make yourself look as good as possible without lying. You try to make the best impression you can, which might mean not presenting your real self. You check your e-mail and your phone for messages, hoping to hear back. Sometimes they schedule another date. You try to be the person they want, and argue to yourself that it is your real self, just the best sides of it, but deep down you wonder if 'maybe there's someone out there who wants me for me, all of me.'

You plan self-improvement of some kind, to make yourself more appealing, but find yourself shirking or dreading sessions because they are a reminder of being unwanted, and is the expense worth the marginal improvement? You catch yourself avoiding friends who are in relationships, because their casual references remind you of what you're supposed to have. You cut yourself off from the people who could help you get what you think you want.

Maybe you're with someone, but it's not very serious. There are no long term prospects and your friends keep asking if you're still with that loser. Maybe you're freelancing, good friends with a enough people whom you can rely on for a booty call or a fling when you're that way inclined. Maybe you've discovered that your life is pretty comfortable with your feet on the ground, avoiding any romantic entanglements. How does one tell whether passing doubts or dissatisfaction is because you aren't with the partner you want, or you aren't with the partner society has taught you and continues to assume is Right? Have you 'settled' or is this what you want? Even when you're totally comfortable right now, external and internal expectations whisper messages of guilt and failure and concern for your future if you haven't succumbed to traditional marriage before you lose your marketability.

This post does not carry the non-aviation tag, because it's really about aviation. The airline job is the mythical Mr. Right for the commercial pilot. Personnel ads and résumés are just like personal ads. Interviews are as awkward and potentially humiliating as first dates. Contract flying is exciting and varied, but does sometimes leave you without a date when there are bills to be paid. You can end up with the wrong one, in a dangerous relationship, but not have the resources to leave, or the self-esteem to know you can do better. The metaphor follows all the way through, including tearful breakups and those confusing relationships where you're not really sure who dumped whom and you're tempted to go over and beg them to take you back. Calling your ex to get your stuff back and talking to your replacement, who has been told lies about you. Yep, it's all there. The only upside is that you probably won't get dumped if your current employer discovers you are actively looking for the next one. You probably won't get promoted either, though. And many who think they have achieved happily ever after discover that the one they have committed thirty years to has gambled away the pension money.

If you're flying helicopters instead of fixed wing, things get more complicated, especially as many people don't become helicopter pilots until years of believing their destiny is in fixed wing. Friends and family who don't know helicopters don't have a clue what they do anyway or what your prospects might be, because there isn't a widely respected stereotype of a successful rotary wing pilot. You might not live in an area where a stable airline job is an option at all on a helicopter. There's a certain freedom there, because expectations are different, but the same angst over career progress. You're forced to define your own success.

Whichever side of the airport you're working, long to be working, or have decided you really don't need the headaches from, I wish you a happy and prosperous Year of the Tiger. Gung Hay Fat Choy.

High Above the Mud and Bugs

For some reason I decide that today I will have lunch at the A&W. It's a fast food chain famous for its root beer. Or famous for advertising its root beer, one or the other. I cross the service road, the Alaska Highway and the other service road without getting run over, and go into the place. It's full of firefighters. Not the kind with the shiny red trucks, forest fire fighters. They're on their way up to Fort Liard. Yes, to look at (and smell) them, definitely on the way up. There are two talking near the counter. "Are you in line?" I ask, because it really isn't clear.

"Yes," says one while the other says, "No," so I'm behind one of them in line. He turns out to be ordering for a large crew, so I have a while to wait. He is super fit and has that stereotypical high-testosterone square face and jutting jaw. What is it that makes this a "strong" face? It's not just terminology; other members of his crew are just as physically strong and fit, but there's a dominance, something probably programmed in my genes to perceive the lantern-jawed man as the strongest. Maybe the chin is a spot where nature cuts corners if there's some deficiency during gestation. Perhaps there is some genetic condition that is accompanied by a receding chin and females of my species have evolved to disfavour all chinless ones in order to avoid the few that herald a problem. Someone should do a study. My chin doesn't stick out past my nose and I can carry my share of mastadon meat, but standards for beauty and value to the tribe are different for females. There are no women on this crew. Forest fire fighting is such hard physical labour that maybe three percent of the population have the strength and endurance to do it. That eliminates maybe 97% of men and at least 99% of women. And the few women who could do it chose to be professional athletes, or didn't want to wreck their nails.

