From a Summer Job to a 41-Year Aviation Career
Flight Service’s Homer McCready started his aviation career before college and now has 41 years of aviation experience. Let’s take a closer look at this career journey.
By Steve Custer, FAA Office of Communications
Homer McCready’s aviation career took off before he even entered college. McCready began working in the agency’s Flight Service division when a guidance counselor informed him of a summer job opportunity at the end of his senior year in high school.
In addition to providing assistance to pilots throughout Alaska, the FAA’s Flight Service also helps develop innovative technologies to help pilots throughout the national airspace fly more safely and efficiently.
“My guidance counselor felt I was best qualified for the job,” he said. “I was an honor student and the reason that my school started an academic-business curriculum.”
The prospective accounting student began working at Altoona Flight Service Station in Pennsylvania in the summer of 1979. Between then and 1983, McCready primarily conducted administrative work, typing and filing within the office; but this eventually led to highlighting paper weather maps, changing the teletype paper and ribbons, and updating publications. “It was working with the weather that intrigued me,” he said. As his responsibilities developed, he knew he wanted to do more than administrative work within Flight Service — he wanted to be a Flight Service specialist.
After graduating from college in May 1983, McCready headed out for specialist training in Oklahoma City in July. “It was horrid,” he said, referring to the difficulty of the training with a laugh. McCready persevered, and after completing the 12-week program, he was stationed at the Washington Center in Leesburg, Virginia as a Flight Service specialist.
Over the course of the following two decades, McCready would transfer to several facilities, bearing witness to the many transformations within Flight Service that have occurred over the years.
The biggest change McCready has experienced while working in Flight Service is the technology. He said, “We used to brief pilots on paper off clipboards that were put in different places around the room. If you wanted certain geographic weather, you used an R/R (Request/Reply) circuit, typed out a ticker tape for what you wanted, and put it on the reader. You were on with different facilities, then you would wait your turn.”
But things would change drastically — and rapidly. In 1986, the FAA commissioned the first “family” of Automated Flight Service Stations (AFSS), introducing new technologies that changed the entire operating landscape of Flight Service.
“With the new equipment, you could enter some basic information including a departure point and destination, and receive the weather information in the proper order. It was in the order you needed to provide it. That’s one of the biggest innovations,” he said. “Having everything you need in the order you need it.”
Even today, Flight Service technology continues to advance even further; weather and flight plan information can be accessed in airplanes at the touch of a pilot’s fingertips using cellphones and tablets. A pilot can even activate and cancel flight plans through these digital platforms. “Overall, technology improvements have been positive and a real benefit to pilots,” McCready said.
Although Flight Service has harnessed technological capabilities over the years to conduct flight operations more smoothly and efficiently, McCready expresses a sense of nostalgia for a time before such major technological innovations were integrated into Flight Service. “There’s a personal aspect I miss,” he said, reflecting on some of his experiences providing flight services.
That strength of personal aspect he refers to shines through in the early days of the Washington Federal Contract Flight Service Station in Ashburn, Virginia, where McCready transferred in 2007 as a supervisor. His role was to instruct incoming employees and help establish operations at the facility. “As a supervisor there, I was juggling many things. We had computer problems, we had people coming and going,” he said. “But mostly it’s how everybody came together, there’s no way we could have done it without the resilience of the people.”
“That’s something I admire about Flight Service people: We do a fantastic job with the tools we are given.”
Though the days of people working closely together in a room using ticker tape and paper weather maps has changed the interpersonal dynamics of the workflow, McCready still believes in the overall value of Flight Service to pilots. “We’re a very valuable resource for them. Especially for student pilots, those who don’t get to fly very much, who don’t have the experience,” he said.
As a member of the Flight Service 100-year anniversary team, McCready served as the lead for creating a timeline of significant historical events, researching photos and culling through his artifacts of aeronautical and weather tools no longer in use. He can show you how to use a sling psychrometer, a weather bureau clinometer, and dew point and humidity calculation wheels.
In addition, McCready continues to share his 41 years of aviation experience with students of all ages as a substitute teacher and an FAA STEM Aviation & Space Education (AVSED) outreach representative. “There have been a few times where my weather and aviation experience have come up in a class that I have been teaching,” he said. “I relate weather with flying because a pilot is always concerned with the weather and often provides information used by the National Weather Service. I usually start by calling the Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) at the Altoona-Blair County Airport and let students listen to that to get their attention.”
As soon as COVID-19 circumstances settle down, McCready looks forward to working with students again.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Flight Service and the creation of what has become the modern FAA, providing safety and air traffic flow in the NAS. Learn about Alaska, modernization initiatives, and the 100-year history of Flight Service.
