Yesterday marked three years of employment for me at my current job. I suppose, with the exception of working for Arts & Entertainment while I was in college for 4 years, this is the longest I have been at one job. I didn’t come into this specific job with any planned timeline, which is probably a good thing, as many of the people who did left when they found their timeline didn’t match reality. I know this job is a stepping stone to another job (hopefully the one I’ll retire from, but in this day and age who knows if that is even possible) but as to how long that takes, I have no idea. So, here’s to another three years.

The day itself was actually pretty bad. About midway through my FO looked at me at one point and said we just need to accept it’s going to be one of those days, and just deal with it. It actually didn’t start off too badly. I had breakfast at IHOP (for the second time in a month) with another FO who was overnighting in Akron as well. We then showed at 12:30 to fly down to Charlotte and get our day going. I have in legs this trip and I despite Charlotte allowing us to keep our speed up (they normally slow us down FAR, FAR away from the airport) I managed to get the plane slowed and on the ground rather nicely. As we started taxiing in, I was planning my upcoming 1:20 minute break. And that’s when the good part of the day ended.

They held us on the ramp for about 30 minutes due to traffic over on the Express gates. Then, once we got to our gate, which didn’t have a jetway, we unloaded all but 2 passengers and then had to wait 35 minutes for the rampers to find a ramp to get the last two passengers off the plane as neither one could do steps. After 35 minutes both passengers agreed to try the stairs and (with a whole lot of help) were about to get down and into wheelchairs. Now, my 1:20 break was down to 35 minutes and we had to swap airplanes.

Fortunately our plane wasn’t in yet so I was able to grab some food before it rolled up. We loaded up and had the door closed on time despite the late inbound, but were stopped from pushing 3 times due to late bags showing up and the rampers throwing them on. That’s fine (I want my passengers to get to their destination WITH their bags) but it made us 15 minutes late. After that fiasco we headed east to Jacksonville, NC, where the FO managed to survive a slam dunk approach (ATC kept us very high and fast) and landed the plane. Another quick turn, with rain showers approaching the field, and we were heading back west towards Charlotte.

ATC once again allowed us to keep our speed up for much longer then normal, which put a small check mark in the “plus” column for the day and 39 minutes after taking off I managed a pretty landing on 23 in Charlotte. Our momentary good luck continued with a gate actually be available for us and a ramp crew meeting us at the gate. We shut down and due to being early realized we had about an hour and fifty minutes before we were due back out to Charleston, WV for the overnight.

Because the plane was going to be sitting for a while I’d requested that they hook up ground power and air conditioning carts. That way I could shut down the APU and save some fuel while the plane sat. I could have just shut down the plane anyways, but due to the heat, I didn’t want the plane to get hot just sitting there. Also, by plugging in a power cart all the electronics stay on and that way we don’t have to re setup everything when we got back to the plane.

Of course there was no power or air carts waiting, and even after I verbally told the rampers all I got was a smile nod and after 20 minutes of waiting I just shut down the plane anyways and figured it would cool off when we turned it back on before departure. Also adding to the problems was the fact that the FO had discovered that one of the brake wear indicators wasn’t visible which means that the brakes are worn out. I wrote that up and called maintenance and then headed inside to the crew room.

When I got back to the plane an hour later there was an maintenance truck just pulling up. I asked them what the deal was with the brake and they said they had to replace it and it would probably take an hour. My FO had been right. It was just one of those days.

In the end we were only 30 minutes late off the gate (and that was mostly because we were waiting on two last minute passengers) and we were able to take off of 18L which is a much shorter taxi. My FO touched down in Charleston only 27 minutes late, which considering the day we’d had wasn’t too bad. Of course the hotel van wasn’t there, but they showed up eventually and thus our day ended, 11 hours, 4 legs and 1400 miles after it started.

3 more years? Hell yeah.

