Happenings at the office

This week I have been at home and working in the office. The CEO is out of town and our chief pilot has been on a trip to London in the Global Express so yesterday the Executive Assistant in charge of Aviation called me to the Airport Office and said she wanted my opinion on helping her get the boss ready to make an informed presentation to the DGCA in India to help promote General Aviation and safety in India. We spent about 5 or 6 hours in the office preparing remarks and cleaning up the information so that what he says will have some relation to reality and will make sense. It is a rare opportunity to help get something done here, as sometimes I think they are stuck in the 20th Century. While I was in the office Roopali (who went to Rollins College in Orlando) and I spent quite a bit of time talking about the direction and movement within our own flight department. It was a scary time as they put so much emphasis on anything that I say and again there may be some personnel changes as a result of things that I said. I am so much less tolerant of incompetance since I have recently lost friends in a crash. But, along with those judgments, I realize that there are lives and families being affected. Fortunately, I also got to be involved in a job interview yesterday, where I was able to suggest some things that might prevent having to hire and remove someone for unsafe practices. Screening and flying with someone before hiring seems to be a foreign concept here, but now it will become a standard practice, as well as making sure that manufacturer approved Sim Training becomes a regular part of every pilot's training regimen. I just don't understand the thought process behind buying a multi-million dollar airplane and then trying to save $10,000 on the pilot training when that is the key safety element to the whole process. Somehow, the record skips on that groove, but then, I am dating myself terribly.
I am scheduled for my flight physical in Mumbai on Friday morning. My last company in Pittsburgh wouldn't even pay for the physical itself, the first company I have ever worked for that didn't do that and now in order for me to get an FAA physical, this company will fly me for 1:45 on a commercial jet, put me up overnight in a nice hotel, pay for transportation and for the physical itself, then fly me back to Delhi the next day. Kind of a nice little break and mini-vacation while visiting the good doctor. These guys get their FAA certification for doing medicals and then they serve the American pilots abroad by doing our physicals in a foreign country. I am less worried about this one than some others since I have been exercising and working out regularly, but I have no idea what my Indian diet has been doing so it will be interesting to see.
I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, but things have been going so well and continue to do so that I am just enjoying life immensely. I saw a sheet yesterday with a summary of all of our pilot information on it. I never realized it, but I am the high time pilot in the company. Our chief pilot is 3 years younger than me and since we have both been professional pilots most of our adult lives, I have him by a few hundred hours. Our retired Indian Airline pilot has about 10,000 hours. I had never really talked to these guys about their hours so I was surprised. I guess all that means is that I am getting OLD.
Go out and make it a good week. No new pics to send but I have some on my camera that will come along when I get a chance to download them in the next day or so.
Pets have been dropped as an idea because we might only be in India until next July or October, no one seems to know for sure. Karen decided it was foolish to attach ourselves when it might be for only 8 or 9 months. Probably a good idea but it will be lonely with no torturers in the house.
Dan