Sole Operator

Sole Operator

A Novel by Ian Farrell

Departures

Incheon, Korea

October

The Seoul Incheon Airways Boeing 737-800 was parked on the south wing of Seoul Incheon Airport’s Terminal One.  The GPS clock on the cockpits forward instrument panel read 9:35 a.m. Check Captain and Chief Pilot Choi Jinho and Captain Han Bin waited patiently in their seats with thirty minutes to go until push back time. With a twenty minute slot time delay, it was almost a routine morning out of South Korea’s Incheon International Airport.   Han Bin gazed out the cockpit windscreen into the airport terminal through a wall of glass ten meters high and slanted outward at a fifteen degree angle.  Just shadows of passengers moving behind the airport terminal glass. Captain Choi rolled his eyes toward Han, sitting in the Captains seat.

This has been going on for too long, and they never give you the Air Traffic Control, ATC clearance until you’re fully ready. Then they spring the delay on you, just like today. Wishful thinking we could get off this gate ten minutes early, Captain Choi said.

He had been monitoring delivery frequency since he arrived, and already informed the cabin and ground crew of a likely delay, even before they received their ATC clearance and slot time delay. Choi reclined his seat, crossed his arms and closed his eyes.

Hurry up and wait, just like in the military.  

With little to do for the moment, Han took a newspaper out of his flight case, Seouler Daily Informer. They arrived early from the airline crew briefing center, and had already gone through a choreographed, disciplined routine.  First the aircraft log book inspection, followed by an exterior inspection and a preflight of the aircraft cockpit. They went through safety, security checks, and the aircraft FMS, Flight Management System, which had the downloaded flight plan uplinked from company operations.  Captain Choi loaded the required data into the aircraft's FMS, and they both crosschecked it against their departure charts and printed flight plans.  There were constant disruptions from refueling personnel, maintenance, the Bursar and Dispatcher with a barrage of minor discrepancies and updates.  A constant flow of personnel came and went from the cockpit as Captains Choi and Han went through their routines.  Yet as busy and hectic as their 450 mile per hour office could become, it was also hours and hours of sitting, monitoring and waiting. With everything done for now, they waited on a slot time delay. It felt no different than sitting in a holding pattern in the sky. Captain Choi leaned forward and pushed his arms up on the seat rests trying to get more comfortable and take the weight off his spine.  His lower back arched inward and his face tensed up. 

I don't know how much more flying my back can take.  Two compressed disks in my lower spine. The lumbar support on these seats just doesn’t do it anymore. I need a parachute harness rig off the cockpit ceiling to keep the weight off my spine. 

You flew fighters too, didn’t you?  F-4 Phantoms? Pulling G's and swiveling ones head around at the same time.  That will do it, Han said.

That didn't help either, but it screwed my neck up more.  All of this sitting has just ruined my lower spine. Office workers can get up anytime they wish, but we are stuck to these seats for hours at a time.

You know why I’m here, Han, and it’s not to give you a farewell check ride. The CEO wanted me to try and change your mind about leaving. It’s not easy, I’m sixty four; less than a year left flying and my career is done. Twelve years in the military, twenty five at Korean Airlines, 747 Check Captain, and just trying to manage flight operations at this airline until the retirement party when I turn sixty five. Then it’s fulfilling all those promises to the wife. I honestly have no interest in travel, yet she does. I would rather settle down on a small farm in the country or out on Jeju Island.

You have had a prestigious career. It is an honor to have my last flight with you, Han said.

Back in the day, a resignation from a national airline was unheard of. But now you have pilots doing exactly what you are doing; getting their pilot in command time and going where the money is. And that is China, or positions like you have been offered, which this airline just cannot compete with their high pay scales.

Han had broken through 1000 hours of pilot in command time on the B-737 and his first offer came through with a Malaysian startup airline. It seemed better than anything he imagined. They offered him a Training Captain position on an Airbus A-319 and a deputy chief pilot position to go along with it.  

It was Han's last two sectors with the company, from Seoul Incheon to Tokyo Narita, and then back to Seoul Incheon.   It would be an uneventful ending to a short lived career of almost five years.   But all things must come to an end, and leaving this job marked an exciting new beginning, just as leaving the military, seven years prior, had led him here. The decision had already been made.

