An Old, Bold Air Carrier ROP (Retired, Old Pilot) Discovers the Meaning of Life at a Fractional

By Bert BottaI should have known better, thinking I was through flying and bolting into retirement seven years before the clock struck 60, leaving my air carrier home of 26 years.The bailout from my airline was more reaction to the morose conditions created there by a corporate raider than logic. But it was also part of my quest to satisfy some silly, primeval longing for a deeper spiritual life in a world that continues to threaten the theft of an aviator’s soul.My “retire now” knee-jerk reaction should have triggered a fail flag in my brain, to move slowly, consider my options. Just like a bad sim ride, everything I’ve done in a hurry I’ve screwed up.Elder Moments in UpgradingAfter 23 years of apprenticeship at my carrier, I was finally chosen from the college of copilot cardinals to be anointed by the FAA Vatican to upgrade. By this time, my reflexes were shot, and my brain was so mushy that I couldn’t even read back a clearance without first typing it into the notes section of the FMS.My motor skills had been so hopelessly conditioned by flying from the right seat and an ingrained second in command inferiority complex that it took me three sim periods in captain upgrading just to line up on the centerline.I took out a membership at 24 Hour Fitness just to strengthen the atrophied thumb of my newly anointed left stabilizer trim hand.But the day I flew the LDA to 30L at STL Lambert on the final leg of my captain check ride, I swear I saw a column of wispy smoke rise from the chimney of a little church in south St. Louis, announcing to the world that a new captain had been chosen.The Lure of LuxuryThose bright, shiny baby jets always fascinated me. Taxiing out in the old days with one of the mini liners sandwiched between my MD80 and some other fire breathing, kerosene guzzling sky hog always stoked my imagination.What’s it really like planting a puny 10 tons of Citation Jet down on a 4,500-foot strip in the middle of nowhere? Do you really have to pump your own Jet A in Ainsworth, Nebraska? What kind of people, capable of plopping down a cool two million dollars for starters just to hold their spot on a waiting list for their fractional folly, chase each other around naked in the teak paneled, gold fauceted boardrooms of those things?The Need to BelongAfter waiting 23 years to upgrade at my 121 home and then leaving it after three short years in the left seat, I had a deep sense of not belonging to my aviation “family” any longer. So what really shook loose inside of me as I shuffled through the back allies of my retirement home in northern New Mexico for seven years was the recognition of my need to belong once again to an elite band of aviation brothers.I needed to be worthy again to stroll through airline terminals in full regalia, to jump seat, fraternally connected to my brothers and sisters, in the jetliner cockpits that I had been banned from without “proper identification.”A full cycle of my life had transpired before my new fractional boss graced me with the opportunity to belong once again.Indoctrination RitesI was ecstatic at “Indoc,” the two-week aviation boot camp that doubled as a welcoming and weeding process at my new fractional home. I was the equivalent of a born again Harley Davidson rider, saved for the black leathers and attitude. I belonged once again. I had rediscovered my purpose in life: to hang with other aviators, to banter about flying and its characters, to exchange lies with my younger classmates.I found myself anticipating for someone, anyone, to inquire into my flying background. I would feign humility, look down at my shuffling feet and mumble that I was “retired airline,” hoping that they would prompt me further.God it felt good to belong again! Every day at Indoc I anticipated the issuance of my company ID card. One of the primary motivations to survive training was the apparition of my receiving this ticket to ride.That was my turf. But it was different. There were detailed explanations of climb gradients amidst furious thumbing to and fro in aircraft performance manuals to see how that would apply in the real world; all that was part of my reentry rite of passage.It was also part of the carefully designed flexibility training that would help me survive at my new home. I was soon to learn that flight plans were made to be broken, that an enroute call from the company was a call to cover for a broken bird. This was not Kansas, Henry.Make a Nest at the BestI loved it at my new mildly dysfunctional fractured, er, fractional family. The company grew so fast that one day’s policy was the next day’s shredder food. The money started out dismal back in 2000 when I first got hired. But it improved. Then again, what’s money when you’re having a ball, eh?If any of you guys and gals reading this covet those prestigious airline jobs, forget it. Make your nest at the fractional best.The prestige of the airlines is gone. The good ole days of seven-day layovers and safari in Nairobi are figments of old imaginations.A Major DragDo you know what it’s like sitting in those big, wide, well air-conditioned large T category junkers? What a drag. Boredom sets in quickly: no climb gradients or big penalties for wet runways to keep one’s mind finely attuned to the arcane art of aviation, no groveling at the feet of wealthy clients to build one’s character, no potty seats occupied by people holding a lap kid, no staring down of some rich guy’s unruly, spoiled, entitled brat.There’s another downside to flying “the big ones,” as if you ever get to fly the real “big ones,” without being so decrepit that you need to hire a personal valet to help you in and out of the cockpit.It’s