The Eternal Effo: How to Avoid a Career in Aviation

By Steve Gatley

The Eternal Effo: How to Avoid a Career in Aviation offers an insightful and often humorous look at a three-decade journey in commercial aviation. This memoir is not about the high-flying life of fighter pilots, test pilots, Concorde captains or astronauts. Instead, it’s a candid exploration of a less glamorous but no less eventful and enjoyable career in the skies.

In these pages, the author shares the lighter side of aviation, from amusing anecdotes to the unexpected joys of the job, as he successfully navigates the industry into retirement. This book is for anyone who’s ever been curious about the realities of a career in aviation, minus the typical heroics and high-octane adventures. It’s a testament to the day-to-day effort and perseverance required to stay aloft in this challenging field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035832316

Steve Gatley

An airline pilot for nearly 30 years, now thankfully retired, Steve lives quietly at home with his wife and does whatever he is told, unless he doesn’t feel like it, such as more travelling or walking the dog when it’s raining.

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About the Author

An airline pilot for nearly 30 years, now thankfully retired, Steve lives quietly at home with his wife and does whatever he is told, unless he doesn’t feel like it, such as more travelling or walking the dog when it’s raining.

Dedication

To SJ for putting up with me.

To C for encouraging me.

To all the folk I shared an aeroplane or a simulator with, even the ones who gave me a hard time. I probably deserved it and without you all, this could never have been written.

Copyright Information ©

Steve Gatley 2024

The right of Steve Gatley to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035832309 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035832316 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thanks to all at Austin Macauley Publishers for the chance to tell my story, also to whoever invented the word processor. I would have hated to write it all

by hand.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth.

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth

Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung

High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,

I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung

My eager craft through footless halls of air.

John Gillespie Magee, Jr 1941

Flight 3456 standby, number 157 in sequence for start-up, call back tomorrow.

Delhi Air traffic control, 2013

For SJ

Introduction

Always be nice to those people younger than you, because they will be the ones writing about you.

Cyril Connolly, 1903–1974

There have been many splendid works of literature about the business of taking to the skies, there will doubtless be more in the future.

Reading through these masterpieces, one fact seems to stand out above all others. Much as the victors in battle get to write history, aviation reminiscences tend to have been written by those who have enjoyed successful careers, from the pioneers in their canvas and string contraptions to heroes of the world’s aerial conflicts.

There are the early jet pilots and the retired Concorde captains, famous test pilots and those who climbed to the top of the fabled pyramid from where they soared into space and walked on the moon.

A career in aviation requires many of the qualities needed to succeed in any other profession; skill, dedication, single mindedness, a desire to succeed and the determination to see things through. The big difference is that progression up the aviation ladder requires a large dollop of luck and good timing.

Without this, no matter how diligent you may be, no matter how much work you put into learning the intricacies of aircraft, no matter how skilful and practiced you become as a pilot, you can be stuck in the slow lane forever whilst others favoured with better fortune move on ahead.

Whilst luck can play a large part in any career, those not blessed with it can usually substitute hard work and experience when it comes to climbing the greasy pole and getting on. Not in this game, you can’t.

So, I wondered about those who due to the vagaries of fate had experienced less than steady progress. Those who fell through the cracks, who were passed over, laid off and generally reamed out with a cricket bat on numerous occasions.

Surely, they have a story to tell. Surely, their path through the aviation jungle has just as much relevance as those who ended their careers garlanded with honours, gold braid and final salary pensions? What about those who didn’t quite make it? Who missed out on the crucial opportunities, those who slaved away over a hot autopilot for twenty plus years and who were always the bridesmaid, never the bride?

This account will hopefully start to redress the balance. We cannot all be sky gods; fate can be as cruel as it can be kind. I shall endeavour to describe a journey through the fickle and obstacle-strewn business of commercial flying that is not necessarily a tale of glory and nonstop achievement. A bit of a balls up, in fact.

Author’s Note

For those who do not toil in the fields of aviation, the terminology can be a bit confusing. Effo=FO=first officer, the pilot who is designated as second in command of the aeroplane and who occupies the seat on the right-hand side, next to the captain who occupies the seat on the left.

If you thought that the seating arrangements at a wedding were contentious and the cause of bitterness and discord, then you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The term FO also includes those who are designated as a senior first officer or SFO. These individuals have been judged to have sufficient experience and ability to have a command of their own and to bear the title captain, but due to lack of seniority or lack of command vacancies, still occupy the right-hand seat. They are identifiable by the three bars on their uniforms (junior FOs have two and captains wear four) and by the long-suffering, resigned look on their faces.

Rather like the religious concept of purgatory, this state of affairs has also been known to persist for eternity.

