I would like to fast forward my journey to the present day and share with you some details of my current flying position.

I am a skipper of a Boeing 767 – 300er for a major airline in Japan and have worked here for a little over seven years.  I flew passengers for the first five years from Japan to most destinations surrounding the pacific rim such as Honolulu, Guam, Singapore, Hong Kong and cities in China and Korea.

I started this job as a First Officer (co-pilot) and was upgraded to Captain after about three years.  The 767 has a requirement for only two pilots, a Captain and a First Officer.  We never carry relief crew and there are no rest facilities on any of our aircraft.  The aircraft is capable of flying distances of a little over 10,000 kilometers or 5,500 nautical miles.

The same aircraft I performed my check flight in to become a Captain. On the ground at Narita International Airport, Tokyo

A happy looking crew after my first flight as Captain some time in May 2005.

In August of 2006 the company launched into the freight business with the purchase of four brand new 767 cargo aircraft.  They were looking for volunteers to fly these planes so I moved across and have been flying freight ever since.  There are no passengers carried at all only freight.

There is a perception amongst the public that flying passengers is a lot more glorified than flying freight and perhaps it is but if I have a choice I will never fly passengers again.

Here’s why:

• We have no late passengers. (still duty free shopping)
• We have no sick passengers.
• We have no complaining passengers.
• We have more time off.
• We have our own toilet.
• We have our own galley.

How sweet is that.

On the ground in Anchorage.

Travel Safe

The Maneuver

As humans we are by no means perfect and making mistakes is common to all of us during our lives.  I believe It is important that we accept that they will happen, and instead of feeling sorry for ourselves investigate why it happened and determine what we can do to prevent the same mistake occurring again.

I made quite a memorable mistake in the early days of my flying training which I have not only never forgotten but more importantly still use the lesson I learn’t from it to this day.

One of the requirements in obtaining your pilots license is to be able to satisfactorily perform a maneuver called a forced landing.   It is a method you would use in the event your engine fails while you were flying cross country and there are no airstrips available for you to land on.  Having only one engine you have no choice but to land the aircraft anywhere you can.

Unlike a helicopter if the engine fails, an airplane will glide quite well which gives you a reasonable amount of time to select a suitable place to land.   When the engine stops and you have that horrible sound of silence (something you never want to hear while flying) your first actions are to run through a memorised checklist in order to try and restart the engine.  If this is unsuccessful you then choose a field or road etc and then maneuver the aircraft into a position so that you can land there, remember you have no engine so no power, if you misjudge it you do not get a second go.

We simulate this procedure by simply closing the throttle which is basically the same as an accelerator on your car.  The engine doesn’t stop it just idles, then at about 500ft off the ground (we can asses at this point whether we have judged correctly and will make into our chosen field or not) we apply power and climb the aircraft back up to a safe height.

The  Mistake

During one of my solo lessons I was at this 500ft point and decided I had judged correctly and pushed the throttle forward to climb away from the ground, and to my absolute surprise nothing happened.  The engine didn’t make a sound and I kept gliding downwards.  After the initial shock that I had about thirty seconds before I was going to touch down in some farmers paddock the adrenalin kicked in and my mind started to think again.  I quickly ran a checklist which is used if an engine fails shortly after take off and there is very little time available to do anything.  I subsequently discovered that I had somehow closed a lever which controls the fuel to the engine causing it to stop.

Although this was a mistake by me it should have been picked up when I ran the checklist just after the simulated engine failure.  In my haste to get the checklist finished so that I could concentrate on where I was going to land, I either missed or didn’t carry out an important item which would have picked up my mistake.

Fortunately I was able to restart the engine in time before having to land in the field which saved from great embarrassment or something potentially worse.  It is possible that the field could have contained tree stumps or ditches that could not be seen which would have resulted in a crash if I had hit them.

The Lesson

If something needs to be done, no matter how urgent it may seem it is important to give it your full attention and do it properly, always take the time and perform your actions or tasks diligently.  I have found out the hard way over the years that this works with everything in life, not just with my flying.

Travel Safely.

Learning to Fly

When you do something you are really passionate about even the menial tasks are a pleasurable experience.  For example when commencing flight training you are required to gain a good understanding of the principles of flight which requires a lot of study.  Normally the thought of long hours of study would not aspire joy or enthusiasm in anybody, but because you know that this study will help you to do the thing that you really love, you develop a focused mindset and the study is not a chore at all.

