January has been a bit more
realistic of a month for me as a reserve airline pilot. After flying in the holiday season last
month and racking up 70 hours of jet time, I have so far flown just under 20
hours this month and spent a lot more time leaving an ass-print on the couch in
my Chicago crashpad.
I think of bit of luck as
well as the time of year contributed to my flying several four-day trips in
December. This month has been more what
I expected – getting phone calls at odd times of the day from crew scheduling
saying “First Officer Goertzen – you need to be here in three hours for a round
trip to Saginaw”. My response – “Where
the hell is Saginaw?”
Still, I’m enjoying my life
as an ACA pilot. This last reserve
period had to be the most wacky. A
five-day shift resulted in me doing absolutely nothing the first three and a
half days except hanging out with my buddy Kevin and catching up on my internet
surfing. Then they assigned me a
two-day trip starting the fourth night.
I was a bit on the bummed side because the trip encompassed less than 2
hours total flying and finished at 2005 on my last night of duty, which makes
it very difficult for me to commute home as I always do on my last day of
work. Commuting is especially difficult
on a Friday night before a three-day weekend when all the flights into Las
Vegas are full. Knowing that I had little
chance of successfully getting home Friday night, I volunteered to fly an 7.7-hour
day trip on my first day off which was today.
Why would a person volunteer
to do this? Bear with me while I
explain a little bit about how airline pay works. We’re paid for 75 hours of flying a month whether we fly those
hours or not. That’s called a
guarantee. Most of our flying goes
towards that guarantee so really whether I fly 10 hours or 60 hours it means
very little in terms of pay except under some special circumstances. However, when you volunteer to fly on a day
off you are paid “above guarantee”.
Meaning, if I volunteer for an 7.7-hour trip on a day off, I will
actually get paid for 82.7 hours that month because those 7.7 hours aren’t
counted towards my guarantee but actually paid above the original 75
hours. Of course, I lose a day off in
the process, but 7.7 hours of flying are worth quite a bit of money and the way
I figured it I wasn’t going to get home Friday night anyway, so may as well
work Saturday before catching my flight home on a day where the passenger loads
were much lighter, giving my commute flight a greater chance of success.
Turned out it was a pretty
good decision, because we got stuck in Peoria, IL last night – wouldn’t have
made it home regardless. The plane
developed a mechanical problem (half of the shiny lights inside the buttons on
the overhead panel wouldn’t light up).
Couldn’t get it fixed so we spent the night there. Of course, the funny thing is we had spent
the previous night and entire day there after doing only a 45-minute
flight. That’s right, spent over 36
hours in Peoria (where?) Then, we were
told we would deadhead out the next morning back to Chicago, meaning sit in the
back of the airplane while another crew did the flight. Really, not a bad deal - easier to catch a
nap that way and we still got paid for the flight, above guarantee since today
was originally a day off.
So I arrived in Chicago
after a 90-minute delay this morning because the problem the aircraft developed
the night before still wasn’t quite fixed when we got there. Then, the first half of my day trip that I
picked up was cancelled, also due to mechanical problems.
Really, ACA’s airplanes
work. They really do fly. But when they develop problems, we are
pretty quick to ground them for safety reasons, which is a good thing. Inconvenient and annoying? Yes.
Do I still get paid for the cancelled flight? Yes.
Anyway, I flew the second
half of my day trip to Fargo as scheduled and here I am on my way home in first
class on a wide-open America West flight that I caught with 45 minutes to
spare. All in all, I was paid 9 hours
above guarantee for a day where I flew 3.4.
I like it!
I’ve been trying to kill
time at the crashpad by developing another website – a message board for ACA
pilots. I’m trying to relearn some of
my engineering skills partially as a way to make money but really more just to
exercise my brain a little bit. If
you’d like to see the website, it is http://www.acaforums.com, but
it will probably be fairly boring to you unless you happen to be an ACA
pilot. My hope is to use the website as
a possible marketing tool for future software products I would like to sell,
but for now, it’s just for kicks.
Back to work Monday
night. I’ve decided I’m tired of
wasting an entire day commuting to Chicago so I’m going to start taking one of
4 redeye flights that leave Las Vegas around midnight and arrive in Chicago
around 0500 on my first day of duty. I
never fly the first day of reserve anyway (knock on wood) so might as well use it to catch up on
sleep after the redeye flight.
