From Virtual Reality to Real Life Wonderful

When she went to work in the 1990s in the cutthroat world of software development, Kit Warfield never imagined where it would take her. But then something interesting happened. While working at Microsoft, she was selected as content lead for a project called Flight Simulator. 

“My team was responsible for all of the fun stuff in the product,” she remembers, chuckling.” We did all of the lessons and we did all of the fun flights that, you know, we were really making up stuff. Like let's try to land this airplane at this airport, sort of thing. And I did that for about six years which in the software industry is like working somewhere for 45 years,” she sighs. “It kind of chews them up and spits out. It was a great gig, though.”

In her time as a commercial seaplane pilot Warfield had the opportunity to see whales breaching in Puget Sound; fly passengers on scenic tours to Victoria and Vancouver, Canada, and even land to have seals pop up and surprise her on touchdown! They say you aren’t a seaplane pilot until you’ve fallen off the float into the water, or had to break out the paddle to return to dock when the engine won’t start. She’s been there, done that. “You check your ego at the door with a seaplane!” she says.

Warfield’s retired these days, but she can recall that the job wasn’t always buttercups and sunbeams. In fact, the learning curve for seaplane pilots—good ones—is pretty steep. 

Take tides, for instance. They come in, they go out. Water up, nice and deep, water down, painfully shallow. Seaplanes react just like a boat on the water, she reminds us. “You can land a seaplane and have it at a beach and, you know, just kind of hang out, just sitting there enjoying the water. One time I did this and I could see that the tide was going out pretty fast. I thought, it’s time to get moving, and told my passengers to load up. Unfortunately, the airplane was completely stuck. There was no choice but to just sit and wait for the tide to come back,” she recalls, sighing at her own gaff. “Fortunately, my passengers thought it was great. My boss, when he stopped laughing, said, ‘I hope you had a good book with you.’I was pretty embarrassed but I didn't do it again.”