CEO Of The Cockpit: The Enemies List (Corrected)

Sometimes, the activities on the ramp at my home airport resemble the movie "Idiocracy" more than a functional place for aircraft operations.

I am not immune to stupidity, missed cues, gaffes, faux pas, and having my head up and locked. Some of the goofy things I have done in and around airplanes would astound and vex you into wondering how I have lived this long.

I have been around flying for a very long time and have faux-pawed so many times I am tempted to write a biography titled "Two Hundred Stupid Things I Have Done in Airplanes and How I Survived Them."

Still, even with my background in aviation Tomfoolery, I am stunned by the annoying, insipid and thoughtless things people do to their aircraft and the airports where they are based.

Take this morning. As I drove down the ramp on my way to my humble T-hangar, I noticed someone pulling the prop on the left engine of their old Beech Baron's left engine. At first, I thought this guy was pulling the prop through out of conviction that pulling props through was a thing that pilots had to do.

I stopped my truck and said hi to this stalwart prop-pulling pilot. He waved and then said the immortal words uttered by many pilots before him who lost fingers and arms: "Contact!"

You are correct, ladies and gentlemen. He was trying to start the engine of his light twin by propping it! Let's forgo the lecture about how illegal this is vis-à-vis the FARs (look it up under "minimum equipment list"). We can even ignore the fact that flying with a completely dead battery on an aircraft that uses electrons to pull up the landing gear and extend the flaps is dumb.

The most dangerous thing was what would happen if the daggum thing started. Our propping pilot gave up after discovering that doing this with a Baron is an almost impossible task. He melted into a puddle of sweat and ignorance after a few attempts and stumbled to the hangar to find a mechanic who could find him a strong battery and troubleshoot the situation.

This guy made my enemies list.

For those of you too young to remember Richard Milhous Nixon, this president is famous, in part, for maintaining an "enemies list" of people he did not like or thought could harm his political career. I am sure that most politicians have a list like that and hope that nobody—especially the people on their list—finds out.

My list does not just contain unsafe idiots. It catalogs the clueless, annoying and outright enemies of flying who harshly affect my piloting buzz.

Here are a few of the members of my list. Please feel free to comment with your additions, even if the list includes pontificating and opinionated pilots like me:

The potential instrument pilot or returning recurrent instrument pilot trainee who wears their instrument hood on their head as they walk out to the airplane. Yes, we all know you are a high-tech gauge jockey. We don't need to see your goofy hood, and you should know that by wearing it, you will be forever pegged as a geek.

I have already discussed people who love the microphone so much that they talk incessantly on Unicom, but for today's enemies list, let's note the ones who say "last call" as they leave the frequency. Dude, we don't care. Just stop talking, and after a while, we'll figure out that you are gone.

Helicopter pilots who hover taxi down the narrow alley between rows of T-hangars. These people should be rotor-whipped. Yes, they think they look cool as their sling wing churns up a FOD tsunami, but yours truly wonders what is so daggum hard about pushing their whirlybird out to an open area using the wheels on the skids or the trailer it is sitting on when they pulled it from the hangar.

This does not happen to me anymore, but I would be remiss if I did not mention trans-oceanic picture-takers and talkers. They call you on track common and say they took a picture of your bird as you passed each other on the tracks. Then they want you to email your address, again, on track common so that they can email it to you. Thanks, but I already have plenty of pictures of airplanes and don't want to broadcast my address.

Pilots who poop on the team bus. Nuff said.

Do-it-yourselfers who change their airplane's oil and then throw the old oil that they have put into an old milk jug into the airport dumpster. Woodsy Owl should show up and yank their tickets after giving them a painful pecking.

Please keep your distance when I am at the self-serve gas pump, and you are next in line. I know you are back there, next in line, and don't need a Cessna enema when you discover your brakes don't work well. Also, I am fueling as fast as I can, Skippy, so fewer frustrated looks are in order.

Please don't paint your lame general aviation spam can like a USAF or Navy fighter. It embarrasses your aircraft and makes you look like a dweeb. If you want to fly a warbird, buy one.

I have enemy-listed pilots who leave trash and detritus all over the cockpit when they leave. In the airline world, we would identify the pilot, package up his or her trash, and company mail it to them. 

My final one today is from my airline past. At 4 a.m., when we are riding the van from the hotel to the airport to start our day, I don't need to hear about your shopping trip to Old Navy, how your boyfriend is funny in the shower or other loud, intimate details of your life. I am trying to relax and catch a few z's before we get frisked by the TSA. Please be silent and take a big gulp of a steaming cup of "shut the hell up."

I finally made it safely to my T-hangar and found a neighbor across the way trying to push open his hangar doors using the front of his pick-up truck. I reminded him that the doors were pinned at the bottom and would easily open if he removed them from the concrete floor.

Sigh…

Thanks for all the kind words but Kevin Garrison wrote this. The byline on these stories defaults to my name in this system and I forgot to change it yesterday. Apologies to Kevin, too. Russ