It has become apparent from the last 48 hours that I am suffering some form of food poisoning. I can only assume it's from Punta Cana. I didn't drink the water there so it must be food related.

I don't have any plans, at this point, to miss my next trip, but if this keeps up it's something that I'll have to consider.

are there first officers that could get called in if they have too many captains on their "do not fly" lists?

Not as far as I know. All the responsibility is on the Captain to manage.

:(

I ended up not being able to go on my trip this week. I still didn't feel like I could manage things well enough yesterday, but by today I did feel better. Calling in sick is pretty painless if you give the company enough notice. I can do it with two clicks after I login online. The min amount of time you can really give is about 4 hours, otherwise like yesterday, it was about 20 hours in advance. The only job where you call in sick a full day before.

Basically, what it boils down to is that the company would rather be able to plan for the absence then have you wait until the last second and start delaying flights while they scramble to cover for you.

I've got some sick time to cover, but I may end up picking up something over the weekend.

Fuck this.

That's pretty much how I'm feeling right now. The last 24 hours haven't been easy or kind between me and my job. I had fully intended to fly over the weekend. This trip that I'm missing is costing me 5 months worth of sick time and by flying I could off set that. The issue is that I can only pick up stuff that's available the day before. So yesterday, when I could pick flying up, there were 2 trips that I could work that would get me home again on Sunday. Neither was especially difficult, and both left early on Saturday morning. Both meant that I'd have to leave on Friday night to get to work. So being the commuter that I am I started looking at what flights might be available to get to Newark. Typically there is a 630p and an 8p on weeknights. Nope not today. There was no 800p at all and the 630p had been cancelled making the other flights to Newark full. That left a 4 and 430 flight for me to have 2 legal flights to take. However, the 4 meant that I was going to miss 'show and tell' day for my middle son at his summer Advanced Astronomy camp. I had planned to miss it, but when I got sick and was home and then went with him to an evening observation, this former Physics major with sights on a career in Astrophysics and Astronomy didn't want to miss it.

The idea of having to leave another 16 hours early just didn't sit well, but that was my only choice. It was easier to stay home and spend the extra days with my family. It was a tradeoff. Not what I had planned, and I really don't want to spend all that sick time, but I guess in this case it's what I'm doing.

Fast forward to last night when my August schedule comes out.

I've said that bidding is a big, giant, pain in the ass. You can put in a bid that you choose, literally, thousands upon thousands of permutations on the hopes that possibly you set it up in a way, that with your given seniority, you are awarded something off that bid. Then you repeat that up to twenty times making small or large changes, hoping that something will stick.

So as far as lineholders go, I'm pretty far down the list of people bidding. Only 29% of the pilots in the group (of lineholders, ignoring reserves who are below that) bid lower than I do, but I've found a nice niche of bidding where I've been able to hold and expect certain things for my month's schedule. I had 3 things that I was bidding around in August. The most important was a set of days off at the beginning of the month to tie into days off that I have at the end of July. I was also trying to get the first day of school off and a weekend off for a community picnic/party that I'm trying plan and trying to convince the rest of the board that it's a good idea to spend the extra money that I want, to show the neighborhood that we are serious about staying connected and getting neighbors better connected. Nobody else is really taking up the reigns on that project and nobody else is really planning on being there because of one thing or another.

So my bid was carefully planned. It took a couple of hours to get it where I wanted it, and it resembled previous bids in a way. I left, excuse me, thought I had left enough wiggle room in it that it would find a way to help me out. I was wrong.

This fucking award.

It went through all 20 of my bids and decided it couldn't build me a line and then after it goes through everything it starts breaking down your bid until it can award you something. In this case it not only voided the group of days that I needed at the beginning of the month it voided my preferences to avoid LGA flying. So now I've got this big, fucking LGA four day trip, that's not commutable on either end, which is like an additional 200 dollars out the door (in addition to the 185 I spend for a month in my crash pad in EWR), sitting right over the days that I needed off so that my wife and I could get away on our first real traveling vacation, where it was just the two of us, in like, ever.

Not only did I not get those days, I didn't get any weekends off again. None. So much for the community party and my efforts there.

I did get the first day of school off, but I also have to leave that day because of another trip. So this whole thing has pretty much ruined everything else. I think I'll throw myself at the feet of the company and beg for mercy. That's about a 25%/75% proposition, but there really isn't any other way. I can't even try to drop it until the 24th. and that would leave me about 72 hours to try and plan a trip.

I'm totally distraught over this entire thing. It's been stressing me out waiting, and now that it's here I can't get it off my mind. It's a massive failure. And it underscores the basics of this job, that seniority is everything and without it you're screwed, screwed, screwed. It's always the expectation. I had expectations based off of previous awards of what kind of bidding would get me an award, and this award was unlike any I've seen. How many times have I missed one thing or another? How many times am I not able to plan even the simplest activities?

I can't play in sports leagues. I couldn't coach little league. I can't socialize with normal people. I don't have any close friends because my schedule doesn't follow anything a normal person would have. I can't see my aviation friends because they either live somewhere else, or their schedules are just as messed up, like mine. My Fridays are Mondays and my weekend is the middle of the week. My Mondays are other people's Fridays. I work with strangers all day, week after week. I spend copious amounts of time alone on the road where the loneliness can be crushing. I work early mornings, late nights, over nights, never the same. I'm constantly adjusting my life to fit this job over and over again. This is why I don't tell my kids to do aviation. This is why marriages fail. This is why pilots won't encourage other people to do this, because even though the pay is good and travel can be fun, it simply wrecks other areas of your life that you never expected or thought you'd be able to overcome. Wrecks it.

As I look down at guys below me, it looks like most of them got overworked in the first half of the month and that the company pulled back on a lot of it's flying at the end (normal, August is the end of summer flying), because that's where most of us have our bulk of days off, at the end of the month.

Fuck me. Off to work on plan C. I know my wife is equally as disappointed, she's just not showing it. She's very good at hiding that sort of thing, especially when I'm emoting all over the place. She knows it's out of her hands, but between my disappointment and knowing hers, I'm a mess right now.

I'm so sorry to hear this.

Ok, catch 22 time.

I called my direct boss, we will call him flight manager in Newark, and I gave him my sob story about how I really needed this stupid LGA, 4-day trip to go away and he was like "sure, no problem, hopefully you'll enjoy 15 more years of marriage because of it." And aside from the $2500 dollars it's costing me to drop this trip (because I'm not flying it, and I'm not using vacation I'm just letting it go, but I can still pick up other flying) I'm like "Wooofuckinhooo!"

That clears the way for me to focus and enjoy this before I go on my next 4 day trip:



That is 15 pounds of pork shoulder that I'm turning into pulled pork on Wednesday. I'm charcoal, hickory and apple wood smoking it for somewhere in the range of 10 hours on the new grill. That 0330 wakeup call the next day though still sucks.

Booked our trip this morning while I'm smoking these pork shoulders. We are both looking forward to the vacation. We decided that Cancun would be our first destination. I've been there on a few layovers and it's a great "starter" location for any tourist. It looks like there won't be any weather issues as traveling in the Caribbean or Mexico is always dicey during hurricane season.

The pork shoulders are almost 6.5 hours in now and slowing working their way up to temp. I was up at 0600 to get everything going. The new grill has proven to use a lot more charcoal and wood than I had been able to get away with for this project. I do love that I can hold it at lower temps than the other one and it responds to air better, but that also means that it fluctuates a lot more than the older one too, meaning I have to check it about every 30-45 min. Should be ready to come off in a couple hours.

Here's the look of the shoulders after being rubbed and injected, just prior to going on.

curious about the 10 hour idea...when i do pulled pork its usually in for 17-20 hours..... have you done this before?

It's all about the temp. The closer that you keep the smoker to 200 degrees the longer it'll take to get to temp. So that's where you get the 17-20 hour timeline. I've never cooked one that long before. I cook solely on charcoal and it's challenging enough to keep the temp in right as it is. I think I could keep it that low, but no way am I able to check the temp every 45 minutes for 17-20 hours.

The rule of thumb for pork is get it to 190 degrees, or very close then wrap it in foil and let it sit for anywhere from 30 min to a couple hours. Try and keep the temp between 200 and 250. At 250, you'll cook about one hour per pound of shoulder. Today I cooked 7 and a 7.5 pounder for just over 9 hours with a 30 min rest.

hmm, i keep a solid 225 most of the time.... trying to talk myself into a big green egg...but those are 1200

Yesterday started at 0330 with the alarm going off so I could get ready for my commuting flight to Newark. The flight was at 600a and had plenty of seats on it. I rested as well as I could going to Newark then had about 3 and a half hours until I needed to be at the plane. I ate some breakfast in the employee cafeteria then tried to get some planning done for the HOA party in August that I've taken on the sole role of planning. Yay me.

I should've gotten out and walked some because I knew I had a long flight in front of me. This trip is a bit easier than some others I've had recently. It's still a 4 day trip, but it's one leg each day, back and forth across the US.

The first leg was the west leg out to LAX. I really hope that this whole trip goes just like this first one. We were operating a flight that that the company has flagged as being very important for getting out on time. We did our part, and everything seemed to be on track until our push time passed and the back cargo bin was still open.

The load planner changed the loading on the ramp guys, then changed it again, and they had to deal with that. Load planning is so important to an airplane. A longer plane like a 737 is especially vulnerable. So we missed our push time by 10 minutes and we were off the ground just 8 minutes late.

Fuel planning has been much tighter in recent months. Part of a money saving project to avoid having to carry extra weight. Extra weight is extra costs. Extra costs means less profit. It's all statistically backed and meticulously tracked. We had enough and the weather was good enough to try and make up some of that, but we were already planned fast so it's wasn't as effective as it could have been. It was an awesome day to fly. I really hope the rest of the week goes as well.

We landed a couple minutes early in LA, but we had to wait for our gate. It was open but the plane was in the alley and the time it took them to finish their push and taxi out put us behind. We finished up 3 minutes late.

I was tired after the start to the day. Normally I'd be out enjoying Socal and especially our Redondo Beach layover, but all I did was walk to Smashburger for dinner and go to bed. No pics from yesterday, but here's a pic that I took previously from here last year at sunset.

I saw this the other night. It's been cracking me up all week.

Ahhhh, west coast time. I slept in and still woke up at 430a.

My show time today was at 755a in Redondo. I can guarantee you that the west coast based guys don't love going to NY and getting 755a reports. I had some difficulty getting my paperwork downloaded, but it worked eventually. We had to have a second release due to a change in the weight of the aircraft. The subtle difference was that we weren't able to reach our planned cruise altitude until we had burned off a little big more fuel.

The weather showed a pretty substantial storm system hovering in the Iowa area. But nothing that should really cause any difficulties. We got off the gate 3 minutes early and off the ground in a reasonable time. We were planned to be about 12 minutes early getting into Baltimore-Washington so there was no need to rush today.

We had to deviate around some weather near Denver and then sure enough, ATC reports that we will probably need to change course up ahead. That weather over Iowa was causing a lot of course deviations for other planes. This was a monster of a storm. We ended up as far north as Rockford and nearly over Chicago. Kind of funny in my head at least. You don't think being that far north as being an efficient route to Baltimore, and it's not perfect, because of the deviation, it's not far off. Thinking of the roundness of the earth is hard when you really only see 2D maps.

The guy that I'm flying with is newer to the airplane. He's told me he only has 100 hours or so in it at the beginning of the trip. That's about 4 trips worth. And yes, it's takes a lot longer than that to get comfortable with it. I chuckled a little bit quietly to myself today after I landed. My landing caused him to pucker his ass cheeks a little as he thought I was going to slam the plane on the runway, but it ended with a very smooth touchdown. Just the way I had planned it. He just isn't used to the sight picture, nor is he comfortable with all the sight lines of a good approach or what my specific technique is. He would get all that with more experience, but it was funny that it got him today. We parked about 12 minutes early, even after our deviation around the weather.

Now tomorrow is too damn early. Bed is going to be calling my name shortly.

So I know I said that I would go into the taxi out with a little bit more detail. So once the doors are closed what's going on up front?

Let me start from the moment that the main cabin door is closed. At that point I'm just waiting for the ramp crew to finish loading bags. When they are done they submit the loads to the load planner who then completes and sends the final weights to the plane.

Once the final weights are in hand I load the computer and send out the request for our takeoff data. Takeoff speeds are based on the weight of the plane, runway length and flap setting. Weather conditions also play into it too. Headwinds, wet runways, all that stuff. I have to have takeoff data for our desired runway. If we get a runway change I need to rerun data for that runway.

Once I've got that data, and we verify that the computers are loaded correctly and the speeds are set right we are ready to go. Pretty soon we are going to be able to push prior to getting all that data and fall into line with the majority of other aircraft.

On the ground the Captain drives, the First Officer runs the radios. Each airport is different and the procedures for the pushback have to be identified prior to now. Some are uncontrolled, meaning it's a free for all, generally at small airports, while the ramp isn't controlled a call to the ground controller letting him know what you are doing helps manage any potentially conflicting traffic.

The majority of airports either have the ground controller in charge or a separate ramp frequency if it's a large airport. Today in LA was ramp. They clear you for the push and that is then communicated to the pushback crew. As we push we start at least one engine. This is the time you notice that the air shuts off for a bit. We need that air to get the engine spinning. With at least one engine up, the tug disconnects and we run a couple check lists.

I then ask either ground or ramp for taxi clearance. If it's ramp, I taxi to a different location and then call ground from there. A ground clearance sounds something like this. "Flight 1234 taxi to runway 22 right, at whiskey, via kilo and bravo." And that is a very short, simple one. Some of them can be 4 or 5 different instructions in one call.

Ground is giving instructions like this non stop to all the planes that they are controlling. It's important to time the call not to step on them and also to pay attention when they are calling you. Radio communication is a very regulated endeavor. It has a certain flow and cadence. At the professional level you are expected to be able to get the entire instruction on the first try and be ready to go. The ground controller at La Guardia is probably the worst job there is. It's a small airport that moves a ton of planes and has multiple planes crossing active runways while handling planes taxiing in and planes taxiing out. It's a pain. Chicago controllers are ridiculous. They do some things up there I'm not fond of at all, and are also the most short tempered of the controllers.

Taxi out is considered a 'sterile' environment. Meaning both guys have all their attention on where we are, and what we are doing next. No other talking is allowed, we are simply focusing on the flight ahead. My job is to make sure that the Captain also knows where he is going. Taxiing the plane on the ground can be very distracting and it can be hard to listen to the radio, while checking your position on the taxi chart, while remembering what the instructions where and where you are supposed to be going. So my job is to clarify directions, make sure we don't make any wrong turns, and keep our asses from having to do extra paperwork.

I may have to change to a different ground controller and eventually to tower. We have one to two more checklists that have to be run that ensure that the plane is fully configured for takeoff.

Once all that is completed, the runway, speeds, airplane configuration, frequencies are set for the tower and departure controllers and the runway is clear, we are good to go. The tower controller clears us for takeoff, and we are on our way.

is the captain always the most senior? or is it randomly assigned? when you have a new pilot like you did today, do you let them do less? i bet it sucks to be in the other seat on their first ever landing....

also welcome to DC!

Remember that all of our jobs are based on seniority. So I would have to be senior enough to be able to hold a captain position. So when I say he was new to the plane, he isn't new to the company. In fact he has been with the company for almost 20 years, just not on the 737. When my seniority gets high enough I can bid for other positions within the company. I have already discussed moving to the 757/767 or 777 fleet sometime in the future, just to get the exposure to that flying before I might be senior enough to move over to the left seat of the 737 (which is probably the first plane I will Captain here.)

Speaking as a former Captain who flew with new pilots, it's not that you let them do less, but they have to be watched as they don't always get everything that a more seasoned pilot might get on the first time. But the other side of that coin is that one of the primary roles of the Captain is to mentor and teach. They should see that role as one who passes information and techniques on to the lesser experienced first officer, so he will be more prepared as he moves on. Not unlike a master/apprentice relationship.

First landings are what they are. The guys who sit next to guys on their first landings are special instructor pilots whose literal job is to teach that stuff. And yes, they happen with passengers on the plane.

Pilotman,

What gets a flight tagged as very important?

The last couple of days kind of ran together. I've been up for 22 hours now and things are starting to get a little blurry.

Yesterday started early in the morning for a flight back to LAX. The weather behaved again, and we were well south of the storms that were brewing in the breadbasket of the country.

I do remember the flight attendant calling up to the cockpit to mention that a passenger was very concerned because it seemed like we flew very close to another plane and wanted to ask us if we knew about it. These kinds of things are pretty touchy. On the one hand I want to chuckle a little because this is actually a more common incident that you'd imagine. And yes, we are well aware of planes that are in close proximity to us, and no there is nothing unusual about the distance that particular plane was. On the other hand, you need to reassure the flight attendant by giving a resonse that doesn't feel like you aren't taking them seriously. Who knows what kind of day this person had? Or maybe they really are just that terrified to fly and they really need to know. This passenger even made a point of asking the Captain about it when we got off! He was really worked up!

Above 29,000 ft (FL290) separation is reduced to 1,000 for planes that are traveling in opposite directions. East bound planes are at odd altitudes and west are at even. Distance is very misleading at altitude. Because there is no close frame of reference to judge your own distance (because the ground is 7 miles away), the eye has trouble deciding how close something truly is. So to us, that 1000 feet of separation is all we need, we don't need additional lateral separation unless the altitudes are the same. If a plane buzzes past you in while you are cruising it looks close, because it is, but that 1000 ft vertical separation is keeping you safe.

Because everything was going just snappy we were able to land back in LA a few minutes early and got into the gate on time.

From there, we got in our car to the short layover hotel, just off the airport property. It was still morning in LA, but all I could think was that I had to go to bed in a few hours. The red-eye awaited.

I spent my time walking down to a shopping area on Sepulveda and eating at a Mexican joint that I've found great for this layover. They were busy today, but the food was still great. I did a little shopping and then it was back to the room to go to bed.

I slipped away around 7p eastern time (4p local) and before I knew it the alarm was going off at 1130 (830p local). I actually felt pretty rested after this one. The last one I did I got even more sleep and was still groggy. That makes the 5.5 hours in the dark even worse.

We got off the gate in LA right on time and hustled off to the runway. It was my leg last night and our dispatcher did an awesome job at giving us the heads up on the weather that was coming up a few hundred miles ahead.

As we got closer to Lincoln, Nebraska we came upon a massive thunderstorm system that was very active. It was causing a lot of deviations and looked scary out the window. Lightning everywhere, the radar gave us a good view of what was out the window and there was enough lightning that it lit the night up and we could get a little better gauge of what we were dealing with.

I took a video of it, but because it was so dark it just didn't turn out well. But I did go ahead and post it anyway. This cell system was at least 50 miles long and we saw non stop lightning in the night. The video doesn't really do it justice, but you can still see some of the great show. This video is just out the right side of the plane. There was almost as much activity on the left side as well. The overall line was well over 100 miles long. All those little flashes you see, that look really small, they are over 80 miles away. This was a big cell. I just wish it could've looked as cool here as it did last night.



Once we got past that area it was smooth sailing. The sun came up after we cleared Chicago, and it was a really nice flight. I took another video of our decent as we headed into Newark. We are going close to 450mph and descending around 1500ft/min.



We got in around 645 and I had a little over 2.5 hours of time until my flight home. I went down to our operations area and grabbed some quality time in a recliner for an hour, but I just couldn't sleep. My flight was wide open going home today. The peace of mind that comes from knowing that you've got a seat that takes you home.

Up next for me is a little time off. The Mrs and I are finally getting to take that honeymoon that we didn't get 15 years ago. We are both really looking forward to it.


So the company has flights that are worth more than others. Either because of competitive reasons, or because the plane is needed to keep on schedule because of what it operates throughout the day. Say it goes to airports that are known for causing delays, it's very important that the plane be on time, because if it starts off behind it probably can't catch back up again. A full day of late flights just can't help the company metrics. So because of that they have a special emphasis on flights that they really need to get out on time.

I'm pissed because yesterday I decided to sit down a get back to my posts here. So I typed out this nice long report then proceeded somehow to lose it when it was nearly finished. Of course I know, that every day I let go by that there will be more and more to type. So I guess I just need to suck it up and press on for those of you following along.

So no more procrastinating. I'm back to work and back to life as normal. The Mrs. and I had a fantastic trip to Cancun. We so needed the vacation and the time away. The Mrs, needed it more than I did I think. We spent most of our time between the pool, eating and getting ready for the parties. We took a day trip to Chichen Itza as our only trip off the resort. Otherwise we simply did what we wanted. No kids around us, no kids at the resort. A real grown up getaway.

Going down there was not too much trouble. We didn't get first class, but we were able to sit together so that was nice. Coming home was where things got a little more interesting. I had originally planned for us to come back through Houston again, but the Chicago flight that left a few minutes later had many more open seats. That only left us with about 90 minutes between flights in Chicago. Needless to say we weren't on time getting in, thanks to the slotting of departures out of Cancun. We hustled through customs, but I nearly lost my cool with the TSA when they pulled me aside for extra screening. We got to the plane at departure time but it was too late. The plane was still there, but it was closed out and there wasn't anything that could be done. So I fumed over the fucking TSA and the now 5 hour sit that we were going to have. Then I noticed that last flight was already delayed by 90 minutes and getting worse.

Ugh. After I cooled down and ate some food I put together that our plane still hadn't left St Louis, and it had to travel to DC, then to Grand Rapids, then to Chicago before it would go to Cincy. At this point I thought that there was a good chance that it wouldn't go at all and that we might be stuck in Chicago. I found another flight on a different company and bit the bullet and purchased a couple of discount stand by tickets on them, but that flight was delayed too.

Customer service did a great job of making sure our checked bag got over to the other flight and we made it home a solid 3 hours before we would have eventually gotten home had we stuck it out. Maybe it wasn't worth the 90 bucks the tickets cost us, but the peace of mind, knowing we were going home was.

