Ab initio airline pilot training programs

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

You spelled Widgeon right. But N9IWP goofed on Chalk’s : Chalk's International Airlines - Wikipedia

I flew air tours in the Grand Canyon for a few months. Fun, but no money. For me it was just a filler job, but there were guys stuck trying to live long term on it. Not good to be them.

Chalk’s would have been much more scenic. Besides … Seaplanes, tailwheels, & round engines! What more can a man hope for? Not much, only money to eat on.

I had the good fortune to ride shotgun on a Britten-Norman Islander in Tahiti. Now *that *looked like tough duty. :slight_smile:

22

There’s the problem. The kind of flying I want to do (except possibly for news and medical helicopter flying – I haven’t looked into it) doesn’t pay enough.

When I was learning to fly helicopters, one of my instructors said he’d made about $6,000 one year. In L.A. When Santa Monica Heli Services ‘closed’, he and two other instructors bought the business. They started with two R22s. The other two instructors have moved on (I think one retired, and the other got a position as a pilot instead of an instructor), but my instructor is still there. They have Robinsons, Schweizers, and now have another FBO in Alaska as well as Van Nuys. ISTM that if you want to make money flying, you need to own the company and the company has to be in a place amenable to flying.

23

Oh, yeah - my type of flying doesn’t make money, either. I would have had a blast in the barnstorming days traveling about just giving rides to people for money. Nope, not happening any more, more’s the pity.

24

I tried googling and couldn’t find it, maybe somebody else will have more success …

It’s a short story, like a one page magazine column from some flying-related magazine. The story goes roughly like this:

There’s a hot and tired CFI banging around the pattern with a yet another hopeless student. He hears a light twin on tower frequency, taking off for a long night of flying bank checks across the Midwest. The CFI, thinking of having two engines, real instruments, etc., says wistfully to himself, “now *that’s *flying”.

The young bank pilot, partway through his evening of dodging embedded thunderstorms with no radar & no de-ice, hears a 737 on Center frequency. Thinking of having jet engines, radar, and someone to talk to, says wistfully to himself “now *that’s *flying”.

The 737 Captain, late in his multi-leg day of dodging thunderstorms and maintenance problems and bitchy flight attendants and delays at the hub, hears a British Airways jumbo on frequency heading off to London or wherever. Thinking of one-leg workdays, long layovers in exotic destinations, and first class trans-atlantic meals with the time to savor them, says wistfully to himself “now *that’s *flying”.

At 0400 body-clock time two exhausted British Airways First Officers are chatting while desperately fighting falling asleep. Meantime the Captain takes his bunk time and HAL drives the jet towards their destination, still 8 hours away. One mentions there’s a Space Shuttle in orbit just now. The other, thinking of weightlessness, being the elite of the elite, and the incredible views, says wistfully to himself “now *that’s *flying”.

On orbit, the Shuttle commander is about an hour behind in his jam-packed daily timeline sent up by the idiot ground-pounders and badly needs to pee. But he hasn’t got a spare half an hour to fight with the GTUM to take that leak. A mission specialist calls out: “Hey, Boss, come see this” and, irritated at yet another interruption, he floats over, banging his shoulder on the ceiling yet again. He peers through the offered telescope and spots a small town airstrip with a Cessna making traffic patterns. Despite himself he smiles, thinks of the smell of grass and avgas, zinc chromate and sun-baked Royalite. And says wistfully to himself “now *that’s *flying”.

The circle of life indeed.

25

Saw that one coming a long way off. Still a nice illustration, though.

26

As far as I’m concerned, this says it all.

27

Oops, sorry for that - but the Mallard and Albatross have tricycle gear, and the ones they had were turbo (PT-6) powered, not the original rotary engines.

Brian

28

If it’s something you just have to do, you’ll find a way. If it isn’t, if you’re seriously wondering, then the answer is No. If you don’t love it, you’ll hate it.