As pilots, seniority is pretty much all we’ve got. Everything (mostly) revolves around your seniority number. Generally at your date of hire (or upon passing your first checkride or some other arbitrary milestone) you are assigned a spot on the company seniority list. The top guy on the list is the one who has been at the company the longest, and the bottom guy (you) is the one who has been at the company the shortest.  As new hire classes normally consist of more then one person, different companies use different methods to assign seniority within a class. Here they go by age, with the oldest person having the highest seniority within the class, but other places use some combination of social security number digits or something similar.

You move up the list as people senior to you leave. Say a guy 100 numbers higher (actually lower because lists start with “1″ as the most senior guy and move up, or down really, from there) leaves to go do something else. Everybody “below” him (although their numbers are all higher) will move up (down really) one spot. In general, especially at a regional with people leaving all the time, movement up the list is pretty quick at first. New hire first officers either wash out or find better jobs elsewhere. Captains move on to other things. People retire. When you are junior pretty much anybody who leaves is senior to you and helps you move up. As you become more senior on the list, many of the people that leave are junior to you and hence don’t help you move up at all. It is very normal to never break into the top 10 of an airline before you retire. In fact, a big airlines it’s considered good to make it to the top 100 or even 500 before being forced at age 65.

Obviously the benefits of moving up the list include better schedules as you have the seniority to hold the lines of flying you want, upgrade at some point, and then working up to better schedules again. Also, the higher up the list you are, the higher your priority for non rev travel, vacation bidding and a whole bunch of other things. Pay isn’t directly tied to your position on the seniority list, but rather years of service. However, which seat you sit in is related to seniority and the pay rate for FOs in generally around 60% of captain pay.

And that’s how stuff works when all is good in the world. Unfortunately it works in just the opposite way when stuff isn’t good. Right now the industry is hurting. Fuel costs are killing any chance of profits. Management (at some airlines) has pretty much lost and as a result massive cuts are being made. For pilots that results in furloughs. Basically a furlough is like being fired, but when the company starts hiring again you have “recall rights” which allow you to be rehired with out having to interview and you re inherit what ever longevity (years of service) you had when you were booted off the bottom of the seniority list.

We furloughed 27 pilots in July and now as of September 1st are furloughing 49 more. It sucks. That’s about all I can say. These are good guys, many of which I have flown with. All anybody can do is hope it’s short lived and they are back soon. In addition to the furloughs we are downgrading 33 captains. Basically a downgrade means that you are removed from the left seat and pushed back to the right seat. Your pay reverts to FO pay (taking a 40% pay cut) and while your system wide seniority stays the same, your relative seniority within seat goes up, as you move from the bottom of the captain seniority list to the top of the FO list. Still not worth it though.

When the announced the downgrades I was 37 from the bottom of the captain’s list, which means I am now 4 from the bottom. Another round of cuts and it’s back to the right seat I go. In the end there isn’t much I can do about it. Fortunately for me (for now) we aren’t cutting so many people that I could end up getting furloughed, although it could happen so for now I don’t have to worry about losing my job (unless the airline shuts down). That’s something at least. A wise man once said if you can’t take the uncertainty of this job, it’s probably not the job for you. You could call it the  cost of doing business I guess.

And the irony is there is no picture in this post.

Anyhow, I figured out the other day that an autograph from a famous person is going the way of the pony express. I was in Charlotte waiting to head up to Hartford, CT to go home for a bit when a guy with a whole bunch of bling around his neck, and a two man entourage stopped next to where I was standing against the wall. Apparently he was somebody famous (after some googling later on I discovered he was Young Buck, who is part of 50 Cent’s “G Unit”). Despite me not knowing who he was, it seemed that plenty of other people did and every few minutes somebody would stop while walking by and ask to take a picture either with or of the guy.

With almost every cell phone coming with a camera now, it’s much easier to snap a quick picture then ask for somebody to write their name on a piece of paper.

And no, I didn’t get my picture taken with him.

Sitting reserve is sort of like playing Russian Roulette with a 3 chambered BB gun; you mostly aren’t going to die, but there’s a pretty good chance it’s going to hurt. How much it hurts depends on how the specific contract you are working under is worded, and how well staffed the airline is. There are places where senior guys purposely bid reserve because they get paid to sit around and do nothing.

