Growing ...Or Flying for McKeester

GROWING...or flying for Mckeester

by Chuck Michael
Names changed to protect the guilty.


I think it was cloudy as usual that day--driving in my Morris

1000 to the airport proudly wearing my new Captains uniform. My friend Pete who flies a 737 for Orion Airways and is a gourmet cook traded it for a quart of black peppercorns that I had brought back from a crop dusting excursion to the Sudan the year before.

Rolling into the company parking lot I looked up at the low overcast sky. Socked in from 500 to FL 250 over the entire British Isles except for infrequent breaks over the Irish Sea the weather report had said; standard for that time of the year. Forced to exercise the privledges of my license-finally. No one can stop me now. There were dim shadows through the glass as I approached the building and climbed the rickety wooden steps to the door.

The new ATP was perched just inside my breast pocket, ready for immediate dispatch in case anybody dared to question the four gold rings on the sleeve. Mckeester Aviation had hired me as a multi-engine charter pilot the week before, just after I had passed the flying exam at Stansted. That was the final hurdle. Four years and 15,000 Sterling worth of hurdles had peaked me for this moment After four years of earning training money any way I could, from washing windows door to door in London to odd carpentry and wall papering jobs to working for Babcox and Wilcox as a laborer, installing a boiler in a Coventry, I had finally arrived. Decisively turning the knob, I entered.

"Hello Mr. McKeester." He was engaged in building a door in the hallway between the ops office and the briefing rooms used by the flight instructors. Looking up and surveying me standing above him he paused for a moment.

"Well! You look great, Mate. Doesn't he really look the part? he said turning to his helper.

"Not a lot of flying to be done today Mate. Why don't you go home and get some working clothes on. We're doing some remodeling and sure could use the help."

" I was hired as a pilot, Mr. McKeester." The words came out reluctantly and with a sense of disappointment that I hoped didn't show too much. Flying jobs were scarce enough and I didn't want to show any lack of enthusiasm.

John stared at me for a moment; taking in the crispness of the uniform and the polish on my new Doc Martins.

"Sure you were Mate!. Sure you were, but right now I need a carpenter so why not trundle off home and pick up some tools"?

Throughout the next two weeks I built his door, repaired the steps served hamburgers at the weekend bar-b-q s--and did a little flying training in the C-404 Titan that I was hired to fly. More dues. The flying did come though. Fortunately, I assured myself, John McKeester was a business man and wasn't about to flitter away the grand sum of the 6500 sterling he was paying me to do odd jobs. I flew the Aztec also; as copilot at first, but learning constantly. Alister and I flew charter trips throughout the British Isles and Europe too. It was all very new and exciting.

"You'll get bloody sick of this in time." Alister said to me one day

on our way across the Channel. "Oh you'll get tired of flying for pirates like McKeester in a hurry.

Alister was 8 years younger than I and had been flying for about ten years. He was a tall man, a gentleman really, with a thin moustach and a hyphenated last name to match. I grew very fond of Alister in the passing months. He had such an innocent face which, with his hyphen, he never hesitated to use to his advantage. John was fond of him also at first, and never suspected how much Alister hated him. Behind a mask of innocence, and amicability, Alister hid a matchless cunning. He was a conscientious and exacting pilot. He was also a street-wise thief.

I could never get close to John like Alister could. He trusted Alister as his best pilot and most reliable employee. Alister had a company check book and credit cards.

"Got any quids on you Chuck"? Alister glanced over quizzically on our way to Cognac one day. I was flying as a tag-a-long copilot, training for Captain in the Aztec. We were ferrying four people over to spend the evening sampling and purchasing Cognac for a large store in Nottingham.

"Money? surely you jest Sir-On 6500 pounds a year with four years of nav and landing fees to pay off? I don't even know how I'm goin to eat tonight. I'm surprised he advanced me the money for a hotel not that we're going to stay in anything but a bed and breakfast with the tenner he gave me."

