Don't Forget the Rudder Pedals, with Wally Moran

By John Zimmerman
Apr 8, 2025
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Pilot's Discretion Podcast, episode 101

From the Lockheed Constellation to the Boeing 747 to competition gliders, Wally Moran’s flying career has covered an incredible variety of airplanes. He describes some key concepts that have stayed the same across all those airplanes, from using the rudder properly to managing technology, plus his personal connection to the TWA 800 tragedy and his advice for successful checkrides (he has given more than 2400). In the Ready to Copy segment, Wally shares what he looked for when hiring airline pilots, the best place to fly gliders, and his favorite aviation books.

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Quotes:

CRM in the 1960s: “Frankly, the Constellation really didn’t need a co-pilot—particularly if you asked those captains.”
What has changed in the airline world: “The flying I did at the end was very standardized. We had glass cockpits and all kinds of very strict procedures and callouts. The entire flight was really scripted. When I started, there was no script to that flight.”
Modern airline data analysis programs: “If [the pilot] exceeds a certain speed, he gets a call from the chief pilot, and he needs to explain that. So, the monitoring is really incredible.”
Technology in today’s cockpits: “Is it too much automation? No, it’s allowed the airlines to operate much more reliably.”
TWA flight 800: “I was the last pilot to fly that airplane before it departed for Paris. I talked to the men that were taking it out, and when we learned about it I was soon contacted… at that point in time, we were suspects.”
The Airman Certification Standards: “My experience of late is that the pilot applicants don’t read it, simply because it’s too big.”
Checkride advice: “Be early. Go the day before if you need to.”
What you learn from flying gliders: “The gliders make you fly precisely, they make you handle the adverse yaw with the rudder.”
Glider competitions: “It’s a mental challenge that is just pretty amazing. The flying is easy.”
Wally’s advice for flight instructors: “Back to basics. Explain p-factor and when to use the rudder.”
What he looked for when hiring pilots: “The thing that I looked for and I think most of us looked for was that burning desire to be an airline pilot, or to be a pilot. We could teach them to fly our airplanes.”
The responsibility of airline pilots: “My boss used to always remind me as we were talking about things at the airline, ‘these people aren’t buying a chance at getting from A to B. They expect us to do it safely.’”