At home I had to finish some training for a procedure change that we are implementing later this month. Basically it's going to allow us to push off the gate without our final weights. We'll be able to get those without too much delay and it should result in faster departures. But because the entire procedure is changing there are a lot of differences between what we do now, and what we will do. This is the only training we will get on it, so I had better get it down.

Thursday at 430a I was on the road again to the airport. I must have been tired, not only from the early wake up, but just in general. I slept most of the flight to Newark and then after I got there, I went straight to ops and grabed a couch and slept for another hour and a half.

My first and only flight of the day was a trip down to Ft Lauderdale. We were planning to be on time, when the company decided to steal our plane and give us another one that didn't get in until we were supposed to be leaving. That put us behind by a good 45 minutes, by no fault of our own.

Yesterday we had one flight from there to San Francisco. Again, I totally took a nap when we got in. There was a little bit of weather in Florida, but it was early enough in the morning that the big stuff didn't have a chance to really get going yet. It was a long ass flight though. I felt like it was never going to end, and it was only 6 hours. Not even close to the longest that I've had.

I have more training that is due this month that I havent' started yet, so I spent some time getting a couple of modules knocked out. So I finished training for Airport Ground Operational Safety, Automated Gate Parking system, and Deice/Anti-ice program. And another for general and specific flight safety and flight planning issues. I've got quite a few to go. I'll try and get a couple of these taken care of over the next few days.

This morning, we left SFO and headed to LAX, where I'm typing this up. I'm about to head to my next flight to Cleveland where I'll be tonight. I was really thinking about going to the Indians game tonight, but the tickets are still pretty expensive (compared to Cincy right now) and I'd probably have to leave early anyway for my last day tomorrow. Besides I've got to get this training done.

I'll leave you with this:

This whole week and weekend has been good for flying. We haven't had too much in the way of weather to deal with and the rides have been smooth. Today we were pretty early getting into LAX from SFO, and despite that we ended up late on the gate.

To give you an idea of how tightly some of these gates are scheduled we were due to park at :39 after the hour, and the plane on our gate was supposed to be off by :35. On paper that might seem like it'll work, but it doesn't take into consideration the one way nature of the alley (as in one plane in, one plane out), nor does it give much leeway for any delays that ground control might give us due to congestion.

We did our best, and technically getting in when we did is considered on time, but after being on the ground for 25 minutes it sure doesn't feel like it.

Everything was on schedule to be out on time from LAX, except for the ramp. They told us that the company was having some issues with something in the bag transfer area and that we were going to wait for 16 bags to show up. It was alright today, the flight plan had us planned to get into Cleveland almost 20 minutes early so we had some time to give.

It almost took up that whole 20 minutes too. The flight was very quiet. Weekends are just quiet in general. Less flying, means less chatter on the radio. It's just a more laid back atmosphere. Just like we had planned, we got to Cleveland right on time without any other adjustments to be made.

I decided not to go to the game. I had some things I needed to get accomplished. Training being one of them. So today I worked through a module that focused on managing emergencies, crew coordination during emergencies, briefing the flight attendants and considerations that need to be made when determining whether or not an evacuation needs to be ordered.

There are 7 more modules that I have to complete before the end of the month. As long as I take it a little at a time there won't be any need to stress.

Tomorrow starts earlier than today did and hopefully ends with me at home. That's right, it's go home day! Woot.

Started this morning leaving the hotel in Cleveland at 635a for the airport. Our flight was supposed to leave for Chicago at 750a. We got on board and started to initialize the flight computer but it wasn't initializing with the correct flight number and destination. After a few minutes of messing with it we ended up calling dispatch. We had already double checked the airplane with our paperwork and it matched, so we ended up calling dispatch to see if they had any idea what was going on.

At this point we had already started the boarding process when dispatch said that we were supposed to be in a different plane. It would have been nice if they had told us this before, because nobody had any idea this was going on. The ramp had almost finished loading the bags and cargo. The passengers were over half boarded. We had most of the set up done for the flight and now they wanted us on a different plane.

So the plane they wanted us to take was still in the maintenance hanger, but would be over soon. This other plane had 1 of the 2 pressurization and air conditioning systems out of order. If the company had left that plane on the route to Denver they would have to bump some 30 passengers off the plane to be able to get enough fuel due to the altitude restrictions with that type of deferral.

They didn't give us any option. Get off, and switch planes. We had time and went and got some breakfast first. The plane wasn't expected from the hanger for almost an hour. Talk about feeling frustrated here. We have no control over any of this and it looks like we are the JV team running between planes like nobody knows where to be. The poor gate agents spent the time we were eating rebooking customers on other flights so they wouldn't be totally screwed.

We ended up an hour and a half late, and did then flew as fast as the ride would allow. Luckily it didn't screw up the last leg. We had originally had a 3 hour break, now it was cut down to an hour and a half.

I spent most of the time walking around the terminal, just to get the blood moving a little bit. Then grabbed a quick sandwich and headed over to the plane. This time there was none of the silliness that we had in the first flight.

The funny thing from this flight though? We were pushing back and noticed that there were a couple of tugs that were driving outside the road lines so they could keep going and maneuver around the plane, instead of waiting like they should have. It just so happened that on the other side of the plane was a police officer with his lights on that was waving at them to come see him. One of the guys tried to do a fast 180 and go in the opposite direction. That only drew the cop to come running after him, yelling and pointing him back in his direction. We had a good laugh. Yes, even guys on the airport, driving tugs, do stupid stuff and get pulled over by the cops.

A nice fast flight into Newark got us home 10 minutes early. ATC had wanted us to land on the shorter runway and we told him no, just put us on the runway that we had planned for. I know we got some extra vectors because they were a little saturated, but I think he gave us even more just because.

After we parked I had 2 hours until my flight, that supposedly had a couple of seats left as of this morning, but when I looked again, it was full. That meant that I'm heading to the gate early so I can get listed on the jumpseat. I needed it today too. It was as uncomfortable as always, and two hours of that is about all I can take. A seat home is still a seat home though, and it indeed took me home today.

I've got to put my September bid together this week. I've only got 2 days left actually. I need to get my butt in gear. Then there's the training that I need to do too. Seven modules left to complete by the end of the month.

It's not like I won't be busy at home either. This week is schedule pick up for school. The HOA party that I've been organizing and not able to attend is on Saturday. I've got shopping to do and have to try and get more volunteers to work it or the Mrs. is going to kill me. Since she volunteered to work in my place, and she's not the one on the board. There might even be a trip to Kings Island with the boys before summer is over.

Busy, busy, busy.

Good luck with your September bid.

Thanks Barkeep, after the fiasco with August I'm feeling gun shy for this one. September is another one of those months with too much going on in it. Between the holiday that the boys are off of school and a birthday for the Mrs, and another for the youngest, that's enough.

Then there's also that school is back in session. I can try and get some amount of weekends off to be with everyone more, or I can be home more during the week to help with the day to day stuff. We've found it more useful to be home midweek in the past. Having said that right now, I'm set up to have the last weekend in August off, which is technically in September and then I'm trying to get another weekend off so that I can take the Mrs to Columbus for the Country Living Fair, which is sort of like a massive 3 day antique market. We went last year as her birthday present after years of wanting but never getting to go, and she wants to go again if we can, this year.

I just finished my bid.

I should have mentioned that I was able to pick up a 3 day trip from another pilot who wanted to get rid of it, at the end of August. That makes up for most of the trip that I dropped to go to Cancun, and puts me back in the normal category for monthly income. That's critical with our one income family.

After talking it over with the Mrs, I settled on selling out for that weekend in Columbus, and of course avoiding La Guardia. The rest is designed to be spaced out throughout the month so that my time home won't be so rushed. I put 12 different bids in to try and capture at least part of that weekend. After those bids, I've decided to forget the weekend and try and capture at least the 2 birthday days until noon the day after. That way, I wouldn't need to leave until the next day. As a last resort, I've left the birthdays as soft requests that could be jettisoned, provided it leaves my request to avoid LGA in place and keep my trip length maxed at 4.

What do you guys think so far? We are coming down to the last third of the year and the last third of this version of the dynasty. Anything that you want to know about? Or thoughts on the job? Parts of it are not as hard as previous companies I've worked for, but parts of it are more complex and challenging. I'm still very happy to finally have reached the pinnacle of the industry.

It's been just over 2 years here now, and with all the hiring I've got just over 1000 new hires below me. As of today, I'm at 92.4% seniority within the entire company. A whopping 7.6% of the company is junior to me. That's nothing. Lol. But it's only going up every month! Just in Newark, on the 737, for September I'm at 56% of all first officers, and 77% of all line holding first officers. Some guys in the last 15 years spent a majority of that time in the bottom 90% of both of those categories. For years. So you can see how much times are changing in the industry.

As always, thanks for your interest, and for sticking with my writing and storytelling. I'm pleased you are following along.

:) Happy to keep reading! I feel like a more educated traveler thanks to this dynasty.

I would love to know more about stewardesses and stewards. I think that's been covered here and there but not in depth anywhere (unless I'm forgetting a post in which case just point me back to it).

I'd love to hear more about the flight that flew through the hail storm last week. How does something like that happen? Isn't that a huge no-no on both the pilots and ATC's part?

Loving this dynasty. I'm only up to page 2 though - don't tell me how it ends!

I vote for year two! :popcorn:

How do all of the upcoming forced retirements of pilots (age 65) affect your seniority status?

Can you be type certified (nomenclature?) on more than one aircraft? For example, 737 and some long haul plane? Do you have a "Dream plane/route" you'd like to be able to have/run?

I was hoping you would continue your pilot career and how you are handling both home and work. It is a look at a career that many do not get to see, and I have to say inspiring as well! Please continue if you can!

So I'm just coming off of 4 days at home where it was non-stop, end of summer action and I'm ready for my quiet hotel room now. Lol. Seriously, it was one of those times at home where I was busy and we were trying to cram the last of the summer with Dad home before school starts next week.

This morning was another 330a wakeup for my flight to Newark to start my trip. I'll be heading over to my plane here in the next couple of minutes.

While I was at home I got a few more training modules done. I covered a module on Evacuation and Ditching that was focused on water landings and the correct operation and procedures for the life raft. You have to figure that if you're a surviving pilot on a plane that has ditched in the water and you're lucky enough to get the life raft off and passengers on it that you're now going to be the boat captain and you'll need to know how to run that show.

The next module was on the Flight Management System and Navigation. And the last was one on the different warning systems in the plane. Everything from just positional lights all the way up to the, red lights, with audible warnings and bells.

I hate doing training at home. It just feels like my time at home is my time, but when you wait until the last couple weeks before it's due you don't get to complain, well not that much anyway. Still, I'll take training at home, on my couch, rather than stuck in a classroom far from home. That's one more improvement over what we used to have. We used to have yearly, 3 day, classroom sessions. Granted, for some things, I'll say the quality of learning was better then, but to be able to cover the same material at your own pace is way better. I don't get in trouble if I fall asleep while I'm doing this training!

I've got 4 modules left to finish before the end of the month. My plan is to get at the very least a couple more done on this trip.

Like I said earlier, we were trying to get this last push of summer under our belts for 2015 and send everyone off to the school year with a good feeling and happy memories. My family puts a lot of things off while I'm working. I mean a lot of family activities. Not housework. They know that things will happen and that I travel and such, but we really try and schedule bigger things for when I'm going to be home. This week was more of a culmination of smaller things, each and every day.

On Monday, my wife and I had to shop for things that I needed to get for the the HOA party that I've taken over. My goal with the HOA this year was to increase neighborhood participation. It's been pretty sad since we've lived there and I decided last fall that I wasn't going to keep talking about it and that instead I would try and be part of the solution. I started a Facebook group and have taken charge there. I've pushed our property manager, who spins her tires a lot and doesn't go anywhere, but a lot of that has to do with the current board, being indecisive. I've successfully suggested some improvements that are on track to be made and convinced them to have this party, that I've planned. It's this weekend. I'll be working. Sigh. The wife and kids are having (not loving) to cover for me, and of course, while we have a few homeowners that have said they will help out, I'm still very much in need of more volunteers. It's all a process. This needs to be successful or the next phase is going to suffer.

Tuesday, the family went to the Drive In (yes! We still have one in Cincy!) and saw Fantasic 4 and Ant Man. We were out until about 2a that night. Next day, I took the 3 boys to Kings Island and played there for half the day. Yesterday, we went to Ikea, (kids asked, wanted to eat and shop there), Micro Center (otherwise known as the Daddy Toy Store) and then to a home show that we go to every year. Yesterday was the only day that I could go for the 2 weeks that it's running because it on weekends. These weren't the big, big homes that you get in the Cincy home show (1.2-2.0 M), but these were bigger than mine (550k - 750k)! The boys do Minecraft, so they are very into the design and function of homes, let alone the silly dreaming of living like that.

So now I'm off to my plane, to start my 12 hour day, where I won't get to the hotel until about 1000p tonight (east coast time). Doesn't matter that I've already been up and in uniform for 6 hours. Thanks for the feedback so far. I'll get to those responses soon!

A couple pix to start the day! First one is of the menu board in the EWR cafeteria. This employee cafeteria is legendary. Small set up, all this food is available 24/7. These guys work and slave non-stop and the food is good and affordable. One of the very best parts of working in EWR (there aren't many.)

Second pic is a picture that I snapped today as well. I knew that the view needed to be just right for the phone to get the detail, but with the haze and this morning it worked out great. So enjoy Manhatten from Newark.

I wanted to add that I appreciate the feedback and questions above. I'll get to those soon. I've been pretty busy on this trip so far. It's definitely thrown some curves into the mix.

The plane was a little bit late getting in for us to leave on time. We did our best to get all of our stuff done, and then we sat there. See, sometimes you sit on a plane and you wonder why you aren't going anywhere. Sometimes we wonder the same thing. We sit there waiting for the next step of the process so we can get paid and get on with the day. In this case we were waiting for 30 bags to get on the plane. See? Just one part of the dance and things get behind the ball. That cost us over 20 minutes off the gate. We had been planned to get into San Francisco 15 min early, but now we were looking at a late arrival. Once we got headed in the right direction we made some adjustments to try and make up some of this time we had lost. Too bad on this day that despite our efforts we just couldn't make up much of the time. ATC gave us a reroute that they said was for traffic, but I wonder sometimes. Not that I'd like to find out the hard way that I was wrong or anything.

Our arrival into SFO is almost always over Yosemite Park and Half Dome. Today I finally remembered to get a shot of it, and when it wasn't covered in clouds either!



Normally a trans-con would be all I would do for the day, but not on this wonderful day. We had about an hour to kill before we needed to be back at the plane for 1 more leg. This one down to LAX. This plane was late coming in as well, and that put us behind once again. The good thing about SFO-LAX is it's usually planned for more block time than actual flight time and you can get in really early. Today was not one of those days. We made things happen to get going and headed out. Due to gusty winds the airport was only able to make use of 2 runways instead of the customary 4. That usually means that departures will be delayed somewhat, but we were flying later in the day, in between pushes (scheduled banks of flights that go out right around the same time.) That didn't stop ATC from holding us on the ground though. We sat, waiting for our wheels up time for LA, due to arrival rates, and flow into LA. Like I've expressed before, it's always better now to have a plane depart a little later, holding them on the ground than it is to have them hold in the air while they burn fuel. We ended up in LA almost an hour late.

By this point I had been in uniform for about 18 hours from when I put it on in the morning at home. I really like being able to commute in on the day I start, but damn, if it doesn't create these unbelievably long days. Needless to say I slept like a champ. I was productive this morning too. I finished the 4 training modules that I had to finish and am now trained until the end of the year.

Today I covered ETOPS, which stands for Extended Overwater Operations. Basically, we have a different set of rules for flights that cannot remain within a set distance from the nearest suitable alternate at any point along the route. Anything overseas is ETOPS. There are only a few routes on the 737 that are, Bermuda being one of them. It's a complicated set up that focuses on fuel, emergencies and worst case scenarios and what is required before you can even push back. The next module was an exam for Pacific Operations. I have to have this because of our routes to Hawaii, even though EWR doesn't operate any of those flights. From there it was onto compliance training where everyone learns how to love one another and what to do if you don't like others loving you quite so much. The last module was an incident review of the Asiana crash in SFO. The technical details of the event were reviewed and discussed.

I walked out to the pier and had a great breakfast at this little joint. Have I mentioned that I love SoCal? Love it. It's still in my blood from being born in this area. Not sure I could do it full time, but I wouldn't mind trying if I could afford it.



We left for the airport, as our flight was just before noon, heading out to Chicago. I had seen on the news about Washington Center going down and all the planes getting routed around the airspace. Our plane was already in LA, so we didn't need to worry about that. Once we got on the plane though we had some other things to deal with. The plane had come in with an open write-up. Meaning that the last crew had a problem and it had to be dealt with before we could do anything.

This issue, I knew from the beginning, had some potential to be a long delay. It's just one of those things that could be any of a number of different problems and it involved a long process to try and ferret out the issue.

We were immediately delayed 3 hours.

Someone might ask, "what do you do when you are delayed like that?"

Well, pretty much the same as a passenger, except that I don't care as much what time I get somewhere unless it's the last day of the trip. Don't screw with go home day. lol.

Honestly though, we sit in first class, talk, eat, read, sleep and wait for some kind of news. Today I got off and wandered around the terminal just to move some. I think some people think that we possess much more knowledge than we actually do. We just don't know how long it'll be. We don't know if it's going to cancel. We don't know if it's going to fixed quickly. We just try and pass information along to the gate agent, the same way that she passes it on to you. Remember, their primary goal is to empty the gate and move on to the next flight. They want to board the plane and get you out of their hair. Even if it means you sitting on a plane for hours waiting. We don't want that. For starters, the flight attendants aren't getting paid for that time either. They don't start until that door closes. So that whole time at the gate waiting? Yeah, just doing their job, but not getting paid for it. It's one sure fire way to have a crabby, tired cabin crew.

Three hours turned into four.

My day had me with a short layover and a plane change in Chicago and then a flight down to Phoenix. It would have been a very long day like the day before. Eventually, they found a different plane that was just coming out of maintenance and they towed it over and switched our gate to the new plane.

Every time things like that happen the dispatcher has to create a new release for the flight with up to date weather, route and fuel information. Then it's our responsibility to look over all that data and approve it. All this time we aren't on the clock either. We knew by now that we weren't going to be able to make our flight to Phoenix. That flight would be re-crewed with someone else. Now we were in limbo for what might happen next. It was nice to finally get going though. When we got going, I had already been in uniform for another 5 hours while we waited out this delay.

Once we had the new plane we worked quickly to get ready and pushed off the gate. On our call to ground they gave us some instructions and then told us to call for a new route and clearance. So if you are taxiing out to the runway, and you find yourself sitting for 10-15 minutes without moving, there's a good chance that the plane got a new route from ATC.

When we get a new route we have to make sure that the computer is loaded correctly. We both verify that the routing is correct (very important) and that it's loaded correctly, that we have enough fuel, and whether or not we can go without needing to have the dispatcher involved. Once we are both ok with everything, and confident that we are set up right we made our way to the runway and left for Chicago.

We really had no choice but to try and make up what time we could, but it was hard with another reroute along the way and then the weather. It took all summer, but I finally had a day where I had to play with the radar, and we simply picked and wound our way around one storm, then another. ATC gives you the authorization to deviate and you are responsible to get yourself where you want to be. The hard part on days like today is trying to pick that best path through everything.

Sometimes the options are obvious, but today I really had to examine the storms, play with the radar and not only pick the safest route, but also the most comfortable for the passengers. I'd say that we were dodging massive storms for most of 90 minutes before we broke out into the clear. The rest of the flight was straightforward.

Back on the ground in Chicago and I found out that my schedule had been altered. Instead of heading to Phoenix, I was to stay in Chicago, where I'm at tonight. Tomorrow is something very different from my scheduled trip, but the upside is that instead of going home on Monday, there's a chance that I might get to go home a day early, tomorrow. Even better news? I still get paid for my original schedule. Or to be more correct. I get paid the greater of scheduled or actual. Since I'm doing something completely different. It's not close to what my original scheduled is, so the former is paid out. If they had added more flying I would have gotten increased to the new amount.

In other news, the party that I had been working on for the HOA was today as well. My family worked very hard to cover for me and aside from an incident where the grocery store didn't have our food order ready, and simply had lost the catering order, even though the party started in 20 minutes. Ugh. So much stress, but they did awesome. Everything else went very well, and I was very proud of their efforts. I'd say that the whole thing was very successful, and planned out perfectly, from space usage, to how many people we might expect. We must have had close to 80 people, if not more when you consider little kids. A great effort and bounce back for having gone years without anything and being told that nobody participates. I hope next year I do get more volunteers though.



This is my sheep boy. His favorite toy when he was little was a little sheep. Now he's a big 8th grader, but he'll always be my little sheep boy.

Ok, I'm going to get some shit posted here so you don't think that I've gotten lost. Procrastination has been borne by busy work schedules and a busy few days at home.

When I left off I was laying over in Chicago. The next day I had been rescheduled to operate a flight to Pittsburgh and back to Chicago. The weather wasn't an issues for us at all, in fact it was quite nice, mostly, where we were going anyway.

We got to Pittsburgh on time, for a recent change, and I had an hour before we had to leave again. That really meant that I had about 15 minutes to do whatever I needed, like eat, shop, pee before I had to get started on our outbound work.

Being a diehard Steeler fan makes trips to Pittsburgh an opportunity to pick up things that I don't typically get access to in Cincinnati. The Sportsburgh store at the airport has tons of merch, from all the local sports teams, and with all of them being the same color, it makes for a nice uniform store appearance. Nothing on the racks screamed buy me today, everything was full price plus and I just couldn't justify it. Great selection though.



On the way back to Chicago we had to deal with adjustments because of the Air and Water show going on downtown. In fact, in addition to changing our arrival and landing runway, we had to make some small adjustments because the airshow planes were not staying on their own side of the bed. Back on the ground in Chicago and I was done for the day. That meant that my trip was going to be done early and I was free to go home! Sweet!

