Should you sit in an American hotel room for any period of time and have the pleasure of hunting through 500 channels of cable TV, it becomes apparent that one can undertake a ‘college course’ in just about anything; from leg waxing to law enforcement. Furthermore, it seems that unless you have the associated piece of paper your chances of employment may be severely compromised. Are tertiary studies in aviation worth the time and money to Australian pilots?

As an unemployed 737 pilot in his thirties, the Ansett collapse threw up a whole spectrum of new challenges. Career, financial and personal security had taken an unplanned leave of absence and the future seemed a rather murky place. It was a bit like a mid-life crisis without the red convertible. Throughout this period of self-assessment and priority shifting, a new career was always a distinct possibility. It was this examination of all options that led to a visit to Centrelink that is still with me to this day.

As I sat in my best interview suit, the employment officer flicked through my Curriculum Vitae and supporting documentation. He flipped the pages of my green covered ATPL whimsically and even glanced at the log-book that told the tale of 10,000 hours. Returning to my resume, his face lit up, “You were an Ambulance Officer previously. This might be of use.” This was the first inkling that my dedication to a career in aviation may be worth zip. He then rummaged further through my papers, squinted and asked me, “Have you any tertiary qualifications?” I replied in the negative, but explained that a first class Airline Transport Licence requires years of theoretical and practical application. It called for numerous exams and none of those 50% results that they call a pass in the real world. I then proudly informed him that it was all paid for by my own hard earned dollars. He looked back at the paperwork and then at me, “You were an Ambulance Officer previously. This might be of use.”

It was shortly thereafter that I decided to reassess my options. Fortunately, within months I was able to secure another airline job and many of my previous career issues became mute. Even so, the matter of a tertiary qualification stayed with me as I no longer possessed the naïve, laissez faire ‘job for life’ attitude. It was to this backdrop that I began to research university studies. I discovered that I was fundamentally a ‘mature age’ student, yet this far from guaranteed a place in any course of study. Many required evidence of more recent studies. Catch 22.

Wary of my eggs being in one basket, I reluctantly examined aviation Degrees and was pleasantly surprised. My industry experience would be recognised and I could enter a course of post graduate studies; a Masters Degree in Aviation Management. The course was available full time, part time and via correspondence over the internet. Within the syllabus lay generic subjects such as Project Management that could be of use in any field of endeavour, not just aviation. Additionally, if I established a track record of study in this course, entry to other faculties may be possible as a mature student. I decided to enroll.

Formalising Qualifications:

One of my primary motivations for undertaking tertiary studies was to formalise my qualifications. We operate in a specialised industry that can render us highly qualified and thoroughly unemployable. Tertiary qualifications are able to speak the universal language of the workplace and offers a yardstick to those who are unfamiliar with our chosen field. Some subjects may not bear direct relevance to the world in general, but this is the case for many degrees.

What the tertiary qualification does signal is application. Particularly when studied in conjunction with full time employment, a high degree of resolve and dedication are required. This is recognised by employers, be they airlines or anybody else. Certainly, so does an ATPL, but it does translate into a tangible quantity for many. A high proportion of recruitment staff at airlines are non-pilots and whilst one would hope they understand the commitment required for an ATPL, you can almost guarantee that they understand the effort required for a degree.

 An Edge:

As we all know, aviation is a highly competitive industry and a good proportion of ‘right time and right place’ doesn’t go astray either. In such a fierce environment, any edge an aspirant can get is time and money well spent. That is not to say that the old-fashioned slog of accumulating hours should be put on the back-burner: far from it. What is worth stating is that if you can apply yourself to gain a qualification above and beyond the next applicant, you stand a good chance of getting the nod on the big day.

It is now possible to obtain a Commercial Pilot Licence through Universities and graduate with both a licence and degree. This would have to be advantageous in the long term. If the opportunity is not there, or the timing is not right, consider studies again at a later date. The flexibility of studies over the internet and recognition of industry experience means that it’s never too late.

Security:

Let’s face the facts, aviation and the airlines cannot offer the long term security that they once did. Our world and our industry is in constant state of flux. Fuel prices, low cost carriers, US Chapter 11 operations, terrorism and so on. Unless your crystal ball is extremely well tuned, it is very hard to make any predictions about the future. Remember a little operation called Pan Am? Having been through the collapse of an airline I am aware that you need everything going for you to keep moving forward. Whilst I never could have seen job security being an issue when I was twenty, I certainly can now I’m forty with three children and sleep better knowing that there are options available to me.

Similarly, I used to be seven foot tall and bulletproof. These days I’m not so tall and definitely not bulletproof. Medical issues have plagued pilots, at times, from a relatively young age. Your medical is your licence. You may blitz every check and simulator session with flying colours, but a stone in the eye from the neighbour’s ride-on mower will put paid to that in a heartbeat. Protecting yourself isn’t about being pessimistic. To the contrary, it’s about peace of mind and the ability to thoroughly enjoy the present. A tertiary degree is a very sound form of insurance.

