Pro-Pilot Playbook Podcast #27 // Pilots, Beards, & Books

[Music] hello aviators welcome back to the pro pilot playbook podcast where we bring you insights into your career the hacks the tricks the tips the shortcuts to get you through your flight training in the shortest amount of time and the least amount of money possible uh here with mike martin hi and i'm sean richie and uh today is going to be another one of those viewer slash listener questions that we'll answer here yeah okay that sounds great yep and the you probably saw from the title of this podcast that was i had to leave it

the way it was that was the actual subject line of the email that we got from joshua and uh yeah pilots beards and books it's uh it was it was a great title for the podcast too i don't know if you did that on purpose or not but yeah yeah that's a catchy title man that'll get you on the air man that's uh right i'd say that's a good way to get get on the air man just think of a good title for your email no we love we love them coming in so uh it's

great to have feedback from everybody we got some uh really nice emails from a couple uh course members uh from over christmas uh you know telling them they they really enjoyed our course and their on their career and training and uh it's just really nice to hear that you know because yeah the response has been amazing um since we started doing this viewer question thing i mean they're yeah they're coming in and we're gonna have to start doing multiple questions in an episode or or not ramble on so much about topics or something but yeah

you get through them right to get through them all didn't then one guy uh actually sent in an audio file that was kind of cool yes yeah he actually recorded i think any email i know gmail does it or or you could do it on your phone record a uh a voice memo and and email it that's great too because we can just play you actually asking the question on the podcast yeah that'd be cool and if you have a question you would like us to answer here uh you can email us at uh podcast

at propilotplaybook.com and we'll do the exact same thing with your questions we're doing right now and this one comes from joshua hello guys i have two questions and actually it's formatted like number one number two so we'll just we'll break it up do the first question here number one i'm 28 and i'm considering a career change in aviation as a pilot from what i've read airline pilots have to be clean shaven i have a goatee and i would like to keep it if possible are the rules different on the corporate side corporate versus cargo side

thanks and he's referring to the facial hair on each side of the fence there um that's a good one yeah yeah and so as far as facial hair goes this is uh you know you see guys with mustaches you know the older the old guys the old captain at the airlines you know a lot of those guys have mustaches and and most airlines will let you have a mustache there's all kinds of rules on you know it can't go past your lip it can't go past this whatever you know how thick it is they got

you know there's in the company manual there's there's always all kinds of stuff on that but as far as full-on facial hair having a beard or goatee or something like that um yeah it's it's can't do it can't do it can't do it can't do it and you know i don't know i'm sure i don't know if you've heard this sean but i've always heard um the rea and i don't know if it's part of this is companies want you to look clean company hide around this or if it really is a safety issue but

it sound it makes logical sense um so they say that it's the uh oxygen mask so for for those of you that are just starting out don't don't know um you know when you're flying a jet um and you're up in the upper atmosphere we have what's called you know time of useful consciousness and if you're up in you know 40 000 feet or something it can be measured in seconds i mean there's charts on the internet you can look at uh where if if the airplane does decompress you only have you know a few

seconds put your mask on or you're passed out so we have these masks they're like six or ten thousand dollars that are right over our shoulder we pull out and they actually inflate there's a big web goes over your head and then it sucks onto your face and you and then it provides 100 oxygen to you um and those things uh can't seal correctly especially in a in a vacuum like that um if you have a big zac brown beard you know uh that ain't gonna work so there is uh it's not just they want

you to look clean cut which is a very important thing too because you're representing the company delta airlines they want you to look good or if you're a corporate pilot you're dealing with these super high net worth business people and stuff they don't want you know to look rough but it is a good question i mean you know uh because that is it i mean my gosh everybody's got a beard now it's kind of a cool thing to have you know oh yeah i go to get my hair cut and you know in the place

they got a whole rack of products for guys with beards you know all kinds of you know beard oil and all this other stuff i've never even knew existed there's a whole market for all this stuff now because it's very popular um you're not even talking about a beer you're talking about a goatee but still yeah you just can't do it um you know up until that point where you get that first real professional job you can uh you know as a flight instructor you can have a beard or you know goatee whatever nobody's ever

to say anything to you being a flight instructor um and and some of your your smaller your first few jobs you know building time you know if you're out there flying a a pipeline or doing mapping or i was even flying a 135 charter company for freight um we would do you know the big airplane would take off from the hub and land in a you know whatever let's just say denver and then from denver all the little airplanes would you know like a caravan or a metro liner a little light twin or something these

things would take off from denver and fly into smaller cities that have a population of three to ten thousand people you know they only got a few ups or fedex trucks so that little plane would bring the boxes in there we didn't wear uniforms you know at that company and and everybody just whatever you want i mean you could have a beard if you want in that situation nobody's gonna care but once you get into more high performance pressurized jet uh yeah the beard isn't gonna work uh it's i mean you're talking about mike just

