Page 24 - September21T

From the Flight Deck
by Kevin R. Dingman
Aviation Alphabet Groups
An (ex)Airline Pilot Spends
Eight Days at Oshkosh AirVenture
GAMA NATA AOPA NBAA EAA
They say one indicator of declining mental health is you spend less time on your appearance. Take shaving, for example. But hippies avoid shaving because hair is thought to be tentacles of free-thinking. And, according to the television rendition, sages who sit atop the mountains let their beard and hair grow without cutting them short because they believe that cutting the hair means cutting the growth of one’s free-spiritedness and free-thinking. Certainly, the mental health of hippies or at least the sages is beyond reproach. My hippie days are long gone (stand by for next month’s hippie story). I’m certainly no sage and my mental health is great; I just don’t like to shave – especially while camping.
Officially Old
While family and friends convinced me to continue with showers (including soap), I haven’t shaved in weeks. And now, my access to commercial airport secure areas,
The author's retirement water cannon salute in ORD.
sensitive security information, the cockpit of an airliner, crew member priority lines, employee websites, and the admiration of men, women, children and supermodels have all been stripped from me. I don’t think it’s because I stopped shaving. After 31 years as an airline pilot, I’m now officially old in the eyes of the FAA. So, at 1214 CDST on July 20, 2021, as I taxied under a two firetruck water cannon salute to gate H-6 in ORD, I logged my last minute as a Part 121 Captain for American Airlines. Yippie?
As retirement neared over the last couple of years, many friends and coworkers described the psychological significance of transitioning from airline captain to Walmart greeter. They all said keep busy, have a hobby, find something to fly and be ready to apply salve to your ego because of that men, women, children and supermodel thing from above. After 10 years of flying the F-16, post-fighter pilot withdrawal and fighter pilot dreams persisted for multiple
22 • TWIN & TURBINE / September 2021