"Here, have this 50 quid." Alister put the pound notes in my lap."We shall party tonight, my friend."

Before leaving out the door I had heard Alister tell John that they don't accept credit cards for fuel in Cognac.

"How are we going to pay for the fuel for the return trip?" I inquired.

"Oh, we shan't worry about that until we have to. Ok"?

We dined and drank a little of each cognac that region had to offer that night. Alister even bought himself a bottle of XO with the fuel money. To my surprise Alister spoke French and soon we were surrounded in conversation with newly found and generous native inhabitants, who apparently learning that it was our first trip to the region, insisted that we try a little of this Cognac, and a little of that particular vintage. Throughout the night Alister kept them informed of what a wonderful adventure it was for him and his American co-pilot to visit the City. I knew Alister had numerous flights to Cognac before and was amused and amazed at this man's ability to look someone straight in the face and even make up original and naive sounding stories with matching facial expressions as testimony to his excitement and wonder of their culture. I hadn't been able to afford an evening of drinking like that since leaving the States years before. As put so adroitly by the British: Alister was "on the fiddle." We fiddled together in lots of little cafes, sampling and sampling, until late into the evening. My concern about how we were going to pay for the return trip fuel waned as the evening went on and by the time we had returned to the hotel, it had disappeared completely in a baccahanalic haze.



The following morning, after an elegant breakfast of croissants an fancy jams washed down with tiny coffees and hot milk Alister and I patted our mouths with pastel linen napkins and left for the airport to ready our fuel hungry plane for the return trip to East Midlands Airport in England. We arranged for the fueler to meet us at the pumps and as we taxied across Alister pulled a Shell Oil Credit Card out of his breast shirt pocket. Here it comes I thought. The grand scheme. The sign plainly stated in French and English: "No credit cards accepted."

I sat there in the right seat, watching incrediously as Alister motioned the fuel boy to top off both wings. We looked at each other. He just sat there, all innocent, never saying anything; just tapping out some mental tune on his knee with the Shell credit card. This was going to be good, I thought to myself and didn't want to spoil it by asking him reveal any surprises beforehand.

As the fuel boy finished and replaced the fuel nozzle, he turned to see Alister leaning over in the cockpit and offering the plastic card out of the little side vent window.

"No Missuer, sil vous plait. No accepte a vous credit'."

Not moving the card from the window Alister replied: "I beg your pardon sir"?

After listening intently to the diatribe in French, most certainly about how it is against policy to pay for the fuel with a credit card while gesturing toward the sign Alister looked at the sign and conveniently forgetting all of his french, replied in a crisp British accent:"Oh, I am so sorry young man. I had no idea that we must pay in cash. We had left England with the distinct understanding that the Shell credit card would be accepted for fuel in Cognac. I don't know what to do. This is certainly a problem due to apparent mis-information given to us before arriving. We have no other way of paying for the fuel. Yes, this is most embarrassing. What shall we do"?

"Mai qui"? the boy managed expressing a totally confused look. I would give anything to have seen the practiced expression that Alister was giving him as he was hunching down to speak through the vent window. My only view was the back of Alister's head and the unforgettably strained look on the fuel boy's face as Alister displayed his empty wallet.

The fuel boy kept trying to say that he could not accept the card and Alister, never swerving in feigned frustration and incompetence never moved the card from its offered position in the window. The fuel boy went off and 15 minutes later returned with the superintendent. Without waiting Alister launched into a long siloquy about how he didn't see the sign and that he was sorry and didn't know what to do because the passengers were waiting and we had to return to England because his wife was about to have a baby and was in the beginning stages of labor when he left the day before. The superintendent wrote down the card number, never revealing whether he understood English or not and Alister never offering the first word of French. I never said anything on our way back across the airport to pick up the waiting passengers. I was laughing so hard that I was incapable of either speaking to him or the ground controller.



