Aviation- My Favorite Mistake

“Did you know when you go it’s the perfect ending, to the bad day I’ve gotten used to spending? When you go all I know is you’re my favorite mistake.” –Sheryl Crow

As I was locking up the office yesterday this Sheryl Crow song popped into my head. There is no disputing that ever since I took my first flight lesson on 10/1/1984 I’ve been seriously preoccupied with flying airplanes of one type or another.

Recently I realized that aviation to me resembles an addictive behavior. Similar to any number of other addictions, flying calls to me each and every time I think I can abstain from it. Every one of these calls requires me to make ever-larger investments of life force and treasure to sate my ever-growing tolerance. Daily it seems like I need to do more and more to meet and maintain my buzz.

I earned my Private Pilot license two years after that first lesson on 9/9/1986. I rode with Ray Nobel in Cessna N95751 a 1985 Cessna 152. At the time the plane was only a year old, so what they say about students excelling when the equipment is new and in good shape is true.  It was a big goal of mine to have the license behind me by the time I got married on 10/11/1986. Everyone told me that if I didn’t get it done my new wife would put an end to my free spending ways.  Funny, Judy actually supported my flying, or should I say is an enabler of it.

Instrument, Commercial, Flight Instructor, and then ATP followed the Private. Then add in the seasonal requirements, necessary to maintain it all.  Second-class medicals every twelve months, Biennial Flight Reviews and Flight Instructor Refresher Clinic’s are required every twenty-four calendar months. In between that it’s Instrument Proficiency Checks every six months to keep you sharp. And just like an addiction all of this takes time and money from your life

Looking back across 2012 as I closed the gate to go home I started reflecting on the business of aviation and my role as a flight-training provider. I finished 2012 with 842 hours of dual instruction given which is a pretty good year up from 713 in 2011. Now any pilot will tell you flying eight hundred hours in a year is a good deal of time. This was revenue time and does not include times that I would just hop into an airplane and throw back an hour or two. Honestly I found most of it enjoyable despite some really annoying moments interspersed between the times when I was flying and when I wasn’t.

But when you look at the total hours flown it equates to about seventy hours a month. Still a good deal of flying but when you break that down further its only sixteen hours of work a week.  As a small business owner the flight instruction portion of my week is our product. It’s how we ring the register, keep the rent paid, the doors open and the lights on. So after flying my sixteen a week I do have a few other things that keep me busy for the balance of the roughly sixty hours a week I spend caring and feeding for Motion Sim.

I totaled the time because I’ve recently accepted a part time position working for a 135 operator and they needed some numbers to put next to my name as they started the vetting process. The offer couldn’t have come at a better time says the guy who is only billing seventeen hours each week.

But as I was attending the 135-ground school last week I was amazed at the knowledge level that the instructor and the other participants were exhibiting. Now all of them have worked there for a considerable amount of time but as the class progressed I realized that flying in this environment is going to require acquiring an instructional level of knowledge about another chapter of the federal aviation regulations, the aircraft specific information, their operation specifications and general operations manual while learning to fly the airplanes.

It was like throwing a gauntlet down, all of this new stuff to learn and exciting new airplanes to fly.

Oh Boy here we go again.