Erika Armstrong
Erika Armstrong
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Show notes
All-around aviation professional, and prolific aviation writer, Erika Armstrong, reads an excerpt from A Chick in the Cockpit: My Life Up in the Air, before we get into the details. In a proper book club talk, we discuss the hard stuff she shared in the book, career and life balance, women pilots and horses, book clubs, the word ‘Chick’, and end on a high note, offering some encouraging words for pilots and pilots-in-training affected by Covid. If you haven’t read the book, and plan to, consider waiting to listen to the whole interview.
You can jump to the time markers below to avoid spoilers.
Intro and Welcome
01:27 – Erika reads an excerpt from the book
08:05 – Spoiler Alert, then we talk about the hard stuff
24:38 – Book Club Warriors – the heroes of the story (Spoilers in this portion)
25:52 – Women pilots and horses (Green light- no spoilers here)
27:20 – Why the word “Chick”? (Green light)
28:44 – Where is Erika now, personally and professionally? (Green light)
33:09 – Erika offers encouraging words about the aviation industry’s rebound from Covid. Hang in there! (Green light)
Find Erika everywhere @achickinthecockpit and her website www.achickinthecockpit.com.
Transcript:
Maya Johanna: [00:00:00] If you take one step, then you will be a little closer to your dream than if you stay just where you are.
Liz Booker: Hello, I’m Liz Booker, literary Aviatrix. Welcome to the Aviatrix Book Review where I review and discuss books featuring women in aviation. Check out the Aviatrix book review website where you’ll find hundreds of books featuring all kinds of aviation in every genre for all ages.
Maya Johanna: Here I am, I’m ready to go again, ready to say goodbye when the sky is high. No reason to stay on ground, lift
Liz Booker: My guest today is a true aviation professional. She’s flown 28 different aircraft and was an [00:01:00] airline captain before the age of 30. She’s an aviation professor at MSU Denver, an instructional designer and vice president of business and development at Advanced Air Crew Academy, and she’s a professional aviation journalist with over 450,000 followers.
She is the author of A Chick in the Cockpit, My Life Up in the Air, and you can find her all over social media and at her website at achickinthecockpit.com. Erika Armstrong, welcome.
Erika Armstrong: Thank you, thanks for having me.
Liz Booker: I’m so excited about this. So we talked about starting off with a reading to give people a sense of your voice as a writer.
You want to give us a little teaser?
Erika Armstrong: Sure. Yeah, it’s always hard to pick, pick out what’s going to capture the essence of the book, right? So I just, I’ve got three pages here. I know it can be boring for people to sit and listen to an author just read their book. So it’s just a short little blurb out of starting at about page 92, if you ever want to go back and find it.
And I had to do the old lady thing and put on my [00:02:00] glasses now. All right. The red eyed flight from Las Vegas to St. Louis was living up to its name. As we turned the Boeing on a final approach, ragged edge of the sun was boring over the horizon, just enough to strain our weary eyes. As most of the passengers were still in a drunken haze long after the flight attendants had run out of liquor.
Like a young child on a long road trip, the lead flight attendant kept ringing in the cockpit to find out how much further we had to go. I kept telling him we’d get there when we get there. Captains get to choose which legs we want to fly. Co pilots know that captains delegate the pathetic legs to them.
So my co pilot knew in Las Vegas without even having to ask that he’d be flying this horrible leg. We had been on the road for five days, my uniform was getting ripe, and we were tired from holding up the images of being pilots. Besides, it was his turn to fly. My co pilot was new, but he’d proven himself over the last few days.[00:03:00]
I’d chuckle to myself when I’d glance over at him during a particularly difficult altitude crossing restriction or crosswind landing and he’d have his tongue wrapped around his lip in concentration. He was doing this now as we were turning on the final approach on this beautiful calm day of fall. I wasn’t sure what was causing him to overextend his concentration, but exhaustion has a way of blearing your thoughts.