The passengers brought us both two bottles of Remy-Martin Cognac and said that they had hoped that our stay in Cognac was pleasant enough. By this time I had recovered my senses and fell into line with Alister about how we wished we could take advantage of the finer offerings of all of the cities we visited during the course of our duties on our limited salary, but that it wasn't proper and fitting anyway, because of the responsibilities of our position as pilots.

What is especially enjoyable about an intercom on a small aircraft is the extent of privacy afforded to the pilots from the close proximity of the passengers. On the way back across the channel we discussed flying in general and our employer specifically.

"John is just as much as a slip-shod incompetent as all of the rest of the operators that I have ever flown for, only stupider." Alister said. "He bought East Kirkby Aviation because his kid wants to learn to fly. Before that he was a booze salesman with more money than brains. The credit card bill will show up and he'll pay it never thinking about why, or specifically where it came from, or indeed which trip it was associated with. Have you seen the accounting department? Papers and bills spread all over the place. He hasn't the foggiest about what the business is about. At the moment he is undercutting all of the charter competition and stuffing pound notes into his back pocket and telling himself how easy it is to make money in the flying business and how he should have got into it years earlier. His competition is feeding him work on purpose. He gets calls from other operators asking him to supply a plane and pilot at ridiculous prices "because our aircraft is down for a blown engine, or the pilot is sick etc." He hasn't an idea in the world about mandatory maintenance, time change components, the expense of avionic repairs. Nothing. As the bills come in he simply pays them. He'll charge 500 sterling for this trip and think that he is making 400 pounds profit and still undercutting the competition. He hasn't even been faced with his first TBO engine change yet. He treats pilots as though they haven't a brain in their head, insists that they fly in impossible weather conditions with faulty equipment, and fires them when they refuse. He'll be broke within six months. Hang around long and you will develop an attitude just like mine. You'll see. Meanwhile this fool is a gravy train and its been a long time coming. After helping him down the road to the inevitable. You won't either in another few months, if he lasts that long."

Our next trip together was to Munich in the Titan. The scenario was nearly the same. We wafted gallons of beer and Steinhager and the menu changed from marinated steak to bratwurst and Wienerschnitzel and Alister, when we ran out of cash taxied off to the bank and cashed checks.

On our return trip, during the preliminary paper work I noticed Alister's name and address on the fuel rebate form. He explained to me that John, still thrilled with his new-found vehicle for easy money, neglected to account for or even care about the fuel tax rebate due for fuel purchased in foreign countries. Alister had learned of this and was funneling the funds directly to his own bank account. He was receiving checks for hundreds of pounds at a time. What an artist.



In the course of the coming months I became qualified as captain on the Aztec and the two twin Cessnas and was doing regular trips around the U.K. and abroad. We had a mail contract for Northern Ireland. Alister and I shared the route, but since he lived just around the corner from me in the village we shared a lot of off hours together. He had a room mate. A Russian named Walter. Walter was a native Ukrainian, an ex-pilot for McKeester and a 25 year old full blown alcoholic. Walter and Alister and myself would play Monopoly till all hours of the night or until Walter, who drank scotch from a 1/2 liter water glass, began disrupting the game by slobbering all over the board; often collapsing face down, arms spread over the hotels and houses in an unconscious heap. Walter, during one of his mid night forages for alcohol, found Alister's XO drank it and replenished it in the morning with some cheap brandy that he had apparently purchased at the off license.(British liquor store)

"My X/O has gone off." Alister said to me one day.

"What do you mean? Cognac doesn't 'GO OFF"' I replied.

