Another great article by the late Capt Len Morgan of Braniff. Been reading his "Vectors" column since the 1980s and have always enjoyed his writings.
Salad Days
The chief pilot thumbed through my Army records, pausing at one entry. "Homestead. You qualified as first pilot?" Air Transport Command's school at Homestead [AFB], Florida, trained crews on the C-54, the jumbo of its day. A coveted assignment, Homestead was rough; no airline school would be as demanding. A failed exam washed out a Major as quickly as a shavetail. Flight training was as exacting; the hood - similar to a curtain, which blocked the pilot's view outside the cockpit- was put up before brake release and went down at 200 feet on final. It was a memorable six weeks. "I was a check pilot there," he said. "Be in school 0830 Monday." The Homestead ordeal had paid off; three years of frustrating job hunting was over.
Eight of us vets were hired to satisfy a new CAA rule that a DC-6 or Connie crew must henceforth include a flight engineer. The uniform was a double-breasted blue affair with black stripes and brass buttons. It draped like a horse blanket and was so described by the old hands. Worse, it was winter-weight gabardine, a miserable choice for sweltering southwest routes. Plaim bill caps all around; as scrambled eggs for the captain came later. The cost of uniform and flight bag would be deducted from our pay. With the prize in hand, it seemed crass to ask what the pay would be. It transpired that we would draw $47.50/week while in school, less $6.25 for the uniform. Out on the line it would be $62.50, with an increase of $6.25 every six months until $100 was reached. That was it, except that DC-4 and DC-6 copilots got $10 and $15 bonuses, respectively. Because it took eight years to advance that far, the bonuses were academic. We'd be on probation the first year, and for another year as co-pilot.
The DC-6 engineer sat on a hard fold-down seat between the pilots. Most skippers accepted the new hand and put him to work. The odd hard-nose resented the implication that he and the co-pilot couldn't manage between them. With one of them, I attained invisibility, being completely ignored. Excluded from all activity and conversation, I was like a fan at Forest Hills. Eventually the old boy came around and was thereafter a prince to fly with. Some captains were hard to figure.
Our top numbers were in their 40s and would fly until 65; there was no automatic advancement due to retirements. The management was conservative to the point of paying cash on delivery of new equipment. These factors, couple with a slow introduction of larger and faster types, produced crew positions set in concrete. You were a captain, a co-pilot, for a flight engineer and thus you would remain for ever and ever, amen. Or so it seemed. A senior flight engineer would get a DC-3 bid in summer, then downgrade when the first snow sent riders back to Pullmans. An accident or two in midwinter meant furloughs. The waltz was three slow steps forward and two quick ones back.
It was back and forth to Chicago, nonstop both ways if you served with one of the "nine old men." There were no duty rigs, thus no incentive to hurry us home, so we spent long hours sitting in terminals. We flew 85 hard hours/month, often right to the minute. Half a dozen co-pilots or flight engineers, each with an hour or two left, would crew and end-of-the-month trip, the junior man working while the rest sat in back reading Time magazine articles about the big wages airline pilots earned.
Because captains drew extra pay for night flying, the most senior drew the bottom flat-salaried co-pilots. On the 20th, the next month's schedule patterns were posted. Only after captain awards were published were we allowed to bid. It was a popularity contest. Eventually it dawned on the graybeards that bad luck was not the reason they always drew the greenest co-pilots. Thereafter, all bids closed together, which solved nothing, for we scanned the captains' choices and adjusted ours; seniority is as valuable in avoiding, as in getting. They caught on, put in a new bid box with padlock and thereafter we could only hope for the best.
But not to belabor the point. Most left-seaters were good heads and most months were fun. Make no mistake, they ran the show aloft as well as on the ground. Because the Airline Pilots Association's bylaws gave a captain one vote and co-pilots and flight engineers on-half vote each, the skippers' control of policy was absolute. They owned the local council outright and, needless to say, appointed themselves to contract negotiating committees.
It was hardly democracy in action, yet it's unfair to blame it all on seniors' egoism. The early airliner was flown by a single pilot. When two and three-engine airplanes were introduced, a second pilot was dictated by law. The new boy was more an apprentice rather than a "co" pilot, in fact, some airlines charged him for the chance to learn at the feet of the masters. The industry was still young when we were hired (our airline was 21 years old) and flying an airplane was still seen as a one-man show. A captain received semiannual checkrides, a co-pilot none. He bore full responsibility, was on the carpet alone if something went wrong, and perhaps deserved a lion's share of the crew budget. This philosophy had lost its credence by 1950 but continued to pervade; thus, typical monthly pay for a DC-6 night run was $275 for the flight engineer, $460 for the co-pilot, and $1200 for the captain. Fair or not, we joined the game knowing the rules and were prepared to play by them. Senior co-pilots openly grumbled, but we new-hires kept quiet. A classmate said, "It's a nice job, if you can afford it."