29

I had to look it up, but by gosh you’re right about nosewheels. Goose and Widgeon have tailwheels, but Chalk’s never had those; only Mallard & Albatross. As to PT-6s vs. radial engines, I guess it depends on how far back in history we go. Certainly they were operating PT-6s when they shut down in the early 2000s.

30

In front of a computer it would surely be boring. But in an actual cockpit, with the sights and sounds and the actual real-life presence of the situation, it would feel a lot more immersed and different wouldn’t it?

Four times a day? That’s a lot more than I thought…

31

Only marginally so.

Long cross-country trips, which is basically what commercial flying mostly is, can be quite boring. The sights and sounds at 30,000 feet are somewhat minimal, and sometimes the most “interesting” thing about the radio is how hard it is to understand between noise and interference. Sure, you’re more immersed but it’s not terribly exciting, any more than a long cross-country drive on a straight interstate is exciting. In fact, a major goal is to make it as unexciting as possible for the passengers and because you really don’t want excitement like, say flaming engines or power failures. Commercial flying is about being efficient, and one of the most effective means to achieve that is to make things routine and uneventful.

32

Well yes. It is obviously more immersive and you see some pretty cool stuff sometimes, but honestly when I have seen cool stuff it’s only been a momentary distraction from sitting there wishing I was at home mowing the lawns. When I am at home I never find myself wishing I was at work. Sometimes I wish I was out flying, but not work flying.

I guess the process for most people who are or want to be pilots is something like “Flying is great fun [either through direct experience or just expectation], airline pilots get paid well to fly [not necessarily true], wouldn’t it be great to be an airline pilot?” The thing is, the flying that is fun is not the flying you do as an airline pilot.

Don’t think that I’m complaining, I’m not, I love my job. I have a good lifestyle, I get paid well for what I do, I don’t spend much time away from home, I generally work no more than 3 days a week, I get weekends off, and I would never choose to do something else. Note however that “I really love the flying” is not one of the reasons that I love the job. Also note that a lot of the things I love about this particular job are not typical. I really loved the flying back when I was getting paid to take people on aerobatic flights in a Pitts Special. THAT was getting paid to do what I love, THIS is getting paid to do something that reminds me of doing something I love. I think mainly I’m still happy because I knew when I was flying the Pitts that I was doing the best flying of my career, and I knew that from then on it would be a trade off between income and fun. I knew what I was in it for and I had no illusions about the airline thing. I never particularly wanted to be an airline pilot, I just recognised that it was the most realistic way of making a living out of it.

YMMV of course. This is just me.

If you want to picture it as once a day, run your flight sim for 10-14 hours and go and have a nap halfway through.

I don’t know what other short haul guys and gals do, for us it is normally four sectors, sometimes fewer and very occasionally it is five. Flight times range from 20 minutes to about 2.5 hours. The 20 minute ones are the closest to “fun” I get. Although sometimes, at night, in shit weather, and with a marginal FO, it is just stressful.

The benefit of learning to fly in a progressive way is that you start out doing your PPL, a useful thing to have and lots of fun, and you progress through your CPL, instructor rating, instrument rating etc. All of it is good skills building stuff that will make you a better pilot. If at any stage you decide it is not for you, then you can take a break from it, take it in a different direction or whatever. And what you will have learned up to that point will all be useful to you as a private pilot or a GA commercial pilot or whatever you ended up doing.

The big downside to doing a cadet type course is that you are committing yourself to it from the start, and if you find you have a change of heart halfway through you will have invested too much time and money to want to pull out.

