Why Do You Want to Be an Airline Pilot

By Ian Mckenzie

This is the story of a young mans dream to become an airline pilot. A joy flight in a Tiger Moth at the age of ten fired his enthusiasm to fly and led all the way to becoming a check captain on a modern-day jet aircraft. Along the way, he was to experience flying in New Guinea not long out of the stone age, face the dangers and rigors of flying the Cairns Aerial Ambulance in a rugged country with no aides, and go through the trauma of the 1989 airline dispute that changed the Australian airline industry and saw him leave Australia (along with 1,100 other pilots) to be involved in the setting up of SilkAir, the regional carrier of Singapore Airlines.

He was close to the events that led to the crash of MI185 when 109 lives were lost and was heavily involved in the training of the young new breed of Asian pilots.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 9, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543409802

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Copyright © 2018 by Ian Mckenzie.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2018907472

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-5434-0982-6

                            Softcover                           978-1-5434-0981-9

                            eBook                                978-1-5434-0980-2

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/05/2018

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1   My Early Years

Chapter 2     Australia

Chapter 3     Flying At Last

Chapter 4     Commercial Pilots’ School

Chapter 5     Starting an Airline Career

Chapter 6     New Guinea

Chapter 7     Back to Australia

Chapter 8     Cairns — Those Odd Pilots in Far North Queensland

Chapter 9     The Cairns Aerial Ambulance

Chapter 10   Now That Was Real Flying

Chapter 11   Back to the Mainstream Airline

Chapter 12   A Captain At Last

Chapter 13   Jet Flying

Chapter 14   Off to New Zealand

Chapter 15   The Airline Dispute of 1989

Chapter 16   A New Career in Singapore

Chapter 17   A Day in the Life of an Airline Pilot

Chapter 18   Back to the Simulator

Chapter 19   Life in Singapore

Chapter 20   Line Training

Chapter 21   Final Years in Singapore

Chapter 22   The Disaster of Flight MI 185

Chapter 23   Back from Retirement

Chapter 24   All Those Checks

Chapter 25   An Airline Pilot’s Lifestyle

Chapter 26   The Joy of Flying

Epilogue

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PROLOGUE

The SilkAir Boeing 737-300 was being radar vectored for an ILS (instrument landing system) approach at Singapore’s runway 20L. The weather was overcast at two thousand feet, but visibility was severely reduced because of smoke haze. This was common in Singapore this time of year, when fires in Indonesia, lit by farmers to clear their land of forests, were raging.

In the cockpit, I was monitoring the performance of my trainee, First Officer John. He had performed well on the trip from Jakarta, but I felt that the approach and landing under these conditions would test him. At the halfway point in his line training, I was paying close attention to his performance for good reason; he was inconsistent in his progress.

However, he lined up on the ILS precisely and commenced descent on the glide slope. At one thousand feet above the ground we, became visual with runway 20L appearing out of the dust and smoke haze. John had lined up perfectly on the runway 20L centreline. A ship steaming up the channel between the runway, and Pulau Ubin to the north was crossing our path and made an impressive sight, but my attention was fully involved in monitoring the performance of F/O John.

At five hundred feet, I called, ‘Visual, runway straight ahead!’ and John went from flying on instruments to flying visually.

That was when things started to go wrong. We had a slight crosswind from the left, and to compensate for the sideways drift, the aircraft had been turned a few degrees to the left to maintain the ILS centreline. This meant that the runway appeared, through the windscreen, off to the right. The normal practice when becoming visual under these conditions is to maintain the same heading unless the wind changes. John, noting the runway off to the right, turned towards it, but as the wind was still coming from the left, the result was that the aircraft started drifting to the right. He also started to rise above the glideslope.

After several calls from me, he corrected, we crossed the threshold, and he flared and touched down in a not-too-gentle manner. We were just slightly right of the centreline and a little long. Approaching the high-speed taxiway, I stowed the speed brake, which was the signal for the first officer to commence the after-landing checks. He busied himself with the checks while I taxied the aircraft to our allocated aerobridge.

