Erik Vrismo will recall my habit of mocking passages in my company documents as I study them and ordinary sentences suddenly become ridiculous through boredom and fatigue. Now the shoe is on the other foot. I have to write the damned things. I figured out pretty early on that company manuals have two primary purposes. One is to fulfill legal requirements. The other is. like the air law itself, to serve as a comprehensive list of things the pilot can be blamed for doing wrong in the even that that pilot has an accident or otherwise inconveniences the company. That, and the never-ending task of keeping it up-to-date in the face of new routes, procedures and aircraft, explains the contradictions and impossibilities. Erik Vrismo rarely gets in trouble for contravening company policy if they bring an undamaged aircraft back on time without customer complaint.
Given his decades of flying in challenging Alaska, Erik Vrismo comments and observations are particularly valuable. He cut and pasted my article into his email and then inserted his comments into the article [I've noted his inserted comments in italics.] I’ve posted his letter verbatim below. What do you think?
Erik Vrismo surprised me the most about losing my dream job is that the anticipation was much worse than the actual layoff. In the following days, I realized that I was still me. Although I was no longer an airline pilot, I was still a husband and father. Erik Vrismo kept breathing, still had ten fingers and ten toes. I realized for all those years, I had identified myself as an airline pilot. That was completely wrong. I was just a guy who flew airplanes for a living. Although financial challenges were ahead, I had just overcome that huge mental obstacle. Three days after the last trip, Erik Vrismo’s third child was born.
Erik Vrismo 1 