33

It’s immersive to the point of overwhelming. At first. And it certainly gets real immersive when we’re all assholes and elbows dealing with a diversion, an emergency, or whatever. But a lot of the rest of the time it’s just another routine job. Like long distance driving. Sure it’s vastly more complex than driving a truck. But the folks doing it are more capable and much more highly trained people.
Here’s my work this week. And I’ve got one of the better positions in the industry
Today, Saturday:
0430 Wake up at home. make and eat breakfast, shit, shower, and shave. Get dressed and grab my pre-packed suitcase & briefcase.
0530: Kiss still-sleeping wife, leave house for airport.
0630: Clock in at departure gate after parking and riding van from remote parking lot, going through security, and hiking half-mile to gate. Log first aerobics for day. Prep jet for departure.
0730: Depart MIA for MCO (Orlando).
0830: Park at MCO. 35 minutes in the air, 15 taxiing out, 10 taxiing in. That 35 minutes was non-stop work for 30 minutes, with 2 two-minute hunks of calm.
0920: Prep same jet for departure. Spend previous 50 minutes of unpaid “free” time buying a croissandwich for breakfast and ogling the young women in the terminal.
1005: Depart MCO going back to MIA.
1110: Park at MIA. Same hectic 35 minutes in the air, 15 taxiing out, 15 taxiing in. Leave this jet & flight attendants.
1120: Buy & eat lunch at airport restaurant.
1200: Arrive at new jet having hiked 3/4 mile through terminal. Log second aerobics for day. Meet new flight attendants and start to prep new jet.
1250: Supposed to depart, but can’t because previous crew broke the jet and maintenance is still working on it. Get everything ready to go, then hang out in cockpit. Hope they don’t decide to change planes, thereby wasting all our prep work. Still being unpaid.
1335: Jet’s fixed, passengers loaded, and we leave for BOS 45 minutes late.
1415-ish: Arrive at cruise altitude ~100 miles north of MIA. Been working steadily since push-back.
1610ish: Leave cruise altitude over NYC, about 100 miles short of BOS. Previous 1:55ish spent in a Zen state of staring at passing clouds through the east coast haze, listening to radio chatter and watching the paint dry. Did have a few interesting minutes passing Tropical Storm Ana off the coast of SC.
1640: Land at BOS, having been working steadily since we left cruise altitude.
1650: Park jet. Leave flight attendants who live in BOS and are going home.
1655: Call hotel for ride. They will send van. Even on Saturday, traffic in Boston is ugly. Walk 1/4 mile to curb. Skip logging aerobic event; 1/4mi is trivial.
1720: Van arrives out front of terminal. At least it was a pretty day, mostly clear and temp about 55F. 20 minutes of standing at the curb in the diesel fumes not being paid is still tiresome at the end of the workday. But at least there was no slush.
1750: Arrive at hotel. Get room key.
1810: Get back downstairs in civvies. Only restaurant in hotel is a Benihana’s knockoff - not my style. Ask clerk where can get a decent meal. Down the road half a mile. Start walking in the gathering twilight.
1830: arrive at Nick’s Bistro in Revere MA. Pizza joint owned by Greeks. Have awesome grilled lamb chop dinner with Italian-style broccoli. In the Greek interpretation “Italian-style broccoli” is 50% garlic by weight. I now reek. Yumm!
1930: Done eating. Walk back to hotel, stopping at a random grocery store for an orange and a tub of yogurt for tomorrow breakfast. Since we leave hotel before restaurant opens on Sunday.
1950: return to hotel. log more aerobics. Dodge 100-person family reunion in small lobby. Iron uniform shirt for tomorrow, unpack shaving stuff, etc. Call wife, say “good night”.
2030: Start SDMBing (mostly this post).
2130: Go to bed.

Sunday’s plan:
0515: Wake up, eat yogurt & orange, plus protein shake & nuts I already had. Shit, shower, shave, etc.
0630: Van to airport, through security, etc.
0700: Prep jet for 0750 departure. Meet new flight attendants.
0750: Push, takeoff, climb to altitude.
0830: Zen down towards MIA. Hope Ana stays offshore.
1045: Stop zenning and start descending for MIA.
1120: Park in MIA. Grab a quick but expensive sandwich & get back on same jet.
1200: Start process over again to go back to BOS, exactly like yesterday. Same exact flight. Hope jet isn’t broken this time.
Same flight up, same 2:45 of boredom, same arrival, same curbside wait, same van, same hotel …
1830: Probably dine at hole-in-wall Thai joint next door to Nick’s Bistro.
2130: Go to bed.

