2015: The Year I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Aviation

Here is a fun tidbit: I am a nervous flyer. Yes, this is very strange considering the fact that I have spent the better part of the last 15 years on…an airplane.

Coming back from the Asia Business Aviation Conference in Shanghai this year we hit a really bad patch of turbulence right over Japan. Needless to say our Boeing 777 decided it was time to audition for the 2016 Olympic Gymnastics Team. While it was showing off and I was praying to every God in existence, I looked up and saw one of the pilots going to the bathroom.

I remember thinking to myself that this could be a really good or a very very bad sign.

Back in 2004 when I was fairly new to private aviation, I was invited to fly in the cockpit of an Airbus 319 going from Colorado Springs to Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora, a suburb outside Denver.

Never having flown in a cockpit before, I was very excited, but of course it is a little unnerving if you are a nervous flyer.

What made this more interesting was that our Captain was a blonde female who spoke like a California beach girl. I do not care what the gender is of my pilot, or any profession for that matter, but this Captain came across as a little “flighty” for lack of a better word.

So I took the plunge (well lets hope not) and sat in the jump seat and was ready.

There are three things that immediately struck me when I entered the cockpit. The first is that there are laptops in front of the pilots. The second is that they steer the aircraft with a joystick and thirdly all Airbus aircraft have near identical cockpits.

For those interested, Boeing aircraft have different cockpits for each type of aircraft, the pilots do not fly with laptops, and they fly with the traditional aircraft yoke in front of them that controls many major aspects of flying the aircraft.

But back to my story about the flight…

So we took off and were steeply ascending, and as I breathed a sigh of relief, the pilot turned around and looked at me (I am not joking) and said, “Yay we are now flying!!” in her best California beach girl voice…

I think my eyes must have immediately grown ten times bigger as I pulled a face that said, “Watch the road!” Or in this case, “Watch the sky!!!”

Needless to say we made it fine and she was an excellent pilot. Though the fourth thing I learned about an Airbus is that nearly immediately after take off they went from manually flying the aircraft to putting it on automatic pilot and it stayed that way until we started to descend.

While on automatic pilot the two pilots were continuously checking everything. Whether it was the altitude, running through checks, looking for anything unusual, making sure everything was okay. They just kept doing it over and over again.

Every aspect of aviation may be the most regulated industry in the world. Between the FAA, JAA, EASA, CAA – there are so many organizations watching everything which is in the end a reflection about their concern for each passenger’s safety.

There is arguably no place safer than on an aircraft. And of course there are very few professions where people are as well trained as pilots.

Aviation is all about training.

While there is no room for error in the sky, the same applies for aircraft on the ground and all procedures surrounding a flight.

Instead of discussing our new stations, our new hires, or anything else new in 2015, I want to think of 2015 as the year we got a little bit better at what we do.

2015 was the year of Euro Jet heavily investing in training our people.Here are the highlights of some of the things that we did:

1. In January we brought to Prague Ron Jackson and John Enticknap, the world’s leading FBO customer service experts and best selling authors of the book Don’t Forget the Cheese. They spent two days with our team in Prague, where our office staff, country managers, and handling agents from around the world reviewed everything from ways to deal with challenging customers to proper customer service in complex situations, to learning how successful FBOs operate.

We also took a team picture at this gathering that is now featured on our website front page and ended up being the cover of our holiday card this year.

2. In the Spring, we launched an ambitious goal of getting all our Country Managers and top handling agents trained and certified in the NATA Safety First Training Program. The NATA Safety 1st program consists of eight rigorous online training modules and exams. The training consists of many keys items such as reviewing proper equipment handling, which is essential for supervision, in-depth fuel check and identification procedures, and correct procedures to follow in the event of an emergency. While these are all things we are well aware of, like the Airbus pilots, aviation is all about constantly reviewing and checking all details.

3. This Fall, key Euro Jet operations team members participated in a training course that instructed them on how to correctly apply IATA rules for dangerous goods. This included how to properly recognize a dangerous good, ensure it is properly packaged, understand the relevant legalities of all items, and correctly fill in the shipper’s declaration. Euro Jet is now fully qualified to apply for dangerous goods permits.

4. Lastly in December, we gathered our Country Managers back to Prague for an intense round table discussion as we figured out ways to continuously improve our service and have us work even better as a team.

You really cannot learn enough in aviation.

I hope for those reading this that the investment in our people and their development (which ultimately is for the customer’s benefit) is very evident.

And this will continue into 2016 as we know training never ends.

So here is another fun tidbit: Whenever I am on a flight and the plane starts to audition for the 2016 Olympic Platform Diving Team, I think about all the wonderful pilots I have met over the years. I think about how well trained they all are in their field. And then I ask for a refill on my wine.

And even if they sound like a California girl…its okay…I know she is extremely well trained and knows exactly what she is doing…

And I think to myself, “Yay!!….I will live to write another blog post in 2016!”

Happy New Year & v jazyce Čechů a Slováků, “šťastný nový rok!”