Dallas-based crews also flew DC-4 and DC-6 schedules south to Peru. An international flight engineer got an extra $30/month, well worth going for. We laid over in Panama each way until a multiple crew plan allowed us to fly straight through. Co-pilots were qualified as relief captains and flight engineers as co-pilots, allowing one man to rest on each of the four trip legs while still maintaining a full crew up front. My co-pilot checkout lasted the 15 minutes needed to make three landings. Until the CAA ruled the scheme illegal, it was interesting duty. At Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fellow off-duty would take an unsold upper berth, fasten the belt and try not to think about the forthcoming dash down the gravel strip in a tropical downpour. There was a hill at the end. I remember once being awakened by an an awful silence and looking out the little upper berth window -- at the Havana terminal. Time to go back to work. Those uppers weren't half bad when you were bushed.
Advancement was painfully slow. The third summer I got in DC-3s, then it was back to the flight engineer seat in October. Gradually the furlough specter faded. It was all too obvious that the safe operation of the DC-6 on all-weather schedules required three crewmen. Co-pilots and flight engineers shared the responsibility and should be held partially accountable.
The traditional image of the all-wise mentor with two inexperienced aides began to crumble. Some of our top co-pilots had logged 15,000 hours became captain. After much infighting during which, to their credit, many captain sided with us, the bylaws were changed to give every member a full vote. Co-pilots and flight engineers demanded and received percentages of their captains' pay. Thereafter, annual proficiency checks for both ranks were required. The day of the "total crew concept" had not arrived, but it was closer.
The salad days were over, not that it was to be filet mignon from then on. At least we junior fellows could trade in the beat up old Chevy and actually go somewhere on vacation. I'd gone through my wartime savings and borrowed the limit on insurance. Living from payday to payday was depressing, no matter how nice the work. For all our sleepless nights, my small class had been spared furloughing. Now things would be somewhat easier. We warmed flight engineer and co-pilot seats for 16 years before the chance to wear four stripes. 30 years from the month we were hired, a friend and I sat down in our final groundschool class. "Back when we were DC-6 flight engineers, ddi you ever dream that one day you would fly as captain on the world's largest airliner?" I asked him. "We've paid our dues," he said.
Salad Days
The chief pilot thumbed through my Army records, pausing at one entry. "Homestead. You qualified as first pilot?" Air Transport Command's school at Homestead [AFB], Florida, trained crews on the C-54, the jumbo of its day. A coveted assignment, Homestead was rough; no airline school would be as demanding. A failed exam washed out a Major as quickly as a shavetail. Flight training was as exacting; the hood - similar to a curtain, which blocked the pilot's view outside the cockpit- was put up before brake release and went down at 200 feet on final. It was a memorable six weeks. "I was a check pilot there," he said. "Be in school 0830 Monday." The Homestead ordeal had paid off; three years of frustrating job hunting was over.
Eight of us vets were hired to satisfy a new CAA rule that a DC-6 or Connie crew must henceforth include a flight engineer. The uniform was a double-breasted blue affair with black stripes and brass buttons. It draped like a horse blanket and was so described by the old hands. Worse, it was winter-weight gabardine, a miserable choice for sweltering southwest routes. Plaim bill caps all around; as scrambled eggs for the captain came later. The cost of uniform and flight bag would be deducted from our pay. With the prize in hand, it seemed crass to ask what the pay would be. It transpired that we would draw $47.50/week while in school, less $6.25 for the uniform. Out on the line it would be $62.50, with an increase of $6.25 every six months until $100 was reached. That was it, except that DC-4 and DC-6 copilots got $10 and $15 bonuses, respectively. Because it took eight years to advance that far, the bonuses were academic. We'd be on probation the first year, and for another year as co-pilot.
The DC-6 engineer sat on a hard fold-down seat between the pilots. Most skippers accepted the new hand and put him to work. The odd hard-nose resented the implication that he and the co-pilot couldn't manage between them. With one of them, I attained invisibility, being completely ignored. Excluded from all activity and conversation, I was like a fan at Forest Hills. Eventually the old boy came around and was thereafter a prince to fly with. Some captains were hard to figure.
Our top numbers were in their 40s and would fly until 65; there was no automatic advancement due to retirements. The management was conservative to the point of paying cash on delivery of new equipment. These factors, couple with a slow introduction of larger and faster types, produced crew positions set in concrete. You were a captain, a co-pilot, for a flight engineer and thus you would remain for ever and ever, amen. Or so it seemed. A senior flight engineer would get a DC-3 bid in summer, then downgrade when the first snow sent riders back to Pullmans. An accident or two in midwinter meant furloughs. The waltz was three slow steps forward and two quick ones back.
