I am plugging away on my
career as a flight instructor. Although
I continue to have ups and downs with both my mood and my students’ progress,
in general I feel pretty happy these days.
I have 10 students now and am flying as many hours as I want, which is
more than I can say for many of my fellow furloughed airline pilots. Many of them have been unable to secure jobs
in the flying sector and are doing things like selling fences, so I still feel
pretty lucky to have walked into First Flight with my resume six months ago.
I am now the senior
full-time flight instructor there, which is kinda weird. There’s still a good deal of turnover in
this industry – one of the other guys moved on to flying tour planes over the
Grand Canyon, and another is flying a Hawker on occasion but usually just
spends his time hanging around the airport – I’m not sure if that’s a step up
or not.
Since the beginning of the
year, I have flown 420 hours, more than in any other year of my life and 2002
isn’t even half over yet. 105 hours
last month alone. This makes me
happy. I have “made” four private
pilots, soloed two, and am making good progress training several others. I enjoy the people I work with. My students are wonderful – most of them
hard workers and all very nice people.
This is one advantage over Ameriflight – at least I’m talking to actual
people and not the boxes in the back of my aircraft. That job did get kind of lonely.
My last day at Ameriflight was exactly one year ago today, hard to
believe it’s been that long.
It’s hot here in the
afternoon – normally 100-105 degrees and it will continue to heat up into
August. Therefore, I find myself
arriving at the flight school as early as 0600 on some days and usually
complete my flying by around 1400 or so.
I still hang around the flight school until 1700 and occasionally have
night flights, but usually I’m home well before dinner time. I’m putting in six days a week most weeks, but
next week I’m taking four days off to visit Oregon for the wedding of my good
friend Scot Cromer. Both Stephanie and
I are looking forward to the break and cooling off for a few days.
I did have the pleasure of
flying a Cessna 172 from Salem, Arkansas to Las Vegas last month. A student bought the airplane, and being
that he was only a student pilot he needed someone to fly it back with him, so
we flew out commercially, picked up the airplane, and 16.6 flight hours and two
days later we arrived back at North Las Vegas, having fought 30-knot headwinds
most of the way back. It was a great
trip though, with the best scenery being in northern Arizona. Our route of flight took us over the
following airports: M03 – 7M9 – RVS – ELK – TCC – AEG – FLG – VGT.
No other job possibilities
on the horizon except that I am probably returning to my software consulting
work soon which will be good for the old bank accounts, and give me something
to do while I sit around the flight school in the afternoon. The pay at the flight school hasn’t been too
bad actually (compared with other flight instructors), about $25,000 annualized
if I continue to fly at this rate.
That’s more than I would have made my first year at Continental Express. Speaking of which, my latest projection for
my recall is still early next year, about 8-9 months from now. The airline is changing, for the better I
think, having broken off into its own company, ExpressJet Airlines. We are moving into the West Coast which is
the beginning of a major route expansion that will require recalling our pilots
resuming hiring again probably by spring of 2003. I think that the opportunities there are still very good, and I’m
guessing I’ll upgrade to captain in roughly two years after my recall.
Wow – recall. What a glorious day that will be. I plan to have a big party. I’ll post the pictures here. Not sure who we’ll invite since most of our
friends are up in Oregon.
But the wait is about
halfway over, and these days it really isn’t all that bad of a wait!