A Year in the Life
 

...of a Pilot.

I have been mulling this idea over for a little while. Especially now that I travel to some more interesting places and my schedule is a little more interesting that maybe it's time to put some things down. Today was the day to get this going. So I guess it's now or never.

It's my intention to use this as more of a diary and more work than personal. I'd like to give some insight to my job duties and things that come up in the course of the day on the job.

I'm warning you. This job is not nearly as challenging in many ways as other flying jobs that I've had. This may end up be seriously boring and maybe not that interesting to most of you. Nobody is forcing you to read it though. I'm not that great of a writer either and I always have issues with keeping on track. A year would be a huge commitment success for me.

So with that. Welcome! Comment as you see fit or ask whatever might be on your mind.

Cool theme.. I will be reading and likely asking questions. Looking forward to seeing your travels!

First a little background about me for those of you who may not be as familiar.

I'm 39, on my 3rd airline. I've been flying as an airline pilot for 12 years now. In 7 days it will be exactly the 12th anniversary of my first job. I've been flying professionally for 14 years. This airline that I'm with now is the culmination of that career. I've been here for 18 months and it's been great. The job the you dream of as a kid. The kind of job that you hope you never have to leave. The kind of job that gives you hope that you'll never, ever, have to interview for another job, ever again. Hope being the key in that phrase.

It's not hard to figure out who I'm with. I won't mention it in here, but if you don't know, you'll figure it out rather quickly.

I've been married to the same woman for 14 years now. She has been there for me since before I was PilotMan. I was just an Assistant General Manger and she was a Hostess. She's been the best thing in my life. Most airline marriages have major problems. The time away, the necessary trust involved, the lack of money. They don't call it AIDS for nothing (Aviation Induced Divorce Syndrome) We've had our tough times, but we've also fought like tooth and nail for the other one. She's been my best friend and I don't think I could do it all without her.

We have 3 kids together. All boys they are 19, 12, and 11. I adopted the oldest after we got married. I've known him since just before his 3rd birthday and am the only Dad he's ever known. He has some special needs as well. The other two have been there with us through my career. While they don't share my love of sports, they do share my love of gaming. :)

So commuting is a big part of this job sometimes. Many times you'll have the luxury of being able to live where you work. Like the 9.5 years in my first job and the reason that I ended up in Northern Kentucky. Many times you just don't have that option. With our kids the ages they are and our finances where they are we are content to sit tight and let me fly back and forth to go to work. It can really cut short your time at home and the extra expense is always there.

As a commuter my options are basically to get hotel rooms or have what's called a "crash pad." Crash pads are notorious and can range from really nice to really a dump. You can have your own room and bed, or you can share a room with 6-10 other guys. Sometimes you have the same bed that you can call your own. Other times you pick your bed on a first come first served option called "hot bunking."

In my base of Newark, a hotel room will run you right around $100. My last crash pad was $225, the one I'm in now runs me $185. You can see it doesn't take that much for a crash pad to make the most sense money wise if you need it.

My current pad just so happens to be in a hotel anyway. A few rooms are set up here with 6-8 beds (3-4 bunks) but the most guys that have been here that I've seen so far is 4. It's a hot bunk set up, but housekeeping does a nice job of keeping it clean and the sheets fresh.

Today I had to leave home at 300p so I could catch a flight to Newark to be able to start a trip tomorrow morning. Count that as 16 hours away from home before I even start work. Let the journey begin.

So I started what amounts to a 6-day trip today. It's really only a 2-day and a 4-day back to back, but for me being a commuter there isn't a chance to go home in between so it's a 6 day.

At the beginning of a trip I have to be at the airport at least 1 hour prior to the departure of the flight. At the plane at least 45 minutes prior to the flight. Before I do that I have a bunch of preflight and paperwork that I have to get done. I'll go into all of that on a different day.

Today I'm heading somewhere I've never been before. It's south of the border and a full 5 hours and 47 minutes of flying time.

Puerto Vallarta!

I have to say that you didn't have to twist my arm too hard when I saw this on my schedule. It's a 23 hour layover and 1 leg back to Newark tomorrow afternoon.

The flight down wasn't bad. Some turbulence east and south of the Appalachians that really didn't get better until we were over the Alabama/Mississippi area. After that it was pretty smooth sailing.

I wasn't flying today's leg and what I mean is that I wasn't in actual physical control. The pilot who isn't flying is called the Pilot Monitoring and is responsible for all the communications between the plane and ATC. Tomorrow, I'll fly back to Newark.

It's a nice 79 degrees here today. I don't have any big plans to head out on the town or anything, especially having never been here before. and was able to facechat with my family when I got all settled. So for now, this is the horrible view I have to endure from my room. :)

This looks like it'll be great.

Awesome stuff... do you have any choice in flights or is it just whatever is programmed for you? Does the flight crew remain consisten t on the flight backor is it a completely different crew? Also, is there any way to change which airport your base airport is or are you placed out of newark long term?

wow.wow.wow

That was one of the better layovers that I've had for a while. I got to spend some time in a chair on the beach enjoying the sound of the surf today. That was my first time on the Mexican west coast. It reminded me of a warmer, smaller, quieter San Francisco. Very scenic. Dare I say better scenery than Cancun, but the beach is more rocky and not as good.

Our flight back was really good until we got to Louisiana. All the weather kicking up there caused a considerable amount of turbulence that we just had to ride out. There was some concern about the weather in Newark slowing our arrival down. We just had to keep an eye on it and press on.

I snapped this picture as we were near Monterrey. These peaks are close to 14,000 and were surrounded by this low fog on the eastern side. My camera on my crappy phone sucks.



The turbulence lasted until we were over eastern Kentucky so not a small amount of time.

It was nice to have the tailwinds today. Tomorrow won't be as enjoyable. Back into the wind. Surprisingly, despite the less than desirable weather in Newark we weren't delayed and were able to make our approach and landing in the rain. Thanks to the wind we were almost 30 minutes early. I think we were helped by the lower Saturday schedule. There is quite a bit less flying on the weekends and arrivals and departures are less intense.

Back to the crash pad for me. Here's a view of what a crash pad sleeping room looks like. Again, this is pretty standard for the industry and this isn't nearly as crowded as I've seen other places.

I'll get into the trips and how they are assigned in a little bit. As far as the flight crews, for us, typically the pilots stay together on the same trip because we are limited to the plane type we are qualified and assigned to (in my case, the B-737). The flight attendants are on a completely different schedule. They change pretty much every flight we do. Obviously the flexibility to work any plane means they can move around here and there for more efficient trips and schedules.

Yes, we can move bases. Everything is seniority based. I can bid into it or trade with another pilot who wants my base. If my number isn't senior enough I can't move. Also, I could bid into another plane too. Again, seniority based. I bid originally for the 737, even though I could have held the 757. There were a lot of things I had to take into consideration but felt that the opportunities were better on the 737.

Chicago would be an easier commute and only recently have I been able to hold it. But the flying is less productive, I would be on reserve again and I would lose some days off. So for now, I'm staying in Newark.

God I'm tired. Hey, at least I got to wake up without an alarm. That's always nice. I had to be at the airport by 1030a this morning to work a flight to San Francisco. Strong winds a heavy load meant that we were going to be right at the weight limit. Flight time: 6 hours and 6 minutes.

A flight is like a dance. There are many parts played by many people and they all have to come together in the right moment for it to leave on time. Flight crew, Gate Agents, Ramp Crew, Dispatcher, Load Planner, Operations personnel. When it works right, like it does most of the time flights get to leave on time. Any hiccup serves to derail the process.

Today, things just seemed to be working against us, not only the wind. As the gate finishes boarding, the flight crew finishes all our briefings, checklists and preflight, the flight attendants finish the cabin inspection, the baggage handlers finish loading the plane, all the data runs through the Load Planner who sends us our weights so we can send info back out for takeoff data.

To keep this shorter I'll paraphrase some things. Load planner had trouble with the weights. We couldn't get our normal takeoff data relayed so we had to call the dispatcher and have him run the numbers and send them to the plane. That is very rare. We had to takeoff on a little bit longer stretch of runway because we were so heavy. On taxi out, ATC had a reroute, but our dispatcher explicitly told us no reroutes because of fuel. So we had to wait some more. Eventually the reroute was approved and we left, albeit about 45 minutes after we were supposed to.

And all that is before you've even left the ground. Now add 6+ hours of flying. Today's flying was made less glamorous due to cloud cover over much of the US. Nothing really to look at. Snow in Canada, snow in Minnesota, snow in South Dakota, snow in Wy...wait I can't remember actually seeing the ground in Wyoming. Hehe. Snow in the mountains. Anyway, you get the idea.

My day wasn't done in SFO mind you. We ended up being about 35 minutes late, but we were also scheduled to deadhead (an aviation term meaning to ride as a passenger on duty) to Vancouver. Originally we only had 1 hour to make the flight, now we had roughly 25 minutes to make it. Thankfully I walked on only a few minutes from departure.

That flight ended up being about 20 minutes late because of late connecting bags that operations held the plane for. So now a 2 hours flight to Vancouver and we end up getting in here around 1045p. Clear customs and head for the hotel. I've actually never been to Vancouver before but I've heard it's one of the best layovers in the system. I won't know, it's dark now, it'll be dark when we leave. I won't see a thing. I figure out that I've spend almost 11 full hours on a plane today. Not just working, actually, physically, on a plane.

I'm starving. We are staying at the airport because it's a very short layover and I change and head out to the food court for some fast food Chinese. I call this part dinner at 1130p (eastern; I've found that life is easier if I say on my body time clock as much as practical.)

So I'm back to work in 9.5 hours. A similarly long day ahead tomorrow but I'm looking forward to hopefully grabbing some fish taco's when I get to Orange County (CA) tomorrow night.

I do some travel for leisure. I'm not sure if I fly more or less than the average man, but for someone who flies as much as I do, this is a very interesting log. Keep it up!

This will be good, very interesting to get some behind the scenes stuff. Some Canadian pilots own the house next to us and are down here 4-5 times a year, so I have talked to them about the flying part, or surprisingly lack of tie they actually physically fly the plane. Have never gotten into this part of it though, so looking forward to the travels.

This is already awesome, PM. Can't wait to read more!

PM, when there's turbulence, who makes the decision to radio ATC for a different altitude to check for clearer air? Is it the captain, or is it a mutual decision? Is it totally up to the pilot's discretion? I recently flew in China and it felt like the pilots didn't care if there was turbulence, they were given an altitude and were going to stick with it (probably just my perception).

How much leeway is there in flying around thunderstorms?

You mentioned that you fly 737s - are there big differences between the old 737s and the new ones? Are you rated to fly only certain models of them?

What prompted you to become a pilot? I'd always wanted to be one growing up but I never really did anything about it. It's interesting that it seems you may have career-changed into it.

Wow guys, thanks for reading! I appreciate all the comments and questions! Don't get too excited though. It's going to get a little bit boring. I have a bunch of days off to take care of the Mrs. who is having surgery later this week. I'll still be posting though. It just won't be exciting.

When a flight is being planned the dispatcher takes into account pilot reports as well as information put out by the company meteorologists. Turbulence can mean more fuel needs to be carried do to altitude or lateral deviations.

To answer the question it's the captain's responsibility for the flight, but we typically work as a team and make decisions together. We are always listening on the radio for ride reports, asking ATC to ask other planes how things are going, and getting information from Dispatch. Sometimes there is just nothing you can do about it. You have to go there or the rides just suck everywhere and you have to ride it out. Most altitude choices are fuel driven. The higher you go generally the cheaper it is to operate, however you are also closer to the operating envelope of the plane. Turbulence can make things dangerous if you are too high.

As for thunderstorms between the radar in the plane and on the ground and the general nasty nature of them we try really hard to avoid them at all costs. General rule is 20 miles but some can be as much as 100 miles away depending.

