The past two weeks have seen
much variety and uncertainty in my new flying career. I completed my IOE back on February 1 with a run to Lakeview via
Roseburg and Klamath Falls, and have been flying solo ever since. It’s kind of cool to actually finally be
producing revenue for the company, not to mention truly being in command of the
Cessna 402.
Actually, IOE was supposed
to be one day longer than it was, but the pilot I was flying with to Lakeview
got sick and asked me if I felt comfortable flying the run the next day
(Friday) without him. Of course, being
a can-do kind of guy, I said “SURE!” I
flew the 5.1-hour run with a reasonable degree of confidence, even though I was
rewarded with the most icing I had flown in to date. I had a great time, and was able to end the day knowing I had
managed to deliver my 2000 pounds of freight without breaking the plane,
myself, or losing any of the cargo. It
made for a nice weekend.
Unfortunately, the following
week they had no run for me to fly so I ended up sitting afternoon reserve, or
“flying the couch”. Reserve sucks. You get paid for a full day as if you were
flying, but at $8.65/hour, who cares?
You have to sit at the base in uniform waiting for somebody to tell you
to go fly. You even preflight a plane
when you arrive so you can literally be ready to go in five minutes. Luckily for me, I ended up flying two days
that week, both times to Everett, Washington, north of Seattle. It was kind of weird flying a run that I had
never flown with anyone else before, but after parking at the wrong place in
Tacoma (“Where are all the delivery drivers?
What time is it? What’s my
name?”) I got my act together and managed to do a respectable job the rest of
the flight. When I did the same run
again at the end of the week, I felt like an old pro.
The nice thing about reserve
is I got a lot of consulting hours that week, saw my buddies at Jeppesen, and
only had to be at the airport six hours a day.
In contrast, I have
considered this past week to be my first real week of line flying as a
professional pilot. I must say, it has
been a great week. I flew the Burns run
every day except Tuesday (which was Everett again). I’ve had the best time.
This week I’ve done two approaches to absolute minimums, picked up all
varieties of ice, flown at 12000 feet just a wingspan or two above the cloud
tops, landed on snow, joked with tower controllers, forgot to put up my cargo
net once (dumb, don’t ever do that), preflighted in 8-degree weather, flown
over the Crooked River Gorge (incredible), and even reached a maximum ground
speed of 266 MPH (231 knots). That’s
fast! I really like the Burns run. The people at the motel here even keep the
bagels and OJ out until I arrive so I can eat some breakfast.
So far with Ameriflight I
have accumulated 71 flight hours including 29 night and 16 actual instrument,
and shot 15 non-training IFR approaches.
The last week I have really started to settle into a routine. What I mean is, I am much more comfortable
with not only the airplane but also company procedures and paperwork. The first few days I came home very
exhausted, and it took me 45 minutes to unload, post-flight and complete my
paperwork at the end of the day. Now I
come home with some energy left and can be on my way out of the airport only 20
minutes after I shut my airplane down.
In a way, I have found that some degree of boredom is what you want in
this career, because too much excitement
and difficulty can be hazardous to your health, and I am just as happy
to be getting familiar with how things work.
I even have time to hang around with some of the other pilots while I am
waiting for my load manifest to be completed in the morning.
Next week I’m back on
reserve (again, sucks), but am already scheduled to fly two of those days. Also, it’s morning reserve, which means I
show up at 0430, leave by 1000 and have the rest of the day off. Plus, I can sleep while I am waiting around
at that time of day. I much prefer that
over afternoon reserve. I have a much
greater chance of flying since mornings are when pilots call in sick, not
afternoons. So far, Wednesday I go to
Lakeview, and Saturday I go to LaGrande.
Yes, I said Saturday, for which I would have volunteered anyway had I
known about it. The cool thing about
Saturday is I fly out at 0800, drop my freight off in LaGrande, and fly back
home empty (deadhead), which means no layover.
Should be home by 1200, get paid for a full day, and three hours of flying
to boot. The schedule after next week
is undefined, but I think I can expect more reserve and fill-in flights until
the next bid period, which is in four weeks.
I plan to do these updates
regularly now every Friday afternoon.
Please stay tuned!