Penair ends non-EAS Portland flying

JordanD said:
I should upgrade soon, I'm anxious to see if I get issued some white New Balances to wear on my overnights.
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Don't forget the grey cheesecloth uniform shirts, the windsnapper pants and 40 extra pounds. The good news is you don't have to wear a t-shirt any longer, and I hear they made the comb-over optional.
 
ClarkGriswold said:
I had a guy give me crap one morning in ABQ to go get breakfast. "Glad to see you dressed up for ABQ." I had a polo on, khaki shorts and topsiders (it was summer). He had the typical Captain look, jeans with a tucked in t shirt. He then proceeded to tell me all about the glory days of international flying and how much they dressed up for those trips.

Dude, it's too early for that crap, especially without my damn coffee and chile rellenos
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I think "annoyance prior to caffeination" is a hangin' offense in some parts.
 
av8tr1 said:
Not to derail the thread but maybe if people dresses better and had more respect for the magic that is air travel we might not have so many examples of New York subway behavior in 14D. Like self pleasuring, open sex, drunks, racist rants, groping of other passengers, you know the average Spirit passengers.
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SHHHHH!
They'll start charging for these things!
 
Back to the OT side discussion. I was an engineer for almost 20 years. I did OK for myself and was able to retire somewhat early. Now I'm flying for a living. I think I have a good perspective on the difference between "professional" and "skilled labor". In my mind, the distinction is the level of decision which can be made independently. The electrician angle is perfect for this; the National Electric Code spells out, in unbelievable detail, the exact way to perform 97% of all jobs an electrician will be faced with. For the remaining 3%, electricians come to someone like me, whom the state has determined can basically make up my own rules (and bear the liability if I'm wrong). In aviation, the PIC uses education and experience to make the same level of calls, with the same risks and the same liabilities as a professional engineer, only the pilot rarely has the luxury of saying "I'll get back to you." The same distinction could be made of 121 A&Ps; they are highly skilled and every bit as smart as any pilot, but their work is dictated, down to every screw and nut on a work card for every job they do. Other than IAs, they don't make decisions and even an IA's decisions are generally binary. Pilots are empowered, like other professionals to pretty much "Go forth and don't • up" with little real oversight, free to make professional, educated decisions in a loose framework and bear the risks of those decisions.

I hate that "blue collar" has some negative connotation in this country. The skilled trades are a fine way to live, full of good people; I wish we esteemed them the way they do in Europe. That said, pilots, even bush pilots, are not blue collar in any way. A professional isn't determined by whether they wear a tie or hip boots, or how hard their work.
 
Nate Hubbard said:
Back to the OT side discussion. I was an engineer for almost 20 years. I did OK for myself and was able to retire somewhat early. Now I'm flying for a living. I think I have a good perspective on the difference between "professional" and "skilled labor". In my mind, the distinction is the level of decision which can be made independently. The electrician angle is perfect for this; the National Electric Code spells out, in unbelievable detail, the exact way to perform 97% of all jobs an electrician will be faced with. For the remaining 3%, electricians come to someone like me, whom the state has determined can basically make up my own rules (and bear the liability if I'm wrong). In aviation, the PIC uses education and experience to make the same level of calls, with the same risks and the same liabilities as a professional engineer, only the pilot rarely has the luxury of saying "I'll get back to you." The same distinction could be made of 121 A&Ps; they are highly skilled and every bit as smart as any pilot, but their work is dictated, down to every screw and nut on a work card for every job they do. Other than IAs, they don't make decisions and even an IA's decisions are generally binary. Pilots are empowered, like other professionals to pretty much "Go forth and don't *I don't have the education to emote without using a curse word* up" with little real oversight, free to make professional, educated decisions in a loose framework and bear the risks of those decisions.

I hate that "blue collar" has some negative connotation in this country. The skilled trades are a fine way to live, full of good people; I wish we esteemed them the way they do in Europe. That said, pilots, even bush pilots, are not blue collar in any way. A professional isn't determined by whether they wear a tie or hip boots, or how hard their work.
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Very well said.
 
