Aviation Synchronization Conference: Inadvertently Inappropriate

I have no idea how it all started, but everything is a That’s What She Said joke these days. The ultimate was an inadvertent TWSS by a COL who was briefing Aviation Network Interoperability yesterday. Which, by all means, is the most boring topic in the world… unless you’re that particular COL, then I’m sure it was epic and awesomesauce in your own little world, sir.

Now I live in a state where everything is TWSS-joke. Case in point:

For the past 18 months I have been driving down Highway 79 to Panama City Beach, seeing that sign.

I know. That’s so juvenile, Wings.

Whatevs. You’re not in my rating chain so I really don’t give a sh*t.

So, my sophomoric sense of humor was made worse by COL Interoperability’s complete obliviousness to the fact that he’d even made a statement worthy of a TWSS.

What was he doing, you ask?

He was passionately pleading his case to a room full of fellow pilots and aviation professionals regarding the over abundance of network interaction in the cockpit… you know, wherein everyone wants to be in the cockpit with you while you’re busy trying to kill bad guys??!! When it becomes more difficult to operate the digital network systems than it does to actually just hit the push-to-talk switch (or the push-to-think switch, if you’re a flight schooler) and talk, you’ve kind of lost battle for network interoperability. The network becomes a hindrance, rather than the helper, and the pilots abandon the program for whatever works fastest, easiest, and seamlessly with the ground guys they’re supporting.

This is what the COL meant to say. What he actually said was, “if you make it hard in the cockpit, the aviators will not use it.”

When I say that I had to rally every fiber of my being and self-control not to blurt out THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID, I mean it. I was a pillar of professional discipline. I was the textbook definition of restraint.

The O-6 sitting behind me was not. He was muttering to his buddy sitting beside him.

“That’s what she said.”

I love inadvertently inappropriate senior officers.