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The Outer Whorl: Essays of an Airline Pilot
The Outer Whorl: Essays of an Airline Pilot
The Outer Whorl: Essays of an Airline Pilot
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The Outer Whorl: Essays of an Airline Pilot

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Ever since man has taken to the air, flight has exerted a strong, almost irresistible, appeal to follow a life of flying--not only to allow it to be a hobby, but to make it one's avocation. Many who have followed this call have written of this journey and how they pursued the various forms of flying - their first flight, their first job flying for hire, and a look back at their career.

In The Outer Whorl, Essays by an Airline Pilot, Neal Schier takes a different tact in recounting his pursuit of flying, because paradoxically, flight itself was just one of the attractions that led him to follow the call that so many before him had heeded. His path was not the simple, almost linear progression, which has marked many aviators' careers for Neal, in a continuum of twenty related essays, examines the unease of a quotidian life in a sterile office and the desire that set in at a young age to pursue something outside of a normal career path. To see the world and learn of one's strengths and weaknesses while forging a profound appreciation for his fellow crew members.

Through this pursuit came a deep appreciation for the allure inherent in aviation and a respect for the uncertainty that flits and flickers behind the mask that flight wears. Neal speaks of his appreciation of flying extends to the admiration of strength and resolve that he finds in his fellow pilots, flight attendants, and other airline employees after the horrors of 9/11-an admiration won by the close work in an airliner's cockpit during hours of fatigue, stress, and challenge.

Through the essays, Neal traces his development first as a military aviator and then as a commercial airline pilot. His nontechnical writing puts the reader alongside him in the cockpit as a witness to the mind-set of a pilot as he charts a course around the world-a course that often leads to self-examination and what one learns about self and others through the travel itself. His narrative details what it was like to lose nearly twenty years of work as his airline struggled with bankruptcy and near liquidation. He raises the question if the turbulence of the career was worth the years of sacrifice and dedication and thus, touches on a question that thousands within the world of aviation continue to ask. His surprising answer is one that is framed by the timeless beauty and allure of flight.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherNeal Schier
Release dateMay 16, 2011
ISBN9781458164094
The Outer Whorl: Essays of an Airline Pilot

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    Book preview

    The Outer Whorl - Neal Schier

    The Outer Whorl

    Essays by an airline pilot

    Neal A. Schier

    Copyright 2011 Neal A. Schier

    Smashwords Edition

    Some names within this work have been changed and in very rare cases events blended to ease the relating of the story. Fidelity to the events as they have occurred was never intentionally sacrificed as a result and I apologize in advance to those who would have just a slightly different memory of the history. Also, he/him is often used instead of indicating a single gender or both genders. This is used only to avoid the slight inconvenience of the English language in not having a gender neutral pronoun other than ‘it.’

    The author may be contacted at neal.schier@gmail.com

    Thank you to Captain Ciro Attardo, a fellow Thunderbolter, who looked forward but never back.

    To be born with talent is the greatest of gifts. To have the capacity to acquire a skill is a good thing in life. To the rest, they must be observers. Their lot is not a wretched station in life however, for they can, as the others cannot, stand afar and watch daily as the world passes by in all its beauty.

    Introduction

    I stood in a small city park along the river in Frankfurt, Germany. The sun was dangling lazily in the sky and the air was neither too warm nor too cold. It seemed as if there were no longer any temperature at all, and it was perfectly comfortable.

    The park was nearly silent with the only sounds coming from the slight hum of faraway passing traffic or the gleeful squeal of the few remaining children at play. I was pushing my godson in the swing - back and forth, back and forth. Not too high and not too fast. He and I both liked the movement and the quietness. It reminded me of the sensation one has when flying.

    Neither of us was in a hurry to leave. He was enjoying the rhythm of the swing and I found myself slowly became entranced by its smooth back and forth cycle. Following the arc of swing and child, my thoughts drifted to what the sensation of flight and movement has meant to me. I looked back on the memories that have accumulated over the years in the pursuit of just that sensation, and also of the many colleagues with whom I have worked and who proved to be lasting examples of dedication for me to admire. I thought of how the love for this career as a pilot was tested by a day of terror attacks and a financial crisis with a depth the airline industry had never faced before. I thought of what once was. I thought of how quickly it had forever changed, like a rising puff of smoke that was soon only to be remembered by what we think of as the past.

    The 11th of September 2001 was more than just an attack using airplanes against large office buildings. It proved to be an epochal event that very much like a galaxy, spun out, whorl after turbulent whorl until objects far distant from the epicenter were nudged, jostled, and in some sad cases, destroyed.