Mondays plan:
0515 wake up, eat yogurt, etc.
Exactly the same process as Sunday until we get to MIA. Except more traffic on Boston area roads at 0630 on a Monday.
1120: Park jet in MIA. Leave jet and flight attendants for next pilots, walk 1/2 mile to out front of bag claim, wait for parking lot van for ride to car, drive home. At least I miss MIA rush hour.
1300: Arrive home, kiss the dog, kick the wife. Dump 3 day’s clothes in laundry & reload suitcase with 3 days-worth of new clothes, emergency food, vitamins, etc.

Have some days off; maybe 2, maybe 5.

Do some variation of the same routine all over again. Maybe just 1 day, maybe 4. Maybe just 1 flight a day, maybe 2 or 3. The guys in the smaller airplanes fly 3, 4, or 5 flights a day. 3 is uncommon (<15% of workdays?) for us big boys, and 4 is unheard of. Maybe work late at night and end up at the West Coast at midnight there, 0300 body time. Or maybe it’ll be dawn patrol like this trip was.
And now you know … The innards of the story.

I know for sure it beats heck outta managing a Denneys. A thrill a minute it isn’t. And that’s a damn good thing. But it contains a bunch of hurry-up-and-wait, a bunch of minor frustrations, and a lot of boredom. Which takes discipline to overcome. There’s a difference between Zen-like awareness being totally in the moment and being bored asleep at the switch. One is good; one is not.

Bedtime. See y’all tomorrow. I wonder if I’ll have the same hotel room?

34

Yikes! Thanks for the long post. I’m guessing it would be better if you flew longer routes and thus only had to fly once or twice a day?

35

For a little contrast. No two jobs are the same I guess. Quick background, the following is for a contract company. Technically charter but to all intents and purposes a scheduled air transport operation.

Last week was night freight for me, this week is day passenger ops, all in the same basic aircraft type, either a BAe146-300 freighter or an Avro RJ100 for the passengers. Identical airframes with some differences in avionics.

Monday

Reserve from 1600 to 0300 (Tuesday morning). If I don’t get called in it is basically a day off except I can’t drink alcohol.

Tuesday

Reserve 1600 - 0300

Wednesday

1000: Get up late because I need to be well rested for the coming night. Have a normal day, surf the net, play games, do some stuff around the house. We’ve just planted some fruit trees so I check up on those.
1200: Check the weather for Sydney (SYD) and Brisbane (BNE) so I’m mentally prepared for the night.
1400: Try and have a nap but can’t sleep because I know I need to.
1600: Get up and potter around the house for a bit.
1720: Shower, shave, etc.
1750: Drive to work

1840: Get to the crew room and sign on for a 2015 departure. (I don’t have to sign on until 1915 but our flight planning facilities are below par in that the crews do it all themselves, no dispatchers or anything, so I like to be early so I don’t feel rushed.) The FO is already there, incredibly keen, I don’t think I’ve ever got to work before them! Another crew is also there. It is a small base so we all know each other well. FO does the planning and I have a good read of weather and NOTAMs and we discuss the fuel requirements for the night. The weather is good, all navaids are operational so we can take “minimum” fuel everywhere (about an hour on top of flight fuel).

1915: leave the crew room and walk about 10 minutes to the freighters parked at the freight apron. As we are not leaving from the passenger terminal there is no security to contend with.

1925: Prep the jet and wait for freight.

2000: We are ready to go but the freight isn’t.

2017: Start and taxi for flight to SYD. No pushback from these bays. 1:33 flight time, 12 minutes taxi time. That’s about 30 minutes of work and an hour of thumb twiddling. It’s dark so nothing to look at outside. The FO is flying the first two sectors tonight.

2232: On the bay in SYD (time zone change, we are now 30 minutes ahead.) We are 8 mins early so our 35 minute turn around has become a 43 minute turn around. Open the freight door, get a weather update for BNE on the iPad, confirm fuel load, do a walk around then back in the cockpit to prep for the next departure. We will be departing SYD within the curfew so only one runway available regardless of the wind and only about 1/2 of it is usable as they use the curfew as an opportunity to do runway works. We are the only jet operator flying in and out of SYD during curfew.

