"Here's a beauty"

" Experience "

I'm going to recount a true story that explains and sheds light on the ageism debate at the moment, and how silly it is, and I think the story explains exactly the value of age and experience over youth and exuberance.

A few years ago many people who lived on Lantau in Hong Kong used to commute to the mainland by ferry, and usually, there would be a whole load of professional individuals on the ferry going to work, and many of those were aircrew going to Kai Tak.

At the time a particular airline was having its pilots brush up on exactly how the "Thing flew" and one of our neighbors was an older Captain finishing his time off and didn't really want all the headaches of understanding how all this new tech made it "Fly".

Anyway being a good friend of my brother who was an Engineer, the old Captain would get him to explain anything that he didn't know, and during their conversations, he told my brother about an incident that had just occurred a few days ago.......

Here goes...... The Captain explained that a few days back he was coming out of Bangkok and the 1st was in the left seat flying and getting some experience when all of a sudden just as we were climbing out number one engine burst into flames, I told the young sprog pilot that i'll do the engine and the rest, and you just fly it. So there we were doing a circuit around Bangkok with a great stream of flame coming out of the engine and whilst I was shutting it down I looked over at the pilot, and I swear to God, I've never seen a man truly white with fear and grasping the yoke like it was the sole life jacket on a sinking ship, anyway, I told him to relax, I kept the chatter down, I didn't want an audience picking over this later, so I just pointed and gestured as the young man got some "Real Experience"...

I'm glad to say he did ok, I got the fire out, did the circuit, and landed, I think the 1st was the quickest into the toilet for obvious reasons.....

He then explained that he was a lucky lad, because with jets you don't often get such an emergency, and he'd been fortunate to have had the pleasure so that in the future he'd have the experience to deal with it. He then went on to explain that in my day as a sprog pilot, I was flying Constellations, the fire-breathing monster, that more often than not lost an engine or developed engine fires, so I'd had a lot of experience of failures and fire, something of course that the youth of today doesn't have......

Sadly the lack of experience in these particular emergencies has led to all kinds of "Lack of experience" disasters, ranging from shutting the wrong engine down to so many incidents that are explained as pure lack of training or experience. Many of these sad incidents are explained in the series "Air Crash Investigation"

So before you chum up these "oldies" and feed them to the sharks, just remember you might be destroying the very individuals who might just save your backside......

I'll finish on a lighter note relating to experience...

A young bull and an old bull were standing on a hill looking down on a herd of cows. The young bull said to the old bull, let's run down there and "Have" one of those cows...... The old bull listens, then turns to the young bull and says, no sunshine, we'll stroll down and "Have" the lot.......

Experience...... Despised by those that don't have it........

Enjoy the attached video.....

[120FPS] 'Connie' Super Constellation Engine FLAMES at Avalon Airshow 2017 - YouTube