Interesting…
Hawsepiping is getting a job doing something where you get time and learn while you work. You can’t hawsepipe your way to a pilot because you have to pay for your instruction and all your flight time until you get hired as a pilot somewhere.
That is not quite correct. Excluding military trained pilots and those who were selected by a foreign airline for “ab initio” training, nearly everyone flying for a living is a hawsepiper.
Most of us who went the civilian route started out as the kid who hung around the airport and traded airplane washing for rides and then worked as a “line boy” at a flight school or fixed base operation to get reduced cost flight instruction. Once we got a private ticket we ferried airplanes between bases and shops (for free) and worked on a commercial license then a flight instructor rating. Some built time on their commercial by towing gliders or banners or giving rides to help pay for the flight instructor rating and once we got that we either built time instructing or, in my case, flying freight, mail, and cancelled checks until we had enough time to get an airline interview. Flying WW2 surplus bomber trainers across the Rockies in the winter counts as crawling up a hawsepipe to me.
Just because we paid for the upgrade training doesn’t mean it was not the equivalent of hawsepiping. There were no sponsorships or scholarships for the 99 percent majority of non-military pilots.
Most of the ones I knew rented planes to get their hours. That’s not hawsepiping. What you described I guess would count.
You pay for a private and commercial license. I don’t know if they still do but VA benefits paid for commercial license training.
There are very few jobs you can get with a commercial license without an IFR rating but you get a CFI and from then on you get paid to fly and FBOs give you a break on upgrading to multi-engine and higher ratings when you work for them . I went through the very same experience Steamer mentioned.
Yeah, it pays peanuts but that’s how you build time and move up. If you want it bad enough you suck it up and do it.
It doesn’t sound all that different than all the hoops and expenses hawespipers have to go through nowadays
Usually you can get paid more than peanuts on boats though.
It’s very similar. The more ratings you have, the more money you make. I "hawsepiped " from a private license to an Airline Transport Pilot license and all the steps in between which is equivalent to an unlimited master. The road may be rockier at first but once you have an ATP the salaries are comparable to a unlimited master.
There are flight academies which you said didn’t exist and you can hawspipe in aviation which you said was impossible.
I remember crawling on my belly over sacks of mail and cancelled checks from the side door to get to the cockpit and then climbing down to the left seat. Flying through squall lines with no de-icing… I don’t miss those days.
Embry Riddle is essentially the academy for pilots. Most pilots are trained by the military for free.
I’m glad I didn’t know about those academies when I decided I either wanted to either fly or go to sea.
Yes, I was mistaken.
Also, when I think of hawsepiping I think of working on deck for 1,080 days, and making decent money doing so, then sitting for your license, which isn’t possible in flying.
No no no, once you get a commercial license you can “work on deck” making money (most often far from decent and in the case of glider towing, mostly working for free) until you have the experience to upgrade. Just like a hawsepiper going to STCW or license prep courses, the upgrade training costs money and for most folks that money is earned by working at entry level jobs that provide not much more than hours and experience. There simply is no difference in the process other than having to buy your entry level ticket, the private pilot license. After that each step just requires time and money, just like hawsepiping.
Not having access to buckets of cash or military training or a European airline job, when I needed to build time I bought an old airplane and flew the crap out of it from coast to coast to coast at every opportunity between shipping jobs. That was just like someone with an OUPV using his own boat to get sea time for a bigger ticket so he could move up - hawsepiping his way to an unlimited license. That is how I and thousands of others got an ATP.
One of the reasons why there is a “pilot shortage” now is the same as all the previous ones, airline hiring practices, layoff practices (euphemistically called a furlough) the seniority system which puts huge barriers to lateral movement in the industry, and now the incredibly high costs of entry for newcomers.
If you have a huge pile of cash or the support of your government or a national airline - which is what keeps the “flight academies” in business training South Americans and Euro airline candidates any route other than military training is hawsepiping in the flying business.
No, the correct comparison would be getting an OUPV and running charters to get sea time to upgrade to a 25 ton, then running charters to upgrade again, ultimately getting a 100 ton, working on 90 ton boats to get your 500 ton, etc. (Although there’s no good way to use that route all the way to unlimited.)
“Working on deck” would be equivalent to getting flight hours by being a Flight Attendant…
I give up … despite going through the process in both maritime (wiper to unlimted chief) and aviation (private pilot to airline captain) I guess you know more about it than I do.
Maybe I just know more about analogies.
I’ve agreed that it’s possible to hawsepipe in aviation. My original statement was based off temporarily forgetting about the process of getting a small license and sailing on it and gradually increasing the tonnage and scope in the process. There are two ways to hawsepipe in the Maritime world, only one of those is a proper analogy to aviation.
You are you splitting hairs. You are strictly interpreting a description of what it is to be a hawsepiper in the maritime industry with no deviations. If you expand the meaning of the word just a wee bit, it could suitably be applied to describe a mustang in the military or a kid fueling airplanes at an FBO to pay for his upgrades ie going from the lowest to the highest rung on your own hard work with a depth of experience no candidate sitting in classes at an academy can hope to achieve.
Are you illiterate or did you just skip a bunch of comments?
Why are you being so obtuse.
Dude, I fucking admitted you were right. How am I being obtuse?
By refusing to acknowledge that the meaning of hawsepiper as a concept can be suitably applied to other trades even though there may be differences as well as similarities.
We probably have more in common than we do differences and I don’t want to get into a pissing contest over semantics.
You’re daft. How is this ambiguous at all?
How am I “refusing to acknowledge that the meaning of hawsepiper as a concept can be suitably applied to other trades” when I have REPEATEDLY now said I was wrong in my original statement and that, yes, it IS possible to hawsepipe in the aviation industry?