Part Time or Full Time?
When I was hired by FlightSafety, the manager said that because most of their instructors were retired military pilots just looking for a little extra money, FlightSafety did not pay much. While he was happy to hire me full time, he said it might be better if I was part time. I would not get any benefits, but I would get $3 an hour more, and would get paid for every hour I worked. I chose the part-time route, and it worked out very well. Because I worked hard and was popular with our clients, I got several raises, and between instructing and developing courseware, I ended up averaging 55 hours a week, making me the second highest paid employee in that location after the manager.
When the manager put me in for another raise, the owner of the company, who had to approve every raise throughout their many facilities, asked how many hours I was working. He was not happy when he learned I was averaging 55 hours a week as a part-time employee, so he gave me a choice: I could remain part time and reduce my work to 30 hours a week, or I could go full time, with a $3 an hour cut in pay and no benefits until after a six-month probationary period. Either way resulted in approximately a 50% cut in my income, which we could not afford.
“You Need to Hire This Guy!”
While this was going on, I was training IBM corporate pilots to fly the Learjet 55 their company had purchased. As usual, I was not only was working hard on their training, but was also helping them to develop their company checklist for the airplane, and during our discussions, I shared with them the difficult situation I was in at that time. “It just so happened” that their former chief pilot, Ed Sowa, was now the vice president of a new simulation company called SimuFlite starting up at DFW airport in Dallas. SimuFlite had this strange idea that jet simulator instructors should have experience flying the airplane they were training others on. While I had been able to fly a Learjet a couple of times by then, and had even earned my Learjet Type Rating as a captain in the airplane, I did not come close to meeting their very reasonable requirements.
Due to my lack of experience, there was no chance that SimuFlite would have considered hiring me, but when Ed’s former pilots contacted him and gave me a glowing endorsement, I was invited to Dallas for an interview. Several days later I took a night flight to Dallas, and was hired as one of the first two simulator instructors for SimuFlite. Even better, shortly after I started with SimuFlite, they sent me to Houston for a month to serve as a pilot on Learjets for a charter company. That got me the operational experience I needed to serve as a credible instructor on Learjets.
“What is God Up To?”
The Learjet 35 simulator was the first to go online, followed by simulators for 12 other corporate jet and turboprop aircraft. Even though I had less experience than any of the other instructors, I was chosen as the first Standardization Instructor over all the programs, and later was put in charge of courseware design and development for the 13 week-long computer-based training courses in development. After doing that for a year, I was assigned to special projects, and then finally ended up back as a Learjet instructor, only a couple of cubicles over from where I had started.
By then I had been a Christian for 10 years, and had led several extended, in-depth discipleship training courses that had helped me along on my path to total surrender to God, so when I completed this rapid rise in responsibility and similarly rapid descent back to being an instructor, I sensed that God was up to something. Several weeks later, my boss when I was in charge of courseware design and development called me at home one evening, and said that it was urgent that I see him first thing the next morning. When I arrived, he explained that he was now with the military division of SimuFlite. They had a contract to provide Aircrew Coordination (Human Factors) Training to Navy helicopter pilots, and the instructor providing this training had just quit. He asked me if I would like to be the new Manager of Military Instructor Training. I would be conducting a two-week train-the-trainer course at SimuFlite for military instructors, and then go to each of the training bases to help the instructors conduct their first training sessions with their pilots and crew members.
This sounded like a fascinating opportunity, and I was anticipating that God had something planned for me, so I accepted the offer. A few minutes later I met a friend and told him I was going to be providing training for the SimuFlite Military Division. He replied, “I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving,” and explained that while I was in the office accepting the new position, it was announced that the Military Division was being split off from SimuFlite, which meant that I had just left my company. God knew that it would be a difficult decision for me to do that, but it was a critical step in His plans for me, so He made sure I didn’t have to make that choice.
When I was hired by FlightSafety, the manager said that because most of their instructors were retired military pilots just looking for a little extra money, FlightSafety did not pay much. While he was happy to hire me full time, he said it might be better if I was part time. I would not get any benefits, but I would get $3 an hour more, and would get paid for every hour I worked. I chose the part-time route, and it worked out very well. Because I worked hard and was popular with our clients, I got several raises, and between instructing and developing courseware, I ended up averaging 55 hours a week, making me the second highest paid employee in that location after the manager.
When the manager put me in for another raise, the owner of the company, who had to approve every raise throughout their many facilities, asked how many hours I was working. He was not happy when he learned I was averaging 55 hours a week as a part-time employee, so he gave me a choice: I could remain part time and reduce my work to 30 hours a week, or I could go full time, with a $3 an hour cut in pay and no benefits until after a six-month probationary period. Either way resulted in approximately a 50% cut in my income, which we could not afford.
“You Need to Hire This Guy!”
While this was going on, I was training IBM corporate pilots to fly the Learjet 55 their company had purchased. As usual, I was not only was working hard on their training, but was also helping them to develop their company checklist for the airplane, and during our discussions, I shared with them the difficult situation I was in at that time. “It just so happened” that their former chief pilot, Ed Sowa, was now the vice president of a new simulation company called SimuFlite starting up at DFW airport in Dallas. SimuFlite had this strange idea that jet simulator instructors should have experience flying the airplane they were training others on. While I had been able to fly a Learjet a couple of times by then, and had even earned my Learjet Type Rating as a captain in the airplane, I did not come close to meeting their very reasonable requirements.
Due to my lack of experience, there was no chance that SimuFlite would have considered hiring me, but when Ed’s former pilots contacted him and gave me a glowing endorsement, I was invited to Dallas for an interview. Several days later I took a night flight to Dallas, and was hired as one of the first two simulator instructors for SimuFlite. Even better, shortly after I started with SimuFlite, they sent me to Houston for a month to serve as a pilot on Learjets for a charter company. That got me the operational experience I needed to serve as a credible instructor on Learjets.
“What is God Up To?”
The Learjet 35 simulator was the first to go online, followed by simulators for 12 other corporate jet and turboprop aircraft. Even though I had less experience than any of the other instructors, I was chosen as the first Standardization Instructor over all the programs, and later was put in charge of courseware design and development for the 13 week-long computer-based training courses in development. After doing that for a year, I was assigned to special projects, and then finally ended up back as a Learjet instructor, only a couple of cubicles over from where I had started.
By then I had been a Christian for 10 years, and had led several extended, in-depth discipleship training courses that had helped me along on my path to total surrender to God, so when I completed this rapid rise in responsibility and similarly rapid descent back to being an instructor, I sensed that God was up to something. Several weeks later, my boss when I was in charge of courseware design and development called me at home one evening, and said that it was urgent that I see him first thing the next morning. When I arrived, he explained that he was now with the military division of SimuFlite. They had a contract to provide Aircrew Coordination (Human Factors) Training to Navy helicopter pilots, and the instructor providing this training had just quit. He asked me if I would like to be the new Manager of Military Instructor Training. I would be conducting a two-week train-the-trainer course at SimuFlite for military instructors, and then go to each of the training bases to help the instructors conduct their first training sessions with their pilots and crew members.
This sounded like a fascinating opportunity, and I was anticipating that God had something planned for me, so I accepted the offer. A few minutes later I met a friend and told him I was going to be providing training for the SimuFlite Military Division. He replied, “I’m sorry to hear you’re leaving,” and explained that while I was in the office accepting the new position, it was announced that the Military Division was being split off from SimuFlite, which meant that I had just left my company. God knew that it would be a difficult decision for me to do that, but it was a critical step in His plans for me, so He made sure I didn’t have to make that choice.