A Year in the Life

[PilotMan]

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

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

[finkenst]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

To answer your second question, yes I can bid against certain guys. It's a part of the preferences I can set in our bidding program. Some companies have policies that allow first officers to bid against Captains, but not the other way around. The reason being that good Captains have to be able to manage any situation and work with anyone, the cockpit IS truly a reflection of the personality of the Captain. They set the tone for every one else in the crew. If a Captain finds himself on too many 'do not fly' lists then he might get called into the office for an informal chat. And yes, there are guys like that.

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

[PilotMan]

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

[claphamsa]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

Fuck this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

This fucking award.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Barkeep49]

I'm so sorry to hear this.

[PilotMan]

Ok, catch 22 time.

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

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



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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

[claphamsa]

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

[claphamsa]

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[claphamsa]

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

also welcome to DC!

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by claphamsa

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

also welcome to DC!

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

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

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

[finkenst]

Pilotman,

What gets a flight tagged as very important?

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

Pilotman,

What gets a flight tagged as very important?

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'll leave you with this:

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Busy, busy, busy.

[Barkeep49]

Good luck with your September bid.

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

Good luck with your September bid.

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

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

I just finished my bid.

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

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

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

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

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

[britrock88]

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

[Barkeep49]

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

[CraigSca]

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

[lighthousekeeper]

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

[finkenst]

Originally Posted by PilotMan

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

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

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

I vote for year two!

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

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

[hoosierdude]

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

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

We were immediately delayed 3 hours.

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

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

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

Three hours turned into four.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

I digress.

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

[MacroGuru]

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

[PilotMan]

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

[PilotMan]

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

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



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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

Good luck with your September bid.

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

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

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by Barkeep49

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

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

Originally Posted by CraigSca

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

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

Originally Posted by britrock88

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

Thank you!

Originally Posted by lighthousekeeper

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

Thanks!

Originally Posted by finkenst

I vote for year two!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Originally Posted by hoosierdude

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[CraigSca]

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

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

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

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

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



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

Speaking of traffic.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

Well today lived up to the hype!

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

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

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

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







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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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



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



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

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

[PilotMan]

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

[Barkeep49]

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

I snapped this picture of Philly on our way in:



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

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

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

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

[PilotMan]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's a bonus:

Overheard; someone on a phone, in the airport:



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


I wanted to ask SO many follow up questions!