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Australian pilot writes ‘I’m bored,’ draws two penises with flight path

We’ve all had jobs that felt monotonous — doing the same thing, day in and day out, until the boredom gets the better of you. If you work in a cubicle, that might be when you pop open a Facebook tab and start cruising through photos of your ex to make sure whoever they ended up with is fatter than you. If you’re a young pilot tasked with testing single-prop aircraft by trying to maintain a single airspeed for two straight hours before the aircraft is sold… you may get a bit more creative with it.

How creative? Something like writing our the words, “I’m bored” and then drawing two giant penises in the sky above your workplace?

The pilot apparently works for a company called Flight Training Adelaide, and the company’s director, Pine Pienaar, has taken a pretty reasonable approach to the whole thing. He told the media that it’s unlikely that the pilot will be disciplined for his actions, saying (and this is a direct quote), “apparently he got bored.”

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We’ve all had jobs that felt monotonous — doing the same thing, day in and day out, until the boredom gets the better of you. If you work in a cubicle, that might be when you pop open a Facebook tab and start cruising through photos of your ex to make sure whoever they ended up with is fatter than you. If you’re a young pilot tasked with testing single-prop aircraft by trying to maintain a single airspeed for two straight hours before the aircraft is sold… you may get a bit more creative with it.

How creative? Something like writing our the words, “I’m bored” and then drawing two giant penises in the sky above your workplace?

The pilot apparently works for a company called Flight Training Adelaide, and the company’s director, Pine Pienaar, has taken a pretty reasonable approach to the whole thing. He told the media that it’s unlikely that the pilot will be disciplined for his actions, saying (and this is a direct quote), “apparently he got bored.”

“Young instructors, what can you do?” Pienaar added.

Neither the writing, nor the penises, were visible from the ground — unlike some of the high profile artwork of members of the U.S. Armed Forces that have been spotted drawing penises in the sky all over the world, from Germany to Washington State. The most recent U.S. military incident involved a Marine Corps pilot who also drew a penis in the sky that was only visible through flight tracking software. In that instance, the Marines responsible for the drawing were grounded, but in previous ones across three branches (Air Force, Navy, and Marines) the penalties were not quite so severe.

The two Navy pilots who drew a giant penis in the skies over Washington State with the contrails from their EA-18G Growler were tasked with providing briefs to their peers about responsibility — but it’s worth noting that the pilot at the stick of that aircraft was also soon transferred to a role as a pilot instructor. Apparently, in the Navy, penmanship counts.

 

 

Feature image is a screen grab from Flight Radar 24

About Alex Hollings View All Posts

Alex Hollings writes on a breadth of subjects with an emphasis on defense technology, foreign policy, and information warfare. He holds a master's degree in communications from Southern New Hampshire University, as well as a bachelor's degree in Corporate and Organizational Communications from Framingham State University.

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