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not biting. United Airlines, however, went on a brief hiring spree when it unexpect- edly appeared three pilots were going to be required in the front of their newly acquired 737s. I applied and interviewed with their local chief pilot. He was a very decent fatherly type fellow, with a grey mustache and grey hair. After listening to my story, he put his hand on my shoul- der and said in friendly and concerned manner, “Young man, if you continue with the application we will hire you, but my advice is to first finish your de- gree at the UW. If we hire you now, we will base you in New York on standby, and in less than a year, we will lay you off.” Moving to New York for 12 months did not at all appeal to my wife or me, and neither did getting laid off with an incomplete college degree. We decided to follow his very kind and wise advice.
As it turned out, the airlines did have a massive pilot layoff in the year that followed, and a lot of my former flight in- structor buddies wound up with jobs like selling men’s shoes at the Bon Marche for
years until the airline industry finally turned around. In the meantime, I fin- ished the B.S. degree and built another 1,000 hours of flying time. But now, with thousands of airline pilots on furlough and few non-airline pilot jobs available, prospects of flying for a living looked very dim for a long time to come. How- ever, I had done fairly well academically with a major in psychology and a mi- nor in chemistry – which happens to be
qualifications many medical schools like to see in their applicants. So, I applied to medical school, and to my surprise, was offered a “full ride” scholarship for the first year. I promptly accepted.
While attending medical school, I con- tinued doing various types of Part 91 and Part 135 flying as we needed the income. Four years later, I found myself with a medical degree, 6,000 hours of flight time and a residency position for post-graduate training at a well-regarded university hospital in the Southwest. Early on dur- ing the residency, I remember working in the newborn nursery one afternoon when I heard on the radio that (what do you know) the airlines were facing a shortage of pilots and were urgently looking for applicants. I was certainly qualified and thought about it for a while, but decided not to pursue it. After four years of medical school, I was at a criti- cal point of my medical training. Plus, they might offer me a job f lying as f light engineer on a 727 only to lay me off in a couple of years.
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30 • TWIN & TURBINE / February 2020 Jet Journal