caligynephobia thanks for the congrats. My time at AA made training a lot easier for me, but I don’t think it really helped or hurt the interview process. All of my “war stories” during the interview were from the Air Force. When I interviewed I had 4,200 hours total time, with about 2,200 hours of PIC (1,700 hours of which was IP time). I had 750 hours of MD-80 SIC time from AA, as well as 550 hours of Flight Engineer time (which I didn’t include in my total time). Again, having the FE ticket helped in training, but it didn’t seem to affect the hiring process.
threemae I know that a lot of people do the permanent PT thing at the hub. Some of the jobs have flight benefits and others don’t - I don’t know which is which, but I do know that you can tell by your FedEx ID. If your ID hangs vertical you can ride on the airplanes; if it hangs horizontal you cannot. If you want to ride along you have to take a safety course and renew it every 6 months. Most of the people riding in back are pilots getting to or from work, but I see a lot of other workers jumping around the system as well. You can bring a couple of bags with you on the airplane - anything more (like golf clubs) and you have to have it go through the cargo screening process. They’ll put your stuff in the belly of the airplane and pull it out for you when you land, but you won’t have access to it in-flight.
The process of getting on the airplane is a little more involved than waving your ID, but it’s still pretty simple. You look up the flight you want, list yourself for it and then show up at the ramp. You’ll get screened like you would at any airport, and they’ll probably go through your bags. You’ll probably ride out to the airplane with the crew and just try to stay out of their way until you get airborne. The whole process is not just cheap - it’s completely free. The only problems come when the seats start filling up. People going to or from work have a higher priority than someone going on vacation, so you might get bumped. You’ll have at least 48 hours notice if you’re going to get bumped, though.
This is the first time I’ve actually asked a pilot anything, so forgive me for being kind of, ah, “new agey.” But I have to know-- you’re up there, it’s quiet, the clouds are below and you have a clear view of the heavens… how does that feel? Or all y’all pure business up there?
Stupid question now: Ever been tempted to do a barrel roll? I’m assuming that flight to Mojave was to put the plane in storage. No passengers, no cargo… how tempting would that be to push the machine to its limits?
mojave66 most of the time while flying we are “all business” but every once in a while I am awed by what I see. It’s usually an early morning flight with the sun just coming up and a solid overcast of clouds. Dark, gray and dreary…until we climb above the clouds and it’s suddenly bright, the tops of the clouds are tinted a beautiful orange from the low sun and you feel like you can see forever. If you don’t feel anything after seeing that you should check to see if you have a pulse!
As for doing barrel rolls - of course I’m tempted. But not very much, and the temptation is easily dismissed. If I want to fly upside down I can do that on my own time!
Following retirement from FedEx in September 2010, I ‘promised’ myself that I would both acknowledge the interest expressed and provide any correcting details to the various forums. It has been an honor to have received notice and questions about my career and ‘quest’ for achieving added knowledge and the pursuit and acquisition of various ratings.
As of July 2013, the ‘display’ of pictures, historical documents and memorabilia that formerly occupied two walls of the FedEx crew room has been moved in entirety for display at the Aviation Department of Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, TN. FedEx elected to dismantle that portion of the Flight Operations Department’s spaces in favor of expanding their crew rest facilities and no space to display these memorabilia. I was given permission to re-claim these gifted items and transacted the transfer personally.
We ALL are driven in some way, shape or form. What might seen ‘nuts’ to some may be a quest that makes sense to others. Where we spend our time, interest and money will vary as to what is important to each of us*** individually***. Gaining an expanded aviation knowledge base was important to me, as demonstrated by spending considerable time in my vocational and avocational pursuits.
You do realise that you are responding to a thread that is almost a decade old, right?
Here’s my question. Why are you putting seemingly random and unimportant words in quotation marks?
Because when he’s new somewhere giving worthwhile input he likes to be snarked at by people of course. Because what we prefer around here is not people who add something but people who like to be snippy about largely irrelevant grammatical quirks.
A new poster comes in to acknowledge an admittedly old reference to him in a cheerful and polite manner and immediately gets taken to task on slightly unusual and entirely insignificant punctuation.
I consider Robert Briggs’ contribution to this thread more pertinent and valuable than chiropter’s by a factor of approximately 8000.
I am just a little plane pilot but was lucky enough to be in a very good place many times.
10,000+ PIC time
Flown 60 different aircraft. Nothing to the number of actually different ones a line pilot does in his time flying.
I have flown 54 different types like C-150, C-172, C-195, C-180, Aerostar, Piper Apache, Piper Aztec, Several flavors of C-130’s, Skyvan, and so on.
IMO, if a pilot does not nor wants to learn more, he is on the way to being more dangerous every day. If you are flying with any attention, it is hard not to learn something every day.
I wish I had been in a position to learn more aircraft than I did.
I was extremely lucky to get the opportunities I did.
Thank you for this post. Otherwise I would not have known I was supposed to read his post with derision and completely ignore anything pertinent he might have written.