I got home about 18 hours earlier than I would have on my regular schedule. That meant that I had some extra time with the family on the last few days of summer break.

My Monday was a lost day just trying to recover from the trip. I just wanted to do nothing and relax. Tuesday I took the family out for dinner and we had out annual mini golf outing. It's something that we've done a few years in a row now. No real reason why, it just seems like a good way to spend the last day of summer. The next day was the first day of school again.

And after that. Back to work. I'm out of time for right now. Yesterday was day 1, and I was in uniform for 20 hours. Quite the day. More to come.

Day 1 of this trip was long on paper. Made even longer with the commute to work, that started at 430a. My flight that morning was very open so getting a seat wasn't an issue. It's that time of the year again. School has started in a lot of places and the summer vacation season is all over. It's the first, post summer, down turn, of the aviation year. Generally that means that there are lighter loads throughout and my commute gets easier until the holidays. The other major low time for travel is Jan-mid March, when spring break kicks up, then again from late April til the end of May.

I slept as much on the plane as I could, didn't really get comfortable though, then got to work and claimed a couch to sleep for another hour and a half. I had to skip breakfast. Sleep was way more important. The first flight was to Denver, we had a mostly full flight. There was weather, and by weather I mean scattered thunderstorms in the northeast, that was causing changes to ATC filed flight plans. We were given a reroute after we started taxiing out to depart. This one was completely different, as opposed to say just a couple of different departure fixes, so it took a little bit longer to get loaded and verified. We had originally planned to be to Denver a few minutes early, but Newark and this reroute conspired against us. The flight was a non-event though, just like I like them, and we arrived in Denver on a hot, hazy day. I couldn't even see the mountains from the airport because of it.

Instead of keeping the plane, or going straight to another for our next flight we had 2.5 hours to kill. It may not seem like much, but breaks in the day not only lengthen the day, but it can halt any momentum that you've got going on. I spent it in ops milling around on my laptop and chatting with the Mrs. We grabbed some dinner before our next flight out to Baltimore. Which just happened to be late inbound.

Tack on another 30 minutes of waiting and finally, at about 815p eastern time we were off. So much of managing the time on the flights is about keeping it in perspective. For example, I'm sure that everyone has had some long drives. I'll play the 10 mile, or 100 mile game, just counting down the miles in groups of 10, figuring the percent remaining, or remaining until I decide to take a break. I do the same thing in the plane. That way I can think about the flight in blocks rather than 3 or 4 hours at a time. That sort of thing is critical when it comes to staying alert, or staving off the boredom of the day. It's all worse in the dark. Winter is coming, the time change comes in November, and that's the worst of it.

I digress.

The weather on the east coast, associated with a cold front moving east, that hindered us in the morning was still a factor for our flight to Baltimore, although it was supposed to have moved off and dissipated by the time we got there. We messaged back and forth with the dispatcher and he told us it shouldn't be an issue. Ultimately, it wasn't but not by much. We were flying directly at this massive thunderstorm that has non-stop lightning for nearly 30 minutes. At night, depth perception is lost. Relying on the radar helps, but you still have to be skeptical. All it takes is one storm that you didn't see, or though you would miss to cause a lot of paperwork, or a severely damaged plane, like Delta had last week. One instance like that might get you 30 days off of work or more, depending on what happened and your actions that lead up to it.

At the most for us, it was distracting. The arrival that we were doing into Baltimore is a busy one, with many altitude step downs and speed reductions, more than enough to deal with, without a big thunderstorm that has just hit the field to worry about. I landed us and we headed to the hotel for some much needed rest. That's how day one ended.

Yesterday started with me heading out for some lunch. This was my first time in downtown Baltimore, my only real goal was to head to Camden Yards and check out the stadium, and eat in one of the pubs close by.



I thought it was great. I wish I could have stayed there and gone to the game that night. They were playing the Twins. Lunch was good, and then it was back to the airport for our next legs.

The flight attendants were already on the plane from the inbound flight and mentioned to us that the pilots had written the plane up and explained why. This one involved the eventual change of the nose wheel tires on the plane and made us over an hour late for our flight to Chicago.

Now the race was on. We had a planeful of people with tight connections in Chicago, and we only had an hour scheduled between our flights to be on time for our next leg. ATC didn't know it, but they helped us out by telling us to fly fast, and giving us some very favorable shortcuts along the way. We landed in Chicago on the best runway for our ramp and gate. I passed along notes to the station to make sure they knew when we would be in and to try and get extra help at the gate to get our passengers to their connecting flights. I have no idea how they did, but we got them into the gate over 15 minutes earlier than I told them to expect getting in.

We got to keep the plane for our next leg to San Diego. Keeping the plane is so nice. I don't have to pack up and unpack all over again. I just get off, grab a snack, and hit the head. Peeing in a real bathroom is a nice perk of an airline pilot. Hey, don't get me wrong, our lavs beat peeing in a bottle, but, peeing while fully upright (not hunched over; as opposed to fully erect (that's a different story)) is better. ;)

The flight to San Diego was obviously delayed. But we managed to cut 13 minutes off that planned departure, and then flew like the wind. The ride was mostly smooth, which is necessary if you are going to go fast. Turbulence is so much worse at mach .80 than it is at .77 or even .78. So with our extra speed we shaved off even more time, and were into the gate only 25 minutes late. If you consider that we left Baltimore an hour and 20 minutes late, kept the plane, turned it in Chicago without much wiggle room, and ended up in San Diego only 25 minutes late, I'd say we did a good job for the day.

Now I've got most of the day here to relax and recuperate before I operate the red eye back to Newark to finish off the trip. Fish taco's here I come.

Wish I would have known you were here. We are staying at the Marriott and I would have joined you for lunch!

In the same hotel no less! That's crazy!

I made a mistake yesterday. I let myself sleep in and I shouldn't have. It was all the difference in my ability to get sleep in the afternoon/evening before my show time for the flight back to Newark. The result was that things just didn't work out how I wanted them to. The good news was that it didn't seem to impact how I was feeling. I was ready to go, and ready to go home. The Captain and I were getting along pretty good, and all I had to do was get through a 4 hour and 48 minute flight, across the US, in the middle of the night, when I should be sleeping.

We were all set to go early and as we were pulling out the fireworks from Sea World started going off, not far from the field. The flight back was long, but it was manageable. Here's a shot of the routing that we took.



You can see that we navigated around some weather over Albuquerque and then this monster of a storm that was over Wichita, KS. The lightening from that system was strobe-like in it's intensity. We stayed well clear of it. But the instability from it was enough for us to have turbulence for almost an hour and a half.

We were originally routed up to Cleveland, but you can tell that we got a nice short cut that was more direct. We ended up getting in almost 15 minutes early. There were almost no tail winds to speak of, so it wasn't crazy early like we get in the winter months, but at least it was early.

I went straight to ops again after we got in. I had over 2 hours to kill and there was a couch with my name on it. When I got up I felt like I was staggering to the plane. I was so tired. I had no problem getting a seat home today and I was barely awake for 10 minutes after we started taxiing. I woke up when the gear came down.

I've got a short couple of days home again before I go back out again. A couple days and a big to do list.

So yeah, about that. It really didn't work out like I had hoped and planned. It pretty much came down to me not getting that weekend off under any circumstances and that is frustrating. I gave the bidding software a fairly wide berth to get me those days off and it just told me no. That means no weekend in Columbus with my wife. She's pretty disappointed. Waited 6 years to go, then finally got to go last year, then has to miss again.

The upside of my schedule is that my lesson learned from August paid off and at least I have the 2 birthdays off and few days off between each trip, just like I prefer. Plus the trips that I do have are very productive. That means that I have more days off than I've had, but the trips are only commutable on the back end, which means I'll be sleeping at the crash pad a few nights. I haven't been there in weeks.

What exactly did you want to know about? I can tell you that they go through extensive training. Some groups are unionized and some aren't. They can work insanely long hours, longer than mine, but the tradeoff is that they can get all their hours in a much shorter time than I can, and actually have a second job, or more family time to balance. The flight attendants that work in the regionals have a different path. Flight attendants can work on any plane, although the company generally keeps domestic and international flight attendants separate.


I really haven't heard too much about the pilots side of the event. From the passengers it seemed like they knew they were going to go through some turbulence. One thing about hail is that sometimes it doesn't show up on radar as anything much more than light rain. Hail is right up there with fire as very bad things for planes. The rule of thumb about entering a hailstorm is a fast 180, but even in that time it can take a massive beating as you saw there. I'm not even sure how those guys could see out the windshield. Despite the fact that they are most certainly looking at time off because of it, they did a great job getting it on the ground.


Thank you!


Thanks!


Getting hired when I did, as one of the first 75-100 guys with no previous connection to the company, once hiring resumed put me into a very enviable position. I'm going to be flowing up the list very, very quickly over the next 10 years. You are right that retirement is at 65, but there are rumors that it'll get pushed to 67 sooner than later. When it moved from 60-65 it was awful. There was no movement, no attrition in any company, no hiring, no expansion, no anything for five full years. As someone who was on the bottom of the list for many of those years I'm not looking forward to another wait.

In addition to the retirements the company is hiring about 1500 people in the next 18 months, and that's going to continue for the foreseeable future. What all this means for me is that I'll be able to pick my plane, my base and my time to upgrade when I want. I'll have choices that I can make that other guys before me never got the chance to. By the time I've been here 15 years, I should be able to hold captain in almost any plane in the fleet. In the meantime I'm going to just cross my fingers that the industry holds together a little bit longer.

Aviation is very cyclical. We just recently went through a very long downurn, companies filed bankruptcies and all the negotiating leverage was with the company. Now they are making money and there are simply fewer numbers to draw from for pilots. We now hold more of the bargaining power, but the hardest part is knowing where to draw the line in negotiation.

To fly the 737 you only need a type rating for it. That rating will let you be able to fly any variant of the plane from the original classic right up to the newest 900ER model. I only fly the 737, but it won't be long before I may get the chance to swap planes and add to my list of type ratings (the CL-65 for the CRJ series is the other.)

As for planes, I'm sure that everyone wants to say that they flew the 747 international. That is still the pilots plane. It may be old and time may be passing it by, but it's still the coolest plane out there.

As for route, I want the chance to see more of the world. I've already gotten to see quite a bit more just being on the 737, but you can't take it over the ocean....yet.

I don't really care. I want to like what I do, have good layovers, get paid, raise my kids well and love my wife everyday. If I fly something else that makes those things easier so be it. After all I've been through in this industry I'm just happy to be here.


Thanks man, I'm still planning on finishing out the year with it! I've surprised myself by being able to hang in there. It does take work, but knowing that people are enjoying it give me incentive to keep going.

I lose track of what day it is very easily. We have a support worker who comes to our house and works with our oldest son on Tuesdays. He always sees me in my scrubby clothes sitting on the couch watching tv and on my laptop. I had to explain that mostly, that was my Saturday morning and that I didn't just spend my life like that. Lol

After getting up at 630a on my days off to take the kids to school and getting a couple of projects around the house done I was heading back to the airport on Wednesday. My first flight was later that night, so I didn't have to leave until 3p. I didn't get to see the boys home from school that day before I left. Once again, I had a seat and didn't need to worry about the jump seat.

Now that school has started for most people the flights are a little bit easier to get back and forth to work. It'll be like that from now until Thanksgiving, then it'll be dead until Christmas, then after the new year, dead again until spring break in mid March.

I had time to grab a sandwich in the cafeteria and a Mt Dew for the flight. I don't do coffee, so my caffeine fix has to come from somewhere. On this flight you need one. This flight, leaving so late, is like a red eye, but a little bit earlier in the day. So tonight, I was heading to Vegas.

The company has changed some of the cockpit procedures for our final weights and performance data and it's taking some getting used too. We took a little bit longer to go through the flow and double checked that we were getting it right. Taxi out was fast, no issues, and by the time we were off the ground we were already 25 minutes ahead of schedule for our arrival.

The flight itself was easy. We managed to cruise up to 40,000 ft, which is as high as the plane will go heading west (FL410 is the highest, but thats an east bound altitude). It was a smooth ride until we hit the Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska area. It was a little bumpy, then it got worse. We had heard some pilot reports from ATC and messaged with dispatch and they confirmed that there was an area about 200 miles long where planes were getting some bad rides. We dropped down to 36000 where it improved somewhat, but crossing the rockies past Colorado Springs it worsened again. ATC said that higher might be better now so we went back up to 40000ft. It was bumpy off and on until we got quite a bit further west. But eventually we were able to start out decent and landed in Las Vegas.

We were about 30 minutes early now, but must have surprised the ramp guys, because they were nowhere to be seen. A few calls on the radio and 10 minutes later and we were finally in. Still early.

I accomplished a fat load of nothing in Vegas. I was thinking about why I don't get out on each and every layover and a lot of it has to do with time to myself. Growing up an only child of a single mom I had a lot of alone time. As a more introverted person it's just something that I'm really comfortable with. So on my days off, I'm at home with my family, but never alone. When I go to work, my hotel time is my alone time, where I can get caught up on things. I did make it out to lunch at a little joint on the Miracle Mile near Planet Hollywood, but didn't do much of anything else out.

Since we got into Vegas around 3a east coast time, and by the time I went to bed, it was late. I got up kind of late, and immediately recognized that I was suddenly west coast acclimated. Jet lag for me when I get home!

So I don't get to do my favorite activity, besides drinking with Izulde, which is drinking and people watching on the strip, so I head back to the hotel and get ready for my next flight. I've got a two leg day with a break in San Francisco to change planes and find some food. The flight out of Vegas up to SFO was one of best in a while. Very scenic, smooth, quiet and on our arrival into San Francisco we were the only plane inbound. I'm not kidding. Usually, you get in a big long line of arrivals and take your turn, but today, nothing. Not a single other plane on the radio or inbound in our area. It was eerie. We kept thinking we had a radio problem because it was so quiet!

Again we were about 20 min early and our gate was occupied. They were just pushing though, so we only needed to wait for a few minutes. Again, into the gate early. I walked around some, found some food, and sat down to eat, while I downloaded my paperwork for the next flight.

When I got done, they were already boarding our flight to Seattle. So I headed over. I guess they needed to start early because we were so full. This plane is one of the newer ones and it seats a lot of people.

With three jumpseaters on the plane and a couple lap kids we ended up at 189 passengers and crew. Not my leg, so I just ran the radios. We had expected one of the 28 R or L runways leaving, but the wind had died down so they were back to taking off on the 1's (1R and 1L). In case you are wondering and I didn't mention it, the runway number is magnetic heading of the runway. Or closest to it. So the winds were strong out of the west (270), but taking off on runway 1, (heading 010, or north) we were going to have a crosswind. We had to redo all of our performance data and redo the setup to match with our correct departure. In that case, all of our takeoff speeds and flap settings get altered because of the shorter runway and crosswinds.

We actually had a nice flight up to Seattle. Planes above us were getting more turbulence, but we stayed nice at 32000. By the time we landed it was almost 1130p local, or 230a, east coast time. See what I mean? I'm so totally going to be jet lagged when I get home.

The hotel was buzzing. Seriously buzzing. I almost felt like I should stay up and enjoy it. PAX Prime is going on across the street. I'm this close and like Comic-Con in San Diego, have neither the time nor the ability to check any of it out.

It's almost time to head back to the airport. This was a short layover. I haven't left the room here either. Just enough time to get caught up with a couple of people and pound out this update. I love getting out in Seattle but today it's just not happening. I haven't even eaten yet.

My schedule today has me flying back to Newark. This is a three day trip for me, so today is go home day. My flight looks good right now, there are plenty of seats so as long as our plane is on time and we can get out of here, I'll be getting home. Just not until 1230a tomorrow morning. Ugh. That just sounds bad. It still feels like morning. Oh wait. Because it is, in Seattle. West to East is never as much fun as East to West.

Hey, wanted to thank you for answering my question about the hail storm.

Also, earlier this week I flew into CVG - first time I'd been there for a while. My first thoughts were that it was a nice, small airport, but then thought that the gates were WAY too far from the baggage claim area. Only on the return trip out did I notice the train system (argh).

Was thinking, as a pilot I think I'd follow your way of doing things. Meaning - live close to a smaller airport. Sure, you have to have that first trip that takes you where you actually need to fly. But...you also don't have the traffic and other proverbial headaches of living close to a large city. On the way home, I flew out of O'Hare, and I was actively looking to purchase ice picks to stick in my eye after having to deal with 2pm Thursday traffic just trying to get close to the airport. Ugh.

Yeah, CVG used to be one of the biggest airports in the US. At one time Delta operated over 600 flights a day. There were 3 terminals buzzing as late at 1100p. The 40-year contract that the airport had signed with Delta expired this year. 40 year!!! It was both the best and worst thing for the airport. That stranglehold was essentially a seat on the board and allowed the company to get the same deal if the board offered something better to another airline. Before the contract ended Delta had cut flying to about 100 flights a day. Since the signing of the new contract both Allegiant and Frontier have substantially expanded and opened new pilot bases here. So there is a little more life, but still nothing like it once was. If you happen to be driving by overnight you'll see the DHL operation in full swing. Their ramp is quite the thing to observe with so many large cargo planes and the people swarming all over like bees. Here's a photo that I took a few years ago of part of Delta's terminal at about 1100a on a Saturday morning:



I like your thoughts on commuting. It's really something that does impact quality of life. We do get the benefit of not getting stuck in rush hour traffic day in and day out, and as all hours as our schedules can be even when we are coming and going, many times we get to avoid the worst of the traffic.

Speaking of traffic.

So yesterday we were supposed to leave the hotel at the same time as PAX was starting across the street. Our shuttle was no where to be found. It wasn't until 10 minutes later that he finally showed and said that traffic into downtown was totally effed. Then we tried to leave. It took us 20 minutes just to get out of downtown. Now we are supposed to be at the gate 45 minutes before the flight, but we weren't even going to be close, coming from downtown. When we finally got there the plane was half loaded and it was only about 25 to departure. Needless to say, an on time departure was not on the books. I worked hard to get everything ready to go and was actually ready to go close to on time, but we were still about 12 minutes late off the gate. Then we taxied out and were about number 20 for takeoff.

The flightplan had us planned in about 12 minutes early, but we had wiped that away off the gate, then the extra time off the ground cost us about 8 more minutes. We got airborne and immediately adjusted our speed to try and recapture some of that time. It would not be a good ride. We had turbulence off and on until we were past Chicago, or about 2.5 hours worth. ATC would have no relief for us today. All I could do was slow the plane down to try and ease the ride until we were clear.

ATC would give us a break through with a nice shortcut, but would later force us to slow early. After all was said and done we landed on time, and now it would be up to the gate to decide if we were going to be on time or not. So here we are, working for the better part of 6 hours to try and get this plane into the gate on time. But it all comes down to this. Ramp tells us to hold short. The plane off of our gate has an issue and needs to return. Crap.

They quickly find a new gate for us, but by the time we get there we are about 5 minutes late. Now, for the DOT numbers, that's good enough, but the company is really pushing this on time or early arrival. Sadly our 6 hours worth of effort would not be enough today.

I had about an hour and a half until my flight home. It had plenty of seats and was running just a few minutes behind schedule. I walked all around the airport and really like these new renovations that are being made to the terminal. It's really going to be nice when it's all said and done. It's going to feel, dare I say, upscale. Which also means expensive, which it will be. But nobody has ever called Newark upscale.

I did roll home around 1230a and true to form, couldn't go to bed until much later. Jet lag ftw. Everyone did let me sleep in though, and I'm actually home on a Saturday for the first time since our vacation last month. But it'll be the last Saturday I'm home for the next month.

I forgot to add this picture I took on our way back into Newark. The moonrise last night was a beautiful thing to see.

Not a whole lot to update right now. Still at home enjoying the break between trips. Tomorrow is the Mrs. birthday and I'm taking her to the comedy club. Happy that I get to spend the day with her though.

I came across this SU-35 demo from a couple of weeks ago on YouTube. I've never seen some of the stunts that this guy does in a fighter jet. It's bonkers.

I started off this next trip last night, leaving home around 5p for my flight back to Newark. I found out on my way to the airport that the inbound plane was over 30 min late leaving so the outbound would be delayed. You can learn a lot about your flight by checking the inbound. If it's coming from the place you are going and it's late it's probably bad news for you.

True to form there was plenty of weather causing all kinds of problems. In fact, when I got to the airport, the first thing I did was look at the board to see if there was another flight that was running late enough for me to jump on. Sure enough, a Delta flight that was scheduled to leave at 400p was still here and looked to be boarding. Another flight had just left.

I headed over there straight away, and found that they weren't boarding, but would be supposed to go in about 40 minutes. And they had a seat for me. Good news for me. I should be getting back to Newark about 30 min before I was originally going to. I ran and grabbed some McD's to take on the plane and headed back. They were already boarding so I jumped in and introduced myself to the cockpit for my official permission to ride.

Right about the time we were supposed to be pushing back the pilot came on and said that the wheels up time had been pushed back. This was not good news. There were thunderstorms encroaching on the field, and if we didn't get out it might be a very long time before we did.

We taxied off the gate to go wait for our time at the runway. There was more bad news from the cockpit as the weather was now on the field and unsafe for us to leave. We were going to wait for it to pass.

Every thirty minutes we heard that it would be a little while longer. Around two hours in the crew were just about ready to pack it in and head back to the gate. If that happened it would be after midnight when I got to Newark. The flight that I was supposed to be on was still there, it was delayed too. Then suddenly, we were getting ready to go. The weather had broken just enough to give it a go and we were off.

I landed in Newark around 1030p. The flight that was planning on taking had only left Cincy 5 minutes earlier and wouldn't land until well after midnight. It was fortunate that I was on this one. I made it to the crash pad by 1100. Now I haven't been here in what seems like 2 months. Don't worry though, I was still sending in my $185 each month like a good little tenant.