With a 737 type rating I am able to fly all variants from the classics to the new Max series that is coming out in a couple of years. That's both good and bad. Thanks to Southwest Airlines being the biggest buyer of 737's they convinced Boeing to keep many similarities between the old planes and the new. The upside is lower training costs and flexibility the downside is a lot of dated operations in the cockpit that most newer planes would have fixed by now. Even the new Max series will still have it. Thanks Southwest.

Oh man, my back story is a little kid of divorced parents who grew up flying unaccompanied from Minot to Los Angeles starting at age 6. A dad who was a pilot in the Air Force. A grandfather who was a naval aviator instructor in WWII. My mom even soloed before my dad did, but never went any further than that. I was in Civil Air Patrol in high school and even my first job after high school was working at the airport ice cream shop.

I come by it honestly even though I didn't think at the time that you could just become a pilot. I went to college and didn't think about it any more. The opportunity came up to go to a flight school in Florida and really commit to it (because at the time it was that or back to graduate school) and in the end it was something that I was always drawn to. I was fortunate enough to be able to be successful at it and make a career out of it.

I'd say thought that it was the flight crews that looked after me, talked to me, the pilots who put me in the cockpit before the flight. Plus when my friends weren't doing anything over the summer I was going to California and getting there in just a few hours. I was seeing a world far away from where I lived and I loved it.

Love this PilotMan!

It was still raining in Vancouver when I left this morning. There wasn't anything to look at. Even though the layover wasn't that long the bed was nice and I got a good night's sleep.

Our schedules aren't always nice and smooth going from one plane to another with no breaks. In less productive months like January we can have breaks. Today's break was 4 minutes shy of 4 hours. We call them productivity breaks or airport appreciation time. You could also call it not getting paid.

If there's one thing I'm good at thought, it's killing time. Only child, single working mom, latchkey. Oh yeah. I can kill some time. Today wasn't even that hard. I dropped my bags off in ops and did 2.5 miles around the terminal. In a suit. Lol. You can't really speed walk in a suit. But sitting as much as I do you gotta get up and move when you can. Throw in some lunch and laptop time and it was over that fast.

Denver always has the potential for shitty rides going over the mountains and today was one of the worst I've ever seen. In fact, the turbulence we had on climb out on the way to Orange County was the worst I've seen in years.

I do have one kinda cool photo from today.



That's snow in the Grand Canyon. That's just not something you see every day.

I think I can see the end of this trip on the horizon. I'm on day 4 today and I'm really ready to be done, but I've got 2 more flights. After having 3 of 4 layovers on the West coast I've more or less acclimated to Pacific time. This will probably work out in my favor, at least for this trip. You see, tonight's overnight has to set me up for tomorrow.

Let me explain. Tomorrow morning I do one leg to San Francisco. Then go to the hotel for 12 hours and then leave the hotel tomorrow night to fly an all night red-eye back to Newark. So after working mornings and afternoons, tomorrow I have to try and sleep during the day so I can be up all night.

It's taken me some time but I think I've got a system that works reasonably well for me. Basically I need to be able to get a good workout in, a good meal and be tired enough to just go to bed by 3 in the afternoon. If I can get 5 hours of sleep tomorrow afternoon I can be rested enough for my night flight.

It's not the ideal schedule, but it get's me back home the same day (called being able to commute on the back end.) I'll do just about anything to get home on the back end.

You know I am reading! Definitely awesome!

Beautiful morning flight up to San Francisco from LA this morning. No clouds, great temps. One of the benefits of being based on the east coast is all the west coast flying that I get to do. In my previous flying jobs I was stuck flying east of the Mississippi 90% of the time. I'd be stuck in the northeast on a snowy day where every flight was dealing with weather in one form or another. Occasionally I got out to Salt Lake City or Denver, Dallas, Austin, but most of the time was NY, Buffalo, Atlanta. I love it out here.

I'm trying to convince my body it's time to get some sleep. I have to get up in 4.5 hours and be ready to fly across the country whether it happens or not. So I really hope it does. Most everyone finds their own way to make it happen. It's not really fun to fly on the backside of the clock when your body is screaming ....sleep!

I leave you with this picture from my walk along the bay, not far from the airport and our short stay hotel in SFO. Just your standard beautiful January day in northern California. It's easy to forget that it's going to be in the teens when you get home, or that it might be snowing back in Newark.

Thanks for the encouragement guys. It means a lot to me. The idea of sticking with this for the year feels daunting, but I'm going to do my best.

Great read very interesting.

Is that a plane in post #23? How often do you see other traffic and how close have you come? Any on ground "incidents"?

Yeah, it's a plane on final approach for runway 28R in San Francisco. It's very common to see plane when you are at cruise. In addition to ATC informing you of traffic that may be close to you, there is the Traffic Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) in the plane that will go off if certain parameters are met.

Above 25000 ft in the US, is what is called Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums. That goes all the way to 41000 ft, which also happens to be the ceiling of the 737. Traffic is separated by 1000 ft vertically. I'm not certain on lateral separation for traffic going the same direction, but it's typically more than 10 miles. With the accuracy of GPS and the navigation systems its common to pass other planes traveling on the the same airway in opposite directions. East bound traffic travels at odd altitudes, while west bound even. When this occurs the plane will be often times coming right at you, with a closer rate between the two of you at over 1000 MPH! Also it's not uncommon to pass or be overtaken by another plane traveling the same direction but 2000 ft above or below. In order for planes to be able to operate at these altitudes the aircraft must have certain minimum equipment for safety of flight.

At lower altitudes and certainly near airports controllers have less space to work with and lateral separation is less, while vertical separation between planes flying VFR and in uncontrolled airspace can be as little as 500 ft. (visual flight rules; we fly IFR on instrument flight rules) VFR planes follow the same east/west altitude rules but fly on the 500's of feet as opposed to even thousands. There is no VFR traffic above 17500ft.

By ground incidents I assume you mean some sort of incursion or forced rejected takeoff. Yes, I have had one that had the potential to be serious. We were on takeoff in Buffalo and another passenger jet missed a turn and crossed the hold short line for our runway, forcing us to reject the takeoff. It was frustrating because we were just beating a line of bad weather out and ended up waiting for over an hour for the brakes to cool down, while we watched the other plane takeoff instead of us. Other than that, nothing really out of the ordinary. I don't see go-arounds as out of the ordinary. They are something that has to happen from time to time. They either happen from planes lingering on the runway too long in front of you, bad weather, poor approach or lack of sufficient separation on final. They seem like a big deal to the passengers but not generally to us in the cockpit.

Done! Now to just get home. I didn't get the real rest that I had wanted to. Just ended up tossing and turning for a few hours. I felt fine though and it was a mostly smooth 4h and 40 minute flight from coast to coast. It's always much easier to go with the wind than against it, especially in the winter.

Now the trick is to get home. So I've been done with work since 630a and my flight was supposed to leave at 900a, but here it is, 930, and the expectation is that the flight won't go until 1030 now. The flight is going to be a long one too, because of that very same wind. Oh well, I'm like a barn sour horse. Point me home and I can handle it. The flight has plenty of seats and it looks like I'll get a row to myself. I'm not a small guy, that extra space makes a world of difference.

I completely forgot to mention that I had another odd first yesterday. I had gotten up to get in the shower in LA yesterday and it wasn't until just before I went to turn the water on that there was no shower curtain! I was like "wtf?!" Too late to call down and wait for someone to take care of it. I had plenty of towels and tried not to make too terrible a mess. When I went down I asked at the front desk "when did you stop using shower curtains?" She just stammered and looked at me like I had a unicorn horn coming out of my forehead.

If I'm lucky now, I should make it home by 115p this afternoon. Almost 6 hours after I finished work added on to my 6 days of work. Hurry up already!

This is a great read!

Looks like you had a great hotel room in PV. How often are you put up in decent hotels? I'd have assumed you would always would have been put up in cheapo hotels near an airport.

I feel like we may have covered this before, but do you still get up to ND at all these days? Wouldn't necessarily expect it, given that you were probably here for your dad to fly from the AFB.

I've only experienced these at LGA, to my memory. But the one that sticks out to me is the one where the plane was making a final approach and had to abort and climb from maybe 500 feet back into a holding pattern for another go-around.

Thank you I appreciate it. To answer your question, all the time. I would say that domestically we average between 3 and 4 star hotels and internationally the same with the trend toward more 4 star hotels. There are contractual requirements that must be met with regard to location and amenities. Of course it's somewhat relative to the location. That hotel in PV was very nice in a great location. My hotel in Caracas might have been a good hotel, but it was surrounded by a 12 foot concrete wall with razor wire over the top, plus the rooms had cracked windows, missing light fixtures etc. That hotel in Caracas would still be considered one of the best available to us simply because of how crappy Caracas is.


Sadly, even though I still feel like my heart is somewhat there I don't. Although not for the reasons you think. It was my mom's family that was there. They had a farm out west of town. All of them are gone now and the farm is no longer in the family. My great-great grandfather emigrated from Norway under the homestead act for that land. I wish it could have stayed in the family, but at least close friends now own it. My dad was the one who was in California.


Exactly. LGA can be a bit of a CF due to airspace limitations and controllers who will bark 3 or 4 instructions in one breath, but this is exactly what I was referring to.

Personally I have gone around due to windshear, a bad approach where I was too fast on final and failed to notice a big tailwind on approach and I just couldn't get the plane slowed down enough. That happened exactly 1 time. No way I'm making that mistake again. I've gone around do to planes not clearing fast enough, tower making a mistake and clearing another plane for takeoff when we were too close and a situation where tower felt we were too close to the plane in front of us and told us to go around even though I was fine and we would have been fine.

So I got home at 2p yesterday. That's 7.5 hours after I was done working. That is what they call the cost of commuting. That time where you aren't getting paid and you aren't home where you should be. Add that to the 16 hours early that I had to leave for work on the front and and you get 23.5. My 6 day trip that I just finished cost me 7 days.

This job isn't like your normal 8-5 job. I don't work M-F. I don't get holidays. I get larger chunks of time off than most people, but the cost of a job where you travel a lot does take it's toll. I know that some of you understand that. Any job where you are gone a lot has it's own price. The price on your home life. It takes a special kind of woman to be able to deal with this sort of life. Many of them who can't move on and find other men where they don't have to deal with it. Many women can't handle the idea of their man being out there on his own for so long and so unaccountable. Jealousy and trust play right into all that and can disintegrate a healthy relationship.

Thankfully, I've been married for 14 years to a woman who has been with me for my entire career. We met before my flying days, when I was a fresh faced restaurant manager just out of college and she was a hostess in my store. Yeah, that kind of thing was frowned upon at the time. Yes, it caused problems that we were prepared for. She has been a stay at home mom to our kids. And while that cost us financially it has paid it's rewards in our home life, our kids lives, and our life together. I'm not sure we could have done it with her trying to balance a career on top of it.

Today we are going to the doctor for a pre-surgical appointment and tomorrow she is going in for what will be a 5 to 6 hour surgery to repair some damage and prevent long term complications from the number of pregnancies that she has had. She will be recovering for a couple of weeks and in this time I will have to do my best to do everything else that she does, plus the normal dad and family stuff. Oh and if we are FB friends please refrain from commenting on this there as we aren't discussing it there.

My next trip out isn't for over a week and a half. I have to make sure that she is doing alright before I leave again. So no awesome trip pics for a while. I'll still update the normal stuff here though and I still have to bid my schedule for February so I'll go over that process as well.

What a long ass day. Left home at 520a this morning, walked back in the door at 900p. Everything is alright, just a long day. Have to go back in the morning because I couldn't stay with her. I had to come home and be with the boys.

I wanted to talk about the bidding process for my schedule and I will, just not today. Too tired.

thoughts are with ya bud...

