Jets and Surfin' USA
Cultural Asides and Other Fun Stories
By the late nineties I checked out the fastest corporate jet ever built— The Cessna Citation X, pictured above, clocking in at approximately 600 miles per hour in level flight and climbing at speeds that other jets cruised at.
I started my jet adventures in the late eighties, interviewing with a charter company that flew Lear and Cessna Citations. These were eight seaters that flew between 400 and 500 miles per hour and were physically beautiful. After flying an ancient piston twin for a check company under winter skies, often freezing in the cockpit after the heater died, I was now close to flying my first jet with all the speed, comfort, and safety that a turbofan aircraft brought to the table.
The chief pilot was a golden boy who had come up quickly in general aviation, building time in a Lear jet early in his career when most pilots were flying prop-driven planes as I had, or teaching. But I felt no jealousy. A short time later, my first captain told me that some folks, referencing our chief pilot, rode “life’s wave” almost perfectly. “Some guys can ride that wave smiling all the way to shore to a Beach Boys tune.”
I sat across from the young chief pilot who briefly stared at my resume and then looked up, brow furrowed in an otherwise smooth handsome face.
“I can’t hire you,” he said.
I said nothing. Losing this opportunity was like being shut out of the Mercury program of the late 1950s, or being passed over for the moon shot in 1969.
“Fred, it says here you’re a bass player.” He paused, scanned the page again quickly and shook his head. “I already hired a bass player this morning. You play upright?”
“Only electric.”
“This fella plays both. I’m sorry.”
Long pause. We both laughed. Back then it was called a joke, though in hindsight I guess I might have sued/bit the hand that hired me for causing undue stress. But I always enjoyed a good laugh even at my own expense.
Never one to joke, United Airlines recently announced that they would limit the number of new pilots to 50% white males, filling the remaining 50% with persons of color and women. Always ahead of the woke-curve, United may want to be the first to offer Klingon warriors and Jedi Knights training slots before the Federation of Planets gets their intergalactic hands on the best talent this side of Alpha Centauri.
After I made captain, a young co-pilot I was paired with had gone for an interview at a major airline. Asked how he would handle a couple of crewmembers having an affair, he responded with aristocratic cool, “If it’s not affecting their job, hell, I wouldn’t touch that hot mess with a ten-foot pole.”
The airline would never contact the young pilot again, but at the end of the interview, he was asked about his hobbies. He said he played guitar. “We don’t need another guitar player,” the interviewer shot back, adding, “Everybody plays guitar.” My copilot laughed loudly, a sun-filled laugh, a surfer guy who rarely wiped out. The interviewer never cracked a smile.