On Utility

The Mighty DC-8s at retirement. Roswell, NM.

Wasting time online the other day, I got sucked down a wormhole of aircraft boneyards. As an airplane ends its time of usefulness, it is typically flown to the desert where it might be mothballed for a period of time, slated for possible reactivation. Eventually, when it becomes clear (or the decision is in any case made) that a particular jet's flying days are done, the airplane will become a parts mule, cannibalized to keep similar machines of the fleet going, and / or it eventually gets chewed up into a pile of raw materials to be melted down and made into something else.

Unlike your old car, which likely will make its way to a junkyard by a flatbed truck, virtually every airplane that goes to the boneyard is flown there. A final flight. When it makes its final trip it is fully functional and could presumably be called back into active service the very next day. Someone has deemed it to be used up, but in many cases there is no hard and fast line for an airplane between a utile existence and a death sentence. Some kind of spreadsheet is used and a line is crossed. Such a momentous thing--the end of a very expensive piece of equipment--that in fact is arbitrary and inscrutable. An olympic runner sprinting a four minute mile to the gallows. That is something maybe unique to this industry.

Like the equipment, so too the people.

I have been present in my career for two final flights. I acted as copilot on a captain's final flight on the DC-8, and again a few years later on a different captain's flight on the MD-11. There are circumstances where a pilot may arrange for his / her final flight to be with a specific crew, but in these cases I was just assigned to the flights by the usual bidding or reserve call-out processes, a random assignment to assist someone else making the final entry in the logbook of their life's work. In neither case were the pilots in any way verklempt about the momentousness of the occasion, though on the MD-11 flight I believe we were met in Louisville at our parking spot by a chief pilot and the retiring captain's family--the one time non-pilots might be allowed up into the cockpit to see how he made his living all these years.

But I couldn't help being a little verklempt myself, as I was nowhere near retirement at the time and the idea of the career's end seemed momentous. At the end of the process, once hands are shaken and cake is eaten (and maybe after the water cannon salute through which some guys taxi on their final trip to the gate), the pilot's ID and associated company materials are quietly confiscated, and the departing employee is kindly escorted thru security and off the property, never again to be allowed access to this rarified world.

If one is ready to retire, as both these gentlemen were, there is probably on the prospect of sunny skies ahead. But just like an airplane's final flight to the boneyard, our newly-retired pilot arrives at the finish line in complete possession of all the arcane skills and knowledge needed for the job, fully capable and current to execute this complex job. Like the airplane, he could be called the next day (or the next week or month) to come back in for emergency fill-in. Some folks do this, opting to take another flying job in retirement.

As my own finish line comes into view, I find it's the scrutiny that I seek freedom from; the medicals and recurrent training and check rides, the regulatory burdens of almost every aspect of the job. These are simply an integral part of what this career entails, but I'll be glad to see the backside of this aspect of the job. But there's plenty else I'll miss. I'm aware on layovers and for airport operations that each instance may be the last time I see X place or do X job, and my love for the machine itself, the magic inner sanctum of the cockpit, remains undiminished all these years later. And though I'm current when I turn in my ID, I'm aware that these skills will fade with each passing month until one day I realize I'm quite out of the game. 

Thus does the world pass us all by eventually.