More than 20 of the Asia Pacific region’s leading experts on airline pilot, cabin crew and maintenance training met online to discuss, among other things, how to best manage the new world of online training in a socially distanced world.

Try this combination: (1) learning a new airplane, (2) adapting to a new way of flying, (3) limited ATC and other resources (4) managing crew risk in a pandemic, and (5) navigating through the smoke of massive wildfires. Regional airline training veteran Paul Preidecker describes his new career flying on-call medical missions.

On a recent trip to airports on the West Coast, we were dispatched to Boeing Field (KBFI) in Seattle. Descending through FL240, we could begin to smell the smoke. There was absolutely no forward or vertical visibility. We were eventually cleared for the ILS to runway 14R with the visibility reported barely above the minimums required for the approach.

On that same trip, we had an overnight in San Francisco (KSFO). Upon arriving at the aircraft the next morning, we found that it was covered with a thin but very noticeable coating of ash that we removed before starting the day.

En route from the southwest on another trip, Denver Center told us that all arrival routes from the southwest into KDEN had been shut down due to smoke and the number of TFRs in the area.

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