His altitude and airspeed were perfect as he called out his requests. Gear down. Roger. Here they come. Flaps 30 degrees. Final items. I was so proud of his stabilized approach, I relaxed and sat back to watch his beautiful landing. 200 feet, 50 feet, wham! In the two seconds it took me to realize he was going to forget to flare, I couldn’t get my hands to move fast enough to the yoke to slow the rate of descent.
As we slammed into the runway, I could feel the landing gear groan into their sockets and we landed hard enough to drop a few oxygen masks in the back. [00:04:00] It wasn’t anything more than a firm landing, but for the passengers, I’m sure they thought the end was near. I’m the captain. It’s still my fault. Even if the co pilot makes a mistake, it’s still on me.
Every pilot has had this bad landing. It is part of the initiation into becoming a good pilot. But when I looked over at my co pilot, he was crimson and drowning in his embarrassment. We were both so sure he was going to grease it onto the runway, that the outcome was out of the realm of our possibilities.
He was wallowing in his misery, so I tried to lighten the mood. Well, that’ll wake up the drunks back there. You probably did the flight attendants a favor by getting the passengers out of their stupors so we can do plane. I’m sure you meant to do that, but you do realize that the flight attendants are going to demand that you stand in the doorway and offer every single passenger a back massage.
The flight engineer started to join in on the razzing and I could see my co pilot’s lip quiver in the attempt to keep a smile away. He began to lighten up a little. We opened the door as the [00:05:00] passengers were deplaning at the gate so we could chime in on the teasing. About midway through deplaning, we could hear the grumble of a deep and drunken voice creep louder as he pushed his enormous mass into the cockpit.
He was slurring his complaints until his breath got caught in the back of his throat as he saw me sitting there in the captain’s seat with my long blonde ponytail. Oh my god, there is a chick in the cockpit. I knew it. I knew there had to be a reason for that god awful crash landing. Well, hell, no wonder why.
Women can’t and shouldn’t be flying. Wait until I tell my wife about this. Hey, hey honey. It wasn’t worth explaining that the male co pilot made the landing. It never was worth explaining anything about being a chick in the cockpit. I just smiled at him and said I’d be out by the baggage claim giving massages.
He offered to take his shirt off right then and there, but he had left his suitcases in the aisle and the passengers behind him were stuck. So the flight attendants pulled him out of the cockpit. My co pilot and flight engineer thought this [00:06:00] was hysterical. My co pilot was also relieved to realize that most everyone thought that I’d made the landing.
So he smirked and said he was going to get in line for the back massage behind the drunk. F you, I laughed. My shy co pilot from Nebraska found the nerve to respond with a good hearted, Okay. To which I replied, Not after a bad landing like that. My back hurts. That’s okay, I’ll let you be on top. And with that, we all start laughing until our red eyes fill with tears.
With our veins flooded with exhaustion and adrenaline, It’s hard to stop laughing because it feels so good. It’s in these moments of humor and smack talk that my heart soars. I’m not offended. I am dauntless and I know I can hold my own, so I can tease about not being a man. When I’m in the cockpit, I am not a woman.
I am a pilot. I am on top. I have earned my right to be a member of my crew and everything that it means. Everyone’s lives depend on our trust in each other. And even after my co pilot’s bad landing, I knew I could trust him. He knew he could [00:07:00] trust me. As we walked down the jet bridge together, we knew we had to put on our serious pilot faces to walk through the terminal.
We all lived in different states, so we waved goodbye and knew we’d see each other again after four short days off were over. Thankfully, the flight I needed to catch home was only a few gates away, United to Denver. The flight was full, so there weren’t any cabin seats on which to sit my weary ass. I had to sit in the jump seat in the cockpit that was designed by an inventor who learned how to duplicate the comfort of concrete.
I arrived in Denver at 6. 40 a. m. on the morning of September 11th, 2001.
So that was 9 11. So, within just a couple pages, just like aviation, right? We can have a mistake, some humor, and then life changing moments. And so that was… Just in a few pages, just like you’re all experiencing now, that’s how aviation is, right?
