Watching people send ACARS messages is painful sometimes. "No, it's definitely not spelled like that."You know, I was thinking the same thing, but for once I wasn't the guy who let it slip past the internal filter.
Back when I was an MEC officer I remember sitting down and talking to the airline's VP Flight Ops. I was giving him a hard time for not hiring more line pilots to do flight ops administrative work. His response:
"Todd, I was a line pilot, so I'd love to hire more line pilots to come in here and do work. But every time I try to give a pilot a job in here, they struggle to write an email with proper grammar and spelling, they can't put together a PowerPoint presentation to save their lives, and designing a complex spreadsheet is completely off the table. So I can either pay them $200k to do a horrible job, or I can pay someone else $50k to do a great job. What would you do?"
I never bothered him again about it.
One thing I learned when I took a management training class is that this is not at all unique to aviation. There were folks in my class from IT, Sales, production, financial management, aviation...and almost to a T we were all in the same boat of excelling at our jobs and then being faced with a steep learning curve when transitioning to a more managerial/hands off role.
You were a stock broker? Oh sheesh, now I really wouldn’t listen to your pilot investment advice
I had no idea you were a career changer into aviation.
Dude... literally painful.
That right there is another argument for the degree requirement.
uhm...more like beyond Jr. High requirement...
The ol’ “I know a guy who only survived because he was thrown clear of the wreckage, so seatbelts are bad” argument.
