What they Don't See

You get that angsty what-the-hell-am-I-doing-here feeling every time you lower your butt into the seat in that darkened box—that place of toil and judgment you know so too, too well. 

As you settle in you get the creepy feeling that a gazillion electrons are running amuck through your body. You can smell their electrical breath and you want fervently to be somewhere in open air. Somewhere far, far away from here.

The sounds in this place—humming fans, thrumming hydraulics, metallic clinks of your belts and straps, switches being moved—bring on longings for music, bird songs, barks, anything wholesome and natural. This place ain't natural.

Its sights—row upon row of blinking and steady lights—green, amber, red—compel your eyes to yearn for far stretching blue sky. A lake or forest. Both are lifetimes from this place.

You're back again. Back in the sim.

We're in civvies—both wearing jeans, polos and sneakers. This contrast of technology and attire serves to link us to the saner world and for a moment we can imagine we're doing this for fun. We are private pilots, winners of a lottery, come here to play with the big iron. But this fantasy, we know, is about to be shattered with an onslaught of streaming demands on our brains and hands that borders on violence.

Today is a short one—only four hours and we're on our way back to the line. It's a refresher and an introduction to our new procedures, the products of the merger with that other company. They do things a lot different and it seems we are being compelled to do it their way.

“Okay, are you guys ready?” the IP asks as he closes the back door. The box grows even dimmer. We look across at each other with raised eyebrows. We nod.

Then the words from the IP's seat behind us that we've heard a hundred times, that we'll carry with us the rest of our days. “Motion coming on.” We feel the box raise high above the floor on its hydraulic legs. We steel ourselves. Remember Mose's prayer just before the Comanche charge in “The Searchers”? (Of course you do.)

Thank you, oh Lord, for that which we are about to receive.

What we're about to receive is that which passengers never see and hope not to.

The much revered Ernie Gann wrote about the box of cerebral torment 60 years ago, but he called it a “Link Trainer.” If only the passengers knew, he mused.

His truths still endure.

Part I: How I Tried Not to Get Hired

A few posts back I wrote a piece called “Monkey Business.” You remember; it was about the Air Force colonel who disparaged the airline business at an airlift operations course. His diatribe drove me in the opposite direction he intended. I filled out airline applications that evening. (I had been carrying them in my brief case for weeks.)

And I did every thing wrong according to the hiring gurus. I filled out my application by hand. I didn’t study-up on airline history. I didn't buy practice simulator time, and I didn’t go out and buy a new $400 suit for the interview. I figured my old navy blue sport coat and khaki slacks should be good enough.

If you paid the gurus money they would coach you. I didn't, but I knew that they advised of the exhaustive astronaut style physical exam you would get at American. They cautioned about Delta’s picky application process. They warned of TWA's extensive written exam, and offered to sell you a practice test.  

The interview itself was the biggie, they said. They taught airline pilot hopefuls how to answer the Give Me an Example question. (Example: “Give me an example of a time when you had a serious disagreement with your supervisor, and how you resolved it.”) The list of cautions and recommendations from the gurus went on and on, fed continuously by feedback from their clients who gutted-up and assaulted commercial aviation’s corporate hiring bastions.  
  
Then two airlines complicated my life. They offered me interviews. First I went to Dallas to take the astronaut physical. I passed, despite failing dismally at trying to humor a grumpy nurse, one we dubbed "Nurse Crochet." Then I had to go back for more screening. My Air National Guard pal, “Flat Land" Moore said, “If you get invited for the third trip you're in, buddy!”

I got the third invite. I asked Eleanor how she would like to move to Dallas. She frowned.

On the much ballyhooed “third trip” I was scheduled for a simulator ride and an interview. I was to fly a Boeing 707 simulator. The sim briefing was at 0700 on a Sunday morning. I got there at 0630 but couldn't find the right building. The place was deserted―buildings locked, no one around to ask. I scurried from door to door looking at my watch. It was a nightmare in the purest sense. 0700 passed. 0715. 20. Man, I was late for the most important simulator evaluation of my life. Or was it? For some, maybe.

Then I found an unlocked door, went in, bounded up the stairs and trotted to the correct room number. I opened the door and found the evaluator sitting across from another candidate (two of us were scheduled). The evaluator looked up. “Cockrell, I assume. Glad you could join us.” He wasn't smiling.

I flew the 707 sim with no difficulty. A takeoff. An ILS. Done. And the interview sprang no surprises.

