>> I'm Ken Hans and I'm an international airline captain.
Q: Can you tell us exactly what does it mean to be an international airline captain?
>> Well I fly a 767 and mainly overseas, taking passengers and cargo around the world.
Q: Can you take us through a typical day in your job?
>> Days vary. The trips on flying international can be anywhere from a 3 day trip,
where you could just go from the United States to Europe and back to up to we do up to 13 day trips.
A typical day might be to start off where I live I have to get to where I fly out of,
so that takes a couple of hours of driving.
And then I fly to where my base is.
And from there I would have to sign in, look at the paperwork, the weather, the flight plans,
and then get in an airplane and usually fly to either Europe or Asia from there.
Q: So in a typical month, how many days do you work?
>> Probably work between 12 and 15 days a month.
Q: 12 and 15 days a month and then do you have 12-15 days off, or how does your schedule work?
>> It depends. Based upon your seniority in the system,
they actually have a group of trips and we bid for our trips,
so I need to fly a certain number of hours in a month
and then based upon that, so that could be two five day trips and a four day trip or one 13 day trip,
as long as I fly that number of hours, that's what's important.
Q: What do you love about your job?
>> That it's different every day. That I'm not sitting in an office.
Or that I have a routine that I have to do, that I get to go to a lot of different places
and visit other countries and I fly with different people almost every time I fly,
so it's working with different people.
Q: When you are visiting other countries, do you get to spend some time like traveling around
or is it mostly just a couple of hours and then you're back on the flight?
>> No. Normally if we go someplace, it's a long flight. We'll have 24 hours.
Typically if you got someplace like Europe, we'll have one flight a day there, so we'll take the plane in.
We'll have 24 hours and then when the plane comes in at the same time the next day,
we get on it and we go out.
Q: What are some of the challenges that you face?
>> It's a very highly tested profession.
We get two full physicals a year.
We get simulator testing twice a year and we also,
once a year we get a check in our aircraft, so it's highly regulated.
Q: If someone would want to become an international captain for flying,
how would they prepare to get into this career field?
>> It's something that getting into the airline industry, you have to learn to fly.
There's a couple of different ways to do it.
The way that I did it was I went in through the military.
I was in NROTC in college and the Navy taught me to fly,
which back 30 years ago, cost the Navy a million or so dollars,
so it's good if you can get that kind of thing that the government can teach you.
The only thing is then you owe the Navy time and so I was in the Navy for seven years to do that,
though it was great flying and now the military doesn't hire as many people or to be a pilot,
because they don't need quite as many pilots.
They're keeping the ones they have in.
So it's not as many pilots getting out and getting airline jobs that are from the military.
When I got hired, my company was 96% former military and now it's probably around 60% or so.
The other way to do it is you can go to either an aviation school
or you get your pilot's license and just start trying to build up your hours doing different things.
Q: Is there any type of college major you think that would help to become a pilot?
>> Science and math, I started out as a computer science major,
so I had all the basic science and math before I changed my major to international politics.
So I had that basis, but it's probably good to have that basis in science and math.
Q: And you say that because you have to know like
a lot of the computers and the equipment and understanding how the plane works?
>> Right. And understanding weather, weather patterns, aerodynamics, things like that, that they go through.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about your story and kind of why you fell into being a pilot?
>> Well I decided that I was going to go into the Navy,
but I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do in the Navy.
And in college, between your sophomore and junior year,
the Navy sent us out to see the different phases of the military,
of the Navy, and so they sent us for a week.
We got to be on submarines and a week we got to go drive ships around and a week,
the Marines are actually a branch of the Navy,
a week we go to go play Marine and ride on tanks and things like that,
and then the last week they took us out and they put me in a small jet, an A4,
with just an instructor and I and took us up and flew us around, did acrobatics and things like that,
and let me fly the airplane and when I came back,
talking to my other friends and classmates that were at the training,
I couldn't understand why any of them wanted to do anything else.
I mean that was, it just seemed so much different than anything I was used to.
Q: Any final advice for someone interested in becoming a pilot?
>> For the type of job that I'm doing right now,
if you're the type of person that likes to be home every night,
you're worried about keeping your yard perfect, things like that,
this is probably not a great job for that,
because I'm gone long periods of time and you have to have a very understanding family
that gets along without you while you're gone.
Q: One of the great things is that you actually get to kind of choose where you live,
because you live in the outer banks, correct?
>> That's right. You can live wherever you want to,
as long as you can get to work and since we can fly on our airplanes at no cost,
then we have people that live all around the world and then just travel to go to where they work.
Q: Great. Thank you so much for talking to us.
>> You're welcome.