Four Fun Phone Calls - Always Glad to Help

There are some folks that really don’t like getting or answering phone calls. Sure, there are some that you just don’t want to get but there are some others that are worth the sour ones. Over the years I have answered the phone many times but four great ones come to mind.

While I was in the National Guard I got some very interesting phone calls. One night, while serving as the officer in charge of a bunch of aircraft out flying, I received a call from a very interesting fellow. He was calling to complain about a helicopter flying over his house at low altitude.

This fellow had called the Albany County Airport. The airport had given him our phone number telling him that we were the only ones with helicopters out flying that night. From the opening word it was clear that this fellow was mad and wanted to take it out on someone. He said he was calling to complain about the helicopter flying low over his house.

There were flight routes where we were allowed to fly at two hundred feet above the ground at night on Night Vision Goggles (NVGs). We tried to not fly over houses or built up areas but some of the routes were pretty close to houses. Most of us would fly a pattern or two in one area and then go on to another area. That way we spread the noise around and normally left an area before most folks got too upset

The time of his call was just before nine PM and the over-flight had just happened. The fellow told me that a Cobra helicopter had flown over his house twice at low altitude. We didn’t have any Cobras flying that night. I tried to tell the fellow that we didn’t have any Cobras flying but we did have some UH-1’s, Hueys, flying. They look a bit like Cobras and sound a lot like them.

I knew that one of the instructor pilots was flying night vision goggles in that area and would be only one to two hundred feet above the ground. It clearly had to be the instructor pilot that had buzzed his house. As soon as this fellow stopped yelling a bit I said, “Sir, there was a Huey in your area and we will call him and have him leave the area”.

That didn’t suit the guy. He yelled that he had been in the Air Force and that he knew what a Cobra was and it had been a Cobra that flew over his house. Twice I tried to tell him that it must have been a Huey but that just seemed to make him madder. So it seemed like a good idea to agree with him. I ended the conversation with, “Sir, if you are sure it was a Cobra I suggest you call Fort Drum, NY. They have Cobras and perhaps one of theirs wandered down to your area. You can call the Albany County tower if you like and their records will show that we did not have any Cobras flying tonight. It could not have been one of ours. Good luck”.

When the Huey instructor pilot landed I told him the story of the phone call. We both had a good laugh over the fellow’s insistence that a Cobra had been flying over his house. The next day all of the instructor pilots would have a good laugh over the phone call. All of us thought it was a big joke. We didn’t have to take responsibility for this fellow’s problem.

On a nice Fall Saturday morning I was again the officer in charge of a group of helicopters out flying when I got a phone call from an irate lady. She said she had bought her home out in the country to have some peace a quiet and a helicopter had just flown over. I asked her is she had any idea how high it was. She said she didn’t but it was way up in the air. I tried to explain to her that airplanes and helicopters are allowed to fly over her area at five hundred or more feet above the ground. She said it was at least that high but she still didn’t want any helicopters over flying her house.

When joking among ourselves we used to say that the noise that helicopter and airplanes make was the sound of freedom. As long as the sound overhead came from friendly aircraft it was the sound of freedom. I didn’t think it was a good idea to share that idea with her. She didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor.

A couple of times I tried to calm her and explain to her that helicopters flying high overhead was allowed. Her call came in at about ten a.m. and even though it was Saturday, ten a.m. didn’t seem like early morning to me. As she complained on and on she emphasized that this was the third time this had happened.

Then I asked her how long she had lived there. She responded that she had lived there three years and this was the third time a helicopter had flown overhead. Once a year didn’t seem too bad to me so I said, “I’ll talk to the crew. If this happens again please call us”. I figured that once a year we could live with a phone call.

When the flight crew returned I told them about the phone call. It wasn’t an area that we over flew often so it was just a humorous story. As far as I know we didn’t get an annual phone call.

During another one of the night flight training periods I was running flight operations and got a fun phone call. It came from a colonel at Fort Rucker, Alabama, the home of Army Aviation. That is where flight school was conducted. The colonel had called because the National Guard in New York had a fellow in flight school that had failed an instrument check ride twice but this fellow insisted that he be given more chances. The colonel wanted to bust him out but he wanted to know if New York was going to insist on the young man having more opportunities to pass the check ride.

The standard was to allow two times to pass a check ride and if they failed both of them they were busted out of flight school. That rule applied to active duty students as well as the National Guard. The colonel said this fellow had told him that they should give him more opportunities to pass the ride because the NY National Guard wanted him to have more opportunities. Additionally he said the young fellow had told him that he was politically connected in the state.

As soon as I learned what the call was about I told the colonel that I was just an instructor pilot and had no authority to give him an answer. That didn’t satisfy the colonel and he rehearsed the story again. He said he wanted permission from the state to bust the guy out of flight school. Again I told him that I was just an instructor pilot and there were no commanders there at the time and the state aviation officer was not there.

For a third time the colonel repeated the story of the fellow in flight school. This time he concluded with, “I just want somebody in New York State to say they don’t want this guy to have special treatment”. Seeing how “he just wanted someone in New York to say they didn’t want this guy to have special treatment” I felt obligated to help him out. I was in New York and I could say the words for him. So I said, “We don’t want him to have special treatment. Two checkride failures are enough. Bust him out”.

My answer may seem cruel to some. A couple of things that none of us need are pilots and doctors that aren’t good at their trades. Those positions require people who are good or they shouldn’t be there. Lives are lost when they are not skilled.

The forth phone call was much like the third. Again it was from an officer at Fort Rucker. This time the call was about a female pilot that was in flight school. She was from one of the facilities in New York that did not have Cobras.

She had passed the first part of flight school and was scheduled to fly Hueys but was insisting on being trained in Cobras. At that time the Army was not allowing women to fly Cobras and they didn’t even have any Cobras where she was stationed. It made no sense.

This call was at a time when there was great fear in the Army about being accused of sexual discrimination if a female didn’t get something she wanted. It could be a tough situation for people to be in. Some times instructor pilots and commanders lost their careers because someone felt they were not treated fairly due to sexual or racial discrimination. Certainly there should be no discrimination but sometimes claims were made that were ridiculous and unfounded and they cost folks their jobs.

The conversation went much as the same as the previous one. He just wanted someone in New York to say not to train the female student in Cobras. Because it made no sense to train a student, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in an aircraft that they would never fly I gave him what he was asking for. I told him, “We don’t want her trained in Cobras”. The answer satisfied him and he hung up. The next day I told the commander about the phone call and he said wasn’t going to call Fort Rucker and get in the middle of this one.

There are some calls that people make that are just to allow them to blow off steam. There are some calls that people make just to get an answer that they want. Some times they aren’t concerned whether the people that give them the answers know what they are talking about or not. In all four situations I had tried to give the callers what they wanted. Two vented some steam and two got an answer they were looking for. All four phone calls seemed quite humorous to me. When you get an answer you better make sure the person giving you the answer knows what they are talking about and that they are authorized to give you an answer. There are some folks who will answer any question for you!