Steve Slade - Director of Maintenance, Maritime Helicopters

Steve Slade says that for as long as he can remember, he has always been interested in aviation. He flew remote-controlled airplanes as a kid. Slade says his mother has a picture of him and his grandfather when he was three years old.  In the picture, Slade is pointing to the sky. One day, he asked his mother what he was pointing to. “An airplane,” she told him. This is Slade’s story.

When Slade graduated from high school, he felt that college wasn’t going to be his cup of tea. He was flipping burgers at Dairy Queen as he tried to figure out what he wanted to do with his life. He says the sister of his girlfriend at the time was responsible for getting his foot into aviation. “I should probably thank her for my aviation career,” he says. “Without my knowledge, she contacted an Air Force recruiter and told him that I was interested in joining the Air Force. The recruiter called me out of the blue and said, ‘I hear you are interested in joining the Air Force. Do you want to come by our office and talk?’”

Slade decided to talk to the recruiter and hear what he had to say. He made an appointment to meet him at the recruiting office. He went to the armed forces office, which housed recruiters from all the services in different parts of the building. He sat down with the Air Force recruiter and told him he wanted to be a pilot. The recruiter informed Slade that he needed to have a four-year degree to be a pilot. He told Slade he could work as a loader on a C-5. That didn’t interest Slade, but he told the recruiter he would think about it. As he was leaving, Slade passed by the Army recruiter’s office. The recruiter looked at Slade and said, “How’s it going?” So Slade walked in and started talking to the him.

Slade told the Army recruiter he wanted to be a pilot. The recruiter gave him the same reply that the Air Force recruiter did — he needed a four-year degree.  “But there is another possible path for you,” the recruiter told him. “Have you thought of being a helicopter mechanic? You could become a mechanic, and then apply for flight school later. Do you want to be a Cobra mechanic.”

Slade signed on the dotted line and reported to Army boot camp at Fort Jackson, SC in July 1977.

The Army Life

Slade tells us that one of the hardest parts of boot camp for him was dealing with the heat and humidity of South Carolina in the middle of summer. “I grew up in California,” Slade tells D.O.M. magazine. “I can still remember stepping out of the airport and getting hit with that hot, wet air. I remember going on marches in boot camp where guys were dropping left and right and the drill sergeants were yelling, ‘Keep going!”

AIT

After graduating from boot camp, Slade reported to Fort Eustis, VA for his Advanced Individual Training (AIT). There, he got specific maintenance training for the Cobra. Much of the coursework was self-paced. Slade says that the course typically took around seven or eight months. He completed it in 3 ½ months. “It was interesting to me,” he says. “The more I learned about helicopters, the more fascinated I was with them. I liked the self-paced aspect of it. A lot of times in a classroom setting, I am thinking, ‘I get it, let’s move on.’ The first portion of AIT was self-paced computerized learning. The last part was hands-on.”

First Duty Station

After graduating from AIT, Slade went to Fort Campbell, KY where he started working on Cobra helicopters. Slade and his classmates started off in hangar studying under the supervision of other mechanics. 

Slade values the helicopter maintenance training he received from the Army. “The Army has the best training for helicopters,” he says. “They start you off in a hangar setting working under the supervision of others.”

When there was a crew chief opening on the ramp, the unit’s crew chiefs selected Slade to fill the position. Slade tells us that as a Cobra crew chief, his helicopter had the highest-flying time. He was fascinated with working on Cobras.

Slade was then assigned in the hangar to run a Cobra Phase team. Normally an E-5 position, Slade assumed the job as an E-4 Specialist. Under his supervision, his team performed Phase inspections on up to seven Cobras at a time, each in varying stages of its one-month maintenance inspection.

Applying for Flight School

Although he had a passion for working on helicopters, Slade still wanted to become a pilot. During the last three months of his enlistment he started the paperwork necessary to apply for the Army’s flight school program. “There was a stack of paperwork around 18 feet high that I had to fill out by myself,” Slade jokingly shares. “It was a lot of work.”

At that time, Slade was attending night school at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University to earn his A&P. He decided to put his dream of becoming a pilot on hold, get out of the Army, get his A&P, and get a job as an aircraft mechanic in the civilian world.