Regrettably, here, our reserve work rules are terrible, and we are more often then not short staffed, which leads to reserve being a not very desirable thing. Here, reserve comes in one of two forms. Either “regular reserve” or “hot reserve”.

Regular reservists are assigned (the night before) a 14 hour block of time the following day (starting at 5am, 8am, 10am or 12pm) in which time they have to be able to return a phone call from crew scheduling within 15 and have to be at the airport ready to fly within 1 hour and 30 minutes of that phone call. If you live near the airport it’s not so bad, as you are just kept on a relatively short leash to your house so you can make it on time. For me it means I that when I am on reserve I have to stay about 30 minutes from home and have a bag packed. That gives me 30 minutes to get home, 20 minutes to get my uniform on and 40 minutes to get to the airport.

Reserve assignments don’t always come with a minimum time call out (1:30). In fact, the company often times gives about 2 hours notice. The annoying thing is they could give a whole lot more as sometimes they know about the assignment 12 to 24 hours in advance, but one of the few good reserve rules we have is that as a reserve, once you are assigned a show time for work you are no longer on reserve and don’t have to answer your phone any more until you get to work. So, in the event that something else comes up and they need to reassign you before you actual trip, scheduling tends to wait until the last minute to assign it so they don’t lose your services as a reserve in the mean time. Sucky? You betcha.

The second type or reserve is hot reserve. This involves sitting at the airport a 10 hour block (5am – 3pm normally) and being no farther then 15 minutes from the gate. It’s boring, you often times don’t get used and did I mention it’s boring? The only thing “good” about hot reserve (and this is really stretching it) is that if they DON’T use you, you are done at 3pm so some people request it on their last day if they are commuters so they can head for home earlier.

Line holders (those that have a set schedule of trips for the month) are guaranteed 75 hours of pay a month. Often times they will credit more then that. Many lines are built to 85 to 90 hours plus we get “block or better” of flight pay meaning if the leg is scheduled for 1 hour we are payed 1 hour if it is less then that in actuality or the actual amount if it takes longer then 1 hour. Reserves are only guaranteed 72 hours, and don’t get block or better unless the company flies you more then 72 hours (which they almost never do). So, as I said before, if the company is properly staffed, reserve can be pretty good. You sit at home, don’t fly and get paid for 72 hours of work. Or, if they are short, you work almost every day you are scheduled and only get paid for 72 hours.

This is day three (and my last) day of reserve in this block. I am currently holding what is called a build up line which has a mix of reserve days and scheduled trips. Tomorrow starts a 2 day trip. My first day of reserve (three days ago) started with me calling in to scheduling the night before (between 7pm and 9pm) and being assigned a 10am to Midnight reserve block for the next day. I looked on my web schedule and saw that they already had a trip (fly to Philly and deadhead home) on me for the next day, but of course they wouldn’t tell me about it the night before because if they had and then needed me for something earlier (the trip didn’t show until 12:55pm) they wouldn’t have been able to use me.

So, very predictably my phone rang at 11am with a notification of my trip, giving me 1 hour and 55 minutes to get to the airport. As I’d seen this coming I was already packed and ready to go. The trip was uneventful with the exception of a rather firm landing on runway 35. I’d been in the 700 for the past few trips and it normally takes a few landings in the 200 to get the feel of it again. Regrettably that was the only landing I was getting that day. After parking the plane I handed over my seat seat to Charlotte based captain who had deadhead up to take the trip (probably because I have a build up line and they are trying to keep me below 72 hour of pay for the month) and stashed my bag in the crew room and grabbed some food. An hour later I was getting on an Air Wisconsin flight to deadhead back to Dayton. Reserves (especially ones in smaller bases like Dayton) tend to do a lot of deadheading, but that’s a topic for another day.

