Worried Man Blues
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- Joined
- Aug 26, 2009
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In July I will mark 8 years away from the airline - a separation begun voluntarily and formalized more than 2 years ago in a seedy Charlotte hotel with some hundreds of my former compatriots, who themselves decided to move on.
Amazing to me is the fact I don't really miss the reality of what I left in 2002, but often the idea of what I left; briefly glimpsed, held and gone like grabbing at water and squeezing too hard until all was dried and gone.
Forgive me, I will translate. The idea was the airline my father flew for for some 40 years. The reality was the airline I flew for 14 years. It took me about ten years to realize (and to convince him) that though the name was the same, they were populated by different people with different ideas about things. When he started flying (as a cabin attendant) in 1951 flying DC-3's, there was no such thing as a union, a duty rig, a pension -- or a merger policy. There was just the guy you were flying with, the machine and the next stop. The rest of the stuff came by fits and starts after terrible battles, spectacular and horrendous accidents and a lot of worry. A whole lot. When he retired, a year before I was hired, my father had flown as copilot for the original Stinson mail pilots and eventually ushered in the jet age, glass cockpits and trans Atlantic flights - without a single day's furlough. He saw mergers and acrimony, sure, but the tide was always rising.
I got hired with the 4th generation - a generation that saw me sitting in the engineer's seat on my first unsupervised trip while the captain and F/O compared their Rolex watches and talked blithely of vacation homes and stock portfolios. As a B-scaler just happy to afford my own single-bedroom apartment in Moon, I tried to reconcile that image with the curling black and white photo of my old man saluting the station agent in Harrisburg from the left seat window of an old Douglas with a Winston hanging from his lip.
I had trouble with it but when you're 23 and generally stupid, you often don't know why you're troubled. Like I said, it took about ten years, a furlough or two and an education in the more unsavory aspects of human nature to figure out why I couldn't stand half of the people I worked with and most of the job itself.
9/11 clinched it for me - damned if I was going to go through THAT (the union wrangling, the lies, the obfuscating and the eventual, horrible furlough) again. Damn glad I did, because they retired my jersey about 6 months AFTER I had left as a captain! And then the merger with AWA a few years later. Nightmare.
I feel for you guys. But it aint no bed of roses out here in the world right now, either. The world of no unions; the great meritocracy of corporate flying. But it's okay and the money's decent, if not the rest. But the idea I had growing up is still there and I can't help it, when I tune in to see the latest version of the Endless Fight, to see the 5th Generation pissing their future (and their career) away in bitterness and vitriol. It makes me pat myself on the back - and you know, that in itself ticks me off. Corporate guy patting himself on the back because the airline guys have it tough. Pathetic of me. You guys have the potential to have the best damn job in the world and spend ALL of your time and resources kicking each other to win a point -- while you get older, and apparently more stupid.
As far as who is right - both. Yeah, that's right, BOTH. So how do you reconcile that? Beats me, but damn if what you're doing (and have been doing) is working. Seriously.
Peace.
Amazing to me is the fact I don't really miss the reality of what I left in 2002, but often the idea of what I left; briefly glimpsed, held and gone like grabbing at water and squeezing too hard until all was dried and gone.
Forgive me, I will translate. The idea was the airline my father flew for for some 40 years. The reality was the airline I flew for 14 years. It took me about ten years to realize (and to convince him) that though the name was the same, they were populated by different people with different ideas about things. When he started flying (as a cabin attendant) in 1951 flying DC-3's, there was no such thing as a union, a duty rig, a pension -- or a merger policy. There was just the guy you were flying with, the machine and the next stop. The rest of the stuff came by fits and starts after terrible battles, spectacular and horrendous accidents and a lot of worry. A whole lot. When he retired, a year before I was hired, my father had flown as copilot for the original Stinson mail pilots and eventually ushered in the jet age, glass cockpits and trans Atlantic flights - without a single day's furlough. He saw mergers and acrimony, sure, but the tide was always rising.
I got hired with the 4th generation - a generation that saw me sitting in the engineer's seat on my first unsupervised trip while the captain and F/O compared their Rolex watches and talked blithely of vacation homes and stock portfolios. As a B-scaler just happy to afford my own single-bedroom apartment in Moon, I tried to reconcile that image with the curling black and white photo of my old man saluting the station agent in Harrisburg from the left seat window of an old Douglas with a Winston hanging from his lip.
I had trouble with it but when you're 23 and generally stupid, you often don't know why you're troubled. Like I said, it took about ten years, a furlough or two and an education in the more unsavory aspects of human nature to figure out why I couldn't stand half of the people I worked with and most of the job itself.
9/11 clinched it for me - damned if I was going to go through THAT (the union wrangling, the lies, the obfuscating and the eventual, horrible furlough) again. Damn glad I did, because they retired my jersey about 6 months AFTER I had left as a captain! And then the merger with AWA a few years later. Nightmare.
I feel for you guys. But it aint no bed of roses out here in the world right now, either. The world of no unions; the great meritocracy of corporate flying. But it's okay and the money's decent, if not the rest. But the idea I had growing up is still there and I can't help it, when I tune in to see the latest version of the Endless Fight, to see the 5th Generation pissing their future (and their career) away in bitterness and vitriol. It makes me pat myself on the back - and you know, that in itself ticks me off. Corporate guy patting himself on the back because the airline guys have it tough. Pathetic of me. You guys have the potential to have the best damn job in the world and spend ALL of your time and resources kicking each other to win a point -- while you get older, and apparently more stupid.
As far as who is right - both. Yeah, that's right, BOTH. So how do you reconcile that? Beats me, but damn if what you're doing (and have been doing) is working. Seriously.
Peace.