You’re rolling along and all of a sudden something changes. You know, just look at this pandemic and what everybody’s dealing [00:08:00] with. So, hopefully some relatable events there.
Liz Booker: A perfect example of one of the things that I love most about this book and your writing is And you, as I’ve gotten to know you through the book, is your sense of humor in those situations when people were saying sideways things to you about being a woman in our field.
I just thought you handled it really well. I can think of a hundred times when I look back at a situation and I think, oh gosh, I wish I’d said this or I said that and you were on the spot. And you knew what to say, so that was awesome. I’m sure every lady out there that’s watching this has her, her list of examples.
So, talking about things that I love about the book, I think probably my favorite thing about it is, is the way that you use aviation as a metaphor for life. All the way, I mean, from the checklists that you use in each chapter, which I think really hold the book together really well and keep the theme going, even when the book maybe changes to other topics.
All the way [00:09:00] down to the title, A Chick in the Cockpit, My Life Up in the Air. You don’t know what that means until you read the book. And so right here I’m gonna give a spoiler alert because this talk is a book club talk, right? We did the little reading in the front just to give people who might not have read it an opportunity to get a flavor for the book.
But if you haven’t read it and you plan to, I definitely feel that this book is worth watching unfold on the page. So pause come back later after you’ve read the book So with that we’ll keep going and jump right in I want to know Why why did you write this book? Who did you write it for and what were you hoping to accomplish?
And sometimes writing a book and publishing it are two different things. Why did you publish it? So, tell me about all that.
Erika Armstrong: The list is long. But the first thing I wanted to do with this book is to bring women into the cockpit. I mean, I know for [00:10:00] myself growing up, I didn’t know a single woman pilot.
I knew of Amelia Earhart, but things didn’t turn out very well for her. So I didn’t have a lot of exposure to that, to having women choose that for a career. So that was the, the overarching premise is to bring women into the cockpit. Second of all, I wanted to show. A simple act by somebody else can make such a deep impact for somebody else.
So for those of you that haven’t read it yet, my book club is actually the heroes of the story. They do one small favor for me, but it was such an impactful thing. I just, it’s just a reminder for all of us that. Throughout our daily lives, everybody’s going through some crap, right? We just don’t know to what level that person is experiencing it.
Just practicing little daily kindnesses can make such a huge difference. So I wanted to be able to show that big picture of it. And then also, women now are conquering aviation. We’ve broken the glass ceiling up there. But the reality is we’re still the ones that are going to clean up all that glass, right?
There’s no reason why you can’t be a pilot, [00:11:00] but we have to be realistic when we talk about a career in aviation, especially for the up and coming women. We put this false illusion on there that, of course you can have it all, and you can have it all, but at any given moment, you’re going to have to sacrifice things for it.
And it’s going to be a teeter totter back and forth throughout your whole life. So I just wanted to show you one example of somebody’s teeter totter. Maybe, you know, to acknowledge, hey, if I’m feeling, feeling unbalanced, you know what, it sucks, but that’s still going to be normal for right now. So and, and just having the evolution of having platforms, even like this, to be able to share our challenges, our frustrations.
This, even, you know, having like the fast group didn’t exist a few years ago. So, you know, to be able to just see other women going through the experience and the challenges they’re facing. Sorry, I have two dogs and a cat. There they go. Life.
Just wanted to be able to, [00:12:00] you know, share that experience with somebody else so they can see, you know, because they’re gonna go through their own challenge. And so I just want them to know that there’s other people out here. And you’ll be amazed at who will catch you if you’re willing to hold your hand out.
This is a great way to make connections. You know, even though it’s just a virtual platform, we’re here to help each other and that didn’t exist a few years ago. So that’s part of the sharing the experience.
Liz Booker: Yeah, you mentioned fast female aviators sticking together, which is a Facebook group and it’s a giant Facebook group.
