Duties and Responsibilities

September 20th was my first day of training for upgrade as a Captain for American Eagle Airlines. I've decided to start this blog to post my various musings, ramblings, etc, that would not fit in the sailing blog, and chat with anyone interested about flying, life, whatever sounds good.

So I am in class, and the instructor mentions someone I know who used to work in the training department.

This guy was a pilot for years, and then started having heart problems. He volunteered for an experimental procedure, involving open heart surgery, and was told ex post facto that it would not be approved by the FAA, and lost his medical.

Well, he made the most of it, and went into the training center, and took over a section of our training that while required by the FAA, has never been given any gloss, or any real edge; it was boring, and the person who was the instructor before seemed to have a particular hate for pilots... I guess because she was a dispatcher, and a terrible one at that.

I had a class down here with him 2 years ago, and I chatted him up on a break, and he said they were in the pipeline for giving him another surgery... one that would keep his corrected problems in his heart, AND the FAA had signed off on, so he could get his medical cert back, and go back to regular line flying. He was a bit apprehensive, but excited; he had been let down by the FAA and the medical community before, and just wanted to go back to flying. I told him that he was the only "bright light in a crappy section of our training," and while I really wanted to fly the line with him, I really wanted him to stay on and make our lives more bearable.

He went into surgery, and he died for 20 minutes on the operating table... complications.

They brought him back to life, but he had suffered fairly extensive brain damage, and did not even remember that he had been an airline pilot... 22 years of flying, gone.

They took him to the training center, and walked through the halls with him, wondering if anything would unlock that part of his brain... and he said "I used to do this? Really?"

He has no recollection at all of flying, of aviation, of anything related to it.

Life is short to begin with. We don't know the reasons why, and maybe sometimes there are no reasons why... Jethro Tull penned- "The God who made kittens, put snakes in the grass..." Live every moment you can. We can't go through our entire lives that way, but we should take the time to enjoy so many more things than we actually do. Find a way to enjoy every day, even just a little, somehow, someway.

You just never know....