Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: The Michael Hatfield Re Max team presents.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: Real estate and more Bay Area real estate is different than in all of America. And why? What's up with homebuyers? What's on sellers minds? How is the market and much, much more.
[00:00:17] Speaker A: Now here's your host, Michael Hatfield.
Welcome to the real estate and more show. And I'm so glad you're here. Having been in the commercial pilot program profession for several decades, it's truly an amazing vocation. I was really fond of for many reasons. Friends have asked me, people have asked me over the years, how did you ever become an airline pilot and what was the process that you used to reach what many regard as the pinnacle of all airline jobs? The airline pilot captain seat, of course, was not easy. It took a lot of preparation and it's still not easy today. But it can be done if the motivation and determination resides inside you. Think about it. If a lower middle class youngster like myself could achieve this position many decades ago, come up with enough money to go through the training, then others can follow that today if they have that desire. I'm here to share some of what I've learned over the many years, going through training for the required ratings as well as the education, the process that I used to attain what I've always considered to be the greatest job on earth. Here to help me this morning is my lady, a person who's kept the home fires burning for more than 25 years of my airline career. Welcome to the show, Nancy.
[00:01:40] Speaker C: Thanks, Michael. Nice to see you, as always.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Good to see you. You got a question for me, too?
[00:01:46] Speaker C: I do. So, Michael, you became a captain for a major us airline and then you were chosen by your peers as an FAA designated czech pilot. Start with some understanding on a few terms. What is a captain anyway?
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Well, when I was hired, it's been a long time, there was a three pilot airplane. There was the captain, which is the boss on the flight. Then you have the first officer, who's still pretty much in a learning situation, and then the new hire person, which was the second officer or flight engineer. A lot of the duties back then, as it wasn't as automated as it is today, fell to a sharing of those responsibilities. But when anything happened and the direction of the flight and how the flight's going to be handled, any problems that came up, it would always be the captain that makes the decision.
[00:02:45] Speaker C: So what is an FAA designated checkpilot? A lot of people are not familiar with that term, so can you elaborate on that, please?
[00:02:54] Speaker A: Oh, that's a really great question. One that's super dear to my heart. I was on a trip and I was in, I think it was Jackson, Mississippi. And we got in late the night before and very little rest. And the phone rang and the chief line check airman on the Boeing 727 was on the phone and he said, this is a recorded line back in the days when everything wasn't recorded. And he said, Captain Hatfield, he said, I want to offer you a position as an FAA designated czech airman, which is an FAA designated checkpilot. And I thought for a second, as I woke up a little bit and we're talking, I said, well, why me? There's a lot of fellows out there that know how to fly a really great airplane. I wouldn't say that I fly any better than they do. He says it's about people. He said being able to work with a crew is something that is very important in what we're trying to instill in our czech pilot office today. So we've checked with your co pilots you've flown with. We've checked all the way back to some of the captains that you've flown with and also your chief pilot. And they said, you know, go ahead there. Nobody's put the thumbs down to me, which was amazing all into itself.
[00:04:12] Speaker C: I gave you good training at home, I'm certain.
[00:04:14] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. Flying airplanes at home. Right.
[00:04:17] Speaker C: So as an airline pilot, have you ever seen a UFO?
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Next question, please.
[00:04:25] Speaker C: Got it. Please explain the differences between being a captain as opposed to being a commercial pilot.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: That's a really good question. A captain is actually the boss. He's in charge. Once the airplane pushes from the gate, commercial pilot is usually the guy that's in the first officer seat. Today it's to pilot airplane primarily. Now, a professional pilot could be flying airplanes like Gulfstream International for a corporation or for a private individual. Could be a different type of operation. But commercial pilot is also also a level of licensure by the FAA. There's four different types of licenses. The first one at the bottom, I say primary types. First one is a student pilot. And then once you've went through your course and you can get to that point where you need to be, you can become a private pilot after passing the required testing. And then once you've attained so many hours, then you can go through the process and become a commercial pilot licensee. That's one that has attained and has received a license in your pocket that says commercial pilot. For airline pilots to fly the big guys you need to have an airline transport pilot certificate. Minimum of 1500 hours. And there's a lot of other different requirements that you go through. In that case, in order to become, you have to have one of those to become a captain.
