Kenny Keller (day 99 vlog) addresses how helicopter pilots can find employment after an accident or incident. He reads and responds to an email from a pilot (early 50s, ~500 hours) who transitioned between counterclockwise and clockwise rotor systems, made an incorrect pedal/input during takeoff causing a spin that was recovered without a crash but resulted in termination by the employer. Keller emphasizes that accidents are common though rarely discussed, recommends staying calm, learning from mistakes, getting more qualifications (CFI), keeping flying time, and applying again after rebuilding experience. He shares insurer and personal anecdotes to reassure pilots their careers need not be over after a single incident.
Chapters
All right, day 99. I'm gonna call this down and dirty. It is cold, windy, rainy outside. And it does kind of bum me out because I've been doing these outside and love doing them outside. But I guess this is kind of a gloomy subject. So it's a good day for a video on a gloomy day with, I think, a good outcome in the end. And ultimately, this is about finding employment after an accident or incident. Going to go to the end of the really long email and I'll go back through and tell you what happened. But in the end, he said, obviously this has tainted my reputation in the industry and I'm struggling to find new employment. My understanding is that many pilots have done much worse and still fly. I accept my responsibility for causing the error in the first place. Your advice, question mark. Okay, Before I go into telling you what happened, I want to say I've talked a lot in the past about my accident. It was hard to get over, but I did it, and my career continued on for a little bit. You blame yourself. You're not sure what's going to happen. You're scared. You don't know what to do. But let me tell you this. A lot of pilots wreck helicopters. It happens. And you don't hear very many pilots talk about us. There's a lot of horror stories out there and a lot of bad things that happen, and very few helicopter pilots will talk about it. I know very few that have ever talked to me about their helicopter accident or incident. And I also want to tell you, I have one of the best insurance guys in the industry. He insures more helicopters than anyone in the United States. And when I was putting one of my instructors on one time, someone that I trained, but he was off doing some side work, got in an accident. And when I brought it up to my insurance man, he said, kenny, pilots wreck helicopters all the time. And as long as you want to put this guy back on your insurance, because he left a little while and he was coming back, he said, we don't just immediately reject someone and we don't just immediately raise your rates if someone you want to put on your insurance has had an accident. As long as you're comfortable with their skills and where they're at, we don't hold that against your policy. We don't raise your rates, and it's not an issue. Okay, so this gentleman is now in his early 50s, and people have said, well, you're too old for this anyway. You know, you should just give it up and just fly for fun. I don't believe that baloney. That's horse manure. He should continue on even though he had this incident. Early 50s, not a problem. So the gist of what happened. Longtime helicopter enthusiast from the time he was a kid. Took his entire life to get to where he wanted to be to get his commercial rating. And recently, at around 500 hours, he transitioned from counterclockwise rotating systems to a clockwise rotating system. Okay, I can't say a lot about that because I've always flown counterclockwise. I have wondered in the past, and you can chime in for those of you that have flown both. I've wondered in the past, you know, when you spend a lot of time flying one, what happens when you transition to the other? How much trouble is it? And can something you've learned in the past cause you a problem when you're switching back and forth? I'm a firm believer, and I've talked about this and the fact that you always revert back to the way you're trained. You know, so even kind of like we talk about in transitions from airplanes to helicopters, you got to change hats, Assuming you got to change hats, too, when you're transisting between the two aircraft, between counterclockwise and clockwise. So this happened to him. He got his commercial job. He had around 500 hours, and during a takeoff, he made a wrong input and the helicopter started to spin. He got it away from the ground. He saved it. They didn't crash. So in the end, good for you. He says he stayed calm. He did what he had to do. But there was a passenger on board, and the car company ended up firing him. He feels like they did that just because they didn't want to be sued by the passenger. You know, could be that could be what happened to cover that real quick. As a helicopter pilot, you got to always be ready to be fired and not necessarily because you did something wrong. In helicopter ems, you'll be fired for getting in an argument with a nurse. Regardless of who. Who's wrong, who's right, doesn't matter. You know, there's a lot of scenarios as being a helicopter pilot where you'll get fired in a drop of a hat. Helicopter pilots get fired often. That's not a surprise. Helicopters get wrecked. That's not a surprise. Again, I'm amazed at how many people don't talk about their helicopter incident or accident. He says, I'll never make that mistake again. It was burned into my memory. I also know how to react in emergency. I remained Calm and flew the helicopter to the ground without freezing up or shutting down. I believe I'm a better pilot because of this. I chose to find the positives and learn from my mistakes. Yes, absolutely. How many of you have heard about a job position where they won't hire you if you've had an accident? Okay, very common. How many of you heard of a company policy that says we won't hire you unless you've had an accident? That is a true statement. And in a way, I can understand why a company would say that, because everybody's going to screw up at some point. Everybody's going to do something dumb. And in the end it's, how do you react to doing something dumb? How do you react to making a mistake? We're human beings, we make mistakes. We screw up. How you handling the mistake or the screw up and what you do is who you are. And I know people are going to say, well, what exactly happened in this lift? And I'm not going to go into it because it's pretty lengthy, what he explained. And I think a person could argue all day long on what happened with the pedals and oh my God, this could turn into a big, long discussion in the threads where we'd just be arguing about what may or may not have happened. That's not what this email is about. That's not what this video is about. This video is for those of you who have made a mistake, have had an accident, have had an incident. It doesn't mean your career is over. And by his email, I can tell he loves helicopters, always has. He realized he's made a mistake. He doesn't mention anything about being a cfi. So my other advice would be if he's really only a commercial pilot and he's worried about moving on in the industry, I would go get the cfi because it's going to solidify your knowledge, cement your knowledge. You're going to learn more. I would go study really, really, really hard, add that CFI and get back out there, start applying for jobs and don't be scared of the fact that you had an accident or incident. Pilots do. It happens all the time. People just don't talk about it. I'm telling you, I can only think of, off the top of my head, I can only think of about three helicopter pilots that have talked to me about their accidents in 20 years. If I think hard, I'll think of a few more. I can think of another one, there's four, I can think of another one, there's five. I'd have to really dig to get close to 10 guys that have talked about their accidents or incident in 20 years. So people don't want to talk about it. They want to hide from it and run from it. And I've told you before in my videos, you know, I had one. It was a horrendous thing to get over. It was a horrendous thing to live through. But you know what? I did get through it and it took a little time. And when I applied for my first EMS job, it was shortly after I was flying again. And a good buddy in the industry said, hey, can he just get back to flying instructing for a little bit? Because he knew the chief pilot of the company I was trying to go to work for, right? And he said, an EMS company is not cracked about hiring a guy who just came through an accident, regardless of whether it was your fault or not. And it wasn't my fault. And he goes, and they know that, but they still want you to get some time under your belt. So I went back to instructing, did it a little bit longer, actually taught someone underneath my examiner, that was a friend. So I was working around him for two or three months. And within six months later, I reapplied for that job that I wanted and I got it right. So his advice was get back to work, keep flying, get some time in the seat under your belt before you apply again. That's what I did. And it worked out. This is a Sunday. I want to get rolling on with the rest of my day, but I'd love to hear your comment down below about this subject. I'd love to hear some more people talk about their, you know, incidents or accidents in the past and how they got over them and got through them, because you can. And I think this gentleman did fine. He had a screw up. He saved everybody. The aircraft didn't get wrecked. Okay, so he got terminated. Big deal. I'm sure the company did it just to save face and move on. It's not the end of your career, nor should it be. So please subscribe to the channel. Thanks for joining day 99. We'll see you tomorrow in day 100. Subscribe. Click that bell, put your comments down below and we'll see you all tomorrow.