I'm not familiar with the menu here. There's no mastadon burger, but there's a "Swiss Veggie Deluxe." I wonder if that's a meatless burger. I ask, when I get to the front of the line, but the server doesn't understand "meatless". I try a couple of different wordings, but get blanker and blanker looks. A manager overhears and intercedes, "We don't have that right now." My second choice is the chicken burger. Turns out there are two kinds. I have to ask the difference. So now I'm being one of those problem people you don't want to behind at the fast food place. Just order already, lady. The server doesn't seem to understand my "what's the difference?" question. The guy behind me knows, however and I order the grilled one. And a root beer float, because the picture looks good, and it's what A&W is famous for.

The firefighters are piling back into a convoy of SUVs as I recross the highway with my takeout. Chicken was edible, kind of salty. Float was basically a root beer with one puck of ice cream dumped in the top, floating there. It may have been "frozen dessert product." Not so good. I eat enough to sustain me and go to the airport.

I take another look at the pilot information kiosk to see if my thumb and forefinger theory for operating it will pan out. I take off my sunglasses, this time, inside the darkened room. What do you know, there's a stripe down the right edge of the touchpad, with arrows, labelled scroll. I check it out. The scroll function still doesn't work and I go back to the up and down arrows on the keyboard.

I take off with a ten knot direct crosswind from the shorter runway, because I don't feel like back taxiing the longest runway. It's one of those things like airline pilots taking less fuel than the airplane can hold in order to take more baggage. Yes, one would be safer, but the other is more operationally efficient. If you went with the safest option at every turn, you'd never fly at all. This runway is longer, better surfaced and lower altitude as the ones I learned to fly this type of airplane on, where it was often ten degrees warmer and there wasn't a choice of runways in a crosswind. If it gets any hotter I'll make the backtrack, though.

Call clear of the zone; position report on 126.7; turn on the tunes. Darn. Not working. I guess I forgot to recharge the iPod thingy. I find that if I have the music playing, it entertains me just enough that my mind doesn't wander, but I don't get so immersed ni the music that I am not sharp for what the airplane is doing. If I don't have the tunes, I start actually thinking, and no one wants that. Job interviewers quickly detect a pilot who thinks, and cross her off the list, I'm sure.

So I conentrate on the airplane. Two things about a fast food burger. One is that it's really salty. I'm drinking lots of water and hoping I don't end up having to ration it. And the other is that it must pack a hell of a lot of calories. I've been flying for four hours now and I'm not hungry. I'm pulling snacks out of my flight bag because I'm bored and hey, jelly beans are entertainment. I don't want a big hit of insulin right now either, so I ration myself on the sugar-based entertainment. Must be a lot of fat in that chicken burger, too, because I can't raise my interest in almonds sufficiently to eat more than a couple.

There's a nice lake down there. Very round. GPS says it's Maxhamish Lake. We wonder if there are fish. There don't seem to be any buildings or roads. (The link says the lake is a provincial park, with fishing and camping allowed, and confirms no road access. The concept of a "park" in Canada is maybe a little different than in the rest of the world. it's not necessarily on a road with signs and toilets and a park ranger. We seem to just pick a place that's nice and say, "okay that's a park." If you can get there, good for you. If not, well some fish and beavers are happy).

Back to the airport to land. The FSS guys says "Roger" to everything, because he has to say something, and he has nothing to add to my plan to join downwind, or my calls on downwind, final and clear of the runway. I raise the wing flaps, open the cowl flaps, turn off the electric boost pumps and put my hand on the transponder for two clicks counterclockwise, from ALT through ON to SBY. I taxi by the FSS and can see the specialist in there, so I raise a hand and wave, even though he probably isn't looking, and probably couldn't see me inside the airplane anyway.

As I shut down I notice that the transponder is still on. That's odd. What did I turn off instead? It's not until I'm doing a post shutdown flow check that I notice the transponder set to 1400. Ah-ha. My hand was on the transponder, just on the wrong knob. I set it back to 1200 and everything else is fine.

As we pull into the hotel parking lot, there are three guys with baseball gloves playing catch. "Car!" I call through the open window, for the benefit of the one who has his back turned. He moves out the way and we pull into a parking space. "Game on!" I call back.

"Like Wayne's Word, eh," says my coworker. I say yes, even though I wasn't thinking of the movie. The guys don't go back to their ball game, so I chat with them. They work cleaning tanks. I tell them what I do, where I was today. It turns out that they were there too, have been up at Maxhamish. "I didn't know there was a lake," one of them says. Another one knows about the lake, "Yeah, there are fish," he says. But there's no road. he thinks people haul gear in during wintertime on snowmachines, and cache it.