Confused? Then read on.

Chapter 1

Beginnings

The saying ‘getting there is half the fun’ became obsolete with the advent of commercial airlines.

Henry J Tillman

So, there I was in my mid-thirties, in what used to be a good profession that was on its knees. Taken over by the accountants, riven by short termism, dominated by the funny handshake brigade, wages cut to the minimum, no pensions and away from home for weeks on end.

Then I got into aviation.

Flying used to be a proper career. When I started, experience was everything and that elusive first break engendered tales of daring, of camping out on the chief pilot’s doorstep in order to thrust a CV into his (nearly always his) hand. There were piles of rejection letters, heartache, disappointments, broken marriages and threats to repossess the house.

Taking up golf just in case you happened upon one of the blessed ones who could put in a word, horror stories of application letters being ritually burnt by laughing secretaries. And this after the misery and sweat involved getting a bloody licence in the first place.

I should have realised whilst having brain failure over rhumb lines, Schuler tuning and latitude nuts. I should have looked around at my fellow sufferers and noticed that there were some with knowing smiles on their faces, should have noticed the decals on their battered briefcases and crested badges on their olive-green windcheaters. I should have realised that there were some who were always destined to have a charmed path through the aviation jungle.

And eventually there came the big break, joy beyond imagining over an invitation to attend interview and the elation at the call offering a position. The sneaking guilt, short lived and transitory over those fellow sufferers who were still waiting the summons from the gods and the even shorter pangs over those who had been passed over. Thank god it wasn’t me was the only thought.

There followed induction days and the relief of having been chosen. Ground school and more classrooms; tedious but at least we were here. The growing camaraderie, then reality thudded home in the shape of the simulator. There was always an unrealistic hope that the hideous torture at the hands of the CAA examiner as you sweated under the hood to get the coveted instrument rating would be a once only experience, a rite of passage akin to the tribal rituals of passing into manhood.

This excruciating business was to be repeated every six months throughout the career we had wished for so vehemently. Inevitably, there were failures, tearful pleading swept aside by heartless instructors who wore the great and terrible epithet TRE¹, a status so exalted that it was spoken of in fear and trembling and even then, only in whispers.

Once again, utter relief that it wasn’t me who had a bad day trumped nascent sympathy. No inkling yet that in many cases, these deities had feet of clay. That they were granted this awesome power not because of their experience or ability but simply because they joined the company on Thursday instead of Friday or worse, due to having shared a squadron, a passion for golf or a tendency to roll up one trouser leg with the chief pilot.

But never mind, soon forgotten as the simulator check was completed and gallons of Scrutfuttock’s Old and Nasty downed in celebration in the Mason’s arms, for tomorrow we fly.

And so my course intake progressed to line training. Pride as the uniform was donned in anger for the first time, trying not to preen as the two gold stripes glowed in the sun and pretending that we hadn’t spent hours the previous night in front of the mirror. Trying to ignore the ribald laughter and shouts of ‘wanker!’ as we marched through departures with our caps worn at a jaunty angle, through hordes of tattooed fuckwits awaiting transport to Benidorm or Ibiza where they would represent the UK with such diplomacy and honour.

And there she was, that long coveted aircraft, the unobtainable object of desire that had haunted my dreams for so long. As I mounted the steps, I noticed that it actually looked a bit tired and the paint was starting to peel, entering the hallowed ground, there was a faint odour of vomit just below the surface. There seemed to be dozens of harassed looking folk rushing hither and yon, cleaning, vacuuming and rarely speaking English. Maybe they did funny handshakes as well.

Settling into the right-hand seat on that first day, barely able to comprehend that this was actually happening, I greeted the trainer who was not a TRE, but a more human individual without the whiff of sulphur that accompanied the evil ones. Rumpled and slightly distracted, he took the left seat and with a weary sigh, opened the technical log.

Shaking his head sadly, he read through the list of things wrong with the aircraft, repeating the defects that in his opinion should have consigned the machine to the breaker’s yard but on that day, on the orders of management, we would have to live with.

I didn’t care and nodded sagely as if actually understood what was being said but all of my attention was focused on trying to remember what all the buttons and switches were for and what on earth I was supposed to do next.

Over the following weeks, my comrades and I progressed from utter neophytes to barely competent junior first officers. We avoided hitting mountains, other aircraft, vehicles and ground staff, managed not to break the landing gear, avoided becoming the lead item on the news by way of creating a smoking hole in the ground and put more lines on the faces of a succession of trainers until the day of the final line check arrived.

Inevitably, there had been a couple more failures along the way as it gradually dawned on all involved that some were never going to make it and were in fact a danger to themselves and all around them. This was a Darwinian business, brutal and final. Once again, thanks were offered up and a goat or two sacrificed as the survivors were passed to fly the line.

