Magic Moment 2

Magic Moment #2

Two years later I signed on as an employee at JetBlue Airways. I worked in a beautiful, modern building located on the perimeter of Orlando international airport (MCO). This is where JetBlue pilots, flight attendants and technicians come for training and my job was to maintain and audit the pilot training records. There are full flight simulators and cabin simulators in the building for both fleets of aircraft, and it was in the simulators where I had the most fun.

This is a JetBlue simulator used for pilot training.

JetBlue has two fleets of aircraft, the A320 airbus and the Embraer 190. My favorite was the Embraer 190 because it has a yoke for steering. This is an aircraft that is manufactured in Brazil and carries only one hundred passengers, as opposed to the Airbus that carries one hundred and fifty passengers and has a joystick for steering.

My first experience in a simulator was when the security instructor asked me if I would like to participate in some security training. The training was to take place in the cabin simulator and some Federal air marshals were going to demonstrate how a flight crew should handle a high jacking. This was an interesting experience, because when I was a flight attendant with Pan Am there was zero security training. I was interested to learn that the Federal air marshals travel incognito. They only identify themselves if there is an on-board circumstance that needs to be handled. The demo that they gave was brutally efficient and seemed to be very real. I was acting as a passenger along with a group of flight crew who were also acting as passengers. These air marshals meant business and I was duly impressed.

The best part about my job was interacting with the pilots and pilot instructors. These were a great bunch of mostly guys, but there were a few very proficient female pilots and one female pilot instructor as well when I was there.

One day after work I was exiting the building when I bumped into one of the Embraer flight instructors. He was leaving early because his two pilot trainees didn’t show up for their simulator training. M   had reserved one of the Embraer 190 simulators for two hours and now it was sitting empty. All of a sudden M  asked me a question.

            “Have you ever been inside a simulator Morag?”

            “Only once,” I responded. “I was given a short tour by one of the airbus instructors. He allowed me to sit in the left seat and try a take-off but that was all.”

            “How would you like a real lesson on the Embraer from me?” he asked, and without hesitation I said, “Yes, I’d love it.”

It was one of the best experiences that I had at JetBlue. Not only did Mike  allow me to sit in the left seat (captain’s seat), he allowed me to take off, fly the aircraft and practice landings. He gave me two hours of flying instruction and I loved it. I learned how to taxi on the runway, how to park an aircraft and how to line up in front of a runway for landing. It was truly magical.

Later that year, JetBlue announced a contest for its employees. Each entry had to be a five hundred word essay nominating one JetBlue employee who exemplified and demonstrated the JetBlue values of safety, caring, integrity, fun and passion. I wrote an essay about M  and my experience with him in the Embraer simulator. I nominated him as my choice and I won the contest. The prize was four round trip tickets with confirmed reservations, to anywhere that JetBlue flew. I used my tickets to travel with a friend to Costa Rica and M  used his tickets to take his wife on vacation to the Caribbean.

One of the other instructors G  gave my son and his wife a similar experience when they visited me here in Orlando for which I am truly grateful. And just before I left Jetblue Airways, another instructor C  did the same for my friend who came over from England for a visit. S  is a recreational pilot and it was a fine experience for him.

C  allowed me to try my landings again, although this time I was in the right seat (first officer seat). I was able to land the aircraft twice without wobbling off the runway. It seems to me that if I was a passenger on board an Embraer 190 and both pilots became incapacitated (something that would never happen of course), I could take over and land the aircraft, not easily of course, but perhaps I would be able to at least keep it on the runway.

Magic Moment 1

This is my collection of vintage matchbox airplanes. Circa 1973. These are all in perfect condition.

Magic Moment #1

After working for seven years as a schoolteacher and ten years in the nutraceutical industry, I moved from New York to Florida. I sold my house on Long Island, purchased a condominium in Florida and decided to relax for a while before returning to the work force. Eventually I did find a job with vitamins and minerals, but after a few weeks made the decision that since I had changed my lifestyle, I also wanted to change my career path. Aviation was calling me back. Airplanes are one of my passions and I wanted to work with pilots and airplanes again.