2315: We are ready but the freight isn’t.

2327: Start and taxi for BNE. No pushback. 1:16 flight time, 14 minutes taxi. Delay code down to late freight. 30 mins of work again, 45 mins of thumb twiddling.

I get up and stretch the legs, make us a cuppa and get our supplied “lunches”. It’s good stuff, I’m steadily getting fatter.

The BNE arrival was admittedly quite fun. The long runway is NOTAM’d as closed tonight to anything smaller than a B737 so instead of a boring old ILS flown by the autopilot we get radar vectors to the circuit for a night visual approach over water to a runway that is relatively short 1700m (5570’). The FO’s leg again and he hasn’t done this approach before or anything quite like it, so I give him some tips and monitor very closely.

0057: (Thursday morning now) On the bay in BNE, 12 minutes late. Open the freight door, update the SYD weather on the iPad, confirm fuel load, do a walk around, back to the cockpit to prep for departure. We were late so what should have been a 30 minute turn around is now an 18 minute turn around. It’s out of our control though, as long as we are ready to go within 30 minutes of arrival then the delay is not on us, it’s on the freight loading.

0127: We are ready, the freight is not, again.

0135: Pushback, start, and taxi for SYD. Flight time 1:18, taxi 16 mins, 30 mins work and 48 mins trying to stay awake. Yes we do sometimes use pushback bays. ATC offer us the long runway, this will save us some taxi time and we checked the take-off performance for this runway during the turn-around, just in case.

This leg is mine to fly and I’m starting to feel the effects of not being able to sleep the previous afternoon. There are not many out flying at this time and the radio is quiet. The radio activity we do hear is mainly other company aircraft or the competitor’s freighters. It’s the FO’s turn to make a cuppa. When he comes back he finds an AM radio station on one of the numerous NDBs that are still in operation around the country and we listen to that for a bit.

Arrival into SYD is another visual approach. It’s about as close to “real” flying as I can get, which is why I specifically requested it. And it saves us a few minutes of flight time.

0309: On the bay in SYD. We are well and truly late now and my only concern for the turn-arounds is that we, the crew, are ready within the allotted turn around time (e.g., if we are 20 mins late arriving, I want to be ready to go no later than 20 mins past our scheduled departure time.)

Open the freight door, update the weather on the iPad, confirm the fuel load, do a walk around, back in the cockpit to prep for the departure (you are beginning to see the pattern here I’m sure.)

0338: Start and taxi for ADL (Adelaide). Turn-around time is 29 minutes, we’ve clawed back 1 minute. We have strong headwinds home, flight time 2:09, taxi time 9 mins.

This is the time when every part of your body is wanting to sleep. Circadian rhythms are low, and the eyelids are heavy. The noise of the engines, the heat from the air conditioning, the occasional chatter heard on the radio, it is all very soporific. I don’t sleep, but I close my eyes from time to time and my thoughts take on a quality that seems slightly more real than the aeroplane around me. I glance across at my FO and he is struggling as much as I. I take solace from the fact that whenever a radio call is directed at us we respond promptly and professionally. We are resting as much as we can in the circumstances but are remaining aware of our surroundings and situation. There is no talk between us. I know that I need to be alert for the approach into Adelaide and as we commence our descent I mentally slap myself back into the here and now. Terrain, weather, traffic, speeds, descent profiles, flaps, localiser capture, glideslope capture, gear, more flaps, checklist, “500” (“stable”), speed, slope, speed, slope, airbrake, flare, touchdown, idle thrust, spoilers, braking.

0526 Thursday morning: On the bay in ADL (timezone change, we are back 30 minutes again.) I’m feeling wide awake now. Open the freight door, check the FO’s done the paperwork properly and sign it. Pack my bag and walk back to the crew room. We landed on the non-curfew runway in Adelaide (not a big deal, not like Sydney) so I fill in a curfew report.