Again, not a whole lot to post today. I spend the majority of the day at the hospital with the Mrs, but got to bring her home today. She is doing good and on schedule for recovery.

Ok, on to scheduling. One of the most asked questions I get is "where do you fly?" or "do you fly the same route?"

Scheduling like most things I have control over is totally based on seniority. What I want to talk about is how the whole process works, what I have control over and how can I use it to improve my life.

I'm going to talk about seniority a lot. It's a simple concept that pretty much says your spot in the company is solely dictated by the date that you were hired. The biggest impact on day to day is the monthly schedule. Each month the company puts out a master list for each airplane of trips that pilots will bid for. These trips will vary from 1-4 days (some wide body, international stuff is different. I won't be talking about it though) and can run from 1 day of the month to multiple times during the month. For example, a 4-day trip could be run starting every Monday throughout the month.

These trips are designed to maximize the value to the company while still complying with all of the rules of the FAA and the contract. The contract already contains all FAA rules so as long as the company stays within it's all legal. Legality is a big deal. It's really complicated and it's really boring. Safe to say, you are better off not worrying about it here.

The pilots are divided into 2 groups when it comes to schedules, lineholders and reserves. Lineholders are the majority, the top 75-85% of pilots in a given group. They hold a regularly awarded schedule that can be between 70-85 hours of scheduled flying in a month. The remaining pilots are reserves. Reserves are on call and can sometimes fly a lot or end up not flying much. They generally are stuck with last minute changes and fewer guaranteed days off, but potentially more if they aren't used.

Next the company looks at all the flying that they have and they draw a line in the group and say everyone above a certain point on the list will be lineholders and the rest will be reserves. It's somewhat fluid based on schedules and more senior pilots who choose to bid reserve.

That brings me to the monthly pain in the ass that is bidding. We have what's called a preferential bidding system (PBS). There are, and I'm not making this up, a nearly infinite permiatation of choices. I can bid for or against certain layovers, days off, trip length, trips that start or end at certain times of the day, other pilots to fly with or to avoid. It just goes on and on and on.

I am senior enough on my plane, in my base, that I'm considered a lineholder. However, being a commuter puts me at a disadvantage because my entire month is somewhat decided by the options that I have to actually get to work. Unlike someone who can drive I have to know that my best travel days are during the week and that weekends, especially Saturdays suck to try and travel on. It also benefits me to work longer 4-day trips because it means that I won't be commuting as often as commuting = lost days off. For me a bunch of 2-day trips are wasted because I probably can't go home between them. I might as well be working. The flipside of that argument is the longer I am gone the harder it is on my family. Anything longer than 4 days gets to be tough on everyone. Especially my rollerboard (suitcase). It just can't hold that much.

The bidding itself is quite complicated. I have to not only order my preferences by what I want, but I have to assign a priority to each thing. The bidding program starts with the most senior guy and gives him exactly what he wants. Then it goes to the next guy, and so on down the list. The bottom of the list gets the scraps and can have some pretty screwy options left over for the monthly schedule. As the program goes through the process of trying to build my schedule if it can't abide me with a schedule request it can ignore it and keep trying. I have to have multiple bids with enough variation that hopefully I can get something that I actually want and not the random gifts of an unloved computer program.

My bid generally looks like this higher priority at the top:

Gimme some days off that I want
Gimme trips that avoid LaGuardia (we have a co-base EWR and LGA. It's a royal PITA for me to get to LGA from CVG or from EWR. Most of those trips start very early and end very late. Not good for commuters. I pay for a crash pad in EWR. A night in a hotel in LGA is between $100-150 on top of that. Fuck that.)
Gimme trips that end by a certain time to I can catch a flight home the same day.
Gimme trips that start later than a certain time to I can commute in same day.

For my seniority, that's about the best I can hope for. I can't really expect to layover in Cancun every week and avoid all red-eyes and still commute on both ends. I'm willing to do pretty much anything if it can get me home at the end of the trip. I'm willing to do pretty much any layover and fly with anyone. It's primarily about getting home.

The cool thing is at the end, when all the trips are assigned, pilots can still drop, trade or add trips to their lines to further adjust their schedules. If I don't want to fly (like I did for a trip at the end of the month) I can ask to have it dropped (lose pay). As long as there are enough reserves to cover the company will do it.

So looking at February there are only a couple of things that I'm trying to work around. I'd like to have some weekends off to be able to see the kids more. It's nice the the 14th falls on a Saturday. Overlaps help. Third, was to try and get a couple days at the beginning of the month off to combine with the end of January to maximize more time at home. Last, I'd like to have the 28th off at the end of the month for my middle son's 13th birthday. In my bid that was the last thing, the highest priority for my month. Getting the 28th off. It should happen, but it's also on a Saturday and maybe that works against me too.

Our bids closed today. I won't know the results until late on the 17th. That's the standard timeline for our schedules. I won't know what I do for the next month until the 17th of the previous one. Now if you are still with me after all that, go bake yourself a cookie and enjoy it's yummy goodness. Nice job.

PM,

How does the pay work? Is it by hours in the air, miles flown or what?

Great read.

Thanks for reading and approving. The approval of the almighty has to count for something, right?

So the answer across all of aviation is it varies. Let me explain. Pay is negotiated as part of the contract between the union and the company. Not all airlines have unions, but every one of them has some sort of group representative or company liaison or you get the idea. Corporate and fractional (think part ownership companies like Netjets) pay by the month. A guaranteed amount based on seat. Seat meaning captain of first officer.

In commercial aviation it's almost always flight time. The big exception is SWA which is still based on leg distance. I'm not entirely sure how their pay structure is set up, but I do know those guys are still the highest paid in the US for carrying passengers.

If you want to know who pays the most overall you'd have to look at UPS and FedEx. That is the top of the top, but the flying can be brutal. Lots of overnight flying and working for a company that really sees you as more of a mover of boxes (ala glorified truck driver) than a professional aviator. Still, those guys get paid.

If there is a top, there most certainly is a bottom. The regional pilots who fly contracted routes for the legacies are really sucking hind tit. They have been for a long time. The pendulum is slowly swinging for them, but not fast enough.

So what is flight time? It's that moment from all the doors shut on the plane and the parking break released and we are going flying until we park and the parking break is reset and a door is opened. That's it. In a month, like I said earlier, you are looking at lines somewhere between 70-85 hours. Reserves get a guaranteed 73 hours of pay.

There are a whole bunch of other things that factor in as well. We have a pay protection of 5 hours per day. We have a protection of 1 hr of credit for every 3.5 hours of time away from base. So if you get stuck with a 3 day trip to Grand Cayman and say you have a 36 hour layover there, your trip only has about 9.5 hours of flying. But you have a min of 15 hours (5hr/day x 3) and a protection of about 13 hrs and 10 min based on time away from base (all of this is just an example). The value of your trip would be 15 hours even though it only had 9.5 hours of flying. You don't get penalized for the company not being able to build a "good" trip.

Pilots also get a per diem to offset the costs of traveling. This per diem adds, on average about $1.85/hr for every hours away from base and can also vary based on destination. International gets a boost. Every company pays a different per diem rate. The regional pilots (again) are the lowest. A typical 4 day might be 78 hours away from base. That translates into $144 in per diem. Most pilots use the per diem to boost their salary. I wish I could spend that every trip. I could eat better than I do. Lol.

I've never been shy about talking about pilot pay. For the most part it's a matter of public record. You can go to airlinepilotcentral and look up each companies pay rates, fleet sizes, and even some work rules. Just as a comparison of some companies:

5th year first officer at:

Delta 737; about $128/hr
Spirit Airbus; $90/hr
Southwest 737; $130/hr
Jet Blue Airbus; $109/hr

Skywest RJ; $42/hr
Endeavor (Delta) RJ; $38/hr

Fed Ex 757; $135/hr
UPS all; $155/hr

Not all cargo companies are created equal either.

Southern Air, Cincinnati based, 747; $79/hr

This whole industry is such a crapshoot. The fact that you can't take your experience with you when you change companies really ties you to where you are. Seniority is everything and getting on with a really good company is the top of the mountain. It's the achievement of a life of hard work. It's the goal we are all striving for. Thankfully, I was able to get mine about 19 months ago.

Very interesting stuff, great read!

Yesterday ended up being just a brutal day. Up at 430a to give meds to the Mrs, up at 630a to take the kids to school, ran to the store to get meds and juice for the Mrs, ran errands across town, took my oldest shopping, then picked up the kids, dropped one off at a competition, took the other home, then took him to piano, ran to another store to get more meds for the Mrs after the first didn't work, took those back to her at home, picked up the son at piano, got some Taco Bell, back home the Mrs is in a great deal of distress, had to run and pick up the other kid from his competition, got home again Mrs is crying with pain, got her bundled up, no dinner, out the door and 20 minutes to the closest ER, raced her inside and spend the last 6 hours of the day there while the Mrs was being tended to. Everything gets made better, back home at 100a, at dinner, in bed by 2, up at 530a for more meds, up at 630 for kids. It's no wonder I needed 2 naps today.

Ouch... It is always darkest...

Things have been pretty quiet. Just trying to keep the family going while the Mrs is on the mend.

My February schedule came back and it's a mess. I spend a while chatting with someone from the union about it. What appears to have happened is that I screwed up without knowing that I was screwing up. Sort of....

I told you it was a complex pain in the ass. I said that the company decided how many reserves and lineholders that it will have every month. What happens as the bidding program goes down the list is it's actively looking at the remaining trips and trying to balance it's ability to actually build the lines that it has to at the bottom of the list. When this happens schedules that I would otherwise have been awarded are discarded so that it can take that flying and move it to someone lower on the list for the purpose of creating the required lines.

That's what happened this month (and to a lesser extent in January too.) I spent the morning chatting online with someone from the union trying to get a handle on it and what I can do about it. The answer is change the way you are bidding next month, talk to the Chief Pilot about dropping (i.e. not gonna get paid for it) a trip so that it doesn't suck so bad. Too bad, your line is legal.

As is stands right now, none of my trips are commutable. Two of them are starting and ending in LGA and all of them are bunched up in the middle of the month. I'd be gone from home for about 18 days with 4 actual days off in between. But that's not really true either. I'd have to commute on each of those 4 days off so I'd actually be home a total of maybe 60 hours in that same 18 day span.

So right now it appears that next month is going to be a complete crapshoot. I'll try and get rid of this stuff that doesn't work and (cross my fingers) hope that I can pick up some flying that will plug some of the holes. Otherwise bills might not get paid when March rolls around. That's certainly not a road I'd like to go down at this point.

Sorry to read about the upcoming work schedule but this is a very interesting thread. Thanks for giving us an opportunity to see what goes on.

Ahhhh so it's been a week. I told you things would be boring for a bit. I've taken some extra time off from work. The Mrs is taking longer to get better than we had thought, but all in all she is doing well. So this month really isn't indicative of my typical schedule.

The window for making schedule trades opened this week. After all the scheduled flying has been awarded each month there is a mix of open (flying with no pilot assigned to it; keep in mind that Captains (left seat) and First Officers (right seat) are totally separate and individual. So in this mix of trips is everything from 1 to 4 day trips. Most are not great trips, but what they do allow is some option for manipulating your schedule. The biggest issue I had is the tightness of my schedule and the fact that 2 of my 3 trips originate and terminate in LGA. I submitted a request to have both of my LGA starting 4-day trips dropped on the hopes that it would open up my month and give me a lot of flexibility. The drawback is that if I can't find flying to replace it with then I end up with cash flow issues. The last request that I made was to replace my last 4 day with a trip that started a day later, giving me a little more breathing room in my scheduled.

So once the company starts processing requests is takes the most senior guy and goes down from there. If for some reason someone ahead of me has requested something I wanted I'm SOL. The company then processes requests about every 4 hours. So what did I get?

