PPRuNe Forums - The Axe Man of Apia

Going through this thread reminded me of a conversation I had years ago with a Captain about the difficulties he was having with his son. The son in his mid 20s was unmotivated. The Captain had trouble understanding the son’s lack of initiative. The Captain compared himself to his son, when the Captain was the boy’s age he was flying combat missions in jet aircraft off the pitching deck of a carrier in the middle of the night. The kid, decades later the product of peace, security and prosperity still didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life.

Collectively we are products of the time and events we are born in. I remind myself that some of the “retired” posters here on Pprune likely flew the missions over Europe and the South Pacific in the 40s or flew with those individuals when they were starting their careers. Events and places such as the Bataan death march, Auschwitz - Dachau, and the horror of bombing of London or the Dresden firebombing are realities they lived through. It was a different world and it produced different men and different cockpit cultures. The 1,000 hour 23 year old CFI of today would bear little resemblance to the 1,000-hour 23-year-old “Old Man” commander of a bomber squadron or the fighter group that rose up in defense of their respective home cities in 1944.

My point is this; cockpit atmosphere and expected proper conduct varies tremendously depending on the age of the pilots, background and type of operation, as well as airline and national culture. One person’s friendly greeting may be view as terribly boorish and rude behavior by another. We are never going to reach a perfect consensus. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” comes close.

Reading through these posts visions of demographics, ages and experiences vividly come to mind. It would be interesting to see how accurate my assumptions regarding the posters are.

Respectfully,

Northbeach