Remember when your elementary school teacher asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Many of us instantly answered: “Airline pilot.” For the lucky few, that dream did come true. But, for the rest, fate offered a different path. Which doesn’t stop us from still being fascinated as we watch those ‘sky gods’ pass through the jetbridge door long before boarding time. Despite all the jokes and the occasional anti-labor newspaper story, airline pilots are still objects of respect and even awe. They get paid to do what most of us would pay to do, if we could. We’d love to be able to share their lives, and their thoughts.
Pilots of the Line makes that possible. This entertaining collection of 26 short pieces provides a collection of wonderful glimpses into the lives of airline pilots. Many provide vivid examples of the adage that sometimes a pilot can earn a years pay in ten minutes. As when battling to keep a twin-engine commuter from being tossed like a kite by the fierce winds that can turn a winter evening in the Northeast into hell on earth. Or flying a rocking and bucking approach through Florida’s storm-filled skies and then watching in disbelief as another airliner’s delayed takeoff presents the very real possibility of a risky go-around into the storm cells ahead.
Then there are other snapshots of the job, like waking up on Christmas morning alone in a Ramada Inn in upstate New York; sitting alone in a hotel coffee shop and watching the business-suit crowd do their breakfast meetings; and waiting snowbound beneath some airport’s main concourse and listening to the tired conversations of veteran pilots who have done this once too often. Every job has its more mundane aspects, and by showing these, too, Masterson is also exposing the reality behind the glamour. These are other aspects of a pilot’s life, too, even if they might not appeal to a Hollywood scriptwriter.
Masterson has the gift of creating believable characters in real situations, whether they are subjects of entire stories, as the mother in ‘Somewhere Over Iowa’ (try to read it without tearing up). But the character who comes through best, and with whom we develop a complete rapport, is Masterson himself—as we observe him going about his cockpit duties in a routine but completely professional manner, and have the opportunity to share his thoughts and observations.
Each of these stories is a little gem, and the reader will find himself eagerly paging through the book to see what situations and insights are revealed in the next story, and the next after that. The book is a page-turner, and Masterson’s writing is at times reminiscent of Ernie Gann’s. Although several of these stories have appeared earlier in Airways in the Tales From the Sky series of columns (sometimes under different titles), reading them again is like meeting up with dear old friends whose companionship one cherishes. For anyone who ever dreamed about sitting in a cockpit, Pilots of the Line is a must-read.
--Stan Solomon,
Airways Contributing Editor
