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I flew for United Airlines from 1986 to 2015, thus ending a 29-year airline career of dedicated service to my employer. In those years, I never missed a trip as a commuter, never scratched the paint on one of our airplanes, never got an FAA violation, never injured a passenger, and never had a less than cordial conversation with the chief pilot. In spite of this stellar record, United fired me on January 18, 2015, and all I did wrong was have 65 birthdays! Upon walking off my 757 at the gate for the very last time, I said to myself “I’ll never do that again! And I haven’t! But even at 65, I wasn’t ready to give up flying.
After my rude dismissal from United, I fell into the most beautiful retirement job an old pilot could ever find. In 2017, I got hired to be the personal pilot for a family in Pennsylvania flying their high-tech, all glass cockpit $5m, Pilatus PC-12NG single engine turboprop. In fact, I have been their Chief Pilot for nearly eight years.
I got hired to be the personal pilot on an all glass cockpit $5m, Pilatus PC-12NG.
What makes this gig so wonderful is that while I still get to fly professionally at 74, I only have to fly an average of once or twice a month and 100-120 hours per year but get paid whether I fly or not. Another caveat is that we operate under FAR Part 91 so that when I attend recurrent simulator training, I am no longer playing that game I used to play at United called “you bet your job.” The translation of this saying is that when an airline pilot goes for recurrent simulator training and check ride, failure meant losing one’s job if he or she failed the test. For those of us who fly under FAR Part 91, there is no test and no risk of failure and losing one’s job.
But transitioning from the airlines to a civilian pilot on long range flights in a turbine powered airplane was a shock! Now, instead of showing up in flight ops and finding my flight planning had all been done for me by my dispatcher, I was now the dispatcher. My learning curve was not steep, it was vertical!
My boss lives in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania but has a vacation home on a private island in Key West, Florida. Because of this situation, I had to learn how to flight plan a flight of 1,120 nm up in the flight levels from Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania (KMPO), where the airplane is hangared, to Key West. KMPO is an non-towered field as are several other places I fly to and from on an IFR flight plan. One of the things I had to learn was getting my IFR clearance at a non-towered airport on my cell phone while flying with a nose mounted turbine engine.
While I had gotten my IFR on my cell phone hundreds of times before, it was always in a piston powered single engine airplane or an airplane with wing mounted engines, but never with a screaming turbine engine sitting not five feet in front of me. And it was because of this, I learned a big lesson that I solved with a technology upgrade. This occurred for the first time when departing Carroll County, MD for my home base at KMPO in 2017.
I had just picked my airplane up from its annual inspection and needed to get my IFR clearance from the non-towered KDMW via cell phone from Potomac Approach Control, as the RCO was out of service. At the end of the departure runway, I called on my cell phone to receive my clearance, but my engine was so loud at idle, I could not hear the controller and was forced to shut down my engine so that I could hear the clearance. This meant I had to find a high-tech way of hearing the controller with the engine running.
We have all heard of Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z, but no one ever mentions my generation, which is Gen O, as in old! Solving high-tech problems for Gen O is tough because we all have analog brains while living in a digital world. But in spite of my status as a card-carrying member of Generation O, I came up with the solution to my noise problem. The answer was to buy two Bose headsets with a Bluetooth feature, then download the Bose app on my cell phone.
The answer to my noise problem was to buy two Bose headsets with a Bluetooth feature.
This I did, and now at uncontrolled fields, I activate the Bluetooth button on the battery pod on my headset, fire up the app on my phone, and call ATC. Even with my 1,200 hp PT6-67B engine idling and two turbine exhaust nozzles pointed at me from five feet away, I can easily hear the ATC controller on my headphones when he or she issues my clearance. So, despite my analog brain, I triumphed over technology and gave myself a well-deserved virtual (pun intended) pat on the back.
Now fast forward to 2024. I am living in Punta Gorda, Florida and commuting to Pennsylvania to fly the Pilatus. And I am also still an active CFII. My good friend Steve Schwenk also lives in PGD and owns a CR-22 Cirrus single engine airplane. Steve was my very first student in 1970 when I was a new 19-year-old flight instructor while attending college in Springfield, MO.
If his name sounds familiar, it is because Steve was the protagonist in my story Rope-A-Dope. You might recall that Steve had tricked his Designated Pilot Examiner during private Pilot his checkride, but got his license anyway. Like me, Steve is also a member of Gen O but is five months ahead of me on the seniority list. He retired in 2014 as a Boeing 747 Captain flying for Delta Airlines.
After buying his single engine Cirrus, Steve needed to get current in flying IFR in general aviation, something he had not done since the 1970s. He contacted me and I agreed to be his flight instructor once more, 54 years after I had signed him off for his Private Pilot License.
After buying his single engine Cirrus, Steve contacted me and I agreed to be his flight instructor once more.
We filed IFR and got our clearance in the usual way from ground control at Punta Gorda, then flew eastward to the uncontrolled Sebring, Florida airport. We would shoot some approaches there, then return IFR to PGD. Getting our IFR clearance on the ground at KSEF involved calling Miami Center on the cell phone.
When we reached the end of the departure runway, the moment of truth was at hand. I thought I would impress Steve with my high-tech triumph from five years ago by suggesting that he buy Bose Bluetooth headsets so that he could hear his clearances on the headphones instead of on his cell phone. Upon hearing my suggestion, Steve looked over at me and, taking a cue from Leona Helmsley, fairly sneered the following words;
“Only little people get their IFR clearance on Bluetooth headsets. My hearing aid has Bluetooth. I’ll get our clearance on my hearing aid.”
Steve then whips out his cell phone, dials up Miami Center and requests our clearance. A moment later I watched as Steve copied our clearance on his kneeboard, a clearance that I could not hear!
It was then that I realized that a fellow member of Generation O had just technologically one upped me, and that virtual pat on the back I had given myself 5 year earlier had now become a virtual slap in the face.
“Only little people get their IFR clearance on a Bluetooth headset…” Man!
His professional credentials include 5 years as captain, training officer, and chief pilot for a commuter airline where he flew the DC-3, Beech 18 and Beech 99 in scheduled passenger operations, and 6 years as Director of Training for both FlightSafety International and Simuflite’s King Air Division.
Turpin was hired by United Airlines in 1986, where he flew the Boeing 727, 737, 757 and 767 in both domestic and international operations including 100 oceanic crossings, and 6 equator crossings. Turpin retired in 2015 at age 65, and currently has some 30,000 hours in his log book.
He is currently employed as captain and chief pilot flying the Pilatus PC-12NG for a company in Pennsylvania. Joel has been a current and active flight instructor since 1970 and teaches instrument flying in a variety of single engine airplanes. Turpin also writes technical articles with an emphasis on instrument flying and airplane systems.
In 2016, Joel Turpin earned the FAA Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award for 50 years of flying accident and violation free, and for his contribution to aviation safety for all of those years.
He currently lives in Punta Gorda, Florida with his wife, who is a United Airlines flight attendant. While Joel has had an amazing career in aviation spanning over six decades, he still considers himself to be just a general aviation pilot who got lucky.
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