They talk about the bugs and the mud. Neither of which I have to contend with. I have a good job, don't I? I don't make as much money as the firefighters or the tank cleaners, but I don't have to fight fires and I don't have to work in the mud and the bugs.

Blog Your Way to the Cockpit

Air Asia is running a promotion beginning with the words, "So YOU wanna be a pilot? Simple. What do you have to do? Blog. What? Thats it? Yes, you're reading it right. Blog." Woo! I'm doing it right!

In many countries, including the UK, it is normal for candidates with no flight experience whatsoever to be hired by an airline, trained from square one at that airline's expense and dropped into the right seat of a jet at two hundred odd hours. Students who pay for their own training are considered "self-sponsored," underlining the fat that someone else usually sponsors the process. During my flight training, I had an e-mail correspondence with a fellow student pilot in England. It went pretty much the same, with us debating the differences in radio technique ("what? you're allowed to say 'takeoff' on the radio?") and airspace ("Purple? Our airspace has letters, not colours!") When we both finished, he started flying a B737 and I got a job flying traffic watch in a C172. I'm afraid we kind of lost touch after that.

Usually the selection process for the coveted training spots involves personal interviews, aptitude tests and so on. I'm not sure how they normally choose the people they call to interviews. I imagine a lot of it is the same as me competing with thousands of pilots who meet the minimum standards of Canadian airlines: timing, luck and who you know.

So why not allow ten people whose daddies don't have the right friends to compete with those whose do? As the competition states, "The 10 winners are entitled to be the first to attend the first round of selection for AirAsia's new pilot intake." These folks aren't skipping the interview phase at all. They're just getting an interview. They could winnow resumes based on school marks, but after a certain level you're getting nerdier, not more suited for aviation. Really if you're going to hire someone and train them to fly an airplane, why not select the part of the candidate pool on the basis of spelling, grammar, composition and the knowledge and maturity necessary to write a good blog entry.

The person who pointed me at this thought it was poor publicity for Air Asia, but I don't see that. In my opinion, a passenger delving deeply enough into the workings of his airline to be reading their blog is beyond believing the pilot façade and might be interested to see a bit of the real people who strive to get interviews and make the decisions. Of course I'm biased, but I think you can read a wannabe airline pilot's blog without worrying about the quality of fully-trained pilots.

I'd enter the competition, but I don't have time to learn good Bahasa Malaysian before the competition closes.

Showing My Stripes

Now that I've done my obligatory take on the news story of the week, I will think about the new year.

Cockpit Conversation was initially supposed to be a blog focused on me learning things that would help me get a job as an airline pilot. I was going to explain things to hypothetical readers, thereby cementing them in my own mind, and forcing myself to research what I didn't know. It's a bit like practicing instruction by teaching things to your dog. (If you want really rapt attention, emphasize your important points by waving a bit of bacon around). I did that for a while, with you, not the dog. And it turned out I had real readers, not hypothetical ones, and I didn't even have to wave bacon. Then I got a really interesting job and the blog turned into an episodic record of that and subsequent jobs that were supposed to lead to the airline career. Two of the jobs were actually at scheduled carriers, so I was an airline pilot, but the most recent airline made me redundant before I ever got in the airplane. Lately this has turned into a blog about me not getting a job as in airline pilot, which really doesn't fit the theory of blogging in order to focus my mind on what I want, does it?

I like blogging. I especially like having my e-mail box full of interesting, clever and friendly comments from all of you. I'm pretty much addicted to it. I like flying airplanes. I like planning and preparing for flights. I like having contingency plans and solving problems. I like briefing passengers. I don't mind delays as long as I have the feeling that I've done what I could to predict, prevent, and work through them. I even get satisfaction out of doing the paperwork that shows what I intend to do, what I have accomplished, and what went wrong each day. And I like flying through the air, the master of the machine. I'm addicted to that, too.

I took down my mammal lists (my record of how recently I had reminded prospective employers of my availability to fly for them), because they were discouraging. They'd pretty much all said no at one point or another, and I felt like I was beating a dead horse. It was better in the short term to stick my head in the sand and be happy where I was, than to be rejected over and over again. But an ostrich isn't a mammal. Here's a clip of a non-burrowing mammal really fighting the odds, so he doesn't become a dead horse.

