Flight School: The First 6 Months – Part 1

I’ve been a bit absent from my blog lately. It hasn’t been due to a lack of creativity. Ideas have been stacking up in a list on my phone, but I’ve been a bit short on time to put those ideas into posts. I started the first intensive phase of flight school in May and have needed to make studying my priority.

I have a bit more time to write now, but before I get back into posting recipes, yoga flows, personal growth topics, etc., I wanted to dedicate a post (or two) to what I’ve been up to these past 6 months at flight school.

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If you know me personally or read this post (I got selected for flight school!), you know that in January I reported to NAS Pensacola to pursue training towards my dream of being a Coast Guard helicopter pilot.

After two weeks of quarantine, I had my first day which consisted of checking in with the Navy Schools Command and the Coast Guard Liaison Office. Aside from some first-day-nerves, it wasn’t bad at all; just some admin paperwork.

The first major hurdle of flight school is getting an “Upchit” from the Naval Aerospace Medical Institute (NAMI). The Upchit is a sheet of paper that says you’re medically qualified to train and fly. The standards to be medically cleared for flight duties are stringent, but in theory everyone who makes it to this point should be fine since being medically cleared is part of the application process for flight school. Still, sometimes things are missed in the original flight physical, and I know people who were medically cleared and then disqualified upon arrival to flight school. That’s why they call it the “NAMI whami.”

I was pretty nervous that morning because I knew that medical stuff was relatively out of my control. Other reasons people got kicked out or left flight school were mostly in their control, but something physically wrong with your body or eyes or blood is relatively difficult to control.

Luckily everything went smoothly, and I was on to the next step, the APIT. I’m not sure what APIT actually stands for, but it’s a physical fitness test. Normally it’s a 2 minutes of pushups followed by 2 minutes of sit-ups followed by a 1.5 mile run. Recently they changed the sit-ups to a plank for as long as you can hold, but I’m not sure if that was just to accommodate social distancing during the pandemic or if it’s a permanent change. Either way, the standards are relatively easy to meet. Everyone in my group passed by a good amount.

Next was the Intermediate Survival Swim and CPR course (9 days of training). Having grown up as a swimmer and lifeguard, this was my jam, but for some it was a challenge. Evaluated events included:

• Treading water for 2 minutes then prone floating for an additional 7 minutes wearing a flight suit, vest, helmet, gloves, and boots
• A jump off the 15-ft diving plank, staying submerged and swimming underwater to the 15 yard line wearing a flight suit and boots
• Swimming 1 mile in a flight suit (goggles optional)

This part of training was mainly to give people confidence in the water in case we ever find ourselves in that emergency situation. There is a good amount of practice leading up to each graded event, and you get up to three tries to pass each thing. Some people were set back and put in a remedial swim course before trying the course again.

After swim, I had about a month to wait before my next class. This brought me until the end of March.

Ethics was an hour-long classroom training and Naval History was formatted as a tour of the National Naval Aviation Museum with a Navy Officer and a Historian. It was pretty interesting to hear the stories of the characters behind the aircraft displayed in the museum.

Another month later, around the end of April, I was sent an email to “class up for NIFE 2129.”

I should clarify that all the months of waiting in between are not meant to be there. Sometimes people go directly from one phase of training to the next without any hold-ups. Other times, since Pensacola is on the Gulf Coast, hurricanes and tropical storms delay training and classes get backed up. Not surprisingly, aviation training is highly dependent on weather.

Classing up for NIFE 2129 meant that I would be in class 2129 (the 29th class of 2021) for the next 8 weeks of training (or so I thought). I completed the flight suit fitting, gear issue, and orientation day with this class and then I got sick the day I was supposed to start academic classes. I woke up with a sore throat and decided not to risk getting others sick, especially with the pandemic still going on.

The tricky thing about getting sick here is that if you’re in a training phase when you get sick, you have to go to medical and get a “down chit.” Then once you feel better you have to go back and get a new Upchit. This Upchit process isn’t like the full flight physical, but it’s still an administrative burden. So even though I was only sick about 5 days, I ended up getting set back 3 weeks.

I’m going to break this post here because it’s getting pretty long, but you can find Part 2 here if you want to read on!

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Cheers!

Sarah