2013 – Page 2 – Robert Chapin

Eastern Michigan University Graduation

EMU Outstanding Student award in Aviation — Outstanding Student Award

I always thought college graduation would be like high school graduation; a happy day that goes by too quickly. But in many ways, my college graduation stretched over two months filled with celebrations, gifts, studying, and so many exams that I’ve lost count!

Over the past two months, I’ve had several new experiences and accomplishments:

Attended the Alpha Eta Rho National Conference in Kalamazoo.
Received the Outstanding Student in Aviation award at the College of Technology Celebration of Scholarship banquet.
Mailed commencement announcements.
Scored 100% during the 3-day final exam for Aircraft Dispatcher.
Moved out of my dorm room.
Enjoyed my undergraduate commencement ceremony.
Passed the FAA practical test for Aircraft Dispatcher certification.
Took a train ride from Ann Arbor. Collided with an 18-wheeler full of kayaks! Luckily, there were no injuries.
Presented my pilot survey research project to the Dean of the College of Technology.
Completed spin training and the flight instructor stage check.
Passed the FAA written test for Fundamentals of Instructing.
Passed the FAA written test for Flight Instructor Airplane.
Passed the FAA written test for Ground Instructor Basic.
Passed the FAA practical test for Flight Instructor Airplane Single Engine.

It was a busy time for me.

From here, I should see my final grades posted for Flight Instructor training. I will bring those grades to the attention of my graduation auditor who will review the grades and give me a letter verifying I am a graduate (summa cum laude) of EMU officially on August 23, 2013.

Since I have no further academic obligations, I only have to wait for August 23 to come around before EMU can put my diploma in the mail. I should have it in my hands sometime this fall!

In the meantime, I plan to work on the instrument rating for my flight instructor certificate and send my résumé to a variety of flight schools. My goal is to have a flight instructing job by the end of year, and I am determined to make that happen.

College Admission & Advising

After deciding which flight school to attend, the next step to becoming a pilot is to get admitted to the school. At smaller schools, this process may be as simple as signing a couple of forms and making an initial payment.

When I decided to attend EMU, the Office of Admissions there refused to review my application. Surprise! If I had given up, or if I had only followed the advice I was given, I would not have been admitted. This is an example of perseverance being a necessity in flight training.

I hope my story and advice can help inspire future pilots to overcome the little obstacles that arise in training.

Continue reading College Admission & Advising

St. Ignace Fatal Flight of Amazon.com Exec

VFR navigation chart excerpt showing St. Ignace and Mackinac Island. — From the Michigan Aeronautical Chart

Airplane crashes often make sensational headlines in the news, yet thousands of them go mostly unnoticed by the media. Consider the count of fatal accidents in the United States during 2011. There were 285 investigations initiated by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), or about one crash every 30 hours (NTSB, 2013).

On 7 March 2013, one month ago, the NTSB published a factual report on the St. Ignace, Michigan accident of 3 December 2011. Amazon.com executive Thomas Phillips and his pilot were killed in this accident, which garnered national headlines in 2011. In contrast, there was only one article about the recent factual report in The Detroit News (Miles, 2013), plus an Associated Press article that appeared sporadically in newspapers such as the Wisconsin State Journal (“Bad Weather”, 2013).

I have followed this investigation since 2011 when I was coincidentally in contact with a relative of Mr. Phillips. I was not personally acquainted with Mr. Phillips, but I learned that he was a cousin-of-a-cousin to me.

While speaking with this common relative, I reviewed the NTSB preliminary report available at the time and explained my opinions:

That the investigation would be a very long and potentially painful process from the family’s perspective.
That the circumstances of the accident strongly suggested poor decision making by the pilot and the airline, which likely involved violating multiple Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR).

Continue reading St. Ignace Fatal Flight of Amazon.com Exec

Symposium a Success

Robert Chapin and his poster presentation on airline passenger misconduct. — Rob at This Year’s Symposium

My research presentation was very popular this year. One has to be prepared for anything with an 8 AM audience, and I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who expressed interest in my work.

This was my third appearance at the EMU Undergraduate Symposium. Drawing on experience from previous years, I created a poster that had a left column of major bullet points. On the middle half of the poster, I filled the area with 18 graphs summarizing the survey results. The right column summarized the survey participants’ demographic information and general answers about passenger misconduct.

I am invited to present my research again for the Dean of the College of Technology at an upcoming board meeting. This is an exciting opportunity to think about while working on the manuscript and, hopefully, publication.

Here are a few tips for future symposium presentations, based on what I’ve observed about designing an effective poster:

Continue reading Symposium a Success

Choosing a Flight School

The first step into flight training is to go flying. Many flight schools offer a discounted first lesson as a taste of how exciting it is to be in the airplane. I paid $29 at the local flight school for my intro flight in 2008. That’s practically free, and it was one of the best investments anyone has ever made in me. I came back to them in 2010 for several thousands of dollars worth of training to become a private pilot.