The flying lessons themselves hold great memories for me, driving out to the airport in my old Toyota Land cruiser feeling like a kid in a candy store, always excited at the prospect of going flying.  There is one occasion during my training that stands out way more than the others, that being my first solo flight:

The aircraft I learnt to fly in can be seen here.  The bottom engine cowling has been removed for maintenance.

Throughout the majority of your training you will have an instructor pilot sitting beside you in the right seat as you occupy the left seat. (The captain’s seat)  He or she is always a great source of comfort as you know that if you do something wrong or an actual emergency does take place there is someone there to bail you out if needed.  Initially you are taught the basics of flight such as straight and level, climbing, descending, turning and stalling for example.  Once you have mastered these procedures your next step is to learn and become proficient at what we call circuits.

Circuits also known as touch and goes are a technique used by pilots to practice take off and landings, after take off at 500 feet a left or right turn is commenced.  Then when you have sufficient spacing you turn again and follow a track parallel to the runway, this will eventually put you at a point where you can commence your approach to land.  After touchdown instead of slowing and vacating the runway you apply full power and make another takeoff, normally this is done for about an hour and allows you to improve your landing technique.

During these circuits the instructor pilot will monitor your progress and teach you different techniques which are required as different situations arise, such as strong crosswinds or what to do if the engine should fail.  When learning to fly the aircraft will be a single engine type so if the engine stops it becomes awfully quiet and very uncomfortable.

The Magic Moment

It comes as a surprise, but one day just after touching down instead of reapplying power the instructor will tell you to vacate the runway where he proceeds to get out of the aircraft and tells you to go and fly a circuit by yourself.  My emotions when this happened to me were a mixture of elation and excitement mixed with a touch of fear and nervousness.  The first time you take to the air by yourself the feeling is simply indescribable, it is a feeling I will never forget it is something that will only happen once in your life and was one of the most joyous moments in my career.

The following video is a great example of how not to land a plane.

Next post I would like to share one of the more undesirable moments I experienced during my training, when something really did go wrong.

Travel Safe

Travelpilot

A Rewarding Journey

I consider myself extremely fortunate to do for a living that which I love to do.  It has not been an easy journey to arrive at this point in my career but one that has been filled with many great experiences, lessons and friendships made along the way.

I have always loved to fly, even the shrill screaming of an alarm clock at 2 am created a feeling of elation rather than dread as I knew that very shortly I would once again soon be in the air.  A view from the cockpit, (my office) an ever-changing and sometimes simply breathtaking experience has given me many memorable experiences.  From the most beautiful sunsets and sunrises, snow covered mountains towering over valleys and rivers of ice, to shooting stars and meteor showers and lines of thunderstorms giving lightning displays that only Mother Nature could create.

I am often asked by friends and family about my job and the experiences that I encounter along the way, it is for this reason that I have chosen to write about them and hopefully give some insight as to what the life of a professional pilot is like.  In future posts I will write about such things as learning to fly, a day in the life of an airline pilot. and also places I travel to while spending time on layovers in different countries.

Let the Journey Begin

It was May 1990, devastated was not a strong enough word to describe how I felt, this was the first of many disappointments I would experience throughout my aviation career and I had not even taken my first lesson.  I had arrived at the airport that day so full of excitement and enthusiasm to find that recent flooding in the area had generated much work for all the pilots, including the instructor pilots so my first lesson had been canceled.

A few weeks previously I had taken a flight in a light aircraft with a friend who had just received his pilot’s license, and I was hooked.  For the first time in my life I had direction, this is what I wanted to do and nothing was going to stop me.

Learning to fly was a great experience; it is as challenging as it is rewarding, but interestingly enough the biggest hurdle I faced causing me to doubt my ability to make a career had nothing to do with flying an airplane.  As many people will attest to, achieving success is often obstructed by the human factor, friends or acquaintances who do not want to see you better yourself out of fear that they may be left behind.

During my first year as a commercial pilot I grossed a total of $5,000, so life was not easy during that time, but the hardest thing for me to cope with was having several professional pilots tell me I was to old to ever reach the position of an Airline Captain and I shouldn’t even bother trying.  Overcoming this type of negativity was far harder than learning the actual technique of flying an airplane.

To succeed in achieving your goal as a full time pilot requires a massive amount of determination, after  years of lessons, study and tens of thousands (these days into the hundreds of thousands) of dollars in costs you come away with your license but with no experience.  And of course who wants to employ a pilot with no experience?  Not many I can tell you.

Next post I would like to share some of the experiences I encountered during my training.

Until then, travel safely.

Travelpilot