Day 1 at the airline looked something like this, except it was a gray, rainy April morning at LaGuardia and not a nice open field. But the point is that it was 5:45am, this Rosen sunshade was down and I had to get it out of the way. If you've never used one before, it's a clever device that can be loosened and positioned to block the sun in almost any direction while flying, but I'd never used one before. With first day nerves, I failed to notice the tension knob that was to be unscrewed before maneuvering the device and with first day muscles, summarily snapped that plastic sunscreen clean off it’s retaining bolts. Staring at me from my left, Captain Kastrava was not happy. These training captains deal with the classic double-edged sword, which in the airlines means that they can make additional pay, but they’ll have to spend their days flying around with new, inexperienced pilots and indoctrinate them into “flying the line”. It’s a tough gig best handled with the right mix of scrutiny and levity and right now, the former was in full effect. After taking our maintenance delay, things improved a bit over the next 2 days. BBQ in Austin, blizzard flying in Halifax (there’s always a blizzard in Halifax) and some really bad landings on my part. Day 1-2 was an exercise of digging out of a self-imposed hole, but it couldn’t have prepared me for Day 3-4…
#p6aviation #change #success #adventure #aviation #pilots #airlines #flighttraining