And it’s how we got a lot of the members for the book club. And yeah, they’re, they are doing amazing things and there are several others in other niche groups. And yeah, they, we didn’t have that when I was a junior pilot. Oh my gosh. I felt out there on my own trying to do. Family planning around my career and all of the balance stuff, and you mentioned, you know, trying to show a realistic view of what life is, but I feel like your view, your experience [00:13:00] isn’t necessarily the same.
An average one in terms of the pressures that you had on you. So just to be clear, like, for any young woman who’s reading this, there are other experiences in the world in terms of having family and work balance. So I’ve read this assertion that work life balance is a myth. What do you, how do you feel about that?
Erika Armstrong: Well, seriously, in aviation, I’m sorry. You’re going to be unbalanced quite often. You know, it’s okay to acknowledge the fact that if you want the whole human experience, you’re going to make that choice to do the whole family thing and have kids and everything. Just, you know, when you’re 18, 19 years old and just stepping into this career, like for me, I never thought I’d have kids.
I never thought I’d be married. I mean, I wanted to fly and nothing else. And the reality is your life moves along. What makes you happy is going to change. So yes, you can do this all, but be thoughtful of your choices. And you know, when you select a [00:14:00] partner to marry and you make that decision, make sure that that person understands all the demands on you in aviation.
It’s, you know, we can talk about what it’s like to be gone 20 days out of every month, but living that is, is a different thing. So, and it’s a different experience for the person at home. As it is for you because you’re out there just, you know, on the road away from home and it can be very lonely and isolating.
So just make sure that you understand that there’s, there’s going to be this balance of happiness and frustrations throughout and pick a darn good partner that can help you through all that. So I know Gloria Steinem is probably, you know, just pulling her hair out by me saying that, but that’s the reality is.
You need to have a balance in your career and also in your family, too. The other person’s going to have to hold up that end when you’re gone. So, just a topic of conversation, especially for the young women that are entering into the career right now.
Liz Booker: No, I totally agree, and I had the trial run marriage where things didn’t go well, but I [00:15:00] was fortunate to find someone who has been with me the majority of my flying, well, all of my flying career and before, and has had to do everything.
While I was gone on deployment, so yeah, they’re out there. You just have to find the right one. Well, I did a poll in the Facebook group to kind of see where Our members experiences intersect with yours I just did four things and not all of them are aviation related because most of your book is not Aviation or probably the more important parts are not aviation related The first one with the most answers was how many of you Our were or aspire to be airline or commuter captains and so that was the largest group of answers, which isn’t a surprise in our group.
The second one was, I love to ride horses and that was just got a huge response and I want to talk about that later. The third. Which was very disheartening, was [00:16:00] how many of you have experienced or witnessed domestic abuse in your home. And then the last one was how many of you have made friends in other book clubs.
So, it was just interesting to see the breakdown, and I thought we probably should just get the hard stuff over with. This was like watching a train wreck, to be honest. It was so painful. To watch things unfold for you. It was so frustrating. Everybody I’ve talked to wanted to crawl into that book, pull you out of there, and take care of business for you. Trust me, we all wanted that. I don’t know what, what you can say with your perspective now compared to when you wrote the book about that experience. And what advice you might have for women who find themselves in an abusive situation.
Erika Armstrong: So for me that was the most astounding thing is that since I published this book, I do not go a week [00:17:00] without having somebody email me it, the, the instances and the examples that have been given to me are so deep and, and vast, it blew me away because I mean, I did a little bit of research gathering for the book itself growing up.
I did not think I knew anybody that was in a domestic violence situation. I’m sure I did. But just like, just exactly what you said, that you wanted to crawl into that book and help people, that’s exactly what I want to do, too. I want to crawl into your life and help you. The thing with domestic abuse, even after all this time, is that the abusers count on your shame.
To keep it quiet. I know for me, it was terribly embarrassing and I couldn’t figure out why. I mean, it was, I was so horrified that I let myself get into the situation. I just, and I just felt at the time when I, you’re in the middle of it, that you’re just, that I’m just gonna have to deal with it. The abusers are really, there’s a pattern to them.