He's going to be my inspiration this year. If he can half-drown a lioness that has her teeth in his throat, I can get all the way through the airline interview process and into a jet cockpit. Right?

Another zebra video taken at the San Diego zoo illustrates another remarkable length to which the zebra may go, but I'll leave you to find that one on your own. Warning: it may leave human men feeling inadequate.

True to my New Year's resolution, I did not read the YouTube comments.

The Final Nexus

I finally got home and got an appointment to be interviewed for the final stage in the Nexus Pass application. I went to the site listed on the website, only to find out that the website was wrong. They sent me to the correct site, and I arrived within seconds of the scheduled appointment time, where they looked for my name on a list, checked it off and sent me to sit and wait. The seats were the kind that bother my back, so I picked up a pamphlet, disobeyed instructions and stood around to wait.

It was kind of funny watching the guys in the office. American customs officers all carry guns, and it looks kind of silly when people are typing at computers, answering phones, rolling around on swivel hairs and reloading their staplers with Glocks strapped to their thighs.

I was called up to the desk after not too long, to be interviewed by a very young American customs officer. It was pretty informal. We didn't go into a separate room or anything, I just stood at the desk while he sat in a tall swivel chair on the other side. He had some very standard questions to ask, mostly the same questions that were on the online application and was genuinely interested in the answers. I ended up telling him how he might go about getting a pilot licence, but recommending against flying as a career. Customs officer doesn't look like a bad career. Maybe he was specially trained to be relaxed and natural so as to get truthful answers out of me, but I think he was simply enjoying talking to people as part of his job.

After a while another guy, with a Canadian uniform, came back from a break and sat next to my interviewer. "Oh hey," said my interviewer to him, "You can jump in and ask any questions you have any time." He then explained to me, "This is a joint interview. He's the Canadian." The Canadian told his colleague he trusted him and mostly just spectated amused.

One of the questions was "Have you ever been fingerprinted before?"

"No," I said. "Well, only at Disneyworld."

"Disneyworld?"

"Yeah, they scan your fingerprint on the way in and link a hash of the data to your pass, so you can't share it with anyone."

My interrogator was boggled. "Have you been to Disneyworld?" he asked the Canadian. He had. "Did you get fingerprinted?" He hadn't, but allowed that a lot might have changed there since 1983. "Heh," said my interviewer. "In 1983 I wasn't even born yet. My parents weren't even married, still working in the fields."

This must be the most human customs officer I've ever met. Did he miss the class on acting superior and aloof? The last name on his badge was Singh. Hundreds of East Indian immigrants come to the US and Canada to work as agricultural labourers. His parents were probably scrutinized and questioned by someone just like him, who might still work here. This kid was a genuine American immigrant success story. For over two hundred years people have been coming from everywhere in the world to the United States and becoming part of the nation. I think that's very cool. I wrote this before another dark-skinned immigrant's kid became the President-elect of the United States. Canada is like that, too, with our last two heads of state (Michaëlle Jean and Adrienne Clarkson) being non-white first generation immigrants. I think people should be evaluated on their own merit, not on where they come from.

On one basis or another, Officer Singh approved my application. He and the Canadian signed it, took my fingerprints electronically, took my picture and gave me lots of brochures to read about how not to screw up in the Nexus programme. I had to go to another office for the retina pictures, but they weren't scary at all, no different than having my picture taken normally.

Now I can zip back and forth across the border for work more easily.

Homeward Bound

My replacement pilot is here and my flight home is booked, so there is no impediment to my leaving. I even have breakfast with my co-worker, because he's not working today. There is a large area of freezing rain forecast, here and to the south. Oh oh. I hope I'm still leaving. Freezing rain is a reason to cancel or delay airline flights, and I have connections to make between non-partnered carriers, who don't know I'm coming. I'll have to collect my luggage, check in, and recheck my luggage. I hope I get there, but I don't want to go if the weather is unsafe. I hope the pilots at this little northern airline have the balls to cancel a flight in unfavourable weather.

The hotel van takes me to the airport. I check in at the desk in the little terminal and put my bag on the scale. As the agent goes to lift my bag off the scale I intervene to show her that the top handle is broken, so it has to be lifted from the side. I hear her conveying this information to the baggage handler. I bought that suitcase in Florida. It was cheap, but I was operating on the theory that cheap or expensive, this lifestyle was going to trash my suitcase, so I might as well not spend a lot of money on it. That and the mall by the hotel didn't have any stores above the level of Wal-Mart or Ross. The suitcase hasn't completely self-destructed yet. I'll get a new one soon. The CSA gives me my boarding pass and I go further into the terminal to wait.

