what are the top 10 things I wish I knew before I started my aviation career I'll
explain it all coming up hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me
my name is Kelsey I'm a 747 pilot my channel 74 gear is all about aviation
today this is a view from my hotel room I'll let you guess in the comments
section below where I'm at and later on this video I'll tell you exactly where
I'm at one of the most important things about being a pilot is learning from the
mistakes of others and that's why we spend so much time investigating prior
crashes so we don't make the same mistake twice in this video I'm gonna
tell you my top 10 things I wish I knew before I started my a VA ssin career and
there's gonna be a lot of points that actually apply to you even if you're not
in aviation I'm gonna try to make this 10 points at 10 minutes so I could
make it quick so let's start the clock aviation is very humbling I know for me
I was always very quick to pick up any sport that I tried to learn or anything
that I wanted to learn I usually could pick it up pretty quick aviation was not
that way it took a little while to become proficient because there's not a
lot of different things to become proficient at and when you go through
flight school as soon as you become good at something you move on to the next
thing right because you're spending a lot of money while you up there flying
just realize that you're gonna feel stupid at times as you go through flight
school and that's totally normal it's not a big deal it's gonna be a humbling
experience so just realize that it's totally normal to feel stupid from time
to time as you go through your career in aviation aviation is a very small
community you can't go around and be a dick to people or you can't go around
and not be serious when it's time to be serious there are people you're gonna
meet now early in your aviation career which may be 10 years from now maybe a
chief pilot or maybe somebody in a position of management so it's important
as you go through your career that you don't run around just screwing people
over to get to that next step you may end up dealing with those people and
even if you don't deal with them people will ask around about you if you're
trying to get a job I've seen many pilots in a position of
power early in their career and then later on that comes back to bite them
where they can't get a job because they were so rude and so bad to a lot of the
people below them that now they're trying to get another job of people are
like hey just realize that there's a time to be serious and a time to be fun
but also there's never time to be rude to the people that are
below you or the people that you're working with that will always come back
to bite you nothing is guaranteed there's a lot of people that I met over
the years that think oh I've made it to this airline I never have to do another
interview again that's not the way it works you know if you think about
Airlines in the past Pan Am TWA Eastern I'm sure when those pilots
got there they thought they had it set because of everything that's going on
with corona there's probably gonna be a big switch up that's about to happen
just realize there is nothing that's guaranteed when you get into this
profession or a lot of professions and the saying is you don't know if you made
all the right decisions until you're 65 or till you retire and look back that's
the only way that you know so just again just because you got that job that
you've always been hoping for that's not time to just showboat and
tell other people how great you are and how stupid they are for staying at their
airline find a mentor and when I say find a mentor that could be the pilot
that you're flying with on that day but it's very important I often when I was
new as a pilot when different airlines that I worked for especially when I was
new onto an aircraft I would ask the other person I was flying with hey is
there anything you see I could improve one see a lot of people might be
critical but they're not necessarily going to say it to your face so if you
ask them and you open that door you can find out things that you maybe didn't
know that you were weak on and things that you can improve on and that's how
you get better quicker another reason to find a mentor is and this is applies for
your aviation career if you can find someone that is where you want to be in
your career they can help you avoid a lot of the pitfalls and they could just
be at your flight school it could be your flight instructor tips that you can
learn from them yeah once you're a flight instructor you can talk to your
friends are at the regionals ask them it doesn't have to be at the end but people
that are where you want to be or your next step use them as mentors always
leaving out now this is something that you may or may not have learned early in
flight school but you always want to leave an out when you're out flying
don't fly and assume that you'll definitely make it into your destination
plan for your alternate plan for a backup from that and that is for a lot
of different things I've seen people where they go into an airline and they
start living on what they call golden handcuffs they get there and they start
living really lavish lifestyles because they're making good money and
when they need to make it jump into another airline they can't because
they're making too much they start living at that lifestyle so you want to
leave you out when you're flying and in your job you want to have a back-up plan
in case things there don't work out that you can make a move or you can make a
move to another airline a lot of times bigger airlines the first year pay is
terrible because they pay a lot of money for you to go through training and I met
guys I say well I can't go to that airline because I can't afford that
first year pay don't get yourself in that situation leave yourself an out
push your limits I know a lot of times early my career would be flying in
somewhere and I'd be looking at the weather thinking man this is going to be
a tricky approach but I always wanted to push my limits the reality is is there's
going to be times you're not going to be comfortable but you have to push those
limits now not too far but you want to push your limits of what you're
comfortable with as far as for weather and wind and
things like that that doesn't mean not leave yourself an out it just means
always going to be really gusty it's going to be really windy okay well let's
go ahead and give it a shot let's try if you doesn't look good well you can
always go around but it's good to keep pushing your limits and pushing
especially as you're a new pilot on a new aircraft if you're flying with a
captain because now you have someone there that can mentor you as you're
going so if it's really strong crosswind tell them hey listen I'm not very
comfortable with this but I'm going to go in and do the best that I can and if
it's not good we'll go around and then we could talk about it when we come back
in and land it's important to be pushing those limits and trying to become the
best pilot you can possibly be speak up when you're not comfortable that's
important when you're dealing with your crew or anyone else there's been a lot
