Hidden Costs

There are a lotahidden costs you don't hear about when getting your first airline job. It's been steadily draining me since my interview. First came the interview, the company paid for the ticket to their headquarters, but they have the interview so early in the morning that you cannot take a flight in the day of the interview. So you must come a day early and spend cash on a hotel room. (I had a bunch of hotel points saved up, so it was a freebie for me, but others paid upwards of $90) Second comes training costs. Most companies are paying a salary or some sort of stipend for you to come to training nowadays, but it didn't used to be that way. Not too long ago guys had to pay for their own hotel and suffer the long lasting effects of not getting any pay during training. My hats off to you aviators, I would not and could not afford to make such a move. Third comes the all important, I wanna look like a real airline pilot flight bag. I'm cheap so I bought the $90 one, but if you want a good one, it'll cost you upwards of $300 for a nice leather one. Fourth comes the uniform. Nothing completes the "looks like an airline pilot" look better than a honest to God airline uniform. Most airlines are going to charge you $700 plus for a couple of shirts, pants a goofy hat, dorky trench coat and a blazer. Sorry if I seem a little jaded against the trench coat and hat, they are outdated and copied by too many other people. I just don't like wearing the same hat as the sky caps that check your baggage at the curbside check-in. Maybe just a stuck up prick, but I worked hard to be where I am and don't feel that just anyone should be wearing the hat and scrambled eggs. (Should have stayed a pilot tradition) But anyways, Fifth, the suitcase. You have to have a black one and just no ordinary bag will do. Ask Erin, she'll tell you. I've chewed up 3 suitcases in the past 18 months. I finally broke down and bought a good one, that cost an arm and a leg, but should last me many years. Sixth but most certainly not least is a new headset. Back in the good old days of flying freight, we didn't use headsets. We just threw in some ear plugs, blasted the speakers at full volume and shouted to each other across the cockpit. Now that I am flying planes that are younger than myself and have decent avionics, I can wear a headset again. Only thing is, David Clarks just don't cut it anymore. Not only do they look out of place in a jet, but they are uncomfortable to wear all day. I really need a decent pair of jet headsets such as the Telex 850's, only they are $420 plus and out of my budget at the moment. So with this short list of stuff you must have (uniform, flight kit/bag) and stuff you should have (nice suitcase and headset) you are looking at over $1,500 in crap that you'll need to become an airline pilot. Just a heads up.

4 hr delay to LGA Part 1

Show time -2.0

I had a notion that tonight's flight was going to be delayed. I had been watching the Weather Channel and saw that LGA, EWR and JFK all had 1.5 to 2 hour delays posted. I checked the TAF's and saw the reason why, low ceilings, low visibilities and rain.

Show time - 1:45

I check big airlines website to see if they are showing a delay on our flight, shows "On Schedule"

Show time -1:00

Check CrewTrac (our scheduling website) to see if our show time has changed. Nope, just showing a minor 5 min delay to LGA

Show time -:45

Hop in the shower to get ready to head downstairs to meet up with the rest of the crew. Wx channel still showing delays to LGA, big airline's website still showing on time.

Show time -:20

Meet in the hotel lobby. Captain and I discuss the wx in LGA. We bet each other on how long of a delay we are going to have. He's optimistic that things will go smoothly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we are headed for a long night.

Show time -:05

We arrive at the gate area to see that its full of people wanting to get to NYC. The gate agent has our paperwork waiting for us, checks our ID's and lets us down the jetbridge.

Show time +01

I make my nest in the cockpit, stash my overnight bag in the back and head out to do the walk around. I finish the walk around, head back to the cockpit and start getting the plane ready for departure. I enter in the flight information into the ACARS, send that off to company and then go to request our PDC (pre departure clearance- at bigger airports you can request your IFR clearance digitally thru the FMS). The reply I get from the computer is an ominous one. We have an estimated wheels up time that's 4 hours from the current time. Uh oh, here we go. I show the Captain the message and he has me call clearance over the radio to confirm. A quick call and they say LGA has a ground stop in effect and re-confirms the 4 hour delay. About 30 seconds later the gate agent pops her head in and asks us if we've heard about the 2 hour delay. We give her the correct news that its a 4 hour delay, not 2.

