Surprisingly enough this month has been going by quickly. I’m not sure why since I have been anything but busy (at least as far as work goes). We haven’t had a maintenance flight in weeks and yesterday was only my second flight of the month. We have been busy packing stuff up and figuring out how everything is going to get moved. I think we are in such a routine that the days all start to blend together. We are getting more missions but the dust is keeping us in check which is probably a good thing since we are getting low on hours. We are not going to have as many hours on the aircraft coming back with us as I had hoped but based on the latest boat date rumors they may not even make it back to
My flight yesterday was one to remember. We knew it was going to be a long day from the start since it was a two part mission with four hours of down time in between. The weather was supposed to be good all day but the dust started to pick up right after take off. Because of the type of mission we were doing we were approved to fly in worse weather than usual but it got down to those limits on our way to our destination and on our return home after completing the mission it got even worse. It was the worst weather I have flown in over here but at least it was during the day so it didn’t really bother me. It just makes flying more work. It was hard to get motivated to take off again on the second leg in the heat of the afternoon. Especially since the weather was only slightly better. It was still bad around our local area but we tried a different route farther out west to get to Al Asad and that was a lot better. We got back home right at sunset. It was a good feeling to be able to finish everything but I was pretty much exhausted. I had a good crew so that really helped to keep things relaxed.
Dust H 116 L 86
2 comments:
How much input would a pilot have as to crew selection? If a pilot thought someone was a problem...I mean a real problem..not just annoying (: Is there any system in place for stating concerns? Any hope, if a pilot had serious reservations about a crew member of being able to say "I refuse to fly with so and so"? In theory everyone is trained; everyone is competent...but in actual situations, does the Army make a provision for ineptitude or panic?
A lot of it depends on the situation. If it was for a unique mission and a pilot was chosen to fly it then he might have quite a bit of input like I did on my flight up from Texas, but for your normal day to day mission you are expected to fly with the crew assigned. The platoon leaders assign the pilots and the platoon sergeants assigned the enlisted guys based on which aircraft is flying, days off, type of mission ect. The crew is looked at as a whole to ensure the experience level fits the mission then the schedule is posted. If you are assigned with someone you really don't like to fly with then you could ask someone else to trade places with you but that is frowned upon - you should be professional enough to not let personal conflicts affect the mission. That being said it can make for some uncomfortable flights and there is some safety concerns because you probably won't work as well together as a team. Now if there is somebody you feel is actually unsafe as in doesn't meet the minimums of ability you can always bring it up to an instructor pilot. That is taken very seriously so people are careful about doing that because you could hurt someones career. It doesn't take long before everyone knows who the weaker and stronger pilots are so the leaders make sure you don't end up with two weak pilots together (I am using pilots in my examples but the same reasoning is used for the enlisted guys). Pilots by occupation tend to have pretty big egos but you are also expected to be able to take criticism and learn from others. The biggest problem you usually see is senior guys doing something wrong but the junior guys are too nervous about bringing it up so it doesn't get corrected.
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