Flight Lessons 5: People

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Chris Manno for over thirty years of trading aviation stories, writing techniques, and for permitting my blatant grand larceny of his artwork without complaint. Thanks also to Chris Parker for all the fact checking, sense of grammar, and style pointers. If he’s told me once, he’s told me a thousand times to avoid hyperbole. (This book makes a thousand and five.)

Thank you especially to Grace (The Lovely Mrs. Haskel) for proofreading this more than a few times and living through it the first time.

James’ Lawyer Advises:

Always remember that James, when you get right down to it, is just a pilot. He tries to give you the facts from the source materials but maybe he got it wrong, maybe he is out of date. Sure, he warns you when he is giving you his personal techniques, but you should always follow your primary guidance (Aircraft manuals, government regulations, etc.) before listening to James.

Prelude: A New Life

The Summer of 2000

Santorini Sunset (Eddie’s Photo)

When I’m on the road, I normally switch from tourist mode to pilot mode the moment I get the next flight plan in my hands. The photography, gastronomy, and mixology objectives effortlessly transform to weather, fuel, aircraft, and air traffic control. But the switch requires the flight plan and I didn’t have it yet. Gary took the faxed copy from the hotel clerk and immediately stashed it in his brown leather brief case. It was like a military top secret.

Where is he? I asked.

I was standing on the tarmac, having just completed the external preflight. Helen Fuhrman looked down the airstairs from her perch in the galley to me, and then she shifted her gaze to above my head. See those shipping containers along the fence? I spotted the containers. There is some smoke coming from behind the last one.

I looked at the container and then my watch. I would have no choice but to confront him. Lieutenant Colonel Gary Storm, United States Army (Retired) took over the flight department just before I arrived. I left my United States Air Force lieutenant colonel rank behind after 20 years in uniform. When I got hired by Q-Tron Computers out of Hanscom Field, Bedford, Massachusetts, I thought I had won the lottery. Q-Tron was a big name in personal computing and the industry became what it is because Q-Tron was able to break the monopoly of the big box makers. Q-Tron used three state-of-the-art Canadair Challenger 604 business jets to visit plants and customers throughout the world. My starting pay was about what an Air Force Four-Star general made. When I interviewed, the chief pilot had all the markings of the best boss I would ever work for. But in the two months from when I signed the contract to when I finished aircraft initial training, the old boss retired, and I found myself working for Gary Storm. After my first two trips with Q-Tron, I was recommended for immediate upgrade to an international captain. Gary said he would be the judge of my fate and that’s how we ended up flying to Santorini, a beautiful Greek Island in the Aegean Sea just 118 nautical miles southwest of Athens. In the week since we left Boston, I had come to know Gary all too well.

I made my way to the shipping container, trying to be as conspicuous as possible. I adjusted my ground track to allow Gary to catch a glimpse of me as soon as possible, and I was careful to make it appear I wasn’t looking directly at him. That would give him the chance to snuff out the cigarette so he could maintain the illusion that he wasn’t a smoker, something Q-Tron would frown upon. The fact he wreaked of tar and nicotine didn’t seem to faze his self-delusion.

What the hell do you want? he asked when I came within a few paces. I already told you we don’t start the APU until fifteen minutes prior.

Gary was in his late fifties, had the weather-beaten face of a life-long smoker, and stood just over five-foot-six. I was forty-three, six-foot-even, and more of a youngster when compared to my boss. He went absolutely ballistic the first time I fired up the APU on time, even when we were caught behind the power curve when our passengers showed up early. I had resigned myself to the routine. I was hoping to see the flight plan so I could pull the charts.

He reached into his brief case and pulled the envelope that must have been delivered to him by the hotel, hours earlier. Here, he said.

I reversed course back to the airplane and started to read. Our flight plan from Santorini Airport (LGSR) to Athens, Greece (LGAV) required a turn west on a Standard Instrument Departure (SID) to join the arrival flow using a Standard Terminal Arrival Route (STAR). The routing added 15 minutes to our flight time but was the most expeditious way to travel a short distance into a very busy international airport. You have to get in line. I pulled out the low altitude en route charts, the SID, and the six possible STARs into Athens. I filed everything away in the right seat of the cockpit, knowing things would go more smoothly if Gary flew while I negotiated with the Greek air traffic controllers. I positioned the checklist on top of the throttles, wanting to get everything ready for when Gary finally gave me permission to start the APU. Our company rulebook said we had to be ready for the passengers 30 minutes before the scheduled departure time, but Gary said that would waste jet fuel. The fact our passengers routinely showed up 15 minutes early didn’t deter him at all. I studied the STAR again, trying to memorize the names so I could more easily understand the controllers.