mentioned a time useful con it's a really harsh environment outside that machine when you're in the 40 000 foot level i mean the temperature's negative 50 celsius which is pretty much negative 50 fahrenheit with a wind chill of 400 yeah the wind's blowing 100 knots uh if the air if it's a rapid decompression the air is going to be sucked out of that airplane and your lungs in a matter of seconds it's going to be a fault there's going to be a fog a mist in the air and you're going gonna be freezing to death

all the air is gonna be sucked out of your lungs you can't breathe you're not gonna know what's going on in in in training you know we are it almost becomes like a muscle memory reflex when something like that starts happening the first thing you do is grab that mask because you only ha you have you know it's it's measured in seconds maybe even less than two seconds fractions of seconds uh to get that mask on before you are passed out yeah agree agreed very important so uh just notice there's methods that now the these

airlines uh i just thought of a funny story but the these airlines have extremely strict uniform policies you know wear a hat don't wear a hat and you know you have to be neat everything has to be pressed has to all match and everything and uh sean worked there too but we we worked at a a very strict uniform place um and uh there's a gentleman there that that always he was in the management and he would inspect your uniform before flight and very very picky you know so yeah i know you know what i'm

going to say what you're talking about i i actually just who you're talking about i should say i haven't thought about this in like 10 years actually so so so it was really funny so this guy you know everybody knew he was a stickler for all this stuff and he actually bought a shoe shiner because one of the guys he didn't like how shoes were polished ex-military guy you know so um there they were doing an article in an aviation magazine came to the company to uh to highlight this company and interview all the managers

and all this stuff is a big freaking deal it's a big magazine and it was a big company and uh of course this gentleman that i'm referring to was uh involved in this interview and then uh uh uh they they at the end of the interview they're like we really like to get some shots of around and some shots some planes and everything right they brought a photographer with them and it was going to be yeah you know possibly on the cover of the magazine and stuff yeah yeah yeah you remember so uh they got

them down there and they had some planes they got they like we really like some pilots you know to to take some photos of and like we'll be on the cover you know they're just wearing business attire like suits and stuff you know right right right right so these guys they're like who are also pilots these i i keep interrupting you but i want to give you the full you know these guys that they're interviewing they're in management now so they're like the director of operations and whatever but right these guys all used to be

pilots it's just they happen to be go-getters and they ended up in the management of the company and yeah yeah so there's nothing wrong with this it's just funny these guys are funny so they they were like well we'd really like to have like uniform on these guys uh if that's possible they're like i think we got one you know so they they they between these mansion pilots they throw together this uniform and it looked good like for a normal person it would you know if you guys saw the picture it looked fine but there

was all kinds of things wrong with it you know like the tie wasn't right and it wasn't the correct wings and you know all these things were missing in between the wings and name tags and yeah because they threw it together so then they end up on the cover of this magazine represent a company and their uniforms all wrong so we had a field day you know i remember there was a bulletin board uh in the uh office there and you know of course when no one's around somebody you know puts puts the picture up

there and then circles all the things that are wrong right and then photocopies the ops manual that shows all this i remember the circles and the arrows pointing into like things on the whatever and yeah yeah yeah yeah i don't know that's one of the it's funny because well it's funny to us because we both lived through it but the uniform nazi guy you know he has to walk by that every day going in and out of his office and you know he was part of that whole spectacle it was just yeah yeah good those

are good stories but but yeah that's important just to verify you know before we answered this when i saw your email i did call you know even the freight operators you know fedex ups those are major airlines um you know those guys all adhere to the same standards as delta and whatever but uh just to make sure i had some buddies that fly for um for southern air and atlas air these these this is a freight operator they're doing all the amazon stuff and they operate like a major airline they've got big stuff they've got

triple sevens they've got seven sixes they've got a whole fleet of 737s but their company is operated not talking bad about them or anything because i mean they're they're uh moving leaps and bounds i mean they're growing big time actually today there was just an article that bezos or amazon jeff bezos uh just bought some more 767s and you know he had been having atlas and and southern air you know as contract do all this amazon work and the article i didn't read the whole article i just kind of saw the headline but it read

as he bought them which that's interesting so maybe he's going to start his own thing now on top of whatever to help deliver everything but anyway their company standards and every they're they're a little laxed um because mainly because they're getting so big so fast and um you know they're they're hiring pilots that are you know those guys sitting in that triple seven aren't exactly at the same experience level as the guys flying the triple seven for other operators you know oh yeah yeah i mean there's 25 27 year old kids flying in the right

seat of that triple seven you know so well here's the other thing too no one sees them there's no passengers so right right so that's yeah exactly so i thought you know what if there's a company out there that's a you know operating major equipment doing that kind of job that allows you to have facial hair it'd be them so i called up my buddies and uh no they're not allowed no they're not even allowed to have mustaches i guess that came down a few years ago because guys were getting carried away having these big

