I don’t normally do these as they tend to be stupid and degrading in some form or another, but seeing as this is an airplane thing…

You are a DEHAVILLAND BEAVER. You love adventure. You are a person of the outdoors, very in-tune with nature and your surroundings. You enjoy communication between people, and also your alone time. You are not afraid to take risks. You aren’t afraid of sucking up some of the pleasures that life can offer. You are a well-rounded individual, who puts your passion in to almost all you do. What Airplane Are You? brought to you by Quizilla

A very Merry Christmas to you and your’s (or is it yours’…. No… it’s not that!). I was suppose to be home last night but ended up getting extended. So, coming to you live from Akron-Canton Airport…. Yeah, you get the point. I’ve got two legs today (CAK to CLT to CLE) and then I am done with a double deadhead back to Dayton via CLT. Oh Joy! Hopefully I will be able to catch an ExpressJet flight from CLE to DAY and avoid the 4 hours of wrong way travel. We’ll see.

I wore a Santa Hat around most of the day yesterday. Some people thought it was cute… some probably thought it was stupid. What ever. Here I am at FL270 coming back from STL in the hat. Oh Yeah.

Over the last 2 days I have been on 4 deadheads and flown 1 leg. GRRR. I didn’t get used my first 3 days on reserve, which although rather dull is ok. I had been flying a whole bunch this month so the change of pace was fine. I’d been doing (well, assigned more specifically) the 5am to 7pm reserve slot and yesterday at 5:01am my phone rang and scheduling gave me a 6:30 show time. Technically that is illegal as we are required to be given 1 hour and 30 min of notice, but what ever. So I get to the airport and they fax me the schedule. It consists of a deadhead to Philly, sitting for 3 hours, flying to Portland and back and then getting right on the Dayton flight and deadheading home. I’d done this trip before, but with a three hour sit on both sides of the PWM leg, so this was good. Anyhow, the FA on the trip was deadheading over as well. No idea who the captain was. So we get to Philly and I head up to the crew room. There are only so many ways you can burn 3 hours and I was working hard to do it when the FA came up and said that they canceled the Portland flight. The weather was 1/4 mile, heavy snow, freezing fog and ice. Good stuff. I called scheduling and they said we were just going to deadhead back to Dayton per our original schedule. So a 3 hour sit became a 6.5 hour sit. What a wasted day. 2 deadheads and no actual flying. I got back to Dayton and checked to see what my schedule was the next day (today) and wouldn’t you know it… 5am hot reserve. They tend to do that on the last day of reserve as you are sort of useless otherwise. Nothing like getting up at 4am and driving to the airport to sit for 9 hours of boredom. So I get up this morning and as I’m walking out
the door at 4:30 my phone rings. It’s the “unknown” number so I guess that that, combined with the hour that it is crew scheduling. Good guess. I’m told to show at the mx hangar to do a repositioning flight. Long story short, I get there, meet the captain, after about 20 paperwork mix ups (the captains wife, also a captain was taking out another repositioning flight at the same time… how strange is that) we got going down to Fayettville, NC. Because there was only one leg the captain said he would fly the take off and I would get the landing. Pretty nice of him I thought. It was a pretty quick flight down to FAY and because the plane was empty (no FA even) we climbed pretty good. About halfway there I took the plane and back down we went. A really nice winter morning sunrise and then a visual approach to runway 4 at FAY. My nicest landing EVER… and of course nobody on board to experience it. Go figure. We set the plane up for quick turn in FAY and the other crew took it over there for the flight (which we deadheaded on) up to CLT. The funny thing was that it was a -700 crew so there were 2 FAs on the -200. Anyhow, we got of the plane in CLT, walked over one jetway and got on the deadhead to DAY. Got home at 11:30, took a nap and then had lunch. Ah yes, the exciting life of an airline pilot.

