How I Made it to “The Show”: THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

By Captain Donald E. Lyle, Southwest Airlines

I have had the honor and privilege to be a professional aviator for 40 years, it is all I ever wanted to do. I do not have 20/20 vision and had been told multiple times that I would never make it. Yet here I am a little over a year from mandatory retirement from a U.S. major airline at age 65 and trying to see what the next chapter in my aviation career looks like. I am living proof that if you want something bad enough, you will make it happen. I did it, and so can you.

When I was in fourth grade, we were studying flight and our science book had an extra credit assignment: talk to a pilot and ask them various questions about the topics in the chapter. Pretty jazzed, I took the book home and asked my mom where we could find a pilot to talk to in our hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. She called United Airlines at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, and they told her to come down the next Saturday afternoon and that they would have someone for me to talk to. Waiting in the operations office with my sheet of questions, a DC-6 crew walked in the door from the ramp and came right over to me. The Captain introduced himself, the First Officer, and the Flight Engineer and asked if I was Don. He said that he understood that I was working on a science project, and the three of them would sit there and answer every question I had. I am positive they had no idea the impact that a few minutes of their time had on a kid in Omaha, Nebraska on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Never underestimate the potential of spending a couple of minutes talking with someone.

In my sophomore year in high school, we had a science elective called Aerospace 1, which was private ground school. The teacher, Anders Christensen, was also a flight instructor and would sign you off to take the private written exam if you passed the course. The class had an optional flight where a student would plan and fly one leg of a triangle in a C-172 with Mr. Christensen and two other students. That was all it took. Near the end of the semester, I asked Mr. Christensen where I could study aviation in college, and he told me about the aviation program at the University of North Dakota. My dad and I visited UND the following summer and I knew then that I was on my way to Grand Forks after high school.

During enrollment for classes the summer before my first year at UND, an Air Force Captain was making the rounds among the incoming first-year students to encourage them to sign up for Air Force ROTC. I told him that I was going to major in aviation, and he advised me to consider something else because “…you will never make it because you wear glasses.” My dad was sitting next to me and smiled, the Captain had no idea to whom he was talking. I graduated from UND in 1980 with a degree in Aviation Administration, a commercial/instrument/multi, a CFII, and about 1300 flight hours.

I have had the honor of serving my country in the United States Navy and Naval Reserve as an F-14 Radar Intercept Officer (RIO). I was a Naval Flight Officer (NFO) because I did not have 20/20 vision and thus did not meet the physical requirements to be a Navy Pilot. I continued to fly on the civilian side while on active duty when a Navy friend and I bought a Cherokee 140. My time in the Navy did afford me the opportunity to fly a host of tactical jet simulators which I could log as simulator time in my civilian logbook, practice carrier landings, and keep my instrument skills sharp. Upon leaving active duty, I joined the Naval Reserve and continued to fly the F-14 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area while beginning my civilian airline career with Atlantic Southeast Airlines, a Delta Connection regional carrier.

The major airlines (or The Show as we referred to them at the regionals) began to interview and hire in the mid to late 1990s and I applied and interviewed at several of them. I still have the rejection letter from Delta Airlines thanking me for interviewing, but they could not hire me because I was not 20/20. I had applied at Southwest Airlines during one of the brief “windows” in 1997 when they would accept applications. At the time Southwest was the hardest major job to get because their minimums were so high, and you had to have a B-737 type rating just to interview. I had the type and three times their minimums, I figured they had to at least call me. They did and they explained that it was how a person fit into the Company culture that was important, not whether you wore glasses or not. In June 1997 I got the call that changed my life: Southwest Airlines had a new-hire class date for me, and I was headed to The Show.

What have I learned in taking the road less traveled? First, there are those all the way up the aviation ladder that will tell you that you will never make it. This is usually because they are not going to advance from their present position for whatever reason. Use these negatives as motivation to keep moving forward. Second, if you do not genuinely believe you can make it, you cannot convince someone else you can. This is especially important in an interview where they are trying to get to know you. Third, look for opportunities in every situation. It may not be the ideal position you want, but you can still learn something. This is an exciting time to be considering a career in aviation, author your story.