Truth in Advertising

My hangar neighbor and former co-worker Jim and I were having a beer before we headed over to the “big” local airport for their yearly free BBQ and propaganda fest. You know the kind of airport I mean: the one with higher fuel prices, class C airspace, student ATC controllers, and hangar rents that would make Elon Musk say, “Uffdah, that seems a little pricey.”

Jim popped the top of his brew and said, “Did you see that Jeff died?”

Yes, I had. Jeff was a little senior to me, and like most airline guys, we drifted apart after we left the company, with no more trips to fly together. He was a good pilot, and was “very good” at laying over, if you catch my drift.

I didn’t know his family or much about his life outside of flying. This is not uncommon. We pilots have a kind of second life when we’re on trips, different from when we are at home.

Some pilots are players when they are away from home, and some are mugwumps like me who enjoyed the chance to sleep in, eat and drink what they wanted, and be left mostly alone. I never played around, but that didn’t mean I was better than anybody else. I lacked the energy and the inclination to be a bad boy on a trip.

“His obituary was kind of interesting,” continued Jim. “According to what they wrote, Jeff was a model student, a war hero, and a deeply committed religious guy who would never mess around or take the lord’s name in vain.”

That wasn’t the Jim I knew. I don’t think I ever heard him say a phrase without “GD” in it, and he used the F-word to modify most of what he said. Of course, as I said, we pilots lead somewhat separate lives, and he could have been a church elder when he was home for all I know.

I know they write the obituaries for the families, not the dead guy, and I know that Jim, being dead, has no opinion on the matter, but I think it would be neat if in some way we could eulogize pilots with truth. For example:

Jim, a senior retired pilot at X-Air, croaked at a two-for-one happy hour at the Smithtown Applebee’s last week. He grew up in Smithtown and played third-string guard on the high school football team. While at Diego State University, Jim enrolled in ROTC after his college draft deferment was canceled. He went to pilot school, served his mandatory years in the military, and was hired by X-Air in 1979. Jim was based in Atlanta and New Orleans.He was a good captain who never killed a passenger, always bought the first round, and never showed up for a trip drunk or stoned. After retiring to Smithtown after a long career at X-Air, he remained active at his local airport, various pubs, and dating websites.

He is survived by his wife, Maude; his three children; six grandchildren; and two unofficial layover progeny. In place of flowers, please send money to your local flight attendant rehabilitation shelter.

After we finished our beers and decided that going to the airport BBQ would be a colossal waste of our time, we began discussing all the other false advertising in the world of aviation.

“For example,” Jim said, “I wonder if anybody ever turned in a totally honest application for a flying job. I mean, your flying hours and logbook are kind of accurate, but pilots never put down their shortcomings when they apply.”

I don’t think that matters all that much. My theory is that the people hiring pilots are looking for members of a club, of people who can get along, not necessarily perfect yankers and bankers. When I interviewed, I got the feeling that they were watching how we acted and interacted with each other, not so much how many FARs we had memorized.

Good pilots, I think, are the ones who have achieved great things, but you would never know about it by talking with them. If anything, they are self-deprecating, non-falsifiers. Jim fell into that category. I wish they could have published the tale he told me about flying the F-105 over Laos and barely getting back. That would be a great obituary story.

Aviation and the people who inhabit it are always subject to half-truths in advertising. A few examples include:

“Fly high above the weather in a pressurized airplane!” That just means you often get your ass kicked by turbulence in the flight levels instead of down low in the troposphere.

“Learn to fly in three months!” It’s like saying, “Become a brain surgeon in five easy lessons!”

“This is a win-win deal!” has been falsely uttered by more than a hundred ALPA contract negotiation teams and airline management perfumed princes.

Of course my favorite false advertising was during a late-night 727 landing in Bangor, Maine during a blizzard: “Braking action reported fair by a pick-up truck.”

I hope when I leave the planet in search of whatever happens after I croak that they forget to write an obituary at all. I hope nobody I flew with finds out that I am dead, but if they do find out, I hope they remember me as the flawed and incomplete yet fairly decent pilot that they knew. Being remembered as some sort of saint would besmirch all of the fun I had.

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