Soon I found a job as a dispatch manager for a flight training school at a nearby airport. It was a great job while it lasted. I liked wearing a uniform again and it was my first experience with single engine and twin engine propeller aircraft (other than flying on them). I learned a lot on the job. The school offered flight training to students of all ages from around the world, but the bulk of the students came from the United Kingdom. The flight instructors were pilots who already had their commercial license and were logging hours in the hope of eventually finding a job with an airline.

Sometimes after work, trainees who had already earned their commercial pilot license invited me to go flying with them. That was a lot of fun. I used to grab my headset, climb into the back of a Cadet Warrior III or a Cessna 172 and go soaring over Central Florida late into the evening. I never made a sound but just sat back and enjoyed the ride. Most of the time the pilots whom I accompanied, were working on their instrument rating and needed to concentrate.

The best moment came when on one of the night flights, Air Traffic Control (ATC) allowed us to do what is called a “touch and go” at Orlando international airport (MCO).

The two student pilots had filed a flight plan starting in Kissimmee (KISM), touching down at Orlando executive airport (ORL), and then returning to KISM. We took off and it was about 7 pm. Soon it became dark and the student in the left seat started his instrument training. I was on very friendly terms with the advanced student in the right seat who was monitoring the less advanced student in the left seat. We chatted and I listened in on the communications between the two students and ATC. We were on the approach to ORL but something wasn’t right. We could not pick up the localizer.

The localizer is one of the components of an instrument landing system, and it provides runway guidance to pilots. We were doing an instrument landing and it was pitch black except for the runway lights.

The senior student advised that we should abort the landing and try again and so we circled out to try the approach one more time. The localizer failed again and suddenly the small cockpit was filled with the sounds of cursing and swearing. We tried a third time but failed to pick up the signal on the third attempt. The senior student thought that the instruments on board our single engine Cessna 172 had failed, and he was worried. The aircraft was a long way from home and if the instruments had failed we would be flying blind. Possibly we would need to make an emergency landing and make our way home using another form of transportation.

I loved every minute of the drama. I knew this student could get us home because he was a superb pilot.

All of a sudden, he cursed again and yelled into the mike. Air Traffic Control, did you send us to the wrong airport? This doesn’t look like ORL; it looks more like Sanford (SFB) to me. There was dead silence for a few minutes and then ATC confirmed that although we had filed a correct flight plan, ATC had made the mistake. They had indeed directed us to the wrong airport. Our on-the-ball pilot was very quick to request a “touch and go” at MCO. This was something that was rarely permitted at such a busy airport, but because of the error ATC agreed. How could they refuse us now?

It was magic. There we were, lined up with the huge jumbo jets and ready to do our “touch and go” landing. ATC let us skip the line and it was fun knowing that we were being allowed to dart in front of a Boeing 747 just to practice a landing. We swooshed down and went right up again. It was magic. We made our way home safely and had a great story to tell.

Eureka 1

Eureka Moment #1

In 1985 I became a single parent which necessitated finding a job. After a long search, I found a job as a Home Economics teacher in a private, catholic high school. 

This is a photo of me and one of my 12th grade students (middle left).

The problem was that I was not a New York State, certified school teacher. I only had Scottish certification to teach Domestic Subjects at all grades. On investigation, I found out that I had earned enough credits to obtain a provisional certification in Home Economics from the state department of education. But it came with a stipulation that in order to become permanently certified, I needed to obtain a Master’s degree within five years. I attended the State University of New York (SUNY) from 1988 until 1991.

After a lot of arguing, pleading and paying for my Scottish credentials to be translated into American credentials, I was finally admitted into a special graduate program for schoolteachers. There was one stipulation. My first course had to be in one of the mandatory disciplines, and I needed to obtain a B average for both the first and the second course, before I would be allowed to matriculate. Since I was teaching full time and had two teenagers at home, I could only attend the university on Saturday mornings or during the summer vacations. It took three years.

I registered for “American Literature and Commentary on Slavery”, and I found it difficult. I had studied “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and “Tom Sawyer” when I was about fourteen years old, and these were books that I didn’t want to read again. Also, although Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize winning novelist, her books were not to my liking back then.  Recently I read “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” by Harriet Ann Jacobs. I’m glad I finally read it but it did not expand my knowledge on the history of American slavery. I managed to read “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” but the whole experience was tedious.