Your family? Choi asked. 

Not to intrude, but are they OK with this new career move?

Just my parents and two older sisters.  A ruined marriage and one successful divorce to go along with it.  It lasted two years. I never liked her father, and now she’s remarried to one of his assistants.  It was a good outcome for all. 

I remember the incident with your father-in-law. It even made the back pages of the ChoJoongDong Newspaper. Did you really throw him down that staircase, as he claimed? An Evangelical Minister!

All charges were eventually dropped, and I was forced to take anger management counseling. I agreed upon a divorce or he would have taken me to court. As I said, a good outcome for all. 

Choi nodded his head as if to find the diagnosis. 

A busy five years. Maybe if you read the ChoJoongDong, your whole perspective on things would change. Even on this job move. I always keep mine in my flight case.

I hope you’re not offended, but that’s a conservative old man’s newspaper.

Choi let out a laughed.

They sat in silence, waiting out their slot time delay and a revised load sheet, due to three lucky passengers that showed up late and got on board due to their delay. The load sheet had the aircraft's weight and balance information once all fuel, cargo and passengers were on board.  It was a final confirmation of all they had on board the aircraft, and contained critical numbers such as the aircraft's stabilizer trim setting.

"The Seouler Daily Informer, I’ve never heard of it.   It looks like one of those hobby publications for things like toy boats or model airplanes," Choi said. 

It’s been in circulation since 1982. You could call it tabloid, but that would do it an injustice. It’s a nice diversion from the big syndicated news, like the kind in your flight case. An old Army buddy of mine works there as a reporter. He has been sending me a free subscription for a few years now.

No response from Captain Choi. Silence rejected Han’s comment. Choi pulled out the company flight plan and buried his head in pages of NOTAMs, Notices to Airmen, with taxi way closures at airports they would not be going to, artillery and naval exercises thousands of feet below their cruising altitude and a sea of information with little value besides the occasional ‘gotcha’ item buried deep in the fine print.  The terminal and area weather forecasts called for CAVOK, Ceiling and Visibility O.K., a blanket term for severe clear.

Hot Night in Uptown Love Shack.

The front page had a well-known K-pop star punching a Seouler Daily Informer reporter, his camera in the air, girl in the background. Action and scandal. She was married, but not to him. A picture on the back page added to a list of names. You would think the newspaper staff, but it was a list of missing persons. A new face with photo. Park Taeri. Missing for almost two months. Last seen boarding a flight from Gimpo International Airport bound to Osaka, Japan. Han glanced it over, thinking nothing of it. There were too many people with the family name Park in Korea. He flipped through the back pages. Russian, Chinese, Japanese and English. It wasn’t just a paper for locals. The back pages were a sea of back ally advertisements, dirtier than the rundown neighborhood their office was located in.

You know, you’re going to find the same thing anywhere you go. It’s human nature; like office politics, inefficiencies, cronies, incompetents in high places, only to be replaced by even more incompetent people.  If you think you are going to escape that, you’re not.  It will chase you around the world, right back here to Seoul.  And then you won’t have a job and possibly more troubles than you ever imagined. You will be an Ex-Patriot too, and that means no protections from your country or pilot union. You will be a sole operator, a mercenary pilot if you will, subject to what could be a hostile work environment and no citizens’ rights!  

Han’s lips tightened up. He understood this old pilot’s logic, but he also knew his glorious career was almost over, and did not face the uncertainty he would going forward.

I have an offer with far better pay and an Airbus type rating to go with it.  It’s going to be a Training Captain position, and they have funding for up to fifty aircraft over the next five years.  It will someday be a good sized low cost airline out of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  I should be the Director of Operations by then.  Maybe after I am through working there, I will come back to Korea and take a managerial job at an operation like Seoul Incheon Airways, or work for KOTSA, the Korean Transportation and Safety Authority.

