Saturday, June 18, 2005

Sam's off probation!

Yesterday marked my first day off probation at my airline. To "celebrate," I woke up at 2:30am for a 4AM showtime. Five legs and six flying hours later, I found myself in Helena, MT.

So despite my newfound freedom to go slumming, I'm still wearing hat & tie, and am turning out at 5AM in freshly pressed shirt and slacks. Why? Because if pilots expect to be treated as professionals, they should look the part. That's a somewhat unpopular opinion in the regional airline world, perhaps because enforcing hat rules is the way certain chief pilots exercise their power and justify their job. Hat issues aside: we need to be professionals in the public's eye if we want to improve our profession, and that's all I have to say 'bout that.

2 comments:

Aviatrix said...

Congratulations!

The chief pilots insist that everyone wears his hat so that it isn't obvious that the chief pilot is only wearing his to cover up his bald spot.

There's no truth to the rumour that hats make you go bald. It's flying airplanes that makes you go bald.

Sam Weigel said...

I can't say I've ever seen our Chief Pilot, or Assistant Chief Pilots, *ever* wear their hats...because I've never seen them in a pilot's uniform! The assistants never fly, and the chief pilot flies only rarely.