Congratulations son, you made it.

---

TRE: Type Rating Examiner. Normally combined with TRI or Type Rating Instructor. A god like creature who can do no wrong, cross one at your peril.↩︎

Chapter 2

Flying the Line

And so, I could at last call myself an airline pilot. Men looked envious, women swooned and bank balances soared.

Oh no, they didn’t.

The reality of a junior nobody in a regional airline was that of early morning starts, 4 or 5 sector days and 100mph fog in the Channel Islands. Of cabin crew who hated us and all we stood for and who had nightclub bouncers for boyfriends.

A dwindling social life and bad-tempered captains who grumbled that they were not paid to train and who had conveniently forgotten that it was them struggling with the controls and reams of paperwork not so very long ago.

The reality was crewing departments who thought aircrew ran on alkaline batteries rather than food and were under the impression that we just plugged ourselves into the mains for a couple of hours when off duty. Rotten hotels that didn’t serve breakfast before 8.00am when you had a 4.00am call.

Weekend stopovers in the Shetland Isles where it never got light during the winter or dark during the summer and where the locals seemed to have been the inspiration for the The League of Gentlemen.

The reality was lousy pay and a mountain of debt left over from training. Nasty thin uniforms that fell apart and a nagging feeling that train drivers had better terms and conditions. And what’s more, they did.

The reality was a car park in the next county along from the airport terminal, security staff who delighted in humiliating aircrew and pretended to be ex-Special Forces whilst reading mercenary monthly at home with their mum. You started to realise that the image did not match the reality.

The cabin crew did not want to snare a pilot as was popularly assumed, they were often gay or preferred hulking yobbos who occasionally appeared glowering and grunting in the crew room whilst Shazza collected her duty-free fags and waved goodbye to her envious mates.

There was some fun to be had; stopovers occasionally turned into pissed up parties and a generally regretted opportunity to confirm that pilots had big watches and small willies. Flying, although a job at the end of the day could be challenging, especially on smaller less automated aircraft operating into dodgy airports in crappy weather.

All too soon, six months had gone by and it was once again time to pass into the hands of those whom in a different era, would have been hanging and disembowelling traitors for King Henry.

As the last months had been spent having such fun, not reading crew notices and hurling the aircraft manuals into a dark corner, the biannual simulator checks often came as a nasty shock. My first such experience was with a trainer who was reputed to sleep hanging upside down in a cave along with his fellow creatures of the night. Balding and austere with a raging case of religion and no sense of humour whatsoever, this was always going to be interesting. And so it proved to be.

Sparing the gruesome details, I scraped through and was sent away feeling that I really had no business in the front of an aircraft. Discussing the experience with a senior colleague, I was cheered by his explanation that the main reason for the dour temperament of the witch finder general was due to his never having had a blowjob.

Lesson learned I carried on, increasing in experience and confidence and made a better job the next time, having to repeat the engine failure manoeuvre only a couple of times instead of twenty. I was still described as a useless twat on the official paperwork but that was a definite improvement on "spawn of the devil, heretic, blasphemer and useless twat".

My annual line check came and went. After around a year in Manchester having far too much of a good time, my daughter was born and I decided that I had better seek a transfer up to Glasgow, where the family awaited.

I have already slandered the inhabitants of the beautiful Shetland Isles; they were in fact a wonderful place and I genuinely miss my weekends up there. One scheduled rotation had us park up in Sumburgh for about three hours before returning to Glasgow via Aberdeen.

Rather than sit drinking coffee, I would change into walking clothes in the back of the aircraft and leave the airport through the terminal. A five-minute stroll led to a deserted beach where the only sounds were the wind, the waves and the cry of seabirds, all this being about 500 yards from a busy airfield. Try that at Heathrow.

At the end of the beach was a small hamlet with a stone jetty lying in a tranquil harbour. I would sit on the jetty, the sun sparkling on the water and lending meagre warmth to my windblown face and wonder why I would ever want to be anywhere else.

I doubt that this harmless and delightful activity is now possible. In a world terrified of the next outrage, you would be surrounded by armed troopers clad in helmets, gas masks and Kevlar screaming, ‘STEP AWAY FROM THE SEABIRD NOW!’ before being trussed, blindfolded and rushed to Guantanamo in a CIA jet.

Another long-forgotten joy after checking into the wonderfully mad hotel was to meet the crew and walk up to the lighthouse on Sumburgh Head. Here one could enjoy a stunning sunset set to a chorus of Puffins and crashing waves. This was, I must stress, a summer activity, try such a thing during the long dark winter months and you would be blown off the path and not touch the ground again until you reached Denmark.

