Barret Hendrickson talks through his experience as a flight instructor, flying for Horizon Air, and now teaching airline operations at ERAU-Prescott. He reflects on writing ASAP reports and maintenance logs as a captain. Since you never know when the FAA might need to inspect the records you have written, it's very important to make those notes precise, concise, and clear.
His advice for current pilots-in-training is to have fun with every opportunity, whether at your dream job, with your back-up plans, and outside of work too.
Episode Transcript:
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Abigail:
All right. Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of What's the Word Eagle Alumni Spotlights Podcasts. I'm your host Abby and today we have a very special guest for you. Today we're joined with Professor Hendrickson from Embry Riddle at Prescott. We do have a little bit of background noise that was captured during our interviews. But let's get right into this week's episode. Professor Hendrickson, why don't you give us a little bit of background about yourself?
Barrett Hendrickson:
I'm an undergraduate myself I came to school here long, long ago, graduated with a four-year degree in Aeronautical Science got all three of my flight instructor certificates and then took off for three years and wasn’t involved in aviation at all; decided to be a flight instructor. I had to go down to Scottsdale and work for an examiner who had done five of my check rides. He was gracious enough to hire me and that was in the early 90s. So do a little bit of work with them and realized I wasn't getting much time that a lot of work for them behind their dispatch counter and did instrument ground instrument Frasca training, so I wasn't getting a lot of actual flight training or time in the logbook. I decided to come back into riddle in 95 and was here as a flight instructor from 95 until August of 2000. And then I went to Verizon air for 23 years until I retired in August of 2023. We had moved back from the Pacific Northwest and 2021 and I was bored. And Dawn Groh, my boss allowed me to come and teach part time and then they offered me a full time position last year. So that's the roundabout of making my way back to Riddle. It's my third stint.
Abigail:
Yeah,very cool. And when you're flying for Horizon, did you have a favorite place that you would fly to?
Barrett Hendrickson:
Not in particular did not like to go to Canada not because I have anything against Canadian cities, but it was the customs coming back through customs. I did not enjoy that. Enjoyed Vancouver, Edmonton, Kelowna, and Calgary are the cities I remember flying to Southern California was always nice because of the sunshine. Aside from it, Missoula, Montana was a really cool place to go. I’d hike up to the M for their university big logo up there in the mountain and cool restaurants and I just enjoyed the coordinates of all places.
Abigail:
Oh, that's awesome and Missoula sounds like a very fun place to visit indeed. But now circling back to your time at Horizon, what type of airplane did you fly while you were there?
Barrett Hendrickson:
Well, because I started in the F 28 as the first officer. That plane has since been retired from I think most of the airline fleets of the world moved into the RJ 100 as a first officer rising was a large customer for them. And then when I upgraded to the left seat as a captain, I went to the Q 400 Dashi Q 400. And then my last airplane I flew was the Embraer 175 And I was a checker with both the two 400 and the 175. Favorite airplane probably could have been the F 28. No technology you had to know how to fly that thing had to think descent planning, nothing was automated. Nothing was digital, no blast whatsoever. The Embraer has a pretty nice plate as well.
Abigail:
Oh, that's awesome. And it sounds like you got to have a little bit of variety in the planes that you flew, which is always a very fun thing to have. And now switching back to your teaching at Embry Riddle, what classes are you currently teaching?
Barrett Hendrickson:
Airline operations. And I also taught last fall a section of jet systems, which was in CRJ 700. I had years of experience in that so that was a natural fit as well. So that's all I've been doing. So far.
Abigail:
Awesome.
Barrett Hendrickson:
Three sections a semester of airline ops.
Abigail:
Very cool. And are you able to tie writing into your work here?
Barrett Hendrickson:
Well, definitely, as a professor, there's been a moderate amount of writing, not as much as you would expect, right? A lot of the course materials already created for me. But in subsequent when I've gone back now, as it's become my course, I go back, and rewrite things do this PowerPoint presentation slides. That's about the extent right now, our end of year, self-evaluation has to be well written. Of course, that always has to, I always have to pull out the writing skills at that point as well. Nothing too much as far as technical report writing or anything else though.
Abigail:
Okay. And now I know pilots don't do a lot of writing. But were you able to write a little bit of some kind when you were a pilot?