It's a little bigger and swankier than the terminal at my old base in Weasel. For example the floor is level and the toilets have doors. But it's not big city. There are no news stands or TVs. There might have been a vending machine. The best part is a partly-completed thousand-piece jigsaw laid out on a table. I love this sort of thing about small airport terminals. I'm sure there some official reason why you couldn't have a jigsaw puzzle table in a departure lounge at l'Aéroport international Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau. Transmission of disease? Choking hazard? The airport authority cannot be responsible for deciding whether the jigsaw should be of kittens chasing string or of balloons floating over the countryside? A jigsaw puzzle has no linguistic or age barriers and it doesn't matter if you come in or leave on the middle of it. One person an work on it or several, with any level of cooperation. And it stimulates your brain, instead of deadening it like TV.

I'm the only one working on this jigsaw puzzle now. I'm looking for an orangish brown piece with really big square corners and a little teeny slightly left of centre tab, when someone comes up and asks about my checked baggage. It's the baggage handler. "I fixed your suitcase," he says proudly. He explains at length that he saw that it was broken and so he looked at the handle, and there was a metal part and he put a bolt through that, and so on. I thank him and he segues off into another story about how he fixed someone else's luggage. This seems to be his hobby. He's single-handedly making up for all the bags that all the other baggage handlers in the world have broken. I'm sure this violates some regulation, as does what I suspect he may have consumed before work. Or maybe he's always this garrulous. I thank him again and go back to the puzzle.

After I get lots of orangish-brown pieces connected, the flight is called. There's no security. I'm in the north. I just pick up my carry on and board the airplane. I've interviewed with this carrier. As look at the airplane I wonder what I was thinking. I don't want to work here. I feel sorry for the pilots. I watch them and hope I don't appear as transparently self-important as I go about my duties. I catch myself looking at the pilots' faces to see if I know them from somewhere. They're younger than me, so I probably don't. I don't want to fly this airplane. I want to fly better ones, skipping this stage. That's not really the way it works, Aviatrix.

They play a recorded preflight safety briefing. I listen to the recording, stow my carry-on and read the evacuation procedures like I mean it. As they start the engines I realize I've made a rookie mistake. There was no assigned seating and I just sat in the first available seat. Experienced passengers move to the back of a turboprop like this, away from the noise. I have earplugs in my flight bag, so I use those.

During the flight I'm watching to see if we're icing. We're not. We're flying between layers. The FO is reading a sheaf of something that doesn't look like approach plates or a checklist. Company memos, probably, or maybe his cheat sheet notes. (When you're new you make yourself a cheatsheat of runway numbers, nav aids, frequencies and other things that you'd have to look up in a variety of places. Tip: laminate your cheatsheet so it looks like a regular checklist). The heater in this airplane works well. Bleed air is a wonderful thing.

My first connection connects and I entrust my safety to another set of strangers. For some reason today I'm more conscious than usual that all pilots are people like me. We make stupid mistakes, get lazy, tired, or sick. And we all want to get home safely. Which I do.

Psych Screening

This is an old story, with some new information about what happened when an Air Canada pilot became so mentally unstable during flight that the captain elected to have him forcibly removed from the cockpit. The captain made the PA announcement that amateur pilots' dreams are made of and the answer came from one of the flight attendants, a commercially licenced pilot with an expired IFR. She occupied the right seat for the remainder of the flight.

It's not unusual for flight attendants to be licenced pilots. For those already pursuing a career as a professional pilot, the job of flight attendant provides financing and acclimatization to the lifestyle. Flight attendants who didn't plan on becoming pilots are exposed to the environment, thus susceptible to the aviation addiction, and may be sucking into the vortex. I have known more than one person who has simultaneously been working as a commercial pilot on small aircraft and working as a flight attendant for a major airline. It's not clear whether the FA in this case had professional piloting experience or just a commercial pilot licence. Either way, she proved useful to the flight and they landed safely.

Air Canada has a rigid psychological screening programme as part of their interview process. I've actually spoken with an Air Canada recruiter who says that sometimes candidates the panel really likes and who score well in the simulator are rejected by the psych evaluation. The recruiters don't get to know what was "wrong" with the rejected candidates, but I wonder if the psych screening is selecting people who think just like the white males born in the 1950s who made up the airline when the ideal pilot profile was developed.

