Like Copilot, Like Captain: The Importance of Left-Seat Mentoring

With the airline industry now upgrading at warp speed, the opportunity for these pilots to experience all types of leadership remains limited.

Les Abend

Wednesday, March 20, 2024 at 09:29 AM ET

Verified

As of April 2023, all Part 121 carriers are required to have a leadership and command program in addition to mentor training for captains. [Adobe Stock]

Key Takeaways:

The author learned valuable leadership lessons, both positive and negative, through informal observation of diverse captain personalities early in their career, such as a hostile pilot lacking Crew Resource Management (CRM) and another with poor people skills.
These varied interactions, despite sometimes being challenging, served as crucial informal mentoring, shaping the author's understanding of effective leadership traits beyond just flying proficiency.
With modern rapid pilot promotions limiting such informal learning, the article advocates for new mandatory leadership and command programs combined with formal mentoring to ensure future captains are well-rounded and adept.

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I stepped across the cockpit door threshold. The captain was in the process of testing the weather radar on board our Boeing 727. Shuffling behind the flight engineer and slithering into the copilot seat, I glanced at the green screen of the old but reliable RCA display. It took more art than skill to operate.

With a scowl on his face, Captain Dave turned to our wet-behind-the-ears flight engineer and said, “Call maintenance. The radar is spoking in the video band.”