There’s more to aviation than flying:

For Beech and Boeings to stay in the air safely, there is a myriad of support staff. In time pilots often develop a taste for management, training, flight safety or projects, such as the introduction of a new type. Such options do not wrench the pilot from the cockpit for life, but offer a challenge and change to routine. These positions are numerous in airlines and often provide an interesting mix that brings about greater job satisfaction but, once again, competition for the jobs can be fierce. A tertiary qualification not only assists in the application process, but may well provide the individual with the skills to successfully undertake the task.

Is it worth it?

Sometimes you can be blessed and waltz through life and career without a hiccup. It is, however, very rare. Furthermore, pilots are inherently a self-critical bunch who hold themselves to higher standards than any Test Officer or Check Captain would ever seek. They need challenges. Tertiary studies seem to offer not only security, but a level of satisfaction that is often sought after by pilots at all levels. Notwithstanding, there is the genuine worth of a degree in the gaining of knowledge and the enhancement of employment and subsequent career potential.

The financial cost of a tertiary qualification is not unsubstantial. If it can be gained concurrently with a Commercial Licence, tremendous. If not, it may be a while before the coffers permit the extravagance of further education, however, do not let the passage of time completely extinguish the flame. A degree may be out of reach in the short term, but there are still tremendous courses on offer in Accident Investigation, Safety Management and the like. The main point will always be to build your logbook, but also try to extend your portfolio.

The pursuit of further education is never easy. It is a test of persistence, motivation and resources. The rewards, however, are great and will provide benefits of a varied nature regardless of the stage of your career. A tertiary qualification may land you that job you desire, allow you to start your own enterprise or earn a promotion within the ranks of management. Whatever your particular goals may be, it will certainly provide you with a great degree of satisfaction.

...readying for departure from Hervey Bay, Queensland.

Along the way we all have cause to encounter all sorts of personalities; some interesting, some complicated and others that spring to mind for all of the wrong reasons. They can be found in a marketplace in some far-away hidden corner of the globe, or right around the corner next to the pie shop. Part of the fun is never knowing quite where you’ll find them.

Some time back, I took to speaking to veteran aircrew of past conflicts in an effort to record their stories. It allowed me to tie together my interest in history, writing and aviation. Along the way meeting characters who have ‘been there and done that’ but retain modesty and the art of the understatement. While some stories are published, others are simply retained by the family to pass on to the enquiring grandchildren whose questions always seem to surface around ANZAC & Memorial Day assignment time.

Two years ago, I was approached by one such survivor of World War Two. Not through the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, or the Returned Serviceman’s League, but an electrician. Repairing all and sundry in the aftermath of a lightning strike, the ‘sparky’ mentioned an old fella he knew who had been trying to get his story recorded for a few years. He’d started to write it himself, but hadn’t gotten very far; maybe I’d like to have a chat with him?
Kenneth Butterworth McGlashan was standing in his shed, shaking his head at a recalcitrant lathe when I first met him. He’d taken to restoring tired antique furniture in his retirement and his workshop was a mix of turned table legs and sawdust. Turning away from his tools, Kenneth greeted me warmly and immediately began chatting about his Royal Air Force days. With a Scottish accent, the 84 year-old started to describe an aerial combat over Dunkirk in 1940 on which he had come out on the wrong side. We wandered inside and began to chat over a cup of tea about aerial campaigns that had become folklore; the Battle of Britain, Dieppe, D-Day. Kenneth had been there for all of them as a fighter pilot, he was one of ‘The Few’ who had defended Britain in her darkest hour.

His sharp eyes hadn’t aged a day, nor had his sense of humour. He related anecdote after anecdote with tremendous clarity and the hours ticked by until it was time for me to leave. Sensing my movement toward the door, Kenneth asked me if I was interested in writing his story and I knew I was, however I sensed immediately that this wasn’t a magazine article or a short story for the family archives; it was a book. This bloke had received his wings on rag and tube biplanes before the war and flown through the entire conflict, from the retreat at Dunkirk to the landings at Normandy and beyond. He was living history and I was hooked. I had to say yes.

Was I up to writing a book? Between a two year-old, a wife pregnant with twins and good dose of self-doubt, I had reservations. But as I sat in Kenneth’s lounge room a week later with the wheels of a tape recorder slowly turning, I started to gather momentum. Not through any skill on my part, but because Kenneth was a natural story teller with an ‘A Grade’ memory. He jumped from episode to episode, but I let him go as sorting out the chronology was my job. For a starting point, I couldn’t go past the tale of Dunkirk with which he had first captivated me.

He had been 19 years of age as he sat perched above the English Channel in his new single-engined Hawker Hurricane. The airframe had only eight hours in the air and, by modern standards, Kenneth didn’t have much more. Leading the rear section of three at 25,000 feet, he was tasked with covering the backs of his leading sections. Not long over the Channel, one of his trio turned back with engine trouble, leaving him and Geoff Howitt to fly as a pair. As they flew toward the plume of smoke lifting skyward from Dunkirk on the French coast, the massive evacuation of allied troops was taking place on the waves below in everything from Thames paddle-steamers to personal yachts.