[00:06:02] Speaker C: So if someone wanted to earn a license to carry, say, their friends around in a light aircraft, what license would he or she have to earn?
[00:06:12] Speaker A: Well, obviously, you could not do it with a student pilot certificate. You would need a private pilot certificate, which in turn is one where you're not flying for hire. You can share the cost of the gas with your passengers and your buddies or your girlfriend or whoever would be willing to help you pay for the gas, because renting airplanes is not inexpensive. But that's the level you'd need to be as a private pilot certified.
[00:06:39] Speaker C: So what inspired you to stay the longer haul to become a professional pilot in the first place? Tell us about that a little bit.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: That's another really great question, because it takes a lot of resolve, it takes a lot of tenacity and a lot of determination. You start out the younger the better, because, you know, airlines, despite hiring practices and so forth, they don't want to hire someone that's 55 years old and only get to fly them for ten years. They want to have it sooner so that they can put all the money that they do into training and then have you fly for a long time.
[00:07:17] Speaker C: It's an investment.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: It's an investment. The inspiration was probably my father, who was a military guy. He'd flown the C 47s back in World War Two, and then there for a while before that, he was actually flying gliders, which was not a really good thing. I'm glad he survived and was able around, you know, to be around and.
[00:07:40] Speaker C: Be my father a whole other type of flying, for sure.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: For sure.
[00:07:44] Speaker C: So technically, what is the difference between a corporate pilot, a private or personal pilot position, and that of an airline pilot?
[00:07:55] Speaker A: The corporate pilot is one that's well qualified, obviously, and is hired to fly a. An aircraft for a company or corporation. It's a term that we used, always a corporate pilot for XYZ Corporation, and they have really great equipment to fly around their top level executives. And I know a lot of people are critical of corporations using funds to fly jet airplanes because they are not inexpensive to operate. But if these fellows are doing $100 million deals, getting him face to face with the client is a very important thing to do. So a corporate pilot is one that works for a corporation. A personal pilot is one that flies either for hire or flies for money for a private individual, usually one that has wealth. A private pilot is, you can be referring to the license, which means that it's a person that has achieved a private pilot certificate and can fly friends and family around, not for Hirever, which.
[00:09:03] Speaker C: We'Ve done some of that ourselves for fun.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Yeah, but, you know, I mean, yeah, for sure.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: So can you describe for our listeners and our viewers the work that an airline pilot actually does?
[00:09:17] Speaker A: We're talking about an airline pilot. We're not talking necessarily about the captain.
[00:09:21] Speaker C: Right.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: The work that you do is obviously you got to show up for your trip. That's absolutely number one, you don't want to show up and have a, you know, an hour late and have everybody sitting there waiting for you for departure and the airplane get out of sequence. These airplanes are put in sequence, and every day they fly, usually as much as 20 hours out of 24, and they go from point a to b to c to back to d, wherever d may be, usually a maintenance base.
And then the airplane pilots are put and also the flight attendants are put on rotations that go in and out of those particular cycles. It's a complex thing to take, you know, to keep track of. And the airlines do a marvelous job of it. Believe it or not, folks. They really, really do. So what does it entail? You show up for the trip, usually. I showed up always 2 hours before, if it was an international trip, 3 hours before, because there was so much more to do to fly the long range equipment to long range, far out destinations. But you show up, you review the flight plan, you make sure the aircraft is ready to fly, or if it's in the process of maintenance work being done on it, you pay attention to that, make sure that it has been completed. And once it's been completed, then you work hand in hand with a dispatcher, which is in the operational control center that provides the draft of the flight plan that you may use. Because these flight plans are constantly changing in flight, they're not always cast in stone. In fact, they're really never cast in stone. So if it's going to have you fly to New York from the west coast, they might have you going up over Denver. But by the time that you put weather in there, you may be as the pilot making a course correction to go south of the weather or go north of it, depending on what the weather is.
