A Chick in the Cockpit (4 page)

Every pilot remembers the first day they got paid to fly. It's the monumental day that you take your Before Start Checklist and set it aside so that you can move onto the next checklist; the Start Checklist. My first paid flight was as a copilot in a King Air 90 (twin engine turbo-prop) because I did get my ass to the airport at 3:30 a.m. and flew a check ride in the rain. The chief pilot grilled me on the FAA's Airmen Regulations, weather, flight planning, and weight, and balance. It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to run the radios and get the captain his coffee. I had triumphed and didn't care whose ass I had to kiss along the way. I kissed ass to kick ass.

Once I was able to start logging multi-engine turbine time, doors started to slowly creak open for me. Once I'd see that crack of daylight through the proverbial door, I'd push it the rest of the way open with all my might. I was twenty-five years old, and had been at Ethan Aviation for five years. I had a good relationship with the clientele, especially in the charter department. It was at this juncture that another strong woman entered my life. She was powerful, starting a new aviation company, and I had something that she wanted. I could help complete her Start Checklist, and she could complete my checklist by giving me a pilot position. Ironically enough, she was the one controller who put up the biggest barriers to my aviation career. But while she was controlling the airspace around me to keep me on the ground, I was busy rearranging her barriers to build a new runway.

5
Cleared to Start Engines

1.
Situational awareness – packed

2.
Make sure area is clear – check

3.
Shout CLEAR! Wait one second. Start engines

4.
Stay where you are until you are cleared to taxi

Now that the Before Start Checklist is complete, we're cleared to start our engines. There is just one final task a pilot must do before hitting the starter, which mixes the volatile solution of fuel and fire. The pilot must take one last focused look outside the aircraft to verify that no one is near the propeller when it starts to turn. Gory stories abound of decapitations and lost arms because pilots are so excited to get the engine started that they forget to look up and out the window before they start the propeller turning. It's an element of situational awareness, and having it keeps everyone safe. It should begin before you walk out to your aircraft and remain on until you lay your head on the pillow when you go to bed.

Situational awareness is required of everyone in, on, and around aircraft. There are daily stories of losing situational awareness: Air India taxiing into JetBlue while JetBlue was waiting to be hooked up to a tug. Asiana getting too low on airspeed during a routine landing at San Francisco and crashing a Boeing 777 on a beautiful day. A pilot looking out the windshield and wondering what a mountain goat is doing at his flight level.

Sometimes you get so wrapped up in your routine that you forget to pay imminent attention. The sights and sounds coming in fit your routine and, even though something is out of the ordinary, you see and hear what you think you should.

A great example is the Boeing 727 captain who had his onboard auxiliary power unit (APU) fail while at the gate in Minneapolis. The external power at the gate was not functioning either, and there was no power cart available, so the captain logically figured he'd start the number one engine to provide power. He properly informed the ground crew and advised them he was starting an engine, but the captain didn't know that the caterer was still stocking the back galley from the lift in his truck, right outside the #1 engine.

The caterer, so accustomed to hearing the roar of jet engines, didn't realize that the roaring jet noise was actually coming from the aircraft he was standing on. He simply took one step out of the aircraft, onto to his catering truck lift, and got sucked into the engine. It's okay. He was quick enough to grab onto the outside of the nacelle and hold on for dear life as someone immediately notified the captain to shut it down. The caterer wasn't permanently hurt. He received frostbite from the cold air being pushed across his skin at an exponential rate and he probably needed to change his underwear. You can be certain his situational awareness would be forever changed.

The problem with my situational awareness at this point was that I had to filter it through my own internal committee, and they decided how I saw the world. All I could see was climbing into bigger, faster, and higher jets. I lost myself and became nothing but a pilot. I knew I wasn't performing the necessary weight and balance calculations to create a work/life balance, but I didn't care. Before I started the engines, I forgot to look around and contemplate my situation. I was a woman in my twenties and never bothered to wonder what life would look like in ten years. I didn't care. My situational awareness told me nothing mattered except getting in front of two jet engines.

