Scholarship Launch Speech

Given to Hillmorton High School, Christchurch, 31st October 2017

Buenos Aires airport was in chaos. Huge thunderstorms had raked across the city. Lightning had struck a Boeing 777 on its approach to land and flash flooding had swept through houses and cars. Flight operations at the airport were all over the place. Aircraft engineers were in hot demand as airlines tried to get their flights away as close to on time as they could.

I sat on the dimmed flight deck preparing for departure. Lightning cast the terminal into bleak silhouette from time to time as my crew ran through all our pre-flight tasks. No doubt, it would be a bumpy departure from the South American city on our way home to New Zealand. The flight was expected to take 13 hours.

Down the back, the flight attendants were busily getting the passengers and cabin ready for a safe departure – their job as equally important as ours. Safety of the aircraft and all its passengers is the number one concern at all times.

Once we were satisfied that the paperwork and fuel requirements were perfect, the doors were closed and we ran through our start up drills. The two enormous Rolls Royce engines roared into life.

Eventually, it was our turn to taxi out to the runway. We were given clearance for take-off and I lined the Boeing 777 up with the centre line. As captain, I sat in the left seat with my First Officer in the right seat and two Second Officers sitting immediately behind us. I pushed the thrust levers forward and the engines responded by spooling up. The plane began to accelerate down the runway, the First Officer was calling out important speed milestones to me. Both hands were on the control stick and both feet were working the rudder pedals. The First Officer called ‘Rotate’ and I pulled the aircraft into the air.

The First Officer leaned forward to raise the landing gear as the plane forced its way against gravity to gain altitude. Suddenly, warning sirens and lights screeched and flashed. Something was wrong. How wrong things were was now the task all four of us on the flight deck had to work out and as fast as possible as we were still uncomfortably close to the ground. Our hearts were in our mouths as we checked all possible causes.

Outside in the dark, the horrendous storms continued to lash the environment around us and down the back 300 people were expecting to get home to New Zealand.

John presenting this speech at Hillmorton High 2017

Let’s wind back to the beginning. Many years ago – long before you were a sparkle in your parent’s eyes, (or, your parents were a sparkle in your grandparents eye, more like) I was a student here at Hillmorton High. Pretty average sort of a guy, played a bit of rugby – maybe a little bit proud to say I got to the first 15. Academically, I was no superstar. More a plodder but determined to pass University Entrance (the old fashioned version of NCEA).

In fact, everyone, including my Mum, were kind of gobsmacked that I passed and as she was so proud of my effort, she shouted me a trip to Wellington. In those days, most people went there from Christchurch by overnight ferry, but Mum had other ideas. She has splashed out a small fortune and we flew up instead. Can’t say I remember much about that trip other than the first few minutes in the aircraft. I sat in my seat, fastened my seatbelt and waited to see what would happen.

Taxiing out from the terminal was no big deal, it was just like being in a car. I had my driver’s license at this point so moving along the ground was really no big deal. BUT… as the plane’s engines roared and we rocketed down the runway lifting into the sky, I had an epiphany – a life changing moment. This was what I wanted to do. At that moment, I knew that flying was in my blood and I had to be a pilot. From that point on, all my energies would be directed to the sole goal of becoming an airline pilot.

The Epiphanic Fokker (F27) Copyright R N Smith Collection

Fast forwarding 48 years and I am coming to the end of a stellar career. 48 years of fun, fascination, focus and achievement. With hand on heart I can say that every single day of my flying career has been a privilege regardless of what challenges were thrown my way.

When I was trying hard to become a pilot, there was no encouragement from others, no student loan, and certainly no pile of cash to help me through. I worked every moment I wasn’t in school or training, to raise funds for my next lessons and it took an exhausting nine years of training and work before my airline career began.

Today, flight training is still blimmin’ expensive, but there are now student loans, student allowances and a team effort of learning together with others, to help students get through and realise their dreams. But the sheer thought of being able to become an airline pilot is often snubbed out in people your age because there is an idea that you have to come from wealthy families to be considered a candidate. That really is not true but let me ask you a question, how many of you have thought you would love to be an airline pilot but didn’t think it could ever happen?

Well, today, that just might change.

But first, let me tell you a little bit about being an airline pilot.

Occasionally, it can seem like you are on the Star-ship Enterprise, about to go into hyperspace. In reality, this happens quite frequently in the winter months in New Zealand or Japan or Canada, for example. This visual happens on night flights when we have our landing lights on and pass through snow showers at about 10,000 feet. As we pass through the showers at 400kph, the snow rushes at us in the beams of light. A truly out of this world experience! Just like seeing St Elmo’s fire, which is mini streaks of lightening zigzagging all over the windscreen when we pass near electrical storms in the tropics. Or surfing the cloud tops on a drizzly, gloomy morning in New Zealand. Just imagine it… Soon after take-off you burst into the early morning sun above the grim weather and lower the nose just a wee bit and go for a joyride around the bouffy cloud masses. Just magic! A complete sense of freedom from the doom and gloom below, even though there is a job to be done and a flight to get to its destination.