Nate Hubbard said:
Back to the OT side discussion. I was an engineer for almost 20 years. I did OK for myself and was able to retire somewhat early. Now I'm flying for a living. I think I have a good perspective on the difference between "professional" and "skilled labor". In my mind, the distinction is the level of decision which can be made independently. The electrician angle is perfect for this; the National Electric Code spells out, in unbelievable detail, the exact way to perform 97% of all jobs an electrician will be faced with. For the remaining 3%, electricians come to someone like me, whom the state has determined can basically make up my own rules (and bear the liability if I'm wrong). In aviation, the PIC uses education and experience to make the same level of calls, with the same risks and the same liabilities as a professional engineer, only the pilot rarely has the luxury of saying "I'll get back to you." The same distinction could be made of 121 A&Ps; they are highly skilled and every bit as smart as any pilot, but their work is dictated, down to every screw and nut on a work card for every job they do. Other than IAs, they don't make decisions and even an IA's decisions are generally binary. Pilots are empowered, like other professionals to pretty much "Go forth and don't *I don't have the education to emote without using a curse word* up" with little real oversight, free to make professional, educated decisions in a loose framework and bear the risks of those decisions.

I hate that "blue collar" has some negative connotation in this country. The skilled trades are a fine way to live, full of good people; I wish we esteemed them the way they do in Europe. That said, pilots, even bush pilots, are not blue collar in any way. A professional isn't determined by whether they wear a tie or hip boots, or how hard their work.
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It's hard to be white collar when you're cleaning cod wad out of the diamond plate flooring. Everything we do is defined down to excruciating detail. We're a lot closer to electricians than engineers - tell me how I do anything creative on the job.
 
ppragman said:
It's hard to be white collar when you're cleaning cod wad out of the diamond plate flooring. Everything we do is defined down to excruciating detail. We're a lot closer to electricians than engineers - tell me how I do anything creative on the job.
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You're just a widget. They don't want creative. No reason to bother. I don't care what color my collar is as long as they show me the money.
 
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DE727UPS said:
You're just a widget. They don't want creative. No reason to bother. I don't care what color my collar is as long as they show me the money.
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Well, to be honest, I've spent the majority of my career in shall we say, "unstructured" environments, and the one thing I've learned is the less I have to think on my feet, be creative, or critically think the better. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think critical thinking skills are the most important skill a pilot can have, and creativity is sometimes necessary...but it's been my experience that if I'm having to get creative and "engineer" a solution to a situation, I've probably already exited the bounds of "safe and proper" previously - usually through some otherwise preventable lapse of judgment on my part.

It's good that we have checklists, profiles, and memory items. It's good that we treat it like a practiced Buddhist ritual and not like a gun fight. As much as it pains me to say this (and 2007 me when I joined JC would call me an ass---- for saying it), it's "bad" if you're doing anything creative in the cockpit, and that's what I mean by this. We don't do anything creative on the job...and that's A-OK! That's a good thing. I liken myself to a potter - I try to sculpt a vase free of any noticeable defects as efficiently as possible. Yeah, I know where I could do better, and yeah, I know where I did good, but if the passengers see it as anything other than a vase - well, I've probably messed up. I am not sculpting post-modern interior decorations, or decorative accouterments - no, I'm sculpting a simple vase. It's still art - but I don't want anything I do to take away from the flowers we put in it - if I can stretch this metaphor to the breaking point.

That's the difference between us and an engineer, programmer, or otherwise. We're generally not looking for a "creative" or "innovative" solution to a problem - that doesn't mean we aren't thinking, and we're certainly "skilled" but I don't think it could remotely be said that we're anything other than technicians, anything other than "wage labor."
 
ppragman said:
This is a big reason why the industry is the way it is.

You can start your career in aviation after a whopping 250hrs of time in an airplane - there are schools where you can go from "dude on the street" to commercial certificated pilot within 90 days.

In contrast to become an electrician in my state you have to apprentice for 8,000hrs over 4 years and do between somewhere between 960hrs and 1400hrs of classroom training.

Or if the electrician is too far out - it takes over 1,500hrs to become a hair dresser in the state.

If you don't like comparing apples to oranges, think about what it takes to get a OUPV "6-pack." That's probably on par with getting your commercial in the maritime world - its 365 4hr days at see (if memory serves). Nah - we are tradesmen and not even tradesmen that have the highest barrier to entry.