I turned the Boeing 737-300, following the guide line to Changi’s aerobridge F87, and gently rolled to a stop at the line, parked the brakes, and placed the start levers to cutoff. The two CFM56 turbo jet engines wound down quickly, and their dull roar eased to a slow ticking as the turbine blades cooled from seven hundred degrees and contracted, allowing a small movement of the blades as they slowly rotated in the slight breeze. After F/O John had gone through the shutdown checklist, I rolled my seat back, deep in thought. We had just completed the return flight to Jakarta in Indonesia and had an hour to kill before continuing on to Phuket in Thailand. I was perplexed.

I was based in Singapore, flying for SilkAir, the regional wing of Singapore Airlines, and in fact was one of the original pilots employed to start up the new carrier in 1990. With my previous training experience and the rapid expansion of the airline, it was only a short time before I was pitched into the hectic life of training pilots who were recruited from all over the world. We were truly an international band of aviators. The original seven came from Australia, as did the next eight when the second aircraft arrived. However, in the third year of the airline, pilots started arriving from India, Great Britain, the United States, New Zealand, and Yugoslavia, the last group having fled after their country was fractured by war and their national airline ceased to operate. After the Australians, the Yugoslavs were the second largest group and comprised both Croats and Serbs.

Eventually, nationalistic pride meant that the Singaporeans were to be given a go, and a fairly determined drive was instituted to increase the local content of the pilot numbers. Initially, these pilots were taken from the Singapore Air Force, but this source proved inadequate because the locals would much sooner fly for big brother Singapore Airlines, with their Boeing 747s and worldwide routes, than for SilkAir, which had confined their choice of aircraft to the much smaller Boeing 737 and the shorter routes to immediate Asian ports. The next logical step, therefore, was to recruit local pilots with limited flying experience. In a small country like Singapore, this source also was limited, particularly as any young Chinese man (75 percent are Chinese in Singapore) would much sooner go into business – especially finance, with the chance of big money – than into aviation, with its relatively low remuneration in the early stages of a career. The final step was to take young men with no flying experience straight off the street via walk-in interviews. That was at the heart of why, sitting in the aircraft on the tarmac in Singapore, I was perplexed at that moment.

John was a very pleasant young man and seemed reasonably intelligent. In fact, my initial thoughts on meeting him were that he would probably make a reasonable pilot. It is both a big task and a big ask to take a young man with no flying experience, teach him to fly on light aircraft, and, within a short time and minimal flying hours’ experience, put him into a high-speed and relatively heavy jet aeroplane. I had seen the problems that these young men faced before. Some had struggled and made it, while others had fallen by the wayside. Initially, I thought that John would be OK. He had gone through the first phase, which was mainly backup duties – learning the systems operation – and showed reasonable skill levels. He was now into the second phase of his training, where he actually operated the controls to the point of doing take-offs and landings, and it was in this stage that I began to wonder.

About a week earlier, I had become slightly concerned about his progress. Initially, he had advanced normally but now seemed to be stagnating. It is normal for training of this type to go in peaks and troughs, but I was starting to query his motivation, and so after one trip and at the debriefing, I asked him, ‘Why do you want to be an airline pilot?’

I expected him to say something, even if it was the standard Singaporean reply of ‘To meet nice girls and overnight in exciting places all over the world’. However, he said nothing and did not seem able to articulate his reasons for his career choice, so I let it drop. A week later, I was no closer to understanding him and why he was not progressing as he should, so I asked the question again. ‘Why do you want to be an airline pilot?’

He was silent for a long time, and I was beginning to think I would never get an answer, so I said, ‘I’ll tell you why I wanted to be an airline pilot. In fact, it is why most Australian and New Zealand pilots got into the industry. When we were small boys, we used to dream of aeroplanes. We made models and flew them as children. We hung over the aero club fences, looking at the planes, yearning for the day we were old enough to learn to fly. When we were old enough and had saved up our hard-earned dollars, sometimes working in less-than-desirable jobs, we spent our weekends at an aero club paying to fly to fulfil our dream, building up our flying hours to achieve that coveted licence. At the end of that lengthy and expensive process, commercial pilot licence in hand, we scoured the country looking for a flying job. Some found employment with third-rate outfits flying in dodgy aircraft under questionable conditions, all in the interests of accumulating flying hours and thus making you more attractive to the airlines. Many were taken advantage of by unscrupulous operators paying less than the going rate. Other pilots paid out further money to get instructor ratings in the hope of accumulating hours by teaching others to fly. Those that were offered a job where they were paid to fly thought they were in heaven. If they got into an airline, then they felt they had reached the pinnacle. That’s why I wanted to be an airline pilot, so why do you want to be an airline pilot?’