Put those away, I heard from behind me. Gary lowered himself into his seat. We are going direct, no need to waste any time on such a short distance.

There is no way Athens is going to allow that, I said. Gary started to speak but Helen interrupted.

They’re here, she said. I looked up to see the black limousine approach. I opened the checklist but heard the APU starting. Gary’s hands were ablaze with motion and I struggled to keep up. I heard the limo’s door open downstairs and the sounds of Mr. Samuel Therianos, his wife, and their bodyguard greeting Helen. Except for the last-minute rush, it was all very normal in the life of a business jet crew. Subtracting from what little normal we had that morning, Mr. Therianos, the Q-Tron Chief Executive Officer, stopped at the cockpit.

Lydia would like to sit in the jump seat for takeoff, he said. Would that be okay?

Of course, Mr. Therianos, Gary said. Eddie, set up the jump seat and a headset for Mrs. Therianos.

I got out of my seat, greeted Mrs. Therianos, and pulled the jump seat into position. I gave her a quick lesson on how to get out of the jump seat in an emergency and how to use the jump seat interphone panel. As I returned to my seat, I heard the right engine spool up.

I’ll close the door, Helen said.

I looked down to the blank FMS, the Flight Management System, and was grateful to see the Inertial Navigation System had just a minute to go before completing its alignment, but less happy to realize not a single line of the flight plan had been entered. I considered my typing chores but opted to catch up on the engine start checklist first.

Get me my taxi clearance, Gary said. Let’s go.

I’m not ready, I said. I need a few minutes.

Santorini ground, Gary said while keying the radio, Bravo Zulu 604 ready for taxi.

In a sign that Murphy must have been Greek, ground control cleared us to taxi and Gary released the brakes and we started to move at Gary speed. There is an old Air Force saying that you should never taxi faster than the wing commander could walk. Gary wasn’t an Air Force pilot. I got the critical items on the taxi checklist and returned to the waiting FMS. The Challenger 604 can fly without it, but navigation becomes a problem.

Call tower, Gary said. Get me my takeoff clearance.

I looked to my left and saw that he was serious. We were moving at about 30 knots and would be at the end of the runway in seconds. I knew that Gary’s first reaction to not getting his way was a string of F-bombs. I wasn’t a stranger to the F-word, but had never heard it called the F-bomb before showing up at Q-Tron. In the week since I started flying with Gary, I became acquainted with the F-word in all its derivations. Gary would use the word as a noun, verb, adverb, and adjective; sometimes all in one sentence. Mrs. Therianos crossed her legs, getting my attention and giving me an idea.

I extended my legs and applied the wheel brakes. I brought the airplane to a stop and locked my knees, placing my hands above them to emphasize the point. Gary, I said over the interphone in my calmest voice. I am not ready. I will not be ready for another five minutes. I need five minutes.

Gary looked at me, mouth open. I could see the F-parade was queuing up but also that he had given Mrs. Therianos a sideways glance. Okay, Eddie, he said. You take all the time you need.

I pulled out the flight plan and started to type. While I typed, tower offered our air traffic control clearance, which I accepted. Mercifully, it matched what our dispatchers had filed and included the STAR I had clipped to my yoke. I added the STAR to the FMS, looked up to our navigation displays and saw that life was sane again. I relaxed my legs. Your airplane, Gary. I then let tower know we were ready for takeoff and in less than two minutes we were airborne.

Mrs. Therianos thanked us for the jump seat and retreated to the cabin. I was bracing myself for Gary’s wrath, but he just gave me a sneer and said, get me direct the airport.

Gary, that’s not going to happen, I said.

Gary keyed his microphone and made the request himself. The air traffic controllers said something that could have been the Greek version of the F-bomb and ended with maintain assigned course.

