Quand on parle d'un Balado nécessaire, eh bien, le voici. Bernard Cantin est médecin spécialiste depuis plus de 25 ans. Avec moi, il jase, analyse et réfléchit. Il critique certes, mais apporte des idées et solutions éclairantes sur la santé. Il sait ce qui aiderait pour vrai.
[00:00:00] Ladies and gentlemen welcome to The 9Gs Podcast, An Aviation Podcast, Episode 16 with
[00:00:07] Obed Masini Before introducing Obed, just let me tell you something
[00:00:11] about the podcast.
[00:00:13] This will be the last episode of the Hong Kong series.
[00:00:16] We're gonna look forward to a new series, I don't know the name right now.
[00:00:20] For now, two days episode special guest is Obed Masini.
[00:00:25] Obed Masini is Zimbabwean cargo pilot flying the Boeing 747-8 for Cathy Pacific.
[00:00:31] Before arriving in Hong Kong, he flew for various airlines in Africa.
[00:00:36] Since his first flight 42 years ago, he flew more than 10 times of aircraft from the first
[00:00:41] officer position to the base captain position.
[00:00:44] Is as well the host of the pilot Obed Instagram account and YouTube channel.
[00:00:50] I hope you will enjoy this episode even if there is poor audio quality coming from the
[00:00:54] recording system I'm using.
[00:00:56] Anyway, thank you very much for listening to this last episode of the Hong Kong series.
[00:01:02] Thanks very much for joining me, Obed.
[00:01:06] Yes, my problem.
[00:01:08] Yeah, sorry, you're currently in Penang.
[00:01:11] Yeah, I'm a man of love in Penang.
[00:01:13] I'm here for two days, got here yesterday evening.
[00:01:15] Oh, okay, you're flying a lot right now.
[00:01:18] I guess you have a busy schedule being afraid of pilots.
[00:01:22] Yeah, because you know, the freighters, even the passenger aircraft to allow them to remove
[00:01:28] the seats and they're putting freight on them.
[00:01:31] So the freighter business is really busy.
[00:01:33] Yeah, I can't imagine.
[00:01:35] So you have a lot of restrictions especially first of all, the hotel restriction in layover
[00:01:42] and then as well you have the crunching restriction back in Hong Kong.
[00:01:45] So how do you cope with that?
[00:01:47] Is it a lot of indoor life?
[00:01:50] Yeah, it's a lot of indoor life.
[00:01:51] You know the problem is the actual flying is still the same.
[00:01:55] It's still fantastic once you get on the airplane.
[00:01:57] It's the process in between, between getting from flight dispatch to the airplane itself
[00:02:04] when you're leaving is not difficult.
[00:02:07] The process is when you get off the airplane now to go home or to go to the hotel everywhere
[00:02:13] this each country seems to have its own thing.
[00:02:16] If at least all the countries I think got together and had one common policy, it would make things much easier.
[00:02:26] When you get to destination like Penang for example in Malaysia
[00:02:30] you have to do the usual screening temperature check
[00:02:33] and then you have to fill out the declaration to say that you're not suffering from any of the symptoms and so on.
[00:02:39] And then they give you a piece of paper which tells you that you must stay in your location
[00:02:45] as in staying in your hotel.
[00:02:47] It's become a little bit easier in Penang because in Malaysia at least because now we just stay in the hotel
[00:02:54] we don't have to restrict necessarily to the room but we have to stay within the hotel which is better than before.
[00:03:01] Yeah, you don't have any mandatory testings in all the countries.
[00:03:06] Not all the countries we do Hong Kong, we do Dubai, we do
[00:03:14] Kalamba in Sri Lanka.
[00:03:16] Yeah, they do mandatory testing, they do the nose thing and all that and Hong Kong over time.
[00:03:23] Even if you go away to a destination where you come back the same day is come back and still do another test.
[00:03:30] Yeah, this is pretty weird it's kind of pain to be tested even if you don't live the aircraft.
[00:03:35] I mean you don't do the turnaround, you're still tested at the time.
[00:03:39] Yeah, if I go to Taipei and come back to Hong Kong when I come back I do a test.
[00:03:43] If I do the flight they don't fly the next day same thing.
[00:03:46] You never know if the stick is contaminated with this COVID test.
