Back when I was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, people would sometimes ask me, “What’s it like to fly?” A better question would have been, “What’s it like to fly in the civilian world?” Then I would have known the answer, and could’ve puffed out my pilot chest and answered confidently, “I have no idea.” I only had USAF flight experience until I morphed from my green caterpillar flight suit into a civilian butterfly/pilot. This metamorphosis involved me starting from scratch, or ab initio, in a Cessna 172. Ab initio, of course, is Latin for “dangerous student pilot who does sit-ups.”
When coming from the military, the FAA doesn’t care about two-engine, four-engine or even eight-engine jet time. (B-52 bomber pilot on a go-around: “Everybody grab a throttle! We’re going around!”) I found out the FAA doesn’t allow military pilots to fly a 172—even if they have a multi-engine ATP certificate—until they add single-engine privileges. Who knew?
