...those who trespass against us... (Airport Personalities, Part II - The Bad)

I'm not going to point fingers in this article. Something tells me that it would be an unwise move for a new pilot to make, particularly one who's hoping to make his fortune in aviation. Some of the people I libel might make it warm for me later on.

Second, I work at this airport. I practically live there. Some of the people I libel might make it warm for me right now.

Third, everybody's got their faults. The people I know who fail at certain aspects of their existence (politeness, competency, generosity, empathy, and so forth) are absolute saints in other arenas. Nobody's all bad or all good. It would be wrong of me to brand someone who isn't totally irredeemable as a gibbering fool, even if they bear a strong resemblance to a gibbering fool most of the week.

So I'm just going to list the stereotypes here, representative of some of the bad 'uns I've met out at the airport, and let you make what inferences you will. Or won't.

If you're going to have good people on an airport, you're going to have bad, too. It's the same all over. You can't have a profession, or a pastime, or any sector of the human existence without that sector, properly populated, containing all the virtues and vices, pros and cons, vagaries and idiosyncrasies of the macrocosm.

This is a smallish sort of airport, Apple Valley, but there are a lot of pilots here. Helicopters from surrounding schools sometimes stop by to practice point landings. We even get jet traffic on occasion. And an absolute plethora of airplane pilots fly in and out, day and night, especially on weekends.

Flying is a subjective business. Everyone has their own opinions about the best way to perform certain flight operations. The Federal Aviation Regulations are straightforward and absolute, but that doesn't mean they aren't open to interpretation. Pilots, with safety foremost in their minds, have to analyze the situations they're presented with and make the best judgment call based on the information at hand, weather, traffic, and F.A.R.s included.

It's often said in aviation that "there's no right or wrong way to do this/that." Often, the methods a pilot employs to accomplish a task are based largely on personal preference, and as long as the pilot is operating his airplane safely, and within F.A.R. guidelines, no one's to say otherwise. On occasion, however, some pilots' judgment is, shall we say...questionable.

And so, having got that two-paragraph disclaimer out of the way, let us take a moment to consider the usual suspects:

The Slowpoke: Everybody knows them. They're on the roads as well as in the air. They've got nowhere to go, and all day to get there. These are the people who just poke along the sky-ways, unhurried, unmoved, oblivious. They're slow to join traffic patterns, they tool along on taxiways, and take forever with their engine run-ups. Whether due to ineptitude, nerves or plain old Sunday leisureliness, these guys make you want to hit yourself over the head with a claw hammer.

They just take so...effing...long to do everything.
And unless you can squirt around them when they pull off the taxiway to do their run-up, there's no way of getting around them, either. You just have to sit and take it, and try to compensate for their sluggishness with liberal use of flaps and landing gear and Martian popping things. There's no law against going slow in mid-air, that's the problem.

The Cheater: Often even more aggravating than the Slowpoke, the Cheater is the guy who knows the rules, but doesn't much care for 'em. Unlike Slowpokes, whose behavior is almost never dangerous, Cheaters can come dang near to causing accidents. They cut corners and take shortcuts. Much like the motorcyclist who drives between lines of cars at a red light, Cheaters break rules.
There's one such rule at Apple Valley Airport: no intersection departures. If you want to take off, you've gotta taxi all the way down to the end of the runway. It's a safety precaution. It prevents you from pulling out in front of a plane that's about to land, or already has landed and needs to exit. One fellow at Apple Valley, who owns a particularly zippy airplane, thinks himself above this rule, and constantly departs at intersections. A law unto himself, he is; doesn't feel he needs to taxi all the way down to the end. And unless the airport manager catches him at it, nothing can be done. It's the same with the young bucks at our airport who don't like waiting their turn. Instead of falling in behind traffic in the pattern, they cut in between or in front of people. One hotshot pilot shaved it so close that the older, more experienced pilot behind him (whom the young'un had cut off) walked over and gave him a dressing-down when they had landed. Unfortunately, that's all he could do. Unless an FAA representative sees these schmucks in the act, we all just have to sit and watch and grind our teeth.