Well you certainly have stamina, Han. I guess you got that from being a former infantry man. I suppose if you could get into an aircraft cockpit from packing a rifle on the DMZ, you can handle something more challenging. Most pilots here are ex-military pilots, like myself, or young fresh cadets out of flight academies with absolutely no experience. You’re a special case, Han, so maybe you will thrive in a more dynamic environment. But as I said, on behalf of this company’s CEO, we would like you to reconsider this move. We will do our best to promote you accordingly, even into our training and checking team, if you so desire.

Han thought little of Captain Choi’s offer, and glanced down at the clock again. As much as they were up on time, it didn’t mean they wouldn’t be rushed before their new push back time.  They were still in a dead space with little to do but wait.  A time when all is done that needs to be done, and they waited for last minute paperwork or something else blocking them from progressing on with their time sensitive duties. When the aircraft parking brake was released, the aircraft was officially off blocks.  Han could time his actions down to the minute when it came to on time departures.  He could even fudge in sixty seconds for communications delays, either with ground control or the tug crew, hooking up to the nose wheel intercom system for pushback.  A smart Captain could even beat the clock by coordinating an early breaks release with the ground crew to start the block out time early before pushback. But today, the delay was on Air Traffic Control, and there was little pressure to get off the gate for an on time departure.

I understand, and respect your offer, but the decision is made. I will be leaving next week for my new position. Please wish me luck, if only my career is half as glorious as yours, I will be a happy man.

Han bowed his head slightly in respect to his Chief Pilot and Senior Captain on the flight deck.

*****

It was good to be done in the evening, but Han felt hollow. Not like other flights in the past five years.  Seoul Incheon Airport was past its peak evening traffic and the terminal was near empty.  The cleaners had started on the floors, and two security guards in black uniforms carrying K-2 rifles walked by in lock step as Han shuffled through the wide expanse of the modern terminal for the last time.  It was a nice terminal with beautiful open arched metal scaffolding that curved around the front entrance. It was wide and open, like many in East Asia.  It couldn’t compete in its immensity to Beijing’s terminal, but nothing in the world could.  You just had to walk through it and see its jaw dropping ceilings. He pondered what Captain Choi had said. He did not push or plead him to stay, but just laid out his own matter of fact predictions. Being chased right back to Seoul with no job. It got Han hot under the collar, just like being reminded of his father-in-law, divorce, and one year mandatory anger management counseling sponsored by his own airline.

‘What does he know about me or my future? What does he know about working outside his protected, prestigious union career? Nothing! I’m out of here.’

Tailspin

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

March

The elevator opened to the third floor offices of Cheetah Airlines company headquarters in Bukit Bintang, Kuala Lumpur. Han entered the reception area with his company ID badge, black slacks with a white short-sleeve shirt and thin silk tie. He was dressed for Malaysia’s heat and humidity. A tall woman accompanied by three men placed the company logo aircraft model of an Airbus A-319 into a box for shipment. Two men were dressed in tight brown uniform shorts and matching tops. A third man stood with his arms folded around his chest, peering over the receptionist huddled behind her desk. He was a muscle man, not a package man. An intimidator, possibly hired by the woman to snuff out any protest or questions from the reception lady, or any other office personnel, including Han. Karen Sandusky made eye contact with Han, and the receptionist gave him a nervous nod as he walked into the office area.

The company CEO branded his image as an upfront, approachable man with an open door policy. Today’s meeting was expected to bring in a high percentage of the company’s ninety three employees for some straight talk by a CEO that brandished his image to the likes of other hardnosed, low cost airline managers from Ryan Air, Easy Jet, Jetstar, Tiger and Southwest Airlines. The companies two Airbus A-319’s were towed into an undisclosed hanger a week prior, and all flights canceled until further maintenance inspections. It seemed quite suspect, as both aircraft were brand new and factory delivered from Toulouse, France.