I knew I was going to fail the course, but one of the other students in the class who saw me struggling gave me some advice.

            “This professor doesn’t want to hear your opinions, just regurgitate what he says right back to him, and you should get better grades on your papers.”

The advice worked and I forced myself to learn American grammar, punctuation and spelling so that I could get the precious B and earn that Master’s Degree. My time at the university was mostly uneventful except for two courses: these were “Family and Troubled Adolescents” and Chemistry in Human Culture”, both of which affected the course of my life to a large extent.

Dr. M  , although very controversial, was a marvelous teacher. He was a family therapist and he and his colleagues had decided to follow a different course of therapy for their private practice patients. They felt that they were getting better results with the new therapy than they did with the usual the prescribed course of therapy for troubled families. The American Medical Association (AMA) disapproved of these therapies but Dr. M  was quite open about the fact that although his therapies raised a lot of eyebrows, he didn’t care. He believed that his patients needed to relive the tortured events of their childhood by proxy, in order to effect a cure, and it worked.

The first eye-opener for me was when he introduced the class to something called a Genogram.

Excerpt off the web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genogram

A genogram (also known as a McGoldrick-Gerson study ^[1] or a Lapidus Schematic ^[1]) is a pictorial display of a person's family relationships and medical history. It goes beyond a traditional family tree by allowing the user to visualize hereditary patterns and psychological factors that punctuate relationships.^[1] It can be used to identify repetitive patterns of behavior and to recognize hereditary tendencies.

The class was instructed to construct their own Genogram but he didn’t want to see any of them. They are too personal, and I was glad, because after looking at mine I was shocked. The Eureka moment came when Dr. M  explained that each person is the result of all that we had listed on our own Genograms. We don’t evolve by chance; we are the result of all that has happened to us. We are the result of all the people we have ever known and we are the result of the people and the history in our families going back through the generations. Wow! My Genogram had a lot of red on it. It was an eye opener because it was only then that I understood what had happened to produce me. Deaths, pandemics, wars, diseases, alcoholism, etc. At that moment I felt glad to be alive and totally amazed that after all of that history, I was at now sitting in my right mind, with a healthy body in an American University earning a Master’s Degree. 

I’ve used Dr. M ’s therapies on myself over the years and they do work, although I’m the only person who knows what issues I’ve managed to resolve with his help from so long ago.

The second Eureka moment occurred in the chemistry class. It was 1989 and I was anxious to finish. By that time I had a better job working in the public school system and as soon as I finished my degree, my salary would increase by $5,000 per year. The only thing not yet completed was one of the compulsory science courses. The only available compulsory science course on a Saturday morning was chemistry, but there was a prerequisite. Only those with an undergraduate degree in a science discipline could be admitted to this graduate course in chemistry. I registered anyway because there was nothing else available and nobody checked my qualifications. I knew that I had the option to drop out if chemistry turned out to be too difficult for me as I was sure it would be, but I thought that I would give it a try anyway.

The whole experience was surreal. I hadn’t studied chemistry since high school and I never liked it. Chemistry at high school was sheer torture for me. Once more the professor at SUNY was an outstanding teacher. I liked him and I liked his teaching style. The professor was Indian but he had been educated in the United Kingdom. With a sigh of relief I realized I might be able to handle this, because the professor taught British style. He gave us homework every week and the requirements for passing this course were three one hundred question exams, plus an oral presentation together with a 20 page report due the last week of the course.

Sixty people signed up for chemistry and three months later there were only twenty of us left in the class. I managed to pass because the test questions were multiple choices and I could usually figure out which answer was the correct one. The professor liked my oral presentation because I made props. I drew large colorful diagrams for my presentation and at the end of the course he gave me an A.  After receiving the results of the first written test, I had my eureka moment.  I had managed to answer all one hundred questions correctly. Were these lucky guesses or was I really good at chemistry? I did study hard for those three months but even with study how many people get an A in graduate chemistry? This was proof to me that I had some kind of brain and it changed my attitude about myself forever.

Later when I decided to give up teaching, I saw an ad for a job.

“Wanted, a nutritionist with a background in biochemistry for a company that manufactures nutraceuticals.”

I applied and got the job because I was able to produce a transcript proving that I had received an A in chemistry, an A in botany and an A in biology. Who knew!