[00:03:53] Yeah so it's a strange thing going on.
[00:03:57] I've done I think I was counting the other day because I keep all the COVID test forms.
[00:04:02] I've done 14 COVID tests in the last six weeks.
[00:04:06] Hopefully it's not a nose COVID test, it's only a speed COVID test for you.
[00:04:11] No it's only a speed which is great.
[00:04:13] The nose one is uncomfortable here.
[00:04:16] The nose one you do in Kalamba, that's the nose one.
[00:04:19] Oh Christ, even if you have to do it only once.
[00:04:22] Yeah, it's not painful, it's just uncomfortable I would say.
[00:04:26] Yeah, it's very uncomfortable, it's not a kind of usual area of your body that you discover.
[00:04:31] Yes exactly.
[00:04:33] Yeah, kind of strange.
[00:04:35] Great so you're right now in Penang so you stay for two days.
[00:04:38] Did you do some flights before that?
[00:04:40] I'm just after leaving Hong Kong or it's kind of two sectors for you?
[00:04:44] Yeah two sectors tomorrow I leave and go to Nampen in Cambodia and then to Nampen to Hong Kong.
[00:04:52] I do a lot of these flights because I'm an instructor and as an instructor I'm involved with training new people who come on to the airplane
[00:05:01] because right now they're moving a number of pilots from the trip or seven which is not doing much work
[00:05:06] because so I've passed it here.
[00:05:08] So they're moving them to the 747 to at least eventually relieve some of us
[00:05:15] because eventually we are going to burn out and we guys on the 747.
[00:05:19] So they're bringing on some more people just to give us some breathing space and give us some time off
[00:05:24] when we need some leave and so on.
[00:05:27] So which is a good plan by the company actually because we'll be burnt out to VHT because we're flying so hard.
[00:05:33] So we need some help.
[00:05:35] Yeah definitely I've heard some pilot stories, some 747 pilot stories that told us that they're flying like 95, 100 hours
[00:05:44] just something like that and it looks like very intense.
[00:05:47] Yes it's quite intense can be.
[00:05:50] I think the main thing that it affects the operation is eventually you start getting long term fatigue
[00:05:57] which can now start manifesting us simple mistakes and silly mistakes in the airplane in the operation.
[00:06:03] So the company's aware of that so that's why they're doing the move of bringing on some extra help from the fleet cylinder
[00:06:10] that are not doing much flying and it's easy to convert somebody from the 747 onto the 747 because it's a very similar operation.
[00:06:18] Yeah exactly it's pretty strange because in one hand we have you guys that fly a lot in the other hand
[00:06:25] we have us that don't fly a lot and both could be safety issues so it's kind of just hard just to find the balance between those two kind of population.
[00:06:35] Yes exactly yeah pretty good.
[00:06:38] So just back up a little bit or a lot for you so can you tell to the audience where do you come from and how did you get into aviation?
[00:06:48] Okay my origins are Sim Babui. I was born in Harari in Sim Babui and then as a young young only three years old my father and my mother moved to Zambia
[00:07:03] which is where I ended up growing most of my early life I grew up in Zambia and I went to school there for the most part primary secondary school
[00:07:13] and the primary school I went to was a school called Silver Rest Primary School in Lusaka.
[00:07:21] It's just outside the capital city of Zambia and this school was just opposite the international airport
[00:07:32] so you can understand living at the school which is opposite the international airport at break time and on weekends it was a boarding school all I saw was airplanes landing and taking off and I knew that's what I wanted to do.
[00:07:47] I got to place at the university in Lusaka in Zambia but I didn't want to go there.
[00:07:52] I went there for I think it was three weeks because it's three weeks into the university I got called for an interview to do a flying course at one of the big training schools that was in Lusaka
[00:08:06] so I abandoned university to take my first lab which is what I wanted to do to fly airplanes
[00:08:12] and I went to his flying college in Zambia it's called Zastie Zambia Air Service Training Institute Zastie
[00:08:19] so I went there and that's what I did my first flight ever in the Cessna 150.
[00:08:25] How was it? It was back in which year? That was Cessna 150 that was in 1979.
[00:08:34] You knew the good time of aviation I mean the construction of the aviation at a time so how was it for fighting there in the Cessna 150?
