Carry your own pail, pal
You ever notice how some people can turn into jerks at times? They’ll be going along fine and then all of a sudden, wham, it’s like their complete personality changes and they turn into nasty Mr. Hyde, and you’re on the receiving end, wishing nice Dr. Jekyll would reappear.
I once flew for a guy who had that propensity for turning into a jerk whenever it suited him. When I first met him, he was the nicest guy in the world. Used to visit the FBO (fixed-base operator) where I worked (Hunt Pan-Am out of Brownsville), and he hired me to teach him how to fly a twin-engine.
This guy in question — who would later become my boss — had about a hundred hours as a private pilot, but he wanted to get his multi-engine rating. Trouble was, he was having trouble with the engine-out procedure (dead foot, dead engine). So we flew for days up and down the South Padre coast, high above the surf, practicing engine-out procedures, how to feather the engine while maintaining altitude and control of the plane, practicing the importance of keeping a twin-engine plane above the MCA (minimum control airspeed) and in control with one prop feathered.
Compared to learning how to fly a single-engine plane, learning how to fly a twin is almost twice as complex. Teaching a student to fly a twin vs. a single is almost the same — twice as complex.
With two engines, if you lose one, you have a lot of work ahead of you, in quick fashion, to maintain control of the airplane, depending on which part of the flight the engine quit — departure, level flight, or approach to landing. The rudder pressure tells the pilot which engine just quit (the gauges can’t always be trusted). Then, he/she/it (personal pronouns are important) has to increase the power on the good engine with increased rudder pressure, cut back the throttle on the bad engine, then feather the prop and kill the fuel mixture (making sure it’s not the mixture to the good engine that gets shut off).
If during the course of all of this, the plane’s speed drops below the MCA (minimum control airspeed), the twin has this nasty habit of rolling over on its back. That presents a new host of problems no pilot wants to face, and from which only a very few safely recover.
The Pail Story
Anyway, back to the story of my former student who turned into my boss. After about 10 lessons, I told him he wasn’t ready for the flight test in the twin, but he wouldn’t listen. He called up the FAA guy himself (he was a designated examiner flying out of Harlingen at the time, not an FAA employee) and scheduled a flight test. I said, fine, learn the hard way, and so I endorsed his logbook.
No surprise. He learned the hard way. He failed the flight test. Never did get his twin-engine rating.
It was hard not to say, I told you so, but I bit my lip.
Besides, I owed him thanks because he had convinced his boss, a wealthy California Ob/Gyn who had done well in real-estate investments, to buy a two-year-old Cessna 414, so whenever he flew to Texas, I could fly him and his GM around the state while they looked at other motel properties for sale.
When he wasn’t in town, I operated the plane as a charter company, flying clients mostly around Texas and Mexico out of Brownsville.
The Ob/Gyn owned, personally, the Holiday Inn on South Padre, which gives you an idea of his net worth. A year or so after I went to work for him, he also bought a big hotel-showroom up in Louisiana (Shreveport/ Bossier City), about a mile away from a horse track, and so we moved the 414 to the Cajun state.
So one day, after being a jerk for about a week straight, the GM (who oversaw all the rich guy’s hotels, including one in Vegas) wants me to fly him to see his daughter in Houston. Okay, fine. So we take off from Shreveport.
Turned out, the Mexican buffet he had just eaten about an hour earlier apparently hadn’t agreed with him, and so shortly after takeoff, he’s headed to the john in the back of the plane. He isn’t walking. He’s trotting toward the rear of the cabin. I adjust the trim and fly on, adjusting the AC’s air vent.
At the time, the twin-engine Cessna had a suction hose for those passengers who couldn’t wait to void their bladder. It was part of a toilet contraption, of which consisted of the suction hose and a plastic pail for the more serious bathroom purposes. I know, not to elaborate, but the plane wasn’t truly designed for bathroom facilities, but had been jazzed up with a custom interior, of which bathroom availability was part of the equation, if indeed nature called and wouldn’t wait to land, or in this case, food poisoning was at work, turning the gastro tract into some sort of explosive device.
Make a long story short, we had to forego a visit to his daughter and head back to Shreveport. After we landed, I told my boss, the GM, I’m not carrying that plastic bucket through the airport lounge. I figured he might argue, but in his weakened state (Montezuma’s Revenge) he simply nodded okay.
To this day, I can still remember the sight of him carrying that plastic pail through the FBO in Shreveport, Louisiana, with his head held high trying to look dignified. With a plastic pail full of human waste, however, it was a hard look to carry off as he made his way to the men’s restroom eager to empty his haul.
Karma.