Professional Pilot Career Journal

December 17, 2005 – Captain? It will have to wait.

Well, it’s official. As of October I am officially a first officer by choice.

After almost five years in this career, I finally have enough seniority at an airline to sit in the left seat of a regional jet since my seniority number is now roughly 1550 out of 2800 pilots. However, I have chosen to remain where I am.

I have talked about in previous entries about the advantages of remaining in the right seat. As a senior first officer I now have 17-18 days off per month and can hold almost any schedule I want. Plus, with our move to Las Vegas it would be necessary for me to commute to a reserve assignment which means I would only be home only 7-8 days per month. That is really just no way to live, so I’m just going to hang tight until I have enough seniority to upgrade to captain with a decent quality of life.

Still, it feels really good to at least know I have the option. Honestly if it weren’t for my consulting work with Jeppesen I might have taken the upgrade, but the income provided by my work makes the financial advantage of upgrading less important. With our new house and new life together I would simply rather be at home rather than sitting on reserve in a crashpad in my new base in Houston. It will be fun seeing friends who I trained with moving over to the left seat, and now there is a chance I might actually end up flying with them. Kinda makes me proud.

I’m really looking forward to flying out of Houston again although it won’t be for a few weeks since I have vacation next month. As I mentioned in my last entry, it is my plan to bid schedules of red-eye flying out of Los Angeles. It will make my commute easier because I fly through the third night of my four-day trip and essentially have the fourth day off. It is my dream to commute home and be sitting in the neighborhood swimming pool in Las Vegas by 1:00 PM on these days. Not a bad way to spend a day where I’m technically working. Also, the 24 hours spent in LA each trip will always been enjoyable as an overnight, especially during the winter months. As you might have guessed, I really don’t like to be where it’s cold anymore. Getting too old to spend my winters shivering.

I haven’t been flying all that much – about 30-40 hours a month because on average I drop every other trip to devote more time to my consulting work. In fact I’m writing this as I fly home on United after several meetings this week in Oregon where the software division of Jeppesen is located. That brings me back to my usual question of if I ever REALLY changed careers, as it seems I spend a great deal more time on my software work than I do on my flying. But I’m quite happy doing things this way, and if I wish to return to 100% flying I can always do so. But for now the extra money helps with the new house, and the work keeps my brain occupied. Flying turns my brain to jelly.