Up by 530a this morning and back to the airport an hour later. An hour later I was pushing back for our first flight. This one to Houston. Routing was good and weather wasn't an issue for this one. We were out a couple minutes early and off the ground even earlier. We touched down in Houston over 20 min early. The only drawback of that was that we had a 4 hour break before the next leg.

I headed down to ops and scouted out a chair. I had intended to get this update written then, but fell asleep. When I woke up half my break was gone and I had to find some food. I noticed that there was a nice sized thunderstorm heading right for us as I headed out. We were about 10 minutes from pushing back when it hit. Anytime there's lightning near the airport the ramp will close as workers are to seek shelter. Airports are massive draws for lightning and can be very dangerous. I'm sure you've seen the videos.

This cost us 45 minutes on our departure time. Eventually, it cleared up enough, in the meantime we just sat in the cockpit and had to wait it out. The next flight had me going to Tampa, where I'm laying over tonight. It was a short layover to begin with, not it's even shorter. We dodged around thunderstorms for most of the flight across the Gulf. I bet we were off course more than we were on course. The ride wasn't great, but somehow we shaved off about 15 minutes of the flight time. I think it had to do with Tampa switching runways and the new arrivals had us landing to the North instead of the South. That alone saved us lot of vectors and a shorter taxi in.

Like I said, it's a short night tonight, an early wake up tomorrow, then back to Houston to start the day tomorrow.

Well today lived up to the hype!

In truth there was no hype, but in reality it was going to be a long day with some potential challenges.

First leg out of Tampa had us planned through an area of weather over the gulf. The truth of it was dodge and weave all the way to Houston. The weather in Houston showed some fog in the area, but like yesterday it was expected to burn off. The Captain had said that he had diverted more times into Houston in his career because of fog than anywhere else and was always ready for it. On our way in the visibility was varying wildly from visual conditions to instrument conditions. We set up for what's called a CAT III approach, which in the 737 is an auto land. We only need visibility at 50 feet to be able to land the plane. Larger planes can land with 0 vis.

As a pilot one of the strangest feelings is watching the plane land itself and all you do is monitor the controls. It doesn't fly like you fly, it doesn't react like you react, it doesn't flare like you flare, but it does get the job done. We got in and were early to our gate.

I took a bunch of photos of the thunderstorms over the gulf this morning. The sun was coming up and creating some great color and images. Some of these storms were massive as well. We were cruising at 38000 feet, and some of these were well above 40 and over 50 miles long.







I had a little over an hour to myself so I went to our operations and found the same chair I napped in the day before and got comfy for some more shut eye. Early mornings always get me and I knew I could use the rest before the next leg. It doesn't take much, anything from 15 minutes to the hour I had the day before works.

It's been a while since I've been out of the country on a trip so the next leg did have me a little excited. Plus, I have never been there before so that means that I have something to look forward to when I get there, and it was my turn to fly. So where to next? Panama City, Panama.

Looking at the paperwork there was more weather scattered in the Gulf that we would navigate around, but weather in Panama City was holding steady. This time of year though strong storms with lots of rain are common so we always have to be prepared for a diversion. Flying that distance, with an alternate as far away as Costa Rica, like ours was meant that we would only have about 20 minutes of potential holding time to play with before we'd have to make a decision to divert. Obviously, we still wanted Panama, but you have to be prepared and ready to make the call if it comes to that.

We spent a lot of time in and out of the clouds as we headed south east. Even at our cruising altitude of 37000, which can get you above a lot, it wasn't enough. So like the first flight, we had to take the best alternative routing. For the most part it was a typical flight, except that we spent quite a bit of time talking about the approach and what to expect for the arrival down there. So the time passed a little quicker. It's hard to make 3 hours pass quickly generally.

As we got within radar range we started painting a lot of weather on the radar. I thought that maybe it was just ground clutter, but a check of the weather at the airport and the surrounding area confirmed that there were storms all over the area, including right near the airport. As we approached the airport this is what I saw on the radar:



The airport is that green area at the top of the radar, just about 70 miles away.

The two of us have to work together to decide on the best course to navigate. Plus we have to listen to two languages on the radio and people who's first language probably isn't English. The storms just complicate things as the radio gets congested, it's hard to get clear directions. We had freedom to deviate as we needed to get into the field. We found a weak spot in that mess, but had to navigate to the other side of the airport to line up for the right approach.

On final, we drove through another batch of heavy rain, then got the airport about 8 miles away. It looked like the airport was getting some rain, but I could still see the runway, and things were alright. As we descended through 1000ft I clicked off the auto pilot to get a feel for the winds and the plane. Everything was great until we hit the rain shower. I went from seeing the runway to seeing nothing. That meant that I had to switch back to full instruments for guidance and navigate the weather and try and find the runway again through the rain. It was challenging. Even with the wipers at full speed all I could see was the flash of the approach lights through the rain. We were still coming down, and only a couple of hundred feet above our decision height for the approach. I had to transition back outside so we could land, otherwise we were going around. And with terrain out there, bad weather, and an unfamiliar airport I really didn't want to do that if I didn't have to.

I kept us in a good position to land and concentrated on staying on the path and flaring just as if it was a nice day. The touchdown was soft, and I stood the thrust reversers up to maximum and let the auto brakes slow us down. The runways in Central America aren't grooved like they are in the US, they aren't arched like the US and don't channel the water off the runway like the US. Braking had to be steady because all that works against you in the safety department. It was raining so hard, and everything was flooded. I took a massive breath after we landed and after we parked the Captain shook my hand and congratulated me on a nice job. He knew it was tough too.

So just how bad was it? This was my view out the windscreen after we parked:



And this was the view from the jetbridge. Note the gushing water coming out of the gutter drain and the "waterfall" coming off the roof of the terminal:



With the weather there's no real reason to go out. My layover is a little longer than last night and while tomorrow is early, it's not nearly as early as today was.

Tomorrow is supposed to be go home day, but I've got 35 scheduled minutes to get from my plane, through customs, and to my ride home, which is over sold. If that doesn't work, I've got a 5.5 hour wait until the next flight. Gotta love working on a holiday.

You may also have seen this going around the interwebs. It's a great view of how an airport deals with thunderstorms. You can see the various arrival corridors get shut down, planes hold, and some divert. You can't just tell planes to stop coming, it's an incredibly dynamic, and complicated set up. The planes never stop coming and ATC and Atlanta especially do a great job of handling this all the time. They have the benefit of owning a lot of airspace, something that the NY guys don't have. They have traffic arriving in 4 quadrants, whereas most of the NY traffic comes from the south and west, with some from the north. It's why bad weather in the NE is so much more damaging to flights than say storms in Atlanta or other Midwestern cities.

Wow. Congrats on nailing a tough landing. Thanks for all the detail. I really felt the suspense and difficulty.

I was downloading the paperwork in the morning hoping to see that we were going to be planned in way early. I need that time to make my flight home. I know that it's only 35 minutes scheduled, but looking at the daily averages in Flight Aware, I see that the flight averages being in 20 minutes early. That would give me enough of a buffer to clear customs and hustle to my flight.

The flight plan only said 8 minutes early. Which is ok, but leaving a foreign country is never a sure thing. Everyone worked together, we boarded pretty quick, got our set up and briefings done in the cockpit and waited. I guess the ramp guys didn't get the message. At least it wasn't raining. We still pushed on time, but had to wait a couple of minutes for our final weights and take off date to come through. Then we waited again at the end of the runway for other planes to take off on the parallel runway. Eventually we were off, but I had only gained about 4 minutes on my 8.

Panama is on Central time, even through it almost due south from Newark. We flew straight north toward Cuba on departure. Before I started flying with this company I had never flown south of Florida. So flying in the Caribbean and Central America is a very new thing. Radio communications are also very tricky. The rules aren't exactly the same and the language barrier can be a safety hazard. Normally you wait for controller hand offs to the next controller, then switch frequencies, then talk to the new controller. When flying over different control areas, run by different countries, it can a little different. For one, radar coverage isn't complete. A lot of times you are reporting points and positions, then you have to make contact with the next controller on your own, 10 minutes before you get into his airspace.

Kingston runs a large central section, south of Cuba, but their radios often suck, which means that sometimes they can't hear you, or vice versa. Then you get to Cuba, where things are surprisingly good. They speak pretty good english and are reasonably friendly. Then north of there is Miami, which also want's that radio call early.

We were routed over central Florida this day, when normally we'd stay off the east coast and cross the mainland at Wilmington NC. Weather in that area kept us west. Most of the weather we had to deal with on this day was over the Keys and the southern half of Florida, par for the course in the late summer. After that it was mostly smooth sailing into Newark.

I snapped this picture of Philly on our way in:



We had made up a good bit of time, and ATC had helped us along the way by having us fly faster. We got to the gate, which was both open, and ready with marshallers. I jumped off the plane and started my journey home. Global Entry is so worth every penny.

I breezed through and went back into the terminal to find my flight. My time to connect had gone from 35 minutes to 55 minutes. Plenty of time. The next problem was going to be the oversold flight home. I needed to get to the gate and get listed on the jumpseat.

It was still available and she gave it to me. I guess I was the only person who needed it. All good things. I get to go home earlier and don't have to spend an extra 5 hours in Newark for fun.

My next order of business is concocting a bid for October. The good news is that I have vacation, and I think, I think it means that my award will be bumped and I'll get more of what I want. We'll see.

I'm not even working today, and it was an interesting day. My biggest accomplishment today was to get the family laundry done and I bought a Christmas present for my youngest son. I found a newer Core i5 HP laptop on Craigs list and snagged it for $130. Then, the text notifications started coming in. I was supposed to be on a 530p flight to Newark, but now that flight cancels do to ATC delays.

Then I get a notification that I've been rebooked on the 830a tomorrow morning. Uh-oh. That means that my backup flight isn't an option. I check the listings and sure enough, not only is my first flight cancelled, by backup flight is cancelled. This is interesting and the first time that I've had anything like that happen.

There's a flight leaving in 2 hours, still scheduled on time. I've got 20 minutes to be out the door and on my way to the airport. I call scheduling and let them know. They inform me that the flight is sold out and they can't put me on it (as in buying me a ticket, making sure I have a seat.) She tells me if I want to try and make it I can, but otherwise I can take a missed trip because I can't make it. That's about 24 hours of pay lost. Now I could look to pick up something else, but it starts to screw up my schedule very quickly, because even in the best case I'll lose work on Friday.

Not feeling very excited about that proposition I hustle up and fly around and get my stuff ready to go. I kiss everyone and make it to the airport on time. The flight is oversold, it's going to have lots of revenue stand by passengers. My only hope is a jumpseat. I'm beaten to the cockpit jumpseat by another pilot, luckily this plane has a rear, flight attendant jump seat that isn't used, and they let us use to commute. It's saved my bacon a time or two, it may be helpful again today.

Then comes the word that they flight is delayed by almost 3 hours. The announcement says new departure 715p. Ten minutes later, the pilot comes up and says that the plane is released and we can go. All hell breaks loose as we now have a tight window to get out and the poor agent is overwhelmed trying to get the people who are supposed to be on, but spread all over, on, and the stand by's who desperately want on, and don't care if the real ticket holders show up. The jump seat proves another savior, and crew is happy to help me out. I'm on.

Try and fail. We miss the time, but all boarded up, we head out anyway. The new time could be minutes or hours away. ATC gives us good news and they let us go in minutes.

When we get to Newark I hear that we were pretty much the only plane flying in, and that the pilots have no idea how they let us go. We decide that there were VIP's on the plane and the company pulled strings to get the plane on it's way. This is actually a thing. When your business account makes up such a high percentage of overall revenue, service happens on a different level.

I'm happy for it either way. Now I'm in position to start my trip tomorrow, I don't have to worry about missing out on 24 hours of pay, and I have a room to myself (so far). Tomorrow starts early. It's a 445a wake up call. A good night's sleep is priority. The only thing that could derail it is this dumbass football game.

Here's a bonus:

Overheard; someone on a phone, in the airport:



"You know what he do? When I leave he sneaks into ma bedroom and goes through my clothes, sniffs my underwear, and messes with ma stuff! He's always messin' with stuff in my room! Can you believe that?"


I wanted to ask SO many follow up questions!

So I'm going to get all serious here for a bit. I wanted to do this and I didn't want to do this.

My day was fine. I worked today. Started off super early and took a plane to Chicago. We left early and were rerouted over Milwaukee because of weather. That reroute, coupled with the near non-stop turbulence in between put us on the ground late. Then ATC had put us on the far north runway, which if you know Chicago, might as well be in Milwaukee. It took that long just to get back to the gate.

A short turn. A plane change. A late fueler, and we were off on the second leg to Bozeman. I've never been here before, but I've been close. It's so close to Yellowstone I can feel it. I could see the Tetons from 150 miles away. I had thought about renting a car and driving there, but I couldn't deal with the cost for only a few hours there.

Instead I met up with an pilot, who rode our jumpseat from Chicago, and lives here and we took me out on a little tour of breweries here in Bozeman. It was an awesome day here today. Just about perfect. I had a good time.



But I also thought that it might be of interest to just kind of spill my guts on the table about 9/11.

I was working as a flight instructor in Orlando at the time. Not yet a commercial jet pilot, but getting paid to fly planes all the same. The path to my future was laid out before me and each step took me closer to that goal. I was off work that day, 14 years ago. Our son was in school, the Mrs. was working, and I was probably playing Championship Manager.

She called me from work and said that something strange is going on and to check it out and get back to her. They didn't have any way to get caught up on the news, and people kept coming in and talking about it. I turned on the TV and felt sick. The second plane had just hit and I knew. It was clear that it was intentional. My first thought was of the people on those planes. The people and the last thoughts that they had in their lives. The pilots, who had most certainly been killed before, and my world was instantly gripped in the most dreaded feeling of fear.

I couldn't watch, and I couldn't turn away. Emotion coursed through my body. I was all at once sick and angry and sad. So incredibly sad. I thought of the families. The families of those crew members. In the days following, the voices on the phone, the lost voice mails hurt. They hurt and it never let up. The resignation of the situation. And I wanted vengeance. Cold, painful, revenge. All of this at once. The Tom Hanks movie, Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close was hard to watch.

I watched the towers collapse one by one and I sat there, alone, and I cried. I cried and screamed and cried more. I paced the house, I sat, I stood. I was so totally helpless and overwhelmed. I still can't look at at 767 the same way. Seeing it go into that building and just explode like that. It's so violent. So raw. That plane is just huge, and here it was looking like a toy next to that building. I wish I had lived my whole life without ever seeing those images.

I wanted my wife, but she was working. I needed to be with someone. So I drove to work, where my friends were. Where we could console one another and where we could talk about it all. I was so pent up with emotion that I had a road rage incident on the way. I'm sure it was my own fault. I was wired so tight.

After I had calmed down, all I wanted to do was hold my family. I wanted to hold them, and tell them how much I loved them, and I didn't want to let them go. There were thousands of people who weren't getting that chance again, and it was all I could think of. I went to my son's school and simply pulled him out and took him home. I don't remember anything else about the day, except the sadness.

I'm pretty sure that you could have diagnosed me with PTSD afterward. I suffered nightmares from that day for over a year and a half. I still can't watch movies based around it. I've never seen United 93. I only recently watched a documentary with the boys. The real time scenes still make me cry. My boys saw that. They got that. They understand I hope. It was brutal.

Brutal because that was the life I was heading toward. Those might have well been my family members on those planes. They were flight crews. Today it's easier. It's easier because here I am telling you my not overly compelling story, but I'm still sitting here with the remnants of that emotion still running through me.

Of course now I work for one of the companies that were attacked, and so that connection is solidified even more.

Never forget that day. It changed my life forever. It changed my career forever. Not a day goes by where I'm not directly impacted by 9/11 multiple times a day. Not one. We can't forget. I can't forget.

United Flight 93
Captain Jason Dahl
First Officer LeRoy Homer, Jr.
Flight Attendant Lorraine Bay
Flight Attendant Sandra Bradshaw
Flight Attendant Wanda Green
Flight Attendant CeeCee Lyles
Flight Attendant Deborah Welsh

United Flight 175
Captain Victor Saracini
First Officer Michael Horrocks
Flight Attendant Robert Fangman
Flight Attendant Amy Jarret
Flight Attendant Amy King
Flight Attendant Kathryn Laborie
Flight Attendant Alfred Marchand
Flight Attendant Michael Tarrou
Flight Attendant Alicia Titus
Customer Service Representative Marianne MacFarlane
Customer Service Representative Jesus Sanchez

American Flight 11
Captain John Ogonowski
First Officer Thomas McGuinness
Flight Attendant Barbara Arestegui
Flight Attendant Jeffrey Collman
Flight Attendant Sara Low
Flight Attendant Karen Martin
Flight Attendant Kathleen Nicosia
Flight Attendant Betty Ong
Flight Attendant Jean Roger
Flight Attendant Dianne Snyder
Flight Attendant Madeline "Amy" Sweeney

American Flight 77
Captain Charles Burlingame
First Officer David Charlebois
Flight Attendant Michele Heidenberger
Flight Attendant Jennifer Lewis
Flight Attendant Kenneth Lewis
Flight Attendant Renee May

I did have a good day yesterday in general. Downtown Bozeman has a number of micro breweries and a good feel. The weather was just about perfect, and I spent the afternoon going from place to place.

Today went according to plan. With it being mountain time it almost felt like sleeping in. It was still an early trip to the airport. We had some trouble getting the final weights, so once we were airborne we had a little catching up to do. Sitting on the right side of the plane I had a special view of Yellowstone this morning.



In the front part is Canyon, the middle is Lake, far in the background is Grand Teton, and if you look to the right side of the pic you can see some of the geyser basins. The steam was very prevalent on this cool morning.

There was no time at all between flights, once we got to Denver. I had to change planes, it was get off on, and right back on another to get it ready to go. Our second leg was to the layover, in Boston.

Today was the first time that I really noticed that the season is changing. There were lots of low clouds obscuring the ground, very little in the way of thunderstorms. The cold front that had moved across the country the last couple of days had cleaned everything out, and we were left with a very fall-like weather look. Winter is coming.

We ran into the back end of the cold front up in Boston. But we didn't get the bad weather that we had been expecting. But we did have some turbulence on the decent. It was a very nice day in Boston today.



After I got settled in at the hotel I figured I might as well keep my tour of breweries going and I headed a couple of blocks over to the Harpoon Brewery and sampled a couple of brews.

Tomorrow is day #3, and while these last couple days have been long, with long flights, tomorrow is the longest.

Glad you got to see Bozeman and Yellowstone! Some great places if you're willing to drive 8 hours from Bismarck. :)

Yeah, A long day.

It's late and I have to go to bed for tomorrow, but I want to get the update for today done first. My first leg was an early morning flight back to Denver from Boston. Another day of nice weather. Typical of fall weather. The flight was almost 4.5 hours. Once I got to Denver I had another 3 hour break between flights. I took that time to eat some lunch and make a couple laps around the building.

I finished the day heading to Minneapolis. There was no brewery on the schedule for today. We didn't get here until later in the afternoon, and tomorrow is the earliest start of the week. I need to get a good nights sleep tonight. Tomorrow is another fairly long day too, and it's go home day, so that'll make it that much longer.

I've had some really good landings on this trip. Not sure what I'm doing that's working, but it's almost rolling on to the runway. Feels great when you get those. My landings are usually pretty solid, but I haven't had this consistency for a while.

I don't remember reporting that I got my October bid in. I got it done a few days ago when I was home. Like I've said, I've got vacation, so I tried to be a little more aggressive with my days. I'm hoping that I can get a couple of weekends in the month. Halloween doesn't actually happen for us until the November bid. My bid months don't perfectly line up with calendar months.

My vacation lines up with the school district fall break, which I never had as a kid. There was no major break after school started until Thanksgiving. So now they get a 4 day in Oct, a 5 day in Nov, and two weeks over Christmas. Seems excessive. Lol.

The plan for the next day was to stay on time, and get back to Newark so I could make my flight home. The flight back to Denver and the flight to Newark accomplished both things. We ran on time and the lack of weather and the benefit of weekend flying saw that we ran a little early each flight.

As I was wrapping up this trip I realized that something had happened that I had never happen before. We had flown 8 legs, and we had carried guys on the jump seat on 5 of them. That's the first time that I've had more filled than empty jump seats. It also goes to show that flights are full and getting seats to go back and forth to work are even harder to come by.

I had an hour to kill before I went back home and grabbed a sandwich since I hadn't eaten since my flight to Denver. My flight was quite full, but there were quite a few other non-revs who were trying to travel. I talked to the agent and said that I'd sit on the jump if I needed to so that someone else could get on, but she reassured me that it was going to work out ok.

I had my seat and headed home to my family. My youngest son turned 12 yesterday. One last year until they are all teenagers and older. That really doesn't matter that much, but it means that we've finally traversed that path known as childhood. These boys are now young men, and I only have a few years left to help turn them into great men. I think back on those younger years with a moist eye. I miss those times and the wonder and awe that each of them had. Don't take that time for granted.

I got up this morning to my middle son asking me about some math homework he was struggling with and about a functions question that he had on a standards exam that he had. He laid out the functions and I was a little proud that I was able to write the algebraic equation for the function by just working the functions backward. Hopefully even just this little moment for us helps and encourages him forward in his STEM pursuits. It's one thing that I wouldn't have gotten as a kid that I've been able to give him. For that alone, I am a success.

I'm back to work tonight. Commuting in to start a trip tomorrow. My days off went by fast again, they always do. I will also find out my bidding for October worked out. I realized that our end of year HOA meeting, that I'm supposed to be at, that I want to be at, that I kind of need to be at since I've been the main force for change in the HOA the last year is on a day that I'm pretty much guaranteed to be working because of the way that my vacation lies in the month. I missed the HOA picnic that I planned, now I'm likely to miss the EOY meeting where officers are elected and homeowners actually attend. I'm likely to be picked as President next year, so it would be nice to actually make the meeting. Not sure how all that's going to go down right now.

I was supposed to get something down here yesterday after work, but I was tired after a long day and had a short layover. My day started off around 730a with the ride to the Newark. No too early, which I was thankful for. I downloaded my paperwork on the way and was ready to head to the plane when I got there.

