Originally Posted by
LeadSled
I guess if I put up a story about John "Cat's Eyes" Cunningham, long tine Chief Test Pilot of DeHavillands (think Comet and Trident) some miserable and narrow minded sod here would say: "He wasn't a real pilot, he only had a PPL".
Which was the only full civil license he ever had.
Similarly, it has been claimed that Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston, who famously rolled the prototype of the B-707 in 1955 over Lake Washington, never got his instrument rating. He always flew with someone who could fly and land the plane in IMC. Or, so I've been told by more than one airplane buff over the years.
--- retired airline pilots still using the term "Captain" when they are no longer flying. Both are equally irrelevant.
Originally Posted by
LeadSled
The title, in the civil world, has no legal meaning, regardless of the size of the aircraft, it is merely an honorific, whether a person is currently flying or not, and a convention adopted by (not only) airlines
Use of the honorific is not common in the U.S. unless something is wrong and they are looking for someone to blame it on in my experience. It's kinda like when your mother addresses you using your full name, it's probably not a good sign.
However, it is still used with varying degrees of politeness in the Middle East and Asia.
A famous Marine over at Delta 25 years ago had the initials of W.O.W. and insisted that his 727 crew members address him as 'Captain WOW'.
One of my friends used to fly with JT on the Gulfstream 2 in the early 1990's when he was at Spruce Creek near Daytona and speaks highly of him. I think the G-2 had a charter operation which Travolta could not fly with so there were two sets of paychecks to keep the feds happy.
JT donated the G-2, N492JT, to the Georgia Aviation Hall of Fame in Warner Robins.
