I write about aviation, learning, and the passing forward of experience

Top of Descent

I am at the end of a long career as a pilot. Now I want to pass on some of what I have learned over those fifty-eight years since I first soloed. So I have written a book: Still Learning to Fly: a pilot’s life

You Were Right!

Feb 1, 2024

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by

Christopher Brown

in Aviation, Prophesy

Cassandra, I know people find what you say hard to believe – myself included. Then last Friday the Washington Post ran an article entitled You can filter the Boeing 737 Max 9 out of your flight search. Some specifics: Just…
The Plug Door

Jan 29, 2024

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by

Cassandra

in Aviation, Prophesy

~ Bulletin from AvProphecy ~ Riddle: What does it mean to remove a door? Hint: It hinges on hinges. Henry Ford was antisemitic and a bigot, but he did some things right. He was a good mechanic – a natural…
The X Strike

Jan 18, 2024

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by

Cassandra

in Aviation, Prophesy

~ Bulletin from AvProphecy ~ It is January, three years from now. Yesterday an atmospheric river slammed the West Coast, its most violent core centered on the Golden Gate. BART tunnels are still flooded. Waves are still breaking over the…

About the author

I first soloed in 1966. In September 1968 my new wife and I flew together in a Bonanza from California to Florida via Acapulco. It was our Honeymoon. The loan of the Bonanza was a wedding gift from the friend with whom I had learned to fly. By the time I joined the airline, in April 1973, I had 2000 hours (1350 of that as flight instructor) and a brand new ATPL.

At the airline I flew the DC-9, B727, DC-8, L-1011, and B767 in the right seat. Then, starting in 1986, I flew left seat on the DC-9 and then on the A320. I retired at age 60 (a requirement in those days) in 2004. For my last eight years on the A320 I was Line Indoctrination Training Captain.

After my retirement I didn’t fly again for six years. Failure to adjust? Bereavement?

I don’t think it was lack of interest. I snowboarded with my sons and their families. I rode motorcycles – including one transcontinental return trip. And I wrote my first book: The Decline and Fall of Air Arcadia. Perhaps writing that book was the adjustment.

In 2012, when I wanted to fly again, I had to start over. First I wrote the PSTAR, the exam student pilots have to take before they solo. I had to renew my Class I Medical. I got checked out in a Cessna 150. I wanted to get my Instrument Rating back, so I took a course and wrote the INRAT. For my ATPL to be current I had to take my instrument ride in a simulator and then get checked out in a multi-engine airplane. Then I was qualified to teach instrument and multi-engine. I did some of that, and the bugs bit me again. The flying bug and the teaching bug. I started down the long road toward renewing my Class II Instructor Rating.

For five years, starting in 2015, I was Chief Flight Instructor at a very small (one airplane) flight school. During that time I wrote my second book, the novel Arkborn. It is my coming-to-terms with climate change.

I also bought a Bonanza. The Bonanza is my first airplane love. It is a love that hasn’t faded with time.

The old girl needed a lot of work. But by the fall of 2014 she was outfitted with state-of-the-art avionics and a beautifully restored exterior, in time to re-enact my airline’s first transcontinental trip on its 75^th Anniversary. The story of that flight can be found on my site formercaptain.ca.

Our family have taken root in California, so my wife and I started re-enacting our Honeymoon, flying a Montreal-California return every year, spending the winter out west with our sons and grandchildren. We did the return trip for seven years, starting in 2012. Then in 2019 we were delayed. The Bonanza needed urgent attention, as people and airplanes sometimes do. Then COVID hit.

When we decided to travel again, in late 2021, we used the airline. By that time the Bonanza had a zero-time remanufactured engine.

I will turn eighty this year. I have flown my last mission. The Bonanza is safe and warm in her hangar, up-to-date and beautiful.

Chris

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I write about aviation, learning, and the passing forward of experience

Top of Descent

I am at the end of a long career as a pilot. Now I want to pass on some of what I have learned over those fifty-eight years since I first soloed. So I have written a book: Still Learning to Fly: a pilot’s life

You Were Right!

The Plug Door

The X Strike

Join 900+ subscribers