During the intro flight, you should expect to fly the airplane yourself. My instructor and I agreed that after he started the engine, I could take control of the airplane on the taxiway, take off, and fly out about 30 miles and back while the instructor handled the radios. He demonstrated a climb and an idle descent for me, and landed the airplane. He also complimented me on navigating and flying straight and level without any help. This was a great experience, and a big factor in my career plans.

When making an appointment for your first flight, be sure to ask about the school’s dress code and security procedures.

Continue reading Choosing a Flight School

Hypoxia Incident Audio Released Last Week

Air traffic communications recorded on 16 November 2012 and released in a new audio file on 6 March provide an edge-of-the-seat experience of hypoxia incapacitation.

The aircraft involved was a Piaggio P180 Avanti twin turbo, tail # N501PM, which had just departed Dallas, Texas (KDFW) heading to Michigan.

The recording begins with Fort Worth Center (ZFW) controller LouElla Hollingsworth instructing One Papa Mike to climb from FL270 to FL310.

AOPA Live, 16 November 2012 incident audio with slide captioning

Hollingsworth received the NATCA Medal of Safety and was recently interviewed on TV news programs. The links below include streaming video with more of the story.

13 March, CBS News interview

14 March, ABC News interview

This incident is not recorded in the ASRS, ASIAS, or NTSB databases.

Survey Results to be Previewed at Symposium

Rob presenting a poster about Air Rage at the 2012 EMU Undergraduate Symposium. — Rob at Last Year’s Symposium

The results are in from my survey about airline passenger misconduct! Participants recruited from popular aviation websites helped produce over 16,000 data points that need to be analyzed. It is a great amount of new information to sift through.

I am working on several pie charts and other fun display items for a general audience. These will go on a poster to help me present the topic of “air rage” and some new ideas about what defines misconduct, its incident rate, and which conclusions may be supported by the survey data.

This presentation is scheduled for 8:30 – 10:15 am on Friday, March 22 at the 33rd EMU Undergraduate Symposium.

The event is free and open to the public.

After the Symposium, the focus of my project will shift to writing and seeking publication of a paper with all of the results explained, analyzed, and compared to previous research.

Do You Want To Be a Pilot?

Dawning sky. — Dawning Sky at the Airport

As graduation approaches, I am reflecting more on the university experience, and noticing that it has been a personal success. I can also look back on some mistakes, and on the successes of my classmates, and see what worked best for all of us.

I’ve decided to start my articles about university life with a series called the Flight Training Survival Guide. I found so many ideas to write about that it made sense to break up the guide into individual topics and add them here one at a time.

Some of the advice in this guide is generic, and some of it is specific to Eastern Michigan University (EMU). I feel this type of advice needs to be neither generic nor specific. One should consider all information when embarking on the path to becoming a pilot.

Before Your Training Begins …

Are you certain that flying is for you? It is amazing how many people get this wrong! Becoming a pilot must be the most important thing that you want to do, more than anything else. No matter how you go about training and how many resources you start out with, you absolutely must have the unwavering desire, self-motivation, and perseverance to accomplish this goal.

Continue reading Do You Want To Be a Pilot?

Air Rage and Pilot-Survey.com

My new survey website is up and running at:

Pilot-Survey.com

Airline pilots, flight attendants, and passengers: Have a look at that website! I am encouraging everyone to help out by taking 10 minutes to complete the survey and pass the website address along to colleagues.

The current research project involves the topic of airline passenger misconduct or “air rage.”

Incidents of violence, threats, and other types of misconduct regularly appear in news headlines. However, there is very little data available about the overall frequency and severity of these problems.

In particular, there has never before been a large-scale survey or collection of searchable data from pilots about their duties and experiences relating to air rage. Using the Internet to survey as many airline crewmembers and passengers as possible, I hope to compile new statistics and learn more about this phenomenon and its impact on aviation.

Introducing CaptainsLog.aero

Robert Chapin in the left seat of a Boeing 777 cockpit.

Touring a Boeing 777 in Detroit, December 2012.

Welcome to my new website! This project will focus on the topics and the professional changes that are more relevant to me today.

I have several goals and projects outlined for CaptainsLog.aero:

Articles from before today were moved here to this new website.
My prog. chart archive now resides here.
The new domain name is a better fit and easy to remember.
New articles will be aviation themed and posted to the front page at least monthly.
I will put more emphasis on professional networking and writing comments on aviation blogs.
My research fellowship will result in an online survey study, which will be available through another new website, to be announced in February.
I will add more personal articles about my experiences in flight training, university life, and career track progress.

You may bookmark and subscribe to this website for reminders to check back soon. Thank you for reading!