The only thing that separates us from operating engineers and charterboat captains is that it's insanely expensive to learn how to fly and there's no apprentice programs, so that naturally selects for a very specific, typically upper-middle class or higher, group of people that can enter the field. Somehow that means we think we're better than those folks - but we're really not.

I probably think differently about this because I grew up in a place filled with Pilots wearing carharts and company ballcaps to work.
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I tried to make this exact same point over on the other forum after some of them were trying to talk down on below the wing employees and as you can imagine, it was not met well...

https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/major/104160-whats-happening-newark-2.html#post2393702

Eventually, I just gave up. I think the pilot ego is a huge barrier to most of us grasping this point.
 
I never said "creative", I said educated decisions for which we personally bear ultimate responsibility. Weather and fuel are the most common ones. So common that some of you aren't considering how much training and experience you use every day or possibly how much authority you wield. An electrician can bitch about how stupid an engineer's design is, but there is little he can do about it. When your dispatcher gives you some BS route, you can tell him to pound sand. Agreed that pilots should not be creative in the cockpit. Also agreed that hosing chum out of your plane at the end of the day isn't glamorous, but that load made it there, and every other day because you were able to use your education and experience to safely fly in "500ft" ceilings in icing conditions from multiple outhouses/fish processors every day for weeks on end. That isn't luck and it isn't skill, it's your professional decision-making skills. I guess the easy way to look at it is when the merde hits the ventilateur, who gets the blame? It isn't the electrician, it's the inspector; it's not the dispatcher, it's the pilot. If the buck stops with you, you've earned at least a little self respect regardless if your trousers were made in Wisconsin or on Saville Row.
 
Nate Hubbard said:
I never said "creative", I said educated decisions for which we personally bear ultimate responsibility. Weather and fuel are the most common ones. So common that some of you aren't considering how much training and experience you use every day or possibly how much authority you wield. An electrician can bitch about how stupid an engineer's design is, but there is little he can do about it. When your dispatcher gives you some BS route, you can tell him to pound sand. Agreed that pilots should not be creative in the cockpit. Also agreed that hosing chum out of your plane at the end of the day isn't glamorous, but that load made it there, and every other day because you were able to use your education and experience to safely fly in "500ft" ceilings in icing conditions from multiple outhouses/fish processors every day for weeks on end. That isn't luck and it isn't skill, it's your professional decision-making skills. I guess the easy way to look at it is when the merde hits the ventilateur, who gets the blame? It isn't the electrician, it's the inspector; it's not the dispatcher, it's the pilot. If the buck stops with you, you've earned at least a little self respect regardless if your trousers were made in Wisconsin or on Saville Row.
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Listen to this man, dammit, if you won't listen to me. ^_^

-Fox
 
Nate Hubbard said:
I never said "creative", I said educated decisions for which we personally bear ultimate responsibility. Weather and fuel are the most common ones. So common that some of you aren't considering how much training and experience you use every day or possibly how much authority you wield. An electrician can bitch about how stupid an engineer's design is, but there is little he can do about it. When your dispatcher gives you some BS route, you can tell him to pound sand. Agreed that pilots should not be creative in the cockpit. Also agreed that hosing chum out of your plane at the end of the day isn't glamorous, but that load made it there, and every other day because you were able to use your education and experience to safely fly in "500ft" ceilings in icing conditions from multiple outhouses/fish processors every day for weeks on end. That isn't luck and it isn't skill, it's your professional decision-making skills. I guess the easy way to look at it is when the merde hits the ventilateur, who gets the blame? It isn't the electrician, it's the inspector; it's not the dispatcher, it's the pilot. If the buck stops with you, you've earned at least a little self respect regardless if your trousers were made in Wisconsin or on Saville Row.
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So, two things I take out of this - you don't think an electrician has earned a "little self respect," as you put it, and you think we have a lot more authority than we actually do.

We can hault flights and have operational control during the flight to take the safest course of action. That is basically it. If a route bisects a line of thunderstorms you can tell them you want a different routing. Sure.

You can't tell the dispatcher "I'm not going to FLL because that flight doesn't make any sense for revenue" and cancel the flight. You can't tell the dispatcher "I'm going to drop into PABC and pick up some people" without permission, and you can't do a lot of other things. Go read the definition of operational control then get back to me.

