Jetwhine

Aviation buzz and bold opinion

Pilot Population

An Airline Career Query & No Good Answer

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Directed my way by a leader familiar with my connection to aviation, an Eagle Scout e-mailed me this question: “I want to become an airline pilot when I get older and I’d like to know where to start? What things can I do as a high schooler or…I read somewhere that taking a ground school would be a good idea?”

The older I get the more I dislike airline career questions because they put me in an uncomfortable position of finding a middle ground between crushing someone’s dreams with the reality of aviation today and leading them on with blue skies and tailwinds that will, in most cases, come to an unhappy conclusion, if they get that far. Avoiding the question is another option, but it is equally distasteful.

When these questions are posed to you, especially those of you who now make a living as an airline pilot, how do you answer them?

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Changing Aviation Interest & Participation

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This past week the mailman delivered a reason to think about my unknown but rapidly approaching expiration date. Thanking me for my four decade membership tenure, EAA offered me a three-figure rebate if I bought a four-figure lifetime membership.

The numbers didn’t work out to my benefit. Weeks away from the conclusion of the first year of my seventh decade of repetitive breathing, I’ll count myself lucky if I’m still breathing 20 years from now. If that happens, family history suggests that something other than aviation will probably capture my daily interest.

And I’m okay with that. Thinking about it further, my aviation interest, which began in 1958 when I was 5, motivated me to participate, which I started in 1976 by earning my private ticket. Since then my participation, subject to more pressing priorities, has been less than continuous, but I’m thankful for every hour in my logbook.

As much as I’d like to add more entries in that log, to have at least one more adventure that involves a stick and rudder, I accept that this possibility diminishes with each day I breathe. And I’m okay with that, too. Preparing for my final days has taken precedence, but my interest in aviation, as it has since I was 5, will sustain me.

Of greater concern is the interest and participation of the generations that follow, and how aviation as an industry will adapt to their demographic nuances. If EAA’s rebate offer is any example, it will not fare well because the baby boomers in charge are making generation-centric decisions that are disconnected from the generations that are succeeding us.

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Culture of Fear Suppresses Joy of Flight

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More than it has in the previous two years I’ve judged an airport writing contest, fear was a central theme in the nearly three dozen essays submitted by students in elementary, middle, and high school. Most of them addressed airline flights and began with the TSA and continued until they reached the desired destination, often in Florida.

The handful that wrote about their general aviation flights also focused on their fear, but unlike all of their airline flying peers, two of them actually looked out the window and marveled at the different perspective flight gives of the world they live in on the the ground. Dismissing the easy explanation that kids today are different, looking at the world in which they are maturing, being afraid is what our culture has taught them to be.

And as their parents and grandparents, it’s our fault.

A common Facebook theme lists all the things we did as kids that kids today don’t do, from riding a bike without a helmet and walking to and from school without a guard or guide to playing outside unsupervised and without organized activities. Keeping kids safe is every parent’s responsibility, but using fear of the consequences to achieve it has the unintended consequence of suppressing rational risk assessment.

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For Boomers, Rusty Pilot is Difficult Decision

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Since I learned to fly in 1976, the vicissitudes of life have removed me from the cockpit and later returned me to the left seat. As a rusty pilot, I am again at a point where my return to the sky is possible, but deciding whether to take advantage of the opportunity isn’t as simple as it was 20 years ago.

At 40 I was halfway to my expected expiration date. When it came to planning for retirement and related concerns we’ll all face in the final chapter of life, it was easy to procrastinate. At 60 the proximity of what awaits me is clear enough to see without my glasses. I imagine many among the half-million rusty pilots AOPA identified in its research face a similar dilemma.

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First-Person View and Recreational Flight

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From the first time we looked up, what has attracted humans to flight is seeing the world from the perspective of a bird. That attraction still drives many of us, but how we achieve this first-person view (FPV) has changed with technology. If you doubt this, think about all the cool video on the Internet that has been captured from drones.

vr listFrom a mass-market mindset, which would you rather do to satisfy your desire to see the earth from above: Spend $10,000 and a year of your life to become a pilot and then pay upwards of $100 or more for an hour’s flight; or invest $1,200 or so for a ready-to-fly small drone like this DJI Phantom 2 Vision, spend several hours mastering its GPS-stabilized flight control system, and recording that aerial first-person view on your smart phone?

Given the number of drone videos posted on YouTube, I’m guessing that these flights, which usually last less time than it takes to thoroughly preflight a Cessna 172, will totally satisfy the aerial FPV cravings of most people born during and after the 1980s. Let’s face it, if a smart phone is involved, it’s a winner among people who text rather than talk, even when they are sitting at the same table.

For those of us born before the 1980s, this evolution of recreational aviation doesn’t bode well for fun flying as we remember it. But such is the nature of progress. Yes, for a few who look skyward, drones will not be enough. They will be the generational outliers who invest the time and money necessary to collocate their body with their view. And they will be the ones who get hands-on to build and restore the flying machines that stirred their dreams.

But their numbers will never replace the pilots who’ve since retired from the cockpit. And I’ve talked to a number of them who’ve traded their airplanes for a FPV drone. With the advent of FAA small drone regulations, today may well be their “good old days,” which should not be missed. — Scott Spangler, Editor