What does professionalism have to do with general
aviation—with pilots who don’t fly for a living? A lot, I think, but first let’s
look at what we mean by “professionalism.”
The word “professionalism” gets thrown around to mean a lot
of different things. It’s one of those
words like “fairness” that means something different from one person to
another, and even to any one person depending on the circumstances. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. One of the beauties and strengths of the
English language is its flexibility. But
it can lead to misunderstandings, and worse, to manipulation: when someone asks
you to “be fair”, they usually mean “Do it my way”.
Professionalism, in the literal sense, means to act
according to the customs, methods and ethics that have been established for
that profession. The connotation, if not
the actual sense, is always one of service first, profit second. Thus medicine, the law, accounting, are
considered to be professions. But we
often use the word in a broader sense. Commercial
pilots are often considered to be professionals, even if we think of their work
as more of a job than a profession. But
there certainly is a service first aspect to professional aviation and there
certainly are customs, methods and ethics related to it.
I often hear people use the work “professional” to mean
“objective” or “not emotional.” They say, “I put on my professional face.” “I
tried to act professionally, despite his unreasonableness.” “As a professional, I tried to give him a
balanced response, even though it was clear there was only one way to go.” And
so on. There’s nothing wrong with that,
as long as it is clear that that is the meaning intended. But it is more of a side effect than it is a description:
a person acting professionally will be objective and unemotional, but that’s
not all there is to being professional.
There is another characteristic of professionalism that I
think is very important, particularly for our discussion here. Professionals work with other
professionals. A surgeon doesn’t operate
alone, he or she operates in the company of other medical professionals. The lawyer’s arguments and briefs do not
exist in a vacuum, they are read and reviewed by other legal
professionals. The violinists doesn’t
play alone, he or she plays with other musicians. And they all know what they are seeing,
because they all do the same things themselves.
They can judge. A professional continuously
subjects his or her work to the opinions and observations and judgments of
other professionals, people whose judgments matter.
In a professional cockpit, there are always at least two
pilots, often more—jump seaters, check airmen, FAA inspectors. A professional
pilot doesn’t fly alone, he or she is always being observed by someone else
and, consciously or otherwise, being judged on his or her performance. Good performance is noted and admired and bad
performance is noted and remembered. A
professional pilot has a real incentive to do a good job and avoid mistakes:
both will be noted.
In turn, there are two different aspects to that
performance, one that I would call systemic and one that I would call
operational. The systemic is the overall
training and experience level of the pilot in question--his or her competence
in a general sense. Does this pilot seem
to be generally well trained and experienced and know what he or she is
doing? The operational is specific: How
good was that descent planning? How good an approach was that? How good a
crosswind landing was that?
Pilot hiring for professional positions is largely about
determining that the candidate first has the systemic training and experience
to do the job and fit in with other professionals, and second can perform at a
level that insures safety, efficiency, and comfort. The first part is done by verifying training
and experience claims and the later part with simulator rides. Backgrounds are checked and performance is
observed. As it will be every time that
pilots flies.
Where does this leave general aviation, those who fly as
single pilots (except for check rides, refreshers and review)? Their
performance is almost never observed by another pilot. He or she can operate the aircraft well,
badly, carefully or carelessly. Unless
there is a violation observed, a rarity, or an accident or incident, also rare,
no one knows.
Which brings up another important difference between the
professional and the non-professional pilot: for the single pilot, no else is
there to correct, critique and instruct.
Professional aviation is really an apprenticeship system: copilots learn
from captains, generally directly, but also indirectly, by observing the
captain’s performance, both good and bad.
The two pilots have each other to help each other, to learn from each
other and to correct each other. (And
copilots do correct captains, even if they have to be a bit diplomatic in doing
so: “Hey Boss, weren’t we cleared for the Back Course?”) So not only are observations
going on and judgments being made, instruction and correction are happening,
too. None of this happens in a single
pilot general aviation aircraft. No one’s fault, it just can’t happen.
So what can the non-professional do? The first thing to
recognize is that you can’t have too much training. The systemic part—the background and general competence
level comes mostly from training. A
little comes from experience, usually obtained the hard way, but training is
much more concentrated and effective. So
if all you’re doing is a biennial flight review, you’re not expanding your
systemic knowledge at all, or very, very, little. If you haven’t got an instrument rating,
start. Even if money is tight,
start. Every hour will help. Think about a new rating: seaplane, glider,
tail dragger, or start work on a commercial certificate. If you are instrument rated and fly mostly
one type of aircraft, take a ground school and simulator refresher course every
year. You don’t “learn to fly.” Flying is always a matter of continuing
education. If you aren’t getting regular training of some sort, you aren’t
getting any better as a pilot.
In the aircraft, imagine another pilot there, one with a lot
more experience, maybe even someone specific like the guy down the street who
flies for FedEx or the kid next door who went on to fly C-17s for the Air
Force. How much more careful would you be and how much better would you try to
fly if that person or someone like that were there in the airplane with you?
This isn’t play acting, this is discipline.
If you would want to make the best possible approach and landing for someone
who knows what you’re doing, why wouldn’t you want to do the same thing any
time, even alone?
Here’s one way to know you’re doing a really good job, even
if no one is there to observe and comment who is qualified to make that
call. If no one says anything at the end
of the flight except maybe, “Thanks, I enjoyed that,” that’s a good sign. When you do a really good job, it seems
ordinary, even boring. People are hard pressed to know what to say. When you do a lousy job, they may not know
what went wrong, but they’ll have a lot to ask and say. A really well planned and well executed
flight is boring: you take off, climb to altitude, cruise along for a while,
descend and land. No big deal. What’s
there to say?
So, train often, plan every flight thoroughly, assume an
experienced professional pilot is riding along with you, and treat yourself to
a little, knowing smile when you walk away from the airplane and no one says
anything. You earned it. Captain.
