Professional Pilot Career Journal

 

October 18, 2006 – Six days to go

 

Just a quick update.  Two-thirds of my upgrade training is now complete.  I returned to Houston today to start full flight simulator training tomorrow.  I have four nights in the simulator, then my type ride, then a sixth session of what is called “line oriented flight training” which is designed to transition me from the training environment to the real world environment.

 

Training has gone very smoothly so far.  I passed my oral exam on Saturday which is really half of it.  All classroom instruction is completed.  Now it’s just flying.

 

The good news is that I just found out an hour ago is that I will hold a line in November after I complete training.  There are enough scheduled lines available that although I won’t be able to actually bid a line for November, the scheduling department will build one for me as soon as I finish the training process, instead of putting me on reserve for the month.  That is because my seniority will be high enough that I could have held a line if I wasn’t in training.

 

So it seems that by putting off my upgrade training that I have indeed been successful in avoiding reserve duty!  Unless there are drastic changes to our flight schedules there is no reason that I wouldn’t be able to hold a line in December and beyond as more people senior to me leave the company.  That does wonders for my time off and quality of life.

 

My type ride is on Monday 10/23.  It’s not really much different from any other checkride that I’ve been through except that I’m doing it from the left seat of the airplane and there is absolutely no room for error.