Hello and welcome to Andrew’s Articles! Today we are going to talk about my capstone interview.

My interview was at the million air club, a luxurious private lounge for expensive travelers. I was excited to go, but shocked when I arrived.

For my interview, I talked to a pilot named, ” Wesley Archer “. He is a private pilot which means that he flies for fun, and not for commercial purposes. When the interview first started, he told me that he has 840 flight hours, and that he had his license for ten years.

I asked him questions about training for pilots. When I asked, ” What training do you need when you first enter the cockpit, and after you’ve been flying?”.  He answered by saying, you need 10 hours of solo time, and 30 hours with an instructor. He also said, that you have to do an Instrument flight, where they black the windows of the cockpit, except during take off and landing. It teaches you to fly with instruments and learn what they do. After this, you take a written exam, and an oral exam. This helped me learn a lot about training that pilots need, which helped me answer on of my sub questions.

I then asked him about, preparation for takeoff and landing. During takeoff, the first thing he said was check the weather, and check himself, does the pilot feel ready to fly. If the is sick, he is causing himself and the people on board the aircraft a risk. Some of the final things he said were, do a walk a around of the plane, check for dents, and other signs of danger that should be fixed before he flies the plane. This taught me that pilots have a lot of safety measures before doing an element of flying. It is important because if these measures are not completed properly it could lead to a fatal disaster. During landing, pilots have a checklist that they need to complete, including, checking weather at the destination of which he wants to land, checking the wind, and finding clearance from ATC. The landing checklist is important because any difference or mistake could lead to a air crash or a runway excursion.

The interview was valuable for my research because it opened my mind more to see what the pilots connection to a runway excursion was, and how it you deal with it. The pilot gave me a understanding of what he had to go through before earning his license. My opinion on runway excursions, I mostly blame towards pilot error, but he explained that to their are more reasons of why a runway excursion can happen, such as, the saying, ” slippery when wet “, means that the outside conditions affected the plane in a negative way. It seems likely for a pilot to make an error, because there are so many automated systems that cause conflict for pilots. Actually, it is not that serious because pilots have a phenomenal amount of training and skill and there is autopilot do fly the plane for you after a course is set.

It inspired me to want to learn more on the topic, because there are so many innovations to help pilots fly the plane.

That’s it for this post folks!