Oh Captain, my Captain

My airline is chock full of wonderful people.
For the most part, the captains I have flown with have been nothing short of exceptional: exemplary leaders as well as patient and gifted instructors who made me feel right at home when the airplane was still foreign to me. From all of them I've learned a tremendous amount about flying, judgment and how to operate not as an individual but as a crew member.
Most have also been just plain great guys to share an admittedly small cockpit with.
Flying with so many different characters has also taught me that a large part of a first officer's job is to become a chameleon, to adapt to each captain's way of doing things, to each captain's quirks, likes and dislikes. Quirky, in some cases, is a very generous word.
Then there are the couple of bad apples. They are rare, very few and far between but flying with them can unfortunately stand out in a new first officer's mind more than the good experiences.
Recently, for instance, I was paired with a captain who struck me at first as a friendly, albeit arrogant, kind of guy. Not uncommon when you're dealing with former military pilots. But from our first leg together, I could tell this would be a difficult month. The man never shied away from berating other pilots on ground frequency for what he deemed to be improper taxi etiquette, nor did he refrain from clashing with a station manager at the conclusion of our very first leg.
As the days went by, I grew increasingly frustrated with his tendency to carry out my flows before doing his own -- something he made a point of doing every day -- and generally crossing beyond the established roles of non-flying and flying pilot. Other FOs can be very protective of "my side" of the cockpit. I am not. I understand that after all, this is his ship. He signs for it. However, his constant interference with my duties began to chip away at the otherwise well-orchestrated routine of the flight crew.
I like to think that I am a patient man. But after just two trips with him, I couldn't take any more. Confronting him, however, would not have been a wise option as I had gleaned from his stories that he is quick to hold a grudge. So I resigned myself to seeing out the month in silence and frustration.
Another character I had the misfortune of flying with a while ago is notorious among our pilot group. Of course, I was ignorant of that fact until after our time together. This one too was arrogant and typically critical of everyone he flew with or came in contact with.
On one particular flight, while it was my turn to fly, he picked a fight with a very busy controller over the heading she had given us. Looking at the radar, it seemed we would collide with an area of heavy precipitation. The controller, however, assured us we would find only light turbulence and moderate rain, information she had received from two aircraft that had just traversed the area.
Well, this wasn't good enough for the captain and to some extent I understood his position. Why take a chance? However, when she gave us the option of taking a vector that would take us many miles in the opposite direction of our planned route, he caved in unhappily and set the heading bug for me to the original heading assigned to us by ATC.
Sure enough, we encountered nothing more than what had been reported: light chop and moderate precipitation.
Hating to admit that he was wrong, however, the captain keyed the mic and angrily told ATC we had flown through moderate turbulence and heavy rain, therefore restricting access through that area to other aircraft behind, which like us had sat on the ground for almost four hours waiting for the weather to pass.
This behavior, in my book, is completely unacceptable.
Both of these men represent everything a captain should not be. I learned little from them, was thrown out of a routine the airline has established for a reason and felt like a lesser pilot because of their constant need to point out insignificant mistakes. Their pettiness and lust for confrontation ruined the time I spent with them.
Thankfully, out of the scores of captains I have flown with, these are the only two I really would rather never fly with again. Not everyone is peachy and pleasant at the conclusion of a 14-hour day, but promoting harmony in the cockpit, advancing constructive criticism and leading by example is what the pilot in command's job is.
I am fortunate to learn from some of the best captains in the industry. Unfortunately, their qualities make the flaws of the few bad captains we have that much more noticeable.