Upon return, we would repair to the bar, eat a hearty dinner and then attempt to play pool on the table that had apparently been rescued from the seabed after fifty years and was a bit bent as a result.

I may have given the impression that the climate around these parts was somewhat tempestuous. Well it was, there were few trees and activities such as football or golf were scarcely possible as the ball would have disappeared in an Easterly direction, shortly after leaving the relative shelter of the ground and never be seen again.

The same for any tree that foolishly attempted to poke its head above six inches or so, those few examples of foliage that survived the howling winds generally assumed a horizontal posture. The locals preferred instead to drink themselves helpless and once a year, re-enact a Viking festival known as Up Helly Aa which involved horned helmets, setting boats on fire and drinking themselves helpless for a week.

Never ever, upon pain of death by having your lungs torn out and splayed across your naked back, (another Viking tradition) refer to the Shetlanders as Scottish, they are Norsemen or Norse folk in these PC times, and proud of it.

These conditions made operating aircraft rather interesting. On one occasion, the gale was so strong that although we were able to land, we could do nothing else since the wind was about 300mph straight down the runway. We stopped and a huge refuelling bowser parked next to us in order to provide sufficient shelter for the door to be opened.

Behind the bowser was a bus, rocking wildly on its springs. The punters left, the new ones bundled into the aircraft and the door closed. A sturdy, low-slung tug was attached to the nose wheel and we were pushed back up the runway like an F14 Tomcat being readied for action in Topgun.

Getting into the spirit, Iceman in the left-hand seat adjusted his sunglasses whilst farty pants on the right gripped the edge of the seat and tried not to blubber. Power was applied and we became airborne in about three seconds, by the time we crossed the far end of the runway, we were at ten thousand feet and had a groundspeed¹ of five knots. All in a day’s work in the Shetlands.

Another time, we had arrived on a dark and howling winter evening. The wind was so violent that we had to literally force ourselves down the aircraft steps and claw our way to the shelter of the terminal. A particularly powerful gust removed the hat from one of the cabin crew and sent it bowling along the ground, to be lost in the raging blackness. She was quite philosophical once inside and actually able to talk again, ‘I needed a new one anyhow,’ she laughed.

Imagine her horror the next morning when a baggage handler, a fine local lad with one eye in the centre of his forehead, two black teeth and a Blue Peter banjo playing badge presented her with a battered, sodden lump festooned with seaweed. ‘I’ve found your hat,’ he proudly announced. She smiled sweetly and fled to the sanctuary of the aircraft before marriage could be proposed.

The airline had many characters in its employ and none more so than in the further flung reaches of the network. One captain, a small fellow who had the physique of a knotted string and a well-known fondness for a drop or two of the hard stuff, was to be my valiant commander on a Shetlands trip.

Upon arrival at the hotel, the weather was unusually vile and we sat in the bar whilst the wind tried its utmost to move the entire building a couple of miles to the east. We decided to repair to the room of one of the crew to watch TV and continue the party. Sir, who was somewhat the worse for wear by now, announced that he was, ‘going for a walk.’

We stared in amazement, not only was it the sort of weather that Led Zeppelin set gothic, doom-laden songs to, but El Capitan was clad in a three-piece suit plus winkle picker shoes and would need to be nailed down to stand any chance of survival. Even Ranulph Fiennes would have trained for six months before venturing outside but no; he was offski as the Scots liked to say.

An hour or more later, the three of us were sprawled on the bed, watching something vaguely rude on the box. The door flew open with a bang and Sir, soaked to the skin and apparently even more pissed, stood in the entrance like a drowned rat. He peered about him through the water dripping from his Bobby Charlton comb over, took in the fact that his FO was lying between two very attractive girls and then noticed the mildly sexual contents of the televisual entertainment.

‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of that!’ he exclaimed and proceeded to fall flat on his face.

The next morning, he was obscenely bright and chirpy and none the worse for his experience. As we ran through the checks on the aircraft, he leaned over and asked, ‘did you have a good threesome then?’

I had to inform him that sadly, such a fantasy did not in fact take place. We were laughing too hard after putting him to bed.

The breakfast room in the hotel looked out onto the wild shore of Shetland, waves could be seen crashing onto the rocks sending huge white spumes high into the air.

These waves also smashed into the end of the Westerly runway and often deposited things upon its surface. One morning, the tempest was such that the runway was closed whilst three trawlers, a blue whale and a Russian submarine were removed from the tarmac.

What an absolutely brilliant place, I still miss it.

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Groundspeed is the speed of the aircraft over the ground; this is the airspeed minus the wind component if flying into wind, as you most certainly should