Josh Hunter

My internet adventure is strange. I suppose I’m a minor influencer now. Not my intent, but here we are. So…here’s my social media experience: I’m tap dancing on a landmine. My airline follows me, my union & even the FAA follows me. This is not a good feeling. Any one of them can decide to stick a sword in me & I’m done. My undergrad degree is journalism & I have a desire to write. I kind of wish I didn’t, as there is very little personal benefit to posting. I could fly two hours at the airline a month & make a lot more than I get paid by Twitter. I want to post in a way that is relatable & honest. Not necessarily the Gonzo journalism style, but not the polished publicity you often get. I want you to see me setting my alarm for 02:00, flying the redeye, getting my chain yanked by crew scheduling &, like yesterday, screwing up. I still feel ashamed about being late. I’ll eventually live that down, but I think it’s important to convey that the clock rules my life & I make mistakes sometimes. Posting that way can be a problem. The swords are all pointed at me & every once in a while, I get poked. I took a week off last time I got seriously poked, and tried to learn from it. I’m trying to inspire & educate. Aviation has a bit of an access problem, and the barriers can look impossible to overcome if you don’t have an inside connection. They are not, though, and there are plenty of opportunities if you only know where to look. I want to show you where to look & give you a pat on the back as you start your journey. Or as you help your kids start theirs. I studied journalism in part because I thought the doors to aviation were closed to me, but a friend of my Father’s asked me to come visit in the Wing Commander’s office at Kirtland AFB, NM. As it turned out, he was the Wing Commander & it was his office. My father had helped him go from Enlisted to Officer, then he rose through the ranks. Dad had asked a favor. He noted I’d been paying for my own flying lessons & told me he knew how to make the Air Force pay me to fly. Sounded like a good deal; flying lessons were expensive & I was having a hard time affording it. I was starting to go a month between lessons for finances. So, I agreed & Bobby Wright helped me put in my application to the Air Force. I got rejected twice, but on the third attempt, my parents were at my place when I got back from an overnight shift as a security guard & they had a bottle of champagne. That was 26 years ago. There are plenty of other aviation outlets out there, and they do good work. I’m trying to add something they don’t. SO… I owe Colonel Bobby Wright a debt. I owe my Dad, as well. Both have passed away, but the debt remains. This – posting on Twitter, as strange as it sounds – is how I see myself repaying it. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need a special insider to get here. You can do it on your own. I’m also here to tell you that it’s not usually that glorious, that you’ll be pissed at crew scheduling & that you’ll feel like a zombie sometimes. I’m here to tell you that it’s a strain on family life, that it’s going to beat you up, that you have a higher risk of cancer & that you will sometimes fail. You’ll hate yourself for failing. I’m here – in part – to be the antithesis to the glory & the ads, and that means posting some downers sometimes & being honest. I’m also here to tell you it’s fucking awesome & as long as you are in it for the love of defying gravity rather than money or some idea of prestige, you’ll never regret your choice. Getting snowed on at 04:00 while doing the exterior inspection of the jet can be either demoralizing or an affirmation, it just depends on you. I will continue tap dancing on a landmine. Man, I hope it doesn’t blow up, but I gave up on aviation as a young man because I had an idea that they were all supermen, and I wasn’t. It wasn’t true. You can do it. It’s hard, but if you want it, you can have it.