Gary released a tirade of the American version of the F-bomb, but without keying his microphone. I acknowledged the instruction and busied myself with the checklist. While it would be true to say Gary’s behavior was a surprise, it would be stretching things to say I was unfamiliar with this kind of conduct. During my twenty years as an Air Force pilot, I had flown with more than a few general officers with similar dispositions. I knew the best course of action was to keep one step ahead of the child in the left seat and prompt them to make the right decisions at the right times.

I programmed the FMS for the instrument approach and got the navigation radios set up. As long as the course needle was centered or Gary’s flight director was aligned for the task at hand, he kept quiet and flew the airplane. Once we were on the ground, he directed his ire towards whomever he decided was in the way. Athens isn’t a particularly dangerous city, but it always pays to be polite when a visitor. Once secured in his hotel room, Gary normally kept to himself. That meant Helen and I became a crew of two.

How do the other pilots manage? I asked that night at dinner. I don’t think I can put up with this much longer.

You aren’t alone, she said. Gary has gotten worse since he took over. The other pilots just put up with it in front of him and grumble about it behind his back. I’ve never seen any of them confront him like you did today.

Helen was part of the original cadre at Q-Tron, having stood the flight department up with its first airplane and first three pilots. She was the least talkative of our three flight attendants and that counted as a plus. I let the conversation drop until she saw fit to restart it.

There is a definite seniority system in this flight department, just like an airline, she said. Length of service means everything. Nobody ever questioned the old boss. Now that he’s retired, nobody ever questioned Gary. Until now.

The Q-Tron flight department had a good reputation and when I interviewed, everyone seemed to be on the same team. The old chief pilot was an Air Force veteran and the atmosphere appeared to be, in a word, collegial. I had only met four of the nine pilots, but they talked about great trips, well-maintained airplanes, and a no-nonsense leader. But all that was before Gary’s reign as the chief pilot.

The rest of the week included overnights in Munich and London. We delayed our APU start each morning, but the passengers obliged us by being late each time. A week before, I was in the left seat when we crossed the Atlantic going east and kept my mouth shut as Gary ignored all our rules about oceanic plotting procedures. But going west I was in the right seat and resolved to do everything by the book.

The book, for the Q-Tron flight department, was written by Bravo Zulu Aviation, a management company based in White Plains, New York. BZA had more than 200 clients, including Q-Tron. They wrote our Flight Operations Manual, supervised all our training, handled our licensing, provided our dispatchers, and did everything an airline would do when managing a fleet of aircraft. BZA rules were our rules. More importantly, BZA rules made sense.

Put that away, Gary said as I started to plot our oceanic route. Can’t you see the FMS does that automatically?

Plotting is a check of the FMS, I said. Flying domestically, you have radar controllers doing the check. Oceanic it is up to us.

Suit yourself, he said. I thought you Air Force pilots had more sense than that. But don’t you think for a moment we are paying for that chart.

The atmosphere in the cockpit had turned icy ever since our Santorini debacle. While crossing the pond going east Gary relaxed noticeably after our first leg from Bedford, Massachusetts to Shannon, Ireland. He talked about how we military pilots were a cut above our civilian counterparts and that since we were both lieutenant colonels – he used that in the present tense – we had something in common. But every little thing became a confrontation after Santorini.

I don’t know why you insist on wasting the company’s money, he said as I turned the radar to its standby position. I looked around the cockpit for clues but came up empty.

You are going to have to help me out here, Gary, I said. How am I wasting money?

The damned radar! he said. You know the weather is good so you should leave it off!

The manual says we should never fly with the radar in the off position to protect the radar plate from turbulence when it isn’t powered, I said.

More F-bombs flew but Gary eventually satisfied himself by reaching cross cockpit to switch the radar off. I left the radar alone. Gary kept quiet as I busied myself with my right seat chores until I switched the radios from Shanwick to Gander Radio. The name Shanwick is a kludging together of Shannon, Ireland and Prestwick, Scotland. Gander is based in Newfoundland. The switch from one oceanic control area to the other is a ritual made at 30 degrees west longitude; it had been that way for many years before my first North Atlantic crossing in 1980. The High Frequency radios are noisy and a nuisance to monitor. Our radios included a Selective Calling (SELCAL) feature which listened to the static for us and allowed the controller to call us specifically using one of 10,920 combinations of four tones made to sound like two. Our radios listened for the tones and alerted us when being called. The system usually worked but had to be tested.