[00:08:43] It was great because it just wanted to do.
[00:08:48] You know, the time when I looked when my parents lived was a small town called Manta in Zambia
[00:08:55] so when they got me to boarding school it required me to fly from Manta to Dola which is the second city in Zambia and then from Dola to Lusaka
[00:09:07] and the first ever time I flew ever in an airplane going to school was on a DC-3 from Manta to Dola and then to Lusaka
[00:09:18] and I looked at the DC-3 as I walked up to it to get inside and I was just bored and I said yes this is what I wanted to do from that day on.
[00:09:28] I wanted to fly airplanes. Little did I know but 25 years later I would fly the DC-3.
[00:09:34] Yeah really?
[00:09:35] And I flew the DC-3. Yeah I flew the DC-3 not quite 25 years I flew it 80 years later so I flew the DC-3 from the time I actually started to fly.
[00:09:47] I started flying as a passenger and then flying coming through and getting my flying license.
[00:09:55] I eventually did fly the DC-3 as a core pilot with Ethiopian Airlines.
[00:10:00] Finally back in which year at the time around the beginning of the 80s?
[00:10:06] Early 1982 to 1983 and then in 1983 by Vincent Babwy my country had become independent two years earlier
[00:10:16] and I went back to Zimbabwe and joined Zimbabwe and there was a core pilot on the vicount or viscount.
[00:10:27] I think?
[00:10:28] Yeah, I called it.
[00:10:29] So I was a core pilot on vicounts. I flew the vicount for 84 years, 700-800 then I flew my first jet, the Boeing 737-200.
[00:10:42] Yes, the 300 did not exist then so the Boeing 737-200 was the most advanced at that time.
[00:10:49] And then from there I moved on to the 7 or 7 as a core pilot to this Boeing 7 or 7 and then very quickly I went back in 1988 to the BA-146 which the company had just bought.
[00:11:05] The BA-146-200 from my command I became a captain on that, on the 146-200.
[00:11:12] I think I was 27 at that time just to almost 27 years old.
[00:11:17] It's pretty young for a captain.
[00:11:19] Yeah, those days for sure even now I suppose.
[00:11:22] Yeah, even now. So you stayed in Africa, flying the BA-146 site was Avril I think?
[00:11:28] They call it Avril now, yeah.
[00:11:30] Then you stayed in Africa or did you move to Hong Kong at that moment?
[00:11:34] Yeah, then I stayed in Africa basically back in Zimbabwe in 1982, early 1983 through to 1989.
[00:11:45] So I flew the 146 command and I moved to the Boeing 7 or 7 command in Zimbabwe as well.
[00:11:52] And then in 1989 I moved to Hong Kong.
[00:11:56] My former chief pilot who used to be in Zimbabwe had gone to Hong Kong and he was already working for a company in Hong Kong.
[00:12:03] So he came on holiday to Zimbabwe and there was a Christmas party in this was in end of 1988.
[00:12:15] Yeah, and he said he came for the Christmas party at the Gulf Cup so I would happen to be there.
[00:12:21] And he said hey, you know we're looking for people on the 7 or 7 would you be interested to come to Hong Kong?
[00:12:26] I said of course I'll be interested.
[00:12:28] He said okay good, when I get back in January you are sending the application form, fill it in send it back and we can do a phone interview.
[00:12:38] And if you're still interested I will sort everything out and you can plan on coming over to Hong Kong.
[00:12:44] So that's what I did that's what happened there.
[00:12:46] I for interview at a time.
[00:12:48] Yeah.
[00:12:49] So they sent me the ticket and everything and in fact he told me on the phone that I already had the job.
[00:12:56] So all I had to do was sort out my business in Zimbabwe and I arrived in Hong Kong and joined Air Hong Kong which had just got another 0.707.
[00:13:08] So they needed 7 or 7 pilots.
[00:13:11] So my first company in Hong Kong was Air Hong Kong not Cafe Pacific.
[00:13:15] So Air Hong Kong and I went back I was a captain in Zimbabwe, I came to Hong Kong and had to be a first officer again for about six months.
[00:13:27] And then I did the upgrade, we went back into the left seat again.
[00:13:31] So I was back as a captain in early 1990.
