Well, I don't think this guy is still flying anymore, but here is a story from the book I'm writing, about the worse (bad) pilot I ever flew with. His name has been changed to protect the guilty as hell.
About a month after Biff and I had returned from FE school there is a trip in the Kingair 200, the one that was later stolen from us, yes really stolen. Ever since we had returned from FE school both of us had been riding side saddle in 727s, which was about to drive me to death from boredom, but ol' Biff really enjoyed the FE job. To be quite honest, from what I heard from the other 72 pilots he did a real good job at the FE station, probably a lot better job than I did. I flew as co-pilot on the 72 a few times when he was the FE and noticed some things that puzzled me and the other pilots.
First off he loved doing all the radio calls, he'd beg to handle all the en-route ATC radio calls. Well, that didn't bother me or about anybody else, those damn ATC calls kept waking us up. Then one day we are heading out toward the West Coast, I have my seat reclined back where my head is touching the FE panel and I hear Biff calling the FBO at our destination on the number 3 VHF. This was SOP for the FE and should not be a problem, but there was a problem, we were about 500 miles out. So I inquire of ol' Biff, as to just what was he doing calling this far out. By this time the PIC in the left seat had woken up.
Biff replies, with a snotty tone of voice, "I'm working the skip."
The skip, what fukin' skip I think. I look at the PIC and he looks back at me, then shakes his head telling me to handle it. "Un Biff, this skip, you want to amplify what you mean?" I ask him.
He gives me the 'you stupid person look' and says, "I'm skipping the radio signal off the atmosphere."
"Uh Biff, that only works on the HF radio, not VHF,"
"DOES NOT, WORKS ON BOTH!" He practically yells at me.
So I tell him, "Okay, whatever trips your trigger.", turn back around, look at the PIC and shrug my shoulders. So for the next hour or so he keeps calling this FBO. Sure enough, about a 100 miles out, the 'skip' works and he talks to them.
So with that experience with Biff, we are assigned the Kingair 200 trip, together. As Biff has blown so much smoke up the chief pilot's butt, Biff is assigned as the PIC, as he claims to have thousands and thousands of hours in the Kingair 200. I at the time only had about a 150 hours in the 200. There's not much I can say, but I figured I could keep him from killing us no matter which seat I was in. The night before the trip started Biff calls me at home and asks me to do the flight planning and pre-flight as he would be running late, no doubt due to saving the life of a pregnant Nun. I had no problem with that and assured him all would be done when he graced us with his presence. About five minutes before scheduled departure time Biff comes rushing up to the aircraft, out of breath as if he had ran all the way to the hangar.
"Well, is everything ready", he asks me, while he stares up at the low clouds, as if he'd never seen such a sight before.
"Yeah, we're ready to go, I've checked the weather, all of our stops are above minimums, should stay that way or be better by the time we arrive and it should be clear at our RON when we get there."
"What about here, I don't like the looks of those clouds. What do you mean stay above minimums, how bad is it?" Now he's got this wild eyed look on his face and is looking around everywhere.
"It is 500 and 3 here, first stop is 200 and one and forecast to be at least 500 or above by the time we arrive."
"Well I don't like it, there could be embedded thunderstorms."
"If there are, they are stealth thunderstorms because there are none on radar. Now, if you think it is too bad to go, you need to go upstairs and tell the Chief Pilot." I was sick and tired of his nonsense and firmly put the ball in his hands, after all, he was the PIC, it was his call.
"Go upstairs? Oh, huh, well let me see the weather reports." So I hand him the weather printouts, he takes and starts walking around the ramp, he would stop, run his finger on the paper, nod his head from time to time. Then he walks back up to me and the aircraft.
"Okay, it doesn't look that bad now that I have read it. But say, why don't you get into the left seat and fly, while I re-familiarize myself with the old 200's cockpit."
