Senior Seminar class winter 2014
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Flying Cheap and my career
When I finish school, I foresee myself working for an airport authority for a long time. There are other potential career paths that I will look into such as ATC and dispatching, but my primary focus is in the executive and administrative world for now. I want to end up as a director of a department of a large airport authority or as a director of a smaller airport entirely. I need to be somewhere warm and around water. I feel like the perfect airport authority would be someplace like Tampa. Director of Operations at an airport of that size would be a large responsibility, but by that point in my life, I will be able to handle it. The operations department is responsible for maintaining compliance with 14 CFR part 139 and part 77 as well as TSR 1542. As the director of the department, this would all fall under my responsibility. This includes topics like snow removal, ARFF, airport security, surrounding airspace, airport inspections, etc.
The biggest safety issues for an airport authority include security breaches and the safe operation of aircraft (including the pavement and airspace around the airport). The way to mitigate these issues is to adhere to the ACM that the airport has developed to most effectively and safely run the airport. Beyond that, updating that ACM with new techniques and policies as they become viable.
Professionalism encompasses a few concepts. In this industry professionalism is about working efficiently, going above the requirements to ensure safety, being a good communicator, a good leader, and maintaining high ethical standards.
In the Flying Cheap documentary, a tremendous lack of professionalism was demonstrated. The two most ridiculous instances of it involved forging paperwork for duty time by a V.P. and also a captain forging a load manifest.
While I move forward with my career, I intend to stay professional; the most important thing to me is to be ethical and to be safe. In this industry, corner cutting like that shown by Colgan Air is inexcusable. It doesn't even make sense for a company to operate recklessly in the long run. In the short run they make more money, in the long run, they have an accident and have their certificate pulled. I will maintain a clear conscience and keep everyone at my airport safe and I will not encourage blatant rule breaking and endangerment. That just seems like common sense to me.
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I agree that it is never wise to be unethical, but do you think Colgan was worried about being caught? Or were they worried about not making a profit and losing jobs? It is a sad thing to say that money makes the world go round. It is never acceptable to be unethical, especially when lives are at stake, including the pilots. Maybe if we all had more core values we would be able to find a way around these problems. I like your definition of professional. I believe that is a good standard for us in aviation
ReplyDeleteI see my vision of where I would like to end up being similar to yours. I'm not sure exactly which airport authority I want to end up at, as I am unsure of where I want to live at the moment. I like your definition of professionalism and noticed from the video those areas lacking professionalism as well.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what you mean by the airspace around the airport being your responsibility. I understand the "safe operation of aircraft" falls under you, but how would you be dealing with the airspace? I do like how you described professionalism, I think those are all good traits to have.
ReplyDeleteATC is a great career and I think that they are starting to hire again. We will have an ATC guest speaker at some point. I agree that there is an element to professionalism that includes going above the requirements.
ReplyDeleteYou run Tampa, I will take Miami or Fort Meyers. Sounds like a good plan for a career and being in AAAE will help. There are 5 of us from Eastern that are members and you know the rewards and benefits from that.
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