    In the air transport industry there will always be this fixed marker of time; what simply was before and what was after 9/11. Suddenly, into the normal stresses and strains of everyday piloting was added a lethal element – the fear not just of hijacking, but of hijacking with the intent to use the aircraft, not as an instrument of beautiful flight, but as a weapon. Additionally, as the fallout from the attacks rippled through the economy, the airline industry tumbled into a financial crisis so severe that even the steadiest of corporate helmsmen struggled to chart a steady course of recovery. The employees, the men and women who had dedicated their lives to the safe transport of their customers, were suddenly faced with the prospect of losing the career that they had sacrificed so many years in pursuing. The attacks had left such a deep scar that many airlines were not just in danger of serious monetary losses, but of ceasing to exist altogether.

    Any thread of job stability that an airline employee had before 9/11 was suddenly ripped away. Wave after wave of change repeatedly washed over the airline industry and buffeted nearly every one of those men and women who had followed the call of flying. For a pilot, one who likes to take charge and be in control, it was particularly frustrating as there was no longer anything to control. Events had simply moved too quickly. The future was now solely in the hands of a nervous market, executives, financiers, and the government. The average pilot and crewmember was swiftly pushed far to the side – to the role of being merely an observer.

    But to each his place, as the Good Book says, and far from the epicenter of life where the decision makers, the talented, the gifted and the forgers of the future resided, I learned that through observation, reflection, and admiration of the reaction to these events by those with whom I worked, I could draw a strength, and even in a way, a deeper appreciation of life itself. By looking in from one of those distant whorls, it gave time to think and it provided a perspective. Most of all, it allowed me to admire the muted honor which my fellow workers brought to their craft.

    Many fear that after 9/11 and into the 21st century that following the call of an aviation career will never be the same as it once was in what is called, perhaps a bit too nostalgically, the ‘golden years’ of air transport. In reality, it was always a rather unstable proposition - even under the best of circumstances. Indeed a lucky few sailed through a career without being affected by wars, wild swings in the price of fuel, bankruptcies, strikes, disease, power plays from the captains of the financial world, or a business plan that turned out to be capricious. Most others however, have suffered numerous career setbacks from any combination of these calamities, and more are certainly on the horizon. Not being at least moderately in control of your own career is difficult for those who have accepted the challenges of aviation, and nearly everyone always had to consider what they would do if the worst occurred. So shattering, though, were the buffets from 9/11 and what followed, that every worker had to look deep inside and seriously contemplate what a life outside flying would bring. That the good gig could end, and the jazzmen would indeed have to put away their horns, was a very real possibility for everyone.

    I was just one of many workers riding through this storm and I, like so many others, had to face the reality of what I would have to do if the career I had so loved and enjoyed for twenty years were to be suddenly gone. My career nearly ended when my airline went bankrupt and, even now, the future remains sketchy. Shakespeare admonished ‘To thine own self be true,’ and it was this sentiment that made me think of the memories and deep respect that I have for those with whom I have flown. I again think of their commitment to aviation and their dedication that has, and will, surpass any and all calamites that may yet befall this industry. Yet the ride has been difficult, even violent, and one is inexorably ground down by the career ending threats that seem only to multiply daily. Some have had to leave - their dreams in ashes. Some with destroyed family lives. Each has had to wonder if this noble calling has been worth the struggle.

    Writing these short narratives of my most humble experiences and memories reminded me of the good and the bad. It provided the springboard to accept the future - bright or bleak. It was my way to deal with what was lost, that my career was now just a mere job. It was my way to prepare to let go if need be. Not to let go of the love of flying, but rather of the events that had slipped beyond my control. To let go and to separate myself from those events in order that I could live again.

    We stayed at the park for some time. A child never tires of a swing, and I had a lot of memories upon which to reflect.

    Chapter 1

    Training

    Peer into the cockpit of any airliner and ask the crew how they learned their craft and one will find as many answers as there are pilots. Hidden behind the good natured bantering between those with ‘the military’ and those with ‘the civilian’ background, are thousands of stories. There are many ways to the top of the mountain, but they all started with the same desire to learn to fly.

