Procedures

We all have them, there in the background, helping out in some facet of our lives. From the loop swoop and pull that helped us remember how to tie our shoes as children, to the signal, followed by the shoulder check that kept our parents car away from those in the lane over as teenagers, and our own cars later in life. Procedures. Some may be learned from others, while other procedures seem to creep into our lives without us having been aware of it ever happening. My life at work is dictated largely by procedures that have been put together to make my life as a pilot easier. In theory, a copilot should be able to fly with any given captain within the company and be able to know, even if they have never flown together, how and when checklists will be called for, when the landing gear and flaps will be retracted on departure, and when they will be brought back out for landing among other things. I find a certain comfort in these procedures as it adds an element of familiarity in a world that is constantly in motion. Regardless of what airport I am taking off from in whichever end of the world, once I have climbed the aircraft to 400 feet, I would call for "flaps up, set climb power and after take-off checklist" Or so it used to be. Since leaving my former job and starting my new one, I have had to leave behind the procedures that served me well for three years, and learn a new set of procedures that will hopefully help to keep me safe in the years to come. While the experience I gained at my last position has certainly helped in the transition to my new job, I have found it difficult to forget the long ingrained procedures from my past. Even something as easy as calling for flaps to be set at 17 degrees has been made into a chore by differing companies with differing procedures. In my last position, 17 flap was referred to as approach flap while at the new company it cannot be referred to as anything but 17 flap. Now before I ask for something to be done in the cockpit, my mind must run a translation to be sure that my terminology will match what the new companies procedures call for. Here, a call for approach flap will be met with a questioning raised eyebrow. While this may seem like an innocent enough mix-up of terms, if this particular mistake was made at the least opportune time, it could make both my and the captains life more difficult than necessary while we try to figure out how to bridge the communication gap. I know with time, I will come to know the procedures I am trying so hard to remember accurately as intimately as I knew my former procedures that are making life difficult now. In the meantime I will be spending my free time reading and re-reading the new procedures, and hoping for understanding Captains.

Enroute

Eight and a half years ago I stepped off of a flight which had brought me from the east coast to a place I would call home for the better part of the next decade. I can remember making that first step onto the jetbridge in Edmonton, saddened by what I had left behind but excited for what lay ahead. Nearly two weeks ago, I received news that I had been waiting on for a few years now, and though it has been more than eight years since the day has passed, I find myself feeling the same way now, as I did when I first stepped off of that flight eight years ago.

The past few weeks have been busy as I have tried to do as much packing as I could in between flights, and get-togethers with friends to say goodbye. I have welcomed the busy pace that the past few weeks have brought though, as it has distracted me from thinking about all that I will leave behind when I head east. The distractions however are temporary, all the feelings associated with leaving will be waiting for me when I get all the things that I need to get done, done. In my scarce free time the past few weeks when I have had a moment to think, I have found myself questioning whether or not I actually want to head east. I suppose there are a number of reasons for this; the move I am about to make is daunting, a bit frightening actually if I were to be completely honest. I am on the brink of pulling up the roots I have set in Edmonton, and setting off in the direction of a dream I have had since I first moved here, a dream of going home. Even while, when I do leave, I will be going back to friends and family that I have been missing for years, now as I finish packing, I can't help but think of those that I will be leaving behind.

I have been replaying the drive out of Edmonton over and over in my head over the past few days, and every time I do I feel a great sadness seeping in as I think back over the fond memories of my time here. I suspect it will be one of the harder things I will have to do in my life to not turn around as I hit the city limits. When I do leave though, it won't be thoughts of Whyte Avenue, or the downtown, or even the airport that will entice me to turn around, it will be the people that call this city home whom I have been so fortunate to call friends that will tug at my heart. It is with no exaggeration that I say that all of you that I have gotten to know, or gotten to know better since moving here, are what have made my time here as wonderful as it was, and it is to all of you that I owe a huge debt of gratitude for all of the memories I will take with me when I leave.