[00:11:20] Speaker C: Takes a lot to run an airline, more than I think sometimes people can even fathom. But that's just my thought. So an airline pilot, does he or she fly the same route every month? How does that work out do you sit on reserve sometimes just waiting for a call? Like, what can you talk about with regard to that?
[00:11:43] Speaker A: The same route every month if you're senior enough in your seat, meaning that you have been employed the longest, that's called seniority. Then you can choose what airplanes that you want to fly. And therefore, each month, when you bid to fly a certain set of trips, that you're given priority to do that.
Most new pilots are on a reserve type of basis. And that means that you, if you're a long call, that means that they give you a period of time, like 20 hours or 18 hours, to get from wherever your home is to your base and then you're ready. Or if it's short call, it's usually two, 3 hours or so. That means that you got to be in position to go fly if you're on short call reserve. The most junior and seniority are in a position to wherever they are on reserve.
[00:12:38] Speaker C: Right. When you don't live at your base or very close to your flying base, it can make it a little more challenging to make sure that you get to your base so you're lined up for that next trip.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Absolutely correct. You know, it's interesting.
You and I always chose to leave the family in one place, and then I would fly to whatever base I had at the time because I would change every year, two years or so, what base that I would be flying out of. And if I were to take the family and move each time, it would be a reorientation for the children. And that's kind of a tough way to go. So we made the choice and said, okay, if I'm going to fly out of, you know, Salt Lake or Los Angeles or Georgia or New York, that I would commute. And so when I bid whatever airplane I was going to fly, I always had to ensure that I wasn't having to go up to New York and sit on reserve and maybe, or maybe not be flown on a reserve type schedule.
[00:13:42] Speaker C: Right. You did the heavy lifting, and there were lots of decision makings, and in the process.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate you saying that, but that's not the true statement. You know, it's harder to raise children than to, you know, have. Have a job going on.
[00:13:54] Speaker C: You know, it's an adventure.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: It's always an adventure.
[00:13:58] Speaker C: Michael, how many types of transport aircraft did you fly in your airline career?
[00:14:04] Speaker A: I flew the 727 DC ten. I flew the L 1011 Tristar. I flew the Boeing 757. The narrow body. I flew the Boeing 767 in all of its versions including the long range 300 eR, which stands for extended range. I loved every single one of them.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: They all had their own unique, wonderful characteristics or a little bit, you know, not as desirable, I think, with flying.
I always remember you talking about the 757 dash, whatever you were flying, or the 767 dash, whatever it was like, okay, what are you flying? Oh, okay, got it. But you could fly all of those once you were trained. So anyways, depending I, what was the largest aircraft you have flown in your career?
[00:14:56] Speaker A: The largest for me, the airline I flew with, pardon me, there did not have the 747 when I was there. And so the largest we had was the Elton eleven Tristar, and it had a max takeoff weight of about 525,000 pounds. And passengers, and they're always changing passenger configurations. International, I think it was like 250 people domestic. And also Hawaii was like 302 passengers on that airplane. Big machine.
[00:15:29] Speaker C: And they wanted to go there, get them to the islands.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: So you're listening to the real estate and more show corporate and personal pilots episode. I'm your host today, Nancy Hatfield. And now let's get but back to our guest, Michael Hatfield.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: I'm the guest.
[00:15:49] Speaker C: So, Michael, you promised to speak on how you got a job as an airline pilot, a commercial pilot. Can you go into what you did and what was required before you were offered that job?
[00:16:03] Speaker A: That is. That one's a mouthful. I've thought on this for many, many years.