I was home by 7pm and happily eating dinner at 8:45 when my phone rang. I figured it was just my assignment time for the next day as it was getting close to the 9pm cut off for calling (I normally wait until the end to call) and they were getting antsy. I was half right. It was my assignment for the next day, but they told me that they were taking me off reserve right then (I still had another 4 hours until midnight when I was technically done) and giving me a 6:05am show the next morning. That’s typical for reserve too. For what ever reasons, crew scheduling doesn’t care about circadian rhythms. So despite the fact that I didn’t wake up until 9am that morning (and hadn’t gone to bed until midnight the night before) I had to hurry up and repack and force my self to go to sleep as soon as I could with my alarm set for 4:30am. Yippie.

Somehow I managed and got to the airport around 6. The plane was at the gate and after a delay due to a maintenance problem (one of our fire test lights wasn’t working and changing the bulb didn’t fix it) we loaded up 50 people and headed to Philly. I managed a much nicer landing on 35 (with video tape to prove it) then the morning before and 20 minutes later I was eating a nice breakfast of a greasy omelet and home fries. Mmmm Mmmm Jet Rock!

After breakfast we took a massive 12 passengers from Philly down to Richmond, VA. For what ever reason they filed us for 16,000 feet, which was fine with me as that route of flight heads south out of Philly, over the Delaware bay, down the cost of Maryland and then across the Chesapeake bay just north of Norfolk and into Richmond. I really miss the coastal flying we used to do before shifting the majority of our operations to the south east out of Charlotte.

Another quick turn in Richmond gave us 50 more passengers for the hop over to Charlotte where, a slightly goofy crosswind I managed an ok landing. After that I handed off the plane to another crew taking it out to Gulfport (what did I say about south east flying) while my crew left me to head up to Akron. I walked down one gate to catch a deadhead (yep, another one) on the flight up to Dayton. two hours later I was walking out to my car and 45 minutes after that I was home and eating an early dinner/late lunch.

Because they shifted my schedule to mornings I was given a 5am to 7pm regular reserve block today. However, because it is the last day, if they haven’t used me by 5pm I can request a release then, which will work well so I can go play ultimate frisbee tonight.

Ah the reserve life. Got to (adjective goes here) it!

Here’s proof of my nice landing in Philly.

(yes, the title is a play on Rainbow Brite)

As promised a few weeks ago, here’s the the rainbow video.

Yesterday started at 6am (well, actually 7am because it was central time) in Birmingham, AL. We switched hotels about three months ago and this was the first time I’d stayed there. The new hotel is right downtown, which isn’t saying much as Birmingham’s downtown district is mostly financial and there isn’t much there to do. The hotel was built in 1925 and has tons of history, including multiple stories of ghosts. Hank Williams spent his last night alive in the hotel.

I didn’t see anything ghosts and actually managed to get a pretty good nights sleep. I was the first one downstairs at 6:55am for a 7am van and shortly there after the other two FAs and the FO joined me. The desk clerk told me that the van driver had just called and said he was running about 10 minutes late. That was ok with us as it was just a quick drive to the airport and BHM is normally pretty quick with security.

The lobby of the hotel was redone in a 1950s sort of vibe and had a grand piano in the lobby. While waiting for the van one of our FAs sat down and started playing. He has a degree in music education and music theory and although he said he hadn’t played a piano in a while he was pretty good. After a few minutes of playing he got up to get something out of his bag, and my FO took his place. He too hadn’t played much recently was really good. The FA then took a flute out of his bag and started accompanying the FO. Needless to say I felt like a klutz not being able to play any instrument.

Our van finally showed up and cut the concert short. We managed to get through security and got the plane out on time. It was a quick flight over to Charlotte where we actually managed to keep our speed up (VERY unusual) and land a few minutes early. A quick turn and we were heading east to New Bern, NC. My FO used to instruct out of Jacksonville, just up the road and would take students into EWN all time so he was excited to visit it in the jet.

