Professional Pilot Career Journal

June 11, 2005 – Full circle

This is just a quick update to let you know about some interesting quirks of the airline industry.

You may recall back when I was hired at ACA it was due to the efforts of my very good friend Will Donaca. He and I flew together at Ameriflight way back in 2001 and he subsequently got me an interview at ACA which resulted in being my being hired in September 2002 after my furlough from Continental Express after 9/11. Here’s a recap. Even though I’m no longer at ACA, it was a wonderful help to my career as well as making it possible to meet my beautiful wife.

I was finally able to return the favor. The sinking ship that is ACA furloughed Will late last year as they continue to struggle with their operation as a low-cost carrier flying under their own banner. Will was able to get an interview with ExpressJet in March of this year for which I was happy to write him a letter of recommendation. He was hired, successfully completed training, and will be starting IOE in Houston next week.

This is just an example of how this industry works for anyone trying to get into it. Help your friends. Will and I have pushed each other’s careers along for years now and could both be hosed if we weren’t able to provide that to each other. Good stuff!

Also, here’s a fun fact. In four and a half years of professional flying, including flight instruction, I have netted $78,400 of after tax income in 2360 hours of flying. Wow – good thing I didn’t get into this for the money, because that averages out to $17,422 per year. Looking at it another way, it averages to $33.22 per flight hour. While $33.22 per hour may not sound so bad, remember that for most of my pilot career I have been on reserve so I have been getting paid a 75-hour monthly guarantee while sometimes only flying 25 hours per month – so that is an artificially inflated number. If I had actually been flying 75 hours per month, that number would be more like $19.36 per flight hour. I don’t mean to imply that this career has sucked – it has been awesome even with the ups and downs, but I sure haven’t been breaking any personal income records.

The only other piece of news is that Carey and I are moving to Las Vegas where we are building a house. I have missed the desert immensely and we are thrilled to finally return. I will be transferring my domicile from Cleveland to Houston as of August 1^st and will commute to there from Las Vegas when we move into our home later this year. It won’t be any easy commute, but it is so much easier to commute as a lineholder than a reserve that it really should be fine, and well worth it to finally live where we want to live.

That’s it!