Nada.

I was told that the company didn't have enough reserve coverage on the days that I wanted to drop trips and even that last trip that I wanted to swap for one a day later? Yeah that one too, no coverage. So they rejected everything that I had hoped I would get.

Off I went to plan B, and that was to look for any EWR trip to replace my LGA trips with over the same days. Luckily there was exactly 1 trip for each day that I could request. Not much to choose from but the chance to dump the LGA for the EWR had to be done. I was also lucky that there wasn't anyone ahead of me making the same request so I was able to get those swaps approved. Not having to worry about having to deal with LGA takes a bit of pressure off if I can't get anything else approved.

I put one last request in to swap my final trip with another trip that was commutable on the front end. That would give me a few more hours at home in between trips. It would cost me on the back end and it would cost me a St. Maarten layover but again, home comes first. This trade was approved as well.

I've gone back in and resubmitted a request to drop my middle 4 day trip. My schedule still doesn't look doable as it is. Again I was rejected. No coverage. I'll leave that request in there. If they do end up with coverage it'll get dropped later. I might even place a call into my Chief Pilot and see if they agree and have them override Scheduling.

That's what's coming up for this week. As it stands right now. I won't be flying for a few more days. More time at home is never a bad thing.

Side question(s)... When I travelled last week I was watching a person whom I assume to be the Pilot inspecting the plane before boarding. Is that typical? If so, how much do you need to know about the plane materials/build?

Yep, I'll get more in depth with what goes on in a typical flight and what my duties end up being but for now that is correct. It's called a walk around and one of the pilots will walk around the plane prior to every flight. In short it's a general inspection of the exterior of the plane. I'm looking for any damage and checking the general condition of the tires, engines and all the pressurized systems. If something isn't right the leak would be fairly obvious. If the weather is bad I'm also looking at any ice or other contaminants on the wings. Pretty much if all the big parts are there and nothing is leaking we are good to go. That's the line we like to say anyway. :)

As for systems knowledge. It's extensive. That doesn't mean that I am able to just whip out any bit of knowledge about any system and just know exactly what's going on, but you have to know and have a working understanding of not only the operation and limitations of the engines, aerodynamics and basic how a plane flies stuff, but also hydrodynamics (hydraulics and fuel) and electricity. Throw in pneumatics with the pressurization and anti-icing of the plane and you've got a basic idea of what things we have to know. Now put all of it together in a plane (they are all different and yet somehow similar at the same time.)

When I was in initial training I think it was something like 40+ hours of systems computer learning. We have reviews every quarter that we also have to go over as well. In the end it's not that we have to be able to build the plane, but for general knowledge and understanding so we can better deal with things that might go wrong and help address the how and why and what is there that can be done about it.

Just dropping in to say I love reading this thread.

Was on a flight last night from Chicago to Orlando (737). It was flurrying in Chicago when we were boarding the plane, and I noticed the weather forecast had changed to a threat of icing on the roads (less than an inch). I guess because of this, they decided to de-ice the plane. It took an interminable amount of time (actually delayed us for about 45 minutes, but I have to admit, I'd rather do that that take chances). Anyway, I noticed that some of the material they were spraying on the plane was orange tinted and then it seemed like the wings chemicals looked green. Any idea why?

Also, by the time we were making our way to the runway, the weather turned and it was a definite steady snow. When we got on the runway, you could tell the pilot hit the brake and absolutely gunned the engines (much more so than a typical takeoff) and only then released the brakes. We took off VERY quickly (I actually time this - it takes about 35 secs for a normal take off, this felt like we were in the air in 20) - I assume they did this to compensate for any ice accumulation that may have occurred. It's been a while since I've flown in inclement weather - is this part of the standard operating procedure for a 737?

I must admit, once we were in the air, it seemed like a long time before we got above the snow and my thoughts were purely on the amount of snow and ice that were perhaps forming on the wings. It seemed like they wasted no time in trying to get above the weather, too - no cutting back on the throttle noticed at all.

Yes! Now is a great time to talk about winter weather operations I suppose! So yeah, FAA regulations state that no person can take off with contamination on the wings. Typically it's a no-brainer if it's snowing hard. But sometimes you may have to deice when the plane has accumulated ice inbound that wouldn't melt off or if the weather is threatening and the chance of getting nailed before you get to takeoff. You will see planes take off with very light flurries if the pilots can be assured that nothing is sticking to the wings or a wing check could be accomplished prior to take off and if it's determined to be clean you would be able to go. The pilot would need to do that himself (you would notice it by him walking to about the exit row and then back up front). As for the delay, yeah absolutely it can cause delays and slow things down but there's nothing you can really do about it. We are going to things by the book. The plane is off the gate and considered "out" on it's departure time and the winter block times (gate to gate) are based on historical data so the company adjusts them and they are more padded in the winter. Some of that time would be factored into the flight time already.

I have to say you were very observant all the way around many people would have missed the color and the cutback, but I can explain all of it!

Deicing procedures are pretty standard all over. There are 2 primary fluids that are used in deicing, they are both Propylene Glycol mixes and feel very much like personal lubricant. The first that you saw, the orange one, is called Type 1. It's sprayed on hot, and it's job is to clean all of the ice/snow/sleet off of the plane and make it smooth again. You may only get this used if there isn't any snow falling because it's not very effective against actively falling snow and you will always get it prior to the application of Type IV. That's why you got Type IV. Type IV is the green fluid that you saw. It goes on cold and is green and very gloopy. It drastically lowers the freezing point on the plane and can protect the plane for a long time. We have charts that we use up front to cross reference the type of fluid (there are many different types of IV), temperature, and what kind of precip is falling. That gives us a number to work with to decide how long we can sit in the snow and be safe. This time is called a holdover time.

The next part of your question is another great one. You noticed some things that were related but necessarily for the reasons you think. Without getting into a whole lot of detail about takeoff data and reject/go speeds, balanced field blah, blah, blah.....anyway the short answer for why he held the brakes was it was all driven by the weather but not because of what may have been on the wings.

I have a guess that you were taking off on 22L at ORD. That runway is a little shorter than some others and with the snow falling braking distances in the event of a rejected takeoff would have been longer than normal. The purpose of running the engines up is threefold. First it clears any contaminants or deice fluid that may have been near the inlet, second it does allow for a shorter takeoff roll and third and most important, it allows us to verify the normal operations of the engines prior to actually rolling down the runway. Once the pilots are satisfied it's go time!

As for the engine cut-back, on a normal takeoff, that typically happens at 800 feet, but if you are in a 737 and going off of runway 22L in ORD, you'll have a modified takeoff where the cutback altitude is at 3000ft instead. This is due to altitude restrictions for noise abatement around the city. Further, Chicago approach control insists that we maintain a speed of 250 knots until they tell us we can go faster. Normally that would happen at 10,000 feet, but they typically hold us slower until above 23,000. That can make is seem like we are climbing faster than normal because the angle will be steep to keep the plane from accelerating, where we'd normally lower it to accelerate. Additionally, the engines will also run faster (than they would on a clear, nice day, because on those days we don't use full rated power) to compensate for the anti-icing system running, because it's drawing warm air off the engine to heat the engine cowl and wings that would otherwise be going backward toward the turbine.

I always like being able to shed light on things for people to help everyone understand the ins and outs of whats going on behind the scenes. You had some great observations that lead to big questions, but this is just a taste of the things that go on everyday. Things have a way of being more complicated than they appear but we are doing the best that we can to make it look as seamless and smooth as possible. Like I have said before, the entire process of aviation is like a delicate dance sequence that plays out with everyone doing their part to make things work at the right time so the operation can stay on schedule and most importantly...safe.

Thanks guys. I appreciate it.

This thread should be required reading for anyone who is bitching and moaning "What the heck is the pilot doing anyways... let's take off already!" lol..

Awesome, awesome, awesome response to my winter-related questions - thanks so much. I did notice, too, but forgot to mention that a guy got out of the de-icing truck and sprayed the intake of the engines as well - again, I'm assuming to remove any accumulation from the blades.

This entire process fascinates me. I read the NTSB report on the Air Florida disaster years ago. Terrible that it takes something like that to change protocols in such a way, but wonderful to hear that there are things going on in the background that go a long way to being safer than even I had hoped.

Again, thanks for the response!

Just so you know, I do still have a job. I haven't been this long out of a plane and off of work without being in training for over a decade. It feels weird. I don't want to give the impression that this much time off is something that is normal for me or anyone really. This time next week though, I should be back to the grind. There is one more thing that might come in the way of that though. We'll see.

The last 3 weeks haven't been without effort. It's certainly been been no vacation. I've got a new appreciation for the effort that my wife goes through with my constant comings and goings. She is a phenomenal partner and I am lucky to have had her with me for the last 15+ years. Just keeping up with the normal chores, meals and school is more than enough to keep someone busy. There really is never any break from it. Ever.

While the Mrs. has been on the mend from her surgery life has gone on. I've dealt with her total care and the normal kid/school/family stuff. The hot water heater decided it was time to give up the ghost. I'm so very thankful it let us know with a nice leak at the base rather than exploding all over the basement. The last thing that anyone needs is 50 gallons of water suddenly making it's way across the basement floor. We had some warranty repair work done on the treadmill. I made the aforementioned trip to the ER. I spent one morning running around Cincinnati to get a part for the dishwasher that had quit and then spent some time getting that running again. All in the space of 3 weeks! Thank god I was able to be here and take care of it all.

Yesterday though, the Mrs. got a call that her estranged mother passed away. Arrangements are sometime this coming week, but things aren't really determined yet. This is a woman that I have no sympathy for. She was quite possibly one of the worst people that I've ever met. The distance was necessary to protect my wife and to ultimately protect our kids. I feel awful for her Grandpa, that he has to bury his oldest child. He's already very fragile. Now this week we go into a situation that we've talked about, but never came up with a good plan for how to handle it. We will be heading to the funeral this week. I will stand by my wife and I will hold my tongue. I will protect her if she needs it, but I don't expect that there will be any trouble. It's so fortunate that I have a few more days at home. If it looks like it'll interfere with my schedule next week I'll call and have myself taken off so I can take care of business here.

Just because I'm not traveling right now doesn't mean that work isn't going on. We've got our yearly vacation bidding going on right now and the deadline to get mine in is rapidly approaching. After that, it'll be time to think about how to adjust my monthly bid for March so I don't run into the same issues that I ended up with in February. Namely screwing myself by asking for too much.

I appreciate the feedback from everyone. I'm glad that you feel like you are getting your money's worth out of my writing. Thanks.

Like everything else that's been going on I managed to get my vacation bid in at nearly the last possible instant.

We bid now for vacation time that starts from May of 2015 until the end of April 2016. Last year I wasn't senior enough to hold my vacation time until the end of March this year. Between being with 3 companies from 2012 until now I haven't actually had a paid vacation since December of 2011. Granted I've had time off that seemed like vacation time, but it's been that long since anything was official.

Again, like everything in aviation vacations are bid on seniority. Weeks are bid in blocks of 7 days all the way up to the maximum number of days that can be held off. It's kind of a mess and like the monthly schedule bids complicated and long winded. No sense in trying to explain it except that I could have all my vacation awarded or I might possibly have to bid up to 2 more times if none of my choices are available.

My bid requests are pretty straightforward. I want some to try for some time around the holidays and if that doesn't work I want something in the summer. My next week I'd like to try and get my kids spring break off in 2016. After that it's pretty much a crapshoot. I'll have to see if I have any time unawarded after this run of the bid and if I do It'll be back to the drawing board for one of the less desirable weeks that remain.