a little known secret that the insidious spread of accelerated dementia in the 121 pilot ranks is due to a lack of motivation and challenge that stems from too many hours learning how to sleep with your eyes open in those big, comfortable, automated behemoths.Comfort yourself with the knowledge that this will never, ever happen at the Fractionals. The pace at those companies is rife with challenge, with vast opportunities for personal growth and spiritual enlightenment.Differences Training: Airlines Vs. the Fractionals  In my old air carrier days some of my biggest challenges were figuring out whether to bid a May or September vacation, or what to eat on those long, boring cross-country legs. Then at my fractional it became trying not to pee on the potty pedestal with my head scrunched up against the overhead while hoping that the compression of my cervical vertebrae wouldn’t turn me into some contorted humpback pilot.Before the company issued new ties to replace those old yellow polyester ones, I had to factor in time on my days off to shave the frayed edges off of that rag. The tie was good for about two tours of dragging it across the throttle quadrants during the contorted ingress and egress of our tiny cockpits before it looked like the scraggly beard on an old Shinto priest. One of my former fractional buddies went so far as to design a clip-on tie because of his near death experience when he closed the baggage compartment door of a Citation Ultra on his standard issue tie. As he flailed about, hanging by his tie and turning blue, a line boy ran over and cut him down. He flopped to the ramp like a spastic rag doll.The good news was the company approved the pilot’s expense report wherein he gave a five-dollar tip to the line boy for saving his life. The press would’ve had a field day with that one: “Distraught fractional pilot hangs self from baggage compartment door in protest over pay dispute!”As a 155-pound runt on my high school football team, I dreamed of being six foot two and 220 pounds. When I got my new company medical insurance, I considered a thyroid transplant that would shrink me to four foot eight, so I could bound effortlessly in and out of those tiny cockpits to more expeditiously serve our clients.Don’t Worry, Be Happy…For you future flyers on the edge, don’t even think of jumping ship to the majors. If you bolt, you would be subject to another airline pilot occupational hazard: stashing all that money somewhere and then having to endlessly research where to place it for maximum return. That can occupy one’s total existence, leave room for little else and turn you into a boorish chump.Should you decide to opt for airline jail, you could be caught in an economic downdraft that so typifies our chosen occupation. There’s no way to accurately forecast this kind of economic flatulence. Being on the bottom of the seniority list, or even worse, experiencing a furlough in tough times is no fun. A Two Hundred and a Half DecisionSo fellow aviators, remember haste makes for screwed up decisions. Move slowly and consider the options on where you too, will inevitably grow old. But be bold and, once you have weighed all the factors, move decisively, move swiftly. If you opt for the big bucks, the comfort, and the bloated retirement package, you might need a good chunk of it just to pay your therapy bills as you attempt to recover the meaning of an aviator’s life…Bert Botta, The Grateful DudeThe Grateful Dude retired after a 26-year career at TWA where, for the last three of those years, he took up space as a line instructor pilot and FAA check airman. Then, after a seven-year hiatus from flying, he found out in 2000, at age 61, that he was an old “hottie” and ripe for fractional picking.At an age when most intelligent aviators have retired and are mastering their golf swing or adding a deck to the house, he returned to the cockpit as a doddering ace for a large fractional company and loved it.Until he got tired of 1 a.m. wake up calls, reporting to the FBO to standby for 14 hours and a deteriorating lack of support from chief pilots that seemed to forget from whence they came, the Dude also played his trade as a licensed professional counselor, immediately engendering a distinct lack of trust amongst his fellow aviators. He was also a personal leadership trainer for a powerful adult men’s rite of passage.He authored his latest book, Fast Lane to Faith: A Jet Jockey’s Search for Significance while staring out the window of his MD-80 for an untold amount of hours.He loves working with aviators and professional road warriors, helping them discover their long held, abandoned dreams, and helping resurrect them; the dreams that is.He hawks his book wherever and whenever he can while he continues to write stuff that fine-tunes his demented sense of humor. You can find the book at: www.Amazon.com.Or if you’d rather have him squiggle a personal signature for you, his email address is: botajet@gmail.comAre you mouse or man/woman? Carefully consider the options before you take the cowardly way out. If you really want to fly the way man was meant to fly, fractional is the way to go, not just for pilots either. Since 9/11, the moneyed aristocracy has increased their cash throw at us as well.“You Never Forget How to Ride a Bicycle…”Little did I know when I scooped up my stack of early retirement chips that I would forage for a living in the “real world” for the next seven years, awaiting the moment when the “return to flying” warning bell sounded from somewhere deep inside. Then I would emerge from my neutral corner, flailing to complete the final rounds of my flying career.Maybe it was the fact that it took me 23 years to upgrade to captain that I wasn’t ready to hang up my spurs.