Chapter 11

The following week was a blur of activity for Thad and John. Each of the pilots was allotted a half hour of sim-time to prepare and then a half hour for testing. Even then, the system was slow and was quickly backing up.

A solution was found when Thad discovered that the Blue squadron wasn’t using any of their simulator time. Max had already selected his pilots without any evaluation. He had signed on older, more experienced pilots. People that he knew and had flown with in the past. It was their general feeling that they already knew how to fly and didn’t need any practice.”

When he realized what was happening, Thad started sending his pilots to access the unused slots on the days Blue squadron wasn’t using. Once that started, the evaluations sped up. But even with the accelerated schedule, they still had a backlog of pilots to test. Adding to that were pilots who started requesting a second chance. They claimed that they would have a better chance if they had just had more practice time. Even when they begged, Morse refused to allow them to use time that had already been allocated to the student pilots. The best they could hope for was a retest after all the other pilots had been tested.

The biggest surprise was a mousey little pilot who bombed on his test flight. Thad was irritated that this pilot was even being considered, which is why he asked John about him. “John, why did you recommend this dud. He can hardly walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Morse chuckled, “Skipper, I know he’s not the ideal pilot, but just talk to him. He might not be able to tell left from right, but he’s got other talents we need.”