[00:13:34] Okay it was in the I am sure it was in the old airports.
[00:13:38] Yes, kite kite airport, great airport.
[00:13:40] Yeah.
[00:13:41] The world wide known airport for the type of wherever you are staying at a time.
[00:13:47] So that was my home base kite kite.
[00:13:50] I had only 1992 basically.
[00:13:53] I moved on to the 0.747 and I've been on the 0.747 pretty much most of that time.
[00:13:58] I became part of the Cafe Pacific family in 1994 when the company basically was Air Hong Kong was brought by Cafe Pacific.
[00:14:08] We just became Cafe Pacific after that.
[00:14:11] And I was already a captain on the 0.747 at that time.
[00:14:15] So I opted to stay in Air Hong Kong as a captain on the 0.747.
[00:14:21] Of course it became Cafe Pacific because all the 0.747s were then taken into Cafe Pacific.
[00:14:27] But I opted to stay on the 0.747 as a captain rather than going to the main passenger side, we should have made me a first officer again.
[00:14:36] So I stayed as a captain until my seniority allowed me to be a captain on the passengers.
[00:14:43] And that's when I became a passenger captain in the 19th, 2007.
[00:14:48] I moved back to the passenger on the 0.747400.
[00:14:52] Yeah.
[00:14:53] And then because of Cafe Pacific decided to leave the passenger market flying the 0.747 and just to remain on the trailer market.
[00:15:01] It was back in 2016.
[00:15:04] And then at that time you remained on the 0.747 fleet but only flying freighters.
[00:15:10] Yes, because they grounded all the year, they discontinued all the passenger 0.747s.
[00:15:15] So yeah, I flew the passenger one from 2007 to 2016 and then I've been on the freighter only now because all the passenger versions have gone.
[00:15:28] Yeah.
[00:15:29] What kind of operation do you prefer the passenger operation or the freighter operation?
[00:15:35] It's a difficult one because there are some aspects of the passenger operation.
[00:15:42] The passenger operation gives you a certain degree of stability because passenger schedules normally just stay as scheduled because that's the schedule for passenger flying and so on.
[00:15:54] Whereas freighter schedules can sometimes change quite easily.
[00:15:58] You can easily have a reschedule and go somewhere else which if you look at it another way is actually exciting because on the freighter we actually have so much variety.
[00:16:11] You see, for example, on the passenger flight when I was doing the passenger I did mostly my favorite was going to San Francisco and London.
[00:16:20] So because my children were at school in England so I'm warning school so I do London flights then go and visit them or sometimes I do the flights and then fly them back home or fly them back to school after the holidays from Hong Kong.
[00:16:34] I take the kids back to school and landed he's around and drive them up to school and then come back and yeah, so that was so that aspect was nice.
[00:16:43] And also the other aspect of course is that you could take your wife with you in my case, my wife came on several flights with me when I had a longer layover and so on.
[00:16:56] So that was good on the other side but the other things you've got to think about on the freighter is that it's very quick.
[00:17:06] The operation is quick when the loading is done you close the doors you're not waiting for connecting passengers.
[00:17:12] You're not waiting for a passenger who hasn't turned up at the gate sometimes and you have to make P.I. announcements to the passengers to tell them or we have to offload the baggage because the passenger hasn't turned up and so on.
[00:17:24] I think you've been on the narrow plane as a passenger when that has happened to you.
[00:17:27] Oh yeah, you know, yeah, we don't have that issue, you know, on the freighter.
[00:17:32] But the variety on the 747 freighter right now is excellent.
[00:17:37] I come here, I go to Singapore, I go to Jakarta, I also do long haul, I go to India, I go to the United States, I go as far as Miami, I can go to Mexico City,
[00:17:46] so the variety is fantastic. So from a flying point of view it's great, it's the greatest fleet to be on and the airplane of course is fantastic, both the 400 and the dayshade.
[00:17:57] Yeah, and you can have a second house in Anchorage.
[00:18:02] Absolutely, like a freighter's guy.
[00:18:04] Yeah, you can have another place in Anchorage here. But Anchorage is a great place.
[00:18:09] Yeah, apparently for the countryside everything that you can do like floodplain flights, I like if you want to fish, you go fishing, if you want to ski you go skiing.