But showing up late was a fatal mistake. Needless to say, the Dallas boys didn't invite me to join them.

Then came an invitation to Denver.

First was a “mini-interview.” That was just to get the immense pile of paperwork right. Then they gave me a physical exam, which was not quite as comprehensive as the one in Dallas, plus the nurses were nice. 

But it was my first experience with a female physician, and she wasn’t bad looking. I tried to think of something else, to avoid coming to attention when she checked me for hernia. I imagined the mechanics of a golf swing. I didn’t even play golf. It succeeded. The trooper remained at ease.     

Next they threw in a battery of brainteaser tests. I sat in a room doing timed practical math and navigation problems while listening to recordings of aviation radio chatter. After that I took a 600 question written psychological test. I had been warned they would ask the same question repeatedly in different terms to check for consistency―warnings that proved correct.  

A month later they invited me back. I was sick of the process and seriously considering throwing in the towel. I packed again thinking that when this is over and behind me, I'll get this airline stuff out of my system and move on. The commander of the Memphis Air Guard unit had offered me a full time position as a C-141 instructor. I asked Eleanor how she would like Memphis, and I got a shrug. I left for the final trip to Denver, but my thoughts were on Memphis. With such an mindset, the potential for failure was immense.

Next post, Part II: I Try Again to Blow It.

"I glance at the instruments. All is as it should be. Occasionally, as we climb, Gillette moves the throttles forward slightly. He is a good pilot, this silent man. His reserve is not cold but warmed with shyness, and consequently with him there is peace."

--Ernest Gann, "Fate is the Hunter"

If only Gann could have seen this.

Breathing Deep

We were a somber group. Homesick, all. You never get used to it. Sunday mornings are not supposed to be like this―early, dark, foggy and far from home.

The van driver loaded our bags―four crews of pilots, eight of us heading to the airport, nobody saying much. Just civil utterings.

"G' morning"

A nod.

"How's it goin'?"

"Livin' the dream, man. Just livin' the dream." Yawn. A cynical chuckle. 

A cuss. A heavy sigh.

I looked at the starless sky and remembered the line from Days of Future Passed: "Breath deep, the gathering gloom."

This was not the way the "dream" is supposed to be. Sunday mornings are for sleeping-in, for coffee and breakfasts, for church and family, and walking dogs. Sunday is supposed to be a day for rest and regeneration. And yet there I was, dragging bags and breathing the gloom. I long to live a normal life.

How much more of this will I choose to endure? I'm supposed to be retired by now. Defunct pension plans and grizzer bear markets hold me hostage here. But a hostage to what? To fortune? A different kind of fortune, Gann would say. (Of course, you've read A Hostage to Fortune, right?)

Yeah, mornings like that compel me to consider exit options. Pilots on my company seniority list junior to me would applaud that idea.

We got to gate 77 and found it full of droopy-eyed vacationers in Hawaiian garb awaiting the eastbound flight, their second leg to home, already dreading going back to work Monday. You could see it in their faces. Fifty-one weeks of hell pays for a week in Paradise. Now back to the hell. If that’s normal I don’t won’t that life either.

Mike and I woke up the slumbering Pratts and beat all the others to runway 25R. (Why are so many of my first officers named Mike? I'm not making this up.)

We were the first heavy jet out of LAX that gloomy Sabbath, maybe the first of any jet. We burst through the top of the fog in mere seconds, and our eyes breakfasted on a horizon ablaze in stunning crimson and orange. The gloom was banished. Breath deep, now, the rising sun. My spirits lifted and I ceased thinking about retirement, for the time being.

It was a good sail over the Rockies, which were encrusted with carpets of shimmering yellow Aspens. I imagined Del Gue down there yelling, "...and there ain't no churches, ceptin' this right here!"

Toward the end of the flight the head flight attendant came up and showed me an image he had just taken with his Blackberry. It was a dead fly in a passenger's omelet. I sent an ACARS request (That’s like an e-mail) to our destination station: "Please have Customer Service meet passenger in 4F to offer condolences for the dead fly he found in his omelet."

Their response: "Would you like paramedics to meet flight to resuscitate fly?"

I suppose I'll endure "the dream" a bit longer.

What is that glow on top of the fog layer?

Rolling out over foggy Los Angeles to meet the dawn

Leveling off at FL 370 and getting
ready to get the Big Eye in the eye


Two weeks ago, out Livin' the Dream with some buddies:

The humidity is causing the prop streamers

I'm the one vertically confused 

Even our props are in formation. Are we good, or what?