It has been a strange three
months since my furlough from Continental Express. We have spent that time moving to our new place in Las Vegas,
unpacking, hiking in the excellent nearby outdoor recreational areas, spending
some time in the city of neon, and most recently enjoying the company of
friends and family over the holidays.
Last week we even attended the Fiesta Bowl to watch the Oregon Ducks
kick some Colorado butt.
Although Henderson, Nevada
is a pretty cool place to live, it has become increasingly boring not having a
job to go to every day. Furthermore, I
missed flying a great deal, and decided that I wanted to get back into it, regardless
of how I might do it.
I walked into roughly 10
aviation businesses in the Las Vegas area over the last two months and sent
resumes to many more around the country in an attempt to find a new job while I
await my recall to Continental Express, which is still probably about a year
away. Although I haven’t had any luck
with the regional airlines or freight carriers due to them not currently
hiring, I was able to get a position as a flight instructor at First Flight Aviation, a flight
school located at the North Las Vegas airport.
To be quite honest, flight
instruction is a step (or two) backwards in my career. However, in a sense I am filling in a blank
that most people experienced well before being hired by any airlines. Full-time flight instruction is very much a
learning experience, and I believe I still have room to add knowledge from this
experience. In addition, I just simply
enjoy teaching people how to fly. Since
I’ve only had a few students since getting my CFI rating in 1998, I believe
this will be a positive experience for me and help make me a better pilot. And most importantly, it will get me off the
ground where I have spent entirely too much time lately.
Today was my first day at my
new job, and it was a very unique one. Like many CFIs, I am responsible for building my own schedule of
students, and will be paid as an independent contractor based only on time
spent with them in flight and ground instruction. Therefore, it is in my best interest to recruit and schedule students
as quickly as possible, and to that end I have agreed to spend several days a
week at the flight school in order to bring in those students. It’s an arrangement which will require me to
continue relying on my unemployment compensation for a while, but with some
dedication I should be able to change that before too long.
I arrived at First Flight
this morning without even having made three landings in the last 90 days, which
is required by FAA regulation to carry passengers. The people at the school seem to be very nice and fun people,
which is important since I’ll be spending so much time there. My first assignment, after getting familiar
with the aircraft and flight operations, was to give interviews to two local TV
stations who decided to visit us and ask some questions in light of the stupid
kid who crashed a C-172 into a Tampa building last weekend. I’ve never been on TV during the first day
of a job before, so it was an interesting experience. Who would have thought it?
In the afternoon I got a
little air time doing a brief maintenance test flight of our C-172RG. I also have my first lesson scheduled
already for a few days from now, an introductory flight which will hopefully
turn into a student. After watching
myself on the evening newscasts, I went home.
Tomorrow I will do a full checkout with another instructor in the 1997
C-172R to get familiar with the local area and satisfy the insurance people,
and later this week I’ll get a night flight in to finish off my currency
requirements.
Overall, I’m happy so far in
this new job and I think it will be great way to keep myself busy until I find
myself back in the right seat of an airline cockpit.
Since I am once again a
“professional pilot”, I will return to keeping this page updated.