My day started off with a flight down to New Orleans. Weather wasn't a concern. In typical September fashion it was beautiful. Once we got to New Orleans I bought fresh Beignets for the whole crew. Call that a perk of the job. Being able to get some specialty food on the road, at the airport, then going somewhere else is pretty fun.

We were heading back to Newark on leg 2. This flight, like the first didn't have any weather, or issues of any kind. But after two flights of 3 hours I was feeling it. We had over 2.5 hours to wait until the next flight. I needed to charge my company ipad and my phone. I found a recliner next to an outlet, put my headphones on and napped in between texts from my wife.

After about 45 minutes it was time to get ready for the next flight. I rounded up all my crap and went to the plane. Our last leg was a short run up to Boston for the overnight. That flight goes pretty fast. Even though it's over an hour, we only spend about 20 minutes at cruise. In between it's busy getting up to cruise and then it's busy getting ready for the decent and the approach.

In Boston we don't even leave the airport. The hotel is right there, but I haven't had dinner and I'm not buying hotel food tonight. I fail at the foodcourt. Who would have thought that in Boston, the restaurants close at 8? I found a salad at one of the few places that was still open and headed out. From the time I got to my room to the time I was asleep was only about 2 hours. Not a whole lot of free time today.

Sleep came easy and I was up by 7 this morning. Saturday didn't even figure into it, except that it's the NDSU/UND football game today. This was later than I usually get to get up at home to I was thankful.

Today was one of the short days. The main goal again was to be safe, on time, and keep it easy. Weather was awesome today and made my flight down to Dulles easy. Days like today make it easy to enjoy my job. We changed planes in DC, had enough time to grab a quick lunch to go, then headed to the next plane to get it ready to go.

The next and last leg was back to Boston for another layover, the third, since last Saturday. Also the third different hotel. We got out of DC quick, no delays, and despite heavy arrivals into Boston, and some fancy ATC routing we got to the gate on time.

The big deal for me today was to get to the hotel downtown with enough time to watch the NDSU/UND game on ESPN3. As of right now, it's 27-3, NDSU. Later I've got plans to get together with DT, or I guess I should say, the guy who was formerly known as DT, since he isn't around here anymore, for dinner.

Here's a couple pics to share with you. The first is a very nice sunset shot of New York from last night heading up to Boston.



And the next is a shot from Dulles today. The chemtrails...ahem..contrails are hanging in the sky a long time today and you can see how the commercial airliners use the same routing frequently. Here it looks like they are flying side by side, but what you are actually seeing is the contrail from each plane drifting from the wind as they fly over the same fix and make the turn on course.



So my October schedule is here too. In the grand scheme it's ok. I got some of the things that I wanted, but I screwed up my bid again and it cost me by me having to work over Halloween now. My kids are too old for it now, but we still do some neighborhood activities. My 7 days of vacation was widened to a total of 13 days off, which is nice, it gives me some flexibility if I need to try and move trips around or just pick something else up. All in all, because of the vacation I've only got a couple of trips. But like I said, I'm still not satisfied. I hadn't planned on having that trip run over Halloween. I'll be looking at the trips available throughout the month to see if I can't get something worked out. I had been worried about being able to make it to the HOA meeting, and from the looks of my schedule right now, it looks like I will. That was a surprise. I had written that off. So all in all, it should be a good month. Only one of my trips isn't commutable on both ends, so that's even better than I had for September. That means that it's down to just 2 months left to worry about for this year, and they are big ones. November has the obvious in addition to my anniversary and then the big one in December. Bidding should be fun for both of those.

Here's DT and I from dinner tonight:

Today was one of the absolutely best days that I've had for flying in months.

It seems like a long time ago, but we did start the day in Boston. Maintenance had the plane since overnight and they were a little slow getting it to the gate for the morning flight out. That put us just a couple of minutes behind schedule for our flight back to Newark. We finally got everything done and the bags were loaded and we were off, what seemed like, really late. Now this flight is frequently delayed due to weather or capacity so it gets blocked really fat. Meaning that the scheduled flight time takes into account for delays, and we still had a chance to get in on time.

The route from Boston isn't exactly straight. We flew west, before we flew south and came into the NY airpace from the NW. Newark was landing to the north, and they step you way down early due to overflying departures off of Newark, and arrivals into the other NY airports. So they had us down at a lower altitude for almost 20 minutes as they vectored us to our runway. The weather was really nice, and you could tell that every other pilot was out flying their own planes because of all the "non-commercial" radio traffic. We parked at the gate right on time and had no worries for the passengers to make their next flights.

I had about an hour and fifteen before I had to be at the plane for my next flight, this one a transcon out to Orange County, CA. I chose to spend the time walking around the terminals knowing that I'd be sitting for 6 hours later.

The flight out to the OC was easily one of the best I've had in a while. The weather was perfect. From the moment that I turned the seat belt sign off it was over 3 hours until I had to touch it again, and then it was only a couple of minutes as we climbed up to 40000ft to get out of the bumps. Then it was smooth again.

I took one picture today. After a little bit of research, this is Canyonlands National Park.



We got into Santa Ana about 12 minutes early. It was hot here today. I'm not used to seeing the thermometer his 96 here. Some of the 737-800's of another company couldn't take off as it was too hot, and the runway was too short. You know that wasn't part of the plan.

I've got one leg tomorrow to get back to Newark and then find my way home again. The Mrs and family spent the weekend doing family, outdoor activities, that I missed again. This was also the weekend that I was supposed to be off to go to Columbus. I'm glad they found something to do, but I hate missing out on the County Farm Tour. Ahh well. The pics she took looked good.

Just two more trips until vacation.

Love the Canyonlands shot. Have to get back to SE Utah after spending several days in SW Utah this summer. (Yes, there's that much scenery in southern Utah!)

Argh, I'm super behind.

I'm going to be brief and try and catch up tomorrow. This layover is short and I just don't have the time to really do it justice.

I finished my last trip and was able to make it home on the first flight back. At this point, without looking I don't even remember where that last flight was or went to other than I made it home. Lol. That happens a lot. It's a lot of do it and forget it. Plus, the days and trips just run together after a few days. I know I couldn't even tell you where I went two weeks ago, or even what time I got home.

I headed back to Newark on Friday with an early start on Saturday. I got to the pad and found it nearly full. I was lucky that one of the other guys offered to give me the lower bunk since I was the first one to get up in the morning. Otherwise, I'd have been stuck on the top. This was the most people that I'd had in this crash pad since I started staying there.

Day one had me going out to Vegas and then back to Denver for the overnight. It was a longer day. Weather has been great so things have run smoothly. I've been trying to mentally make a list of some other things to write about, and I swear I will get to it. For now I want to leave you with these pics that I've taken on this trip. It's been great for sightseeing so far.

I'll start off with 2 pictures of the Grand Canyon, taken as we were on our way to Denver:





Next is a picture showing just how low Lake Meade is outside Vegas. I've drawn some arrows to show you that you can see the water line, like the inside of your toilet tank. On the right, you can see a marina that's has had to relocate significantly far away from the parking lot.



I know I've taken a picture of Zion National Park before, but this is such a much better picture. I really love how it turned out:



Next, flying over the Rockies you can see fall is in full swing. The Aspen trees are turning to their bright yellow color and can be seen all over.



And last you can see how I finished off this long day. I had to take a nap so I could stay up for it, but I finally got to see the Dodgers while I was on a layover after just missing them a few times. Too bad they lost this game on a walk off HR. I had great seats for this one, and considering that Rockies lost 90 games this year, the stadium was so full! I was impressed.



This morning I was up and we did a Nashville out and back to Denver, where I finished up tonight. I'm up very early tomorrow, but I wanted to get this semi caught up. Enjoy guys.

So let me start with today and see where this goes. We had a 6a van this morning to get to the airport in West Palm Beach. This is the last leg of this trip with today being go home day. It's been a productive, if not tiring, trip. Let's be honest, they are all tiring to one extent or another. It's part of the reason that I've not been good about updates here lately. When I get to the hotel I have an agenda, like eat and sleep or I'm just too tired to really put much thought into this.

So anyway, one leg back to Newark. We were ready about 10 minutes early, but for some reason we didn't have an ATC clearance for our IFR (Instrument Flight Rules, all commercial carriers operate on an IFR flight plan) flight plan. A call to dispatch was in order and they set to getting the problem resolved. We could push back and taxi out, we just couldn't go anywhere without it.

The ride into PBI was fairly bumpy yesterday, no, it was crap. It was just crap for well over an hour. So I didn't have much hope that we would find much of a smooth ride today either. Our flight plan came in and we verified our clearance and then were off, still early.

Much to my surprise the ride was mostly smooth for us. Perhaps being at 39000 ft today was good, as we were hearing rougher rides below. This flight used to be considered a long flight when I was flying for a previous company. Anything over 2 hours was, but on the 737, it's now a short flight. From the time we get to cruise until we start down it's really only a little over an hour and fifteen minutes or so.

This trip hasn't been as good as the last few. I've actually flown with this Captain before, and I remember complaining last time that we just don't "click" in the cockpit. He is a nice guy, but something about our personalities just don't mesh well so we go through bouts of irritation, conversation, quiet. I guess just how you'd normally spend hours on end with someone that you wouldn't spend time with outside of work.

We were going to be early into Newark today, and I was supposed to have a 3 hour break. There was an earlier flight home, but it was scheduled to leave when we landed. So once we parked I didn't hurry off, but still checked the board to see if there was a chance. There was. It was delayed for maintenance, but it was still leaving in 10 minutes.

I had to walk across one terminal, ride the bus, then get to the gate. Odds were slim, but that flicker of hope started running through my mind. That's the dangerous part. The hope that you'll make it. I got to the gate and the plane was still there, but the agent was gone. The other agent said she already closed the flight, and didn't really go out of her way to try and help me. Ten minutes I stood there thinking that maybe she would take pity on me and just walk down and ask the other agent, but she didn't. She did all she needed to, and I missed my chance to get home.

I won't deny it. I was hot, irritated. The plane didn't leave for 10 minutes. I know, I know, I've been lucky before, but you're not always lucky. I know. It's that damned hope. Hope can fuck with you and get you all wound up. I'm still going to get home today. Home to a torn up family room getting ready for a remodel this week. Tonight will be loading flooring up the stairs, and moving furniture and tomorrow will be tearing up carpeting. I like these projects to just "be done." Preferably done by someone else. Lol. The chaos of the in between blows.

Yesterday we were at cruise, coming from Denver back to Newark in the morning when a 767, coming back from Honolulu passed us, 2000 ft above on the same airway we were on. With both of us going to the same place. I've been hoping that this would happen because I wanted to share this unique sight that passengers would never get to see.



Alright, so it's probably not that exciting. Just 2 planes flying in the same direction. Doesn't even look fast. We were cruising at .77 Mach, a very normal speed for our plane, and he was probably around .84. That equates to about 40-45 mph faster. So over a 2 hour flight, he ends up roughly 12 minutes ahead until the approach controller gets a hold of him. He landed right in front of us, or about 3 minutes ahead of us.

Days at home go by so fast. We moved furniture, ripped up carpet, brought up the new flooring from the basement and got it ready to go. We had flooring to do and a completely new (gas insert) fireplace surround complete with new tile. After 2 long days we still aren't done, but the handyman will come back on Monday and I really hope it's done. We'll have to finish up the grouting work in a couple of days, but overall it's a big upgrade in the room.

The best news of the week was hurricane Joaquin going out the sea. For a while it looked like it was going to make the NY area a mess and a sure fire suck fest to try and commute to work for me. Thank goodness that didn't happen. I start my work week tomorrow, but still had to leave home at 230p today so I could have enough flights to get there. Saturday's can be a big problem coming from Cincinnati. Sometimes there aren't any direct flights, but I lucked out with 3 today. I had to travel on the middle flight so I would have at least one back up flight. That flight ended up being full, and it looked like I would be stuck in the cockpit again, but the other non revenue passenger didn't show up so I got the last seat in the cabin.

I got to Newark and grabbed some Qdoba to take to the crash pad. I got there just in time to catch the start of the NDSU football game on ESPN 3. I'm number 2 in the crash pad tonight, which beats the hell out of number 5. This trip is the last one that I've got before my second week of vacation for 2015.

So I think I've covered what happens during the preflight, taxi out and takeoff. The next section of the flight is the climb out and cruise. Departures can be pretty basic at times. We will always be given an initial altitude to climb to. ATC will either assign us an initial heading as well, or we'll be cleared to depart via any one of a number of other departure procedures that might be GPS or ground navigation based.

We'll have 5-7 controller changes as we climb up through ATC sectors and head out of controller airspace. If I'm the guy flying I try and hand fly the first 15 minutes of the flight or so. Of course that might change, if the sun is in my eyes or it's complicated and busy I may turn the auto pilot on early. If it's quiet and nice, I may handfly the plane all the way up to cruising altitude, 25-30 minutes.

Once we are above 10,000 ft we are technically out of sterile cockpit procedures. Meaning we can relax a little and have a little conversation, but generally, while we are climbing out it's still all business. Radio chatter is busy and if anything is going to go wrong it's got a better chance to happen early into the flight. It's really important that both guys are clear on where we are going, and what the last instructions from ATC were. Getting an instruction wrong, like speed, altitude, heading is not only potentially dangerous, but it's a quick trip to a 30-day, unpaid, suspension and an FAA mark on your permanent record. That's all relevant at all times, but on climbs and descents, more is going on, and the chance for errors is higher. Being able to work together and following standard protocols is necessary for the safe, reliable operation and keeps each pilot tuned in and you know what to expect.

We reach cruising altitude around 25-30 minutes after takeoff and then step through some basic procedures for the cruise. Long haul, over sea's flights have some extra steps, but the main checks are fuel, altitude, and winds. Then what?

The auto pilot and pilots gets a lot of discussion. There is this big misconception that the auto pilot does everything. That we are up there as glorified babysitters who really don't know what's going on as the plane just flies itself to the destination. I think this one generality is one of my biggest pet peeves. Auto pilot is nothing more than cruise control for cars with altitude control. I'm still monitoring over 20 engine gauges, checking for correct auto pilot mode operation, checking pressurization, fuel and controlling the cabin temps. Simple changes in altitudes require cross verification and a multi step process just to move to the next altitude.

"It's always cold."

No kidding, it took me 20 minutes the other day to get the temp right in the cabin. The planes are notoriously finicky about temps. They are old, new good, bad. Each takes a good bit of tinkering with to get right and then, just when you've got it right the flight attendants call and tell you something isn't right. The temps that we have in the cockpit aren't the same at all in the back. We generally have the sun beating in somewhere and with the smaller space we might keep it colder than the cabin. Some planes have the cabin temp controller in the back for the flight attendants to adjust, but that's not the way the 737 works.

So from taxi out to cruise, it's probably 50 minutes into the flight before I really sit back and think about anything else. Then from about 45 minutes before we are supposed to be landing things pick up again. Flights on my 737's that are 1h30m or less can be quite busy up front.

Tomorrow is a one leg day to a good layover. It's time to call it a night.

My one leg yesterday started with a 530 get up for a scheduled 755a flight down to Cancun. We were routed around a couple of large areas of turbulence, and we knew that we were going to pick up some flying over the Carolinas. Speaking of that area, it's good that there wasn't a whole lot there at impacted our flight. Just some bumps as we went south. In short order we started out over the Gulf about 80 miles north of Tampa. We were past the worst of it and there was smooth sailing ahead. Cancun has some pretty strict rules about arriving early. We were originally planned in 14 minutes early, just within the guidelines, but a fast departure out of Newark has us looking at closer to 28 minutes. There's only so much you can do to slow down. I messaged dispatch and he called down to the station to smooth over any issues that there might be and messaged us back that we'd be alright when we got there.

This layover is the longest of the trip, almost clocking in at 19 hours. After taking care of talking to the family I changed clothes and headed over the the taco shop across the street for some fish tacos and cervezas. I ended up sitting with a couple of local guys who worked at the hotel next door and we chatted about work, Cancun and the upcoming USA v. Mexico soccer match. They seemed to think very highly of the US team and not very much about the current Mexico team. They could have been trying to make me feel better though. :) Those fish taco's are so damn good and at 88 pesos for 4 of them, at the going exchange and they are a whopping $1.30 each. You can't beat that. I'd pay more than that for a beer later in the day.

I had been looking forward to this layover since I got the award on my schedule. It's easy to see why. The day was about as perfect as they come.



I was up and off to work before dawn again today. This leg of the trip started off with a flight back to Houston. In typical fall fashion the ride was excellent. We had a great flight. We were one of the first planes off the gate in Cancun and ended up with another fast taxi out and take off. That doesn't always happen here. The ramp can get very busy, like this summer, when we waited almost 30 minutes to push back and I missed my flight home from vacation.

We landed back in the states and for some reason that time of day was exceptionally busy. The ramp controller was doing his best puzzle game and moving planes to move other planes, to move other planes. We just wanted in and off, and because of our early departure from Cancun we were still in the gate over 15 minutes early.

In Houston, I had just about 20 minutes to clear customs, hit the bathroom, make a phone call, download my paperwork and get to the next plane. Plenty of time.

My second flight took me back to Boston again. We had a great ride until we hit the DC area. Our dispatcher had sent us some pilot reports from ahead so we knew that there might be some bad rides. We had enough time to get the passengers seated and the flight attendants notified that it was coming.

We landed early in Boston and headed to the hotel for the night. I tried to get the Captain to walk over to the Harpoon brewery nearby, but he had taken nasty fall yesterday and was feeling pretty banged up and not like it. So I walked to Jimmy Johns for a sandwich for dinner and then back to the hotel. Nothing exciting about that. The sunset tonight was impressive. I managed to get a great pic of it while I was walking back:



Tomorrow will be another early morning and the longest day of the trip. I won't get to the hotel tomorrow until after being on duty for over 12 hours. One more day closer to vacation. Two days down on this trip, two days to go.

You'd think I'd be all used to these early morning wake up's by now. All month and most of last has been early mornings. Then I go home and get up early to get the kids to school. I hate early mornings. Much more of a night owl, which you can see if you look at the time stamps on many of these posts. Boston seemed like a long time ago. The first flight was a short hop down to Newark. Today also marked the first time of the fall where I could see my breath on the walk around. Grr.. something about winter...coming...fuck it, it's too early.

This morning was gorgeous. We cruised down at 16000 feet which seems low, but Boston and NY need to keep you down below other traffic traversing the area. There's just too many planes to worry about getting you all the way up and down. We were coming in from the north and Newark was landing to the north, which meant that we had to tool around at 6000 feet for almost 20 minutes while they flew us to the other side of New Jersey to shoot the approach.

When I think of New Jersey, and I know it's not fair, I think of crime, filth, and shipping yards, Atlantic City, whores, and the Jersey Shore. It's not flattering. I will say that it earns it's nickname, the Garden State. From the air it's quite a sight to see, especially on a nice morning like today was. I caught sight of a hot air balloon skimming the tree tops this morning as we were making our way toward Newark. No way I'm doing that. Scary.



We touched down and again made it to the gate early. Nice days make for solid schedules. Then we had almost 3.5 full hours of break time before the next leg. My plan was to store my bags and the I walked around the terminal for about an hour. After I was tired of that I headed down to ops where I charged up all my electronics and drifted off to a nice little nap. The time flew by and I had to get back up for the next flight, this time back out to LA.

I looked at the paperwork and didn't really see any areas of concern. A stray thunderstorm over Denver and maybe some light turbulence over the Great Lakes. This was too easy. We pushed 5 early and ended up #2 for takeoff. Only 5 hours and 39 minutes to go. That equates to about 6.5 hours of sitting. We get up and take our lav breaks and meal breaks. Even getting up 2x during the flight helps. The plane had a problem with the wifi that wouldn't clear, but they still had tv back there. There's nothing that I can do except to power cycle it. If that doesn't work it's out of my hands. True to form the trip was good. The only real drawback was that there was a lot of low cloud cover, which is another sign of the fall/winter weather pattern across the US. Smoother rides for us, but nothing to look at, and then in just a few weeks, my most hated of all days. The fall back to the end of Daylight Savings Time.

Getting into LA was easy today. No delays and they cleared us for an approach to the north runway. Our taxi in even managed to stay on time. We had to wait for a plane to exit the alley where our gate was, but that couldn't throw us off. Our layover was in Redondo again, and today I felt like going out to enjoy the awesome day. I stopped at one of my favorite places for, you know, fish tacos and a beer then headed out down the beach to walk off my dinner.

I came across these benches near the volleyball courts on the beach. They appear to be left over from the '84 summer olympics. I thought that was pretty cool to be just sitting here along the beach.



Last, before I head off to sleep til tomorrow. The sunsets here are just awesome, and this particular one I could watch from my room, where I could see the ocean. Today, like day 1 in Cancun, certainly makes a case for the fantastic perks of this job.





Tomorrow is one leg back to Newark, and it's GO HOME DAY! Go home to start this vacation! Our bidding window opened for November. 5 full weekends plus the holidays of Halloween and Thanksgiving, plus my 15th Anniversary. The list of what I can actually get will be very small next to the list of what I have no hope of getting. There's going to be a lot of trading off to come out of that with something decent and I need to try and do it before I leave on vacation and the whole thing slips my mind.

Oh man, I've started this post a bunch of times, but can't seem to get it going. It seems like it was a long time ago since I left LA and started my vacation, and I guess it was. Let me tell you, it was great. It was great because it was just what everyone needed. We got to get away for a few days, unwind, spend some time together, and recharge.