handlebar things with the curls and just getting nuts with it so uh they're not even allowed to have any facial hair whatsoever but uh evidently uh there are quite a few guys that you know will because you're out there in the middle of the night flying all over the world uh there are a lot of guys that do still have mustaches at that company so i hear they'll shave it off before they go to recurrent or something you know but yeah um so so is he is he if people are going to watch this and

go you know what forget the pilot thing i can't have a reader no i'm just joking right the appearance thing you know it is important to have your pilot looking sharp i i don't disagree with that i mean as a passenger imagine you know you're boarding you know your delta airlines you know and and everybody kind of looks up in the cockpit there as you're getting on the plane i mean you don't want to look up there and and see the the dude from big lebowski you know sitting in the captain's seat you know you

want a clean-cut you know guy sitting up there you know and and the facial hair i think takes away from that a little bit unfortunately i mean you're right though the beard thing is becoming popular maybe we're moving away from that but um i see a lot of for there are foreign operators i see foreign guys oh yeah with a lot more facial hair uh you know i don't know maybe not the big major whatever but i see a lot of foreign pilots with facial hair but united states no get it out of your head

um but like i said in the beginning of your career you can have you'll be able to get away with your goatee for quite a while in the beginning of your career but i wouldn't uh sacrifice you know this amazing lifestyle over there you know i had another boss in the beginning of my career that really wanted us to look clean shave and i remember you know one of the times you know i forgot to shave in the morning or whatever and he would stop and you go mike mike you need to stand a little

closer to your razor in the morning good good that's straight straight stroke correct quotes on that so yeah not in this business i don't think you're going to see many uh uh big beards now all right good question though yes it is a good question you know there's probably yeah yeah a lot of guys probably are yeah guys wondering that all right the second part of his question here joshua asked see number two i'm probably about six months out to a year out before i can start any flight training due to my current workload with

my business are there any books or early studying material you'd recommend that i can do on my own to get a head start i appreciate your podcast and your youtube channel thank you for the advice joshua so books mike what do you think what do you got oh man uh there's so much stuff available there's a lot of free stuff available there's there's uh um i think you know uh one place he could start um you know and and their friends of ours the great company uh sporties pilot shop it's a it's uh sporties.com yeah

um basically it came from it used to be in the 80s or 70s the only place to buy pilot supplies were these small pilot shops uh at airports and they would sell charts and b boards and all that kind of stuff well these guys took it to a whole nother level they're the premier supplier of pilot supplies i mean you get anything from uniforms there to headsets to charts to uh you know even cool fun stuff like model planes of the plane you're flying anything you could think of they sell um and it was a

catalog business then it became an internet business obviously but check them out and their reference of books is unbelievable they'll have and they have all kinds of things you know to to look at but i think we all you know my generation got started with books i mean i i checked the book out of the library i can remember when i was uh in high school about becoming a pilot that is so outdated now i don't even want to say but uh yeah i would say that um uh uh any any test prep book would

be good you're gonna have to take your uh um your uh private pilot written that'll be the first test you'll take so you know maybe a book that that uh helps a study guide there's study guides for that there's oral exam study guides those might be good to read you know what do you think sean well that's actually i was just looking around my office here i don't have it in here it must be downstairs in our bookshelves but yeah uh as far as books go and this doesn't really have anything to do with just

starting out learning to fly but it's a great little and they have it on apps now you can actually get this on for the ipad or the phone and it's made by a company called asa and it's called uh the oral exam guide and they make one for each certificate for the private certificate for the instrument rating for the commercial certificate for the cfi and it's basically just a book of questions so when you get your certificate when you get your pilot's license you know there's there's actually three different parts of it there's the written

test that you'll take at a computer testing location uh before the actual you know practical test the flying portion and that is uh that's a whole nother thing to study for you know that's and they release all the government releases all the questions there's a bank of like for the private pilot there's a bank of probably 600 700 questions and then there'll be 60 questions pulled from that randomly that you'll get on the computer but you can study all six or seven hundred questions and uh before you go in so a lot of it is

almost memorization right and then there's the practical test which is two parts there's flying the airplane you actually go up with an examiner and he'll watch you fly make sure you're safe know what you're doing and then there's the oral part and the oral part is where he's going to sit there at a table and just ask you questions you know well what would you do if this happened or why do you think we have this on an airplane you know that kind of thing and this oral exam guide one of the reasons i say

i like it is because it's just a bunch of general it's a book full of just general aviation knowledge and a lot of it is off the wall stuff and in practical useful information and uh you know has the question they may ask and an answer anyway i i have those books i've had them some of them since i first started flying uh i bought a new one uh when i went back to flight instruction uh a couple years ago when we were creating the program just so i could have current information but they're still