There was no one in the dispatch or crew scheduling departments, and no one in the training or safety cubicles. Even recruiting and human resources were not in yet, but the CEO’s office door was open, just as he had advertised. The lights were turned off, and as Han peered into his office, he noticed his desk was cleared and the shelves empty. He checked his company phone, and there were no calls or messages. He shrugged his shoulders and went into the conference room and took a seat in the fifth row of foldable chairs. The receptionist sat silent and paralyzed as bubble wrap and tape packed the Cheetah Airlines A-319 miniature for shipment to Karen’s home in Seattle, Washington. It would join her collection of over two hundred similar models she had collected throughout her years in the aviation industry. Her collection of company logo aircraft began with the shutdown of her own airline, Pan American. After almost a decade of dedicated service, she ripped a company model Boeing 707 from its stand, and with tears running down her mascara and no job; she pushed the clumsy model into her 1986 Honda Accord and drove off the Pan American training center lot in Miami, Florida. The year was 1991 and she was twenty eight years old. Almost ten dedicated years and a used Honda with a Boeing 707 in the trunk. Even her husband, a newly minted Captain with twenty years in the company and divorced three times, the last with her encouraging assistance, was also out of work. Loading the aircraft in her car, she discovered on its underbelly a dedication placard from the Boeing factory and the aircrafts history as the first Boeing 707 wind tunnel testing model. It was presented to the companies CEO, Juan Tripp in 1958 with its hand painted Pan American paint scheme. Juan Tripp’s signature adorned the fuselage, dedicating it to Pan American’s training department.

The shutdown of her own company marked a sobering new chapter to her life, and launched a new career as an airline pilot crew leasing and training contractor. To Karen, Pan American was an American brand as strong as Coca Cola. Its Intercontinental Hotel chain, wholly owned by Pan American, represented luxury and class the world over. It brought the American Empire to every countries doorstep without deploying a single soldier or diplomat. Today, Intercontinental Hotels was owned by a UK based company with the largest hotel chain in the world, and included such brands as Crown Plaza, Holiday Inn, Staybridge and the old Intercontinental Hotels established by Pan American. The Intercontinental brand meant little to Americans, and Pan American Airlines became nothing more than a television sitcom in later years.

Her former husband’s theory as to why this had come to pass made as much sense as any she had heard. Its threat to America was that it flew away, and was out of reach. It was an Airline with no borders or country. It was too pioneering to be American. It was just easier to piece it out to less hostile domestic minions. Even ones that went bankrupt themselves for the very same reasons. It was easier to deploy the Air Force and Navy around the world than a brand so strong it said, in the most elegant manner; ‘You can leave’. Just get on one of our airplanes and you will most surely leave with an Intercontinental Hotel waiting for you anywhere we fly in the world. The idea of leaving did not sit well with the American psyche, or it’s government. And leaving was so different than being deployed.

The solidarity and brotherly love of unions dissolved when an airline shutdown or merged with another one. Many airlines just stapled the smaller company to the bottom of their own seniority list, subjugating senior Captains at one airline to low seniority positions at another. Her husband ended up in the ACMI freight business. It stood for Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance. Charter airlines with names like Kalitta, Polar, Omni, Atlas, Southern Air, and World Airlines wet leased wide body freighters to other airlines. They provided ACMI at a fixed hourly rate and monthly guarantee. It was flying around the globe for up to thirty days straight, and it destroyed one’s body, soul and life. It was long haul flying, and it was a killer. Her husband lasted ten years before it finished him off, and her own contracting business languished in the boom years of the 1990s. Her small contracting booth sat idle as lines stretched long around the Major Airline booths at job fairs. There was little interest in a pilot contract job when airlines were on a hiring binge.

The aftermath of 9/11 saw the same airlines that had picked apart Pan American’s lucrative routes and businesses just ten years prior begging Congress to bail them out of bankruptcy. The CEO’s now gathered together in front of Congress demanding bailouts and bankruptcy protection from their own labor groups. As she watched the CEO’s lined up shoulder to shoulder, hand in hat after 9/11, with husband number one a box of ashes in her closet, delivered by the same Boeing 747 freighter he had once commanded, she felt a calm and peaceful understanding of all she had gone through. Airlines in the western world had cannibalized each other based on their own misguided ideals of solvency and profit. The end result was airlines with no class, no service, no flag, insolvent, and no airline hotel chain to end up in after a long haul flight. Only those airlines that protected their brand image and were pushed by the economic power of their governments became powerful and great. These were rapidly becoming Asian and Middle East Airlines, and they needed contract pilots.

