Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Almost done for a bit

I'm on day 2 off my last month holding a line for a while.

I spent the weekend in San Francisco with family and to attend a wedding. The wedding was in a small town near San Jose on Sunday. I had to be in base Monday at 12:30PM. My wife and daughter were planning on going home on Monday afternoon.

After the wedding I headed to San Francisco and jump seated to my base. I had lots of options as SFO is a hub for a few carriers. I got a seat in the back and slept. Arrived late and headed to a hotel.

I'm currently on a two day trip. Day one was long....7.5 hours of flying, but just 3 legs.

The first turn alone was 6 hours 20 minutes. After getting back to base I had a 2 hour sit.

While walking through the terminal I saw a friend who recently upgraded to Captain. He was a fairly senior First Officer but is now the bottom Captain. Quite a change in quality of life. The quality of his paycheck went way up as it's almost double what I make as a First Officer.

We talked about work and I answered a few questions about being on reserve. He's been here about 6 years but never did much time on reserve. I've been on reserve more than not. He was being junior manned into a reserve day. I let him know the contractual pay he would get. After all said and done he will get paid for 10 hours for flying just 1 hour 10 minutes if he takes the option of not getting another day back in return and elects to be paid extra. Not too shabby.

Today is one leg into base and I deadhead home. I start training September 8th. Tomorrow starts a partial reserve month for me. Not looking forward to it...but I'm only on the hook for 5 days.

It's been a crazy 5 months commuting. This whole experience has really put me off commuting in the future. I'm sure it's mostly due to living in base for the first 2 1/2 years of my career. If I commuted from day one I would not know any different. I have friends that have been commuting from day one.

I expect to be in training from September 8th until mid October. I will then hit the Simulator and then off to the line for IOE. Training has been a little backed up, so it could be longer. I'm looking forward to being home for a bit. Not looking forward to sitting in a classroom, learning systems and such though.

2 comments:

  1. Hey Geek,

    I'm just curious about your training.  Are you changing airplanes or is it just recurrent training?

    Thanks!

    ReplyDelete

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