“I’M THE CAPTAIN!!!”

“I’m the CAPTAIN!!!”

There was a hunting lodge in Georgia, that catered to upper-end corporate clientele. Businessmen would fly in with their clients for a few days of quail hunting, gourmet meals, and telling stories and conducting business by the fireplace in the evenings in their comfortable cabins.

The lodge had one particular hunting dog, named Copilot, who was far and away superior to any of the other dogs.

Copilot would sniff out the birds, hold point until the hunters were ready, then flush them out. Once the shooting was done, Copilot would go find the birds, retrieve them without leaving toothprints in the meat, and then go do it again.

Thick brush? Lousy weather? Copilot didn’t care. He lived for the hunt.

One day a long-time repeat customer called the lodge to make a reservation. “I’m flying in on the company jet with my top customer. I want to make sure he has a great time. Please be sure we get to hunt with Copilot,” he said.

There was a pause, then the lodge owner replied, “I’m sorry. We don’t use Copilot anymore.”

“Oh, NO!” the businessman replied. “Did he die? Was he injured? Is he sick?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“Well then, what?”

“A couple weeks ago someone made a mistake and called him Captain,” the owner explained. “Now all he wants to do is sit on his ass and bark.”

The first 16 years of my flying career were in General Aviation – flying small to medium-sized airplanes, single pilot operations. Then one day, I became an airline pilot, and things were done in accordance with established procedures and a chain of command in the cockpit.

Coming from an environment where I was always the pilot in command, and doing things my way, it was an adjustment to say the least.  

In theory, it shouldn’t be that difficult. You learn your company’s procedures, and then you both follow said procedures. Callouts are standard. Flow patterns are performed. Checklists are used to ensure nothing was omitted during the flow patterns. Challenge and response to the most important items. It’s done the same way every time. No matter who the crewmembers are. If it’s done right, you can interchange any crewmembers at any time during the flight with zero interruption in efficiency. Cockpit resource management ensures that it’s all done in a safe and organized manner.

In theory.

The reality is there are personalities involved. A good captain can set the tone and create a relaxed atmosphere. The first officer is comfortable and can perform his/her duties without the added pressure of a domineering captain and feels free to contribute suggestions or bring anything out of the ordinary to the captain’s attention. Thank goodness, that is how it is done most of the time.

But every now and then, you get a captain who mucks the whole thing up.

You get the ones who have never been in command, and it’s now their turn to run the show their way. They’ll change or ignore standard operating procedures, insisting everyone does it their way. And it gets even worse when there are multiple captains with this attitude. No two do it the same. It is distracting, it is frustrating, and at times it is downright dangerous.

By the way, it is worth noting that these are the ones who sweat bullets during the days preceding a simulator proficiency check or an unannounced line check. Because they now suddenly have to remember how it is supposed to be done. They become impatient, short-tempered, and they f*** things up by the numbers then blame it on their support pilot. Same with out in the real world, flying the line. They deviate from procedures, overload their first officers, then blame them if things go wrong. They often tend to be the ones who are involved in accidents.

There are those who were everyone’s friend when they were first officers. Then they upgrade and become difficult, impossible to please. I was a captain for a lot of years, and it was interesting to hear the people I flew with talking about someone who I’d always enjoyed flying with when they were in the right seat, but now they’ve upgraded and no one wants to fly with them.

You see the same thing to some degree when a pilot who was well-liked as a captain gets promoted to check airman. Usually it’s not a problem, but for some, the ego kicks in and their hat is now too small.

And then you have those who think they are truly superior to the rest of us. The best example I can recall happened one night on the ramp in Wilmington, Ohio.

I was in the jumpseat of a Boeing 767 going to Tampa. When it was time to start engines and pushback, everything was going as normal, initially. Then it became apparent that the person driving the tug was inexperienced, because we were going all over the place. I glanced out the window to the right and saw the wing walker with her lighted wands crossed, frantically trying to get someone’s attention. The ramp was a “target rich environment” with ground support equipment, stairs, fuel trucks, other airplanes, etc. We were apparently about to hit something.

“Your wing walker is saying stop,” I said to the crew. The captain did nothing. “She’s staying stop,” I repeated.

By now the first officer was looking at her, and he saw what I saw. “She’s saying stop!” he said to the captain.

The captain, who was quite high on the seniority list, exploded. “I’M the CAPTAIN!!! I’LL DECIDE WHEN WE STOP!!!” All this while we are being pushed back in a sort of S-turn and the wing walker is still out there trying to get them to stop. I fully expected we would have a collision with something at any moment. But, somehow, that didn’t happen.

It upset me to see the first officer being yelled at that way.

We flew all the way to Tampa and not another word was said about it. I didn’t talk with the crew, and their only conversation was the bare necessities with conducting the flight.

On the ground in Tampa, I said to the first officer, “On behalf of all the rest of us captains here at ABX, I want to apologize for the way Captain ____ yelled at you.” He seemed to appreciate that.

Later that week, I crossed paths with the first officer in our company crew lounge. On the way to the hotel, the captain had said to him, “I suppose I should explain myself. I reacted the way I did because we had a jumpseater (me) violating the sterile cockpit policy.”

Which of course was absolute horse shit. The sterile cockpit policy prohibits any conversation below 10,000’ MSL that is not related to flight operations, with the notable exception that we are expected to bring up anything pertaining to safety. Which is exactly what I was doing.

The captain’s inability to understand the concept of the sterile cockpit notwithstanding, he still ignored his first officer telling him of a safety issue.

It really burned me when I realized that he was yelling at me. I would have had a conversation with him on the ground in Tampa had I known at the time.