You're back? Ok - so, we don't create anything, we aren't doing any strategic business planning, we aren't doing spreadsheets about operating costs of the airplane and running optimizations. We aren't designing "trips," we don't even get to choose the order of "stops" we may have to make or the sequence of them. If we have a crew we may be managing some people, but typically not more than a handful of people, and typically not for very long. Hell, even if you were captain on an A380, what's the most people you could managing professionally? Something like 15 or 20? Tops? And you are only responsible for them during the "job?" You don't do their payroll, you don't do get to hire and fire flight attendants at will - you're more like a foreman, but with less power (a foreman can fire people, as a line pilot I've never had the authority to fire anyone).

Again, saying that we're technicians isn't a "bad" thing. I don't think you are considering how much training and experience an electrician or a paramedic or a process technician need to do their job right, and how much "authority" they wield. I used to fly paramedics and nurses around at work every day - they had a lot more leeway in what they could elect to do to a patient during a flight than I do as a pilot. They had "standing orders" which are a lot like a GOM, but the nurse/medic decides patient X is combative or may otherwise be difficult to transport? They can literally sedate that person against their will. An electrician has a ton of leeway in their work, as do carpenters, and others skilled tradesfolk. They are just as skilled as we are in what they do - indeed, I say that some trades require a LOT more training and education than flying. If an electrician screws up on the job, it's less likely that anyone is hurt, but you could burn down someone's home, electrocute someone, or cut out power to critical infrastructure in an area. Again, that's not as "sexy" as a fireball of metal and jet fuel, but it is important work, and I'd say just as important and just as "skilled" as flying.

Hell, if you're a process tech on an oil rig and you screw up, not only could you be killed, but you could pollute an area so badly as to make it unusable. Do you remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Fertilizer_Company_explosion? or Deep Water Horizon? The list goes on and on - are "train engineers" below us lofty skygods? Because there was a train derailment in Canada that killed 47 just a couple years ago - here's what wiki says is the "cause:"
Combination of neglected defective locomotive, poor maintenance, driver error, flawed operating procedures, weak regulatory oversight, lack of safety redundancy
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I routinely see accident reports that are similar to this in aviation. The risks are just as high in some other fields - they're just different risks, and often the responsibility is the same. Consider the accident in Lexington where they tried to takeoff on the wrong runway and burned up, well, industrial accidents like this happen all the freaking time. Just read through this list of pipeline accidents on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pipeline_accidents_in_the_United_States_in_the_21st_century#2017. They typically don't kill 50 people at a time, but holy crap is other kinds of work super sketchy and requires just as much attention to detail and adherence to procedure as what we do. A particularly interesting excerpt from that article is this one:

On October 8, an explosion occurred at a Williams Companies pipeline facility in Gibson, Louisiana. 4 employees were killed, and, one other injured. The cause of the explosion was from procedure not being followed during welding work.
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That reads an awful lot like aviation accidents. The only difference is that many of these pipeline accidents don't expose the public to significant risk. Still, the list is enlightening.

Just tell me though - why is it a BAD thing for us to be technicians? Why is it BAD for us to be highly skilled craftsmen doing our jobs for managers? Why do we have to be a part of a particular class of workers? I don't think that's bad at all! Why is it a BAD thing for us to have a lower barrier to career entry than say, an electrician or a boat captain? I don't think it actually is a bad thing. In fact, I think being being a technician is a mark in the job's favor. I also think that unlike an electrician or a boilermaker, there's a lot more "art" in this job, but that just makes it closer to other transport jobs like bus drivers, train engineers, and boat captains. Again...this isn't a bad thing, and I'm not sure why everyone thinks that it is.

Just as process technicians, railroad engineers, power plant operators, electricians, and others can learn a lot from aviation, so too can we learn a lot from them! It's not a bad thing to be a technician. I love my job, I take pride in my job, but I know what it is and what it isn't. I've been a manager. I've also been decidedly "white collar." Flying is certainly not. Tell me - do your crewmembers call you at 9:30pm at night three days after you got back from your last trip with them to ask if you could approve a time off request for them? Oh - as pilots we're not responsible for time off requests, we tell people to call the chief pilot? Weird. What we do isn't that special. Again, that's not a bad thing, that's not denigrating the profession - this is an awesome job with amazing, hard-working, intelligent professionals - but this is a trade.
 
