"Are You Feeling Lucky, Punk?"

There is a website that attempts to rank the best all time movie lines, and, amazingly, Dirty Harry’s question to the fugitive he has on the ground, with a gun within reach, after asking the “punk” if he thinks he has any rounds left in his 44 magnum, isn’t number one. It fact, it was more like 48, just ahead of, “Why do I have to be Mr. Pink?” (Reservoir Dogs), which was good, but would hardly rank on my top 100. I would have put “Are you feeling lucky, punk?” right up near the top. In fact, my biggest problem would be which came first, that, or “Make my day.” But “Are you feeling lucky” gets the nod here, because this post is about the role luck plays in aviation, indeed, in life.

Lee Trevino supposedly said, “Yah, there’s a lot of luck in golf, but the more I practice, the better my luck.” There’s a lot of luck in aviation, too, and the same rule applies. Not always, of course, otherwise we wouldn’t call it luck, we’d call it karma, but hard work does seem to put the odds more in your favor.

I had some bad luck early in my career at ATA, really nothing I could do much about, but after having finally made it to L-1011 captain, I found out less than a year later that I was going to be bounced back to the 727—the victim of another round of cutbacks, a perennially favorite of airline management. There’s nothing wrong with the 727, but it was a smaller, older airplane, it meant a pay cut, some retraining, and it meant having to go back to commuting—there were no 727 slots in Boston, my preferred base. But I did it, and less than a year or so later, management decided that the problem wasn’t too many 1011 captains after all, it was not enough (another perennial favorite of management, changing their minds without ever admitting their mistake, but at least it worked in my favor this time). The result was that I again found myself down in Miami (where ATA kept its 1011 simulator), to get a quick check out on the 1011 after a year away.

The check airman was Tom Hopp (see “Turns”), which I was happy about because I always had a good experience with Tom’s training and checks. I was paired up with a copilot who was also coming back to the 1011, but, unfortunately for him, he was coming back to the 1011 as a copilot because he had “busted”, or failed, his six month check as a 727 captain. There probably was more to the story than that, it usually takes more than a single bust to get dropped back to copilot from captain, but that wasn’t my business. What was my business was that I was paired up with a sim partner who was, understandably, not happy to be there.

The first day was a warm up and refresher, which Tom started off in the briefing room by trying to set a relaxed, no pressure tone, first telling my partner how sorry he was the way things turned out, but that it was just a little bump in the road, and to give it his best and he’d be pack in the left seat in no time. We then had a little chit chat about what we were going to do that day and the next, and he then started going over the various maneuvers to be covered, with questions thrown in as appropriate—a common (and, I think, very good) way to work into “oral questions” without making it seem like a test. At that point in my career I had been through several of these little question and answer sessions with Tom, and hadn’t always gotten all the answers right but had been smart enough to make notes afterwards and had a pretty good little file on his “orals”—which I’m sure Tom knew, and was probably something he wanted you to do. I knew for sure he didn’t want you to come back a year later and still not know the answers to the questions he had asked you a year before. So Tom started by asking my partner all the questions first, and it became pretty clear pretty quick that he hadn’t studied at all and had only the vaguest memory of 1011 systems. He had a particularly bad habit of starting each answer with, “I’m going to say...” He might as well have said, “I have no idea—but I’ll make a guess and maybe I’ll get lucky.” Each time my partner didn’t know the answer, Tom would turn to me and they were all questions I had gotten previously, so I pretty much knew all the answers, but each time it got a little more awkward.

Finally Tom said, “You know, Brian [not his real name, of course], there is no good reason that Clausing here is the only one in the room who knows the answers to my questions, because I’ve been working with Clausing for a long time and I know he’s not all that sharp.” (I took that as a left handed compliment—that I was good enough to take a jab from Tom—but with Tom you never really knew for sure.) “So,” he continued, “I’m not going to ask any more questions right now, but when you come in here tomorrow, I’ll expect you to have some answers.”

Poor kid, I thought. He’s going to be up all night.

So we moved on to the simulator, and as you can probably guess it didn’t go all that well either. There were lots of excuses and complaints—“The simulator’s messed up”—“The visuals are no good”—Tom even offered to climb into his seat “to see what the problem was”—which put an end to most of the complaining, and when it was over we headed back to the briefing room. A very quiet walk down a very sterile corridor, the kind of walk where all you hear are footsteps on linoleum.

