Professional Pilot Career Journal

May 2, 2004 – ¡Mexico!

Well, as of April 1^st I am no longer a commuter. Life is much better now!

Carey and I moved to our new place in Cleveland. It’s a beautiful apartment in a nice suburb called Westlake, about 10 miles to the west of Cleveland. We’re getting settled in and I even have an Ohio driver’s license. Despite my occasional lament about the fact I keep moving further east instead of west and that it snowed here last week, I’m quite happy to be living a normal life again.

My seniority is enough to allow me to hold a reserve availability time starting at 10:00 AM each day. It’s not a bad way to go knowing that I rarely will have to go to work before noon unless it’s a multi-day trip which can have earlier report times starting on the second day. I have been flying more recently but still only flew 48 hours in April. I expect to fly more during the summer but if I am wrong I won’t be disappointed. Summer is approaching and it’s nice to be home. I have followed through with my commitment to take better care of my body – I’ve begun an exercise program and am eating better both on the road and at home. It’s nice to have a refrigerator full of groceries again. This is SO MUCH BETTER than wasting countless hours in a crashpad.

I’m in New Orleans right now on an 18-hour overnight but am not motivated enough to take the $28 cab ride to get down to the French Quarter to see why people love this city so much so instead I did some fun analysis on the type and location of flying I’ve done lately. Here is a new map of all the airports where I have made a landing. The new map is color coded – the blue airplanes are airports where I landed small aircraft, the red are airports where I first landed flying for ACA, and the green ones where I first landed while flying for COEX. I’m up to 227 airports now – 151 in small planes, 55 in the CRJ with ACA, and so far 21 new ones in the ERJ with COEX. I have landed at quite a few more airports than just 21 with COEX but most I had already been to with ACA. I’ve landed as far west as Gold Beach, OR (4S1) with Ameriflight and as far east as Portland, ME (PWM). The north extreme was Skagit Regional Airport in northern Washington (75S at the time but it’s now BVS) and my new southern extreme as of yesterday is Monclova, Mexico (MMMV). For a fun reference, here is the same map as of about 15 months ago. Well, at least I think it’s fun.

Other than Canada, which to me is just basically a northern extension of the United States with some French people (sorry to any canucks that I just offended, but hey, it’s my damn web page – where were you during the war) Monclova is my first real international destination. Monclova is a small city in Coahuila about 130 miles SW of Laredo, Texas. It’s certainly not a tourist city and I’m not even sure why we fly there since we had 2 passengers on the way down and 4 on the way back, but it sure does feel like Mexico. We were only there for about 9 hours on a short overnight but it was pretty cool feeling like I was in a foreign land. Nothing was in English and I was told not to drink the tap water. We fly to a lot of cities south of the border and the word on the street is that any airport in Mexico with a long enough runway to land a jet will eventually be served by us. I saw real mountains for the first time in five months and palm trees which was quite exciting. I’ve missed the desert. Other notable items – speed bumps right in the middle of major highways, Corona and Coca-Cola ads everywhere (really, you can’t look down the street without seeing one), and a hotel shuttle van with every light on you can imagine (anti-lock brakes, parking brake on, check engine) while driving to the airport. It’s funny to see Spanish subtitles when watching TV shows in English. Oh, and nudity and foul language is no problem on the local Fox affiliate.

The air traffic controllers in Mexico have a great deal of respect for pilots, which is nice because they’ll pretty much let you do whatever you need. Unfortunately, that also means they will not stop you from flying into a mountain if you ask for it so you really need to be on top of your charts and situational awareness. I flew a non-precision approach complete with a procedure turn for the first time in a very long time in Monclova last night Most airports there don’t have terminal radar so you’re really on your own. It was interesting flying out this morning and being immediately cleared to 33,000 feet – that doesn’t happen in the US. No taxiway in Monclova – we taxied the full length of the runway before making a 180 and taking off. Speaking of respect, it was also nice not feeling like a criminal when going through security down there. They actually don’t assume every aircrew is attempting to bring a box cutter on board so we can “take down the plane” and pretty much leave us alone. They don’t even try to smell our breath to see if we’ve been drinking like the airport security people here in the USA who are trying to be heroes. In fact, all around it was nice to be treated well – it helps that they probably don’t know I make $17,604 a year. Oh, and they’re polite to the passengers too – what a concept.

I’m looking forward to more Mexico overnights – most of them are actually 33 hours so you can get out and find something to do. If we expand in Mexico as much as I think we will, I might even try to learn some Spanish.

The other new places I have flown lately haven’t been too remarkable but going to Providence, Rhode Island last week marked the 46^th state I’ve stepped foot in (not necessarily flown into). I also was amused that a local bartender in Omaha, Nebraska didn’t consider Fat Tire and Rolling Rock to be domestic beers. I guess to someone who has lived in Omaha their whole lives Colorado and Pennsylvania really are foreign lands.

I’m having fun. As Carey and I have said a great deal over the last month, “life is good”.