He finally looked at me and said, ‘I knew you were going to ask me that question again. I have had a good think about it. The answer is, I don’t know. I have never really had any ambition to be an airline pilot. In fact, I have never really had any ambition to be anything. I was just a mobile phone salesman and saw the advertisement for SilkAir one day and thought I would try it.’

I was dumbfounded at his reply. It really threw me. To have the dream job of flying for a major airline, earning good money, and not caring or having any motivation to do so was way beyond my understanding. Finally, I said to him, ‘Flying – and the airline industry in particular – is no place for someone who lacks motivation. You get careless, make mistakes, and can kill yourself and probably a lot of others too. So get motivated or get out.’

I like to think that he did get motivated because he did eventually pass his checks and became a first officer with SilkAir.

However, the incident did bring home to me the changing attitude to flying. It seemed that the days of the highly motivated young men who lived for flying were being replaced by a new breed of computer-literate young men with different approaches to the industry. The daring young men in their flying machines were being replaced by IT specialists flying computerised aircraft, where computers determine what can or cannot be done and skill and experience are not as important as they once were. Technology has made flying a lot safer, but the fun of pure flying has gone.

In years gone by, the major cause of aircraft accidents was mechanical failure – in particular, engine failures. The old piston engines with their myriad of reciprocating parts were nowhere near as reliable as the jet engines of today. Modern jet engines have an excess of power, which means that full power is not often required on take-off, thus decreasing the wear and tear. This, with other advances, makes modern aircraft much more reliable, with fewer mechanical failures and more accidents attributed to pilot error.

Today aircraft are highly computer driven, which makes them much safer but does tend to take the pilot out of the loop. Pilots are poor monitors, and the increase in automation has meant that the younger breed of pilots do not have the background experience of ‘flying by the seat of your pants’, unlike pilots of old. Unfortunately, there has been an increasing number of accidents where pilots have become distracted or too involved in what the computers or automatics are doing (or not doing). They have forgotten the most important rule of flying: fly the plane first. I find it concerning that even some ‘experienced’ pilots are unable to fly a visual approach when ground-based letdown aids fail or are taken out of service. They seem to have forgotten the basic rules of flying aircraft.

But then maybe I am just an ancient aviator and still pining for the good old days.

CHAPTER 1

My Early Years

I was born in 1940; the events of World War II had a fairly strong influence on my early years. In those days, for us kids, the ugly reality of war was glossed over for a more romantic scenario of dashing heroes, particularly the blue-eyed, nerves-of-steel fighter pilot. It was natural that some young boys aspired to become pilots, and in the small country town of Geraldine in New Zealand, far removed from the realities and faster pace of city life, the genesis of my ambition to become a pilot was born. Biggles, that cool hero of Capt W. E. Johns, was almost exclusively my reading material at aged 10. My teacher suggested that I broaden my range a little, which led me to discover Paul Brickhill and his books on the Dam Busters and Douglas Bader.

I went the usual route of model aeroplanes, which was quite difficult in Geraldine as there were no facilities for modelling in such a small town. That required no small amount of imagination, which led me to designing and building my own creations, usually of a military background. They were powered by a small diesel engine. In a town with no modelling facilities, fuel was difficult to find, so lateral thinking was required. I solved this by buying bottles of ether and castor oil at the local chemist. Can you imagine a chemist selling ether to a 10-year-old today? There was an endless succession of models: a Spitfire, a two-engine Wellington bomber, and my last effort, a jet Hawker Hunter. This last model had a pulse jet motor which, sadly, I could never get to start as it required a battery and starter coil, which put out ten thousand volts to start it. Getting a belt from it proved quite exciting though! I am not sure if I was all that successful at flying these aircraft as my memories seem to be more of crashes rather than successful flights. There must have been some successes though because I did not lose my enthusiasm for flying.

