I went exactly 3 weeks short of a full year without flying a big airplane.
I’ve officially been in the airline business for a decade now. When I got hired four years ago by my current employer, I trained on the MD-11. To date, it has been my favorite ‘airline-type’ airplane I’ve ever flown. It took me all across Asia, Europe, South America, Australia, and here in the good ol’ US of A and other parts of North America. Tragically, there was a horrific accident involving an MD-11 last year that resulted in all MD-11 aircraft being grounded due to safety concerns and subsequent modifications. And while the mighty “mad dog” has since resumed flying, operational needs of my employer shifted and I found myself as one of the people holding the short straw and having to train on a different aircraft. Of the options available to me, I picked the Boeing 767.
I flew the B-767 for my previous employer. It too served me pretty well and provided my introduction to international freight flying. To be completely honest, at that time 6 years ago I put more attention into finishing my online degree than I did becoming the best 767 the world has ever seen. I applied myself to learning the airplane and I was safe. But I never became one with it. Nevertheless, the governing US aviation agency dictates that once you change employers, you must complete a full training program to qualify to fly on an airplane you may have already flown; basically starting at ground zero and relearning the airplane all over again. After many many weeks of self-study, classroom instruction, and training on several different types of devices, I set off for a series of real trips with an array of line check airman(sometimes called check pilots; someone trained to babysit the newbies and make sure we are as awesome in the real world as we are in the simulator) to complete the final phase of training(initial operating experience or “IOE”). As I mentioned before, my first flight on IOE was exactly three weeks shy of one full year since I had last flown a jet.
This month has taken me to big and small cities in the US—NYC; Philadelphia and Allentown, Pennsylvania; Los Angeles, California; Memphis, Tennessee; and Raleigh, North Carolina—as well as Panama City, Panama; San Jose, Costa Rica; and San Juan; Puerto Rico. You may have read in the ‘About’ section of the website that I lived in Central America as a teenager. If you haven’t, you should go read in the ‘About’ section of the website that I lived in Central America as a teenager. I haven’t returned to that part of the world since I lived there. But on the way back to the US from Costa Rica, I flew right over Roatan, Honduras. My life was totally different the last time I saw it. I’m sure the island was too.
Flying the 767 wouldn’t be my first choice at my airline. But I’m going to embrace it while I’m here. It will take me to some places I haven’t been in a long time; and hopefully to some new and exciting ones too.