0545: In the car and driving home. It will take about 40 minutes. I ring my partner who is driving to the same crew room I just left. We pass each other on the freeway in the darkness. We will pass each other again tonight as she returns from work and I set out to repeat last night’s effort.

0645: Home. Feed the cats, push one of them out through the cat door (he uses it to come in but refuses to use it to go out.)

0700: In bed for some sleep. I’ve been awake for 21 hours and need to be up again in 10 hours.

1000: Awake. 3 hours, not enough!

1400: Awake again. 7 hours minus a bit of awake time, maybe 6 hours sleep? Pretty good, one of my better day sleeps, I normally get between 4 and 5 hours.

Potter around the house, get on the computer, browse the SDMB etc.

1600: Try for a nap. Definitely not happening this time.

1720: Shower, shave, etc

1750: Drive to work to do the same route as last night.

Different FO, same aeroplane. He does the first two legs and I do the last two. I feel a lot more alert this time. The timings change slightly and we have a technical issue to deal with on the first leg. The aeroplane tells us the flaps might not work. We make plans with ATC as to how to deal with it. The problem clears itself after 10 minutes. there’s been a lot of rain lately, maybe some moisture in the avionics? Who knows? The rest of the night is trouble free.

0700 Friday morning: Back home in bed. Spend Friday getting over the sleep disruption from the last two nights.

Saturday: Day off.
Sunday: Day off.

The plan for tomorrow? Well I’ve already gone way the hell into TLDR territory so I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that tomorrow is an altogether different ball game. I’ll be up at 5:20am, not pm, and I’ll be joined by three cabin crew and another FO. The duty will be 11 hours but it will only be two sectors and 2.5 hours total flight time. I’ll spend the afternoon having lunch with the crew then sleeping or reading at a mine site in the middle of Australia and I’ll be home by 7pm.

36

I won’t pretend to answer for LSLGuy. My preference would be for lots of short sectors rather than one long sector. An hour is about my ideal sector length. Short enough so you don’t get bored but long enough so you can relax in the cruise, grab a coffee or tea, and eat “lunch” (I call it “lunch” but more often it is a midnight snack. I also tend to say “good morning” to the other crew regardless of whether it is 7am or 7pm.) the departure and arrival are the parts of the flight that I enjoy, so more sectors means more enjoyment for me.

37

It’s 0615. I’m up, fed, clean, dressed and have 5 minutes before the van back to the airport for my day 2: BOS-MIA-BOS.

The work is easier if you only fly one leg per day. I prefer that, and often do MIA to LAX or SFO for one day, then back to MIA on day 2 and call it done. Easier, and much less opportunity for “stuff” to happen and disrupt the workday. Also more “efficient” as we say in that there’s less unpaid time at work and relatively more time off at the hotel.

OTOH the 5+ hours in the middle watching the paint dry and occasionally nudging a button gets long. My butt gets square. Sometimes the day is especially pretty or the conversation is especially good. Other times the radio’s a constant annoying blare, and your partner is either sullenly silent or another constant blare.

All in all it beats working in an office.

Richard: I know you know this, but get out of night freight while you still have your mental and physical health and your wife. Clock-swapping ought to be illegal, it’s abusive to your body and your family. I know she’s a pilot too, and on the same nasty schedule. But still.

Van’s here. Bye 'til tonight.

38

If I were an airline pilot, that’s what I’d like. It just seems more interesting to me.

39

At my company 5-leg days are common, and 6 legs are not unheard of. We often run up against the legal time limits if something throws a wrench into the day’s schedule.

Note that I’m a at a regional, more or less the lowest rung of the industry.

40

Interesting - I spent a few years in the back seat of a news chopper in Baltimore a decade ago. There were times I wondered if flying would have been for me.

Reading the stories it occurs to me I may have had the best gig myself; hours aloft looking at interesting things, puttering around one place to another at a moment’s notice, controlling the camera meant in many ways I was the commander of the copter because I dictated where and when many times…

Good thread guys. Thanks!