of crashes that have happened because the pilots were nervous to speak up an
example that I was thinking about when I wrote this was the crash that happened
in Columbia a few years back with the Brazilian soccer team
they didn't take enough gas and instead of telling air traffic control hey
listen we are very low on gas we need to get in immediately they didn't say
anything they're trying to hide something because they should have
stopped to get gas and they didn't so as a result of that they ran out of gas and
without telling ATC hey we need to get in there now they were trying to hide it
don't hide it if you're in a jam talk to your crew members talk to air traffic
control they are there to help you at the
the day you may get in a little bit of trouble but it's better to get in
trouble than be dead another example of that was a flight that happened a long
time ago as crj200 they flew up to 41,000 feets and they basically locked
the engines instead of telling air-traffic control that they had a
problem and lost both engines they were trying to hide it and they ended up
crashing and killing themselves if you get yourself into a jam talk to air
traffic control use every available resource get yourself on the ground
safely and again you're probably going to be on a lot of trouble if you've just
locked up two of your engines but at least you're alive and at the end of the
day that's very important take care of the crew in your command now if you're a
first officer at an airline that might be the flight attendants if you're
captain it's everybody beneath you including the gate agents I've flown
with a lot of different pilots and I've seen people that have not taken care
that people below them and I've seen people who have taken care of the people
below them I've had it were an example I went through a training where the guy
was going through captain upgrade and I was a new first officer on this aircraft
and that guy gave me some tips he said hey I would do this and this and this
when you do this maneuver and so I did it and the instructor started yelling at
me when the instructor started yelling me I looked at the captain who had told
me to do these things and he was just quiet and I thought and he didn't want
to take the heat when you're looking for a situation for your commander to
protect you you would expect that they would step in that situation and he
didn't on the reverse of that I was flying once we were coming in onto a
runway that was had a lot of things going on we got a little bit behind on
the aircraft I was actually flying the captain was supposed to make a radio
call three miles out to let them know that we had to get permission to land
well he didn't do that as soon as we landed air traffic control said hey give
us a call when you get into the park immediately I knew exactly what it was I
said you didn't call to get permission to land did you and he said I don't
think I did and as soon as we parked and all the people got off the plane I
walked back up there and I was linking to on the phone with air traffic control
and he was saying 100% this was my fault that first officer was the one flying it
was on me if you have any questions if you need me to come up there and talk
with you guys I'd be happy to do and that just put a really good taste my
Mathis hey this is a guy who he messed up now even he was the type of guy that
even if I had messed up he would still take responsibility for it realize when
you're in command whoever you're in charge of it's important that you are
taking responsibility for what they are doing even if they're messing up
don't try to shift and put the blame on them another example that I did
personally we had a flight at sin and that showed up late but the passengers
relate to board and there was another issue
well the gate agent tried to blame the flight attendants we lit up getting to
our destination like 3 flights later when I was at the regionals we ended up
getting to our destination and one of the managers was calling the flight
attendant and yelling at them now you see flight attendants don't have a lot
of protection and they're very likely to get fired and a lot of times they get
bullied by management which I don't really agree with well I heard this guy
who is known for being a bit of a bully to the flight attendants talking with
the girl and she was being like quiet and yes I know no that's not quite what
happened and then he kept cutting her off I took the phone from him and I said
hey listen this is a deal and this is what happened and I explained everything
and it happened of why we were actually late now the flight attendant was late
getting to the plane that's true but that was not what caused the delay and
so I wanted to make it very clear that it was not her fault of what happened
and if he had any questions to call me I gave him my cell phone number and I said
don't call her anymore about this if you have any questions you can call me but I
know her and a lot of the flight instead she worked with really appreciate it and
knew that in a bad situation that they could come to me and I would make sure
and do the very best that I could to protect them if you are taking care of
your crew like that and you have that mentality it is going to help you in the
long run live on your last paycheck there are times where you are moving up
and things have been going really well and then you have to take a step back I
talked about it a little bit earlier but you might upgrade the captain and then
all of a sudden there's a shrinkage at the airline and then you end up going to
first officer and if you went to captain and now you bought a new car and you got
a new apartment a started going all these trips and you ran out some credit
card debt you can't go back to that earlier paycheck just plan on living on
your previous paycheck if you haven't figured out where I'm in right now I'm
in Nagoya Japan I haven't been here for a while used to come here all the time
on the Dreamlifter but that's where I'm at get
hustle I have flown guys that worked in real estate as real estate agents real
estate developers I've met guys who do coding foreign computers
I've met a few youtubers but get something that you can do on the side
being a pilot is a part-time job if you have something on the side you have a
secondary income to rely on don't live on that income just have that going on
the side because like Corona has taught a lot of pilots you need to have a
secondary income if things don't work out I'm not saying live in fear or
things like that I'm just saying you want to have something on the side just
in case things don't work out or there's a slowdown or you get furloughed see the
last five six seven years things have been so great people thought oh I'll
never have a problem my career that's not how a aviation works when I'm talking
about sighs huh so I'm not talking about a Barry Seal run some drugs type site
hustle I'm talking about a legit side hustle but speaking that if you haven't
seen the Hollywood vs. reality that I did on american-made starring Tom Cruise
I'll put a link that video right here I look forward to hearing from you
until then keep the blue side up