Events like this reflect the stress involved in the responsibility for a large airplane and trying to hold an aviation career together despite economic fluctuations, mergers, pay cuts and the risk of losing everything over a medical problem that would only be a minor blip in many other careers. And I can't help thinking that it's a tiny piece of vengeance for the people whose career progress was halted because they would or would not "like to see a film about an otter" or did or did not "prefer gardening to making wooden toys."

Oh and I asked Magic 8-Ball if I would be an airline pilot again and it told me You May Rely On It. I guess I should do something about that then, eh?

Edit: Reader Christopher provides a link to the report made by the Chief Inspector of Air Accidents in Ireland (where the flight landed). It shows that the captain didn't make an Airplane!-like call for pilots, merely asked an FA to check the manifest for company pilots, and gives some interesting details on the removal. The report commends the captain for his good CRM and professional actions, and also mentions that the FO's condition improved in hospital.

Customs Clearance

Next morning in Maine the weather is grand. The cold front that has been bearing down on us overnight has raced through while we slept, leaving nothing in its wake but a bit of scud cloud. The coast, quite literally, is clear for our advance to Canada. The only bad news in the weather is that the tailwind we've enjoyed for the last few days will die down shortly after takeoff.

I have to file a flight plan for the border crossing and we also need to phone Canpass with notification of our customs arrival so I do the former and hand Lite Flyer my passport to do the latter. I also need to get a transponder code for the border crossing but the briefer says he can't assign me one. I have to get it from Boston Center. And he can't give me a number for Boston Center, I'll have to get it in the air. He gives me the frequency. I'm on the phone a long time with flight services, but Lite Flyer is also embroiled in a conversation that involves giving out her credit card information. Eventually we're both done and then I field a call from the manufacturer, checking up on us. He's amazed that we're preparing to take off for the border crossing already. We've made great time. The winds have helped, after that first day, plus we've worked hard. I've been lucky not just with weather and maintenance issues but that I haven't once regretted disregarding one of the cardinal rules of ferry piloting: never bring the owner. Lite Flyer gets up at whatever time I say we have to for weather, eats what's available, has made no unreasonable demands, never required an early stop for a bathroom break, in fact has introduced not one minute delay that I recall, and is great company. This would have been a much less enjoyable trip without her.

We take off into the morning. There is still some low cloud around, which keeps us low at first. We skirt airspace NOTAMed for an airshow: the NOTAM said Blue Angels, but we only saw a Pitts Special, and then climb into what remains of our tailwind. Remains? The information we had that it would only carry us a short way was not correct. If anything, the push increases as we go north. We're going to be in Canada so fast that Lite Flyer mentions she's almost sorry that the trip will be over soon.

"It's not over yet," I warn her, keeping an eye out for landing places. Airplanes have a very keen sense of irony, but this one didn't hear her, fortunately. We skirt Bangor class C airspace and then make a beeline for Fredericton, on a track that will keep us clear of the artillery range to its southeast. The tailwind still won't quit, and it's funny how big a difference that makes in a small airplane. We have a true airspeed of about 65 kts. That makes 200 nm a three hour trip in no wind. Give us 15 kts on the tail and we cut it to two and a half hours. It takes such a slow airplane for a moderate wind to make such a huge difference. I make a couple of unsuccessful attempts to raise US flight services and amend our arrival time, but no one answers. Perhaps we're too low. within striking distance of the international border I switch over to the Boston Center frequency and they do hear us, and give us a code. I seem to recall it was 7373, so I show Lite Flyer to make sure the last two digits aren't both zeroes before making the first digit a 7. We don't want to create an international incident!

As we approach the international border, we're mainly over uninhabited bus and marsh. Boston Centre calls us and clears us en route to squawk VFR. "Don't we need to be on frequency with the discrete code for the border crossing?" I ask. He says no. I tell Lite Flyer, "I guess they don't need to defend this corner of America from terrorists." I can kind of see why. No offense, Northern Maine, but you're like Florida without the beaches or sunshine.

We slide across slowly. The border is very wiggly here so I'm waiting to be absolutely sure we're fully across before celebrating getting this critter to Canada. Lite Flyer calls it first. And appropriately, it almost immediately gets colder. I put on my jacket, a good trick with these sturdy harnesses. I also manage to raise Canadian flight services on 126.7 and report our new eta. I'm looking ahead to where Fredericton must be, waiting to see the airport. I think I see it but I can't be certain. You know, flying to unfamiliar destinations was harder before the ubiquity of the GPS. You had to find the destination by pilotage and dead reckoning.

