everything.
Over the course of my career, working harder or being more diligent didn’t lead to faster promotions. I spent three and a half years as a flight engineer, followed by four and a half as a first officer. After my eighth year at PSA, I checked out as a captain. My advancement came fairly quickly, but it wasn’t because my competence was being recognized. It was because my airline was growing at the time, enough people senior to me were retiring, and enough new airplanes were joining the fleet, necessitating more captains. I was OK with how my promotion was decided.
I also understood the history behind our profession’s dependence on a seniority system. It started in the 1930s, as a way to avoid the favoritism, cronyism, and nepotism rampant in the early days. It was about safety as much as fairness. It insulated us from office politics and threats to hinder our careers if we didn’t “play the game.” A layman might think such a seniority system would lead to mediocrity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pilots are a pretty proud bunch and they find it rewarding when they have the respect of their peers. The system works.
What the seniority system does not do is afford lateral mobility. We are married to our individual airlines for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, until death do us part (or until we get our last retirement check).
WHEN YOU share a cockpit with another pilot, even before you leave the gate, you notice things. You can tell how organized a pilot is, his temperament, his interests. What ways has he found to handle the distressing and the distracting issues of pay cuts and lost pensions, which all of us now face? How does he interact with the flight attendants, especially if his ex-wife used to be one?
After you fly with him for a while, you build on your impressions. Everyone I fly with is competent and capable. That’s basic. But is the guy in the next seat someone I can learn something from? Does he have such skill that he makes everything look easy (when we all know it’s not)?
Pilots I have known who make it look the most effortless have something that goes beyond being competent and beyond being someone who can be trusted. Such pilots seem able to find a well-reasoned solution to most every problem. They see flying as an intellectual challenge and embrace every hour in the sky as another learning opportunity. I’ve tried to be that kind of pilot. I’ve derived great satisfaction from becoming good at something that’s difficult to do well.
Before I go to work, I build a mental model of my day’s flying. I begin by creating that “situational awareness” so often stressed when I was in the Air Force. I want to know, before I even arrive at the airport, what the weather is like between where I am and where I’m going, especially if I’m flying across the continent.
Passengers usually don’t realize the effort pilots put into a flight. For instance, I try pretty hard to avoid turbulence. I will often call the company dispatcher to see if changing the route of flight might yield smoother air. During the flight, I’ll ask air traffic controllers for help in determining if changing altitudes will offer a better ride, or I’ll ask them to solicit reports from nearby flights. I want to give my passengers and crew the best ride possible. Turbulence is often unpredictable and sometimes cannot be avoided, but I like the intellectual challenge of finding smooth air.
I’VE CARRIED about one million passengers so far in my twenty-nine years as a professional airline pilot, and until Flight 1549, not many of them would ever remember me. Passengers may say hello if they meet me as they board, but just as often, they never see my face. After we land safely, they go on with their lives, and I go on with mine.
It’s likely that hundreds of thousands of people watched coverage of the Flight 1549 incident, not realizing that they had once placed themselves in my hands for a couple of hours. It’s all part of how our society works: We briefly entrust our safety and the safety of our families to strangers, and then never see them again.
I’ll often stand at the door to say good-bye to passengers after a flight. I like interacting with them, but you can understand that after all my years of flying, a lot of the passing faces can become a blur. Some passengers stand out—the cranky ones, the first-time fliers who seem so enthralled, the recognizable faces in first class.
One night in the late 1990s, I was flying an MD-80 from New Orleans to New York and the comedienne Ellen DeGeneres was in first class. Shortly after she took her seat in 2D and before we left the gate, my first officer left the cockpit, walked into the front of the cabin, and gave her an enthusiastic greeting. “You are one funny-ass lady!” he told her.
I watched this scene, laughing. I wouldn’t have complimented her quite that way, and I’m sure in some HR manual, we’re told that we’re not supposed to address any passenger as “a funny-ass lady.” But Ellen smiled and seemed to take the comment in the right spirit.
We headed back into the cockpit and then flew Ellen, and any other funny-ass passengers on the plane that day, up to New York.
FLIGHTS ARE almost always routine, but every time we push back from the gate, we must be prepared for the unexpected. About a decade ago, I was flying from Philadelphia to West Palm Beach, Florida. At 9 P.M., we were at thirty-five thousand feet, just about fifty miles south of Norfolk, Virginia, when I got word from a flight attendant that a fifty-seven-year-old woman was not feeling well.
From the cockpit, we began the process of getting a radio-to-phone patch to contact a medical advisory service, while flight attendant Linda Lory attended to the woman. Linda got a bit of medical history from the woman’s brother and another relative traveling with her, and passed the information up to us in the cockpit. The relatives said the woman had a history of emphysema but hadn’t been to a doctor in years.
A few more minutes passed, and as soon as we established communications with the medical service, we got word that the woman was unconscious. Because the aisle was narrow, laying her flat on the floor of the plane was difficult. Passengers nearby were watching it all unfold.
“You have the aircraft,” I told the first officer, Rick Pinar. I called air traffic control, declared a passenger medical emergency, and received immediate clearance to a lower altitude and a left turn direct to Norfolk.
“Make an emergency descent and divert to Norfolk,” I said to Rick.
What are a pilot’s obligations to a sick passenger? We aren’t doctors. So how do we determine when a passenger is so ill that an emergency landing is required, diverting the flight to the nearest airport that has appropriate medical facilities, disrupting other passengers’ travel plans?
We have access to advice from contract medical services and they and the airline dispatcher help a captain make an informed decision about whether to divert and to what airport. When making such a decision, we have a legal obligation, but more than that, we have a moral obligation to protect life. It’s one of the responsibilities we signed up for. It’s part of our commitment to safety. If in my judgment I have to land a plane to save a life, I do so.
On this particular flight, we flew as fast toward Norfolk as the airplane could go. There are federal aviation regulations about maximum speeds below ten thousand feet. For jets, it’s 250 knots, or about 288 miles an hour. In an attempt to save the woman’s life, we went above that speed—over 300 knots. We also made a rapid descent.
Once we touched down, we used heavy braking to shorten our landing roll, allowing us to turn off the runway more quickly. We taxied as fast as was reasonable to the gate.
It was all a bit disconcerting to the passengers. They could see the woman on the floor of the aisle, making no movements. They could feel the heavy braking. They knew we were taxiing faster than usual toward the gate.
Linda, the flight attendant, didn’t strap herself into her seat for landing. She was hunched over the woman, trying to save her through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was an heroic attempt on her part.
When we got to the gate, paramedics were waiting for us right on the jetway. They hustled onto the plane as all the passengers watched. They brought a straight-back board, put it underneath the woman, and tried to lift her up. They had trouble turning her on an angle to get her out the door and onto the jetway. It took several minutes to get her off the plane.
I stood on the jetway with the paramedics and the ill woman’s relatives. They told me they were on their way to Florida for a funeral of another family member, so an already tragic moment for them was suddenly compounded.