I didn’t know what was going to come next, I had never been in that sort of situation before. Tom started with words to the effect that that didn’t go very well, and if we all were going to get through this checkout we needed to spend a whole lot less time blaming the simulator and a whole lot more time concentrating on the maneuvers. Then he paused for a moment and said, “Brian, have you ever had the experience where you got your bid for the next month [your bid is your schedule and the name of the other pilot you were going to be paired up with for that month], and you found out you were going to be flying with Captain Blackcloud, and you just knew it was going to be a long month—that everything little thing always seemed to go against this guy, lots of little problems and hassles, nothing ever seemed to go smoothly, the weather was always bad for this guy, his airplanes always broke, his passengers always had problems, he just had the worst luck in the world and you just wished you’d bid another line?”

And Brian said, “Sure, happens a lot.”

And then Tom said, “And then the next month you get your bid and you find out that you’re going to be flying with Captain Sunshine, and you just know it’s going to be a great month, this guy just has the best luck in the world, everything always seems to go along just fine without any big problems or hassles when you fly with him, and you wish you could fly with him very month.”

And Brian said, “Yah, sometimes that happens too.”

And then Tom said, “You know what, Brian? It’s not luck.”

That was almost 20 years ago and I have spent the rest of my career trying to figure out what it is if it isn’t luck. Because what “it” is is the essence of what it takes to be a good pilot, maybe the essence of what it takes to be good at anything.

Tom had some of the answers, things like anticipating problems, reacting but not over reacting, listening, looking around, and, mainly, fixing small problems quickly before they became big problems. It was all good advice but nothing revolutionary and nothing you could say in just a few words: “This is it. This is what being a good pilot is, this is why some guys seem to have all the luck and others none.”

As a check airman I used to spend a lot of time watching the good ones, the Captain Sunshines, the ones who seemed to be completely in charge and at ease, trying to figure out what it was that told me right away they knew what they were doing, and, conversely, what it was that told me right away that the not so good ones weren’t completely at ease or in charge. And I’d like to say that I finally figured it out, but I can’t. The best I have been able to come up with are two little ideas. One is a sort of standard, or test, a very general idea to help determine whether you are headed in the right direction or not. The second is a sort of “mantra,” an easily remembered phrase, or saying, to help in getting that standard right. These two ideas are all I really know about being a pilot that is worth anything, and each will take a little bit of explaining. The first idea will be the subject of a later post, to be called “The Test.” The second will be the subject of a further post, to be called “The Way.”

Turns

Regular readers of this blog may remember that in “Pro Am” (Archives, January, 2008) I said that one of the things a general aviation pilot has going for him or her that an airline pilot does not, is that the general aviation pilot never, “has to fly with a difficult copilot, one that is argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, or unresponsive.” If you’ve never flown in a professional cockpit (a two pilot cockpit), you might think that that statement was a bit petty, perhaps overreaching. How often could that be a problem? And the answer is, quite often. They put human beings in cockpits for a reason, and the price paid is a considerable amount of pushing and pulling between two individuals with strong opinions and often strong egos. The captain has to listen to his copilot—good CRM (Crew Resources Management) demands it—but he still must maintain his authority: there can only be one captain. The copilot has to defer to the captain when questions of technique arise, but must be forceful when he or she feels that safety is being jeopardized. In between is a gray area of cosmic dimension. In the best of worlds, each gives a little when there are differences, and reasonableness prevails, like in any partnership. But at times, reasonableness does not prevail, and a stronger stand has to be taken.

Tom Hopp was one of several pilots, check airmen, and simulator instructors that ATA was lucky enough to get from Eastern Airlines after those pilots were unlucky enough to see their strike fail. I remember once riding jump seat on an L-1011 with Tom Hopp as captain. His copilot was being difficult at nearly every turn, insisting on doing things his way, dragging his heels with Tom’s requests, and at times simply ignoring him; in short, he was “argumentative, combative, competitive, lazy, uncooperative, [and, at times,] unresponsive.” I knew Tom had a lot of patience, but I also knew we were headed for some kind of a show down, I just didn’t know what kind.

Tom put up with it for the whole flight, which fortunately was not a long one, saying things like, “Well, I know that’s one way to do it, but this time I really do want to do it this way.” When the flight was over, though, after all the checklists were done and everyone had started to pack up his stuff, Tom got up, closed and then locked the cockpit door. That’s never a good sign. He said to the copilot, “Do you know why I’m in this seat [the captain’s] and you’re in that seat [the copilot’s]?” It was a rhetorical question, he wasn’t supposed to answer, and, he didn’t, the first smart thing he had done all day.

Tom said, “It’s not because I’m such a great pilot and you’re not, and it’s not because I’m more deserving than you are, or luckier, or anything else. There is only one reason I’m in this seat and you’re not, and that is because it’s my turn. That’s all—it’s my turn. And someday it will be your turn. And when it’s your turn, you can run the cockpit the way you want to, but as long as it is still my turn we’re going to run it the way I want to. Okay?” Another rhetorical question, and again, no answer. But he got the message.