Set up was perfect, right? I was in a new town. I didn’t have a lot of close [00:18:00] friends. Nobody really to talk to. New job, you know, gone quite a bit. I did not want anybody else to know about this. So I know that there are a lot of women right now that are experiencing this and nobody knows about it. So if you can at least reach out and ask for help, even just email me.
I’ll give you my email address. Just asking for that help is the hardest thing to do. But truly, I, I am astounded at the number of people that have emailed me with similar stories. So it breaks my heart to hear all the situations. Everybody’s situation is very unique. But if you pull back and look at the big picture, the foundation of how and why it’s happening continues to be the same.
So, you know, it’s going to take a generation to kind of change the mindset of that. I know it was interesting to watch my kids when they were in elementary school. They started a new little class called Brainwise in the public schools. And all it was, was teaching you to recognize your emotions when, you know, when [00:19:00] you’re a little kid, like kindergarten.
They’re trying to get you to acknowledge it. But I think one of the peripheral things that might happen with that is for little boys and girls as they’re growing up to recognize those emotions and to learn how to handle them. You know, I didn’t grow up with anything like that. So I’m, I’m hoping that our generation now, everybody that’s listening here, we can start teaching the next kids and the next set of, you know, generation about those, you know, anger management you know, We know what’s right and wrong.
The abusers know what’s right and wrong. They make excuses and justifications for it. So it’s going to take an entire generation to change that concept. So by talking about it, it helps shrivel up that shame to put it in the spotlight. So that’s why I was willing to take this, you know, incredibly difficult and embarrassing part of my life and just say, all right, that’s what that abuser wants.
I’m going to put it out there and just. Just show everybody pattern of behavior and to know that you can get out and there will [00:20:00] be people to help you.
Liz Booker: A lot of the readers that I talked to were talking about how in the book all the signs were there. And in your defense, I said, well, now she can see that and place that in front of you. And yes, they were happening in front of her. But obviously in the moment, she didn’t understand that those were warning signs. Is that true?
Erika Armstrong: 2020 hindsight, absolutely. Yeah. So, yeah, as a young person, you know, excited about their career and stuff, I, I made excuses for everything as we moved along. And I think when all the women that I’ve talked to, they do the same thing.
They justify those behaviors and they’re like, well, you know, I must have something to do with that. And that’s part of the rewriting the book is to be able to show what are those things that I look back on and I’m like, duh, you know, why, why didn’t I, See it then. So, cause most of us don’t, the tendency is for domestic abusers is they’re very gregarious and charming and the outside [00:21:00] world, they present a different image than what they do in the confines of their home.
So it’s definitely a warning sign to share with everybody.
Liz Booker: Yeah, and you know, to your point earlier, you said you have to find a partner who understands. On the face of things, this is a person who should understand, you know, your career and what it would require. So, being in your shoes in that moment, you think you have a good match here and, and then just things went sideways.
It was just awful to watch. Very painful. So this book is like two separate books. And like I said earlier, I really feel like the thing that holds it together is the fact that you did use aviation as a metaphor for life, and you kind of kept that theme going into emergency procedures. And I thought that was very clever and craftful of you, but a lot of people have asked the question, why is there no indication, not even in the blurb, about what this book is really about? [00:22:00] Why did you make that choice?
Erika Armstrong: I decided to go the traditional route. I pitched my project to an agent and the agent then pitched my book to a publisher. So I did the old fashioned route. So at some point they take your project away from you. So when I originally wrote the book, it was like 117, 000 words.
And it was funny because my agent wanted something different than what my publisher ended up wanting. One wanted more aviation, the other one said they wanted more of the life story. So, trying to find that balance because I knew it wasn’t going to make everybody happy because you’re not quite sure exactly what the topic’s going to be.
Originally when I had the book, the actual opening scene was the scene in jail. I wanted to right away for everyone to know this is where we’re going to start and then we’re going to kind of work back on how we got here. But my publisher said, nope. She’s like, it’s, this is an important topic. We want people to read it and nobody’s going to want to read a book about this.