Karen’s contracting website filled up with applications of furloughed pilots following 9/11. She traveled around the world to any distressed airlines, filling her database with the most qualified, type rated pilots she could find. Traveling on half empty airplanes after 9/11 seemed a no brainer for anyone in the airline business, and only the occasional retired airline pilot and his wife were a bother to her. She only heard stories from older cabin crew of a similar opportunity during the 1973 oil embargo and recession that nearly bankrupted Pan American with its new 747 fleet. Post 9/11 had now become a business boom for contracting companies, and the financial crisis of 2008 only threw more gas on the fire.

Bankrupted airlines created a depository of instant, current and qualified crew for her contracting company, and going to airline shutdown parties was even more exciting than the mundane job fairs she attended with pilots dressed in the same suits, same haircuts, and the airline booths with lines of pilots hawking resumes and trying to get sixty seconds of face time with a potential employer. Airline shutdowns where chaotic, panic filled events that allowed her to jump the queue and get first hand selection of whatever was in the meat locker. She always started with a security ID badge that gave her access to company operations and the treasure trove of soon to be furloughed employees. A freight & packaging crew and hired muscle man would usually meet her in front of the offices, and she would start by putting them to work disassembling the company logo aircraft for shipping. Her airline display case now held models of aircraft from the great international legacy carriers of the world, including Swiss, Varig, TWA, Eastern, Sabena, Avianca, and many other obscure and now defunct airlines from around the globe. She even claimed a few that were in waiting, like a prized Cubana Yak-42 model signed by Fidel Castro. She parked it next to her Jamaican Airlines A-340 and her favorite hookah pipe. She even managed to have models sent to her by just arranging a freight company to go to a company’s headquarters after they had announced bankruptcy, and ordering all the aircraft models shipped to her home in Seattle. It often worked in the confusion and chaos surrounding a company shutdown, and it seemed the company logo model aircraft that adorned the reception area was the last thing on people’s minds.

She even attempted to remove company logo aircraft from certain legacy airlines that refused to go bankrupt, even though she knew, deep down in her heart, they really were bankrupt. Air France sent her a very nice letter that congratulated her on an attempt to ship six of their vintage models. They even sent a plastic version of their Concord with an upgrade voucher from Business to First Class. They had lots of class, and she liked the idea that at one point in time, the flight crews were presented with a cake upon arrival at the aircraft. It was in their contract and it seemed so civilized and human. She even visited the flight deck with her upgraded ticket and noticed the Captain enjoying his meal with a small harmless glass of French win. She always flew Air France when she could, as it reminded her of her old Pan American days.

Lufthansa was a polar opposite. They threatened to ban her from all service for life and even bring her up on charges for attempting to ship their model displays, some of which they had under lock and key in glass cabinets. They seemed freakish towards miniatures, and over controlling and harsh. They even built a miniature airport in Hamburg that was small, insanely detailed, and left her running out of the museum, her skin crawling. Their seriousness of small, finely detailed models was borderline psychotic. She always avoided Lufthansa, and could only hope for the day when they would go through a chaotic bankruptcy and shutdown. If that ever occurred, she would show up with the burliest looking freight dogs she could find along with a brick from the Berlin Wall. She would smash open their display case and take every one of their crane logo designed aircraft dating back to before World War II. She found them over controlling, freakishly detailed and cold hearted.

Employees filed into the conference room as the clock approached nine in the morning. Karen sat down next to Han Bin in the fifth row, and they waited for the company managers to enter and give their speech. He felt a sense of betrayal as the Assistant Chief Pilot not being informed on a very important company meeting and what was being called by the CEO a crisis. The CEO had delegated the meeting to his CFO who called in sick, and further delegated authority to a contract human resources individual to give the company update and outlook, as it was now being called. Han sat next to Karen and waited to hear an update on company operations, now being presented by an individual who did not even work for the company.