Without looking out the window, I started my engines. I put the throttles full forward and at a certain point during the takeoff roll, I was committed to my takeoff path. About halfway through the flight, I began to wonder if I had packed my situational awareness.

~~~

Pilots sometimes learn about thunderstorms by accidentally entering them. Thunderstorms are often surrounded by benign clouds that look soft and fluffy, but in reality are hiding the true power of Mother Nature. Pilots who survive a trip through a thunderstorm will think they're better pilots because they survived. The reality is that they
are
better pilots only because they'll never do it again.

I lost my situational awareness and entered my own thunderstorm as a young pilot because I was lured in by shiny jets across the airfield from my front desk at Ethan Aviation.

Every airport with more than one FBO has what my workmates at Ethan Aviation called the Evil Empire. Their fuel prices are lower than everyone else on the field, their hangar rates are just a tad cheaper, and they have no qualms about actively pursuing other FBOs' clientele and employees. While everyone viewed this company with malevolence, I only saw their shiny jets and opportunity.

Sharon and Ranger Wellner owned the Evil Empire. Ranger was an investment banker worth millions, so as with any aviation investment, they bought the facility to lose money to offset the income. You really can't make long term sustainable income in aviation, but it's a blast while it lasts, or it's a great tax write-off on the way down.

Sharon had invited me out several times for coffee to woo me away from Ethan Aviation, provided I brought my database of clients with me. I resisted because the group mentality where I worked had predefined my thought process and clogged my filters. All my co-workers had been brainwashed to banish the thought of working on the dark side. They questioned my loyalty, but I secretly kept wondering why. The Evil Empire was thriving; they had four times the charter aircraft Ethan had, ran a twenty-four hour air ambulance service that kept those pilots busy, and the best part was that they had a shiny new Citation, and I wanted those jet engines plowing me through blue skies. Loyalty? Where was loyalty going to get me at Ethan? I'd been there six years and they would never let me transition into their flight department full time. I was a habit for them and no way would they break it. I was enthusiastic and cheap.

Finally, one day after I booked a charter in one of the jets from the Evil Empire, Sharon crooned the shocking words (equivalent to
: Luke, I am your father
...), “Erika, if you bring me your clients, I'll get you in the charter department as a pilot. You'll also have to work in the flight scheduling department, front desk, and accounting, but I'll get you more flight time than what you're flying now.” My eyes rolled to the back of my head with pleasure.

I never knew that Darth Vader was a woman.

The next day I took my rolodex (yep, no Blackberry) and turned in my notice. At this point, I was cross-trained in all of Ethan Aviation's departments. On any given day, I could do payroll, avionics maintenance work orders, standard maintenance work orders, front desk customer service, and flight scheduling. I was making slightly above minimum wage and had begged for raises for years, which had always been denied. They knew I needed the experience and wanted flight time, so I had stayed all those years. When I turned in my notice, all of a sudden they realized what a bargain I was. They started negotiating to get me more flight time, but my mind was already in the right seat of that shiny jet across the field at the Evil Empire.

From the moment I walked in the door of The Evil Empire, I could see that appearance was paramount. Everything was placed with purpose to give the air of professionalism. The facility had a sterile, cavernous open lobby with modern art deco hanging from pure white walls, and the lousy acoustics made it noisy even though there were just a few people there at any given time. Sharon wanted it to look modern and stately, but her failure was that she didn't think like a pilot. Pilots want their mothers when they're traveling on the road, which means that warm, soothing, and comforting should be the atmosphere of any FBO. This was not it. But I didn't care. I watched the line guys pull those shiny jets and turbo-props out to the flight line each day, and I wanted in.

I expected that I would have to work multiple desk jobs for a few months before I stepped foot into the airplanes, but after six hair-pulling months, I was at my wit's end. My coworkers from Ethan were right. I'd been lured to the dark side, and it was all a mirage. Sharon had no intentions of letting me fly. I had asked weekly when I would get checked out in one of their King Airs, but Sharon was quick to retort that the office couldn't function with me gone flying. I kept reminding her that flight time was why I came to work for her. What a conundrum! In trying to do such a good job, I was working myself away from my true goal. I wanted to do a good job and increase her charter business, but the result was she started hiring more pilots.

When I realized she was setting up pilot interviews, I sat down with her in her office and asked if I could get on the list. She knew she had put me off long enough and had to just say it. “Erika, look, I'm sorry. I just don't think our executive clientele would be comfortable with a
woman
pilot, no matter how good you are...”

My vision began to tunnel as the reality set in. I was blinded by not realizing I was a
woman