I managed a modified visual (low clouds which we were able to get under to find the airport) and a slight firm landing. This was the first time I’d taken the 700 into EWN and it was a little strange to see it sitting on the ramp where the much smaller 200 normally sits. We loaded up 70 passengers plus a PDT jumpseater and headed back to Charlotte. As we started down the arrival the radar was painted good sized thunder cells about 30 miles west of the airport. They caused no problem for us, but the three of us commented on the fact that later in the day it was going to get a little bit ugly.

After unloaded we headed up to the crew room to start out almost 3 hours of airport appreciation before we were due to head back out and do a turn to Wilmington before going back to Dayton and the end of the trip. My FO, a guy from his new hire class (who I’d also flown with) and I wandered over to the food court to get some lunch. While we were eating the weather rolled in and out the windows we could see the ramp lights go red as it shut down. By the time we were done eating the ramp was open again but the rain was coming down.

Another hour of waiting (and watching the last set of the Wimbledon final) I headed out to the gate. The agent informed me that in the computer the plane was off the gate in Savannah, but not yet airborn. However, as it had left the gate over an hour ago that was probably just a computer glitch and should be there soon. That sounded too good to me so I called up dispatch to find out what was going on. I was told that Charlotte was ground stopped and the plane was in fact still on the ground in SAV and not scheduled for even an update for another 30 minutes. At about the same time the “delayed” wording went up over the gate and the new departure time (to ILM) of 5:25 (from 4:11) was posted.

The rest of the crew was at the gate by this point and we jointly decided to head back up to the crew room as the terminal was starting to get a little bit crazy with all the delays and growing cancellations. Once up there I periodically checked the status of our inbound plane and found that by 4:40 it had returned to the gate and was now scheduled to depart at 4:51pm. One of the FAs started working some math to see just how late we could start out to ILM and still have enough duty time to make it back to DAY that night. Although something of a fuzzy art, we came up with 6:30pm being the absolute latest we could be off the gate in Charlotte to still be able to do the ILM turn and then head north to DAY and stay within 15 hours of duty. And that assumed we met absolutely no delays, which almost the entire South East covered in red on the radar map probably wasn’t going to happen.

The clock continued to tick closer to our time limit with the plane still sitting on the ground in Savannah. At 5:15 dispatch solved the problem for us by canceling the ILM flight which meant we were now off the hook until 7:40pm when were were (assuming our plane made it in from SAV by then) supposed to head north. I manged to pass the time talking with a fellow captain from my new hire class who I hadn’t seen in a while and getting some emails sent. At 7pm I headed down to the gate only to find another airplane parked there waiting to head down to Tallahassee. Our plane had finally left Savannah and was due to land any minute, but of course couldn’t pull in to the gate because there was already a plane there.

After some quick detective work using the gate computer, the gate agent and I figured out that the crew the TLH flight was waiting on was the same crew that was brining in our plane, so obviously it could pull off the gate to allow the plane in because the crew to do it was out on the plane waiting to get in. A quick call to dispatch solved the problem and shortly there after we were heading back to gate 3 to finally get our plane.

After swapping crews (I felt bad for them as they had to go down to TLH and then come all the way back to Charlotte and then finish up the night by going to Louisville) we got set up and loaded up 65 passengers for the trip to Dayton. We pushed off the gate just after 9pm, about 1:30 minutes late. Because we were off the normal schedule there was only one plane in front of us on the taxi out and we managed to get right out.

With the exception of one line of weather that we popped through west of Charleston, WV (Youtube video coming soon maybe) it was a smooth flight and I managed my nicest landing in a while on 6L at Dayton. 25 minutes later I was in my car heading home, looking forward to my first days off in 5 days.

The hotel in BHM gave us paper bag breakfasts to take with us. It consisted mostly of fruit. Raspberry danish, Strawberry yogurt (with a fork to eat it), an apple and an orange. Tasty.

Saying “I get to sleep in all the way until 5:10am” is sort of like saying “wow, gas is only $3.89! That’s Cheap!”

My FOs probably are about ready to kill me every time I take out my monkey. The best part is, I can say that and not even mean it in the dirty sense.