This is the first of a series of 2 blogs in which I share my recent conversation with a Boeing 777 Captain of a major airline in the USA. Annoyingly, I didn’t get a chance to record the conversation since it happened on a noisy, London Underground train.
Here’s what I’ve done instead. I’ve poured all the fragments of the conversation into a pile of words, on the screen, from memory, and have pieced them back together as accurately and as concisely as I could manage it. I hope you will find it interesting and insightful. I know I did!
The Conversation Starter
One of the big reasons why I advise people to share their goals is that, in doing so, you draw people who identify with you and people who will support you.
In my case, I was literally wearing my dream-goal as I sat on the train, reviewing the theoretical side of my next lesson. I had a T-shirt on that read ‘Born To Fly’. Chip, who sat across from me, asked if I fly. That was the beginning of our conversation.
My mentor always said, when you are in the presence of people who are more successful than you, don’t say much, just ask questions. So, I fired as many questions as I could come up with on the fly.
Chip The Captain
Chip, a middle-aged, Boeing triple-7 captain at a major airline in the USA, started off like many of us, with a dream. His dream was to become a pilot. With no funding available from his parents, he took a job as a waiter, to start making his dream a reality.
His first solo flight came when he was aged 16. I’m often told that pilots never forget their first solos. I could tell from the way Chip’s face lit up, that it his first solo was still vivid in his mind.
Chip later joined the military where he advanced his flight training. One thing led to another and eventually, he became an airline pilot.
Here are some of questions I asked, and what he said in response.
My Chat With Chip
- Which airliners have you flown? I flew as second and first officer on a 727, first officer on 757, 767, and first officer and then captain on 777.
2. Which one was your favourite? 757. It’s brilliant! The performance is great. Losing an engine is a non-issue, easily corrected rudders. The power ratio from one engine makes the flight relatively smooth.
3. What is the trickiest destination you fly? London. You can really be behind the curve if you don’t know all the rules. There are a lot of rules in UK airspace, compared to other countries. It’s one of the destinations we train for specifically, to make sure we don’t mess it up.
4. Do you end up on this side of the Atlantic very often? No, not as often as I would like.
5. What is the coolest approach you fly? Tegucigalpa, Honduras. It’s really cool. Look up airplanes landing at TGU on Youtube. (You don’t have to look it up, here is a link I found. click here)
6. What is it like for pilots right now, in the airlines? I don’t know what it’s like over here (in the UK), but in America, there are many pilots retiring. We can already feel the shortage. The pilot shortage will only get worse in years to come, so it’s a good time to be in training.
7. What’s the most eventful flight you’ve had so far? It’s not so much eventful, as it is memorable. In the military, I was deployed in operation dessert storm in 1991, the year that you were born. There were these scud missiles used, terribly in accurate but deadly. The smoke from them would rise up to 10,000 feet and just level-off. I remember flying at around 10,000 ft. The view was incredible.
In the airlines, I haven’t really had many eventful flights. I lost my hydraulics once but with 2 back up systems, it’s virtually a non-issue. So, most of my memorable flights are from my time in the military.
Next Time
I don’t want to make these posts too long so this is probably a good place to stop. I have been releasing a blog post every Friday, over the last few weeks, and will continue to do so, as long as I can manage it.
In the next part of my conversation with the triple 7 captain, he gives me just the advice I needed to hear (you might need to hear it too). He then turned the tables on me and started asking me some questions. For all that and more, see you back here, next week.
Until next time, stay safe and live your dreams.✌🏾
For more on how I’m getting on with learning to fly, check me out on the YouTube.👊🏾
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Future Pilot Niner One 