pilot. I'd never thought about it. I was just a pilot, as good as any on the upcoming interview list, and I just wanted a chance. She lured me by that chance, but she had never intended to do anything more than lure.
A woman!
How could a woman discriminate against another woman for being a woman? All she'd wanted were my office skills and client list. I walked out of her office and felt like crying, but didn't want to act like a girl, so I called her a “bitch” in my head and grew more determined to find a way to get my butt in one of her pilot seats...despite her. My fortitude was tested as each new male pilot walked in the door for their interview. Latently, I realized that I had been cleared to start my engines, but forgot that I needed someone else to put gas in the tank.

Sharon proved she could discriminate with as much bravado as any man as I began to see a visual trend of the new pilots being hired. She hired pilots based on what they looked like, how slick they were, and if there was a tuft of gray at the ears—no more, no less. She hired the image, not the skill or ability to keep passengers alive, and it exasperated the chief pilot. I could see him hold his breath as Sharon walked handsome new pilots into his office, without bothering to do a background check, stating that she had just hired him. Her formula appeared to be that if they
looked
like a debonair pilot, they must
be
a debonair pilot. Instead of affirming that the most important element of being a pilot was the ability to fly the airplane, her filter was clogged and she believed the airplane knew the difference between a male and female pilot. I was increasingly frustrated in being able to figure out how to unclog that filter.

Part of my job was to screen pilot resumes, which came in like the daily tide. The chief pilot wanted the list whittled down by a cursory review of the resume. There were so many good pilots, so it was easy to reject a resume that had any kind of black mark. The chief pilot was trying to abide by the book and hire only the best, but his boss made it hard for him.

It didn't matter how minor the offense was on an application or resume. Even a speeding ticket ejected the application into the circular file because competition was that fierce in the pilot world—and still is today.

The first page of the pilot application asked, “Have you ever been arrested?” It didn't matter if you were completely innocent or cleared of all charges. You could be walking by a PETA convention, get arrested accidentally, and the Evil Empire would absolutely not hire you. Why would they when there were hundreds of other applicants standing in line without anything to research or investigate? This is the policy of all flight departments. Where there is a ding, there is a flaw, even if it was fixed.

The battle for pilot jobs is cutthroat and this is the same at all charter and commercial aviation departments. Why take a chance of a scandal when the next pilot has a perfectly clean slate? We've all read the headlines. Anytime there is an aircraft accident, the media looks for any reason to blame the pilot. If a potential new hire pilot has been arrested, even if cleared of all charges, it will be brought up and the company will be blamed for hiring the pilot with a character flaw—at least that's how the media will see it, and that's what I was told to look for when pilots turned in their resumes.

Against the recommendation of the chief pilot and a few senior pilots flying the line, Sharon happened to hire one of those suave pilots without bothering to do a full background check simply because he had the right look. A few months after he was hired, he flew Senator Paul Wellstone, along with seven other people, four feet into the ground. The utter irony is that he had, indeed, been arrested, and it was discovered only after the accident. Not only arrested, but had a felony record. He had served time at a federal prison camp in South Dakota for fraud, and Sharon had not bothered to check because he fit the physical parameters of her cookie cutter image of what a pilot should look like. I did not fit her image, but he did.

It's something women have been fighting against for years, and now here was a woman doing exactly what we fought men against doing. More nauseating was how that pilot became a different person in her presence. He crooned to her, complimented what a wonderful charter operation she ran, all the while running his fingers through his blond hair.

On that fateful day when the handsome, qualified pilot accidentally chose to no longer exist, he lost his situational awareness and let the airspeed get too low due to a quick build-up of ice on his wings. It accumulated fast enough to disrupt the airflow over the wings, and his airspeed got so low that he eventually stalled and spun into the October ground of northern Minnesota. Classic icing crash, and even a low time King Air captain should have been able to prevent it, but we'll never know for sure what happened.

There are conspiracy theorists who say that it must've been a bomb because the accident was just too unexplainably simple. It's agonizingly simple...freezing rain in Minnesota can build up preposterously fast. When you're on approach, you're busy, and in this case, too busy, to check the ice forming on the wings. Or maybe it is not that simple. Maybe they did see it but misjudged how much ice a King Air 100 could carry before it stalled. Pilots are supposed to let ice collect on the wings of these King Airs because the airplane has a pneumatic (air) boot system that blows up a boot along the leading edge to break up and shed the ice. But if you break if off too early, you will make a false leading edge and you won't be able to get it to break off. You have to let a sufficient amount of ice to build up and then blow the boot.