Well, I did it. I have been officially awarded a captain
slot. After five and a half years in
this career, I’m finally going to “upgrade” to the left seat of a jet.
I should go to training
around October 2nd, give or take a week. I could have gone to training as early as
August, but I have vacation in September so I didn’t want to mess that up. Training should take roughly 30 days, so by
early November I will be flying as captain and putting jet PIC time in my
logbook. I am not really looking forward
to training, but nobody does. When I
finish training, I’ll have an EMB-145 type rating on my pilot certificate and a
fourth stripe on my shoulders.
However, I am really looking
forward to sitting in the left seat. I
feel more than ready, and I think I have been doing this a little too long to
just be a first officer anymore. It will
make the job more of a challenge since everything will now be my
responsibility. I also look forward to
the 75% pay raise that comes with the promotion. For the first time, I’ll finally be making
real money in this career.
I put the bid in a couple of
weeks ago, a month earlier than I had expected.
We actually have two types of aircraft in our fleet, the 50-seat
EMB-145, which makes up 90% of the fleet, and the 37-seat EMB-135 which is the
other 10%. These aircraft are
functionally identical – the only difference is number of passengers they hold. But as a result, our contract states the bottom
10% of captains are actually considered EMB-135 captains instead of EMB-145
captains, and get paid about 10% less unless they are actually flying the
EMB-145, which is when they get EMB-145 pay regardless of which captain slot
they hold. It’s kind of complicated. Anyway, none of this matters since due to my
delaying my bid for the upgrade, I held the EMB-145 with no problem so I will
get the higher of the two pay rates.
Good for me!
I now have only seven trips
remaining as first officer. It’s kind of
funny because the first question I get from the captain when I start a trip is,
“So when are you upgrading?” Then I have
to go and explain all the reasons why I waited, and now I don’t have to do that
anymore.
I will definitely be able to
hold a line when I finish training, which was my primary reason for
waiting. I really couldn’t handle the
thought of being on reserve again, and it looks like I will be able to avoid
that for the rest of my career at Continental Express. It’s just impossible to do that while
commuting and have any quality of life.
Speaking of quality of life,
I stopped flying the
I’ve now switched to a
schedule where I have late report times on the first day of my trips so I can
always just commute in from
In addition, I have been
able to have 18-19 days off each month.
Out of over 700 first officers in