On training

 

Before you start flying, you do a lot of looking up.

After you start flying, you do a lot of looking down.

Life as a pilot shows you a great variety of views. I started flying in country where airport's elevations of over 5,000 ft are quite common, with minimum en route altitudes of 20,000 ft all over the charts.

 



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Where I've been flying for the last number of years, we cruise around 15,000 ft regularly; If you tried to get over this mountain at that level, you wouldn't make it. Flatter is safer, but I miss the views.

 

 

 

I trained from an airport elevation of 4,000 ft amsl. There’s nothing like the early training days on a Cessna or a piper in my view.

The freedom of building hours flying visually as low as 500 agl (above ground level), doing ‘touch and go’s’, etc. You’ll get that again as a professional pilot. You’re always constrained by regulations, standard operating procedures and the dreaded ‘Flight data monitoring’; the digital black box which companies now download regularly to spy on you.

 

 

 

Even worse, if you fly a bigger plane they know what you’re doing in real time through ACARS. Like everything else; used for good, it enhances safety; conversely, it can -and does- get used to snoop on pilots.

 

 

 

I was thinking that it’s a shame those training days go by so quickly. We all want to get onto the bigger birds asap.

If you’re training right now, take it all in; enjoy. This may be the purest part of your career.

 

Copyright © Francisco Rebollo 2014