    The phrase ‘paying your dues’ is bandied about when it comes to earning a once coveted job as an airline pilot, but talk to the pilot from any airline, and you will quickly learn about just how those dues were paid. There are always apocryphal stories of a young man or woman learning to fly on the parent’s money and then coached and coddled through the early stages of a career so as to suddenly be piloting a 747 into Hong Kong, but I certainly have never met such a pilot. I have however, sat spellbound as I heard my colleagues explain how they were flying a Coast Guard helicopter, low on fuel, straining the limits of machine and crew to rescue a fisherman in the violent waters off Alaska. Of flying canceled checks, mortuary deliveries, or medical supplies around Southern thunderstorms in the deep of night. Of returning emotionally spent from a photo reconnaissance mission over North Vietnam to find the aircraft carrier in rough seas and driving rain. Of flight instructing, of building, repairing, and flying any and all sorts of aircraft. Of flying approaches into mountainous South American airports in bone-crushing turbulence or of fighting to understand the accented French/English of the tower controller at a small African airport. Aviation in the early 21st century is a world apart from the early days when the pioneering aviation greats charted the skies and set in place, often paying in blood, the air transport system that we enjoy today. Although it is a world apart from the flying of those early years, today’s flying can in other ways pose just as many challenges, just as many stresses, and an almost infinite set of demands in which aviators are still ‘paying their dues.’ The aviation writing legend Ernest Gann, who wrote so eloquently about the struggles of the early transport pilots just to remain alive, would easily recognize that the dark stalker of fate he knew so well, still hunts just as it did in yesteryear.

    So everyone ‘did do something’ else before they arrived at the job of flying passengers from Chicago to LaGuardia, or London, or Singapore and often times it is best that they did. When I was out ‘paying my dues’ in the military I remember sitting outside the fence at the Frankfurt airport in Germany watching the aircraft of the world’s airlines arrive and depart. I thought often, sometimes with great envy, of one of the major European airlines that was known for hiring its pilots very young – so young, as was mentioned in a good-natured teasing manner, that it seemed that many of the young men did not even need to shave every day. The company took these young men and women and trained them ab initio – from zero flying hours. The standards were high and exacting, and at the very tender age of the young twenties, these pilots would already be plying the skies as a major airline pilot. Certainly a program that worked, and works, well for this specific company, but I cannot help wonder if there were a blandness that this would bring to the piloting corps – every pilot stamped from exactly the same mold, with exactly the same background, and with exactly the same experience. Would it be, I wondered, as if one were trapped behind an insular wall of uniformity? Frankly I enjoy the rich loam of experience and the diverse backgrounds that pilots bring to air transport in most of the world’s countries and here in the United States. E pluribus unum (out of many – one) fits as well in the cockpit as it does on a coins of the U.S. treasury, for not only do these backgrounds provide a real strength through the variety of experiences and viewpoints, but they also provide almost unlimited learning opportunities through the exchange of past experiences and ‘lessons learned.’ Almost as a side benefit, these various flying backgrounds also provide an almost endless supply of real corker ‘I was there’ stories.

    When I wished to learn to fly, I choose to do so through the military. It is neither better, nor worse, than ‘the civilian’ way of learning to fly – it was simply a different path, and the one I chose to take.

    ~

    Fred told me that after his wife had left him and filed for divorce, that instead of taking to the bottle he took to the Greyhound track. He mischievously related how every morning he would delve deep into the Racing Form to perfect his ‘system’ of picking the winners, the placers, and the to-shows. One night when he won the trifecta and made himself financially comfortable for the rest of his days, he said he left the track so shaken by the entire experience that he never returned. He was convinced that his winning had nothing to do with skill on his part in picking the winners, but rather plain dumb luck, and it frightened him enough that he never tried his hand again.

    Fred however, had a lot more to him that just a penchant for playing the race track. As a young man he had signed on as an able-bodied seaman of sorts on a cruise for a project that the National Geographic was filming in the South Atlantic. He had seen a good bit of the world, gained his education, and became a computer programmer of nimble intellect and prodigious output. I had a great deal of respect for Fred and considered him something of a mentor. I was a newly minted computer science graduate in the early 1980s and was working in South Florida for a firm that was writing computer programs for high-speed mini computers. The computer era and software engineering were about to change the world in a most literal sense, and two of my fellow workers had already shipped off to a town in California called Cupertino to start work for a quirky, yet promising, firm called Apple Computer. Perhaps if I worked hard, I thought, I would have a chance as well to one day work for that novel upstart player in the growing market.

    Yet every afternoon when the thunderstorms grew over the Everglades and rolled eastward, Fred would notice that I would be standing at the window looking out to the West. I always was wondering what lay beyond what I could see. What is out there? What is outside the stifling four walls of an office and weekly production reports? What is beyond the Everglades? Feeling as if I had died at 21 and was only waiting until 80 to be buried, Fred noticed the symptoms of my unease before I did. So when he pulled his chair into my cubicle one day, he came right to the point. "What is it that you really wish to do? Remember, you can rejoin life in an office when you are middle-aged. If there is some dream you wish to pursue, you have to do it now." Fred knew what was ‘out there’ in the world and he knew the power of the draw to see it. I took Fred’s advice, and I made the change. There was a lot I wanted to see.

    In a few

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