While it will be with great sadness that I will leave, I can assure you that, as Billy Connolly said, "there is a great deal of hope out there, it's not all bleak." There is no telling where this adventure I have teed up for myself will take me, and as much as it scares me, I like that. Whatever may come, good or bad, from here on in, will be entirely what I make it.
Where ever this adventure does take me, know that I will miss you all dearly, and I'll look forward to the day we meet again.


"It's staggering out there you know, it really is extraordinary, and kind-of bleak and weird, and it's going to get alot weirder, and the weirder it gets the happier I become..... You ain't seen nothing yet"- Billy Connolly

The Great Escape

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

Most of us have a retreat, a place where we can escape the clamor of the world around us, if only for a little while. Some may find solace at a pub table, a church pew or perhaps some have to wander no further than the couch in their living room. Even while at first glance these places may seem to have little in common, they all achieve a common effect. For a number of years, my bike has been my pub table, my church pew, my escape. On the days when the pillars of my life seem to be wavering and the days when things are going great, as well as all the average days in between, this is where I like to pass my idle time.


Today I sit staring at the trailhead before me. Beyond the low hanging willow branches lies a path that sashays through the trees leading eventually to another equally hidden trailhead at the other end. Where this trail leads of of little consequence though, as for the vast majority of my rides, the goal is not to go somewhere, but rather, to just go. Some may laugh and say that I am crazy to even think of wheeling my bike out anywhere after the first snow, but I am not out here for them, nor do I do this to be environmentally friendly or to make some statement, I do this for me. As a result, whether or not people think riding around on my bike in the dead of winter or in the rain, or anytime for that matter, is crazy, is of little importance.

As I drop behind the curtain of branches the noise of the city loses its obtrusiveness, eventually to be replaced by the quiet whur of my tires rolling across the ribbon of trail below me. As my feet spin below on their respective pedals, above, my mind spins through the recent events of my life. The past few months have been busy and have brought about some big changes, while the months ahead hold the prospect for more of the same. Inwardly I wonder about the fate of the airport I work at, and the implications for me, I wonder if where I am is where I am supposed to be, I wonder if I unplugged the kettle before I left the apartment.
I wonder the thousands of things that a world full of people all around me wonder everyday.
Even while my bike is my refuge, I have no illusions that all of my concerns will be solved by the time I pedal up to my front step. Like not biking to get somewhere, but rather to go, I do not go out to ride with the intention of fixing what I perceive as being the problems in my life at that point in time. I go out with the intention of trying.

I push down hard on the pedals one last time for tonight as I make my way up the last hill to climb out of the river valley. The noise of the city starts to flood back in with its usual intensity and the trail ahead lightens as I pedal back into the soft light of the streetlights above. The world seems a different place now from when I first ducked into the trailhead a hour or so ago.
Things that had seemed to be problems before, do not seem to be anymore, while other concerns that seemed insurmountable, now look easier to manage. The world once again makes sense. I realise that being on my bike doesn't change the world around me, anymore than sitting in a church pew or a barstool or the couch in my livingroom can. All it can do is offer a new perspective to help change how I look at it. I like that.

A year later

A flash of red catches my attention as I turn to enter the downwind leg at a small rural airport north-east of Edmonton. The red warning had caught the attention of my copilot as well, who called out the warning, "Engine fire on the right"

Before rational and common sense could kick in, I turned to look at the flight test examiner who was sitting behind us, expecting to see him playing with bared wires which could be responsible for setting off the engine fire warning system. The examiner raised his hands and shrugged in a way that suggested that the fire warning wasn't his doing. As the fact that the indication wasn't an examiners trick sunk in, the copilot and I settled into the engine fire in flight procedure. Then, as quickly as the fire indication had come, it was gone.