When we got back I still had a week until my next flight. With the boys back in school our normal routine started back up. One son ended up in the Dr.'s office but seemed to shrug it off with some medicine. I ended up driving my middle son to Bowling Green, KY, where we took a tour of a high school for gifted STEM students at WKU. They take kids for 11th and 12th grade, fully paid room and board and they will graduate high school with 60 college credits. I know that it's perfect for him. All he needs is to keep doing what he is doing and he can do it. The average ACT score for incoming Juniors was 30.8. Not sure he will score that high, but his drive in STEM is very strong. I have very mixed feelings about sending him away two years early. I know he could handle it, he's very well rounded and he would love it, but the parent in me just isn't ready for that yet. It's still a couple years away, so I've got some time to come to terms with it. We took some more family time over the weekend to do our yearly fall leaf drive and picnic. Another great adventure. I also had my important HOA annual meeting and was picked, based on the my successes this year, to be the president for next year. I topped all of it off by shopping for and starting the application process for HELOC so we can keep upgrading the house and consider finishing the basement off. Busy, busy, busy.

I got the results of my November bid and lo and behold it's not half bad. The downside is that I work all 5 weekends (counting Halloween as November, because it is for bidding purposes.) But the upside is at least it's consistent throughout the month. I've got a nice break between trips and a pretty good number of days off. I've got our Anniversary off and I'm actually going to be home on Thanksgiving day. I have to leave the next day, but I haven't been home on Thanksgiving for a couple years at least.

Wednesday morning I headed out around 530a to catch a flight to Newark and get back to the task at hand, flying airplanes. My flight in left me with about 90 minutes before I had to be at the plane. I had enough time to grab a quick breakfast, charge up my Ipad and wait. I'm getting sick. The kind of sick that reminds me of how my son was sick last week. Hmmmmmm. How is this possible? Oh, and not only did he manage to get me sick, but the Mrs, and his brother are also sick. Booooooo.

The first flight was a long transcon to San Francisco. I won't lie. This is just the kind of flight that is challenging after a layoff. It's long, and boring. Boring is good. It's infinitely better than action packed, I'm good with boring. But boring is still boring. This already makes for a long day, but when we got to SFO we had a two hour sit and another leg to LAX after.

By this time I had been on the go for over 12 hours since leaving home that morning and I wasn't exactly feeling great. I was ready to get to the hotel. We had to wait for some traffic to clear behind us in order to push off the gate, then we were underway. SFO was advertising 2 departure runways so we set up for the most expected runway. As we taxied out, ATC had a change of heart and told us to get set up for the other runway, that the one we had been planning on was currently closed. When we have a runway change all the work falls to me in the right seat. The first thing is that we need new takeoff data. I have to reload our flight computer for the new runway, then double check the new take off data that comes back. Reset any flap settings, take off speeds, power settings and verify that our departure is correct for the new runway. Then when I've got all that set up, I have to verify all of it with the Captain so that he knows we are all on the same page, and that he can double check all my work and see if I missed anything. In the meantime, I'm working the radios and making sure that we aren't taxing anywhere we aren't supposed to be. The goal is to be ready to go when you get to the runway. We got there and then were promptly told that he other runway was open and to taxi over there and get ready to go. It was kind of exasperating. I mean, I had just busted it all out and now I've got to go back and do it all again. There's just so many places that you can make an error, you've got to be so dialed in and focused to make sure you've got it all together. Now, I've done this many, many times, but that doesn't make each time any less important. Finally, after I had it all set up again, we were ready to blast off for LAX.

My goal was to try and make up some of the time that we lost on the push back and all the runway changes we endured. Plus it couldn't hurt to try and get to the hotel faster, right? ATC was going to slow us down, but then told us they would let us go, and sandwich us between two "heavies," meaning large wide body plane with a takeoff weight of greater than 300,000 lbs. We would be behind an Asiana 777, like the one that plowed into the sea wall in SFO.

Before we left SFO, the flight attendant told us that Jim Belushi was riding with us. That's cool. Wake turbulence is caused by the wash from planes and is worse when the plane is heavy, slow and clean, or like slowing planes on descents into certain airports when I'm behind them. It feels like uncontrollable turbulence to a passenger. The plane kind of bucks and rolls like a knuckleball dancing in the air. It's usually not terrible, but yesterday it got pretty sporty. I'm sure it made Jim hold on a little bit tighter. ATC had us slow down more to get some more spacing, then told us we would have an extended downwind. We had a great view of the Hollywood sign and Dodger Stadium as we cruised over downtown. We landed on the north side of the airport, but had to taxi to the far south side. About as far away as we could get. Then we found out that our gate wasn't ready. So it must have seemed like we had no idea where we were going, because it just took forever and ever. Eventually, we got where we needed to go, about 20 minutes later than we hoped. Thank god that's over with.

I got to my room, threw a shirt on and walked right across the street to the Burger King for my killer dinner. Too tired to do anything else, too far from anything else.

This morning we headed back out in the dark, and took another plane back to the east coast. I'm still not feeling great. Just kind of getting by. This flight was just under 5 hours, and it's not our only flight today either. We had another two hour break and when we got to Dulles I had hoped to go to the clinic, but there isn't one in Dulles. So I opted for a recliner and a 30 min nap before the next flight.

Before we got into DC, I took this great pic of the leaves in full color in Virginia. It's a great time for sightseeing in the mountains. I did enhance it a bit so the colors pop a little better. My original looks a little washed out, but these are indeed the colors you see.



We were just about ready to leave Dulles, when the tug driver told us they had maintenance coming out to check something out. We didn't know about it, this was the first we had heard of it. We were closed up and ready to go. Luckily it turned out to be minor, but it still cost us 15 minutes. Dulles has a runway closed and they gave us a very circuitous route to get to the runway. At least they only gave us the one runway today. We took off into the setting sun and made our way down to Orlando for the night.

Here's the sunset that we got to look at as we were climbing out. That bright orange ball is a pain in the ass, but it sure is pretty at times.



It didn't take long for it to be dark again. That's one of the hardest things about the winter time and we haven't even hit the time change yet. It's starting the day in the dark and ending it in the dark. As we cruised past Savannah I got a really good picture of the city lit up at night. We're cruising at 34000 feet in this picture.



That's it for tonight. The rest of my schedule on this trip is much more manageable. Or shall I say easy. I get a long layover tomorrow night to recover and I don't have a flight longer than 2 and a half hours the rest of the way.

I'll admit, the wear of the writing is wearing on me a little. I'm feel like I'm losing my steam a little bit, but there's only like 10 weeks left for the year. Wow, 10 weeks. Crazy. I'll make it. I'm worried that it's getting a little repetitive, but that's kind of what it is. One thousand things repeated over and over again. I guess maybe that's the point of all of this. To try and give a peek into my life at the same time help you to understand what this life is like. It's way too late. My alarm clock will be going off before I know it.

I had a nice long post here and I was switching between tabs and I accidentally closed it and then I screamed obscenities.

So to recap all that good stuff that you missed because I screwed up. It wasn't long after I posted above that I was in bed, and not long after that I was woken up. We have a text notification system that lets you know when your schedule has changed. I has a setting where I can turn off notifications and set the time you don't want to be disturbed. I thought that I had set it for that. Apparently, I was wrong. Right around 340a I got a series of 4 text messages saying my trip had changed. Of course I had to check. I had to get up in 3 hours anyway.

When I was with my previous airlines, schedule changes were much more common, but this was the first time in 2 years that it had happened to me here.

I was thinking that I really wanted to see something on there that would let me sleep in, but no, that's not what it said. I was supposed to be doing one leg to IAD and then going to the hotel to call it a day, but instead I've got to do another flight back to Orlando for another night there. My next day is different too. Instead of doing IAD/MCO (Orlando)/EWR, I'm flying to Houston and then scheduled to deadhead back to Newark. The deadhead means that I'll have the chance to go home directly from Houston, but with the weather coming in, it might turn into a mess. I'm hoping I get in and out of there before things really go south.

Today was fine, not too terribly early to get up, and each flight ran on time. We had to change planes in DC, and it was enough time to make a call to check on the family and see how everyone was feeling. Orlando was crazy today. Just crazy busy. No idea, it's like Christmas in there. So many people, and it's almost always busy, but not on this level. This was something else. We had a jumpseater both directions today.

After I got to the hotel today, I headed back out and had to get some exercise in. Feeling badly, having long days, has kept me from really doing anything. I made a few loops around the lake downtown and then headed to a Thai restaurant for dinner, alone.

Tomorrow will be early, but the hotel is noisy tonight. I think there's a wedding in the park tomorrow and they are tearing it up. I need that weather to hold off so I can get home.

I took a couple more pics today. Both are throwbacks to when I lived here and trained here. I flew all over Orlando. Basically, this is the birthplace of my career. It started here, at Sanford. Here is where I earned my private, instrument, commercial, flight instructor, instrument instructor, and multi engine instructor ratings. I worked as a check airman and was able to pass guys and give them their own certificates. It seems a long time ago.



The next pic is another pic of history. This is Deland, where I soloed. The first solo is a huge deal for a pilot. It's that time when he has to know what to do, because it's all on him to get back to earth safely. I still remember that feeling of taking off alone, and being airborne, alone. It's something. The next day after I soloed, at almost the same time, there was a fatal mid air here. Between one plane in the pattern and another doing a practice instrument approach. In the corner you can see Daytona Beach airport, and the beach where I got engaged while I was there.

just a random thought...in my flight home from Paris today, the pilot announced of the loudspeaker that the flight attendants should go back to their seats...do you all ever get "sensitivity training" or anything like that? some pilots talk alot, and some say nothing,, an some scare the crap out of the flyers.

As in that's all he said, for the entire flight?

Generally speaking, an announcement like that would be for the safety of the flight attendants. It generally means that the ride is going to be potentially dangerous and that they need to be seated right away.

What do you mean exactly by sensitivity training? Are you talking about how pilots are supposed to talk to passengers, and what announcements are or should be made?

If that's the case then, yes, there are some announcements that are required by law. For example, every time the seatbelt sign comes on in flight someone has to make an announcement that says "put your seat belts on." Some companies a flight attendant can make that, but for us, the pilots have to.

Outside of the required announcements, there are recommended ones. As for the quality of the announcements that is up each pilot. You're right, some guys really like to talk, some don't. I'm in the middle. I like to make what's required, plus I'll make an extra one here or there, but I try to make them very professional and thorough.

As for scaring people, I don't think I've every flown with anyone who set out to scare people. I understand that turbulence can be scary, especially when it comes out of nowhere, but it catches us by surprise too. We can't see it, we can't avoid it all the time. We do our best and it's a big deal. There have been some very serious injuries that resulted from turbulence. Broken necks, backs, legs, arms. It's not good. That's why we try and be conservative with that sort of thing. Those kinds of injuries are bad news.

So today was the earliest start of the week. This whole early morning thing makes me sound snarky, but people who get up at 4a because they can have issues. One leg left for this trip and I'm ready to be done. My kids and wife are feeling better, but I'm still not feeling good. I'm guessing the schedule and lack of any true rest as a lot to do with it.

The weather in Houston wasn't holding off for us. We were off the gate 10 minutes early and on our way. The computer was kicking out some takeoff data that had a flaps setting that we didn't want to use, so I reloaded it for a new flaps setting and verified all the data we took off.

The flight west was easy, no delays. We landed and the company changed our arrival gate. No reason why, it was open and available for us. I said goodbye to everyone, packed up my stuff and left. Still not feeling great I headed for the medical clinic at the airport. I needed to get looked at. The dr wasn't too impressed, but was happy I was heading for some days off. He gave me some much stronger medicine and sent me off.

My flight home was running on time. I grabbed some Panda Express and went to wait. The company that was operating the flight had to play some rotating crew games and our flight attendant was late inbound. Even with the delay I was just happy that the weather was not going to be an issue, and that I already had a seat in the back and didn't need to sit in the cockpit going home.

Home at last, home at last. The last weekend that I'll be home through at least the month of November. I need to rest and try and kick this cold. I'm taking the Mrs. to see Rob Thomas on Wednesday. We've got 5th row, center stage seats. We haven't been to a concert together since we saw Sugarland and Brooks and Dunn years ago. So it's not like this is a regular thing. I just got lucky when the opportunity came up to snag some great tickets. She was very surprised. Might as well call it an early Anniversary present.

not sure who all said what, I was enjoying the 9 hours of a decent movie selection :)

it really freaked some people out when he said that (also of note, there was a pilot and 2 copilots, I assume for the long flight)

I guess you mostly answered my question (jet lag is killing me). I have heard some pilots really freak out, and I assume its for a good reason. (I also deal with a passenger who is terrified of flying... so alarm is never a good thing)

Hey - I was just at Sanford yesterday. Took my two year old to see some planes landing, but it was a slow day, so we only saw one large plane land.

I live right in Winter Springs - did you live in Sanford when you worked here? Please tell me you've been to Hollerbach's Willow Tree Cafe when you were living here :)

We lived in Lake Mary when we were there, and sadly no, I've never been to the Willow Tree Cafe. We didn't spend a whole lot of time in Sanford in all honesty. The one place I miss though is Keller's Smoked BBQ. Great BBQ for that area. Tijuana Flats is the other place we used to go that I haven't been to in years.

At one time Sanford was one of the top airports in takeoffs and landings. And yes, that stuff get's tracked for funding and airspace designation purposes. According to the Orlando Sentinel in April of 1999, 8 months before I started there, it was the #5 airport in the US for takeoffs and landings for General Aviation airports (meaning small planes, not necessarily commercial flights.)

I thought that while I was there we jumped to #2 behind somewhere in Calif, but it was just crazy for a while and a lot of fun.

Since we were talking about Sanford, my fun fact of the day is this:

On the day that I was going to solo I was pumped up because the Foo Fighters' song, Learn to Fly, came on the radio while I was heading to the airport. It seemed like providence at that point. LOL.

My voice is a little hoarse today, party from still recovering from the nasty cold that I've had, and mostly from the concert last night. I don't think I need to go into great detail about it, but it we had a really good time. We had 5th row, center stage, seats for Rob Thomas. We both fully enjoyed it It's important for us to be able to get out for a night together sometimes. With three kids that all take up time, and my traveling that shortens just how much flexibility we have in our time together and it's easy to just fall into this pattern where we just do our own thing.

I know that I mentioned this issue in marriages and aviation. I've flew with a guy a few years ago who sat there and told me he commuted for over 20 years, worked when he could to provide for his family and put his kids through school. Then when they were gone, his wife divorced him. He was blindsided. He felt betrayed that he had done all this for them, but the as I sat there and listened to him talk it became obvious to me that he had focused on the wrong thing.

As much effort as he put into his job and making money, he let his family get adjusted to life without him. Sure he was gone making the money for them, and I guess he expected them to just figure that was good enough. That the time spent with them didn't matter as much, because he was working for them and that they just had to understand that. And I think that in older generations that might be true. People who's parents lived through the depression, who had to leave to make money, or who had to sent their kids away because they couldn't afford to take care of them anymore. For those kids, now in their 60's, that philosophy works for them, but it doesn't work for their kids.

The Mrs and I, both came from families that were broken. For one reason or another we both went through life with big differences in what made families "normal." I think that's the building block of our family when you get right down to it. Our strong desire for our kids to have a life so different than what we went through. So when I'm gone my wife has to step up and take charge, but then when I get home, everyone has to adjust to the way things are with me there too.

I try and minimize the time I'm gone and maximize the impact of my time at home. If that means I fly more red eyes, and take trips that force me to work weekends and holidays, than so be it. I've made them, not money, or schedule my priority. They get all of me when I'm there. I don't go our for boys nights, hell I barely have any friends at all who are around, I don't take side trips on my own. I give all my time to them. I'll have time for myself later on, but I want them to have a Dad around they can depend on, not like the one I have.

So this morning I got up and left again. My flight was supposed to have around 10 open seats on it and getting here shouldn't have been a big deal, but as boarding continued the number of seats started dropping. I didn't even list for the jump seat, I certainly didn't think that my options would shrink, but another company must have been booking these seats to make up for a cancellation somewhere. The last seat finally disappeared and they were in a hurry to get the plane out, and I still hadn't listed. Another pilot, a former coworker at another airline had already listed, and thankfully there were two jumpseats we could use, because otherwise I'd have been SOL this morning. The gate agent got me in the system and I was allowed on, to sit in the cabin jump seat, sandwiched in the row, right in front of the lavatory.

I got to Newark around 11, and didn't need to be at work until just after 3. Another day where I spend 4 hours at the airport just hanging out. I went down to the cafeteria and grabbed a burger for lunch then off to ops to try and get some work done. We've got another busy week of meetings for the kids, bank meetings for closings and a landscaper coming to the house to start some pretty heavy work. All that has to get scheduled and fit in to the normal stuff going on. I sat here and made some calls then messaged the Mrs to let her know and put on the calendar. It's just a busy time for us.

I'm off to Phoenix this afternoon. My trip starts off with this one leg flight and then to the hotel for an early morning tomorrow. I'm signing off here, downloading my paperwork, then heading to the plane.

Here's my view from the concert last night:

My layover last night in Phoenix was only about 12 hours. The flight down there was beset with turbulence for most of the first half of our, 5 hours flight. I don't think it started to smooth out until we were around Kansas City. There was absolutely nothing to look at. It was cloudy, such is the fall/winter cycle, and everything was covered.

When I got to the hotel last night there really wasn't anything to do. Twelve hours in between flights equates to about 3-4 hours of free time before it's time to get ready or bed. That time doesn't include the travel from the airport to the hotel, nor does it include the travel time back so we get to the gate at our appropriated 45 minutes before departure. That usually means that we're leaving between an hour and hour and a half before. Then you figure that hour and fifteen early my alarm starts to go off and it's clear that it gets a little short.

This morning we were off to Houston to start the day. We were rerouted twice on the ground, then given a thirty minute delay by ATC due to spacing because of the weather in Texas. After we got going we tried to make up some of it, but I think we were still over 20 minutes late. On the way there we heard that Austin was closed due to flooding at the airport and that the tower had been evacuated because of the storms there. I'm glad we didn't have to deal with it.

In Houston we had about an hour to kill before it was time to pre-flight the next plane. I opted for some food court lunch knowing we weren't going to be getting any food on the plane. By the time I got to the gate they were already boarding the flight. We pushed early, taxied out and took off with virtually no delay.

I'm international again. Once again this year, I find myself in Cancun. We got here a few minutes early so everyone could get a few extra minutes in their vacations. That was pretty freaking nice of us.

The only drawback is that this layover is only a couple hours longer than last night, so it's not all that. Hell, the sun was off the pool when we got here so you should totally feel sorry for me.

The Captain and I grabbed some drinks and dinner and caught a little of the game. Tomorrow is a near a 430a wakeup, so I'm cutting this short and heading to bed. Happy Halloween tomorrow, I'll be on the road again, but looking forward to seeing an old friend tomorrow night.

Ok, so yesterday started off easy enough. We got going out of Cancun while it was still dark and headed off to the airport for the tenth or twelveth time. It can take a lot to get the plane ready to go, and the bulk of the preflight and setup falls on the first officer. From the moment that I step on the plane I've got about 30 minutes to have everything done. But I've covered all of this before. Cancun can be a little bit trickier because some of the automated things like weather and ATC clearance have to be obtained manually. The language barrier can be very challenging, so that all takes a little bit longer. I'm going to fast forward a little bit, because the meat of yesterday is going to take a while.

It all started about an hour into the flight and an hour until we were to get to Houston. It's no secret that that the weather in Houston has been crap the last few days. We had an alternate of New Orleans. All that means is that for us to legally depart to Houston, New Orleans has to meet certain weather requirements so we can fly to Houston then be nearly assured of getting into New Orleans. It doesn't mean, that's a hard and fast decision about where we are for sure going if it comes to that.

I sent a message to dispatch asking them to consider some other options because all the weather was heading at New Orleans. We found out that Houston hadn't been taking planes for over 30 minutes and they expected the airport to remain closed for at least another 30-45. Then they'd start letting some in. They messaged us back that New Orleans and San Antonio were off the books and full already. At this point, as every minute goes by we are getting busier and busier. It's hard to explain just everything that's going on in the cockpit.

We are going 500 mph toward the destination. It's not like we can just pull over and think about things. Fuel becomes the first thought almost immediately. We have rules that dictate how much fuel that we need to have when we land as well as when we are pretty much required to divert. Each alternate airport required fuel is different and the overall number is always changing relative to our position from the destination. It's quite a bit of mental math going on. Then there's making sure that wherever we choose we not only have the performance to get in, but to also get out again with the required fuel. So dispatch gets busy running those numbers and trying to find options for us, while we look at the weather, fuel, and start to formulate a plan of action all while driving ceaselessly toward the destination that we may or may not get into.

I was flying so my focus is on the plane, while the pilot monitoring (phrase for guy not flying or PM) is doing the messaging and trying to talk on the radios. He's got to keep the flight attendants in the loop with everything going on so they know what to expect and what kind of time they've got. So I may be on the radios too. Then we're both working together, looking at the most likely outcome and planning. It's busy.

ATC is filling us in on the changing situation and they tell us that we are getting a reroute. That immediately changes the fuel game, depending on where they move us to. Dispatch tells us that Dallas is where they'd like us to go to, but that our thought of Corpus is also an option. Both stations said they could accommodate us so it's kind of up to us at that point. Dispatch has some reservations about getting back out of Corpus as the runways are pretty short in comparison.

The reroute takes us from south of Houston, directly west over Corpus and to San Antonio, then Austin, before joining an arrival to Houston. They are still closed but look like it might open up. Then they give us a hold south of Corpus. Each and every one of these changes means a whole new slew of math to figure out our fuel number and how much longer we can go before we have to call it.

ATC comes back to us and says to forget the hold, they are going to have something else for us and keep heading west. We've can do all of this but really only have about 10-15 minutes of extra fuel to play with so each change is significant. Then we luck out. There's a hole on the backside of the airport and we're going to be about the 6-7th plane to be let in. Just a matter of luck, based on when and where we were. That changes our fuel situation and we get set up for the approach and arrival. The field still has heavy rain and storms around. On final, I'm concerned that we won't break out, the clouds are really low, but we find the lights just a couple hundred feet from decision altitude. It's pouring, the wipers are on fast, and I can only really see the runway for the split second between wiper passes. I have a nice touchdown and we are in. One leg to go, but we're already tired.

