Say no to drugs

See, this is the stuff they don’t tell you in flight school! Aviation isn’t just about flying, being in the air, and telling colorful stories about the wild blue yonder.
As it turns out, it also involves a lot of training, updating numerous records, seemingly endless online classes about all sorts of things, certificate upkeep and renewals, and too much paperwork that looks like it isn’t even remotely related to flying. It really surprised me at first going through flight training. I am not sure why anymore, but I must have had this very romantic idea about what flying was all about. Nowadays, I have made my peace with it, for the most part, and just run through the motions every year. And every year they seem to come up with additional classes to make us all safer.

My least favorite parts of my job are the annual hazmat training and the online classes for drug and alcohol supervisors that are somehow required for heavy helicopter captains by somebody, or so they tell me. A close second is the annual Grand Canyon waiver renewal for flying in their SFRA but that one at least has something to do with flying. There is a long list of these for me personally but with some, like the CFII renewal, I almost understand the point … almost. 😉

The people who produce these classes also caught on to guys like Chuck and I, and started making them so you can’t just click through the tutorials anymore and then take the test at the end. They now make you sit through the whole video before you can move on. Watching some of these videos I end up just like Chuck on the first panel. Or, my mind starts wondering which, coincidentally, is the reason why we have today’s comic.

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One comment on “Say no to drugs
  1. Bernd says:

    Reading this it seems astounding that the recurring requirements for PPL are so little and benign. Just a flight review every other year and mediacals ever x years, depending on your age. (I’m fast approaching the x=1 age.)

    Of course, you must keep yourself updated on all new regulations, but there’s little to no formal training, exams, etc.

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