Request SELCAL check, I said to Gander Radio. In less than 30 seconds the tones came up, the crew alerting system reported SELCAL, and our cockpit chimed. SELCAL received, I said.

You already did that, Gary said.

That was with Shanwick, I said.

Doesn’t matter, he said. You already proved it works.

I proved the radio works, I said. But I also have to prove the connectivity between transmitters. It says so in the regulation. Besides, it’s in the BZA manual.

More F-bombs. You got an answer for everything, he said. To think, you were an Air Force colonel!

Gary kept to himself until after we landed and shut down in front of our hangar at Bedford. Helen opened the door and our passengers said goodbye as they left. Gary collected his gear and got out of the seat, but not before leaving me with one more thing to consider. I don’t think you have what it takes to fly for Q-Tron, he said. I’m going to call BZA to see if they can find you someplace else that can deal with a crybaby like you. You better get your resume updated but don’t use me for a reference. Anybody calls me about you and they are going to get an earful.

After I finished with the cockpit, I got up to see Helen stacking the last dish into a plastic bin. Need help? I asked.

Take this, please, she said. I carried the bin and followed her to the hangar kitchen. Another flight attendant greeted her with the news we had missed while we were gone.

Three pilots just quit, she said. They gave a month’s notice.

After twenty years as an Air Force pilot I was hired to fly a Canadair Challenger 604 for a major computer company. It was my first job as a civilian pilot but not my first flying what many call VVIPs, Very Very Important Persons. Through it all, I learned how to fly airplanes, how to instruct, and how to lead men and women in large and small flight departments. I also thought I knew the art of what has become known as Crew Resource Management, or CRM. But I was wrong.

CRM in a military environment is different. If the commander of the operation buys into CRM, everybody buys into it or is shown the door. I suppose the same would be true with a very large airline. But when dealing with a smaller, civilian flight department, things get complicated. You want to get along and the feelings of the person in charge are not enforced by a rigid command structure. You end up with pilots that can ignore rules they don’t agree with or do things situationally. You fly so as to get along with whomever is in the other pilot’s seat.

Even pilots who think they have fully embraced CRM may be deluding themselves to thinking their particular version of CRM is good enough, or better than what the next pilot believes. But there is a secret to better CRM. My only regret is it took me another twenty years to discover that secret.

The story is presented in four parts, each with a flight lesson that follows.

The flight from Santorini really happened as I’ve related, as did all of the flying events that follow. I’ve changed some of the locations, reordered and changed some of the events, and combined many of the characters. You cannot assume any of the characters in the story that follows are faithful representations of actual people. All this is an effort to focus on Crew Resource Management and to protect the identities of some very fine men and women.

Oh yes. All of the names have been changed, even my own.

Part One

Masters of Ocean Flying Boats

1: The Ground Up

April, 2000

A Boeing 314 Clipper NC18607 circa 1941 (US Library of Congress)

We sat at the kitchen table, rereading my resume designed to hide the fact that I held my most recent job for only a few months. We had two kids in school and The Lovely Mrs. Haskel was halfway through nursing school. Our mortgage was brand new. Our savings were old, but paltry.

It’s not too late to go to the airlines, The Lovely Mrs. Haskel said. In fact, you have a couple of open invitations, don’t you?

Not interested, I said.

She bit her tongue, starting to voice her thoughts but realizing they would not be helpful. We went through the discussion twice before, in the weeks after I put in my request to separate from the Air Force and the day I had officially retired. We had both agreed the airlines would have bored me, having to commute from wherever we decided to put down the new homestead would be brutal, and having to spend a few years waiting for the pay to catch up would have been a financial burden. Starting pay at Q-Tron dwarfed any other offers I had, but now that was coming to an end.

Being asked to leave an assignment was nothing new for me. I had several Air Force commanders over the years tell me that I should find another job. But in each of those instances, a higher-level commander overruled them, and I ended up in a better situation than before. But getting on the wrong side of one’s boss is never a good thing. I left the cockpit three times in the Air Force, each time thinking there was more to an Air Force career than flying airplanes. But just as Michael Corleone could never leave The Family, just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back in.

We should do a postmortem, she said.

I’m not dead, I said.

When you were in the Air Force you always finished every assignment with a notepad of lessons learned and reasons things turned out the way they did, she said. In medical jargon, that is a postmortem.