It was back and forth to Chicago, nonstop both ways if you served with one of the "nine old men." There were no duty rigs, thus no incentive to hurry us home, so we spent long hours sitting in terminals. We flew 85 hard hours/month, often right to the minute. Half a dozen co-pilots or flight engineers, each with an hour or two left, would crew and end-of-the-month trip, the junior man working while the rest sat in back reading Time magazine articles about the big wages airline pilots earned.
Because captains drew extra pay for night flying, the most senior drew the bottom flat-salaried co-pilots. On the 20th, the next month's schedule patterns were posted. Only after captain awards were published were we allowed to bid. It was a popularity contest. Eventually it dawned on the graybeards that bad luck was not the reason they always drew the greenest co-pilots. Thereafter, all bids closed together, which solved nothing, for we scanned the captains' choices and adjusted ours; seniority is as valuable in avoiding, as in getting. They caught on, put in a new bid box with padlock and thereafter we could only hope for the best.
But not to belabor the point. Most left-seaters were good heads and most months were fun. Make no mistake, they ran the show aloft as well as on the ground. Because the Airline Pilots Association's bylaws gave a captain one vote and co-pilots and flight engineers on-half vote each, the skippers' control of policy was absolute. They owned the local council outright and, needless to say, appointed themselves to contract negotiating committees.
It was hardly democracy in action, yet it's unfair to blame it all on seniors' egoism. The early airliner was flown by a single pilot. When two and three-engine airplanes were introduced, a second pilot was dictated by law. The new boy was more an apprentice rather than a "co" pilot, in fact, some airlines charged him for the chance to learn at the feet of the masters. The industry was still young when we were hired (our airline was 21 years old) and flying an airplane was still seen as a one-man show. A captain received semiannual checkrides, a co-pilot none. He bore full responsibility, was on the carpet alone if something went wrong, and perhaps deserved a lion's share of the crew budget. This philosophy had lost its credence by 1950 but continued to pervade; thus, typical monthly pay for a DC-6 night run was $275 for the flight engineer, $460 for the co-pilot, and $1200 for the captain. Fair or not, we joined the game knowing the rules and were prepared to play by them. Senior co-pilots openly grumbled, but we new-hires kept quiet. A classmate said, "It's a nice job, if you can afford it."
Dallas-based crews also flew DC-4 and DC-6 schedules south to Peru. An international flight engineer got an extra $30/month, well worth going for. We laid over in Panama each way until a multiple crew plan allowed us to fly straight through. Co-pilots were qualified as relief captains and flight engineers as co-pilots, allowing one man to rest on each of the four trip legs while still maintaining a full crew up front. My co-pilot checkout lasted the 15 minutes needed to make three landings. Until the CAA ruled the scheme illegal, it was interesting duty. At Guayaquil, Ecuador, the fellow off-duty would take an unsold upper berth, fasten the belt and try not to think about the forthcoming dash down the gravel strip in a tropical downpour. There was a hill at the end. I remember once being awakened by an an awful silence and looking out the little upper berth window -- at the Havana terminal. Time to go back to work. Those uppers weren't half bad when you were bushed.
Advancement was painfully slow. The third summer I got in DC-3s, then it was back to the flight engineer seat in October. Gradually the furlough specter faded. It was all too obvious that the safe operation of the DC-6 on all-weather schedules required three crewmen. Co-pilots and flight engineers shared the responsibility and should be held partially accountable.
The traditional image of the all-wise mentor with two inexperienced aides began to crumble. Some of our top co-pilots had logged 15,000 hours became captain. After much infighting during which, to their credit, many captain sided with us, the bylaws were changed to give every member a full vote. Co-pilots and flight engineers demanded and received percentages of their captains' pay. Thereafter, annual proficiency checks for both ranks were required. The day of the "total crew concept" had not arrived, but it was closer.
The salad days were over, not that it was to be filet mignon from then on. At least we junior fellows could trade in the beat up old Chevy and actually go somewhere on vacation. I'd gone through my wartime savings and borrowed the limit on insurance. Living from payday to payday was depressing, no matter how nice the work. For all our sleepless nights, my small class had been spared furloughing. Now things would be somewhat easier. We warmed flight engineer and co-pilot seats for 16 years before the chance to wear four stripes. 30 years from the month we were hired, a friend and I sat down in our final groundschool class. "Back when we were DC-6 flight engineers, ddi you ever dream that one day you would fly as captain on the world's largest airliner?" I asked him. "We've paid our dues," he said.