We tune the mandatory frequency and listen to the flight services specialist at the field herding traffic. (Yup, it's an international port of entry and a provincial capital, but there's no control tower, just an FSS. The specialist tells traffic the winds and who else is in the area, and solicits position reports.) It's busy, and the specialist is working hard. They're using a runway that we're approaching at right angles. Fifteen miles back I have the picture of who is around. I call in and remember to leave the "Charlie" out of my call sign. The specialist of course has no trouble with the four letters and when she replies I give my position, eta and state my intentions to make an overhead join to downwind for the active.

I can see the runway, or at least I have seen enough runways in the past that I see the environs and know that that is the runway, but I'm waiting for Lite Flyer to find it, and trying to explain how she will join the circuit. "Just fly straight over the runway, and then hang a left and you'll be on downwind." She finds it, and then ATC calls back with a wind change. The wind is now favouring a cross runway and the specialist, who is skilled at telling pilots what to do without actually giving instructions, asks us if we would prefer a different runway. We would, even though it means me quickly contradicting myself, "Turn right to parallel that runway." I hasn't been sufficiently clear and she can't read my mind about which runway. "Turn right here, more right, more right." I can't usefully tell her to turn to a particular heading, because there's no heading indicator and the compass and GPS lag too much to be used to roll out. We get it sorted out, and while I think I did a little bit of direction ("fly direct the point of that island") for widening out to follow traffic, she planned the turn to final and made an unassisted landing. It was the best landing of the whole trip and I'm delighted. It's her airplane and she just brought it to Canada. She's less excited about the triumph than I would have expected. I think I'm more delighted than she is at the accomplishment. Maybe she's done lots of great landings before and I haven't seen them. Or maybe she doesn't see her own progress.

We taxi to customs and shut down. Lite Flyer calls 1-888-CANPASS on her cellphone to report our arrival. We're right on time, because the tailwind that made us early is balanced by a takeoff delay. She's on hold so she gets up to stretch her legs. I remind her that crossing to the US that she may not step out of the airplane until asked to by the customs officials, but here she's allowed to go to the payphone, just don't wander away. I stay in my seat.

She appears to be having some difficulty with the phone conversation, saying "no" and repeating information that was included in the pre-departure telephone call. She gets up and wanders around. I watch her on the left side of the airplane, and then I see a customs officer come out of the building with a clipboard, talking on a cellphone. He's on the right side of the airplane. It's a very small airplane, so I'm sure they can see each other if they look, but I don't think they're looking. I wonder if they are talking to each other.

Eventually they hook up and Lite Flyer explains that she is importing the airplane, has already paid the taxes by credit card. The customs officer walks slowly around the aircraft and there's something different about the way he does it. It isn't the "what a cool little airplane!" walk that we've seen over an over again. It's not me looking for anything broken, loose, leaking, frayed or bent. He stops and pays special attention to the plastic sponson. I think it's the "where could you hide drugs in this vehicle?" inspection walk. He asks more questions, looks at my passport and gives it back and then asks if we have any paperwork associated with the purchase. "That's half the weight of the aircraft!" I quip. Lite Flyer unstraps the knapsack full of paperwork and she and the customs officer go inside.

Meanwhile a Jazz CRJ has landed and taxied in. I look at it with a bit of a sigh in my heart, because I interviewed with them and didn't get on, but then I feel the grin on my face and bet myself that the crew of the CRJ don't have as big a grin right now. In fact, I bet they are looking at me. Sure enough, they disembark and they're both looking at me. I grin wider and make a "come on over" gesture. If there's one thing you an say about this airplane, it turns heads. I think I could park this next to any airplane in the world, and the pilots would get out and come and see me.

"Where's the water rudder?" the captain asks when he comes up. I explain that the bottom of the actual rudder is in the water after a water landing, so it doesn't need a separate water rudder. He says that the FSS told him to watch for a King Air as he was taxiing in, but that all he had eyes for was this airplane. He has 3500 hours of float time and jokingly offers to trade airplanes. I would, but I have to admit that it's not mine. I think it doesn't matter what you're flying, you always want to be flying what other people have.

