Advice for the young in Aviation

My flight to Texas was arguably my best one in the Boeing 777 - excluding Christmas in Capetown or the 47 hours in Manhattan, both with my wife onboard - but a personal record is a personal record, and it was a seriously long flight: 17 hours and 41 minutes, what even with the discount of the long taxi out and in, counted for over seventeen hours aloft. The full tank and over eight thousand nautical miles of air distance route got us tired, naturally, but to be fair, I felt quite lucky: getting the first rest out of the Gulf, I woke up seven hours later to assume controls hundreds of miles into BIRD (Reykjavik FIR) feeling well charged for the second half of the flight.

North of Iceland, I saw something out there, and called the attention of the captain. Lady Aurora was out for dancing, and gave us an outstanding display for over four hours, all the way to Churchill. I saw them from the ground before, but from the flight deck was a different story: being ourselves as North as 72 degrees for a while, we had a much better understanding of the sheer size of it, as the Northern Lights, in a kind of arc, were more to the South, and as we entered the Hudson Bay, in Canada, the bottom cotton like layer, a diffuse green covering the whole horizon for hours, eventually was over us, as we continued flying toward the US border.

The size of the thing is just as mind blowing as its beauty, despite the colors in real life never getting close to what our modern cameras can see - our eyes are not that good in the dark, as you already know.

Much later on, the four pilots were having a nice barbecue for something that could be taken as a lunch for a local, but for us, nine time zones behind home base, was more like a very late dinner.?At seven o’clock?I hit the bed: next morning I was going to do something very exciting and anticipated.?

Because of the jet lag, waking up early was easy. Actually,?at 5 am?I was running my usual three miles in half an hour (you’ve got to keep that medical sharp) and after a low carb egg plus bacon breakfast, I headed for the school. Despite being my first time there, American Flyers whole team, from the receptionist to the instructor, were super nice, and after a very good chat with Matt, the director, off I went for a real flight: low and slow VFR, something I have not done in FAA skies for a long while.?

If you read one of my recent articles you know my FAA ATP check ride was less than a year before, and if you read the FARs (61.56), you know I technically didn’t need a flight review. But, since my last one was like seven years ago, I asked for the maneuvers anyway. And despite the nice Cessna 172S being equipped with a G1000 and an autopilot, neither the instructor nor I were willing to use it. A very comprehensive preflight, specially all those fancy G1000 parameters I never had to worry about on the six packs I used to rent in Florida, and we departed Addison busy Airport runway to the East - after a long wait in line similar to those on my home base hub and spoke rush hours. He talked me through the idiosyncrasies of Dallas Bravo - like leaving Addison at 2000 feet and getting back two hours later at 2500 feet - but aside his inputs, I was on my own: full hands and comms. My less than optimum skills on the VFR talking might have get him wondering how the heck someone gets me paid to fly in and out of DFW in a 350 ton airplane, but this was one of the very things I wanted to get polished with that flight: in Aviation you only get good on what you practice a lot - it worth mentioning that, as an American made pilot, I could not dare doing any Portuguese talking on the radio on my previous GA flight in Brazil that you read about on my last article, so my performance in Dallas was not that horrible after all.?

Speaking about of getting good on what you practice, off we went for the maneuvers I haven’t done for ages. Slow flight and steep turn were not amazing, and to get them good I had to insist a bit. The stalls, however, were very nice, much better than I expected myself. After all, we do those in the simulator every six months, right? And of course, the Skyhawk is one of the most brilliant designs to ever take to the skies, no surprise it sold over 44,000 units in the many decades it has been in production - the most produced civilian airplane ever. Last but not least, engine failure!

Best glide, look for a field. I chose a couple grass openings slightly behind us. As I moved toward there - and realized we were too high still, a glance on the moving map - a luxury I did not have during my Private - revealed a grass strip right underneath us. In no time I positioned myself for a landing there (most likely in the second half of it, but well… ).

Alright, time for some pattern work: all my approaches were very nice, and we tried normal, short field landings, short field and soft field take offs, all good and safe - sometimes a bit flat or firm, but you know, the triple is so easy to land - and as a First Officer and Relief Pilot you land it so occasionally that I might have some credit for the rustiness. In fact, my average has been around one per month - ten times less than I did in pistons in February alone. And if the quick reaction on the go around with the?MC01?called the instructor’s attention, my quick reaction rejecting the take off when the flaps did not come up at the touch and go did not go unnoticed by the CFI either: he said it was his second ever - I had my share, both in the airlines and even in the Seneca during my Commercial check ride, a decade ago. It is better to be down here wanting to be up there than the opposite, as the saying goes. On the taxi back the flaps started working again for the same reason they didn’t (none) and we took off again - he later reported that to the maintenance personnel at the school.

Leaving Terrell and Mesquite behind, we got back to ADS for my first flaps up landing in years: a chilly yet sunny morning well enjoyed. “How many hours have you got?” he asked on the way back to the building after a proper debriefing. As I answered “logged, five point two” he said he was envy of that, “sir”. Well, my friend, don’t be. Although I don’t feel that old, at his age I had way less than zero. At well over a thousand hours, he’s in fact way ahead of myself, like so many young men and women taking to the skies nowadays. I’ve survived some four or five crisis already, they had barely seen their first - and did exactly what I told them to do three years ago: get ready, because when this is over - and will be over rather sooner than later, you will skyrocket your careers. Seniority is the name of the game: the more you have when the next low tide gets to us all - and it will get - the best are your chances of making relatively unhurt to the other side. One day you will be up here in the flight levels with all the perks and sacrifices and realize the best part of your careers was sneaking below Bravos. The “sir” here promises. Keep paddling, kiddos.