Now established on the downwind leg, my copilot and I ran through the possible explanations for the fire indication. The model of King Air that we were flying uses photo cells that detect light in an otherwise dark engine nacelle compartment to provide warning of a fire. If a given amount of light were to be present in the nacelle, the source could be the light generated by a fire, although that is not always the case. The sides of the engine nacelles have gill vents which allow air to flow through the nacelle for cooling. Under the right circumstances, with the aircraft's tail pointed towards the sun at the right angle, light can enter the nacelle though the cooling vents in a way which can set off the fire detectors. Even while we had just turned with the sun at our tail, the copilot searched for an indication that perhaps the fire warning system hadn't been tricked by the sun's light. With all of the engine instruments indicating normal, and no sign of a fire on the wing, we decided to continue with our landing as planned, and with the plane on the ground we would take a closer look at the engine instruments. With our examiner, who was now acting as a third crew member, in agreeance with our plan, we continued on with the approach, while keeping a sharp eye on the right hand engine's fire detector. Once on the ground, after a few minutes monitoring the engine instruments and the engine for a sign of fire, we once again concluded that while it probably was a fire that had set off the detectors, that fire was 92 million miles away, and in all likelihood, wouldn't give us any more trouble today.

Confident that the only emergencies we would have to deal with now would be those thought up by our examiner, we prepared for the departure back to the city. A thousand feet above the ground, finished with the departure procedure that kept us clear of obstacles, I initiated a left turn that would set us up for the GPS approach back at the city. Just like it had five minutes earlier, with the sun at our tail, the fire detector momentarily flashed again. Although it would have been easy to simply pass it off as the obvious, the co-pilot and I again checked for any sign of a fire. Even while the engine instruments again showed no sign of a fire, which agreed with the view out the right window, mentally I prepared myself again for the possibility that the engine fire indication hadn't been set off by the sun. Again we quickly discussed the situation with the examiner, and with us all on the same page, we set up for the approach to Runway 30. Eight minutes later, the main gear touched down onto the runway, signalling the nearing end of the flight test. Even though the test was technically not over, the most difficult parts were now behind us.
As I taxied in to the hangar, I thought about the difference that a year can make. Last year at this time I was taxiing in from my initial ride to upgrade to Captain. The past year has been trying; I have had days where finding an alternate was difficult, where I spent countless hours enveloped in cloud with the weather at all the airports below me hovering at minimums, reminding myself to relax my grip on the controls. I have also had days where the visibility and lack of cloud allowed a view of everything within a 100 miles. I have learned to be more assertive, while maintaining diplomacy, learned when to stand up, and when to let things be. Perhaps, learning, would be a little more accurate.
I have found my past year flying as a captain has had a similar effect to that of studying for the ATPL exams; for every lesson I have learned, for every question I have answered, there seems to be ten lessons I have yet to learn that pop up to take their place. The further that I get in this career, the more I am beginning to see that what I have learned to date pales in comparison to the lessons that are yet to come.

"Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn and you will." ~Vernon Howard

Leaving home

Although it has been more than 8 years since the day has passed, I can still remember it vividly; I had spent the previous night hanging out with my best friend, we walked out to the shore and reminisced as we passed landmarks that triggered memories from the past. Even while outwardly I did my best to remain positive, inwardly I knew that in a few hours my life would take a path that would diverge from all of the things around me that I known since childhood; from friends and family, from salt air, from home. During my last few months at home I had been well aware of this fact and I had come to gain a new appreciation of the community which I had grown up in. To an outsider, I am sure my home wouldn't stand out much from other small coastal communities in the area although to to me it would always hold a place in my heart.

As dawn drew closer, the stars perched above our heads slowly faded from sight

into the light of day. My friend and I sat in silence on the back step as the sun rose through the trees on the eastern horizon. Anything that was worth saying had already been said and no words could stop the inevitable from happening. We loaded my two bags worth of personal possessions into the trunk of the car, and finally the moment that I had been dreading for months was upon us.The mood of the moment hung heavily in the air as I hugged my friend. With all the composure I could muster, I said goodbye and turned towards the car. Driving to the airport I watched from the passenger seat as all that was familiar faded from view out the rear window. I had traveled this road thousands of times before, but this time was different. I rested my head on the door frame as my all nighter began to catch up with me and the roadside blurred in my tired eyes.