It was hard to hear that, but the reality is it is hard. Even me after [00:23:00] experiencing it, I. Turn away from books about it. So we decided we were going to write the book just like it happened. That we’re just cruising along, happy go lucky, doing our lives, and all of a sudden, wham, this thing happened. So, we We had to cut the book down to 85, 000 words, so the first thing we had to do was just pull out giant chunks of the story.
And then try to find a way to re thread everything through again. It’s tough because there’s a lot of things that I wanted in there that the agent and the publisher wanted out. It’s a back and forth, a give and take, and a lot of rewriting to try to get all that threaded through there.
Liz Booker: I think that’ll be really helpful for a lot of people who came away with those kinds of questions. One of the things I took away from that experience What was keeping you there was your isolation, not just an externally imposed isolation. You, that was some of that was self imposed, you know, in hindsight, what could you have done differently in your [00:24:00] life to set yourself up? better for a support network.
Erika Armstrong: A lot of it’s self imposed. You know, when I was going through flight training and, you know, entering into this very masculine world, I turned away from anything feminine, right? I chopped off my hair and I just stayed away from women in general. And on layovers and stuff, if the pilots asked me out or the to go out and just hang out or the flight attendants, I’d always go with the a pilot.
Definitely the things that I could, could do now didn’t exist back then, simply being on a platform like this and having other women have a conversation, having just that local social club. I know it sounds superficial if you’re only seeing them maybe, you know, once or twice a month, but those connections, especially off of the virtual platforms are so important.
Maintaining those friendships it, it truly is important just to have somebody to. To bounce ideas off of and have conversations [00:25:00] with. It’s hard to keep this balance, especially with the pandemic going on. We can’t see each other, but in the same breath, it’s still opening up a whole bunch of other platforms that didn’t exist.
And reading books and having book clubs, that’s an awesome way to make those deeper connections.
Liz Booker: Thank you for… Some kind of joy in this book at the end. And thank you for it being a book club. That was fabulous. Especially for the first book that we were reading for the book club. When those ladies came into the courtroom for you, tears just started flowing for me.
I was so relieved and so happy for you that you finally got what you needed. You needed some external support. How did that feel? I mean, you told us about it in the book, but tell me more.
Erika Armstrong: It’s so amazing even because in the courthouse, you know, you’re in there with this mindset and you are, you’re prepared for battle and you just, you know, you do put the blinders on and I tell you what, just having them show up that day and seeing each face come around the corner.
I mean, I was, [00:26:00] it was weird because I was such a wreck because I was so emotional. I was so. I and thankful, and I, it, and that thankfulness just grew so deep that day. So I had to like fall apart in front of them and then put myself back together when I walked in that courtroom. But I tell you what, after I put myself back together, after those few moments, I was so much stronger than I was just, you know, 45 minutes earlier.
So Simple Kindness by those, that book club was just amazing.
Liz Booker: So what’s the, what’s the thing with women pilots and horses?
Erika Armstrong: Isn’t that funny? So one of my things I do on the side is I actually research brains, pilot brains. There’s actually a personality that is drawn to aviation. So I, I’ve also found that there’s a personality of women that are in aviation.
And we do have this weird connection between horses and aviation. And I, for me, I think it’s that connection with something that can’t directly communicate with you. Being on a horse [00:27:00] makes you. Forget yourself. You don’t think about yourself anymore. All you’re doing is paying attention to this creature and trying to understand what it’s saying, what it wants from you.
I think that same skill that women have for flying airplanes and riding horses are actually the same access in the brain. I think women pilots when they are in the airplane are much more able to listen to that airplane. Airplanes speak to you. When it has a problem, it tells you. You just have to be, pay attention to it.
I think there’s a, there’s some segment in the brain that that personality and it’s the thrill and a little bit of a, you know, adrenaline rush riding horses. I think it’s the same thing. The reason why we are drawn to aviation too.