I'm having a challenging day mentally today. The funeral is set for Friday and I was asked if it would be possible for me to be a pallbearer. The family is really small and I was able to do it for my wife's Grandmother a couple years ago, but inside my head this is different. I know that they don't have many options and I know that I'm going to do it too. I'll do it for my wife and I'll do it for her Grandfather who I love and who is destroyed right now. It's just not an easy decision or it's a decision that makes me feel conflicted inside anyway. I know what the right choice is, but there are parts of me that needed some extra convincing to make it.

I love working for a company that has the resources to be able to handle an event like this without it causing a big deal. I called my manager today and was able to get my trip that was starting this weekend off. I just don't think I would be mentally ready to go on Saturday morning after what is sure to be an extra emotional, possibly tension filled day on Friday. I'm not sure I can justify leaving the Mrs. so soon after that day and then couple it with the pressures of having to take over the running of the house while she still is still recovering. I'm so thankful for this job.

Today was a long day. I'm glad the hard part is over. It was better than it could have been. But I don't think you can ever say that these things go well.

So the first round of the awards were posted today and while I didn't get any weeks in the summer (again...sigh....bummer) I did get 2 weeks awarded. I'll get my kids fall break (4 day weekend coinciding with teacher education) and then spring break again in 2016. At least it's something to plan for and isn't just a meaningless couple weeks in January or February. The other upside of getting both weeks awarded in the first go around is that I don't need to worry about bidding any more, or trying to decide what to bid for out of what's left over. I can tell you, as far as I'm concerned, there's nothing left at this point that would be worth anything.

With it being the 6th of the month it's also time to consider my bid for March. The bidding window is open for and I need to look at what time I need off. More importantly, how I can improve my bid overall to so I can avoid the mess that happened in February? I'll break it down a little more soon with how many hours I need for a line and where I'm actually bidding at in March.

Time bidding is almost like an online game of sorts. With real life consequences... ughh.

I gave my wife a sign for Christmas that says "You are my favorite hello and my hardest goodbye." It seemed fitting considering the in and out nature of my life. Most couples would have a melt down after this much time together, but not us. Thirty-five days. Yep, you read that right. Thirty-five days. That's how long I've been out of an airplane and away from work. Now granted, some of it was by design and some of it was due to things outside of my control, but I can't deny that it's been both nice and hard to be away that long. There is something about the my job that scratches an itch that you just can't quite reach otherwise. I know that sounds a little hokey, but it's true for a lot of guys in aviation. When I was learning to fly back in the day you'd see guys come in and try it because they wanted the money or the lifestyle. They weren't prepared for what the job actually entailed and they found out quick that this kind of thing was not just something that you'd pick up on the way.

So like true to form I got my March bid in at nearly the last possible opportunity. I had been procrastinating doing it because I just didn't know what I wanted to do. Ultimately I had to go much more generic with my options. I had to really emphasize that flying in and out of LGA is just too much a pain for me personally and that if possible I'd avoid it at all costs. I had to decide what (if any) were important dates in March. My middle son has a band concert and it's in a position in the month that is going to be difficult to get off based on the days off I have at the end of February. My goal was to avoid the 4 on-2 off-4 on-2 off-4 on that February turned into that had all of my flying crushed in the middle of the month. I'm currently bidding about 76% among lineholders, meaning that only 24% of the group of lineholders bids after me. There isn't a lot to count on, especially when you consider how challenging the last 2 months were to schedule. Ultimately I decided on a very generic bid where I am trying to get a continuous cycle of 4 days on and at least 3 days off in between. No preference for weekends off or even any other specific days. It's a schedule I think my family and I could handle for a long while. It's something that we've handled well in the past and it just makes the month go better with things more spread apart. It makes commuting easier as well. I just don't feel like bidding for specific days is really going to work again until maybe summertime when the schedules get much heavier.

I do have one thing going for my in March/April and that is my vacation. It hardly seems like I should be excited about vacation after just having 35 days at home, but I am. We are taking a trip to Hilton Head for the first time ever and I'll get to take my wife to Savannah, a place I've always wanted to take her. It'll be the first family vacation in 2 years and the first long driving vacation we've had in 5. These last 35 days were NOT a vacation. It was work. Just the kind that my wife usually does. ;) My vacation should help with my schedule as it counts as a certain number of flight hour credits and will mean that I don't need that many trips to have a schedule built. Who knows though? I'm already nervous that I've fucked something up again.

The crash pad is quiet tonight. I'm the only one here which is nice. I've only been here 2 times in the last 2 months. It's not exactly paying for itself right now, but it's still worth it. It really pays when it's quiet and you have the room to yourself. I only have a little bit of trepidation about the time away, like suddenly I've forgotten everything I'm supposed to do. I had this feeling once last year after a particularly quiet time and I found out that I have nothing to worry about. It all comes back and it comes back so easy. Even landing planes. I think I can still nail a good landing even after 35 days away. I guess I'll find out tomorrow or Saturday, depending on when my turn to fly comes up.

I'll leave you with the last line from one of my favorite movies. Fast Eddie Felson steps up, smiles big and says "Hey, I'm back!" So I am.

I had wanted to give some updates before now, but now is better than never so let me take you back to Friday morning.

I started my trip with a deadhead (me in the back getting paid to be a passenger) from Newark to Montego Bay. We were delayed getting out of Newark due to a sold out plane being downsized and now there were about 10 seats that had to be bought off. With it being an international flight the ramp had to make sure that the people who didn't get on didn't have their bags shipped off to Jamaica. We were eventually somewhere close to 45 minutes late. I was only supposed to have about an hour between flights in Jamaica anyway.

Once we got to Montego Bay I had to go from gate 7 to gate 4, but wait, it's not that easy. No, I have to go clear customs like all the other passengers, leave the building (side-note; I'm wearing my suit, hat and trench coat. It's 80 degrees. Jamaican's have no problem asking you why you are wearing a coat or calling out from the road, or bar, or pretty much anywhere), walk outside to the departure building then go back through security and then I can finally get to the gate. What a pain. So this flight was going to be late too. When I got to the plane it had already been boarded and the passengers were just waiting on us pilots to take them to Chicago. It took us a normal amount of time to get the plane ready, but for the passengers I'm sure that it was an eternity. Finally we left for Chicago. I flew this leg and got my first landing since my time off. It wasn't an easy one either as winds were 25-30 mph. I've logged over 1500 landings in my career but that voice in the back of your head can get to you when you've been off so long. I put it right where I wanted it and we were back on the ground again. We cleared customs again and then walked to the hotel for the short layover.

Next morning up at 445a and it's cold as fuck. I'm not looking forward to the preflight. Today is a breeze compared to yesterday though. While yesterday was over 8 hours in a plane (flying) and nearly 12 hours on duty, today is just one leg to Ft Myers. I haven't laid over in Ft Myers in years, and even more, the hotel we are going to is the hotel we used to be at when I worked for Comair. I'm a sentimental kind of guy. I always see these loops in life where things get to come full circle. So this was one of those days. It started snowing while I was doing the walk-around and even though it wasn't supposed to we felt like we needed to get deiced before takeoff. Chicago can sometimes be really busy and have plenty of delays, but today it was easy. We got out quick and made it to Ft Myers early. The only drawback was that it was only about 60 there. Still beats where we had just come from.

Today was another early start as we were off to the airport before 6a. Today was also the longest and the day that had the biggest potential for bad things to happen. Weather in the northeast today had caused the cancellation of about 50% of the flying in and out of Newark. The issue was wind. Winds were from 330 (NNW) at 33 and gusting to 39 kts. That translates to 39 to 45 mph. Unfortunately the main runways in Newark are orientated on 040/220. In other words for the main runways the wind was a direct crosswind and gusts exceeded the limitations of the plane. That leaves 1 useable runway in Newark, runway 29, which is only 6200ft long and due to NY's airspace restrictions makes this runway more complicated to use due to Manhattan and airspace owned by LaGuardia. With only 1 runway for takeoffs and landings the potential for delays, holding and fuel diversions was high. However, all the cancellations tempered a lot of this and we weren't really slowed down at all. We had some very rough turbulence from 5000ft all the way down to the surface. It's not like you are making this easy decent right to the runway, for arrivals into EWR you are flying around at this low altitude for about 15-20 minutes due to airspace constraints above for planes going to JFK and LGA and space reserved for departures so you fly lower, longer. I won't lie. This approach was one of the hardest landings I've ever had to do. I'm pretty confident with my flying but even this one had me working hard. It wasn't pretty, but despite everything I still put the plane where I wanted. It was just a harder landing than usual which you will find is normal in strong gusty winds.

That lead into the next flight. The Captain and I weren't entirely sure that we'd be able to use 29 because we needed a lot of fuel and the 737-900ER is known to be a bit of a runway hog. Much to our surprise though and against the grain of a day where I'm sure plenty of people didn't get where they needed to go we were happy to take a plane, full of passengers from that cold hell-hole known as Newark four hours away to the warm vacation destination known as Aruba. This is my first trip to Aruba, and I've got a little time tomorrow morning before we head back to Newark to finish off this trip to relax and get some sun.

We get back too late tomorrow for me to catch a flight to Cincinnati so my plan was to take a flight out first thing Tuesday morning. Of course, Cincinnati is due to get between 6-10 inches of snow Monday and Tuesday. That could really mess things up. I only have 1 full day off in between these 2 4-day trips and I really need to get home so I can take my youngest boys to a car show that we gave them as a Christmas present. I know there's nothing I can do about it right now and I'm only borrowing trouble but I can't help but worry about it.

Slept in as late as I could today. After back to back days of getting up before 5 I have a hard time sleeping late. Shortly after I woke up I found out that my room was directly above the loading dock for the hotel. So I listened to the sound of truck after truck back up and unload. It didn't impact me really and who am I to complain. I'm in Aruba.

The hotel I'm staying at has it's own private beach and a free boat to take you over there. I headed over, got a workout in and then ate some lunch on the beach. I'm not one to really go all out with my meals but times like this call for taking some time for yourself and enjoying the day.



A couple hours later I was back in the plane and on my way back to Newark. Nice flight today, no major issues. After I landed I got some good news and some bad news.

The bad news was that the flight I was planning on taking home the next morning cancelled and that throws a wrench into things. I had the option of trying to hop a ride on a cargo company that has 1 direct flight from Newark to Cincy on weekdays, but after talking with the Mrs. and finding out just how much snow we got and how bad the roads were today the prospect of cleaning my car off at 130a and then trying to get home just didn't sound that great of an idea.

So now I'm going to try for the next flight which is 3 hours later and very full. If I get on that plane there's a good chance I'll be on a jumpseat. That's the plan for now anyway.

The good news was a message from the company that said that my trip was bought off for IOE. So what the hell does that mean? Well IOE is Initial Operating Experience. It's when a new pilot or a new captain is going to get to fly their first few legs with a pilot whose purpose is to give them their first on-line experience with the plane (or seat for the captain.) A pilot has to do about 25 hours in order to get signed off and there is certain training that must also be accomplished. So what does this mean for me? Well you may have figured. The term bought off means that the company is giving my the trip off with pay since I was awarded it and it's my trip and now they need it and are taking it.

This is maybe the second time in 13 years that this has happened to me and it couldn't have come at a better time. With only 2 days off between trips and this bad weather making my commute home more difficult I don't need to worry about that anymore. Even better? It was my last trip for the month. I'm going home and I'll be off until March. Super lucky.

Party time in cincy!

No doubt. I ended up in the jumpseat for my flight home. Sometime I'm going to have to take a picture just try and show how little room there is in the jumpseat on the E-145 (the plane that I end up commuting on.) For a guy my size uncomfortable is just not quite the right term for it. On top of that it was 150mph head winds all the way back making the trip even longer.

So what was the cost of commuting today? Well let's see, I got done with my trip around 800p last night and got home today around 1130a. That's a loss of 15.5 hours on the back end and on the front I lost another 13 or so. So just over a day lost on this 4-day trip. I am so happy I don't need to head back on Thursday morning.