Departure +30

The crew heads out to the terminal to stock up on supplies for the long night ahead of us. The CA grabs some food, the FA grabs some Cinnibuns and I manage to scrounge up my old freight dog favorite, Rockstar.

Departure +1:45

I get bored and start taking pictures. I love the fact that I now have a toilet on board. Gone are the days of whizzing in Gatorade bottles.

Flying again

Life is good. I'm spending more time at home. More time with the family and less time on the road. Cant argue with that. The new office is growing on me and the more time I spend in the cockpit, the more comfortable it becomes. The FMS is becoming second nature. The FCP (flight control panel) is no longer just a bunch of buttons, it has become a useful tool to make the flight as smooth and efficient as possible. And I'm gettin a hang of how things operate at the new company. Looks like I'll be sitting reserve until at least December, but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. I usually know about trips ahead of time and am learning how to "massage" the system to get the most flight hours in while spending the least amount of time at base. Just like with my old company, I try to avoid being at base like the plague. I snapped a few pictures the other day. Its still pretty impressive to see a Big Red 74-4 (747-400) taxi out in front of us and then start its take off roll on the way to the Orient. Never used to see that with the old company.

Bus Butt

A good view of a few of the Finger Lakes in N.Y.

The office. Taken around the same time as the pictures above.

In another post, I'll go over some of the stuff you can see in the pics of the new office.

Long time no post.

Well I know it's been quite a while since I've posted, but I've been busy. A lot has happened in the last few weeks and I haven't really had the time or resources to post. First things first, Erin and I finally tied the knot. The wedding was awesome, Erin was beautiful, Jack wearing a Kilt was the hit of the wedding and everything went off with out a hitch. I couldn't have asked for a better day. A special thanks go out to "The Mom's" for putting together such a great day and to "The Dad's" for letting the Mom's spend so much money. Another thanks goes out to everyone who made the journey to the Midwest for the wedding. It was good to see everyone and I hope you had as good a time as Erin and I did.

Now back to some flying stories. At my last posting I was just about to start my O.E flying. In the few weeks since then, I've finished up with that and started flying as a regular line pilot. In the few short weeks that I've been flying the CRJ, I've decided that my personal nickname for it is going to be Princess. Long gone are the days of jumping in, lighting the fires and blasting off at 6,000+ f.p.m climb rates. The CRJ needs a lot of attention and tender loving care before it'll do something you want and I can forget about any kind of a decent climb rate above 20,000ft, because Princess just doesn't have the muscle. For the first time ever I had to ask ATC for a "slow climb" because the plane wouldn't maintain a 500f.p.m rate up to our cruise altitude of FL320. Around FL270 she started really dropping off in performance and by the time we hit FL300, we couldn't maintain 500f.p.m so we either had to level off till we burned some gas or ask for a slow climb. Thankfully we didn't have much traffic around us and the controller let us crawl our way up there. Granted we were heavy with lots of gas and a full compliment of 50 pax, but the lack of performance really caught my attention. I think that's about the only gripe I have about the plane. Cant argue with that.

So now that we have the one glaring issue of the aircraft out of the way, I can move on to things I like. First things first, I love the glass and the flight director. Much to my surprise I am still able to handfly the plane as much as I want. Typically I'll hand fly it to FL180 then let "Otto" have his chance. Then on the way back down, I'll take over again at 10,000 ft. I was a good stick and rudder guy before, but the glass has brought it to a whole new level. I've gone from being pretty smooth in the freighters to very smooth with the CRJ. Its all thanks to those little pink bars right there in front of me on my PFD (primary flight display). As long as I keep snug with the FD, things are gunna work out just fine.

The second thing I like about the Princess is the seat. Its fully adjustable, reclinable, has lumbar support and is a dramatic improvement over any of my previous aircraft. I can sit in the cockpit all day and not get as uncomfortable as I'd get after 15min in a Lear. The third thing I like is the fact that the cockpit is quiet. In cruise I can take my headset off and kick back and relax with the speaker on and not have to shout across the cockpit at the captain. We can have a normal conversation with out straining our vocal chords. The fourth thing is the fact that all our planes have identical avionics and components. There are a few minor differences such as whether it is a Flaps 8 or 20 bird or has Mach transducer selector valves (I have no idea what the are, so don't bother asking), but that's about it. No more spending 5 min looking around the cockpit trying to find switches and gauges. There is plenty more to write about, but its late and I'm getting hungry.