Now eight years later I have found myself thinking about home more as hiring at the airlines has begun again, and the prospect of finding work on the east coast has become a greater possibility. While being out west has presented me with opportunities that I would have never been granted had I chose to pursue my career closer to home, the east coast is still and will always be my home. For the past eight and a bit years I have been following my mind, allowing practicality and reason to guide my decisions. It was for my career that I chose to move to Alberta to learn how to fly, and in part it is the same reason I have remained here for as long as I have. Though reason and practicality have served me well, I think the time may have come to start listening to my heart as well as my head.

"I complain about it, I grumble about it, I can be mean about it sometimes, but I love it beyond reason, it's where I am from, it's who I am"- Craig Ferguson

For all the Right Reasons

The alarm on my phone rings through the darkness of my bedroom, pulling me out of my sleep and back into the world of the awake. I reach over to silence the alarm and roll back over to allow my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the darkness. As I lay in bed, my mind and body wage a war over whether to stay in bed, or heed my phone's alarm and get up. While my body is offering convincing arguments as to why staying in bed is the optimal choice this morning, ultimately my mind wins out the fight, just as it has for as long as early mornings have been a part of my job. I stumble my way through the darkness out of my room, closing the door quietly behind me. From here I will follow the routine I have perfected since early mornings have become a fact of life, and in the process, coax my mind into spooling up from simply being awake to functioning. I make my way to the kitchen to pour a glass of milk and start breakfast before jumping in the shower. The clock on the oven reads 2:30. Looking out the kitchen window at the apartment buildings to the north of mine, all of the windows are black save one, from which light is spilling out onto the parking lot below. I wonder what obligation or lack thereof has my neighbours to the north up at this hour. While I don't harbour any special attachment to this particular hour of the day, I have grown fond of the quiet which envelops the world during these early morning hours. The thud of railcar's couplings being pulled together in the railyard to the north breaks the silence, prompting me to continue on with getting ready for work. Now out of the shower and dressed, I finish up breakfast, and check the weather and notams for the days flights to get an idea of what I will be up against at work. Heading out the door to the car I straighten my tie in the mirror, and double check that I have my keys before locking the door behind me. Today is a pretty normal day, if there exists such a thing in the world of charter flying. The first officer and myself will position the plane at the Esso, across the airport from our hanger, for 6:00 to make our planned departure time of 6:30. Assuming the passengers are on time and the weather cooperates we will be in our hotel room in Grande Prairie by about 8:30, where we will sit for 7 or so hours before departing back to Edmonton this evening. By the time we are finished work tonight, the first officer and myself will have been on duty for 15 hours, with about 2.5 of those 15 hours having been spent in the air. While today is not a particularly challenging day, days like these can be nonetheless tiring given the length of time we will spend at work.

Over the course of the past few months I have been afforded, sometimes subjected, to the views that the general public holds of aircraft and those who fly them. Some of those views have some basis in reality, although many are relics of a bygone era, leftovers from the golden age of air travel when it was considered a privilege to fly, when the noise from jet aircraft was deafening, and when pilots as a whole were very well paid and respected. On the day described above, our passengers would have only seen the two and a half hours that we shared together while in the air. They wouldn't have seen the work that would go into making the flight happen before departure and after our arrival. While I am sure, with time, our regular passengers begin to get a sense of what our job entails between rotation and touchdown and make opinions based on what they are seeing, the reality is that they are only seeing a fraction of what this line of work entails. Pieces, but not the entire puzzle.

Sitting down in the office of the flight school I was considering training with, my parents and I were bombarded with visions of a bright future in aviation. The owner of the school spoke of the cornucopia of opportunities that would be created due to a flood of retirees at the airline level. This outgoing flood of senior pilots was forecast to create a pilot shortage around the time that I would be finishing my training, opening doors of opportunity that would lead to the promise of high paying jobs. While I wasn't entirely sure that the airlines was where I wanted to end up, and not particularly concerned with how much I would be making when I did get a flying position, the owner's rhetoric was convincing. With time I would come to learn that the flood of retiring airline pilots would be something more akin to a trickle, and that while high paying jobs did exist, there existed more minimum wage flying jobs than the high paying variety.
Talking with people while getting signatures to help keep the airport open, I was surprised by how many made mention of the deep pocketed aircraft owners and pilots who call the city airport home. Hearing this, I would laugh quietly and explain that while the city is home to some wealthy aircraft owners and pilots, most are everyday people earning average wages. Some did take the time to listen, however many brushed me off as being another overpayed pilot.

