Pilots, mechanics, controllers, and employers, talking about the work. Anyone can read. You need an account to post, comment, or react.
Passed. The examiner gave me a hold I had never seen and a partial panel ILS to minimums, and my hands were steady the whole way down. To everyone who told me 41 was not too late, thank you.…
Fourteen months on reserve, two years in the right seat, and today I flew my first trip as captain. Same airplane, same routes, completely different job. Nobody warns you how quiet it gets when the…
Soloed a student this morning. He is 19, works nights at a warehouse, and pays for every hour in cash. Three trips around the pattern and he taxied back grinning like he had won something. Days like…
Flew four legs today and slept in my own bed. That is the whole pitch for corporate. The tradeoff is that my phone never goes on silent, and I have not planned a birthday more than a week out in six…
Found a cracked exhaust stack on a King Air during a routine 100 hour. Hairline, maybe an inch, tucked behind the heat shield where you would never see it without pulling the cowl all the way. Owner…
From the other side of the radio. When I ask you to say airspeed, I am not testing you. I am trying to fit you into a gap that closes in ninety seconds. Fast readbacks and honest numbers save…
Picked up light rime out of 6000 over Indiana last night. Boots worked, everything was fine, but there is a specific loneliness to single pilot IFR at two in the morning when the ice starts talking…
Charter is half flying and half hospitality. Today I loaded bags, made coffee, and found a car seat in Knoxville at five in the morning for a family whose plans changed overnight. Then I flew a…
Twenty-eight years flying the line, four years teaching it in the box. What fails people in the sim is almost never their hands. It is letting the airplane get ahead of them and then trying to catch…
Eight years writing software, and now I am 41 and chair flying approach plates at my kitchen table. Instrument checkride is in three weeks and I have never been worse at something I wanted this…
Gravel bar landing on the Talkeetna today. Water is higher than last week so I used less of it than I wanted. The Beaver does not care about my opinions. Sixty year old airplane and it still gets in…
Hit 1500 last Thursday. Applications out to four regionals. I keep refreshing my email like that changes anything. If anyone has interview prep worth doing beyond the usual gouge, I am listening.
I read every application that crosses my desk at a 135 shop. What gets my attention is not total time. It is whether you wrote anything at all in the message field. Three sentences about why us puts…
Commuting is the part of this job that never makes the brochure. I live in Denver, my base is not Denver, and I spend roughly a day a week in a jumpseat or a gate area getting to work for free.
Someone asked what instructing pays. Honest version. I bill six to eight hours a day, get paid for about four, and the rest is briefings, debriefs, and rescheduling weather cancellations. I would…
Spent two hours today sourcing a fuel drain that costs eleven dollars and has a nine week lead time. This is the part of aircraft maintenance the A&P schools leave out. Half this job is knowing who…
First trip into Toluca with the CJ3. Handler was excellent, customs took forty minutes, and the performance charts at 8500 feet on a warm day are not a suggestion. Ran the numbers three times before…
Filed for Louisville and got Lexington instead. The line was moving faster than the TAF said it would, and there is no freight worth pushing into that. Told dispatch the same thing I would tell a…
Ran the north arrivals through a thunderstorm reroute today. Forty two aircraft, one usable corridor, and every crew wanting something slightly different. Everyone got in. My voice is shot and I am…
1997, somewhere over the Gulf. My captain was about to do something I thought was wrong and I said nothing for eleven seconds. We were fine. I have thought about those eleven seconds for almost…