Barrett Hendrickson:
So, the captain, there's a fair amount of extensive writing because you have while ASAP reports, especially in the commercial world, if you make a mistake, you have to articulate what went wrong. What would you do better even at your stage with the NASA forums, I'm sure they'd like a well-articulated article on what went wrong, what could you do better, but maintenance logs cannot emphasize enough. And that would be the advice of anybody coming from Embry Riddle or any flight school going to the airlines is you need to write accurately because Maintenance Control will want to know to what extent which seatbelt might be inoperative, which radio doesn't work, how does it not work? I mean, there's a myriad of examples of why writing would be accurately concisely precisely would be why we use something we fail to remember, I think sometimes, because we see the maintenance log every time, we fly that every time you fill it out, that is an official FAA record. And if something were to happen to that airplane, or happened to you, or have they pull that, and now your writing, writing skills, articulation or lack thereof becomes under the scrutiny of the NTSB, the FAA, and the world as a whole. Right right, and anybody can ask to the Freedom of Information Act, anybody could pull something, just investigate. And now for who wrote this, you're under scrutiny all the time.
Abigail:
Right right, so you want to make it clear, concise, straight to the point?
Barrett Hendrickson:
And precise as well. I know concise and precise can be similar, but they may go hand in hand.
Abigail:
Right right. Oh, yeah. Very important.
Barrett Hendrickson:
Especially if people at the FAA and NTSB you're gonna we don't want them to go. What did you mean by this? Exactly? It's like, well, you better be clear the first time right, rather have written a little bit more information in a logbook than having to go back and explain myself. Right for to clarify, because a lot of times you don't remember, it could be months later, and you've had 10 logbook write ups. What about this one from four months ago? Well, I don't remember that particular flight. But if you're right, clear enough the first time you don't have to worry about it. So, makes it easier.
Abigail:
Yeah, yes, yes. Perfect. And so, my next question for you, what does a typical day look like?
Barrett Hendrickson:
Well, office hours Monday, Wednesday, Friday, typically, I'm here for you guys how to student interaction if you guys have to come in and take up makeup, quizzes, tests, whatever, answer your questions. And then I teach on Tuesday, Thursdays. And so that involves being here a little early to get set up, make sure all my I've studied the PowerPoints the night before just to review, because it's usually been a semester since I looked at him last. If there's any changes, they usually do that to do a day or two, I've had a hard time and that's mostly at home. But as long as here, it's show up to class on time and get set up a few minutes early. And then for Tuesday, Thursday classes I finished at 530. In the evening, I'm the last one in the office. So, I just go home and have dinner and decompress and get ready for my office hours. The next day is typically what it is a lot of time in front of the classroom, which I enjoy. I'm not gonna fly I'd rather be teaching.
Abigail:
That's awesome. And sounds like you've got a really good schedule going for yourself right now.
Barrett Hendrickson:
It's actually better than the airline schedule.
Abigail:
Yeah, that's awesome. And now my last question for you. Do you have any advice that you'd like to give to our current eagles?
Barrett Hendrickson:
The main things I would tell the up-and-coming students if do not be afraid to flight instruct. Everybody looks at it as your cross to bear, so to speak. And I just I don't want to teach, I'm going to have a miserable experience. I just want to get my hours and get out of here. My first advice on that would be don't, don't look at it that way. The big advice I would give anybody at your stage right now would be don't fear flight instructing embrace it, have fun with it. The other piece of advice when you're acting airlines students’ is don't think that the airline is the end all my boss first day at Horizon said you better have hobbies and enjoy things outside your job because this gets to be boring. And of course, all of us. That's heresy don't how can you talk like that. And he was right after about 5, 10 and then, 15 years, 20 years into doing it gets very repetitive, it gets very it gets kind of boring. And you have to have the outside things that keep you fresh, keep you interested in what you do. Those are two things I would say to incoming students saying flying is right now I get it. You want to get paid to fly. You cannot wait to get there and it's it's everything. I was there once. But having lost my medical now I realize okay, there's other things to do. So maybe that's the third piece of advice have something else to fall back on because of almost 50% of all of you students won't make it to age 65 to retirement, half of you will drop out because of medical issues. That's huge percentage. You don't think of it as being you I didn't. But there'll be a third thing.
Abigail:
And those are great pieces of advice from Professor Hendrickson, really good for all of you flight students, but really just for anybody in general, it's good to have a fallback plan in case plan A doesn't work out. And that wraps up this week's episode of What's the word Eagle mmm nice spotlight podcasts. We want to give a big thank you to Professor Hendrickson for being on with us this week. If you're new to our podcast you can find us on Spotify, YouTube or Apple podcasts as well. So be sure to go give us a listen.
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Amelia Chesley:
This podcast is supported by the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Abigail Bradberry is our host, Matthew Haslam is our department chair. And I'm Amelia Chesley, Assistant Professor of professional writing. The intro and outro music are Wander by Aylex. Find us on Spotify or on YouTube. And reach out if you are a Prescott campus alum. We'd love to feature you in a future episode.
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