Acrofox said:
Listen to this man, dammit, if you won't listen to me. ^_^

-Fox
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I did listen to you, I just think you're over-inflating what this job is. I get that it's fun for you, and you love it. I love it too. I think it's the singularly best job I can think of. I'm still "in love" with flying airplanes. It's awesome, requires skills and decision making and is often challenging. That doesn't mean it's any better than being an electrician or an A&P mechanic. Many trades people work just as hard, are just as responsible, and have even more difficult training and checking programs to become a part of the industry.

Why is this being a "blue collar trade" a bad thing? If anything, I think that makes it better. I think we take ourselves a bit too seriously in this industry. Yes, we need to take the job seriously (that I don't think we do enough, especially when it comes to airmanship, decision making, and the like) - but in terms of what we are, and how we perceive ourselves, I think we take ourselves way too seriously. We have posts on here with people who legitimately believe that dressing nicely in your uniform makes you a better pilot. We have posts on here where people agonize over whether they didn't complete college fast enough for Delta - hell, a whole meme has developed over it. I have personally talked to pilots who think flying pistons is "beneath" them now that they've gotten into jets - I get not wanting to do it (I know I shudder at the thought of having to work that hard anymore), but literally thinking that's "below them" now that they've made it?! WTF over.

I ask you - is there a version of this video series:

http://www.sportys.com/pilotshop/sporty-s-how-an-airline-captain-should-look-and-act-dvd.html

for electricians? Amazon returns nothing useful.

This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. I'm not saying that there isn't any value in that video (I even watched the whole series once when I was a freshly minted commercial pilot) - but it's a symptom of how seriously we take ourselves, and I think it's absurd. Flying airplanes is fun. It's an honorable trade. It's a good way to make a living, feed your family, and do something rewarding. It requires self-discipline, a good attitude, and hard work. But let's not make it something it isn't. You're not in management. You're not designing or creating anything. You don't actually have as much leeway in your job as you perceive. This job doesn't make you "better" than the guys who work behind you or under the wing.

Flying airplanes certainly requires more technical education, skills, and experience than the guy who cleans the lav or pumps fuel in - sure, but I'd suspect that becoming an electrician is probably harder (@z987k - what say you?).

This job doesn't make you a doctor. It doesn't make you an engineer. Do you have to go to school for 4 years just to physically be able to do the job? Hell no. We can get you spooled up in 90 days, and a year after if you hustled you could go into the right seat of a jet. Just a few years ago you could go straight into a jet at 250 hours and they weren't falling out of the sky (3407 being the exception - and don't get me wrong, I think the experience requirements to get into the right seat of "big" airplanes are wayyyyy too low to this day). It's not magic, and a lot of people are certainly capable of doing the work.

I think part of this notion that we're somehow better than the mechanics and the like comes from the fact that the military has required pilots (other than the army with their WO program) be commissioned officers for some time. Given that aviation inherits much of its culture from the military, I think this is something that's probably crept in since the ages of the flying sergeants kind of went away. Regardless, as a "line pilot" what we do on the job isn't "administrative or management." That's not a bad thing - that doesn't detract from the job...
 
Two posts up I said this:
Nate Hubbard said:
I hate that "blue collar" has some negative connotation in this country. The skilled trades are a fine way to live, full of good people; I wish we esteemed them the way they do in Europe.
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I paid for engineering school by welding for a job shop nights and weekends. I respect the skilled trades as much as anyone. That doesn't mean I will denigrate my profession or my colleagues, the two are not mutually exclusive.

You've otherwise made my point for me. Every day you make a string of decisions which take into account multiple variables for which you need more than a passing knowledge. Understanding the economic impact of a different route, a diversion, or a cancellation on the company, the customer, and yourself, and making a decision and a backup which both mitigates the most risk for the best profit is a professional-level decision. No roughneck has that kind of responsibility. Certainly if you make the wrong call too many times, you will be fired, but that is true of any job.

Lastly, AK is a big place. There are lots of places where 500 is good VFR flown safely every day, which you know as well as anyone. Education, experience, and professional decision making are what make it that way. Unprofessional behavior will get you killed anywhere.
 
Oversight and corrective action, presuming that you survive, that is, typically happens after the moment, not in it.
 
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