I’ve had a well winter and spring for the most part but I picked up a nasty cold this week. Monday I was feeling great but flew a two day trip with a first officer who was suspiciously blowing his nose and trying to suppress a cough. And he was a new-hire still on probation. The company doesn’t allow them to be sick - so whomever they are flying with gets a surprise several days later. It’s about the worst cold I have ever had and might even be the flu. To top it off my vacation starts the day after tomorrow and I was planning on taking Sandi to the west (left) coast. Since the company will only allow me four sick periods per year this is sort of good news - I have used up all four since August 2007 so in this case I won’t have to do a carpet dance for the chief pilot - I just get to spend my vacation at home self-medicating.

I’d like to talk about that first officer who supposedly gave me the cold. He was so new that when he arrived on the aircraft, before introducing himself to me, he introduced himself to the lead flight attendant by saying, “My name is ____, and I’m new and don’t have much flying time” As he was organizing himself in the cockpit the flight attendant’s pulled me aside and expressed their concern.

I got to spend some time explaining to the flight attendants how I would take extra care to closely supervise him and reminded them that I had been flying since 1969, etc. He needed to tell me about his lack of experience but generally speaking its best not to share this sort of information with the flight attendants. You may not know but there is a shortage of pilots because of the state of the airline business. Pay and benefits have been cut for many mainline pilots so naturally there are fewer kids looking to this as a good career choice … traditionally older more experienced pilots fill the captain seats and first officers are generally, but not always, less experienced. I feel confident in the system and think raising the mandatory retirement age for pilots to 65 is a great interim idea, at least until we can raise the pay and benefits back to suit the profession. If things don’t change I wouldn’t be surprised if in the next twenty years we may move toward replacing pilots with computers monitored by folks on the ground.

By the way, the first officer did a good job and actually made smoother landings than I. The only excuse for my inelegant landing are that I’ve probably forgotten more than he knows (at this point in his short life) and smooth landings, while nice, are not the most important thing for pilots.

I fault my temporary ill health on the company. I find their lack of interest in the area of containing contagious diseases appalling. If a flight crewmember is sick why would they want him/her to spread sickness to their other crews and/or passengers in the case of flight attendants?

Posted by Robin on Saturday, May 24th, 2008 at 9:44 pm.