In another conversation with a gentleman who was undecided as to whether or not he would sign the airport petition, the gentleman, piecing together that I was a pilot, asked if it was true that pilots could only work 10 days a month. Aiming to keep my answer relatively simple, I told the gentleman that while there are regulations governing how much pilots can fly, which could have them flying 24 out of 30 days or more depending on the type of operation, their schedules are typically dictated by how busy the companies they work for are. My schedule personally has been relatively slow for the past year and a half, as aviation has been feeling the effects of the recession, although I have had months where at the height of the economic boom, I came close to reaching the 30 day flight time limit. Although having a slower schedule at work can certainly be nice to catch up on things like housework, any day that I am not scheduled to fly, I am placed on reserve where I must be available to fly with a little over an hours notice. The only exception to this are my six scheduled days off a month. When I first began flying charter, I lived 30 minutes from the airport, which meant I would have to be within 20 or so minutes range of my place, or carry work clothes with me wherever I went to ensure I could make it to the airport on time if a flight came up. Being on reserve was a strange adjustment for me, as things which I took for granted as a flight instructor where I made my own schedule, like having a beer after work, or a glass of wine with dinner, would now have to be cleared through dispatch first. With time, clearing things such as wine with dinner or going for a bike ride became second nature, and now while I am on holidays it seems odd to not have to call to check in with dispatch.

Over the course of the few months that I collected signatures for the airport, I was introduced to a number of peoples perceptions of what my life as a pilot must be like. Despite the perceptions, the reality of the situation is that I will probably never make a fortune as a pilot, have 20 days off a month, or capture the imagination of the non-flying public like the Earharts, Yeagers, or Sullenbergers of the world, nor do I want to. I didn't choose flying as my career because of the money, the respect, or the time off. I became a pilot because I love flying, because I had a yearning that could not be quelled from the confines of an office building, and because there were no openings left in the train engineer class. I can think of no better reasons.

"Isn't it crazy that in a world full of people, only some want to fly?"

Counting Demons

A number of months ago, I began looking over airline interview questions I had come across in an effort to prepare myself for whatever move I would make from my current position. Even while there was, and still is, not much on the horizon in the way of flying jobs, I have learned a few times over that a little advance preparation can go a long way.

If one were to look at the typical airline pilot applicant, they would likely find that most have thousands of hours of experience in their logbooks, gained over a number of years. Over these years and hours, those pilots would have become well adept at handling both normal and unusual situations, and would have come to gain an intimate knowledge of the rules, procedures and aircraft that they used to move people or cargo from point A to point B. While pilots would undoubtedly come into an interview with varying levels of proficiency, the largest unanswered questions would concern the applicant's personality and character traits. Interviews can still be very technical in nature, testing aircraft, regulatory and procedural knowledge, though most devote a large portion of time to determining not only what kind of pilot you are, but just as importantly, what kind of person.

With this in mind, I sit staring at my computer screen with a pencil and pad of paper, jotting down memories of my flying experiences that relate to each question. Many questions aim to determine the background of the applicant; what positions they have held, where they worked and for how long, why they got into a career in aviation, and are relatively easy to answer.
Other questions aim to determine what type of person you are, and how you handle difficult situations, and can be a bit more challenging.

Question Number 17 asks what my greatest weakness as a pilot is. A friend once told me that the best answer to this question is to confess to being a perfectionist; you can't go wrong.
I am sure many others have tread down this very path and beat this response into one that now means nothing. Whoever first came up with this in an interview gets full points, the rest of us are simply looking for an easy out. While I do consider myself to be a perfectionist, I would be fooling only myself if I were to believe that it is my greatest weakness as a pilot. Thinking that others could provide a more objective view of my weaknesses than I could, I turn and ask my girlfriend who is sitting on the couch behind me, what she considers to be my greatest weakness. Without a second thought or a moments hesitation, she responds; you dislike confrontation, that is one of your greatest weaknesses as a pilot.

