I Want to Be a . . . Pilot
A Career Gets Off the Ground After Many Lessons in the Sky

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

When Captain Sidney Clark Jr. was a kid, he spent Sunday afternoons watching planes take off and land at airports in Mississippi and, later, in New Jersey. From the first day of kindergarten he wanted to be a pilot.

At the time, though, there were no commercial pilots who were African American. (It would be seven more years before Marlon Green became the first with a major passenger airline, in 1965.) But "if it is something you really want to do," Clark said, "you don't recognize difficulty."

At 16 he began learning to fly, paying for the lessons himself. One year later, even before heading to college, he had his private pilot's license. At that time it required a minimum of 40 hours of flight time, which cost about $12 an hour.

At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Clark studied philosophy and engineering. He flew whenever he had enough money to rent a plane. Some pilots learn to fly in the military; others follow the path that Clark did.

After college he decided to earn his commercial pilot's license despite an instructor telling him that he would never be hired because he was black.

"I just wanted to fly," he said.

He studied with an instructor in Florida and earned his commercial license, allowing him to fly passenger and cargo planes. Clark got a job with US Airways, quickly moving up the ranks. He has been with the airline for nearly 30 years.

Now 54, he is the chief pilot for US Airways at Reagan National Airport. In addition to flying routes from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Europe, he oversees 230 other pilots based in Washington.

Commercial pilots work at all hours, including nights, weekends and holidays, so their families must adjust. Clark's two sons (now grown) even learned to like dad's odd schedule: If he missed a special day such as Christmas, they got to celebrate twice.

Some people are afraid of flying, but Clark compares it to driving a car. "We provide transportation," he said. "That's all we do. We don't think of it as a risk."

Paying attention to detail is crucial. With so many planes in the sky, if a flight is off-schedule by even three minutes, it could mean trouble in the air.

English is the international language of flight, so that's not a problem for American pilots. But understanding accents is important, Clark said. Landing in another country can be tough if the air traffic controller has an accent that is hard to understand.

Knowing about weather is also an important skill to have. Clark has become pretty good at predicting the conditions he'll be flying in.

"We go through a lot of training," he said. "Continuous training. It will not stop until the day we retire."

Meeting people from around the world is one of the best parts of being a pilot, Clark said. He recalled a stop in Frankfurt, Germany, when it struck him he was crossing paths with people of all different cultures: "I am going 'Whoa, it doesn't get any better than this.' "

-- Amy Orndorff

To Air Is Human

Want to know more about the history of commercial aviation?

A new permanent exhibit, "America by Air," opens Saturday at the Air and Space Museum on the Mall. In addition to learning interesting facts (nonstop cross-country flights in the 1950s were a factor in Major League Baseball teams moving west), kids can hop in a simulation cockpit and feel what it's like to pilot a plane.

To learn more, go to http://www.nasm.si.edu/americabyair.