The FO is a woman with grey hair, an almost unknown rarity in Canadian airlines. I think she's the first female airline pilot I've met who was not young and perfect. It's secretly inspirational because there are parts of me that have wondered if I have failed to advance in this industry because I don't have the right hair or qualify for a second career as the other sort of runway model.

The customs officer comes back and tells me that the airplane is cleared and that I'm welcome to go inside and use the washroom if I want. That was considerate of him. Lite Flyer is fielding telephone calls from friends and family. I understand there's a member of her family in Fredericton, so I'm waiting to find out if they are meeting us here at the airport.

Two Meetings

I'm all dressed in my suit arriving at the airport before my interview. A woman in the arrivals area asks me if I'm a member of a certain profession. I look at her startled. I was one of those once, but haven't been one for years. It was the career I gave up for aviation. Has it so thoroughly permeated my being that I am still identifiable as one? Nah. She's greeting delegates arriving in town for a conference. It must just be the suit.

I have time to kill before the interview, and the greeter has to wait for a few more flights to arrive, so I stay and chat to her a bit, finding out the state of the industry I left and catching up on some colleagues we know in common. I tell her why I'm here and she knows a pilot who works there. She names him. It's Steve, the interviewer. Canada, they keep telling me, is a country of thirty million people, but I think really there must be far fewer of us. The illusion is probably kept up by a bunch of extras they keep running by in different hats. Maybe if this flying thing doesn't pan out I can get a job as an extra.

I go off the the washroom to check myself out in the mirror. There I meet another woman in a suit who asks me if I'm interviewing with Bilby Flights, too. She's just come back from the Maldives and has the interview before mine. I wish her luck. A company like this interviews to fill a class, and it would be nice to have another women in the class.

I see her again later. She went over to reception early and her interview is over already. Mine isn't scheduled yet, but I go do the same thing. I'm glad it's not too hot today, as I walk along the service road in my suit and girl shoes to find the right office. It's easy to find. They're also interviewing for receptionists which makes an interesting contrast between the dark conservative suits the pilots are wearing and the fluffy women with colourful nail polish filling out pre-employment questionaires in the waiting room.

I'm led around airside to get to the chief pilot's office. He's really nice and the interview goes well. There are no technical questions. They are all questions to determine how I would fit in with the operation. I think I would, and I think I managed to demonstrate that with my answers, Not knock it out of the park well, some of my answers were a little wandering, but he seems to take most things well.

I can see that he has written a question mark on his interview sheet where he is taking notes on my answers. I wonder if it's a question he has about me or if he's just drawn it in response to his own asking, "any questions?" I ask him about how the company is coping with fuel prices considering how thirsty the airplanes they are flying are. I'm hoping to hear that there are long term plans to move to a more fuel-efficient airplane, and there may be, but they do contract flying such that the client pays for fuel, Nice.

After the interview I have the pleasure of meeting another sometimes-aviation blogger, Connie. I read her blog before I started blogging. She has moved on to a new blog more about music and less about airplanes, but answered my email and agreed to this meeting. I've put away the suit and changed into jeans and runners and am now scrutinizing everyone to see if they might be her. I probably should have looked at her current blog for recent photographs instead of going by my memory of photos from the old one! But we found each other and she takes me to a pub on the water, named after an animal, where we chat about being women in aviation and enjoy a good view and good food. I think it's tougher being a woman in maintenance than in the cockpit because even the densest male pilot has figured out that flying isn't about brute strength, but there are still a lot of strength-based tasks in maintenance. I imagine there are very few women maintenance engineers who are not the only one in their shop, always setting the standard for their male colleagues for what women can do in that field.

If nothing else comes of this trip, I've met someone interesting, and will have a positive memory to take away At the end of the meal I have the fun of buying her lunch. She's all surprised and protesting, but I assure her that free lunches are one of the benefits of blogging. I've received a few, so it's only fair that I pass on my good fortune.

An Interview, After All

It's been less than a month since the jet job interview I couldn't attend, but they called me again to say that they have more interviews scheduled this week. And this time I can attend. It's a really really good opportunity. The company pays well, has full benefits, like a real job, maintains their aircraft and I could make a whole career there. They fly old noisy three-crew airplanes, which itself would be an experience, and chances are that during my career they might renew the fleet, giving me a chance to fly a modern airplane before I retire.

It's pretty exciting, but there's a part of me that clings to the job I have and love now. It's possible that it's a much better job but that I wouldn't like it as much. What if they hated me?

But it won't hurt to go and see.