[00:18:19] And yeah, that's, that looks like a very good place.
[00:18:23] It is here, it's just I certainly think I could live in Anchorage.
[00:18:28] Everybody says I went into the ringtap but I've been through a lot of winters in Anchorage and it's still okay.
[00:18:33] You know, I can handle it. It's a nice place.
[00:18:36] Yeah, and that's, I think it's kind of strange operation for you because sometimes you take off from Hong Kong with a pretty good weather, then you go to Anchorage,
[00:18:44] it's minus 20 degrees ice in Kineho.
[00:18:48] Yeah, do you take off again from Anchorage to I don't know Los Angeles?
[00:18:53] It's like 20 degrees Celsius.
[00:18:56] And yeah, it's kind of I think flying wise and like to build not to be like experience because you don't need obviously to be like experience but for the experience, I think it's very,
[00:19:07] it's very, it's very nice. The variety of all that playing experience is nice.
[00:19:12] Yes, it is. It's, that's the thing I say about it is a segment in that sense and also the certain good aspects of flying freight is when you get to your destination.
[00:19:27] It takes you once you, for example, once you've landed Anchorage, you're in the United States.
[00:19:32] You clear customs and everything in Anchorage. So from Anchorage onwards is domestic flying.
[00:19:37] It's a domestic flight, you see?
[00:19:39] So when you land, yeah, when you landed any destination from Anchorage, Miami, Houston, Dallas, Stomach, it takes 10 minutes to get off the airplane.
[00:19:49] And within 15 minutes here in the transport to the hotel and you have the hotel in 20 minutes with 18 cabin crew.
[00:19:56] The passengers getting off, dollars took up sometimes 45 minutes, sometimes an hour to get through for all the cabin crew to get on the bus and all that's just.
[00:20:06] And you're so tired, apparently you just want to get out but you can't because you're waiting for the rest of the crew.
[00:20:11] Yeah, yeah. So that's it. I do them like.
[00:20:14] Yeah, especially at 1 o'clock in the morning when you wait at Bangalore that everybody is getting out of the airplane.
[00:20:19] The cabin crew is clearing everything and then you wait and you'll just have the hotel at 4 o'clock in the morning.
[00:20:25] Yeah, yeah.
[00:20:26] With the freighter you're out and gone within 15 minutes.
[00:20:30] Yeah, exactly. And I was lucky to do those two type of operations, the freighter operation and the passenger operations because I fly in your sister company.
[00:20:41] And I have to admit that freighter ops is kind of relaxed because you don't have passengers, you don't have complaining passengers.
[00:20:49] You just cook your own meal.
[00:20:51] Yes, you don't have the service but it's relaxed.
[00:20:54] It's relaxed here.
[00:20:56] So it's actually much better with two on full discreet.
[00:20:59] I like it.
[00:21:01] Just back up a little bit because I have a question about the African licenses.
[00:21:06] We don't know a lot about how it works in Africa for the licenses.
[00:21:11] We know a lot about Europe, a lot about North America and here in Hong Kong.
[00:21:15] But do you have your own license or is it kind of international license that you can easily convert to the Hong Kong one?
[00:21:23] Yeah, well, the African licenses, you know that every country that's an IKO member state international civil aviation organization.
[00:21:34] They have to follow certain guidelines for the licensing of a crew.
[00:21:40] Now some countries like South Africa, Ethiopia and even Zambia and so on have got obviously their own flight training schools.
[00:21:49] But where I trained for example when I did my training and got my PPL first in Zambia all the exams that we did and so on were the British exam.
[00:22:00] So the exams would come from the UK and the theory and everything we did was UK exams and then they'd send them back to the UK just as people do international exams for Cambridge or Oxford University in all the schools around the world is similar.
[00:22:18] So the license I got in Zambia and the license I held from Zimbabwe was an international license when I got to Hong Kong all I had to do was aviation law.
[00:22:31] Yeah, to learn the differences that I needed to understand for Hong Kong and I was issued with a Hong Kong license.
[00:22:40] The license is a good license. It's just because people have no connection maybe with Africa they think it's a different scene. It's actually the same.
[00:22:50] The same rules, the same people who train people in Europe, train all African pilots and we do the same exams, everything's the same.