Liz Booker: I mean, you’re controlling this giant animal, you know, it’s got to give you a little confidence boost that you can control a giant machine, right?
Erika Armstrong: Absolutely, right. They’re both magnificent beasts. Right. One’s a horse, yeah.
Liz Booker: This word chick is a little provocative for some [00:28:00] people. So why did you choose to use that on the cover of the book?
Erika Armstrong: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to throw it all back in their faces. That’s the absolute truth, right? So we take a negative connotation and to be able to just put in the spotlight, tongue in cheek, and say, Look, yep, you can call me whatever you want.
Doesn’t matter. I’m still in the captain’s seat of that airplane. Doesn’t matter what word you use to call who I am. That’s not going to change my position and my power. It’s just kind of a, you know, kind of throw it back at it. It’s funny cause I’ve never had a guy say, you know, I’m offended by it, but I’ve had a ton of women.
I just had one, like just maybe 10 days ago, who just read me the right act telling me that I was out there. soliciting sex by calling myself a chick in the cockpit. I’m like, yeah, I’m like, what? So yes they were, they’re, they’ve been the toughest critics, but it’s okay. I’m not here to please everybody and neither should you.
You are not here to please people. You are [00:29:00] there to be yourself, to be authentic. It’s hard to do that sometimes. You’re not going to please everybody, it doesn’t matter. Just make sure you can be comfortable with yourself. Humor, I’ve learned, has gotten me through a lot of intense moments. So I, I’m throwing that out there and I, and I’m not going to change it.
Liz Booker: People want to know where you are now, like, where are you in your personal life? How are your kids? How’s the relationship that you talked about at the end of the book, if you’re willing to talk about that, and, and where are you going professionally?
Erika Armstrong: My oldest daughter, it’s her last year of high school, so she’s already sent out her college applications, so I’m freaking out a little bit that she’s already heading off to college.
My other daughter, she’s in 10th grade, so a couple years left. I’ve been having so much fun with them, even though they’re teenagers. We still have so much fun, and I’m so appreciative that I’ve been able to be here for them. The relationship in the book, he ended up moving to the other side of Colorado.
I’m [00:30:00] still here, so. But life is good. So I think you’ll all appreciate the irony after reading the book. I got hired at SkyWest. I was going to go back into the regional flying again. And the week before I was going into ground school, I got a phone call saying, Hey, you were supposed to be Denver based.
That’s where I live, but we’ve changed our contract. So you’re going to have to go to Cincinnati. So that means 20 days on the road in Cincinnati and I just, I couldn’t do it. So they’ve, you know, held a slot for me, but I’ve postponed all of that. I’m working for advanced air crew Academy doing corporate pilot training.
I was getting ready to go back to sky West again. My other daughter was old enough to drive now. And, so last year in March, I was driving to brunch to go meet my two best friends and I got hit by a drunk driver. So I’ve got I lost my hearing in my left ear And there’s some peripheral damage in there so I can’t [00:31:00] equalize with air pressure so Long story short, you know what?
Sometimes life’s just put you where you need to be. Of course, after dealing with that loss again, and hoping that my hearing was going to come back and all the damage that came with it. First of all, I’m, I’m glad to be here. The driver’s no longer alive. So my thankfulness is. You know, in that deep that I’m still here and I am also teaching at MSU in Denver in their aviation department.
I am having a blast with the next generation of pilots coming into aviation. And then I’m also just now, recently in the last few weeks, entering heavy jet aircraft sales. So I’m super excited about this. I still get to be in aviation. I still get to have my… 500, 000 followers and share my stories with them and I’m trying some new elements of aviation that I probably would never have gotten to be in if I hadn’t been for the car accident.
I learned, [00:32:00] you know, especially during this book that, you know, I’m going to have all this crap thrown at me and I am going to embrace it and stand on the top of that pile and see what I can do next. So that, that’s where I’m at.
