Waiting in the Wings: A Pilot’s Final Chapters.

As I surveyed my study before sitting down to work on my manuscript, I could see that I needed to consolidate my various piles of paperwork. As is always the way, the search radius soon expanded things.to include filing cabinets with drawers full of thick A4 notebooks. As I flicked through their pages I began to appreciate the hours of writing and sketching that had gone into their creation, every time that I trained on a new type of aircraft.

Still, these books only reflected the last type rating courses that I had completed – command training on the Boeing 737 and the type rating on the Boeing 787. I had already parted company with the notes from my previous courses across three airlines, flying the 737, 747 and Airbus A320/321. Even so, there were volumes of notes that I had drawn from the pages of manuals and the mouths of instructors.

I guess that I’m “old school” as it is the reading and subsequent writing of information that bakes it into my brain. Combined with a sound dose of armchair flying and repetition in my personal procedural trainer, I have somehow managed to squeeze a fair amount of procedural and systems knowledge into my memory banks over the years. Although the days have passed that required us to draw the fuel, hydraulic, pressurisation and electrical systems from memory. Today, it is all contained in modules of online learning and yet my drawers are still full of pens and paper.

Yet there was something more final than the sight of my notebooks falling into the recycling bin – it was what they represented. More than the hours spent crafting them and more than the days spent in classrooms and simulators. Their disposal reaffirmed that that for me, the end of my airline career is approaching. I will never go through the rigors of a new type rating again. I paused and counted the number of type courses on my fingers which included initial training and upgrades. Boeing 737 (3), Boeing 787 (2), Boeing 747 (2), A320/321 (1). There are those pilots who have done many more, still I look back upon these months of training with a sea of memories. I was one of the fortunate few who did not particularly ever feel too much stress about training.

For me, the future challenges will be found elsewhere. I will never stop learning about aviation, writing, history and life and undoubtedly there will be new hurdles to overcome.  With that comes a focus on the road ahead and the new opportunities that are waiting in the wings. Even so, to know that I am progressively ticking off the various finales of my airline career causes me to pause. What else have I done for the last time without even knowing? What city will I never see again? These questions don’t worry me particularly, it’s just that I’m now considering them seriously for the first time.

I’ll keep a few things – a couple of old Boeing manuals and the flight plans and ephemera from the final Qantas 747 flight. Ultimately, the truth is that a chapter is drawing to a close and time marches on. However, it is just a chapter, and I am the author that determines how it finishes. More importantly, there are still chapters of this book left to write.