Suddenly, the leading sections dived towards a flock of marauding German bombers. Simultaneously an ear piercing squeal rang out in Ken’s headsets and his wingman broke formation clean in front of him as a pair of Messerschmitts roared from left to right. McGlashan rolled in on his foe, but seconds later heard what sounded like an alarm clock going off behind his head. (It was actually bullets hitting the armour plating.) Reality struck when the port side of his Hurricane began ripping under a hail of gunfire and red tracers skipped between his legs, tearing up the piping and framework of his aeroplane’s floor.

What ensued was a turbulent spinning plummet towards the French sand. When the attack abated, he attempted to level out and get out as his fighter was bleeding to death. Crippled, the Hurricane was attacked again and he was ultimately forced down on the beach just south of the Belgian border. On the ground, he hurried from his fighter and dived beneath one of a sea of abandoned Lorries on the beach. His subsequent nine mile walk to Dunkirk was a drama that included being shot at by German infantry and being threatened at bayonet-point by French Algerians, but ultimately it was a walk of isolation. As a nineteen year old he watched Spitfires dive into the sea and soldiery drift on the swell like so much flotsam as he trudged toward the final point on the Continent held by allied forces.

Needless to say, Ken survived his encounter over Dunkirk. After an eventful boat ride back to England he went on to fly in the Battle of Britain from the RAF’s easternmost airfield at Hawkinge until it was abandoned and laid to waste by the Luftwaffe. At this time his squadron was transferred to Ireland, where they trained foreign pilots on the Hurricane and attempted to protect coastal towns and the vital shipping routes supplying the British Isles from the west. There was no radar or organised control system in this region, so it was not unusual for the pilots to be scrambled by an irate Postmaster yelling down the phone, “We’re being attacked, what are you going to do about it?”

From Ireland he would be a pioneer in night-fighting in a time when pilots were force fed carrots to improve their night vision. Stacked from 13,000 feet at 500 foot intervals above a burning Merseyside, the ‘advanced’ technique of detection was to wait for the bombers silhouettes to appear against the backdrop of the inferno. The fighters would then dive down, but inherently the bombers had already slipped away into the veil of darkness. Later in the war he would ‘night fight’ again, this time in company with a bomber equipped with a massive light in its nose. Termed ‘Turbinlite’, this technique involved sneaking up on the target in absolute darkness before illuminating it with a 2,700 million candlepower searchlight. This highly unsuccessful game of cat and mouse provided a greater risk to friend through collision than to foe through combat.

Through the disastrous raid on Dieppe in which Ken’s aircraft was again badly shot up, he continued to fly operationally. On the eve of D-Day, he was one of a handful of aircraft airborne in darkness over France seeking out the German aircraft designed to jam the communications of the Normandy landings. Following D-Day he was deemed ‘Tour Expired’ and was to be pulled from operational flying. Instead he was seconded to BOAC and sent to Cairo as the British carrier set about re-establishing civil air routes in the Middle East. Be it serving in Cyprus through the EOKA campaign, welcoming in the jet age in Gloster Meteors and de Havilland Vampires or winning the Air Force Cross, there always seemed to be something happening for Kenneth McGlashan.

He finally retired from the RAF in 1958 and later established his family and a civilian life here in Australia. In 1990 he received a very cryptic letter from the Tangmere Aviation Museum who was undertaking some research following the discovery of the Hawker Hurricane that Kenneth had left on the Dunkirk beach in 1940. Today the aircraft is set to take to the English skies once more.

So tale after tale occupied afternoon after afternoon. I would sit and listen as Kenneth would detail his extraordinary life and tale of survival, taping every word before spending the night tying it together into some sort of order. Slowly but surely, his life became the book we had both envisaged. We agreed to title it in a manner that reflected Kenneth’s level-headed approach and made a humourous jibe at the fact he had a few RAF aircraft make ‘unscheduled’ landings in his time.

Along the way, I gained two valuable friends in Kenneth and his wife, Doreen and this is another wonderful by-product of my hobby. Sadly, when the book was launched at Kenneth’s stomping grounds during the UK’s Duxford Air Show in July, he had not lived to see it happen. However, Doreen made the long trip to the UK to be a part of the event. On the second day of the air show she was flown by helicopter to be reunited with the restoration of Kenneth’s Hurricane. Nearing 90, Doreen is insistent that she’ll be back next year to see the fighter fly once more.

Ken always stressed that by numbers, there were 3,000 fighter pilots who defended the realm through the Battle of Britain and within this sum only three percent were officially recognised as “Aces”. He was always proud to be counted amongst the remaining 97%. To me this in many ways sums up who he was.

His life was an extraordinary tale. I didn’t have to venture to some far flung corner to find it though; Kenneth McGlashan was virtually over my back fence and my life became richer because of it.

"Down to Earth". The Book.

“Down to Earth” (ISBN 1904943845) By Squadron Leader K.B. McGlashan with Owen Zupp