It’s because we started at the bottom and gradually crept up!
1. Learned to FLY. Started in a Tiger Moth or Auster with no wireless set to have to operate. We concentrated on learning flying skills with only five light signals and two coloured flares to keep an eye out on the tower for.
2. When we upgraded into a Chippie we learned about wirelesses with five VHF channels and then later Cessnas with a HF radio with squelch and volume nobs and another four or six crystals in that. Some had a fishing reel in the ceiling whith the rtrailing aerial wound on it you had to remember to wind back in or you lost her on the aerodrome fence. Cessnas or Tripacers had a great big radio compass with it’s three bands and a great round dial full of frequencies and a BFO switch.
Air Law and CRM what the hell were they.
3. Controlled area was above ten thousand. Who got to ten grand in one of those old girls… too bloody cold. The control zones just were around the capitals and we went into them when we were well into our Commercial Nav training… maybe.
4. Student pilots were learners who said WOW! when they met a Private Pilot. Commercial trainees were up there with God. They sometimes flew in cabin aeroplanes and wore suits when they did.
5. Student Pilots, including Commercial students were going to be flying like an Airline pilot in a great big DC-6, one day in the future… when they had learned all their stuff.
6. Bars on shoulders were respected. One and a half meant, “He’s made the airlines and is a First Officer in a great big DC-3. He’s learned his stuff, proved it to the interviewers and the bars are the proof.
The bloke with one and a half, looked up to the bloke with two, who looked forward to the gruelling training had proving he’d get to do to wear two and a half and be in command of an airliner.
7. The Captain had been honed by fellers who learned how not to kill themselves in primitive collections of sticks ‘n pipe covered in rag from Kingsford Smith, Horry Miller, Aub Kosch and the like or had come back after the Germans and Japs had tried knockin’ them down with tons of red hot steel for years. They had learned all the tricks and rules of thumb and they slowly and generously passed the knowledge on to us. We knew we were in the presence of real pilots and maybe we could become a bit like them over the next ten years. There was a bloody lot to learn.
8. Most captains were humble and didn’t strut round quoting buzz words like, "responsibility", "command decision" etc, to impress themselves when they had an audience.
9. Hosties respected pilots and didn’t think they were more important than the young FO because THEY’d been in the company longer. They got chucked out at thirty or when they were married
… oh for the old days.
Now, Instructors with no experience have to toe the line and teach students (out of the book) to think they're just like Jumbo Captains from the start.