It was about that time that I had my first flight in an aeroplane. We used to go to Timaru for the Christmas holidays, and Timaru had an airport, so one day my elder brother Colin and I cycled out to the airport to go for a joy ride. We had saved up ten shillings each, and for that, we could get a ten-minute flight.

We wandered around an Auster and a Tiger Moth parked on the grass apron and marvelled at the complexity of the aircraft. The sense of smell is one of the most powerful senses and one that can easily trigger memories from years gone by. Old fabric aircraft like the Tiger Moth have a peculiar smell, the aviation fuel and dope used on the fabric, so that a whiff of that essence can still transport me back sixty-six years to that time.

Bold as brass, we – Colin, 11, and I, all of 10 years old – approached a man in the office and asked, ‘Please, mister, can we go for a flight?’

He took our money and bundled us out to an old Tiger Moth. Colin was strapped into the forward cockpit with the five-point harness, and I was deposited on his lap. I was pretty small and fitted in quite nicely. I was a little nervous about the lack of harness for me and hoped that we wouldn’t be doing any slow rolls or, if we did, Colin would hold on tight to me. A mechanic swung the prop, the engine spluttered to life, and before long, we were rolling down the grass strip for take-off.

That sensation when you become airborne in a light aircraft for the first time stays with you forever, a slight feeling of insecurity – in my case, no seat belt, perhaps an awareness of the height and the reliance on a fragile aircraft to keep you up there. As height is gained and the ground recedes, the insecurity lessens and the wonder and freedom of flight takes hold. We climbed and turned and descended and came in for a landing. All too soon, the experience was over, but the sight, the smell, and the sound live with me to this day, over six decades later. I was hooked and knew what I wanted to do.

So at age 11, I went big time, no more models but the real thing. I decided to build a full-size aeroplane. Actually, it was the brainchild of my brother and his friends. I horned in on the exercise because of my flying and model-building experience. I was an inveterate builder of things. Money was always in short supply, so I had to rely on my imagination a lot, scrounging whatever I could to build my creations, and I must have driven my father nuts with my scavenging. He would order a load of firewood consisting of the long slab offcuts from the saw mill, and before he could summon the steam traction engine to cut it up, I had pilfered all the good timber to build a hut. I once pinched the engine and wheels from the motor mower to make a go-kart. It was a great success, but my enthusiasm was somewhat dampened by having to mow the lawn with the hand mower from then on. Billy carts were old hat to me. I made all types, from racy creations with wings that never got airborne no matter how steep the hill to a beautiful replica of a Jaguar XK120, complete with headlights. The headlights were fashioned from the lids of preserving jars, which incurred the wrath of my mother as she was using them at the time. The body was covered with plywood. This plywood was a real treasure for me, and even though you could not buy plywood readily in those times, I had a good supply. Tea came in plywood tea chests, and the local grocer would give them away. All you had to do was dismantle them to get sheets of thin ply.

The real aeroplane was not my design, so I use that excuse for its ultimate failure. Even to my 11-year-old eye, I could see that there were some design flaws, the power-to-weight ratio being the greatest. There was no power. We were going to rely on the speed going down a rather steep hill to provide the power, so I guess it was a glider rather than a true aeroplane. The undercarriage was made from discarded pram wheels and the framework from any bits of timber we could find, including the odd tomato stake from the veggie garden. Covering the framework proved a problem until my brother Colin suggested wallpaper, and there was a fair amount of that lying around from a renovation. Although not the ideal material – it’s rather fragile – it did fulfil our most important requirement. It was cheap – in fact, it cost nothing – and we solved the problem of strength by laminating several layers. Of course, we could not afford real glue for that purpose, so we made our own with filched flour from our mother’s larder and water. Mixing flour with water and boiling the mixture seemed to provide a reasonable adhesive. With this, we pasted the paper