"It's gone off. I think Walter must have found it. Anyway it's gone off." was Alister's only comment. He spoke not in anger, but with an understanding. He explained that Walter's parents had emigrated to the U.K. when he was a boy, his parents spoke only Russian, and had raised him on Vodka. He wasn't a bad sort, just hasn't had the advantages of the rest of us who were raised under western standards, and his problems haven't been lessened any by working for people like BKlby. Walter, he continued, was flying for John when he wound up in Bergen, Norway. The gear wouldn't retract out of Bergen, so he called John, who told him to fly the aircraft back to East Midlands with the gear down. It was in the middle of the winter and Walter, realizing the danger of ice accumulation on the landing gear, flatly refused to fly the aircraft across the North Sea under those conditions with the gear down. John caught a commercial jet into Bergen and brought the aircraft back himself When Walter called from Norway about what was happening John told him that he was fired and to find his own way back." McKeester hates pilots, neither he or his son have the wherewithal to get a commercial instrument license and his plans for keeping it all in the family is tainted by the necessity of relying on those who do. The C.A.A. has caught them both with false flying entries in their logs and they will never get licenses. The sad truth is that he gains a lot of self satisfaction in making our lives miserable while paying low wages for the privledge, but flying jobs are scarce. You are the one who took Walter's place. You can bet that he has a list of pilots to choose from when you get out of line also. I have him fooled for the time being and am taking maximum advantage of it, but my time will come also. It always does with these jerks."

I regressed at that point in the conversation, remembering the past operators/jerks that I had worked for as a Crop duster. The times that I had been fired or quit for stopping short of the ridiculous No matter how scarce jobs are in the flying game; there are more of them than I have lives. Unlike the pilot, whose responsibilities end outside of the cockpit, an operator suffers under many more pressures not readily apparent and can be motivated in a variety
of ways not always obvious to the people that work for him.

It is hot in South Alabama in August. I rolled through town after a long drive from where I had just graduated from Commercial/Agricultural Flight training to the site of my first job just on the other side.

"So you're the hot Thrush Pilot." the stocky man standing there said after introducing myself. My eyes wandered across the tarmac and stopped at the shiny yellow bird parked there. The stocky man slid his aged Bell helmet on and motioned towards the plane. Shortly we were banking over my first field of soybeans.

"I fly it at 80 in the turns." he was yelling through the roar of the Pratt & Whitney 600 HP motor. After landing we walked across to the hangar and his eves fell on the custom made CalMil flying helmet that I held under my arm. I knew that he was thinking that I shined it every night. Damn! He knew I was green, but I wished it didn't show so much. I took off the Thrush baseball hat and inched it into the rear pocket of my Levis. He loaded me up with 300 gallons of chemical on my first trip and said: "Strap it on yer ass and follow me." My inquiries as to where we were going or what we would be spraying got no reaction.

"Never you mind, just stay in close."

He took off in his Thrush and I followed him in mine. We ferried for a bit and then he dipped into a soybean field. The air was very still that morning. No wind at all. I was right behind his left wing tip when he opened the spray handle and covered my windscreen with chemical. The field was irregular in shape with fingers of tall trees extending into it. We completed the first pass, up over the 50 foot trees and back down again into the field. I could barely see anything. He had disappeared. Three wires had materialized right before one of those strings of trees and I had stuck my wheels in the beans to get under them and eased back on the stick as smoothly as I could to clear the tops of the woods. I heard a large thrashing noise as the prop made sawdust out of a branch. There were four or five of those fingers. On the second pass, too inexperienced to call it quits, I followed him again up and down, wondering behind which of the fingers waited the wires. On about the third or fourth I pointed the nose into the field to be confronted unavoidably by them. I pancaked the aircraft into th field, cut the bottom wire, tore off the spray boom on the right wing and bounced back into the air. After he ran out of chemical I followed him back to the strip and he said that he didn't see an oil on my windscreen and couldn't understand why I was blinded. "Why did you fly under those wires, and how did you get over the woods on the first pass?" These questions coming from a man who ha been flying Ag in that area for 18 years; an experienced crop duster with 5 planes who had hired a new commercial pilot with less than 50 hours of experience flying ag planes. I was too thankful for the opportunity of flying such a large airplane as the Thrush to wonder why.

