Flying for the “Majors” is every pilot’s Holy Grail. For me, it’s pursuit required equal measures of dedication and starvation. Until about twenty years ago, all major airline pilots were hired almost exclusively from the military. Nowadays, FLAPS (Fucking Little Airplane Pilots) make up more than half the total pilot pool of all airlines.
The traditional route up-the-ladder for the FLAP begins with flight instructing, followed by flying night freight in ragged-out equipment, and if you survive, then jobs with the commuters. All this for the express purpose of building turbine time (jet multi-engine hours). 1500 hours lead to the ATP rating, and after a few thousand hours with a commuter, and with persistence and luck, perhaps an interview with a major airline.
Stigo Brandvik and I were broke as always, yet we were excited. We landed our first flying job for, Trans-Air, a Commuter Airline out of Fort Lauderdale. We would not be paid for the first two weeks of ground school nor for flight training. We would only be put on the books after our check ride, when we would then be legally able to “fly the line.” That meant no money for almost six weeks from the time we hitched our ride down to Lauderdale.
Always broke, Stigo and I slept in our clothes in the Alamo Rent-a-car lounge, off the field. Early every morning, we would take the Alamo shuttle bus to the airport, head over to the General Aviation side of the field, and shower in any maintenance locker room we found open. Then we’d sneak through the charter planes parked in the hangars, scrounging for leftover sandwiches, or some half-eaten anything not yet thrown away. Nowadays, that’s called “dumpster-diving” by street-people.
Somehow, we survived the training and the six weeks of starvation, until thrillingly, we received our first paychecks, at our co-pilot rate of $6.00 per flying hour, we could earn a maximum of $600 a month… heaven.
Oystein was still Flight Instructing during the day, and flying bags of bank checks or food stamps at night. Now, without me to spell him at the controls, exhaustion was taking it’s toll. Coming back to Jacksonville from Charlotte, he fell asleep at the controls. He was out over the Atlantic Ocean, nearing Andros Island, when the screams of the Air Traffic Controller in his headset finally woke him up. Luckily, Oystein made it back with enough fuel to land at Ft. Lauderdale Airport.
There are any number of fatalities a year caused by single-pilot exhaustion, someone falling asleep at the controls while the airplane, properly trimmed, just keeps flying along until it runs out of fuel.
Not long after this incident, Oystein was deported… seems that he fell for Jekyll Annie Thomas, whose short shorts inspired many an aviator to fly into Jekyll Island for her specialized fuel pumping. Oystein, who was already married to a cooperative young lady for immigration purposes, was inspired enough by Annie’s pumping services to divorce the first one, and to marry Annie. Annie was trouble… suffice to say she arranged to have Oystein thrown out of the country, since she secretly wanted to live in Norway.
Oystein, our beloved Captain “0,” has last been seen driving cabbage trucks in Bergen, and is reputed to be smuggling a tightly controlled fish drug into Norway from Germany, flying in on fraudulently filed flight plans, listing Stigo’s name as the pilot.