Ah, so, I said. Let me think about it. In many of our previous lessons learned sessions I had to admit that perhaps, just maybe, I could have been less confrontational to my superiors. Yes, I did tend to find fault in those giving me orders, but there were faults to be found. I suppose the sheer number of confrontations would argue that the problem wasn’t necessarily one-sided, but the fact I kept rising from the ashes had to argue otherwise. I thought about my Friend versus Foe ritual about these things, one of my few secrets that The Lovely Mrs. Haskel knew nothing about, would disapprove of, and therefore would never know.

No, I finally said. Gary’s actions left me with no recourse. I would make the same decisions all over if presented with the same situation. That’s a key pillar of Crew Resource Management. You have to stop the captain before he does something that can endanger you, your passengers, or the airplane.

The next three days were spent on the phone and the Internet. The Boston public school system said I was qualified to be a high school science teacher and they had immediate openings. So we wouldn’t go hungry; but we wouldn’t get rich either. The following day the U.S. Treasury department asked for a copy of my resume and the day after that invited me for an interview. It would have meant a small pay raise but not enough to justify the move to Washington, D.C. Through it all, the thought of leaving aviation was enticing, but the thought of moving was not. In twenty years, the Air Force had moved us thirteen times. But now both kids were getting to the age where uprooting from school would be traumatic.

On Friday morning I decided to fly down to D.C. for the interview, but my decision was OBE, overcome by events. The BZA dispatcher called to ask my seating preferences for an airline flight to White Plains, New York. I was scheduled for a week of indoctrination training at company headquarters. It seemed Q-Tron couldn’t live without me after all.

The short flight from Boston to White Plains was aboard a Canadair Regional Jet, the same basic tube as our Challenger 604s with the same engines, but less sound insulation. I stole a quick look into the cockpit and realized that my life as a corporate pilot wasn’t so bad after all. They had the most basic avionics I had seen in a decade. As the stuffed airplane made its way to the runway I listened carefully to the creaks and moans, wondering about the metal fatigue of the undercarriage and the human fatigue of the two occupants in the two front seats. I closed my eyes and thoughts of a story I had read years ago returned to reteach me the lesson I needed at that precise moment.

It was a cold winter’s morning in a lonely, fog-shrouded West Virginia cemetery. A black lacquer casket was lowered into the ground as men and women dressed in black looked on. After the last bit of earth was returned to the hole the family walked away, silently. At least dad died doing what he loved doing, the oldest son said.

What are you talking about? the widow said, looking at her son. What did he love doing?

You know, the son said. He was a coal miner all of his life and it was only fitting that the last day of his life was in the mines, where he wanted to be.

That’s ridiculous, the mother said. He hated everything about mining. He started in the mines when he was fifteen and he died when he was only fifty. He knew the mines were going to kill him, and by God they did.

The son stopped, incredulous. I never heard him say he hated his job. If he hated it so much, why did he spend his whole life doing it?

Because that’s what men do, she said. They don’t complain, they realize they have an obligation to their family and they do what they have to do to put food on the table. He never finished high school and this job was the best he could do. Yes, he never complained. But that doesn’t mean he was happy being a coal miner. He was putting food on the table. That’s what men do.

The next morning, I was in a classroom at the BZA-USA headquarters, housed on the third floor of a large office building in an industrial park, about a ten-minute drive from the White Plains Airport. I got to the classroom about 30 minutes early, seeing five rows of tables with a stack of books and a name tag at each seat. Everyone had an indoctrination book and the flight operations manual. About half of us also had an international operations manual. I had the room to myself and started to read. The indoc book and FOM were very good, neatly printed, and full of excellent content. The IOM was laughable: out of date, poorly printed, and filled with errors.

You must be Eddie, I heard as she entered the room. I am Debbie Lynn, your instructor for the day. It is always good to have an Air Force pilot in class. You guys keep me on my toes.

She sat on the table opposite mine and read the notes I had scribbled on the pages of the IOM. Are you going to be a troublemaker, colonel?

Not at all, I said. I go by Eddie, by the way, and I am here to learn.

She was extraordinarily short for a pilot, someone you would joke about having to sit on phone books to see over the glare shield. She had the face of a much older woman, but judging by her voice and language, she was probably about my age. I guessed her normal disposition was to scowl, but as each new pilot walked in