Into the New Year with More Cockpits and Flight Decks
Being as it is just past the new year, I got to thinking about some past new year’s eves and where I spent them. There have been many that were memorable, but one that comes to mind was training at the American Airlines Flight Academy.
Spoiler alert!! At the end of The Lucky One I was interviewing with American, and yes… I did get hired. That is where the ‘Lucky’ book three will pick up.
An American Airlines Boeing 727
Being as it is just past the new year, I got to thinking about some past New Year’s Eves and where I spent them. There have been many that were memorable, but one that comes to mind was training at the American Airlines Flight Academy.
Spoiler alert!! At the end of The Lucky One I was interviewing with American, and yes… I did get hired. That is where the ‘Lucky’ book three will pick up.
My start date was December 23, 1986, and we were held captive for a month, trying to drink from a firehose of information before we were allowed leave to take a three-day break to go home. But you had to clear all the hurdles that were thrown at you, if not… you got sent home early and permanently.
Last month I shared some of the cockpits of airplanes I flew in my budding career as a commercial pilot. At American there was one very important cockpit we had to learn if we were to pass the numerous tests. We weren’t yet pilots for AA, we were going to be Flight Engineers. Which none of us wanted to be, but that was the way they started us out. If we wanted to work here, we had to learn to do that job first.
The Boeing 727 tri-jet was the object of our desires, our new girlfriend, we needed to know her, and love her. Well, not really, but if we wanted to be hired permanently, we had to learn the whole airplane inside and out, literally. It was a weeding out process and was often compared to boot camp, only mental instead of physical.
Showing up two days before Christmas, we were put into classes of six and paired up two at a time. We had varying backgrounds and were mostly dedicated to passing the course, but not all of us made it. You’ll have to wait for the next book to find out who fell on the battlefield.
Our new hire class, L to R, Bo, Ned, Mike Greg, Dale and Russel
I’ll go into more detail in the next book but suffice it to say it was an ordeal with a lot of stress. Part of what made it difficult was, as pilots, we wanted to be up front flying the damn thing, not sitting back there, flipping switches and reading checklists.
At times I wondered how much I really wanted this job.
Working in a 727-cockpit mock-up. Me with Ned and Bo, who are good friends to this day
It was a memorable Christmas and New Year, with our heads either buried in operating manuals or quizzing each other on systems and limitations when we were not sitting in a classroom and later a simulator. All we could think of was to complete the course and emerge as American Airlines pilots. Even if that meant sitting at that panel for a year or more before we could actually fly the airplane.
Contrary to the minimal amount of training at my previous flying jobs, it would be two months of this high-pressure environment before we would actually ‘go to work’ in a real airplane.
What kind of memorable new years eves come to mind for you as we start out 2024?
Let us hope that our memories of this year will all be good.
The real thing, inside the Boeing 727
The pilot must know every switch, dial, valve, and circuit breaker
See y’all soon!