[00:23:00] Yeah, it's kind of standardized.
[00:23:03] Yeah.
[00:23:04] How long have you been flying right now? I think it's more than 40 years.
[00:23:08] I started flying. Let me see.
[00:23:12] Well, I started flying first time. The first flight was 17, 1978 to now. So how many years is that?
[00:23:20] 22, plus 20, 42 years.
[00:23:25] 42 years. Yeah, a very long flying career.
[00:23:29] What's next for you? I mean, do you have any age limitation flying here at Hong Kong or you can fly up to 80 years.
[00:23:39] 80 years.
[00:23:41] Well, the rule of most countries is you can fly up to 65. So I've got just nearly seven years to go.
[00:23:49] So, yeah. But I don't think the my intention is to
[00:23:55] I would like actually to give back somehow the my aviation experience.
[00:24:00] So am I doing some consultancy work or certainly teaching?
[00:24:06] I like to teach. I've been training people for a long time.
[00:24:10] So I think I'm going to be in a training group or teaching groups.
[00:24:14] I'm way that sort of thing maybe do my mind tend to do my own thing anyway of tutoring and teaching.
[00:24:21] That sort of thing.
[00:24:23] Yeah, you've been teaching a lot especially in your HTC position in your company company.
[00:24:28] Yeah.
[00:24:29] And then you advise for the youngsters?
[00:24:32] Yeah.
[00:24:33] You know, I think what they must understand these youngsters is that everything that they're being taught at flight school
[00:24:43] is very applicable when they get into the airlines.
[00:24:47] It's applicable in the sense that that knowledge that you gain may be the basic knowledge and then it to be meshed into what you need to know
[00:24:57] to apply that knowledge for flying the big jets or heavy turboprops within an airline.
[00:25:04] And it's not sort of finish college, get your CPL and then forget about all the books and stuff that you learned at flying college.
[00:25:15] Keep that information. Keep it with you because quite a lot of it you'll be surprised.
[00:25:19] You'll actually refer to it even when you're flying a highly technical 787 or something.
[00:25:25] There's a lot of stuff that you they're teaching you now at college that you should keep and is applicable.
[00:25:32] So it's quite important to keep that.
[00:25:36] Yeah, to keep the knowledge up to date as well.
[00:25:40] I think you saw a lot of students, not students but let's say young second officers that you were flying with and that you trained.
[00:25:49] That was sometimes a bit tough. Let's say not so sharp on the knowledge and there is nothing more tiring than having a trainee that is not fit in the knowledge.
[00:26:02] Yes, because you work for him and you just want him to just to perform.
[00:26:08] If he doesn't add the knowledge, it's not going to perform well.
[00:26:11] Yeah, I think you know one thing of noticed and it's to do with the generation of pilots coming now.
[00:26:21] When I first started coming across the younger generation now, the millennials let's call them.
[00:26:32] I kept thinking why is it that these youngsters of today don't seem as keen as we were when I was the same age as them.
[00:26:45] Because when I was the same age as them, all I thought about was airplanes, airplanes and that's all I wanted to do was airplanes.
[00:26:53] I think the modern kids now, for example, we knew about the different types of airplanes and the different airlines and so on.
[00:27:06] I must say the kids of today don't know some of these things but quite a lot of the ones that have come across.
[00:27:13] I can point it to narrow plane at an airport and there won't be no hotel plane.
[00:27:18] They have just no idea because they have no idea of the history or aviation of some of the things that came up.
[00:27:26] Not all of them, I'm just saying I've come across some of them and they're in the minority.
[00:27:31] I've got to say they're not the majority, the minority.
[00:27:34] Some of them just surprised me that they've finished their CPO and they can look at the galaxy going past at an airport and they don't know that it's a C5 galaxy.
[00:27:45] They can look at a DC-8 or something and they don't know it.
[00:27:48] I mean these are things which were for aviators in my time, you just knew every single airplane.
[00:27:54] That's not important necessarily to fly airplane but it just to me shows the degree of keenness and interest.
[00:28:02] It makes you think that they're in the job because they want to travel and they want to see the world not necessarily because they want to fly.
[00:28:09] The interest is not the same and this is leading to major issues relating to the motivation.
[00:28:18] Yes, I don't like it.
