Here I am again, closer to the tropopause than to the surface of the Earth, somewhere between the Rocky Mountains and the Canadian Shield, where I have spent so many hours of my life. I don’t remember precisely why, for this particular mission. I’m not even sure how I got here from where I started this blog. It’s always alike, but never the same. Sometimes the heater works and only our toes are cold, because the frigid air of the flight levels blasts in through the gaps in the unpressurized airplane. Sometimes the heater refuses to work at all, and the cold seeps slowly  through the layer ..read more

I didn't send this, because it might be kind of inappropriate, and on closer inspection someone else on my team had followed up, and the candidate either ghosted us or turned out to be unsuitable after all. But someone needs to hear it. Dear Pilot Whose Application I Just Found Unread In My Old E-Mail, It’s unlikely that you’re still looking for a pilot position with us, but I thought I’d follow up, as you are qualified.  We currently have all the pilots we think we need, but that can change rapidly. If you are still interested in the position let me know and I will keep your resume to c ..read more

We work in unpressurized aircraft, often at high altitude, wearing oxygen masks.  Hypoxia is a risk, and one of the symptoms of hypoxia is euphoria, the feeling that everything is fantastic. To mitigate this, crew members test O2 levels regularly and report them to each other as a sanity check. The saturation, given as a percentage should be enough to get an A on a test, so 87 and up. If someone gets a B, they have to check their equipment and retest in a few minutes. Before the pandemic, I stocked the planes with pulse oximeters, within reach of each crewmember, and then had to test them ..read more

 So, it turns out that I spend enough of my waking moments writing the sort of things I used to blog about, mentoring pilots, troubleshooting airplanes, planning flights, and analyzing weather that it's the very last thing I I wan to do on my downtime. Maybe I'll get to step three some day But I saved this for you ..read more

 I thought as I wrote this to a pilot recently, that it's the sort of thing I used to write on my blog, except just doing it myself, demonstrating it, rather than being so pretentious as to tell anyone else to do it.  Thank you for your time and attention today.  When you start the plane and do the run up tomorrow, try to think about what you are causing to happen and watching to happen with each switch and action. E.g. You are not just turning on the red switch, but connecting the battery to the main buses. You are not moving the propeller levers, but adjusting the speeder spri ..read more

Step Two of the nine steps of being able to defer something is ensuring it can actually be deferred. If it's a stain on the carpet, it can be deferred.  But remember than in order to defer something, it first needs to be reported as a defect. In Canada, that is referred to as "snagging." Like "I snagged the landing light." And the result is a snag. "Talk to maintenance about the wording before you put the snag in the journey log."  Americans call them squawks. And they don't have a journey log, so they write them on a squawk sheet. Americans can tell me whether the squawk sheet is a ..read more

So, after I blogged a few days ago, I scrolled down and read the previous blog entry, and then the one before that, and the one before that, and kind of got stuck there until it was time for bed.  I woke up this morning and read some more instead of doing what I was supposed to be doing. It's kind of fun reading about my adventures, and your comments thereupon. Maybe, I thought, I can come up with a way to blog about them without subjecting my company or clients to unnecessary scrutiny, and without taking the vast swathes of time I used to spend on this sort of thing. I know my former blo ..read more

Dear Pilot, While it is excellent that you communicate with company when you have in flight issues, please note that you have a commercial licence and something like 2000 hours of experience. Consider the fact that Captain Sullenberger and crew do not have any photographs of their landing in the Hudson River, and did not text their dispatcher for help. When they experienced a problem, they used their knowledge of the aircraft systems and their checklists to manage the problem. If you have time to take photos, you have time to pull out the checklist. The reason we spent hours in groundschool ..read more

 I am busy preparing training, as I always seem to be these days, but something in the regs made me giggle: "A pilot who accepts an aircraft with defects, the repair of which has been deferred in accordance with an approved system, has a good defence against any possible charge of flying an unairworthy aircraft, whereas a pilot who undertakes a flight with an aircraft that is not in compliance with the approved system commits an offence." So what they are saying is that a good offence is not always the best defence. Or perhaps this would be a bad offence ..read more

I have to do one of the things in the title of this post. Actually all of them, but mostly one at a time, and blogging isn't in that list. But I want you to know that I am well, and think of many of you readers whenever I draw on my years ago experience to make decisions, or just to tell stories. Having told many of them once to you helps me remember them. While I am typing this, someone is trying to discuss an accident report, for a flight that departed an aerodrome where I worked. Maybe things have changed there, but things don't change fast in the north. Probably no one has moved that forme ..read more