I'm very excited for March. My schedule came out and it would seem that the changes that I made were successful, however I'm thinking that because I had vacation that that was a big reason for what I ended up getting. I don't know for sure but I have a feeling that when you have vacation the program that builds the schedules gives you a preference for your choices. I don't know well enough to be sure but it would make sense and other bidding systems previously have worked this way. A little bonus for when you have a vacation.

I ended up getting exactly what I bid for. I have the first few days of March off so I can go to my son's band concert and then I work 3 4-day trips with at least 3 days off in between before I go on vacation. I don't have any weekends off but I'm not flying in or out of LGA and all of the trips are commutable on the back end and one of them on the front end.

All in all it's a very manageable schedule and one that will get me home enough in between trips. If my schedules were like this every month I think that it would be a solid balance between work and home.

Today, it's 16 degrees at home. A full 25 degrees below normal. We got another 2 inches of snow on top of the 7 or so that we got a couple days ago. School is cancelled again and the boys and I have already been out to shovel. I just want you to know that this is not Aruba.

Definitely not Aruba. Just wanted to let you know that I'm thoroughly enjoying reading this Pilotman!

Go Midwest! (ducks as snowballs start flying towards me)

I may be the only person in this town with a little sunburn on his face though!

Thanks Radii, I'm happy you are finding it interesting!

The biggest of the 7 snowmen that were built today. I am officially tired. I was caught by surprise today. I got up and there were people across the street at our neighbors house. Our neighbors are quite old and can't get out to shovel so we always make sure their house is taken care of. So when I saw someone else doing it I was a little upset. That is until I came outside to do our driveway and the guy comes over to me and tells me they've already paid for our driveway. So the boys and I got off free this morning. It's snowing hard again though and we'll have to go back out later. In the meantime this is the biggest snowman that I've ever made. That bottom piece was heavy!

Awesome stuff! Count me in the group that loves dealing with snow!

So things have been pretty quiet around here again. We've been prepping for a big day today, the 13th birthday of my middle son. For those who don't know he is my middle son, but my first biological son, and while that has never mattered to me, my life did change the day he was born. I've been lucky to see him grow into the young man that he is.

One of the very best things about my life is being able to not think about it and leave it behind completely when I'm not working. The only thing that I need to worry about is when I have to be back in the plane for my next trip. That being said, I do need to get started on some computer training that is due by the end of April. I've had plenty of time to get started on it (since the beginning of January) no reason rush, but no reason to procrastinate on it anymore either.

We still have about 6 inches of snow on the ground at home. Our 7 snowmen from last week are still standing although they don't look nearly as great as they did. The forecast for us has rain, snow, sleet, freezing rain, more rain and possibly a thunderstorm all in the next few days. We are supposed to dodge both weather systems with one going south and one going north. But it's likely that we'll get a good taste of the weather from both as we bounce back and forth across the freezing point with precip falling regularly. They've already talked about flooding in the area as the snow on the ground rapidly melts and more falls.

My next trip isn't until next weekend, so I'm just going to stay home and take care of the family. My intention is to go into some detail on what I do before the start of a trip and before a flight next week. Thanks.

Thanks for sharing your personal experiences, I'll try to tune in from time to time.

I'm feeling frustrated today. Not because it's my last full day home and I'm heading back to work tomorrow but because school is cancelled today. I knew it would be with all the snow that we were going to get but that doesn't change how I feel about it.

Remember that I had tried very hard to bid so that I could get my son's band concert off and then was excited because I did get it off and everything was good? Yeah, that whole plan is blow to bits because of school being cancelled. Because of no school today, that means no concert tonight either. Instead the concert is now scheduled for Monday night. And guess what? I'm not going to be home Monday night. Great.

I know it's just the way that things go and it was totally out of my control, but that doesn't really make me feel any better about it.

We got about 6 inches of snow yesterday and last night. I got the kids out with me and we got our driveway and the neighbors driveway done as well. I'm ready to be done with winter. Lol, I shouldn't be complaining. Our winter was pretty plain until the middle end of January. And we don't have near the cold that I grew up with. Still I can't help but think about that warm weather destination that I'm heading to this weekend.

Delta flight skids off LaGuardia runway - CNN.com

So this popped up on my Facebook sidebar, and I immediately thought of this thread. Is an automatic process to shut down an airport after a plane skids off the runway? And how long are flights usually suspended as a result?

Yeah, it's a safety issue. I mean I can't say for sure every single time, but safe to say that if one plane had an issue then that pretty much tells you that every other plane that lands would be at risk. Not only that, but ATC is immediately busy. Ground it busy directing CFR (Crash-Fire-Rescue) to the site while Tower is helping get planes rerouted to other airports.

Primary importance would be to secure the plane and make sure that it is safe to approach, you know, not leaking fuel or on fire or anything. Talking to the crew to verify how passengers and crew are and then working out a plan to get everyone off and transported to a safe area. Then they have to figure out how to move the plane off the berm and fence and get it to a safer area.

I'm guessing that the airport will be shut down for a few hours. That airport is very challenging in snowy conditions. It's surrounded by water and very tight airport boundaries. The runways are pretty short. I love flying in there but it's also the site of some of my hardest landings. I can tell you that on the other side of that fence and berm is water. So this could have been a much different outcome. It looks like everyone was pretty much able to walk off alright, which is the goal every time.

Tell us more about these "hardest landings"!! I need reference for what I sometimes think... man this pilot can't judge depth!

By hardest I mean most challenging. Not necessarily roughest. We make jokes that the most challenging days are when it's clear and beautiful and there's no wind. There are no excuses on those days. Like my landings a few weeks ago, strong cross winds, wind shear and bad weather are the culprits of challenging approaches. In bad weather the goal is to put the plane on the ground, so a firm landing is a good thing. Slow speeds close to the ground make the plane more susceptible to gusts or sudden wind shifts. Less forward momentum through the air means less usable rudder (the pedals I control with my feet) to control the direction the nose points.

Speed dictates the overall effectiveness of the controls. For every approach and landing the approach speed, landing speed, and landing distance is calculated prior to the approach. These are the targets we are shooting for while trying to point the plane in the right direction. Wind correction while flying is like crabbing into a strong current with a boat. It takes planning and coordination, but it goes a step further. Landing with a crab in puts undo stress on the landing gear and is considered a poor technique. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but in all cases we try and avoid it. To correct for the crab, the last 10 feet to the ground the pilot takes out the crab by dropping the wing a little (using the ailerons, controlled by the yoke) and "kicking the rudder" to compensate for the crosswind. This is the effect of the plane pointing in the same direction as the runway, with the upwind wing being slightly lower and into the wind. All this time using pitch and power adjustments to maintain the correct rate of decent and proper airspeed. Gusty and unpredictable winds make all those things happen often and simultaneously. I hope that clears up what I'm talking about.

I left home yesterday at around 515p and headed to the airport for work. This will be my second trip since the early part of January. Between scheduling, bereavement leave, trips bought for training, and a little luck I've been very fortunate.

I've finally come into the 21st century. I bought 6 smartphones for the family. With my traveling a smartphone is almost a necessity. I've typically purchased my internet through Boingo and written that off as a need item. Getting stuck in an airport for hours on end is bad enough. Trying to plan travel and find the best option home it's life and death. So with this upgrade I'm looking forward to having some better quality pics to display here.

Quiet trip to the crashpad, I got there around 9 pm and only had to share the room with 1 other guy. I was back at the airport by 715a this morning. I didn't need to be there until closer to 8, but I had some things that I had to get done, like check my mailbox and download and revue the paperwork before the flight. My flight today took me to the place that I was daydreaming about while I shoveling snow this week. I was heading back to the 85 degree temps of Aruba for the longest layover of the trip.

We got all loaded up on time and were pushed out early. Once we started to taxi out to the runway ground control told us that we were going to be held for restrictions over our departure gate. They didn't tell us why, but I suspect that it was simply flow for congestion heading south from the New York area. Our flight plan had a 20 minute taxi time added into it and even with that we were supposed to get in 8 minutes early. However, our delay was somewhere closer to 40 minutes. Once we got off and out and up to altitude we took a look at how much fuel we had, how much time we could make up and then figured how fast we should be able to fly. The plane and planning paperwork gives us good information to be able to make a good decision. I was flying and the company is really pushing to get to the destination on time. I pushed it up as far as we felt comfortable going. There weren't any slowdowns or delays. Our route took us down the east coast to the Norfolk area then out over the Atlantic. From there straight south and over the Dominican Republic and then to Aruba. Just to show how tight and how every minute matters I was able to make up the time that we needed, and the Captain parked the plane at the gate right on the minute of the planned arrival time. So let me pause for a minute to pat myself on the back.

My room today is stunning. I think our normal hotel is full so they put us up across the street at the Ocean Suites here. My room is a suite with a balcony that looks out over the pool and ocean. It could be the Carribean, but I'm just going to call it ocean today.



The Captain and I took the ferry over to the island and enjoyed some food and beverage. They were getting ready to have a wedding over there. I really wish that I'd been able to do something like that. The Mrs. and I got married on the beach in Florida. It was very small, we did everything ourselves and rented a house for the wedding party and family to stay in for the week. I just with looking back that we could have really done something cool like this.

I'm here until just after noon tomorrow when I'll head back to reality with a flight and layover in Chicago. It will be a short layover there, so I won't even leave the airport, with an early get up the following day. Today was really the only day to sit back and enjoy life. Everything else is set up to get ready for the last leg, a red-eye from Los Angeles back to Newark, that will be coming off of a 12 hr, dayover rest period. I'll have to figure out how to get my sleep in the daytime for that leg.

I had the morning off in Aruba and did absolutely nothing with it. I didn't sleep all that well and just couldn't find any motivation to do anything. Left for the airport just after noon and went through the maze that is local customs, security and then US pre-clearance. The plane was just deplaning when we got to the gate, but we had to wait for everyone to get off, then wait for customs to clear the aircraft before being allowed to go down.

One thing about the islands is that things generally don't happen very fast. The delay in getting down to the plane and the slow boarding process had us closed up late. Then ramp ATC had some difficulty managing space and caused us to be delayed further. Once we got going all was well again. The route today took us north toward Hispaniola and over Haiti. Haiti is like a 3rd world black hole of ATC in the Caribbean. Santo Domingo to the East has radar and good positive control. Haiti has no radar and just relies on position reports as you travel across the country. I was looking down at Port Au Prince as we passed today thinking that I was seriously lucky to be from the USA. That country has nothing but mountains and rock and dry land. The Dominican at least has some farmland and flat areas, Haiti is just one, dry, rock.

From there we just tracked north of Cuba and south of Bimini until we crossed into the US at Fort Lauderdale. Then north to Jacksonville, Knoxville, passed within 20 miles of my house, west of Fort Wayne then joined the arrival into Chicago. We were on track to only be about 5 minutes late when the ramp told us that there was no room in the inn. We ended up waiting an extra 15 minutes for a gate to open up before we could get in. Stuff like this is really frustrating for us. We try really hard to get where we are supposed to go on time, especially short layover nights and this stuff cuts into that time and just irritates passengers. Nothing I can do about it at all.

Staying at our short hotel at the airport. I'll be off to LAX in the morning. In case you haven't heard LAX has just started a 3 year runway rehab construction project and there are already delays. I'm hoping that we get out early enough in the morning that it won't affect us. Any delays will cut into my afternoon rest before the red eye back to Newark.

Today has almost been perfect. Almost. Got up around 530a this morning in Chicago to get ready for my 730a flight to LA. Everything went just the way it was supposed to. On my end anyway. I grabbed a Dt. Mt Dew before I went to the plane. It's for the red-eye tonight going back to Newark. I can't find Dt Dew anywhere near our gates in LAX. After 3 days of Diet Coke ( I don't drink coffee) I'm ready for the change. It's also become just one more thing in my routine for red-eyes.

