Well, this is it. My last day flying freight. This morning I made my final landing at
Lakeview and tonight I will make my final approach into Portland, at least for
a few years, since Continental Express doesn’t fly on the West Coast.
As if by some weird
foreshadowing premonition deal, last Friday on my way home Portland Approach cleared
me to fly the Moxee 3 Arrival. For
non-pilots, this won’t mean much, but it was the first STAR I have ever
flown. STARs (Standard Terminal Arrival
Routes) are procedures normally reserved for jets and high-flying turboprops
and are a method of sequencing traffic into a major airport. I was at a particularly high altitude that
day and conditions must have been right to get the STAR. Maybe they knew of my impending career move
and wanted me to get some practice! But
anyway, it felt pretty cool, like I was one of the big boys.
Now it’s on to the business
of selling the house and getting ready to move. I leave two weeks from Saturday for Houston to begin my training
at CoEx. I’m pretty excited to get
started.
I looked back at my logbook
today. Since I began flying for
Ameriflight on January 16th, I have logged 326 hours. Of those, 50 hours have been at night, and a
whopping 61 hours have been in the clouds.
I shot 112 instrument approaches and made 393 landings (all with the
gear down!) When you add the 8 hours
I’ve managed to fly in the Cessna 182, I have more total flight hours so far
this year than I had for all of last year.
Unfortunately, I will
probably be flying very little for the next couple of months, but I could use
the break. Ground school will keep me
plenty busy, and the next time I take to the air, it will most likely be in a
jet.
I took some pictures around
Ameriflight today which I am happy to share.
My next entry may not be for a few weeks unless something significant
happens between now and then, but at this point I hope there are no surprises
and I report to class on July 9 as planned.
Thanks for following along
in my career journal. Many updates will
be forthcoming shortly when I begin the next step of my career!