St Elmo’s fire lighting up the flight deck

Passing over the lands and oceans in the pitch black of night time, the whole world below you asleep, missing the beauty that we see – shooting stars, the auroras, seeing the space station orbiting earth, the warm glow of thousands of stars, in all their glory, lighting up the quiet flight deck. During the day seeing fellow aircraft coming at us at a closing speed of 1800 kph and passing either above or beneath us. Now that is quite exhilarating – puts any fairground ride in the shade!

And then there are the more challenging experiences. Who here has been in really rough turbulence? Here in New Zealand, we get pummelled by it but it happens every day here and we are used to it, nonetheless, in the middle of the Pacific in clear skies, out of the blue we can get zapped by a particularly bad patch – which tends to really trash the cabin and wake up the heaviest sleepers. Lightning strikes, wind shear and all that the weather can throw at us, all adds spice to the job.

Then there are the delays, the unexpected technical problems and of course, the most unpredictable element of all…. The passengers.

Generally, our flights to the Northern Hemisphere are flown during the night so passengers can start their new day in the destination of their choice. In the darkened environment of the cabin most people sleep. Some drowse. Some read. And some get desperately sick, life threateningly sick. I can recall diverting to remote airports to try and give someone a chance to live. I can recall babies being born early on flights and I can recall people breathing their last on these long flights.

Not so long ago, we had such a flight. We were as far away from any airport as we possibly could be when the Chief Flight Attendant called up by internal phone to advise that they had a medical emergency in economy. Two doctors were in attendance, but it appeared a female passenger was going downhill rapidly with an unknown stomach problem. She was writhing in agony and her heart and breathing rates were through the roof.

At 36,000 feet and travelling at 900 kph in an aluminium tube, your options and resources are limited. It seemed the on board medical kit and two doctors travelling as passengers weren’t enough to save the woman. We needed outside help and we needed it fast.

I called the international medical emergency line and soon had a team of doctors on the ground assisting the on-board doctors with suggestions and authority to administer some of the more potent medicines we carry in the medical kit.

Despite pain relief and other medications, the women’s agony grew and grew and we began to make preparations to divert the flight to Samoa to get her to a hospital as soon as possible as we had another 7 hours before we were due to land in San Francisco.

My tech crew and I were busy with diversion plans and the doctors were busy trying to find ways to keep the woman alive for the next hour or so. As these preparations were taking place, a flight attendant squeezed into the huddle around the passenger and started rubbing her shoulders and whispering to the woman. It was clear that the woman was listening to the flight attendant. Very soon, the lady suddenly sat up and declared that she felt fine and as suddenly as it began, the emergency was over. We stayed on course and continued through to San Francisco and the doctors, both passengers and on the ground, stood down and the flight resumed its planned route.

It goes without saying that we were completely in the dark as to what had caused the lady to recover so fast and to such an extent that you would never have known she had been so ill. Once the flight was over and all of the flight and cabin crew were on the bus taking us to our hotel, I asked the Flight Attendant, who had whispered to the woman, what had happened. “Oh’ she said. “It was nothing really. She had a terrible problem with withheld wind. She just really needed to relax and have a good fart”.

Being a pilot of an airliner is often seen as a top job and I guess it could be easy to get a big head knowing you are in command of such a sophisticated piece of machinery and responsible for getting the passengers from A to B with complete efficiency and comfort…

Well, the weather and the aircraft itself makes sure you don’t stand on that pedestal for too long! The flight Attendants are very quick to pass judgement too.

After a pretty ropey flight between Dunedin and Wellington in a Boeing 737, things got pretty bouncy as we approached Wellington, and I ended up smashing the plane down onto the runway rather hard. The First Officer muttered a swear word as we bounced down the runway and I taxied our way to the terminal in embarrassed silence. Once the passengers had deplaned, the Flight Attendants greeted us as we emerged from the Flight Deck and they held up score cards out of 10, indicating their opinion of the quality of the landing. The scores were 2, 1, -1 and 0. The First Officer, showing a quick allegiance to the winning side, quickly pointed at me and said “He did it”. With disapproval, the Flight Attendants went on to remark that we had been host to 12 ‘fear of flying’ course graduates and that the landing had either cured them of their fear or cemented the fear deeply into their souls forever.

Although the self-loading cargo are a force to be reckoned with, the plane itself can also get the heart rate elevated from time to time.

Part way across the Pacific one night, the Chief Flight Attendant came forward to let us know of a system failure in the cabin. There was no running water available. This meant that there was no water for teas or coffees and worst of all there was no water to flush the toilets. We checked from our end and sure enough, the water pumps had failed. This was a unique problem and there didn’t seem to be a work around for it. As it wasn’t an aircraft safety issue, we chose to carry on with our flight from Japan to Fiji, but we would need to be inventive on how to make our clients comfortable, especially when it came to the toilets. 150 people on a 10 hour flight tend to use the toilets quite a lot.

