Training day These pilots are the ‘face of Boeing’ for airline customers By Eric Fetters-Walp “When you’re with customers for 30 days or more, you really get to know them,” said Rich Brown, a Boeing instructor pilot who spent a month and a half with a small airline in Africa earlier this year. He said the training pilots rely on the expertise across Boeing when a customer question stumps them. “If I don’t know an answer to one of their questions right away, we have the resources to get the answer to the customer.” The Flight Training–Airplane team, which provides short-term training services negotiated as part of the airplane sale, employs three dozen pilots. Boeing Pilot Services, a separate team of 28 pilots within Commercial Aviation Services, provides extended training that can last for months or even years when requested by customer airlines. The two groups work together to offer “seamless services” for the airlines, said Suzanna Darcy-Hennemann, chief pilot and director of Flight Training at Boeing Flight Services. Both groups of pilots are especially busy these days as a growing number of airlines take delivery of their first 787s, she said. “That is the primary driver right now,” Darcy-Hennemann said, adding that the Pilot Services group expects all its pilots to be deployed full time at various airline assignments by early 2015. Meanwhile, nearly all of the Flight Training–Airplane pilots are spending at least half the year deployed with airlines worldwide. While spending that amount of time away from home isn’t always ideal, the pilots say they are used to it. Most of them had similar travel-intensive schedules in previous jobs as commercial and military pilots, Darcy-Henneman said. Boeing looks for that type of experience and a strong background in instruction, as not all pilots can teach as well as they can fly an airplane. Especially as Boeing works with more internationally based airlines, the trainers have to know how to PHOTO: Record deliveries of jetliners such as the 737 and 787 Dreamliner (shown) are keeping pilots busy at Boeing’s Flight Training–Airplane and Pilot Services. BOEING Frontiers November 2014 29
Frontiers November 2014 Issue
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