The Drawler: These dudes are more frustrating to air traffic controllers than to their fellow pilots. Regardless, there's been many a time when a pilot has had to bite his tongue, finger hovering impatiently over the radio button, when a Drawler gets on the air. These guys take as long to say what they're going to do as the Slowpoke takes to actually do it. You'll always know a Drawler when you hear one. Ordinary radio calls are pared-down, rapid-fire nuggets of information and requests. From an experienced radioman, a call to ATC might sound like this:
"Joshua Approach, Cessna Four-Two-One-Two-Six, five miles north of Apple Valley at five thousand feet, en route to Tehachapi."
Then the controller will reply, giving the airplane (who just requested flight following via radar to his destination) a transponder code and pertinent weather and traffic information.
Drawler radio calls sound like this.
[Microphone clicks]
[Pause]
"Joshua Approach."
[Pause]
"Centurion One-Three-Niner-Tango."
[Longer Pause]
"Six miles west of Apple Valley."
[Another long pause. No pertinent altitude information given.]
"Destination: Fox Field."
[Click]
Then the controller will come on and ask the Centurion for his altitude and whatever other information he usually neglects to give. Then he'll give the Drawler a four-digit squawk code, the current altimeter setting, and landing information at his destination airport, weather and whatnot. The Drawler will read back this information at a snail's pace, further clogging up the airwaves. This makes pilots who have somewhere to be and something important to do (like the Southwest Airlines crews who routinely talk to Joshua on their way into Los Angeles, not to mention JM-1 and I who are trying to escort a Predator from a restricted area into a Class D airport) foam at the mouth.
There are sub-classes of Drawlers. There's the Stutterer, who stumbles and staggers through his radio calls, making soft-hearted pilots in the vicinity wince on his behalf; and the Out-of-Towner, whose accent is so heavy that he either speaks excruciatingly slowly, or is almost incoherent, or both. I've heard some Texans on the radio who sound like they're bellying up to the bar instead of requesting an IFR clearance to Bermuda Dunes.
Now, if the Drawler also happens to be a Blithering Idiot (see next bullet point) he will do the same thing, only he will get most of the information the controller gave him wrong, and the controller will have to correct him. This makes pilots who have somewhere to be and something important to do wish they had fool-seeking missile launchers on their wings.
Unfortunately, there ain't no law against talking slow, either.

The Blithering Idiot: Worst kind of pilot there is, bar none. These are the people who fly twice a year, are grossly inexperienced, don't do their homework, aren't worth two cents on the radio, have no idea what all the little flashing lights in the cockpit are for, land airplanes like they're kites (or anvils), and so on and so on and so on. In short, these folks haven't got a clue what to do or how to do it. Some of them are (forgive me) just plain stupid. I've had the misfortune to encounter quite a few of them myself. I don't exempt yours truly, by the bye; I've done some blitheringly idiotic things in my time, both on the ground and in the air. Fortunately I haven't endangered anybody or given the FAA or the NTSB any paperwork to do, which is what Blithering Idiots commonly do. They're even more dangerous than Cheaters. They pull out onto the runway when you're on your final approach; don't see you because they're not scanning the sky properly for traffic; clog up the radio frequencies (see above); get off at the wrong taxiways; don't listen to instructions; forget important laws of flight (and in some cases physics, and even reality)...and all the rest of it. Anything you can think of that's dumb to do in mid-air, they've done it. I know everybody makes mistakes. Not everybody who fouls up in the sky is an idiot. But there must be a reason why 80% of all airplane crashes are caused by pilot error.