[00:28:20] Guys, they are more willing to quit.
[00:28:24] Yeah, absolutely.
[00:28:27] I think what it is also with the new generation may be us all the people don't understand them and what I can say about them is that I think they are just as passionate about flying as we were.
[00:28:42] The difference is the generation of today, these kids can multitask and they're not phased by the fact that they might lose their job and so on.
[00:28:52] I can speak to my daughter and she says, if I don't do that then I'll just do this.
[00:28:58] If this happens to me then I'll just change and I won't do that.
[00:29:01] Whereas in our generation if you want to be engineering or you want to be into flying that's all you wanted to do and that's all you did.
[00:29:09] You didn't try and dabble in any other things.
[00:29:12] The kids of today are trying several things while they're still doing their flying.
[00:29:17] So it's when we look at them that they're not interested.
[00:29:21] They're not keen on flying.
[00:29:22] Actually, they are keen.
[00:29:24] They just able to multitask and do several things maybe because of technology more than we could.
[00:29:30] So when we look at them, it seems as if all these kids are just not interested.
[00:29:35] They don't have the passion.
[00:29:36] Actually, they do have the passion for flying.
[00:29:39] They can just multitask more than us all the generation.
[00:29:43] I see it all the time when I come into Hong Kong and I have to do my COVID test.
[00:29:47] And they're filling in all the forms and so on.
[00:29:50] When you've got a younger person dealing with all the documents and so on,
[00:29:55] you're there and you're on your way to go and give your sample within like three or four minutes.
[00:30:01] Get there and there's an older person and all the generation person you'll be there for ten minutes for the same thing
[00:30:08] to print out your form and so on.
[00:30:10] It's just the kids of today have just got the technology in their hands and they know what to do.
[00:30:16] So because of that, they can do that and they still have the passion to fly.
[00:30:20] But they can also do other things.
[00:30:23] Yeah, exactly.
[00:30:25] They have some very good skills like you said at the multitasking,
[00:30:29] the social media mastering and the communication mastering as well.
[00:30:33] That is linked with the social media.
[00:30:36] I think that perhaps there is kind of luck in the relationship.
[00:30:42] The virtual social media thing is not very helping to the relationship that those guys can have.
[00:30:50] Yeah, the other thing I think if I was to say something negative in a way to the millennials and the generations said,
[00:31:01] I just sense that to some extent, some of them don't value experience.
[00:31:12] They want things now.
[00:31:14] They want it now so they graduate from flying college.
[00:31:18] They join an airline within a year or so they want to be captains.
[00:31:24] That's the first question they asked when they join.
[00:31:26] It's only a second officer, our first officer, junior first officer says,
[00:31:29] oh, when do you think I'll be a captain?
[00:31:31] And I'm thinking, well, you really need to work on being an expert at what your position is right now.
[00:31:39] They want to get to the top but they don't want to engage in the climb to get to the top.
[00:31:46] Yeah, huge lack of patience.
[00:31:48] Yes, they want to get there without the working between.
[00:31:53] They don't want the working between. They just want to get to the top.
[00:31:56] And based on my Instagram, the questions I get, I get lots of kids asking me,
[00:32:03] I want to be a pilot.
[00:32:05] What should I do?
[00:32:07] What can I do? How do I become a pilot?
[00:32:10] And I think to myself this is a generation which within seconds can find a particular song,
[00:32:18] a particular video clip on YouTube or a particular song on iTunes or whatever they can do within seconds.
[00:32:25] But this is the same generation that can't go online and search for flight training colleges, schools.
[00:32:32] You know, it's just as easy.
[00:32:35] They want you to give them that information.
[00:32:37] They don't want to do it themselves.
[00:32:39] I'm just talking from my experience on my Instagram, my followers.
[00:32:43] Yeah.
[00:32:44] I mean, questioning is showing that somebody maybe is interesting,
[00:32:49] unless they're questioning just to try and find out if the instructor knows what he or she's talking about.
[00:32:55] But I think a lot of the kids today are actually just very keen.
[00:33:01] They just want to know.
[00:33:03] I think the ones I meet anyway are asking the question just so that they know because they've got,
[00:33:09] they've probably developed their own ideas of how something works or how things,
[00:33:13] something should be done.