Re-familiarize my arse I think. "Sure thing." I say and I go switch my headsets to the left seat. So I sit there for about five minutes, the 'passengers' were loaded, but still no Biff. So I twist my head around to where I see can behind the left wing and he's just standing there starring at the weather print out. I yell at him to get on board and I swear to God he jumps ten feet into the air. Finally he gets to the cockpit and after knocking me in the head, knocking things all over the cockpit he finally gets settled into the right seat. I ask him to get the clearance while I run the checklist, which he agrees to. Five times he cannot copy the clearance. First he says the controller is talking too fast, she wasn't, then he said it was his headset, the overhead speakers where on, then something else. I finally told him to just sit there and I copied the clearance. Now this was a standard NE departure that all of us had been getting for years, all I needed to do was to write down the initial altitude, which would change from time to time and the transponder code, the routing we all knew by heart.
Anyway, off we go and Biff is now doing a good job on the radios, until we get cleared above 18 thousand.
ATC: "XXX cleared to FL 210."
Biff: "Uh (he always said 'uh' every time he talked on the radio) roger, XXX is cleared to 21 thousand."
It took a minute for what he said to sink in, 'what did he say' I thought.
ATC: "XXX now cleared to FL250."
Biff: "Uh roger, XXX now cleared to 25 thousand."
ATC comes right back and says: "XXX confirm cleared to Flight Level 250."
I waved Biff off and grabbed the mic, "Yes sir, XXX is cleared to FL 250."
I look over at him and he is glaring at me. "What do you mean cutting me off like that?" Boy he's annoyed. Well, guess what, so was I, but I keep my temperature in check. "Biff, you've flown enough on the 727 to know that all altitudes above 18 thousand/FL 180 in US airspace are called flight levels, that why we change the altitude setting to 29.92."
He continues to look at me, then with a sneer on his face he says, and I kid thee not, he really said this, "Well,,,,,I think it is rather tacky for us in a little turbo-prop to use Flight Levels, that's only for jets to use."
How does one respond to that logic? I couldn't.
To humor me (so he says) he decides to use flight levels for the rest of the day. Now this trip had five stops until we got to our last destination which was somewhere in Florida, I cannot remember where. Normally all of us switched seats every leg, so every time we landed I'd unplug my headset and put them up on the top of the right side of the instrument panel and every time I did, Biff would demure stating that I should keep flying as he thought I needed the practice. After one landing he said that it 'felt a little firm'. I told him, "Biff, we're hauling prisoners, that's what we do, I don't care what they think of my landings. If we ever carry the President of the United States, I'll make a lot smoother landings." (Unless of course we had good looking female guards on board. )
Finally on the next to last stop I flat out tell him it is his turn to get in the left seat and fly, I was tired. With great reluctance he moved over the left seat. As he is taxing out he is in high idle and is bring the engines in and out of reverse, separately, trying to steer and as a result we are all over the taxiway. Hell, I'm getting air sick on the ground. Now we're cleared for takeoff, Biff locks the brakes, shoves the throttles to the stops, I move them back to max power, as he had taken his hand off the throttles so now both of his hand are on the yoke, then he releases the brakes and off we go. And we go, and we go and we go, we're still on the runway at about 130 knots and I say, "Biff, I think its time to rotate."
And boy does he. He yanks the aircraft off the runway. However, as clever as I am, at least was back then, I was kind of expecting this and blocked the yoke to limit the rotation to about 15 degrees. Then still hanging on to the yoke for dear life he keeps climbing, as we pass through 5/6 hundred feet I ask him if he would like the landing gear retracted. He gives me a startled look, as if he didn't know that I was in the cockpit with him. Then he came back to what was going on, lowered the nose, retracted the gear and asked for climb power. Then everything was fine until we entered the clouds that were about 3,000 feet AGL.
That's when he lost control of the aircraft. All those years of aerobatics and unusual attitude practice paid off. I still to this day cannot explain how he got that Kingair nearly inverted as fast as he did. Anyway, after I handed the aircraft back to him, he turned the auto-pilot on and it stayed on until short final at our last stop. As for his landing, well we did stay on the runway, barely.
It took a while, but we, all of us other pilots, finally got him fired, but it damn near took an act of Congress to do it, literally.