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've discovered a fantastic interview question.  "Tell me about a time you had to use all your piloting skill to succeed." The answers show me how a pilot thinks about their own limits, what they consider piloting skills to be, what they understand about their aircraft, weather, or whatever the situation was, and a surprising number of times it results in the pilot telling on themselves about how they violated the regulations, and how they feel about that. They just hop into hangar flying mode and pull out a favourite "there I was" story. There are two things a pilot can learn from makin ..read more

Apparently the time when I build up the most blogging manifold pressure is when we're interviewing and training. Because here I am again, with a story I can't not share. It's the worst resume format I have ever seen.  The resume content itself is, I suppose, not that bad. It conforms to a new trend I am seeing where a pilot with no experience cites their flight training as if it were employment. I received a different resume where a pilot who listed "198.6h" of flight experience (you need 200h even hold a commercial aeroplane licence in Canada) laid claim to "three years of flight traini ..read more

I'm re-reading the TSB Report on an air crash at Fond-du-Lac, in preparation for another class I'm teaching. At every step of the recounting, pilots who have never worked in the north will be crying, "What?" and "No!" while pilots who have may nod their heads with understanding.  When I got to this sentence ... Early in this investigation, it became clear that more information was needed to determine whether the underlying factors identified in this occurrence were present elsewhere in the Canadian commercial aviation industry. ... I said out loud, "Where have you been?" How can someone b ..read more