[00:33:14] And they want you to give them the knowledge as to why it isn't done like that.
[00:33:18] And if you explain in a certain way that they get it, I find they're very receptive.
[00:33:23] They just think differently from us, but they're very good.
[00:33:27] They're good. They pick up and they could.
[00:33:30] The ones I'm training have excellent.
[00:33:33] They could fly well.
[00:33:35] They have the knowledge and they're very inquisitive and curious.
[00:33:39] It's a hand of I've learned to understand that they just think slightly differently to our generation.
[00:33:46] Yeah, I agree.
[00:33:48] They have a good learning curve and they did you the multitasking skills?
[00:33:52] Yeah.
[00:33:53] And they know how to handle the stuff, especially technical stuff and with the system stuff as well.
[00:33:59] Yeah, yeah.
[00:34:00] They are good.
[00:34:01] And I think the learning curve is good as well.
[00:34:04] Yeah, great.
[00:34:05] Obed, you've been flying for 42 years.
[00:34:08] What's remaining on your aviation bucket list?
[00:34:11] I know you've done a lot from the DC-3 to the Boeing 747 being an STC in your company.
[00:34:17] What's remaining for you now?
[00:34:19] What do you want to do in aviation?
[00:34:21] I think I want to, like I said, I want to leave.
[00:34:24] It's it to be a shame for, and it's always a shame for anybody who's very experienced
[00:34:29] to eventually when they retire, take that knowledge with them.
[00:34:33] So somehow I'm going to leave that knowledge.
[00:34:36] There's a book I'm planning on the line that will be good for students coming up training.
[00:34:45] And the book that I'm going to write is ready to do it's the the meshing of flight college into airline.
[00:34:53] That transition period and was important.
[00:34:57] That's the book I'm writing or I'm starting that soon.
[00:35:02] And I want to leave that legacy.
[00:35:04] You've got to leave something behind of everything you gained.
[00:35:07] So people will use it.
[00:35:09] Yeah, and you have to because for three years of flying is a lot of experience.
[00:35:13] And I think it's a very high value for everybody.
[00:35:16] Yes.
[00:35:17] Can you tell us a bit about your social media because I know we talked a little bit about Instagram?
[00:35:21] Yeah, yeah.
[00:35:22] I find that when I started my Instagram just as a bit of fun actually.
[00:35:28] I just said, oh, it will be a bit of fun for some pictures talk a little bit about airplanes and so on.
[00:35:34] And then I just found that I started getting a lot of traction.
[00:35:38] And people asking me questions about how certain things work and so on.
[00:35:42] So I started putting little clips about mainly the Boeing 747.
[00:35:46] And sometimes just general aviation questions which I found a lot of people at flight schools.
[00:35:51] Even people that are not in aviation that are just interested in aviation started interacting and this interaction that could be more interested in finding out and putting more posts that people wanted to know about.
[00:36:05] So there's a lot of people that follow me on my Instagram that have one nothing to do with aviation.
[00:36:10] They're not pilots, they're not connected to aviation anyway.
[00:36:13] They're lawyers, doctors and so on that are just they're just like aviation and they've just want to know how things work.
[00:36:19] So I've been putting these little clips and from there it just grew people started getting interested in asking me questions.
[00:36:27] And I started putting basically responding to a lot of the questions that were asking out to a little bit of research sometimes and just put it up.
[00:36:36] But a lot of the things are impromptu. I don't plan it. I just think of something on the moment and do a quick video clip and I post it.
[00:36:45] So in many ways, a lot of the people like the fact that it's not scripted.
[00:36:50] I just do it on the spur of the moment and I post it and people seem to like that because of all the posts that I put if I sit down at home and actually edit it and make it look all nice and so on.
[00:37:06] People view it but I don't get as many viewers as something that they just do on the spur of the moment.
[00:37:11] I mean, they are playing. I talk about this. I talked to my colleagues and post it.
[00:37:16] That goes viral. Everybody wants to. That's the kind of information where I do something like that and they just do a little bit of information in it as well.
[00:37:26] Plus interactive chatty and people seem to like that sort of thing.
[00:37:30] Robert, thanks a lot for all the journey. It's been a real pleasure and I think your look will be very nice and I'm just looking forward to reading it.