We were supposed to have a 3 hour break here, but after we clear customs, oh customs. Hmm, if we had diverted, because we were an international flight, nobody could have gotten off the plane, because they would have had to clear customs, so that would have sucked too. Anyway, we get back to the US and find out that the flight to Tampa is already delayed by almost 2 hours. No surprise. There were a lot of diversions earlier. It's going to take a lot of time to sort out. That put us in a situation where the company has to give us a hotel room, and in Houston, that's very convenient as it's right at the airport, just a few minutes away.

By the time I get into the room I've really only got a couple of hours of down time to recharge. I'm bummed because I've got plans with one of my best friends in Tampa, and we haven't seen one another in over 2 years. This just makes that a lot shorter. I'm on the phone when my phone starts messaging me. My schedule has changed again. I start to pull it up when scheduling calls.

We are being rerouted to operate a flight to Punta Cana. I ask when it's scheduled to leave? He says now. Right now. They know we are in the hotel and it'll take a few minutes to get ready. The effect on my trip means a couple more hours of pay, but I'm going to miss my flight home and have to take a much, much later one. I'll be home about 5 hours later than planned. So I guess I'm making up for last week.

The flight was actually already, 45 minutes late. My guess is that the inbound crew was diverted and stuck somewhere else. It took me about 30 minutes to pack up and get to the plane. There were a lot of frustrated passengers. Think about it. They just know that there's no crew and are pissed at the company because of it. They see the expected departure time getting pushed back and back and they blame the company. The entire cabin crew was pulled from somewhere else, the pilots were pulled from somewhere else and all we are trying to do is bust ass to get out of there, but the looks I'm getting as I walk up say that they think something different. It says "finally, where the fuck were you at?"

I sat down and had to get all the flight papers together. Then started the preflight. The Captain was about 10 minutes behind me so I got a lot done before he got there. It took some time, but we finally got loaded up and pushed back. Flights were now getting into Houston regularly, but gate space was full and the ramp was overloaded with planes waiting for parking spots. Thankfully, because we got in when we did, we were now going to be beating the rush of the next wave of departures.

We taxied out and ATC told us that we had a weather reroute. They wanted us to try out a new departure to see if it was good enough to send planes through. Our only other option was to get rerouted north over Arkansas and Tennessee. Really? We've got a crapton of fuel, but who wants to fly to the Dominican via Tennessee? The weather clearly looks like it's breaking up, but there is still a lot of weather out there. We are fine with going for a look and trying it out. We don't need anymore delays.

It takes about 20 minutes from getting the new clearance, to loading and double checking everything, to getting our new takeoff data. All of this work while we taxi our falls on me. The Captain taxi's the plane, I do the rest, plus make sure he knows where he is, and where he is going, and what our taxi clearance is. Busy.

We finally take off for our 4 hour flight and fly straight toward the weather, picking our way around the heaviest rain, but still getting plenty of turbulence. We have to keep everyone seated for the first 20 minutes of the flight while we fly through the stuff, then just as we we are about to break out we get a lightning strike. It hits around the nose somewhere. The tell tale thump is pretty unmistakable and I challenge anyone not to jump. We don't have any changes to the plane, and after we land I check and don't see anything. Maintenance will still look at it, but I'm sure it was all ok. The flight attendants didn't notice anything at all, so it was a minor event.

The flight takes us back toward Mexico then south of Cuba, north of Jamaica and through the ATC black hole of Port Au Prince. We start to hit some more turbulence around Hispaniola because of a number of thunderstorms in our way, that we did have to fly around, but finally we made our way into Punta Cana.



Yesterday alone was a killer day for work. It was long, and challenging all around. We had a husband and wife complain about the flight when they got off. I didn't talk to them, but I really don't know what to say when this is what they say, "This is the second worst flight I've ever been on! I just don't understand why (company name) can't figure it out. You guys up there were just flying around to waste gas! When will (company name) teach these pilots to just fly over the turbulence?" Husband pipes up, "Can't you just avoid the fucking turbulence!?" :rant:

I heard this story and can't help but to just shake my head. I really don't know what to say. You think about all the work I've just put in to get this plane here, my day had already been intense and after all this, all this results in getting cussed out? From someone who completely thinks they've got it all figured out and that it's all a giant conspiracy theory to fuck them over? I just drink a little more and shake my head. Un-fuckinging believable end to the day. At least I got to blow off a little steam in an all-inclusive resort. It's go home day today. Back to Newark, then back home. I'm ready.

how often do you have lightening strikes? how significant is it?

Lightning can be very damaging and they do have the potential to damage to the plane, but the vast majority of strikes that happen are pretty much harmless. Since the plane isn't grounded the bolt generally goes in and out without too much effort. The most common thing you might see would be light scoring from the bolt. I would say that it happens pretty regularly. Just in my career alone I've lost count, but it's been at least 7 or 8 times as a pilot and passenger. The worst thing that has happened to me is that the weather radar quit working.

Today was like my weekend. I actually got to sleep and get up with no alarm. It was nice. I've got school duty when I get home again so it won't happen on my days off. I'm already looking forward to the next day I can sleep in, which will be next Sunday, on my next trip.

I spent most of the morning doing the write up above, and chatted with the Mrs about the yard work that was started today. I ended up heading down to the beach at the resort before I left and grabbed a burger and fries off the beachside grill. If you'll remember the last time I had the Punta Cana layover I got food poisoning and missed my next trip. No way that happens twice, right? It rained most of the morning, but I was still able to sit outside and enjoy the morning before I had to leave.



I headed back to the my room and thought about the next flight. I'm actually deadheading back to Newark today. That typically means that we don't leave the hotel as early as we normally would, but it's a 20 minute ride to the airport and we are only leaving 60 minutes before departure. This is a company scheduling thing. That's awfully tight, even with my security line fast pass.

We got to the airport and things were jacked up right from the start. They dropped us off at our normal place but security was closed. We had to ride a bus over to another terminal, go through security there, then ride another bus back to the plane. And we only had 30 minutes til departure. Hmmmmm. When we got to security, the level of fucked up far exceeded anything that I had expected. There were people everywhere. Someone came up to me and asked which flight and when I told him, he told me that all these people stuck in security would get put on another plane and they would try and get it out on time. I told him I was a passenger and needed to get on that plane. All the passengers for all the flights were in that line, not just the one for Newark. That whole set up is all on the airport. It has nothing to do with the company at all. The airport dictates what it's going to do and how it's going to execute it. All the company can do is deal with the outcomes and try.

Luckily my fast pass, by being a working crew member, deadheading is company business, zipped us right through. The flight went out late which didn't help my prospects at catching an earlier flight. If we had been 20 minutes early I probably could've hopped on another carrier home. As it was I ended up getting upgraded to first class, which hasn't happened to me on a deadhead in eons. It was so nice. Makes all the difference in the world. Flight crews used to always get first on deadheads. Then the airlines made upgrades available for miles and that ended that.

I had a meal, watched two movies and relaxed. Now I'm sitting here with over 3 hours between my flight here and my flight home. I think I'll get a real seat going home, and I'll get there around midnight. So even though my day was technically short, it's over 12 hours long just to do two flights.

This week will be busy between school, paying bills, Dr's appointments and landscapers, and before I know it I'll be heading back to Newark to start again. The all important December bid is coming up. I have 2 guaranteed days off that I know when they will be and I know that I'm taking the entire family to see Star Wars the week after it opens in IMAX 3-D. I'm already looking forward to that one. It's almost time to get started on my online training as well. I have until the end of the year to get it done, but it'll take a few hours so you can't leave it until the end. There are now 60 days left in this dynasty. Let the countdown begin!

Sorry guys, I've been a little bit late on my update as I've been doing this trip. I had to leave home on Thursday to start my trip on Friday. I know that I should have been writing all along because I am behind. I think I'm just dealing with a personal slump of not wanting to do anything at all. Things have been busy at home because of life and the work that we've been doing and I'm just finding content to sit in a quiet hotel room.

I didn't have a great day on Thursday at home. I was tense. There is a decided change in the air on the day that I leave and the day I come home. If we ever have disagreements or fights, when we do, it's probably on one of these days. The constant transition needed in the house between everyone gets us. I don't like leaving, and I need to get my head right to head out the door and off to work. It's like you take all that stuff at home and you have to put it in a box and kind of leave it behind so that you can focus on the task ahead. It's not easy.

I had a really early report time on Friday so I was trying to take an earlier flight to Newark so I could get some rest in the crash pad. The problem was that the flight was full and Newark was running delays. When I got to the airport I saw a 400p flight that was just now boarding but I didn't figure that I'd be able to make that flight and I needed to get to my gate so I could get listed for the jump seat. After I did, food was next on my list. The flight was still showing on time, but I wanted to eat now just in case.

As I was eating I got the distinct impression that this flight was delayed and I found out that if I would have hustled over to the other flight (roughly 3/4 of a mile away) I probably could have gotten on. Grrrrrr. So I wait and cross my fingers that I can get a seat, because missing this flight cuts into my sleep time. Eventually they started boarding and I watched the seats disappear. There was another pilot there too who was ahead of me on the list and would board ahead of me. I got the jump seat and then they found an empty seat anyway, but it was sitting next to a large gentleman, and me being a large gentleman didn't make it much better than the cockpit. My plans to get there early were out the window, we were over an hour late. When I got to the crash pad, you can see that I really wasn't in the mood to write.

I was happy I was alone. I didn't really want to deal with anyone. That feeling continued when my alarm went off at 430a. I struggled to drag myself out of bed and into the shower. My day ahead was a long one, and this wasn't helping. I was off to the airport by 530a and by 7a we were off the ground on the way to our first destination of Boston. The first of three legs, and three plane changes. The weather was very warm. You never know when you look at the schedule for November which days might be trouble. This was one of them, so to start with weather not being an issue was alright with me.

Plane changes. Changing planes between flights is a pain. It takes time to pack up and unpack. There are a lot of things to get set up and adjusted before I even start pre flighting. Dragging my stuff through the airport on a break is less useful than just being able to step off and walk around for a few minutes. Three plane changes in a day is no typical. The company continues to rotate planes on certain routes and they've taken away the EWR-LAX and EWR-SFO flights from the 737 fleet. That hurts overall schedules. Those were very productive. It means instead that the 737 will be doing more, less productive trips, in a day to make up for that loss.

I got all set up for the next leg and we blasted off for Chicago on time. It's definitely winter. We had 175 mph winds right in our face for this leg. Ouch. That's the winter jet stream. Strong and brutal. It's nice going east, but fighting it west makes it long. It also means we are trying to fly near the max speed for the plane to try and stay on time. Turbulence is your enemy at higher speeds. Just like on a boat, hitting a small bump when you're going fast makes it feel that much worse. So flying, even a little bit faster, can feel a lot different to the passengers.

We landed in Chicago on the far north runway and made the long taxi to the gate where, in spite of everything, we were on time. Now we change planes again with only an hour between flights. That's really only enough time to get right on the plane and get set up. I did have time to stop and grab some Garrett's popcorn, because who doesn't like cheese and caramel corn in the morning?

The last flight was going back east and riding those same winds to Rochester NY. Winds in Rochester were very strong out of the west as the cold front was barreling through. We opted to land on a shorter runway and take advantage of the wind rather than have a big crosswind.

The layover there wasn't long, and I had moments where I struggled through the day. I was just tired. We got in around 5p on Friday night. I convinced the captain to join me at Dinosaur BBQ, and we lucked out into a seat at the bar just a couple were getting up. They were already running a sizable wait when we walked up, even though it was still early. So after all that, I was asleep by 10 and not in any mood to write.

We left early the next morning for a flight back to Chicago. Chicago was already running metered departures for inbound flights but they had enough room to work us in so we got off with room to spare. We beat ourselves into that headwind again and landed on the far north runway again. Our early departure helped us stay on time. We now had a couple of hours of time so I went to ops and then to the cafeteria for some lunch. I ran into a friend from my new hire class. An Air Force academy grad who does motivational speaking on the side. A really nice guy and someone who I'm proud to call a friend.

Our last flight yesterday took us to the great northwest of Vancouver. This has been touted as one of the best layovers in the EWR fleet. And I guess it is. In the summer. Not now. It's the rainy season. It rained all day and night. We stay right downtown, not far from some great sights to walk to, but not today. I put on the NDSU football game and watch them blow out Western Illinois on ESPN 3 and then grab some dinner and a beer with the captain at a local burrito joint. After that I finally felt like I was getting some down time and relaxation. I didn't really feel like writing.

I woke up at 330a (630a body time) and figured I'd finally get this done. Today we'll finish up this trip back in Newark and I'd normally say it's go home day, but that isn't true either. We will get back much too late for that tonight. I get the notification to check in for my flight home while I'm writing. As I do I see that it's completely sold out and I'm #3 on the stand by list. Ugh. Here we go again.

Flights are not supposed to be this full this time of year. This is the down time before the holidays. But right now, the airports are full, flights are full and if it's this hard to get to and from work now, the end of this month and December are going to be awful. There's another flight on Delta at the same time, it's full too. I may still go that route, thinking that the competition for the jump seat might be less and the better option for me. If I miss both then the next flight is 5 hours later. I'm already stressing about it and losing half of a day off just trying to get home.

What a nice day for flying it was yesterday. The cold front that blew through the eastern US this weekend cleaned everything and left clear skies and mostly smooth flights for me. One interesting thing about the flight from Vancouver was that for the past couple of days there has been a problem with the fuel farm in Chicago and planes have been having to carry a lot of extra fuel so that they land with more than normal so that the next outbound leg won't have to take on as much fuel from Chicago. I really don't know what the issue was to be honest, but it's highly unusual to be flying around spending all that extra money just to fly expensive, heavy fuel around.

I had about 3.5 hours on break before my flight back to Newark. I was able to catch the last quarter of the Steelers game, just in time to see Ben get hurt. Sometimes in my feeble sports mind that kind of thing is all my fault. Then I did a couple of the training modules for my training that I need to get done by the end of the year. They were on the safety culture of the airline and a company production of what to do when there is an active shooter in the building and your life is in danger. Really uplifting stuff here.

I grabbed the paperwork for the flight back. The weather looked good, but we didn't have those 170 mph winds anymore. Too bad, that's always nice when you're going home.

We were ready to push back on time out of Chicago, but because of ramp congestion, as in plane after plane pushing back and taxing in and out. We ended up pushing back close to 10 minutes late, but a fast taxi out and little line at the runway had us off the ground a minute early. The flight back was very nice. We landed almost 20 minutes early in Newark and pulled up to the gate, where we were met by exactly no one. It took the ramp crew a few minutes to get it together and just when we thought they were ready, they disappeared again. Apparently, they had forgotten the lighted wands to park us with. Uh, kind of need those things guys. So we waited some more. The company is tracking all that stuff and it's a big point that they are working to improve on.

We landed at 930 and by 1015 I was in the crash pad for the night. Again, the only one there, which was nice. I gave myself about an hour to wind down then had to force myself to bed. I needed to get up at 430a if I was going to get in line to grab the jump seat.

I showed up at the gate over an hour early and stood in front of the podium and read the paper while I waited for the gate agent to show up. I was the first to claim the jump seat and I would need it too. The flight ended up being full so my ride up front got me home again.

I spent today working on getting caught up on the weekend. I've got a big HOA budget meeting tomorrow night and I needed to get my ducks in order for that too. I fell asleep on the couch, which was to be expected with only a little over 5 hours of (not that great) sleep in me.

My middle son has a concert on Friday night that I'm going to miss because of work. He is in the County Middle School All Star band playing trombone. Just one of the many things he does. It's just one more thing that I'll miss.

The last thing for this week is the December bid. It's a big one. The big one. The one that I worry about. I need to have it done in 2 days.

I'm trying to do this fucking December bid and the Mrs and I are currently embroiled in a nice little fight over how shitty my Christmas schedule just might be and trying to define what levels of a shit schedule are better than other levels of a shit schedule so that I can cover my ass in the event none of my more preferred bids work. It always ends up with her being upset and me being pissed, because I can't ever please anyone enough to make it work the way that we'd really like. I've spent the vast majority of my 13 year airline career on the bottom of one seniority list or another where I'm always subject to the whims and foibles of other people. Perhaps next year this won't be so bad, but this year, like so many others, it sucks major levels of ass.

Ugh, sorry to hear. The holiday season can be really rough, especially for people that HAVE to work.

Thank god that's done with. It only took me 3 hours to finish and hash out. I know that I do it from the perspective of extreme pessimism, but I've been burned enough times that I'm only setting myself up for failure if I don't. November turned out actually much better than I had planned for and it reasonable to assume that December might as well. However, I can't start from the perspective that everything will be alright, because if it isn't than it's just a giant "F" for me on my bidding and a major let down and failure for my family.

When will you know how it turned out?

I'll find out on the evening of the 17th. I still don't know why it takes so long to publish the results. The computer can crank out everything in minutes, but then every line has to be checked for legality and to be sure that there were no errors in process. Apparently, it takes almost 5 days to get that done. It's a long time to wait to be able to schedule your activities for the next month.

I said goodbye to the family this morning after another hectic week at home. I had my standard list of things that needed done plus a couple extra. The standard driving of the kids back and forth and getting errands done. Plus we made it through the HOA budget meeting with a good feeling for the next year. The oldest son (Aspergers) landed his first job ever. It's a huge step for him and the first big thing he's done since he graduated from High School in the spring of 2014. The Mrs is in the throes of Christmas decorating. It takes her between 2 and 3 weeks to do it and when she's done the house looks like it should be in a magazine. It's pretty much her favorite thing to do of all time....except me of course. :)

The flight out here ran a few minutes late because of the strong winds in Newark. I was fortunate not only to have a seat in the back, but an entire row of 2 seats to myself. So lucky. The wind made the ride in a little bit like a roller coaster with all the turbulence, but I didn't get sick or anything.

I got to Newark and had about 3 hours before I needed to show up at the plane. I found my standard hiding place in one of the briefing rooms, grabbed some lunch and came back. Drama had erupted on the HOA Facebook group that I moderate and I needed to set some things straight. By the time that I had that taken care of, it was time to start getting my flight paperwork going.

Today I'm heading out to the west coast, one leg and I'm done. The goal will be to enjoy some fish tacos later on tonight. If you are bored I'm sure you can follow along on Flight Aware, look for a flight to San Diego that leaves Newark around 2:30. :)

This is day 1 of 3 for me. Last week was also a 3 day, but it acted like a 5 because I couldn't commute on the front or the back. This one is like a 3. I'll be back home Sunday night. Next week has my 15th wedding anniversary. It's been a great year. We've been fortunate enough to be able to celebrate along the way so we'll stay kind of low key. In the meantime, I need to get my job done so I can get home and enjoy it. I really need to find some motivation to get healthier. Maybe that should be next year's blog. PM loses weight? Don't hold your breath for that one. ;)

Here's a photo from last week coming out of Vancouver. It's actually the very snow covered mountains east of there. I took it climbing out. Just a reminder of what the next season looks like.

The flight plan had us getting to San Diego over 20 minutes early. Even despite the stronger westerly winds, they died off enough for us to stay on time. We pushed back a couple of minutes early and had a quick taxi out, getting off the ground an extra 7 minutes early and pushing our expected arrival time even earlier.

When you fly west, leaving in the afternoon the one constant is the sun. It sits above your window and mercilessly saunters down in front of you forever. For the entire 5.5 hour flight the sun was beating into the cockpit. We had turbulence off and on for the entire way until we hit the front range of Colorado. After that it was nice, but low clouds kept any sight seeing from taking place.

After we got to San Diego, I found my way over to the restaurant that I like, and even though their happy hour prices have gone up and aren't nearly as good as they used to be I still was happy to have some fish tacos and Modelo. I didn't stay out late and even though it was Friday in one of the best night scenes that we get to go to, I just couldn't hang. Being on east coast time and commuting in wrecked me.

My layover was good enough that I even got to sleep in this morning and then drug my butt to the gym to get some exercise. My day today is much shorter than yesterday. We leave here in an hour to get ready for the trip. Tonight will be shorter, but it'll lead right into Sunday, which is also go home day and you know that makes me excited.

I spent some time trying to find a nice place to head for our Anniversary dinner, but it's so challenging to find someplace that will have Vegan options for a very restrictive diet and still let us get dressed up. So many of the fine dining restaurants just don't make it worthwhile when you have to restrict yourself to just a couple of things on the menu. I think maybe I've found somewhere for us, but it'll be carb heavy and it won't fit all that well with the Mrs eating plan is in her current exercise routine. Ugh. She is awesome, but she is a real pain in the ass at times and she knows it.

I totally forgot to mention this last night. As I was saying "bye" to the passengers a little old lady asks me, "what was the name of that body of water that we flew over at 8 o clock?"

She really expected me to know, right in that minute? Look I'm a lot of things. I know a lot of random stuff, but I don't even know what time zone you're talking about. Let alone the name of every random body of water that we might go over. It was funny. She just huffed and walked off. Like the way a teacher is disappointed when you don't know the right answer.

Today, I got to fly the newest plane in the company! I mean new, new. This plane has been flying on line for 11 days. It did have that new plane smell too. The biggest difference though is that the plane is clean. Not just clean inside, but clean underneath. Very clean. Plus the cockpit is clean. The cockpit is generally a nasty, dirty mess. Like if you sat and ate at your desk for 8 hours, then someone else did that, then another person did that, before you got back and did it again. Imagine just how fast it would get dirty. That's what planes are like. They do get cleaned occasionally, but not often.

We took off from San Diego to the west over the ocean then turned back over land and climbed out. One of my favorite things to look at when I'm flying along the US and Mexico border is to see how the countries blend and how the border creates such a stark line on the ground. Most of the time you've got this big US city like El Paso and this much smaller, poorer city like Juarez right next to it. The dichotomy from the air is stark.