Life as a Civilian

After he got out of the Army, with the ink still fresh on his A&P certificate, Slade went to southern California to stay with his sister while he looked for a job as a mechanic. The job came sooner than he expected. “It was a beautiful day one Thursday, and I decided to go for a drive,” Slade tells D.O.M. magazine. “I really wasn’t job hunting, I just wanted to enjoy a nice drive. I drove by the Long Beach airport and I saw McDonnell-Douglas had a Help Wanted sign out. I went inside and inquired about the job opportunities they had. They asked if I had an A&P, and I told them I did. 15 minutes later, I was sitting in a job interview. The interviewer talked to me a little while and then asked, ‘Can you start Monday?’ I took the job and started building DC-9s the following Monday, not even five days out of the Army.

Working at McDonnell-Douglas

Working at McDonnell-Douglas was a lot different than maintaining Cobras for the Army. “I learned a lot of maintenance practices that I didn’t learn in the Army,” he says. “But it was different. In the Army, I was working on maintaining machines that were already together. At McDonnell-Douglas, I installed the flaps and slats. I would install all the pulleys and cables that went with them. I followed blueprints and worked with engineers to work out things if they weren’t quite right.

“I was remembering the fun of working on helicopters,” Slade continues. “In the Army, the helicopters were running and you were fine-tuning them and working on them. It was a fast, fun pace. That was a far cry from working on an assembly line.”

Becoming a Helicopter Pilot

Eventually, Slade was let go as part of a company layoff. About a month later, he went to the Army recruiter and told him he wanted to be a pilot. The recruiter tried to talk him out of it, but Slade insisted. “I want to be a helicopter pilot,” he told the recruiter.

A year later, after a barrage of paperwork and tests, Slade was accepted to the Army’s flight program.

Slade reported to Fort Rucker, AL for flight school. Slade says his helicopter maintenance experience helped him out in flight school. He was way ahead of his classmates who had to learn basic helicopter theory from day one. Even so, Slade says flight school was the hardest thing he ever did in his life. It was like Army boot camp on steroids. “There were also a lot of mental games,” he says. “We would get in trouble if we had extra toothpaste on the inside of the toothpaste cap. All of our clothes had to be folded exactly the same and lined up with each other. All of our hanging clothes needed to have equal spacing between the hangars. If you had 14 items and removed one, you had to re-space everything so that there was the same spacing between each hangar. I eventually learned to carry around a piece of plastic that had spacing markings for different numbers of items. If I had 12 items hanging, I would use the 12 mark on the plastic to quickly and evenly space them.

“The mental games weren’t without reason,” Slade says. “They were pounding in the importance of attention to detail. We got a gig each time we did something wrong. We didn’t want to get too many gigs, because the lowest ten percent of our class who got the most gigs got set back two weeks.”

Out of the 56 people who started the pilot training program, Slade was one of 36 who graduated. The top ten percent of the graduating class was chosen to fly OH-58s since it was the Army’s only single-pilot aircraft. “I was thinking to myself that I wasn’t going to make a career in the Army,” Slade tells D.O.M. magazine. “There aren’t a lot of Cobras and Blackhawks flying around in the civilian world, but there are a bunch of Jet Rangers! I was happy I made the OH-58 cut, the Army’s counterpart to the Jet Ranger.”

Slade’s first duty station as a pilot was in Hawaii. He says that pilots typically spend their five-year commitment in two different duty stations. But because he bought a house on the island and convinced his superiors he would have a hard time selling it when they were looking at having him transferred to a different duty station, he ended up spending his entire five years in Hawaii.

Civilian Life (Again)

When he got out of the Army, Slade went to work for for PHI for a few years. He was flying workers to and from the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

One day, he was talking to a fellow pilot at PHI who told him a friend of his in Hawaii was looking for pilot/mechanics. Slade called the guy up and talked about his pilot and maintenance experience. He got a job offer and moved back to Hawaii.

Building up Flight Hours

Slade flew out of Kauai for a Part 91 operation. “It was one of those jobs I’ll always remember,” he says. “I was flying right off the beach in a tank top, shorts and slippers. I was flying tourists around the most beautiful scenery in the world.”