The Know-Nothing: They differ somewhat from your run-of-the-mill idiot in that they don't necessarily do stupid things in the air, but are wrong most of the time on the ground. Like, maybe they'll have their numbers mixed up. Instead of believing he must remain 500 feet below, 1,000 feet above and 2,000 feet horizontally clear of clouds, and maintain one statute mile visibility (as the F.A.R.s say you must during VFR flight by day in Class G airspace between 1,200 and 10,000 feet MSL), a Know-Nothing might think he would have to remain 1,000 feet above, 1,000 feet below and one mile distant from the clouds while maintaining five statute miles visibility (as he would during VFR flight by day or night above 10,000 feet MSL in Class G airspace).
Confused? I can't see how you would be.
Yeah, I know. This is complicated. Aviation is the worst mix of alphabet soup and the grade-school math class you still have nightmares about. There's hundreds of different numbers, terms and abbreviations you must know by heart, all of which can pile in on each other in your brain and mix themselves up. But if you keep your brain sharp, review periodically, fly often and get your head on straight, you'll be okay. You'll remember what you need to remember, and all these parameters and qualifiers and conditions and requirements will become second nature. Know-Nothings, though, never quite get a handle on it. And not only don't they know what they're talking about, but they prove it quite often. Loudly. At best, they're corrected in private, resolve to do better, and then stain their image again with the next outburst; at worst, they make public spectacles of themselves, lose all credibility as pilots, and (more disquieting yet) become flight instructors and pass on their wrongness to their students.
They haven't gotten 'round to outlawing this yet, either. The best you can hope for is that your local Know-Nothing will foul up badly on his biennial flight review (BFR) and have his license revoked.

The Wanderer: An unpredictable cross between the Slowpoke and the Blithering Idiot, the Wanderer's flight pattern beggars description. You can never tell what these guys are going to next. They might report that they're three miles east of the field when they're actually five, or vice-versa. (Cheaters often use this tactic to insert themselves into the traffic pattern ahead of other aircraft.) Or a Wanderer, attempting to enter the pattern, might wind up weaving and doubling back on his own path, because he didn't give himself enough space to turn, or he wanted to overfly the field first to make sure nothing screwy is happening, or because the wind is pushing him all over the sky, or (potentially) because he's a Blithering Idiot.
Wanderers also have a tendency to fly

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patterns, taking them two miles or more away from the airport on the downwind and base legs. This causes problems for other airplanes lining up in the pattern, who have to wait for the Wanderer to turn and pass them on his final approach before they themselves can turn base. Combine a Wanderer with a Slowpoke and you can almost hear the pilots behind him sharpening their knives.

The Chicken: Now, this one's kind of unfair. There's definitely no law against being cautious. The more careful you are as a pilot, the better. You really can't do enough to ensure your safety and the safety of others in flight. But sometimes people can go overboard. There's a difference between being cautious and being overcautious. Some pilots inadvertently cause problems for themselves, their airplanes or others when they're too careful; and some pilots just don't have enough experience to be decisive and assertive. It is for that very reason that you rarely encounter Chickens. Usually they're too scared to even fly. The slightest breath of wind will send them into a tizzy. Chickens combine all the worst characteristics of Wanderers, Slowpokes and Blithering Idiots. Approaching a field and hearing other traffic in the area, they'll hang back and let everybody else go ahead of them. If anybody else shows up while they're doing this, the Chicken will let them go ahead too, burning up more fuel and making a possible hazard of himself flying in circles close to the airport. They may also stress their engines unnecessarily by idling too long on the ground (running repeated checks during their run-ups, for example). This latter habit is believed to be have been responsible for several airliner crashes.
Blithering Idiots don't know what they're doing; Wanderers don't know where they're going; and Chickens don't know when to go.
Like I said before, caution's one thing. By all means be cautious. Check your engine, know your airplane's limits, scan the skies for traffic. Keep your wits about you. But don't overdo it. Don't take too long to make important decisions. Don't wait forever to join the pattern. Don't waste time. Don't dither. And don't be afraid.

As annoying as they are, these guys are usually harmless. Slowpokes don't hurt anybody, as long as you're not behind them in the pattern and disastrously low on fuel (that'd be your fault, though, not the Slowpoke's). Cheaters are merely annoying, as long as they don't do anything dangerous outright. Wanderers can cause problems, but as long as you keep your eye on them you'll be fine. Chickens are more to be pitied than persecuted. I was a Chicken myself when I first started. Getting a bit better every day.

So, be on the lookout for these guys the next time you're in the sky, all right? They are out there. Just hope you never figure out who's who.

Oh yeah, and watch out for the judgmental bastards, too.