Today I took a picture of something that was just the opposite. Here I've taken a pic of the larger city of Mexicali. You can clearly see the border in the pic and the neighboring US city is the tiny Calexico. You can see how Mexicali runs right to the border and just stops. Like a normal town would have expanded or would be a more circular shape, instead here it is, wedged up against the border like a man clinging to the side of the bed when his wife is taking up the whole thing.



We had to navigate a couple of rain showers as we flew in and even got a little St Elmo's Fire on the windscreen. I touched down softly and in the dark. For this short layover we stay at the airport hotel, so I grabbed some dinner in the airport and then walked to the hotel.

I've got an earlier flight tomorrow. My day needs to stay on time. I've got about an hour between my arrival time and my flight home. My flight is full, so I need to try and grab that jump seat again. I hope it all goes smooth.

In case you were wondering the sticker price on a brand new 737-900ER is $95,000,000. Companies make deals and never pay that full price because of the order size, but that's what they go for, in case you were wondering.

I got up early and walked over to the plane from the hotel. I had intended on getting shoe shine in the morning, but I guess it's that's not an option that early on a Sunday morning. You mean not everyone has to be at work then?

This trip has been a perfect reminder of what it's like to fly on a normal body clock schedule. I didn't have to get up crazy early or stay up super late at all on any of the days. I had plenty of rest in San Diego and my second day was short enough that it felt easy. Now here I am on day 3 feeling rested and excited to finish up. Thanks to UFC 193 I was in bed later than I had planned, but it was alright.

The first flight out was from Houston to Fort Lauderdale. The routing had us tracking along the coast until almost Biloxi before cutting across the Gulf toward Florida. We picked up quite a bit of turbulece pretty early in the decent and landed off to the east in Lauderdale. We landed and parked almost 10 minutes early. We had another scheduled plane change and around 90 minutes until the next flight, or in other words, about 45 minutes of time to grab some lunch.

I ordered a burger at Shula's and checked up on the world and the family, then downloaded my last flight info for the trip back to Newark. The inbound plane was on time so there was every opportunity to get back on time. Hurdle number two was cleared with there not being a wheels up time or Expect Departure Clearance Time (EDCT) to Newark. We were loaded up with a plane full of people coming off of cruises and going back home.

The route back starts off over the Atlantic where we cross back over land in Wilmington NC. The sky cleared up and the weather was good for us. ATC didn't really slow us down at all. I think we landed almost 15 minutes early. I didn't rush off and said goodbye to everyone before I packed up and headed to my plane home.

I should've paid closer attention to what my options were. I had just missed an earlier flight home. I guess when I was listing I didn't feel like it was worth it to run for 10 minutes and I had completely forgotten, but as early as we were I think if I had run for it I would have made it. It worked out alright though. My flight, that had been showing as -2 for the week, ended up with 3 or 4 empty seats and I was even able to get an exit row for the flight home.

I've booked a dinner for Wednesday for the Mrs and I and we may go out to a bar or club afterward. I haven't decided, but dinner will be nice. Not a whole lot going on in Cincinnati on Wednesday nights. In the meantime I'm just patiently waiting for the December schedule. It should be out in about 36 hours.

I'm back out for the next trip early on Friday morning. That will be a very long day, 4 flights starting at home at around 730a and not getting done and to the hotel until after 1a.

good luck on the schedule!!!

Well ladies and gentlemen, the results are in and it's pretty much all disappointment. I bid 20 different lines, the maximum. The last bid was very vanilla for the purposes of just covering my ass and it looks like it saved it. I had 17 bids rejected that were perfectly legal but that were rejected because it would would have prevented someone junior to me from getting a line. I've covered this before, but the company sets a line in the seniority list and says everyone above that line gets a line the rest are reserve. So my requests meant that while I should be able to hold that time off for the moment, the bidding program needs that trip to be able to complete the schedule. It's complicated, and it doesn't seem right, but that's just how it is. I'm glancing up and down the guys in my general seniority and I did pretty good. I'm not really sure how much me having the 22nd and 23rd off contributed to everything but I only got the 21st off around them. I had really hoped to have 4 days off, but I kid you not, nobody got 4 days off around Christmas.

I currently bid at #275 out of about 400. The most junior guy who had both Christmas Eve and Day and a total of 4 days off was #165. The jr guy with 3 days off and the holiday off was #175. I didn't stand a chance. No prayer at all.

We have a number of bidding rules that we can either keep in and keep the bid more restrictive, or can be ejected and roll the dice on the chance that it might give you a better schedule, but it's got a bigger chance of backfiring too. From what I could see of the other bids the majority of pilots in my seniority range chose to relax their bidding restrictions and ended up getting seriously fucked in the ass. I'm talking about guys who start work on the 17th and have zero days off until the end of the month. Even guys more senior to me just don't have their bids set up right and have worse schedules then me.

My schedule is pretty much 3 days off between trips, at least 1 really crappy trip, and 1 trip that looks like I might need to self modify my schedule so that we can have some family time around the holiday. I have to be available for my trip over Christmas, but missing the trip before will let me have a weekend off and get to go to see the youngest's piano recital and the middle son's band concert.

It's not ideal, but family comes first and you need to do what you need to do. I'll have a nice bunch of days off, but all at the cost of 4 months worth of sick time. No, not ideal. We'll have to open presents on the 21st, go see Star Wars on the 22nd and I'll leave on the 23rd. But, unlike so many other pilots in December, my schedule won't bring tears to my eyes.

Is it legal working 14 straight days ? I mean, in terms of security, I'd rather have someone fresh from a day off piloting my plane than a guy who has been working 14 straight days.

It is legal.

The FAA requirement is 24 hours free from duty in 7 days of work. The idea is that that time is achieved at the end of the trip, in domicile, so ending in Newark, then off. Our contract says 2 days off is the min, plus that time has to be achieved in domicile (as in at the end of the trip.) However, that is more restrictive than the FAA regulations.

In some cases a pilot might be able to say hold weekends (or holidays) off, if he relaxes those restrictions and allows just the FAA minimums. Not only does that 24 hours off not have to be in domicile, it isn't considered a calender day either.

So in that run of days, as long as you've got 24 hours off somewhere, you're good to go. A layover that exceeds that, on any trip counts as a reset on that 7 day cycle. I would venture to guess that there's a very good chance that most of these guys are going to self modify their schedules somewhere as needed.

Before I start every flight, as part of my paperwork download process, I have to verify that I am fit to fly. Most of the newer flight and duty restrictions are based off of changes that came about after the Colgan crash in Buffalo. There has always been the opportunity for a pilot to call in fatigued. Essentially saying that he simply can't work. There's a long legal process that's involved in going that route, but it provides the opportunity for someone who is very tired to stop working.

I just wanted to add as this thread passes 10,000 views, I'm quite confident that it's one of the most (if not the most) viewed Dynasty thread of 2015. It's the 42nd most viewed dynasty of all time right now (since we've been at OpSports anyway.) I wasn't really sure if I'd be able to stay with it, but the regularity that I see people reading it, even if they aren't commenting, keeps me going. Thanks.

PM

I'm already 2 flights into my day today. Last night I was looking at the flight that I was planning on taking to Newark and discovered, lo and behold, that the flight was oversold again and that I was a little way down the stand by list for the flight. I checked my back up flight and it was oversold as well. Weather in Newark last night caused a big backup at the airport and it resulted in at least the cancellation of the last flight out from Cincinnati. That meant that all those passengers were rolled over to the morning flight. So that's what I'm competing against.

When I walked up to the counter and was pleasantly surprised that I was the first to claim the jump seat. I didn't have any time to really waste. If I missed this one, the next one had a good chance of not having room for me either. Nobody else came up and kicked me off the jump seat so I it was mine. Another day with full flights. It sure seems like this is happening more often. I'm really leery of the holidays being a big, giant pain in the ass.

By the time I landed in Newark I had less than an hour to be at the plane for my first flight. Not having eaten I grabbed some lunch in the cafeteria before finding the plane. Good weather today, the cold front had passed and there shouldn't be any delays to Boston. I meet the Captain. He's just picked up the first 2 legs out of Open Time. I don't know what happened to the scheduled Captain, but I guess they had to pay overtime to get it covered.

I'll get another Captain when I get back to Newark. We took off and no major delays, getting into Boston a good 10 minutes early. I've had over an hour and a half here to recharge my Ipad and phone and I've got to get my paperwork downloaded. I'm heading back to Newark next, then sit for a couple of hours before finishing the day with a flight to Cancun. I won't get to the hotel until around 100a eastern time. That's almost 18 hours in uniform for the day. Ahh the joys of commuting.

Ugh - do you at least get to sleep late in Cancun?

So the plane showed up and got on board to get started. We were trying to get going, but the weather information in Boston already said that they were running metered delays to New York, so it was really just to find out what our delay was going to be. We had one of the toilets out of order for the flight, which could have been a big pain, but the flight was so short that it didn't have an impact. We got the clearance and it showed what amounted to a 15 minute delay after we pushed back and before we took off. That's pretty good. It could've been much long longer.

A lot of times we will get the EDCT or "wheels up" time up to thirty minutes before the plane is scheduled to leave. You'd see this in the waiting area as we were just getting ready to board or we had just started to board and then they stopped and put the ATC delay on. Many times, you get it much later and the crew and the company need to come to an agreement on when it's beneficial to reboard the plane. The flyer bill of rights limits how long a plane can be on the ground with the door closed before it takes off without have to go back to the gate and give people the chance to get off again.

Occasionally we'll know that there will be a 30-40 minute delay and will board up like normal and take the delay away from the gate. I won't make an announcement until we are parked somewhere to wait out our time. If we take our time it can make it seem like it's not that long of a delay even though we knew how long it was going to be the whole time. It's a lot easier to sell a 15-20 minute delay on a plane than a 45 minute delay. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the delay ATC can get you off the ground before your time if they have a spot open up and you are ready to go. I've had it go both ways. Missed times to leave because we were at the gate because we were trying to keep people comfortable and then been out and gotten to leave, or conversely had to return because our time never came. We would never just go sit if it was going to be hours. So many times, you've got a time that just gets extended and extended and nobody has any clue how long it's really going to be.

We took off about a minute before our time and because of the inherent delay time built into the flight from Bos to Ewr, we landed and parked at the gate right on time. By the time we got back to Newark I had already had a long day, and I knew that I had to make it though one more leg. I only had about 45 minutes and while I thought about grabbing some food, I didn't.

The plane was just a few minutes late inbound and it was also international inbound which meant that the plane has to be inspected and clear customs before we could board it up. That lead to us needing to hustle to come close to an on time departure. The Captain gave me the choice on whether I wanted to fly or let him, and given my tired state I optioned to let him and just work the radios.

We tracked right down the east coast before cutting across the Florida panhandle and out over the gulf. All was fairly smooth sailing until we hit the south. The jet stream has been riding further south (normal for late fall/winter) and that brought with it a considerable amount of turbulence. We escaped it further south and then had to maneuver around a nice sized thunderstorm out in the middle of nowhere. Mexico picked us up and gave us a 5 minute delay vector, I guess to get us in line for the Cancun arrivals. We still ended up getting to the gate a few minutes early though.

I couldn't believe how long the line for customs was here. There were like 3 people working and still planes were coming in. It had to be at least 30 minutes long. Good thing I get to fast pass my way to the front and don't have to deal with that mess.

This layover wasn't really planned to be that long. I was scheduled out on a 130p van the next day, but that did mean that I could sleep in, which is very good for me. The real bonus was that I had been given an oceanside suite as well. I've never had one here in Cancun before. It's one of those situations where they sell out regular rooms then just move us to an upgraded room. My room had a wrap around balcony complete with chaise lounge and 4 place table and chairs. Somehow, I convinced myself to even hit the gym for some quality treadmill time before breakfast. After that I chilled and waited for my van time to come. It was really nice.

This was from my balcony, while I was waiting.



My next flight was to go to Chicago. If you haven't been paying attention, the first snowstorm of the year was blitzing the city by noon. Our plane outbound was indeed coming from Chicago so we planned to keep an eye on it. No sense leaving a perfectly good hotel room when your plane is still hours away.

It was delayed. Big surprise. Scheduling called me to tell me that they pushed out van time back an hour. Then it went to 2 hours. Then 3. This whole time all I can really do is wait. They finally got off the gate to taxi out only to have to come back and eventually cancel. I'm still not complaining, except that my layover in Phoenix and lunch with BYU14 wasn't going to happen again.

With our flight cancelling we still had to sit around and wait for them to make up their mind on what to do with us. It took about 30 more minutes for the schedule change to come across and it meant that we were staying in Cancun. There was much rejoicing.

This literally never happens to me. I think I've spent my whole career hoping to get "stuck" at a really cool layover so I can be there longer. It has never, ever happened. Until now. I was all set to show you pictures of going from the beach, to the snow, to the desert in one day. Now all you get is the knowledge that I really approve of the current trends in bikini swimwear. Very quality stuff.

About 10 minutes after that I got a call from the front desk that went something like this:

"Mr PilotMan?"
"Yes?"
"Your company called and told us you are staying another night and that you are now leaving in the morning. Is this correct?"
"Yes."
"Well sir, we have someone who is paying for that room and we need to move you somewhere else."

Crap.
Oh well. You can't have a suite all the time.

So I had to pack all my crap up and move it to the other side of the hotel to a different room. There's nothing to really complain about through. I am still in Cancun after all. I consumed some more fish tacos and perhaps a margarita and cerveza. My whole schedule is now different, and the biggest change is that I've lost about 12 hours at home. My last day will see my get home in the evening instead of the morning like I had planned. It's still commutable, but the lost time at home hurts a little.

You know I am starting to feel jilted :)

Runs like this must play havoc on your internal clock. Do you ever get used to it?

Are you getting paid for the time you're missing at home? I know you posted more about the ins and outs earlier but I've forgotten how it would apply in this situation.

Up at 530a this morning and in the van to the airport about an hour later. We were at the gate right on time and found that the plane was parked on a hard stand. That's a remote parking area, not connected to the terminal, that a bus is needed to move passengers and crew back and forth to.

I went down ahead of the Captain who had made a pit stop prior to coming down. I was the only one on the bus for a few minutes. I don't know why they didn't take me over there. The boarding coordinator, then comes and tells me that they are going to fill the bus up before they take us over to the plane, and I inform him that I have to get over there and have work to do. He is all, oh, well, we already started. Now, it's 15 minutes more before we head over.

Now I'm down to 30 minutes, out of Cancun, no chance of this flight leaving on time, but I do my best. We end up closing up and pushing back five minutes late. How irritating and something totally out of my control. The stupid thing is that I could've walked to the plane and back in the time it took to wait, but I don't think that was an option. The told the Captain that it would've taken too long to drop us off. Bullshit.

We pushed back and the flight to Houston pushed right next to us. We were ready to taxi first and they called and said that they had to go back into the gate because they had passengers on the wrong plane. You see, both planes were side by side, and they were loading buses side by side, and these people just went the wrong way. They were supposed to be going to San Francisco, with me. Just one more thing completely out of my control.

So much of that whole operation is run by the airport. They just work with the airlines to make it all come together. While it makes my airline look bad, it's really the fault of the airport itself and it's operation that put us in that situation to begin with.

So we were off for our nearly 6 hour flight to SFO. We flew north and actually crossed over US land to the east of Houston, then made our way over Dallas and toward the Rockies. Rides were rough at the higher altitudes so we spent the majority of the flight down at 30,000 ft, which is much lower than we'd normally be. I had us flying just a little bit faster than we were planned to make up for the few minutes we lost on the ground. We landed a few minutes early only to find out that our gate was still occupied and we had to hold for them. We parked and then everyone disappeared. The gate agent was there, but she wasn't pulling the jet bridge up. The ramp had pulled us too far forward and needed to get a tow bar to push us back about a foot. Seems unimportant, but the jet bridge won't connect to the plane if its' not in the right spot. Ultimately, we were late. We tried, but it was still within the DOT arrival window, so technically it counts.

I cleared customs then we found our way to the ride to the hotel downtown. So for the first time all year I get to watch some football on a Sunday and the Steelers aren't playing. It was still nice to relax and watch some games though.

I'm wrapping up my trip tomorrow with a dead head back to Newark. Normally, with a deadhead at the end of the trip, I'd just take another flight straight to Cincinnati through another airport, but pretty much every flight is full. I can't book on my own on full flights and my best flight to get home is actually the one out of Newark, so I might as well just take it. Nothing like 8+ hours of riding in a plane just to go home. I'll have about an hour to connect in Newark to go home.

I took a picture when I was back in Boston as we were getting ready to leave and I forgot about it until now. If you've ever been there you might have noticed that there are a few gates with American Flags on them.

You can see the one here and if you look across the ramp you can see one where the American plane is parked.



If you look above the door on B27 you'll see a plaque. This is the gate the United 175 departed from on 9/11. Across the way, is where American 11 was parked. The plaque has the names of the crew members who were lost on that day.

Another pic that I snapped today was my view from my room tonight in San Francisco. It's not Coit Tower on the 4th of July or anything, but it's alright. We're not staying at that other hotel anymore. I think this is the 4th different hotel that I've been at in SF this year.

Sure, crossing time zones is always challenging. Especially, flipping between late nights and early mornings. It helps to try and stay on your home time zone for eating and sleeping, but it's not always possible. The wide body, international crews have it worse. They are doing over 13 time zones at a time. I've been contemplating bidding to a different plane next year, and picking the brains of guys who've already done it. Most liked it, but admitted that it ages you much, much faster than just domestic flying like I do now. I already feel like I look old enough. I don't need to accelerate it any more than I need to.


As a matter of fact, I am getting paid more for being late to finish my trip. The company has a window they can hit, but this situation isn't even close. I don't remember exactly what the rules are for when it kicks in, but it's certainly worth my while. More money is always welcome during the holidays.

So my trip finishes up with a couple of good layovers, a little bit of extra pay for finishing late, and only flying 4 legs in 4 days. The Captain and I had a good time and got along rather well. That helps keep the stress of everything down and makes the trip a lot more fun overall.

The nice thing about the west coast is that the early wake ups really aren't that early. I had no paperwork to download, just to get to the plane and find my seat. By just being a passenger there are actually rules that govern what seats we are supposed to be given.

Generally, a deadhead leg would be scheduled far in advance of the trip. I'd know when I got my monthly schedule which legs I was going to be a passenger only on. I normally only deadhead a few times per year. It's a tactic to move pilots back to a base or to have them work a longer day when it would be illegal to have them fly.

The company takes care of all the booking on these flights as opposed to when I'm commuting back and forth to work. I just have to check in and then I have the option to switch seats like anyone would as a passenger. Per our contract the company is supposed to give us a seat in the economy plus section if it's available. Regular economy otherwise. The seats are supposed to be assigned as aisle, then middle. If I get stuck with a middle seat I can actually get paid a little more as a result. So they'll try and and give us the best available of those options when they do the booking. On the day of the trip I'm also placed on the upgrade list for first behind the highest profile passengers, but ahead of a lot of the other lesser awarded passengers. I've gotten first once this year, but it's far from regular.

My booking was only done a couple of days before the actual flight so I ended up with a window seat in regular economy. So no extra leg room for me, but the window meant I'd have a little "me" space anyway. I haven't been a passenger on a flight this long since I went to Germany when I was in college. The in seat entertainment was a pretty good thing, as is the policy that I can get reimbursed for the internet on the flight. So I bought my wifi and watched movies. The time passed a lot faster than it does in the cockpit.

As a paid, working employee, I can board the flight as soon as the crew gets on. Meet the other crew members, get my bags where I want them, and get situated without any hassle. I don't have any problem putting my two bags in the overhead either because I'm working, required to have them, and I personally, need the extra space at my feet. Especially for a 5.5 hour flight.

It's been my experience in the past that some passengers have a hard time dealing with crew members that cut to the front in security, get on the plane early, or take up more space than a passenger should be allowed. The Known Crewmember program has pretty much eliminated the security issue, but the other stuff is still there. When I'm commuting I try and be as inconspicuous and accommodating as possible. I'm extra and using my benefits. If I'm working, I'm working, whether I'm a passenger or not doesn't matter. I don't go into your place of work and complain that I'm not getting the same perks that you are from your own company. My perks just happen to be very visible and frankly aren't that useful outside of this single environment.

The flight was planned to get in early to Newark, so I changed my listing to try and get the earlier flight home. It was a 3 minute walk between gates, but when I got there the plane was still there, but the agent had closed the flight. I would have had a seat, but it was just too close to departure so I missed out. So frustrating to see the plane you want sitting there without you on it.

The next flight was an hour and a half later, not bad. I grabbed some food and headed over. For once there were plenty of open seats on it. I walked up, got my seat (a whole row this time) and got on to go home.

I talked a while back about the highs and lows of airline travel. Busy seasons and the such. Here's a good article that shows the busiest times of the year.

The day before Thanksgiving actually isn’t the busiest time to fly - Quartz



Above you can see what I described as the down seasons in my earlier discussion. Jan/Feb are the quietest, coupled with the post labor day in the fall. The summer is crazy busy, and spring break and the holidays right up there. So it all matches in line with what my observations have been.

I'm home until after the holiday. I haven't been home on Thanksgiving for 3-4 years so this will be very nice. Christmas has exploded all over our house and the Mrs is pretty much done with the decorating. I'm going to enjoy this time as much as I can.

I did a couple of my required training modules this morning. The first was on fatigue risk management. That dealt with definitions of the different types of fatigue, the different triggers that can bring on fatigue. The new time and duty limitations that the FAA imposed a couple of years ago, how to prevent fatigue, and the policies and procedures of what to do when you do find yourself fatigued and unable to fly.

The second training module was on meteorology. How to make the most of the tools that are at our disposal, severe weather avoidance, techniques to operate the airborne radar more efficiently, and policies and procedures for dealing with a severe weather event like a microburst, windshear or severe turbulence event.

That's about it for now. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and go sign up for the FOFC Secret Santa so I can buy you a gift this year.

I'm just going to leave this right here. It's perfect for this week. I'm home, it's Thanksgiving week, and it's got some form of aviation in it. LOL! I'm sure most of you already know it, but if you don't, you're welcome.