Slade was able to build up more than 1,500 flight hours in around a year as a pilot mechanic. He would often fly 9 or 10 hours a day, then maintain the helicopter in the evening.

He worked for several companies in Hawaii over the next few years as a pilot/mechanic. He eventually landed a job with Hawaii Helicopters flying A-Stars. When he wasn’t flying, he helped out his fellow employees, learning many aspects of the business. He turned wrenches. He helped take reservations. His enthusiasm was noticed, and he was promoted to chief pilot a year later at the age of 33. He worked there for 15 years.

Believe it or not, Slade says that after 19 years in Hawaii, he got tired of 85 degrees every day with no seasons. He wanted a change. He took a job in LA as a chief pilot. He was flying night flights. He flew from LAX down Santa Monica beach, then flying along Hollywood boulevard showing homes of celebrities in the area. He also helped out with maintenance on the helicopters. After 9/11, flights were restricted to 1,500 feet, and it hurt the company.

Slade then got a job in Louisiana flying EMS helicopters out of Lake Charles for a few years. There was one mechanic at the company. He asked him how many days off he had, “None,” the mechanic replied. “I can’t drink a beer because I’m on call all the time. If my wife and I go to dinner or the movies, we have to take two cars because I never know when I will have to leave and report to work.”

Slade called the company headquarters and offered to be on call on some weekends so that the mechanic could get some personal time off.

Medical Issues

Around that time, Slade had some issues with his flight medical. Instead of going through a barrage of expensive tests on his own dime, he decided to focus on other career options. By the time he hung up his flying hat, Slade had accumulated more than 10,000 hours of flight time.

Slade went to work at Air Evac Lifeteam’s communication center. He was trained in advanced Doppler interpretation, and worked with pilots to give them weather updates during EMS flights.

A year and a half later, he asked to be transferred to the company’s Part 145 repair station. He worked on the line where the company took in used Long Rangers, stripped them, and rebuilt them with updated electronics and EMS equipment.

A year later, Slade wanted a change of pace. He sent out some resumes and got a call one day from Air Methods. It was a significant pay raise, and he took the job. He moved to Denver and worked in Air Method’s Part 145 repair station. He also worked in the overhaul shop, getting experience on repairing components. Eventually, he applied for a job at the company as a maintenance compliance technician. It was basically an assistant DOM position. He wrote AAIPs and MELs. He assisted with records audits. He worked with mechanics to help interpret ADs and service bulletins. He did that for three years, learning more about the regulatory side of the business. “I knew the regulatory side of the pilot part because I was a chief pilot,” Slade says. “This gave me the opportunity to get an intense amount training in the regulatory aspect of maintenance.”

Helicopter Flight Services

With the additional regulatory experience he gained, Slade felt it was time to move up in his career. Slade applied for a DOM job with Helicopter Fleet Services in New Jersey. He landed the job, and started to expand his knowledge even more.

After a year and a half, even though he enjoyed the job and the people, he got tired of the hustle and bustle of the big city. He saw an ad for a job opening for a DOM for Maritime Helicopters in Alaska. The thought of living in Alaska intrigued him. He sent in a resume and got a call an hour later. When they got done talking, Slade had a job offer. He gave a month’s notice to Helicopter Fleet Services and moved to Homer, AK to start the next chapter in his career.

Maritime Helicopters

Shortly after starting his new job, Slade found out that the company’s repair station manual hadn’t been updated in a few years, and the FAA some issues with that. He immediately started to revise the manual and presented it to the FAA. The FAA was satisfied with the revision – all of its concerns had been addressed.

Maritime Helicopters operates 16 helicopters. It has helicopters stationed in remote areas across the state working for different contracts. A pilot and mechanic are stationed with each helicopter.

Slade says there are some unique logistics challenges to working in the remoteness of Alaska. “You can’t just get a part overnighted,” he says. “You need to do a lot more planning in advance and have more spares on hand.”

“The mechanics I hire also need to hit the ground running,” he says. “They are in remote areas working by themselves. Once they get out there, there is nobody to call for advice. They need to be knowledgeable and able to make go/no-go decisions all the time.”

 “This is the most rewarding job I have ever had,” Slade concludes. “I have a great group of guys. The scenery is stunning. It is challenging, and keeps me busy, and is a great job.”