Saturday, April 4, 2009

Forgot to bid

Today was a waste of a day.

I woke up at 4:50AM. By 5:15AM I was driving down my street to the airport. I am very fortunate to live 8 miles from the airport I'm based at. My wife and I bought our house years before I even thought about seriously joining an airline.

By 5:30 AM I was pulling into my parking spot. I call it mine. I park in one of  three spots every time I go to work. A few minutes later I was on a packed employee bus headed to the terminal. I spotted a Captain who is junior on the same aircraft I fly. I figured he was also here for morning airport standby (aka airport appreciation).

By 5:40AM I was walking off the bus. I talked to the Captain...he is here for the same thing as me. We sign in and I make my way to the quiet room. My union requires the airline to provide a quiet,clean and comfortable area for pilots on ready reserve. The room is pretty nice. It's a sealed off room with lazy boys.

Back in February I had morning ready reserve for the month. I had a routine. I would sign in at 5:55AM, find MY recliner right away and sleep until 10AM. Around 10AM I would gather my laptop bag and head out to the terminal for breakfast and coffee. I would then browse the Internet until the end of my shift. Sleeping made the time go by so much faster.

This morning I found MY recliner again, put on my headphones, turned on my MP3 player and place my cell phone on my chest. I was only able to sleep until 8AM. Boooo.

I updated my Jepp charts. This was an odd update. Most updates have me replacing several charts. This update had me removing several GPS RNP approaches. Whatever. Today I haven't actually shot a GPS approach at my airline outside of the simulator.

I hung out in the crew room for about twenty minutes talking to some other pilots. There was a Captain who is somewhat senior who was on ready reserve for a different aircraft. He is normally a line holder. Last month he forgot to bid for this month. When pilots forget to bid, they get whatever is left over. Thus he got ready reserve for the month. He hasn't been on reserve in years. Kinda funny. Kinda sad. I was told pilots only forget to bid once. I went up to the terminal, found my spot and watched Seinfeld episodes and browsed the Internet for a few hours. Once I saw all of the flights (for my aircraft) were staffed I began packing up. I saw the last flight board and headed out the door.

Waste of a day. I'm off tomorrow and then start afternoon airport standby again on Monday.

Friday....my wife and I are headed to The Bahamas. We were going to fly somewhere International, but we decided to wait and see how my displacement goes before spending a large amount of money. The cruise was pretty cheap. Not only do airline employees fly for next to nothing/free, we also get HUGE discounts on travel.

2 comments:

  1. Just wondering were you ever in a Virtual Airline?

    ReplyDelete
  2. or currently in one?

    ReplyDelete

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