Six Months Later

I've now officially been an airline pilot for 6 months now. I'm finally feeling comfortable enough with the airplane that I don't fear how the next landing will go, or worry that someone will tell me I'm not doing something right. In fact, after Line Indoctrination was over, I found that real life "on the line" was something quite different than anything I'd experienced before, and not in the way I would have expected.

My Line Indoc, as it turns out, was not only quite non-standard, but also not at all ideal. Five different training captains, flying out of three different bases, 15 different airports (of which 5 were in the USA), and a whole lot of conflicting information. After my sojourne to Toronto, I finally was paired with two different captains who really, finally, showed me how it was done. They were both sympathetic, understanding and extremely knowledgable. And both knew how to teach, something I had been missing up to now.

The transition, at the end, was very sudden and unexpected. Until now, I felt like I had been dragged by the hair across Canada, and that someone had mistaken me for someone who had a pilot's license. I have no right to be here!, my mind kept screaming every time we taxied away from the gate or set up to land. I fretted and fussed over the "line check", the last two flights of the process where my instructor became an examiner. Every single flight we did, something got missed or mistaken. I was repeating what I'd been taught in the simulator like a parrot, but not really "flying" the plane.

Until the last day. Then suddenly, something flipped a switch. I became a Dash-8 pilot. Everything just... clicked.

The very next day, I was out among the masses, ready to be used and abused with the best of them. And it felt good. How about that?