It was one of those incentives that came within me as a youth. It came in, I was, at the time, I was very young. I was 15, and what am I going to do? I was very tormented about what I was going to do for a living and if I ever had a family, how to support them, how I was going to support myself. My parents were of modest financial means.
And I find that looking back, that somehow, some way in my mind, that there was a seed planted, that it's one of those things where you feel empowered. It's, you can do it, you can do it. And where I grew up, everyone around me said, well, you want to be an airline pilot, you have to go through military training because they won't hire you unless you are. And so I went down that direction and came really close. Really close. And my brother, who was in the air force, said, you know, you want to be an airline pilot. I mean, I know you want to fly the fast movers and all that, but your real goal is the lifestyle of becoming a professional pilot. And I'd recommend that you just keep going the way you are because your training is at that level. But looking back, there was just the seed in my mind, I would call it a seed of empowerment that said, you can do it, you can do it.
And at the time, they were not hiring civilian pilots at all. Maybe eight to nine to 10% of the pilots were being hired from a CIS billion training background, whereas the rest were military guys. So it was tenacity and determination. Pure tenacity and determination and being able to say, you know what? I am going to do this. I am going to do this.
[00:18:02] Speaker C: Thats awesome. I love hearing about that. So once you had achieved the minimum hiring qualifications for most of the airlines around that timeframe, how did you navigate the various airlines hiring processes?
Tell us about that.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Well, I mentioned that I had a hard head.
I mentioned that I was ten. Yeah, my wife would tell you, yes, that's a true statement.
I did. And that hard head determination or stubbornness means that you are going to do something that you don't really want to take no for an answer. You want to move ahead, you want to do it. And you're not going to just give up because if that would have been the case, applying for jobs as a civilian background pilot, it would have been perfectly easy for me to give up. And during the process, once I met the minimum hiring requirements for the various airlines and they were all somewhat the same, but the more that you had, the more likely you were to get hired. But once I met those minimums, I started beating my head on the door right then and there. I had a factory of mail going out periodically, I put it on a schedule. It was of determination that I went and I interviewed with several of the airlines. I went, I interviewed with Delta, I interviewed you with United, I interviewed with Northwest oriented at the time. I mean, I went, I would do them all. And then one day I get a knock on the door. A knock on the telephone is more accurate from Western Airlines, which became Delta Airlines. Later on, I got a knock on the door from Braniff, which went out of business. And then I got a knock on the door from an old line cargo airline, very historical airline called the Flying Tigers, which became FedEx at that point. And at that time I just decided that maybe I don't want to fly all night with cargo all the time and maybe flying passengers would be a nice thing. So I jumped on the hiring bandwagon with western airlines.
[00:20:29] Speaker C: So when you were trying to get your airline commercial airline pilot position, they were hiring primarily, like you said earlier, military background pilots like and then civilian were like what? Less than 10%. So what do you think it was for you that why they were interested in you? Because of the number of hours that you had under your belt? Like, why? Why do you think they hired you specifically?
[00:20:58] Speaker A: Another good question. When you go through the hiring process and today, it's different than what it was back then. They would call you in. They would, first of all, survey your application and look at your flying time and what you've flown and who you've flown, what you've done, how much multi engine time that you've had. Then they would take, and they would call you in for an interview, and you would sit and do a personnel interview, and then you would go home. And then a month later, you would either go to the next step, which would be you go in front of a pilot board of three, and they would give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down. And then once, if you pass that, a month later, then they would call you in and have you fly a simulator to see that you can actually fly.
[00:21:45] Speaker C: Prove it.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: Right. And then they would send you to a specialty medicinal institution to take a look at your fit, your physical condition, as well as your mental stability. You know, being a pilot, you know, there might be many people out there.
[00:22:04] Speaker C: It's important.
[00:22:05] Speaker A: So it's a long process. So maybe four months. And you would start this with various airlines, and you would do it with these airlines, and then you would get a rejection letter. Or in the case where I had is, I got a lot of rejection letters, and then all of a sudden, three of them said, hey, you know, we'll take a real close look at having you come to our initial flight training class.