I ran through 7 sets of wires during that first season and one set of large ones on my second. The aircraft was damaged a lot, sometimes requiring two or three days for repair, but I never crashed it and it never dawned on me as to why he even invited me back for the second season. He had his pick of more experienced

pilots. He hired another inexperienced pilot the second season and put him in the airplane I was flying. I got another airplane that whose flying controls were rigged differently than the first and it took a lot of getting used to for my level of experience, but I flew the fields that he sent me out to do.. There would be wires strung across some of them with the poles hidden in the woods. A crop duster looks for the poles to tell him the location of the wires because it is almost impossible to see the wires themselves from the air. He would load me up with a full hopper, that's 300 gallons at 9 lb per, and more often than not the first field on th schedule was the small one, surrounded by tall trees. It is easy to stall a heavy aircraft trying to get into and out of a small field. Those fields are best done last, after most of the chemical has been sprayed. The density altitude in Alabama on a typical summer day would sometimes reach 4000feet. On one occasion I sprayed a 2 acre field surrounded by 50 footers while carrying a full hopper of chemical. He criticized me on that particular occasion, saying that I hadn't gotten close enough to the crop. He always treated me very distantly. I don't suppose that I engendered his good cups by damaging his aircraft. I was sitting in the spray shack looking directly at him one day when he answered the phone and learned that his other new crop duster had spun his airplane into the woods. For just a sliver of a second, before he caught himself, a remnant of a smile appeared around his mouth. Not so on would notice if they weren't paying close attention. It wasn't more than a slight curl of one side of his lower lip, but that is when I learned what I had been hired for and why he always treated me so badly. I kept bringing the aircraft back damaged which cost him all the more in repair bills instead of doing what he really wanted me to do, which was to wreck it so that he could collect on the insurance. Out of the two seasons that I had been there only 3 of his five thrushes ever worked at any one time. All of my vague questions were answered in that split second. The ag business was slow during those years. There hadn't been any appreciable rain an the farmers weren't spending a lot caring for what they knew would be less than a bumper crop. He had hired me to die.

I flew as much as I could for him for the rest of the season, but I never brought the aircraft back damaged again. I became, at that point, less conscientious about doing a good job and establishing myself as an ag pilot and a lot more aware of remaining alive to collect as many flying hours as I could. I volunteered for all of the difficult, small fields. But I did them, not in the order that he told me, but the order in which was best suited for my own survival. Through the years of crop dusting there was a series of operators, both good and evil. When I got my multi license and began flying Charter I thought that it would be different and was glad to see the last of Ag flying. Alister, was reminding me of my apparent forgotten lessons in flying. As a politician's first responsibility is for re-election, a pilots first responsibility is to his passengers and aircraft. The Charter business is no different than any other type of flying in that regard.
For a while it went well for me at McKeester Aviation. I conscientiously planned my trips the evening before and arrived for the flights prepared and enthusiastic. I flew the mail run across
the Irish Sea to Belfast. There was a regular run to Manston on the south coast that we made with the Cessna 402. Occasionally there were moments that aroused my suspicions about John; like the time he fired a newly hired pilot for not taking off with ice on his wings and began throwing buckets of hot water at his airplane, as the rest of us watched disbelievingly out of the window of the pilots lounge. So far I had been lucky, but the aircraft were beginning to show signs of lack of maintenance. One of the radios on the Aztec became unserviceable. On the C-404 one of the navigation receivers went bad, and one night I took off to Belfast without a transponder. John told me to take the trip and report that it had just went out when queried by ATC. I wrote it up in the tech log and was the recipient of a few harsh words as a result of John having to get it fixed. The aircraft tech log pages are numbered and its entries indelibly printed and regularly checked by the C.A.A. John called a meeting in which he assured all of the pilots that the discrepancies on the aircraft would be fixed on the next inspection. "But for Pete's sake, don't write them in the tech log!" He told us. When we inquired as to how the maintenance techs would know what to fix during the inspection John told us to write them down on little yellow stickums and past them on the instrument panel. When one of the 404s went into inspection the instrument panel was covered with little yellow stickums. Alister and I flew the aircraft after inspection and found that nothing had been fixed. The faulty gauges that we had squawked had not been calibrated, one of the radios was still not receiving. We decided to walk over to the hangar after the flight and to inquire as to why our complaints had not been taken care of. After arriving and learning which mechanic had inspected the aircraft we confronted him. "We fixed everything that was in the tech log gents."