We determined we had plenty of bottled water, juices and other drinks to keep people hydrated and we could use bottled water for hand washing. But what to do about the flushing of the toilets? As a team, the Tech and cabin crew mulled over the problem for a minute or two until the Chief Flight Attendant, quick as a flash, said “We can tip the premium wines and spirits that we carry, down the loo!” So, we did just that!

“We recommend this vintage for an exceptional flush”

Yep. Each passenger using the loo was given a bottle of wine or spirits to flush with. And that was what we did to keep everyone happy. We literally flushed dozens of bottles of premium red and white wines down the loo so we could still get to our destination on time, without diverting to an isolated Island airport somewhere. A triumph of ingenuity!

As my career spools down, I really want to help one of you here spool up your career as an airline pilot. I am offering a Scholarship to this school to help anyone who really, really, really wants to be a pilot. It’s worth $10,000 for flight training hours.

Can you be a pilot? A good start is to consider what makes a good pilot. Fortunately, you have all been practising the qualities required since you enrolled at Hillmorton.

The most critical quality you need is confidence. A belief in yourself, resilience when things go wrong – and believe me, a lot of things will NOT go to plan, either in your training and actually when flying as aircrew. I was once told if you want to make God laugh, make a plan!

But learning to understand that that terrible experience you are currently going through or just went through is not heralding the end of the world and that things will get better again, that you will laugh again and that your life moves on – is the most powerful life skill to have. And you are all actively learning that skill now – whether you know it or not.

You need to be a Global citizen, to feel equal to everyone. No better and no less than the person next to you. You have to be able to relate to anyone, regardless of their position in life. There will always be people with greater or lesser fortune and opportunity than you. Be considerate to everyone.

Get involved in life. If you find yourself bored, then think sideways and make a deliberate move to get up and become busy with something. Seize every opportunity to experience something different and challenge yourself. Don’t stare at your phone screen for endless hours. Remember, it’s easy and lazy to be useless and boring as a person but it takes courage and bravery to be an interesting person. Join groups and be part of the community. Help others. By giving of yourself, you are automatically seen as a leader.

As a captain, I sit on the flight deck for long hours with other like-minded people, all wearing the same uniform as me, all as tired as me and all heading for the same overnight hotel as me. But I am always entertained in the conversations that we have as every crew member I come across is following a different interest to me. They might be studying dinosaurs in their spare time, or planning to cycle around the world, or skydive in their spare time, love cooking or are studying a master’s degree in engineering.

One guy I know drives trucks when he’s not flying; and another is a lawyer. But what they all have in common is that they continue to learn and challenge themselves. They are living their lives to the fullest. We don’t ever discuss what’s on the telly, we tend to look outwards at the world and sample as much of it as we can, knowing that there is more to learn about on this planet than we would ever have in a lifetime to learn. I urge you to jump in now and start growing your knowledge and skills.

If you have a fire in your belly wanting to be a pilot, only you can make it happen. And you CAN make it happen.

So, let’s get back to that fateful dark night in Buenos Aires. Perilously close to the ground after takeoff with sirens blaring at us as the storm raged around us, what on earth was happening?

It became clear pretty quickly that the nose gear had failed to retract. This was definitely going to be a problem on a 13 hour flight into headwinds for our flight home to New Zealand. We cycled the landing gear but the nose gear obstinately failed to retract. We had no choice but to level out at 6000 feet and advise ATC. We were directed out over the Atlantic and we spent the next hour or so flying in slow loops over the ocean far away from land and other aircraft movements as we burnt off enough fuel to land safely back into Buenos Aires.

Naturally, there was a palpable frisson of anticipation of an unusual landing as we didn’t know what state the landing gear might be in. Gingerly, we lowered the gear and with all three lights green, I brought the aircraft in for a very gentle landing. The landing was fine, definitely nothing to write home about but we still had the original problem to solve, why hadn’t the nose gear retracted?

We waited for engineering to contact us after we shut down. Surprisingly quickly, they came back with the source of the problem. The nose gear pin was still in situ. This pin specifically prevents the nose gear from retracting whilst on the ground and obviously needs to be removed before flight.

The two pins sit close together – the steering lock pin and the nose gear retraction pin. I was so used to seeing one there that on that stormy night, I had just assumed in the dark stormy conditions that it was one flag I could see, not two. The engineer, had also made the same mistake when he pulled the steering pin out, failing to see that the other pin was still in situ.

The engineers simply pulled out the pin and we finally took off for an uneventful flight home.

I was once told by a flight instructor early in my career that it’s not how you get into trouble that counts but how you get out of it. Never a truer word was spoken. You can make a mistake at any time in your career, but just make sure it’s one you can get out of!

Control That! Keeping the North Atlantic Safe.

Taking Flight: Journey from the Lowlands to the Pacific Skies