great um but there is a plethora a plethora i mean that word gets used i like that word but uh there are so many flying books even when we were coming up before the internet was around there was tons and tons and tons of them and there still is and now everything's moving to an online thing but sporties you mentioned sporties has a great online that whole online thing they have where it's it's not just each they've got it like uh a library of of all this stuff so you download like their viewing platform and

then whatever you purchase is in there in your library but yeah there's there's a ton of that kind of stuff the nuts and bolts of how to fly an airplane out there there's the flight training handbook which is actually an faa approved book on basic flying like if you're going to learn to fly small planes fantastic talks about traffic patterns and all that kind of stuff you know so there's there's some stuff you can dig in there to get into the nuts and bolts about about flying now if you're a step below that where you're

just wanting to get into flying there's obviously our course that we have uh that that is like designed to tell you exactly how to start your training this guy i don't know he seems like he he's already made his mind up and probably knows what he's doing i don't know what well he's six months out to six months to a year out before he can start training oh no he's a prime candidate yeah so that's you know i've said this before but uh the next 45 seconds to a minute is gonna be a straight commercial

folks it's a straight commercial for our program i mean joshua it's almost like uh you asked the perfect question for us to talk about the program it was a plan that must have been a plan i mean this podcast is an accompaniment to the to the actual program we have the pro playbook uh which you can find at propo playbook.com you know i just sat here and said plethora 18 times about how many books there are on on how to fly how to operate an airplane how to pass a test how to whatever but there

is nothing that's why we created it there is no other product like it on the market that teaches you how to manage your career and how the whole system works and how to get from never driving to the airport before to landing your first job at an airline or a charter company or something i mean literally it is a it's the best thing for you right now um i mean obviously i think it's great because mike and i created it we're proud of it but yeah um especially you know you haven't even driven the airport

yet i mean we go through flight school selection we go through uh finding your cfi you know flying flying on this airplane compared to that airplane uh yeah how to um oh god i don't know well and then don't forget there is the nuts and bolts part of it too uh so uh the accompaniment we've got there's an adder that you get for free it's a whole separate mini course that comes with the with the main program uh yeah this was mike's brainchild baby it's beautiful yeah so i it's called the flight uh training jumpstart

course but basically what it does is there's nothing this is even it's not even a uh well you're doing your training videos to help you with your training this is actually a video series to help you have the knowledge you need before your first lesson so it talks about very basic things uh that you that most people don't know like you know how to steer the airplanes airplane stalls uh what how the engines work and and what to expect on your first few flights so if you watch this the objective is that as soon as

you walk into your first lesson you're going to be way ahead and uh those those lessons are expensive and uh right you're talking about what this instrument does and how it works and yeah you know how how the heater works in an airplane you know this is all stuff that is going to have to be taught to you anyway and it's typically taught in that first you know three four hours or something right it that you will be paying for by your by the hour yeah by the hour from your instructor so when he starts

talking about how this works or something you could be like oh yeah yeah that's a vacuum instrument and it has we have this one as a backup for that is electric and you know what he's going to be like oh so you already know you know you're not going to waste a bunch of time there but the program the main program not only goes through how the you know the prerequisites and what you need for each certificate and rating but we also give our two cents on how to hack the system and get it done

faster and cheaper in each one of those scenarios and then after you're done with all that after you get your your cfi and it's now it's your turn to teach people how to fly certified flight certificate flight instructor uh we teach you how to maximize that how to make sure you're full of students and and getting the most bang for your buck with that certificate and then from there we have time building secrets we have you know how to get yourself into a jet with almost no time um how to you know handle an interview

uh creating a resume there's even examples of resumes in there you know you can there are word documents you can just have um yeah all kinds of stuff the commercial breaks over sean it's uh yeah i'm sorry yeah i just i just think it's i mean yeah people are gonna stop watching manifold i know yeah but but no no but i mean it is really good and and and this guy needs it now that you say that i mean because it is exactly what he uh what he's asking for so uh so yeah hopefully hopefully

that gets him but uh that was that those were did he have another question on there no that was it he had yeah the the uh yeah the beards and the books pilots beard books [Laughter] love it love i love the uh catchy title man and and that well so if you send us a question and you got a catchy title like that we'll just name our episode after that right then you'll know when you see a pop drop on your phone you'll be like i guess they're answering my question right there you go then

i don't have to try to come up with something clever right right you don't have to come up with something yeah yeah yeah that's you man well yeah i'm the guy yeah he's a clever guy put it on youtube i guess whatever right so i think that uh we got it we nailed it if you have a question for us you'd like us to answer on the podcast here email us at podcast propilotplaybook.com um awesome we appreciate everything happy new year yeah happy new year all right and we'll see you next week yep next week

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