"Well, what about all of the discrepancies written on the little sheets of paper on the instrument panel"?

"Oh, Mr. McKeester was over here and told us not to bother with anything written on the little sheets of paper stuck to the instrument panel." Alister gave me a knowing look. I felt like a fool. "Have you reviewed your failed radio procedures lately"? was all he said on the way to the parking lot.

Around two in the morning the following week my aircraft was on the postal loading ramp being loaded with mail for the Belfast run when I noticed the left tire going flat. I called John at home, who called a mechanic. The mechanic arrived with John and the new wheel and with John standing over us mumbling and fuming about incompetent pilots, the mechanic and I changed the tire. "You didn't write this up in the tech log, did you Mate"? the mechanic queried as we he was torquing the wheel bolts. Upon replying in the negative he said: "Good thing Mate, because I wouldn't have signed it off if you had." "Well, why wouldn't you"? I asked.

"Because Mate." he whispered. "You saw where he got the wheel. Pulled it out of the trunk of his car. There isn't any paperwork on it. It hasn't been crack tested. He's 'aving some garage mechanic down the road put them together for him."

"Come on, Come on, 'urry it up lads. We 'av'nt got all night. I've already lost 750 quid in fines for being late out of here. If I had
pilots that knew how to land an airplane we wouldn't be 'aving these problems would we?" I didn't say anything, but my inattentive behavior toward him and unresponsiveness to his badgering gave away my developing negative attitude.

Things never got any better around the office. John would walk by us without even a hello anymore, and our attitude toward him was about the same. We thought that maybe he was beginning to feel the financial pinch of the aviation charter business. There were other incidents, harrowing stories of flying with ill maintained equipment, and pilots being pressured into dangerous, and potentially lethal situations.I began actively seeking another job . As it turned out I found another job flying one of John's 404s. He had sold it to another charter outfit. In between the time that the aircraft was sold and the new owner taking possession John fired me. The expression on his face when I arrived to fly the aircraft to its new home served as a great reward for the past suffering and professional compromises endured at his hands. It was especially comforting considering the reason that he fired me was as punishment for covering for another pilot..Alister. Alister called me from Belfast on the night before asking me to go sick for my next day's flight. "You and I are the only pilots that he has left Chuck. He called me this evening after my arrival here and told me to return for another load. I have been flying all day and am beat and out of hours besides. I refused and when I return to East Midlands tomorrow I know that he is going to fire me. If you go sick he will have no one but me to fly tomorrow because the new pilots he's hired are not checked out as captains yet, and it will eventually all blow over."

"Yes Alister,Old Boy." I shot back. "It sounds like he is going to fire somebody and that somebody will be me instead of you if I go sick." There was a silence for a moment on the other end. "...what do you care? You have another job lined up anyway."

I am a lousy actor; can't even fake a cough well enough to keep John from firing me, but I did, and he did.

Alister is an airline captain now. John went broke and is back doing what he always did best: selling booze. I continued flying for lousy pay, accumulating 200 hours actual IFR in weather to match until finally going broke enough to return to a good job in maintenance. I managed to pay off all of the bills and remain current. The five years in maintenance didn't do a lot for my airline flying career, but I'm back working as a free-lance pilot and CFII. A little older, a lot wiser.