His phone over the past few months was a river of phone calls from the Company CEO on down, and as he waited, expecting a flurry of activity to light up his company phone, it seemed ever so silent. He was not even used to calling company operations or top level management, because as a Training Captain and now Assistant Chief Pilot, he was constantly being called and pressed with desperate questions about training, manuals, flights to new destinations, and every micro managing detail about operations. His job as Training Captain progressed very quickly to Assistant Chief Pilot duties when the assigned Chief Pilot stopped showing up for work. It felt like drinking water through a fire hose. Yet in nothing short of a month, the fire hose of calls and operational issues turned into a garden hose and from that a milk shake straw and now not even the dribble out of a leaky faucet. Something in this aggressive, can do airline had simply gone tits up. It had rolled over like a fat girl in the Dead Sea. It had gone South like a Minnesota snowbird after Thanksgiving. It was now as boiled over as a Chinese hotpot.

The company operations were on the third floor of a ten story building in Bukit Bintang in Kuala Lumpur. It took up half a floor and was leased out, as most things were from the start. There was no commitment to anything solid, and even the aircraft paint schemes were near identical to Air Asia with the exception of the tail design, which looked more like a speed tape job that could be quickly modified in no more than a few hours in a closed hanger. He never felt the least suspect as long as the river of calls flooded his phone with micromanaging details from the company President, CEO and a small party of mid-level managers. He was content in not asking the most blaring questions of all. Are we operational? Are we solvent? He could not see beyond his management blinders what to Karen was a classic airline startup failure and shutdown. The wall of mid-level managers now lined up in front of the conference room, waiting for the company representative to enter.

The company rep came out and took the podium in front of the employees of Cheetah Airlines. He gazed out over the crowd and pulled out a cloth towel and patted his forehead and upper lip. He exhaled through the microphone and held his hand to his chest.

With such pain and great regret.

He stopped and looked down at the podium. Karen swore she had seen the man before, but could only place his face with a transvestite Filipino, playing top 40 1980’s hits at a three star hotel lounge across the street. He broke down in a soft whimper that seemed seductive, arousing and disturbing all at once. It created a smoke screen that even left Karen’s lower lip sagging in shock at the spiteful nature of upper management.

Crocodile tears, Karen said to Han.

Malik Kiambang, Han’s First Officer, looked over in panic as Karen put her arm behind the back wrest of Hans’s foldable chair. She looked over at Malik, wondering if she could ever have her way with such a young man again, and not do that much emotional damage. If the right occasion ever presented itself, she told herself.

He hit the lecture, tears rolling down his eyes.

I have to pass on this sad state of affairs brought to you by our esteemed management team, the Panther Group.

The who group? Someone in front of them asked.

They’re always a group when this goes down. It’s harder to follow them back to their homes or sue them, Karen said.

As of today we will cease operations.

A scream and cry could be heard from the back of the room, as a small group of nineteen and twenty year old cabin crew wailed out in pain and anguish as their mother ship went down. Karen looked back with a smile as the young girls in company sarongs, not so different than Singapore Airlines, huddled in a circle, wailing out tears of sorrow. They had been forced to pay a retainer fee from a cabin crew training academy, which was deducted out of their first year internship pay. None had received a paycheck yet, and they all owed money to separate head hunter agencies. Between their cries of sorrow and pain, they snacked on instant noodles, chicken satays, nasi goreng, and played with a treasure trove of cell phones that lit up the perfect circle they had made behind the chairs. Karen looked back, regretting that she hadn’t cornered them all. It was where she began many years prior at Pan American, and she cursed that she could have easily written debt burdensome contracts on all of them. But even to her, that was a pure criminal scam, and beyond her morals.

Due to the financial hardships of the global economy, and the dynamics of this competitive, fluid industry, we must adapt and come back stronger. We are here for you. Today, we will be here. For you. For our family. Cheetah Airlines.

The mid-level managers stood behind the Filipino, who was now choking back tears at the demise of Cheetah Airlines. His whimpering softened as the 19ers, as they called themselves, with pristine 01 seniority numbers, wailed out in their tight Malaysian Sarongs in the rear. They had brought their own bamboo mats to sit on and their feast and drinks adorned the area set aside for them. It seemed the