The boarding process went smooth, except that we had a passenger who needed to be wheeled on with an aisle chair and somebody neglected to get them boarded first. Getting them on after the plane is boarded is a bit more challenging. That cost us missing our out time by 5 minutes, but we were planned into LAX twenty minutes early so it's not a big deal.

The flight was very nice today. Flying west in the morning is always a plus. No staring into the sun for half the day. The weather was good and the front range was very scenic today. I snapped this picture of Zion National Park; east of Las Vegas, on our way into LA.



We landed a good 13 minutes early and our gate was open. That is until someone decided to take it away at the last minute and give it to another plane. The only reason that I'm guessing was some sort of VIP on board to get them into the gate faster. So we got kicked to the curb. Our gate was occupied by a 767 that had been loaded with a dog and dry ice in the same cargo bin. Obviously that can't work, but they must not have been getting good information on how to fix it because it was taking forever!

Pretty soon our early arrival turned to a late arrival. Ground control kept taxiing us all over the airport because it seemed that no matter where we were we were in the way. So to keep all this straight I've got to talk to ATC Ground control on one frequency, our Company tower operation on the other frequency, talk to the flight attendants as needed and make the PA's to the passengers in between. The Captain just drives and we both double check each other to be sure we are where we are supposed to be.

They finally give us another gate and we get parked almost 40 minutes after we had landed. Like I say to the passengers, this sort of thing is out of my control. If I could change it I would, but I'm doing my best to make sure that our Tower ops knows that I'm irritated with the whole mess. Especially when we were early/on-time.

I short my sleep somewhat the night before a red-eye, in addition to getting some good food and good exercise. That lets my body let down enough to where I can usually sleep for 4-5 hours during the day; before the all night flight back to Newark. We have to be on time tonight. My flight home depends on it!

Hoping to have the chance to visit Zion NP this summer. Thanks for the preview!

I can't believe that I haven't posted anything since my last flight. I guess you may or may not be wondering if I made it back. So I guess this should be proof enough that I've made it back just fine. Lol. I slept about 4.5 hours before my red-eye, getting up around 1230a East Coast time. I've become more adjusted to the all night thing, but it's still never easy for me. This night wasn't bad, except for about 45 minutes before sunrise. It's just a body thing for me. Once the sun starts to come up my evolutionary instincts kick in and I snap right awake. Prior to that can be some yawning and looking at the clock like you are sitting in 5th period English class or watching the odometer click along on your 500 mi road trip.

We were right on time to the gate and I had a couple hours to kill before my flight back home. Good thing for me it was on time and I got home just after noon. I was even able to get a 45 minute nap on the flight home. That brought the cost of my commute on this trip to about 18.5 hours lost and unpaid and not home. One days when I get home off of a red-eye I try and stay awake the rest of the day. It generally ends up with me being awake for close to 24 hours, followed by getting up at 630a to get the kids to school on time.

I nearly forgot while I was on this last trip that the April bid window was open. I've got my vacation spilling into April which should help my schedule too. I made some adjustments to my March schedule to import to my April bid. My vacation means that I've got my oldest's 20th birthday off as well as Easter Sunday so no need to worry about those dates.

So I'm ok as long as I can get my trips spread out far enough to allow for enough time at home in between and no fucking LGA trips. If my schedule looks anything like that I'll be happy and fine with how it comes out.

Came down with a cold yesterday. Not loving it. I usually don't call in sick for colds as I sinuses are manageable, but I'm not feeling great and am planning on plowing ahead.

I've had a 3 day break on this time home. I'm sitting here though coming to grips with the decision that I need to make regarding tomorrow and my trip to work. My trip doesn't need me in Newark tomorrow until 345p. I had planned on taking the 1 direct flight from here to there tomorrow leaving later in the morning, but not giving me a fall-back plan if I ran into problems getting to work. I went to check in for the flight and find that the flight is sold out and I'm #3 on the standby list for 1 or possibly 2 jumpseats. The short of that is that while there is a good chance that 2 people won't show up and I could possibly get the jumpseat that it's about an equal chance that I don't get on the flight at all. Sigh. That's not really a chance that I can afford to take which means that instead of leaving home tomorrow at 10a I'm going need to leave at 540a to catch a flight to Charlotte and then another flight to Newark from there. This is probably the second time in the last 2 years where I haven't been able to make a single leg commute work. Plus by the time I get to Newark I'll have about 4 hours to wait until I need to actually do work. Like I've said in the past though, I'm a master of killing time. Maybe I can even get a nap in operations before my flight.

...and I feel like shit and I've called in sick for the trip. I think my ears were popping just going down the stairs. Today was miserable. Upside is now I don't need to go to Charlotte to get to work! Silver linings I guess. I think that my 12 year old did this. He seemed to get over it after a few days, so I'll be optimistic.

A couple quick thoughts on how sick time works. It's sort of like any other job and sort of not. Except that you are encouraged to give the company as much heads up as possible, and in fact, one way to get a meeting scheduled is to give less than 4 hours notice. It's sometimes crazy that this is probably the only job where that much heads up is welcome or necessary. In this case I gave the company roughly 17 hours notice to cover my trip. I have a sick bank of time that is used to cover trips. It gets filled at a rate of 5 hours per month (almost twice what it filled any my other companies) and my trip was worth about 20 hours. So it'll take me 4 months of work to get back that time in my bank.

Also, whether I miss 1 day or all 4 days doesn't matter to the company. It counts as 1 sick event. The issue becomes if I have too many sick events in a rolling 12 months. That'll get a meeting scheduled too. So in this case while I feel better it's in my best interest to stay home and get over this yuck before trying to get back in the cockpit again, which would be next Sunday.

This came across my feed today, it's funny and has a lot of truths within.

So what is your Mount Rushmore of f'd up airports? LGA and ??, ??, ??

I'm just going to lump all the NY airports together in 1. LGA, JFK and EWR all have their own major issues. It wouldn't be fair give one a leg up on the other.

After that I'd have to say PHL. It's small and crowded and frequently is the first to experience slowdowns of the NY area/vicinity airports.

Chicago O Hare has the multiple issues of being one of the busiest airports, coupled with bad weather and having been in a state of remodeling for the last few years. It's getting closer to being better, but the weather will always suck.

After all of those is probably LAX, although IAD or BWI could be in there. LAX is just exceptionally busy. The airport is laid out well, approaches aren't terribly difficult, weather isn't generally an issue, but it's busy. There are lots of international flights.

Take these for what they are. I haven't been around the world I haven't been in many places where ATC isn't very helpful. In fact, this list only includes US airports.

If I'd given thought outside I surely would have started with Mexico City. In fact, Mexico City has to be #1. Mountains, challenging ATC, mountains, altitude of the field, condition of the runaway, challenging approaches, language barrier, it's busy on top of that.

There is no US comparison to Mexico City.

The April schedules came out today and again, I am pleasantly surprised. I do believe that vacation months get preference for bidding because again, I got my first choice.

Now I work over 3 weekends and I know that makes a big difference in getting a better schedule too (due to more senior guys wanting to get weekends off), but all my flying is generously spaced out and commutable on the back end (home leg). I also got a couple of days tied on to my vacation to make it a little longer.

I'm still not feeling well. It seems like it comes and goes. I'm glad I called in. Flying even with a nasty sinus infection and cold can be very painful, annoying for the other guy you are with, and can have potential long term injury depending on what happens. Also with as much coughing as I've been doing finding enough sleep can have a compounding impact over the course of the trip.

So I said I was going to write this and I've been procrastinating it. I just need to sit down and punch it out. What goes into the beginning of the flight?

About an hour before the flight I make sure that I have all the paperwork downloaded to my Ipad. This paperwork is called the release. It has all the information about the flight that pertains to us. From the flight plan that was filed, which plane we are flying, the expected flight time and our entire planned fuel load and weight plan. The release also has data for every fix that we are crossing with lat longs, flight time between fixes, fuel burn and so on. The release shows us if there is any broken and deferred equipment (stuff that can be broken and is signed off ok from maintenance per the minimum equipment list.) It also has our entire weather packet that has planned weather along our route and wind speeds aloft. Additionally it can also show areas where there is turbulence, thunderstorms, icing. The release is reviewed and the Captain can make changes or talk to the dispatcher if he has any questions. These changes might be routing, altitude or fuel load changes.

Once I get the release I glance over it make sure that I like what it has to say, the same at the Captain. I can question anything and make suggestions as well. I then download the weather from our weather program. It's pretty detailed and gives me the opportunity to pull up weather charts once we are airborne and I don't have internet access. The third thing that I do is update the planning program in the Ipad. We use that to replace all of our paper charts, maps and so on. It's allowed me to get rid of 35 pounds of paper and an entire bag. It took a little getting used to but I consider it a great step up for the operation. So once I've got my airport and route loaded to that I'm off to the plane.

About 45 minutes before push I show up. Sometimes, like today the passengers are already getting on board. People often wonder why when stuff is broken we don't know about it and stop boarding and the simple answer is that we don't know about it yet. I'm referring to things that just don't work when you are going through the setup process for the flight. You want everything to work, but sometimes it seems like it's all going against you.

I park my bags get part of my stuff that I need out and start the first part of the preflight of the plane. There are things I need to check in the cockpit and a specific setup that is required before I can go outside. Once that is done I head outside for the walk around.

So when the pilot is just walking around what is he really looking for?

Starting at the nose I'm checking everything. Looking at the probes, windows, wheels, hydraulic lines. I'm looking for damage. I'm looking for things that might be forgotten by maintenance. I'm looking for pools of fluid on the ground. I'm looking for specific things that I need to see, like enough wear left on the brakes or making sure that the wings are dry and free from ice, snow or frost. A good walk around takes at least 5-7 minutes on my plane. It's not hard and after a few thousand it's easy to get complacent but you never know when you'll need to find that thing that will make all the difference in the world. It's critical to stay focused every time.

I head back into the plane and sit back down. I may have chatted for a bit with a passenger or probably a flight attendant. The Captain and I have to introduce ourselves and we need to get on the same page for the preflight. We both have different responsibilities but we also have to back one another up too.

Once I get situated I need to start my long preflight flow on the panels and do the required checks of the systems at the same time I'm helping set up the Flight Management System with the routing and aircraft performance. I get the weather and clearance from ATC then whoever is flying the plane begins their briefing on where we are, what we are going to do, and what to expect for the taxi out and takeoff. We accomplish our first checklist after all that is done.

Now that I've got that done I get my headset set up, my IPad mounted to the plane and take care of my necessities prior to door closure. Ask the flight attendants if they have everything they need and then wait for the final weights to be delivered via the computer in the plane. Once we have the weights we input those into the computer and send it off for our takeoff speeds. Those come back and if everything is alright we run another checklist, the doors get shut and we are ready for the pushback.

Like I've said before this is just my part of the dance of the preflight. The gate, flight attendants, ground, dispatch, and load planner all have their own parts to play prior to every single flight. If it all goes the way it's supposed to we get out on time and are off to great destinations.

Morning flight out of Newark today. Sunday morning. That meant that I had to fly here on Saturday. Saturday's just aren't great for commuting. There are fewer flights and as a bonus, Newark had lots of cancellations from the previous day due to weather. I left home just before 230p. The plane was full, but thankfully, once again, I was able to get the jumpseat in the cockpit so I could get to work.

My backup plan wasn't pretty. It involved another flight to Charlotte and the hope that I would get into Newark before 11p. I'm really glad I didnt' need to do that.