I’m in the middle of two days off right now. I had a 3 day trip leading into my days off which I got back from at around noon so it is really 2 and 1/2 days off. I like it. The trip was split between two crew. Both were good so it helped the trip go by quickly as the weather certainly didn’t. We had our first real snow storm up here and flying from CLT to Akron for an overnight was pretty interesting. Thankfully it was the captain’s leg as we were coming down to the runway through clouds of blowing snow. Oh yeah… the runway was covered in snow and ice too. Ah yes, living the dream. By the time we got to the hotel it was 9:00 and we had a 5am show. Got to love reduced rest. I barley slept all night and was really tired for the who of the next day (CAK-CLT-ROC-CLT-CVG). Got into Cincy (well, KY really) around 5 and just had enough energy to get dinner and then go to sleep for another 4am wakeup. Why do I love this job so much? Well, the early winter morning sunrise from FL250 made it worth it I guess. After we got back to Charlotte we did a quick Jacksonville, NC turn. It was the first time I have gone into an uncontrolled field in the jet. It was sort of strange making position report. After that I deadheaded back to Dayton to dig my car out of 5 inches of snow and go home.

Today was pretty laid back. My roomate got stuck as a replacement hot reserve but when he got back we went over to the mall so he could get a gift for a friend who is graduating college. God I hate malls. Especially around this time of year. After that we played a couple rounds of Mario Kart on the gamecube. Great way to spend a day off. I’m trying to get down to Miami next weekend and see a friend. Not sure how that will work.

Following pictures are from the last few trips I’ve been on.

Climbing out of BUF heading down to PIT. That’s Lake Erie in the background.

The lineup for 9R in PHL. It’s CRJs as far as the eye can see. Mostly AWAC.

Jacksonville, NC. Middle of nowhere.

When I was logging the last trip I did I realized I hit 1000 hours on Thursday. Looking at the actual legs times it looks like I crossed the great divide while waiting for some PHL rampers to walk over and get the plane to the gate. There’s some irony huh? It doesn’t feel much different being on the other side. I guess the next big one is 1500 so I can get my ATP and actually be qualified for the other seat (in pure hours, not experience!)

I got off of a 4 day on Thursday night. It wasn’t a bad trip over all, except we had 5am shows every day. A little on the early side for me, but at least two of the days we were done before 3pm. Trip highlight? The Mount Vernon Visual into DCA with a circle to 33. Nothing like yanking and banking at ref plus 10 at 300 AGL. It was actually a nice landing too which is always an added benefit. I undid any feeling of accomplishment I may have had by completly botching the last landing of the trip back into Dayton. I’ll blame it on the fact I was tired. Yeah, that’s it.

I spent about 4 hours yesterday getting my license, plates and title switched to OH. I guess I am really a resident of OH now. Good stuff. Or not. The process sucks. I had to go to the BMV and get an out of state inspections (where they charge you $3.50 to verify your VIN. Then I had to drive 15 minutes to an Echeck station for the emissions checking. No problem except they don’t take plastic so I had to go back home to get my checkbook. Back to Echeck and then back to the Title Office next to the BMV to switch the title to an OH one. Then I went back to the testing center in BMV to take the written test. You need 30/40 to pass. I was happy to only have to see 30 questions to finish it. (What color is a caution sign in a construction area? Hmmm.) Took a quick vision test and then went and stood in line for about an hour to hand in my MA license and the results of the written test. Fortunately they also took the title and the echeck there as well so I didn’t have to go into another line. So, after 4 hours I had a new license (which is good because the picture on my other one is from my learner’s permit when I was 16) and two new plates. I’ve got to go put them on the jeep today and then Fedex the Mass plates to my old insurance company so they will cancel my old policy. What a hassle.

I’m catching a 4:55 flight down to CLT to pick up a trip tonight. It’s open time so it is in addition to my monthly hours. A quick flight to Memphis, a long overnight and then a return to CLT. I should be back in Dayton by 9:00 tomorrow night. We’ll see.

Two pictures from my last trip

>Power Plant near Charlie West.

Downtown New York on the way to Burlington.