Catch Me If You Can Page 0,13

I was going to need more than a uniform if I was to be successful in my role of Pan Am pilot. I would need an ID card and a great deal more knowledge of Pan Am's operations than I possessed at the moment. I put the uniform away in my closet and started haunting the public library and canvassing bookstores, studying all the material available on pilots, flying and airlines. One small volume I encountered proved especially valuable. It was the reminiscences of a veteran Pan American flight captain, replete with scores of photographs, and containing a wealth of airline terminology. It was not until later I learned that the pilot's phraseology was somewhat dated.

A lot of the things I felt I ought to know, however, were not in the books or magazines I read. So I got back on the pipe with Pan Am. "I'd like to speak to a pilot, please," I told the switchboard operator. "I'm a reporter for my high school newspaper, and I'd like to do a story on pilots' lives-you know, where they fly, how they're trained and that sort of stuff. Do you think a pilot would talk to me?"

Pan Am has the nicest people. "Well, I can put you through to operations, the crew lounge," said the woman. "There might be someone sitting around there that might answer some of your questions."

There was a captain who was happy to oblige. He was delighted that young people showed an interest in making a career in the airline field. I introduced myself as Bobby Black, and after some innocuous queries, I started to feed him the questions I wanted answered.

"What's the age of the youngest pilot flying for Pan Am?"

"Well, that depends," he answered. " We have some flight engineers who're probably no older than twenty-three or twenty-four. Our youngest co-pilot is probably up in his late twenties. Your average captain is close to forty or in his forties, probably."

"I see," I said. "Well, would it be impossible for a copilot to be twenty-six, or even younger?"

"Oh, no," he answered quickly. "I don't know that we have that many in that age bracket, but some of the other airlines do have a lot of younger co-pilots, I've noticed. A lot depends, of course, on the type of plane he's flying and his seniority. Everything is based on seniority, that is, how long a pilot has been with a company."

I was finding a lot of nuggets for my poke. "When do you hire people; I mean, at what age can a pilot go to work for an airline, say Pan Am?"

"If I remember correctly, you can come on the payroll at twenty as a flight engineer," said the captain, who had an excellent memory.

"Then feasibly, with six or eight years' service, you could become a co-pilot?" I pressed.

"If s possible," he conceded. "In fact, I'd say it wouldn't be unusual at all for a capable man to make co-pilot in six or eight years, less even."

"Are you allowed to tell me how much pilots earn?" I asked.

"Well, again, that depends on seniority, the route he flies, the number of hours he flies each week and other factors," said the captain. "I would say the maximum salary for a co-pilot would be $32,000, a captain's salary around $50,000."

"How many pilots does Pan Am have?" I asked.

The captain chuckled. "Son, that's a tough one. I don't know the exact number. But eighteen hundred would probably be a fair estimate. You can get better figures from the personnel manager."

"No, that's okay," I said. "How many places are these pilots?"

"You're talking about bases," he replied. "We have five bases in the United States: San Francisco, Washington D.C., Chicago, Miami and New York. Those are cities where our aircrews live. They report to work in that city, San Francisco, say, fly out of that city and eventually terminate a flight in that city. It might help you to know that we are not a domestic carrier, that is, we don't fly from city to city in this country. We're strictly an international carrier, serving foreign destinations."

The information helped me a lot. "This may sound strange to you, Captain, and it's more curiosity than anything else, but would it be possible for me to be a co-pilot based in New York City, and you to be a co-pilot also based in New York, and me never to meet you?"

"Very possible, even more so with co-pilots, for you and I would