“ Aiiye bhaisaab…do ka dus….do ka dus…dekhiye…sirf dus me do…!” the guy was getting in my way even as I tried to dodge amongst a sea of people in the evening rush hour! “What nonsense!” I hissed under my breath… “Arre Jaane do bhaai” ….The guy becomes arrogant now – “Hahn jao na!”
What A Day! It’s the 17th of July 1996, on the footpath outside the VT station (Oh, that’s CST Railway station for the new generation) and I am on my way to Sterling Book House …after attending a long day at The Bombay Flying Club. Rendezvous? To Buy The CAR. Now, there was lots of students at the institute that insisted on getting photocopies from the senior students and buying/borrowing the amendments…not me! “I am an approved student of an Approved AME Institute…oh yeah! and I must have my own brand new copy of it”…I admit, I was a bit of a stuck up! Against popular belief, it does help….sometimes…!
Well, I knew the CAR was a large hard cover file like thing…but I never knew it would be so large that it would refuse to fit in my backpack until it was stretched out to all corners! And so there I was…the center of all annoyance as I clambered into a crowded train with the bag knocking people each time I attempted to turn or move. That was how the C.A.R came to me….grand!
It wasn’t until I opened the sacred file and attempted to make some sense of it that I realized that the poor backpack wasn’t the only one that would require accommodating this large ‘thing’…!
The next day, our C.A.R teacher Mr. V.N.C Nair, retired Air India engineer (and a highly inspiring person to be around, as I found out all through my years of association with B.F.C), took us through the CAR – “What is C…A…R…?”… Suddenly it strikes me“O mi gosh! what is it?!”… Some students chorused “Civil Aviation Requirements”…some others said- “No, It’s Civil Airworthiness Requirements”…….Mr. Nair looms along the two groups of benches, a silent smile wide across his face, just nodding and observing everyone of us… every now and then stopping by a bench and nodding at a person to get his/her opinion of “What is C…A…R…?”….. the agony called C.A.R had begun..!
Well C.A.R for the layman is like LAW…civil air law. It lays down the guidelines under which we AME’s are expected to maintain commercial aircraft. An AME is entrusted with the responsibility of certifying an Aircraft including Aircraft components and items of equipment on an aircraft as airworthy; or, fit-for-flight. Safety is paramount, however, the AME task’s also have to be completed in as short a time interval as possible for the Aircraft to do what it was made to do – Fly!
An AME’s job is one of great responsibility, in many ways greater than a Pilot’s. The pilot too is dependant on you …after all “There’s no Highway in the sky.” In the days to come, we would be told this very same thing, in different phrases and with different forms of emphasis and… exaggeration as well! But, this was drilled into us all, right at the inception, all to well. There is more than one person I know that works on those guidelines till date, and it serves him/her well.
What A Day! It’s the 17th of July 1996, on the footpath outside the VT station (Oh, that’s CST Railway station for the new generation) and I am on my way to Sterling Book House …after attending a long day at The Bombay Flying Club. Rendezvous? To Buy The CAR. Now, there was lots of students at the institute that insisted on getting photocopies from the senior students and buying/borrowing the amendments…not me! “I am an approved student of an Approved AME Institute…oh yeah! and I must have my own brand new copy of it”…I admit, I was a bit of a stuck up! Against popular belief, it does help….sometimes…!
Well, I knew the CAR was a large hard cover file like thing…but I never knew it would be so large that it would refuse to fit in my backpack until it was stretched out to all corners! And so there I was…the center of all annoyance as I clambered into a crowded train with the bag knocking people each time I attempted to turn or move. That was how the C.A.R came to me….grand!
It wasn’t until I opened the sacred file and attempted to make some sense of it that I realized that the poor backpack wasn’t the only one that would require accommodating this large ‘thing’…!
The next day, our C.A.R teacher Mr. V.N.C Nair, retired Air India engineer (and a highly inspiring person to be around, as I found out all through my years of association with B.F.C), took us through the CAR – “What is C…A…R…?”… Suddenly it strikes me“O mi gosh! what is it?!”… Some students chorused “Civil Aviation Requirements”…some others said- “No, It’s Civil Airworthiness Requirements”…….Mr. Nair looms along the two groups of benches, a silent smile wide across his face, just nodding and observing everyone of us… every now and then stopping by a bench and nodding at a person to get his/her opinion of “What is C…A…R…?”….. the agony called C.A.R had begun..!
Well C.A.R for the layman is like LAW…civil air law. It lays down the guidelines under which we AME’s are expected to maintain commercial aircraft. An AME is entrusted with the responsibility of certifying an Aircraft including Aircraft components and items of equipment on an aircraft as airworthy; or, fit-for-flight. Safety is paramount, however, the AME task’s also have to be completed in as short a time interval as possible for the Aircraft to do what it was made to do – Fly!
An AME’s job is one of great responsibility, in many ways greater than a Pilot’s. The pilot too is dependant on you …after all “There’s no Highway in the sky.” In the days to come, we would be told this very same thing, in different phrases and with different forms of emphasis and… exaggeration as well! But, this was drilled into us all, right at the inception, all to well. There is more than one person I know that works on those guidelines till date, and it serves him/her well.
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