This morning came too early. The alarm went off at 530 anyway. When I got to work one of the first things that we were told was the the company was probably going to hold us on the ground before we could taxi out. The flight plan was very fast due to the lack of headwinds and our destination had a restriction that anything earlier than 15 minutes would cause the company to get fined.

From a passenger point of view this seems like a hard thing to swallow. Like why would you delay a flight when you could get there early? But in this case you can see why. We had a little issue with the plane not wanting to load our takeoff performance weights and data and that caused me to make a phonecall to our dispatcher to get them know what we were dealing with and why we were going to be late coming off the gate. The company is really pushing hard to get our push times right on the minute but in this case we were at the mercy of technology.

Once we got that sorted out we went to hold on the ramp for about 5 minutes before getting handed off to ground for our taxi out. They then told us that our departure gate was running delays and to expect them. Now, I'm sitting here wondering why our operations couldn't have expected this because now it seems like our early arrival is evaporating.

It wasn't too bad though and we did eventually get kicked into the air without too much of a delay.

We did our thing and despite our best efforts ATC kept speeding us up and getting us shortcuts. Then they told us we were first in a line of about 8 planes and that we couldn't slow down. Ultimately, we touched down 15 minutes early. I don't know how any earlier would have been our fault when it's ATC that is calling the shots up there, but it didn't matter in the end we got to our destination just fine.



I never complain about coming to Cancun. We don't stay near the party area of the beach, it's still on the strip but a lot more subdued. I honestly thought it would be busier than this. This isn't the best view from my balcony I've ever had but it is the first time that I've been able to see both the Gulf and the waterway back to the mainland.

I snapped this while I was eating dinner. It's busy but not crazy busy. This is as good as it gets on this trip. Tomorrow surely won't be a chance for sunburns, bikinis or cerveza.

So I came across a movie today on Netflix that I'd never heard of. I guess it's based off of play that ran sometime ago. It's called Charlie, Victor, Romeo. What they've done is turned the final transcripts of the cockpit voice recorder into a live action play. The set is very simple, but the actors do a pretty good job of conveying the emotion and complexities of the cockpit. They dramatize 5 or 6 of the final moments of these crashes. It's not enjoyable, it's tense. I don't really know how it plays for someone who isn't familiar with the typical cockpit. I'm sure that I see it a little bit differently than the typical person, but if you are interested in it you can catch it on Netflix right now:

Watch Charlie Victor Romeo Online | Netflix

I'm sure that parts of it seem like a foreign language is being spoken or the perception is there that these people don't know what they are doing, but that's not really the case. You get to hear what it's like when 4 people are talking in your ear at once, the helplessness of imminent death, struggle to understand what you are seeing, the failure to spot danger signs and the incredible success of teamwork and effort.

Sadly, Cancun had to end and always sooner than later. We had a very smooth departure out this morning. Even though it was early there weren't any issues getting out on time.

Our destination this morning was Houston. It's funny, for years a flight that was 2.5 hours long was a looong flight. Now it's a short flight. It's all relative to what you know. For the guys that go to Asia, 8 hours is short, but for us very long. So today was a short flight.

Once we got to Houston I had about 2 hours to kill before my next flight. I decided to get a shoe shine, the winter has been rough. After that I walked around just to get the blood moving then headed to our Operations area and crew lounge. I had to put some power back in the IPad for the next flight.

After my break it was off to the plane. I knew that I'd be getting lunch on the plane so I didn't need to worry about finding food. Again we had no issues getting the plane loaded up and ready to go. Next up on the grand tour? Calgary! A new destination for me. I've never been here before.

I saw some pretty mountains. It's cold and overcast and was snowing before we got here. Quite the change from Cancun where I started this morning. Tomorrow will come to early, but at least it's Mountain time.

Which brings me to another challenge of this job. The constant time zone changes. My body is on East coast time and I got an hour given in Cancun, and now in Calgary I get another hour. My body should be telling me it's 930p, but it's still daylight. Somethings not entirely right with this. Lol. My wakeup call comes in about 8 hours to start my day tomorrow. C'mon tired, get busy! Today was almost 11 hours of duty time. I should be tired.

Tomorrow I'm off to Denver followed by a fairly short turn to Miami where I'll have another short layover and an ridiculously early wakeup call. Making it worse is that it WILL be east coast time, before 4a. It's going to be challenging. My wakeup tomorrow is also before 4a, but those extra couple of timezone hours really make a difference. It'll really hit hard in Miami.

Snapped this pic in Houston today before we pushed for Calgary.

Fairly uneventful morning flight into Denver. The plane must have picked up a bunch of ice when it flew in last night because it was covered this morning. I know it was cold and there was frost too, but there was quite a bit of ice too. We got deiced after pushback and taxied out for our departure. There still wasn't anything to look as as it was still dark and overcast.

There were many reports of rough air going into Denver. If you've ever been in and out of there that's pretty standard. Denver always has very rough rides from the wind coming over the front range there. After we parked I had about 30 minutes to walk around in the concourse just to help get the blood moving again.

Next up was the flight to Miami. We saw numerous pilot reports of bad turbulence to the southwest of the airport, which just happened to be the direction that we were heading. The dispatcher purposely planned the first part of the flight down at 29000 feet to try and get a good ride before jumping up to 37,000 once we were clear.

We actually ended up dropping down to 25,000ft though as the rides at 29,000 were still pretty bad. This lasted for about an hour, until we were past Tulsa when things started to improve. We eventually got up to 35,000 where we had a nice remainder of the flight.

All of this takes a fair bit of coordination. I was talking on the radio for this leg so I was constantly listening to the other planes, trying to hear their complaints and guess where they were. Then query the controller about his rides as well. When you are down that low you end up talking to a lot of different controllers as the sectors are smaller than they are up higher. Meanwhile the Captain spend his time messaging back and forth with dispatch through the messaging system on the plane. The dispatcher can get other reports from company aircraft out in front as was the case today.

Getting bumped around is no fun for anyone. It's a sure sign that summer is on the way. The flight attendants had to be seated, as well as the passengers. So they didn't even get to start their service until over an hour after the flight took off. The constant jostling can really wear you down over the day and makes a day that isn't so tiring be very tiring by the time you get where you are going.

Good thing summer hasn't totally hit Miami yet. A typical afternoon arrival would have big storm cells and lots more turbulence but today there were only a few lower clouds and no rain. Not too bad. A short night tonight, but tomorrow is go home day. My flight looks good so far and as long as we are on time out of here I should be alright. Even though it's go home day I still am having a hard time dealing with my 325a alarm. Less than 10 hours now. Yeehaw. And I still have to go grab some dinner.

I feel ya man! Although yours is a little worse than mine but I do feel you. In order for me to survive the dr has me on Ambien if I want to take it. Are you allowed to take that type of medicine to catch the zzz's?

I stopped taking them when I started buying things online after I was "asleep"

Speaking of spring, how much of "landing in thunderstorms" is up to the pilot? I've had a few experiences where the turbulence has been "okay" but I've been told over the PA that flights just ahead of us are experiencing extreme turbulence so we're going to do a go around and wait it out a little bit. I've also had landings where it seemed like we perhaps should have had a few go arounds and tried a little bit later but did not (ugh).

How much of the process of landing in tstorms is up to the individual crew? Heck, how much of flying through them is up to you guys? Is it up to the crew, or ground control?

There are medications that we are restricted from taking, but as far as Ambien is concerned I don't know. I do know it's been talked about between crew. I'd have to say that there are a lot of people who take some type of sleep aid. I don't. Lucky me has learned how to relax, use breathing and muscle relaxation techniques and fall asleep pretty quick.

I hear about some who use Melatonin, but the majority use straight up Tylenol PM. I think that sleep aid use is probably more prevalent among flight crews than the general public.

Thunderstorms are a very big deal for pilots. We get extensive training about them and know just how dangerous they are. If you look at the Air Asia flight you can see plainly that they are not to be messed with. A heavy rain shower isn't a thunderstorm.

As a pilot the sole responsibility of where the plane is at in time and space is mine. I have the authority to take emergency action regardless of what ATC says. I have used it as well. In one situation ATC was denying us a turn because of a slower turbo prop near us, but we would have flown right through a big cell. I'm pretty sure that ATC lost minimum separation but we told them we'd maintain visual separation. They weren't thrilled but there wasn't anything we (or they) could do. Another time was departing from Atlanta in the summer and ATC thought they could sneak us through a hole that they had been using. What they didn't realize is that the hole had closed and we just told them what we were doing and let them figure out what to do next. It get's really busy when planes start moving on their own. ATC has to scramble for a backup plan very quickly. Its' not like we are just standing still up there. Flying is very dynamic in 3 dimensions and it moves very fast.

Many times pilots will rely on other pilots to help decide whether or not they should do it. If the last 15 planes were just fine you might be too, but as soon as 1 plane starts to bail out you might see others as well (you'll see this especially on takeoff) it's much easier to wait on the ground than in the air.

Thunderstorms can produce massive downdrafts that can take planes on approach right out of the air. We know much more now than we did back then. We have better training on how to recognize these situations and airports have systems that can sense them as well. Like pretty much everything else there are company policies for how to deal with thunderstorms.

Enroute it's a good idea to stay 20 miles away from them. I've seen some guys not come within 100 miles. You take what you can get though, and sometimes you're just flying through holes that you can see on the radar. Generally though with today's technology there is really no good reason to fly through the middle of a thunderstorm. We can typically mitigate having to make these calls just in the planning stages, and if we can't ATC can be very helpful, because they have a different view of the storm on their radar, or they might see something (a hole, or an ever extending line of weather) that our radar doesn't pick up yet.

Every crew makes their own decisions on when to shoot an approach in weather or not. Generally, as long as it's safe, I'm game to go take a look, as in start the approach and give it my best effort to get in, but the caveat is that you have to have a plan and be prepared for what you are going to do if it doesn't work out right. Many times the decision on whether or not to wait has to do with how much fuel is left on the plane. Many times you don't have the fuel to wait. If that's the case then a diversion is in the cards.

We try to have as much information as possible to make the best decisions that we can. Taking into account what company policy dictates in the situation. We use other pilots, ATC, dispatch, plus our own observations and radar to determine the best course of action. In the end though, unless the airport is closed, the decision rests solely with the crew.

Huh, the stuff on storms is fascinating to read about, thanks.

At the risk of sounding like a know it all, and I don't want to turn this whole thread into speculation on this incident, but this whole French Alps plane crash seems to be turning out just as I'd feared. I could still be wrong and maybe I will be, but at this point, as I did initially, I feel pretty confident about it.

Similar to Malaysian 370 this seems like a pilot instigated event. Here's why. The plane climbed uneventfully to 38000 ft. Then 2 minutes later, it's starts a steady, somewhat, but not crazy fast decent. It makes no changes, turns, adjustments and steadily descends until it crashes going pretty fast.

Climbs and descents are treated as high workload environments and pilots generally try and keep movement to a minimum during this time. If one pilot had to go to the lav he more than likely waited until he hit cruise to do so. Now here in the US, we have a 2 person rule that keeps 1 pilot from being alone in the cockpit. It's not (entirely) because they don't trust us, it's so that if something does happen there is someone else there to get the door open or just be of assistance. It's a post 9/11 adjustment.

So here on this flight, they reach cruise, 1 guy steps out, the other locks the door behind him. He decides to simply crash the plane. Who knows why? I don't know. But the nature of the timing and the type of decent, and that there were no radio messages to ATC and that we know that 1 pilot was locked out point to a pretty strong indication of crashed on purpose.

If there had been some kind of emergency that needed a decent, the pilot would have tried to level off at 10,000 feet. He didn't even pause. Just went down between 3,000 and 3,500 feet per minute (not a super fast rate). Yes it's fast, but not like if you just pointed the plane straight down. Not like Egypt Air. But with no pause and the steady rate causes me to speculate that it was input on purpose and just left untouched until the end.