Billy Guckian's Adventures

Cargo Carriers: Should they be exempt? The accident of Colgan 3407 was not only a tragic accident towards everyone who's families who were on this aircraft but changed everything in the aviation industry as a whole. The FAA had to commit to a change in how businesses train their pilots and how much rest they need to be able to have. Fatigue has been the number one issue for this industry because of the ever growing demand of travel from customers. Sarah Huston says, "Pilot fatigue has been a real problem since the beginning of air travel. Long haul pilots have reported falling asleep at the controls and Cargo pilots that fly at night face fatigue from challenging the body's internal clock" (Houston, 2017). I agree with these points because before this accident, the FAA wasn't as lenient with how many hours a pilot could fly consecutively or the rest period for their employees. The job was to get to point A to B in the fastest but cost effective approach but a...

What happened on Germanwings flight 4U9525 was very tragic and still is a hot topic today. On March 24, 2015 flight 9525 was scheduled for a flight from Spain to Dusseldorf Germany carrying 150 passengers on board. Pilots Patrick Sodenheimer, who had over 6,000 hours in the Airbus alone and co-pilot Andreas Lubitz were at the helm and apologized to all of the passengers for the 26 minute flight delay. To make up for lost time, Captain Sodenheimer decided to cut through France on top of the Alps and as Sodenheimer was going to the bathroom, Lubitz gave him a weird answer saying that "Hopefully" and "We'll see" if they would make it to their destination. That was the last thing heard from flight 9525 until it crashed in the Alps killing everyone on board. What brings up some red flags is Lubitz's answers to Captain Sodenhiemer's questions about making it to their destination. Apparently the answers to his questions about the airplane and the destination ...

Flying Smart? The regional airline industry today is in some sort of disarray. Companies like Expressjet, Endeavor, SkyWest and other companies are finding it harder to find pilots due to the shortage that is going on in the aviation industry. Is it that no one is finding flying as interesting as it once was during the 50s? Is it the amount of training and money it takes to fly for the airlines? Whatever questions you might have, I believe that the pilot shortage is real based on projected retirements and the amount of new hires coming into the business. Jon Ostrower says that" over the next two decades, 87 new pilots will need to be trained and fly a commercial airliner everyday to in order to meet the insatiable demand to travel by air" (Ostrower, 2017). In lamer terms that's a pilot every 15 minutes to be trained in the airplane, learning the rules of the air, standard operating procedures and so on. What most companies are trying to combat the ongoing demand is o...

Hey everyone! For everyone who doesn't know who I am my names Billy Guckian and I am a senior in the aviation program at Eastern. I'm 24 years old and live in White Lake, MI which is about 45 minutes away from campus on a good day. I work over at Pentastar Aviation as a line technician at Oakland County International Airport and the job has taught me a lot over the years of being there. What I do over there is fuel aircraft, put aircraft in the hangar, help customers with bags, deicing aircraft and many other jobs. So what got me into the aviation industry? What got me into flying? I am here to answer all of the burning questions that you might have. My journey started back when I was in community college getting my gen eds out of the way. I originally was going to school for criminal justice because I always wanted to do something with law enforcement. Back then the economy was taking a downturn and I was looking at other options because my gut was telling me that this was...