We all understand the concept of “having a turn,” because from infancy we are taught to take turns, to wait our turn, to be fair about whose turn it is, and so on. It’s a fundamental of the socializing our elders teach us, something that keeps us from descending to savagery and chaos with each generation. I’ve been thinking a lot about “turns” since I retired, because in the simplest sense, retirement meant my turn was up, it was someone else’s turn, and it helped me understand the change: I wasn’t a captain up until then because I was the best of the bunch, it was simply my turn; and I didn’t have to quit being a captain because I wasn’t any good anymore, it was just that my turn was up.

Kids understand turns very well, because they have to deal with taking turns every day, from sunrise to sunset. I was reminded of this by my Italian teacher. We were discussing the verb “toccare”, which means “to touch,” but is also used idiomatically to mean to take a turn: “tocca a te,” means “your turn,” tocca a me” means “my turn.” (I don’t know why Italians call a “turn” a “touch”—there are a lot of things about Italian I don’t understand—maybe it comes from chess. I don’t really know why we call it a “turn” either—who turns?—but we do. Language is funny. ) In fact, kids understand the concept of taking turns so well they shorten the phrases to “tocca-me, tocca-te,” in Italian, just as English speaking kids say, “My turn,” or “Your turn.”

So the concept of taking turns begins in childhood and the pain and sadness of having your turn be over is universal. But there is something worse than having your turn be over, that is having it taken from you. On April 3, 2008, ATA ceased operations. On that day ATA pilots didn’t have their turn come to an end, their turn was gone: They went to bed that night as ATA pilots, and they woke up the next morning unemployed. That is a wrenching change and one that is much worse than simply having your turn come to an end. So I feel very lucky that, whatever feelings of sadness I had as I walked away from my airplane for the last time (see “Last Flight”, Archives 2007), I was able to see my turn through to its end.

This will be a difficult time for all those ATA pilots who lost their jobs, but almost all will survive, land on their feet, and come out the other side with something that gives them satisfaction and security. And I hope that someday they all have the somewhat sad satisfaction of seeing their turns come to an end.

For the record, the picture at the top is what it looks like when you walk away from an airplane for the last time. Bangor, Maine, September 24, 2006.

ATA

I just found out that ATA Airlines will cease operations today, April 3, 2008. This is a very sad day for me. You can read a formal announcement, with an explanation for how this all came about, at www.atairlines.com, then scroll down to Press Release, under Media.

Oshkosh

I’m making plans for AirVenture2008, or “Oshkosh,” as it is more commonly known, to be held this year from July 28 to August 3. I went to Oshkosh last year at the invitation of my old buddy from high school, Rusty Sachs, who, at the time, was Director of the National Association of Flight Instructors (NAFI). (NAFI is a part of EAA, the Experimental Aircraft Association. EAA is the sponsor of AirVenture.) Several of my previous blog entries were based on that visit (“Catania,” for one) as where many of the photos. I was also one of many presenters there, and the talk I gave can be found under Articles (right hand column, second group). It was called “CPR for DR: Breathing Life into Dead Reckoning.”

I have agreed to be a presenter again this year, and my topic will be “Air Navigation, Past, Present, and Future.” I hope it goes better than last year. Probably the best part of my talk last year was the title, and the rest was downhill. I was nervous about talking for almost a full hour without a prepared text, but the result was, I am afraid, pretty boring. It’s hard to read a talk outdoors, with temperatures in the 80’s, at 2 in the afternoon after everyone has had lunch and is feeling a little sleepy, and not be boring. It didn’t help a bit that I couldn’t get the installed AV system to work and my backup, my own laptop, didn’t work either. (Actually, I think it did, I just didn’t know what button to push to direct the output to a remote screen instead of the computer’s. And there wasn’t enough time to trouble shoot it.) So I had to do without illustrations, a real disaster. I’ll be much better prepared this time and will make sure I find time to check it all out ahead of time.

But there was one really good thing that happened. At the end I said I would hang around a little bit if anyone wanted to talk to me, and a few did, nice, patient people that most AirVenture participants are. Then, after almost everyone else had gone, a young man came up to me and said, “Did you write Fly Like a Pro?” And I said, “Yes, yes I did. That was my first book, in fact.”

He said, “That book is the reason I am in aviation now. I read it and it made my want to be a pilot.”

I was overwhelmed. I really didn’t know what to say except “Thank you, that’s really great to hear. That’s what every author wants to hear.”

And then he left. Made my day. I hope he comes back and gives me another chance.