Liz Booker: Erika, I’m stunned by that. You can’t get a break, lady, my goodness. Oh, wow. So is that the only physical effect?
Erika Armstrong: Yeah, that’s all that’s left over. In this, the hard part is the inner ear is just, there’s not a lot of replacement parts for it. The problem, what happens with the brain when it has a sudden hearing loss is it replaces it with a tone. So I have this crazy tinnitus thing that I’ve never had before.
And so the first few months was just, I mean, truly, absolutely drove me crazy because it, you notice it the most when it’s quiet, I think all pilots have just a little bit of tinnitus or that maybe a little bit of hearing loss. This was different. There’s a whole other level. So I’ve been working with the medical doctors outside of the [00:33:00] FAA, so that I can at least get a third class medical.
So I’m trying to do it right, make sure that I do all the steps that they’re telling me to do. But they’ve all told me that I need to eliminate the ability to Fly under the commercial license. So ATP license. So third class medical is what I’m hoping for now.
Liz Booker: I am grateful for you that if that’s all that you have left over from that accident, I’m so sorry it happened.
But yeah, I mean it really probably puts into perspective As much as this year has put into perspective for everyone what we need to be grateful for and what our priorities need to be. Wow. It’s been a rough year for a lot of people. A lot of people in aviation a lot of students have had their training interrupted.
I mean, for you, if you had been going in, who knows if you would have been able to progress at all at this point. And then careers, [00:34:00] people taking early retirement, being furloughed. It just feels really bleak. Do you see anything bright in the future for those people who are hanging on?
Erika Armstrong: I do! So my major is in economics, so I’m always looking at the big picture of the airline industry.
All you have to do today is go Google the Dow Jones Transportation Index, and it’s going to give you a good idea of where we’re back at. All you student pilots out there, You guys, I promise you, in 18 months, you’re going to be rockin and rollin The airlines, even in business aviation, because that’s where I work in business aviation, so I’ve, I’ve worked with like 500 different flight departments, I see what’s happening out there.
Business aviation has been thriving. We have, our tuition charts that we’ve been planning over the next 10 years are thrown out the window. The airlines, I think, just kind of overshot their goals. I mean, we just didn’t know what this pandemic was going to do. So we have retired so many [00:35:00] pilots early, it is mind boggling.
Now that we’ve got the vaccine just on the horizon, they’re just now getting it out there. If, if it works, you’re going to see our industry struggling to fill those pilot seats. I just saw a regional airline is getting ready to, to get started again and do some mass hiring. So all you student pilots, CFIs.
In 18 months, you’re going to email me and say, thank you for telling me to hang in there because barring any others, you know, gigantic economic disaster. Aviation has got a one year’s worth of pent up travel and pilot training and you guys are going to come in at the perfect time. So Erica at achickinthecockpit. com is my email. You can email me.
Liz Booker: I just want to thank you for your courage in sharing this story. That was the thing that struck me most about this was just, like what you’re saying, being able to be authentic and [00:36:00] share those. personal details with the world. You really have to be comfortable with yourself to be able to do that.
I think it’s very brave and I just want to thank you so much for sharing it with us and sharing your time with me tonight and in being my first interview. Thank you. I could not have asked for a better first guest because you’ve done so many of these and you mentored me through this whole process. So thank you.
Erika Armstrong: Oh, you did awesome. And for all those listening, I’m so happy that you guys are all here and you’re all joining in on this and I’m so excited to see you as we move all through the other books that we’re going to read. It’s such a great way to increase the depth of all of our experiences by sharing other people’s knowledge and experiences so looking forward to seeing everybody.
Liz Booker: Thank you, Erika.
Thank you so much for joining me on the Aviatrix book review. I hope you enjoyed it. Please like and subscribe and turn on notifications and share with your friends and join us next month when we’ll be talking with Lauren Kessler, the [00:37:00] author of The Happy Bottom Riding Club, The Life and Times of Poncho Barnes. I look forward to our book discussions next month. Blue skies, everyone.
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