[00:22:30] Speaker C: You just never know what happens. So about hiring today for airlines, do you want to comment on that, how it's different or anything specifically on that?
[00:22:41] Speaker A: When I was hired, there was three. They started out in class of 15, and the class date, which is the date that your seniority starts, and then you're ranked by how old you are in your class or how young or young. I was the youngest, I think, in my class, or second youngest or whatever. And then there was another individual that was a virtual war hero. He really was a very well qualified, really super guy, ex military, air force guy, but they rank them. And when we were hired, I was one of only three of 15 that were civilian background. One gentleman did not make it. Two of the civilian backgrounds made it, which was me. Today, there hasn't been a tremendous amount of people come out of the military for hiring like it used to. Be. And the airlines have discovered that they can hire from connection carriers. They can hire from great background, people with great backgrounds that are civilian background and that they can do well with them and they make great, great pilots.
[00:23:53] Speaker C: Right? Right.
[00:23:54] Speaker A: Male, female.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Sure. I know at some point in every pilot's life, he or she makes a decision to either fly for an airline or fly personally or corporate. And do you recall when you made that decision? Exactly?
[00:24:08] Speaker A: I definitely do. Actually, I made that decision right at the very beginning when my brother and I, my brother sent me down and he said, what do you want to do? You've got like 1600 hours at this time. And it was still a while before I was hired.
And you're going and you're flying with the Navy. That's great. And you'll be flying, you know, some really fast moving equipment or some heavy equipment or great equipment. But you might miss that cycle of hiring that the airlines have because they hire a bunch and then they lay you off when economic times are not good. It's called furlough. And if you really want to be an airline pilot, you need to focus on that and not mute your effectiveness of being hired by going off in that direction. So he was the one. So it was early for me. I made these decisions early, and I cannot say enough. If you want to be an airline pilot, make that decision. Don't take no for an answer. If it's a realistic objective for you, go for it.
[00:25:10] Speaker C: Do it. So what specific ways or paths are there for a younger person to take who would be interested in becoming a professional pilot?
[00:25:22] Speaker A: Well, there's, you could go to embry Riddle, that's an aviation university, and you not only are gaining the college degree that you're required to have, and it doesn't matter too much of what your college degree is in, but you're also in a flight school facility where you're learning to fly airplanes. That way you can go that direction and buy yourself through the ratings to where you meet the minimum airline qualifications for hiring. The second one is you can come out of the military. They love military pilots. They always have provided, you know, they like you as a person, as a military or an ex military pilot. So that's, those are the two directions. Or you could end up going privately, working your way through your ratings, going to work for a connection carrier as a copilot, work your way there, and then go to one of the major carriers. That's the other third direction.
[00:26:18] Speaker C: Sure. And we actually know some of your pilot friends whose children went and became pilots but is the process different to become a corporate personal pilot than an airline pilot? Really?
[00:26:32] Speaker A: It really, it's not a lot different. It's just a different stage. If you're going to fly golf stream for a private or commercial, then you go through and you get your airline transport pilot certificates so you can fly as a captain on that airplane. Then you go to a company like flight safety and they train you on that airplane through the type rating process. Every airplane over 12,500 pounds or jet powered, generally it requires a type rating. Put on a, like a captain certificate, which is airline pilot certificate.
[00:27:13] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:27:15] Speaker A: So anyway, you've been listening to the real estate and more show. Today was a little bit different. We deviated off and let Nancy, you know, take me through the coals and talk to me about it. And I want to say a big thank you, Nancy, for doing such a great job with this today.
[00:27:33] Speaker C: You're welcome. There's so much more we could have talked about.
[00:27:36] Speaker A: You've been listening to the real estate and more show, and I'm Michael Hatfield. And please go to our YouTube channel at my real talk show. That's my real talk show on YouTube. And if you would be so kind like and subscribe, and we'd really appreciate that. We'll be back in a moment with our next special guest.
