#pilotlife #helicopterpilot
Author Stephen Boyce piloting Bell 412 Initial Attack Crew 2018. Bear was a stowaway...
Tonight’s destination is Vancouver where I’ll be spending a month in command of a Bell 412 supporting the fight against the wildfire season. My somewhat tolerable seat is straight and level at 33,000 ft over Niue in the Pacific Ocean. We are a long way from anywhere and I notice the lady across the aisle who was visibly distressed during the take-off and climb out, has found her coping mechanism in Sauvignon Blanc and sleeping pills. I had thought to reach out and provide some words of comfort around how normal everything was going, how the crew had thousands of hours, how the science from Cessna’s to A380’s and Robinson to Bell 412’s was all tried and true and how all of us pilots think we are as good as Sully Sullenberger…
Her manifested anguish prompted this disorganised blog as I reflected on my emotive response to flying. Evidently I become introspective. I find being in three dimensions very calming and the plan view of earth scales me back to reality and enforces humility. Flying is controlled chaos and my whole experience of Aviation has constant dynamic change as the only ‘constant’ expectation. The fact that in two days I’ll be flying helicopters in Canada but only last week spent two days crossing the Tasman Sea in a Diamond DA42, evidences the fact.
My fellow passenger testifies that in some measure, flying will always be a stressful experience (it was a romantic experience until the TSA, USA airlines and economy coach killed that off…) involving dynamic change from the web booking to baggage carousel. Consider that most flying starts at a place of emotional contradiction – an Airport. Upstairs at Departures it’s agony, tears and heartbreak mixed with a tinge of adventure; downstairs the Arrival Hall atmosphere is thick with expectation, nervousness and unmitigated joy. You never feel more love than when you exit that door and distances measured in thousands of miles are closed in a hug.
Personally, flying has been a singular reoccurring constant in my life. Most people have never been in an aircraft but some reading this know intimately that we have spent to much life in or around them. Aviation corrupted me at birth where my first childhood memory is peering over the door frame as my Fathers Cessna 206 skimmed low over Lake Rotorua. I knew Von Richthofens favourite colour was red by age 7, I can still draw a Phantom Jet from memory and my WWII aircraft recognition skills are second to none. Like the prodigal son, I spent my early 20’s avoiding Aviation’s siren song but finally when University seemed unrealistic I decided to fly helicopters.
The son of a career fixed wing pilot with an opportunity to fast track to employment rebels and goes rotary wing. I’d never even been in a helicopter. Smart move Boyce.
Last night while two fingers of Laphroaig vented in crystal, two powerful beams of light split a sky as clean as a mountain stream announcing the downwind of an airliner returning to Auckland. As loathed to confess as I am; it was super cool. The hair on the back of my neck stood and my anticipation rose expectant the coming month of adventure. As quickly as the dopamine subsided, reality returned and I wondered what price Aviation would tax me to feed the need. What has it cost already? At a minimum it’s 28 days of lost family time.
The fuel for a life in Aviation is passion. Flight is a drug habit, a love affair, a gold rush. When you don’t have enough of it you will do anything for more until you overdose and hate it. It’s a life of dissatisfaction of the status quo, dreams of adventure, risk and success and helicopter pilots are particularly dysfunctional on a whole other level.
If you want to fly helicopters to the limit of their design and your skill, you have to travel to parts of the planet where there are no roads to negotiate, combinations of extreme heat, extreme cold and high altitude. It typically takes three flights and +24 hrs before you drop out of orbit into a world fully disconnected from reality. The remoteness of a fire base, drill camp, jungle, desert or snow covered continent removes your worry about lodgings, food, mortgages, PTA meetings, traffic or finding time to walk the dog. It is 28 days where you fly, grind your teeth, sleep and eat. Then repeat. Days are measured in air time, hook loads, fuel stops, torque limits and hectares burnt and nothing else registers.
Pilots, engineers and cabin crew are the core of Aviation and as some stage, we all thought it was a lot of fun. It’s a shame it just isn’t anymore. Everything loses some lustre over time - earns a worn tannin of familiarity but today workplace dissatisfaction in Aviation is at a whole new level. Passengers are zombies plugged into an entertainment system, co-pilots are millennials of the magenta line, Captains slaves to autonomy, drones replace helicopters and SMS has all but eroded any room for creativity and common-sense. ‘Nothing fly’s without paper’ has never been more accurate and our industry which was so avant-guard in the 60’s and 70’s is beyond stifled in regulation. Experimentation is risk, risk is intolerable. Everyone calm down, be safe and swallow the blue pill.
All this musing suddenly reminded me that I was so distracted packing and leaving that I forgot to pat my dog goodbye. First blood to ‘Aviation’
I imagine somewhere in Nuie right now a kid just raised his head to the distant roar of turbine engines searching for the blinking strobes 33,000 feet above his village. The hair on the back of his neck stands up and he thinks “…that looks exciting”
First blood ‘Aviation’