In the six years that I have been earning a living flying airplanes, there have inevitably been times where despite my best efforts at diplomacy, confrontation was unavoidable.
As a pilot, I place the safety of a flight as my first and foremost responsibility, followed by maintaining the legality and finally the efficiency of the flight. While this is the generally accepted hierarchy of responsibility in flying, sometimes the order can get a bit lost in the routine of day to day operations. On a warm summer afternoon sitting at the flight school where I was working at the time, a woman called to book a discovery flight for her father. Discovery flights were designed to give prospective students a taste of flying a small aircraft, although quite often, those who we would bring up flying had no intention of pursuing flight training but rather, just wanted to go for a ride. Such was the case with this particular discovery flight. Since the other instructor working at the time had already had a flight earlier that day, this discovery flight was given to me. During the walkaround, I dipped the fuel tanks and discovered that the tanks were full, due to a earlier flight that had been cancelled. While full fuel tanks would not be a problem if only two people showed up for the discovery flight, a third person would put us overweight for take-off. I decided to wait until I knew how many passengers I would be taking up before making a decision as to what to do. I watched through the window of the flight school as my passengers pulled into the parking lot, counting the people as they got out of the car, 1,...2,....3. As the passengers walked through the door, I introduced myself to them, and presented the dilemma and my solutions. We could either delay the flight and remove some of the fuel from the tanks by siphoning out ten gallons, or I could take two passengers on a quick 15 minute flight, and then take the remaining passenger on a 15 minute flight afterwards. The passengers agreed that waiting to siphon out fuel worked best for them, so I proceeded to the ramp to begin defueling.

A coworker who had overheard my conversation with the passengers, stopped me and asked what I was doing. I explained the fuel situation and that I had given the passengers what I thought were the best options, and was now going to defuel. With a look of disdain, the instructor shook his head and asked why I was defueling. Thinking that perhaps I hadn't made it clear the first time, I explained again that if I were to take-off with the fuel that was on board, I would be overweight. Immediately after explaining myself a second time, my coworker made it clear he had understood quite well what I was saying, it was my reasoning that he was having trouble understanding. He reassured me that the plane would lift off the runway just as it had always done before, and that the little bit of extra weight would be unnoticeable. While I understood that the extra 50 or so pounds that I would be overweight at take-off may not have much impact on the performance, I knew I would be operating outside of the certified limits for the plane. If anything were to happen between take-off and landing, the extra 50 pounds of weight that seemed so trivial now, could potentially have further reaching effects that I wouldn't be aware of until it was too late. I explained to my coworker that I wasn't willing to risk the safety of my passengers, especially considering the ease of either defueling, or splitting the passengers into two groups. Undeterred, my coworker pressed on in his attempt to convince me to go.

In an effort to put the issue to bed, I maintained that I would not take-off overweight, and conceded that while we both had opinions on the matter, now was not the time to discuss whether or not it was an acceptable risk. With that he relented, turned around and walked inside and I continued on with the defueling. After finishing the discovery flight I bid my passengers goodbye, and secured the plane for the night. With my work finished, I sat back and thought about the events of the day.

With my co-worker already gone home for the night, I debated whether or not to confront him the next day. Although I knew I stood little chance of convincing him that taking off overweight was an unacceptable risk, my goal wasn't to convince him to change his mind, but rather to let him know that taking off overweight wasn't something I was going to sign up for.
The following morning I decided I would wait until the others in the office emptied out and then take the opportunity to speak with this instructor. As the morning slid by, and the office failed to empty out, I began to question the benefit of confronting my coworker. The more I though about the situation the more I came to the conclusion that this was a battle not worth fighting.
As the days and weeks past, it became easier to convince myself that confronting this instructor would accomplish little, although the reality was I simply did not feel comfortable doing it.

I have been fortunate to work in an industry where confrontation is sometimes required to keep everything above board. Since that time I have grown more comfortable confronting others when there is a need to do so and the more I learn the more I am beginning to see that the real art is, just as with any other tool, knowing not only how to use it, but just as importantly, when.