Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Back to the grind

My last three day was pretty uneventful. I did manage a 10 minute turn. It helped that there were only 6 passengers in and 10 passengers out. I didn't feel rushed at all. In that 10 minutes I had time to run the parking checklist, passengers left the plane, I did my post flight, hit the lav,  bought a cup of coffee, passengers boarded, I called to get clearance, programmed the FMS and away we went.

It was a fairly productive 3 day in that the high headwinds caused me to overblock the 3 day trip by 47 minutes.

Yesterday I commuted over to an ATP location to teach the RJ course. One of the students looked really familiar....I flew with him when I was a CFI.

He was set to start the ATP 90 day fast track, but needed a few more single engine hours to meet the 85 requirement. I flew with him to his hometown where his grandfather picked us up and took us to dinner. That was 4 years ago.

He decided to not start with ATP and spent 4 years in the real world. He CFI'd on the side and has just over 1000 hours total time and ready to head to an airline.

The other student was a much older man who got his private in the 70's then decided to work with the family business. He bought a Seneca and later a Cirrus to fly for fun. He sold the business a few months ago and is heading to an airline as well.

They both did well. It's an eye opening course. Even though the flows and checklist are very different than what I do at my airline, they are similar enough for me to quickly adapt.

I really enjoy teaching the course. Normally there are 4 students per day. This week I only had two and thus only get 1/2 my pay from ATP. Since I had the whole day scheduled to teach I went ahead and spent double the time with the students. I'd do it for free...that's how much I enjoy it.

I start a really crappy 3 day tomorrow. It's a 5-2-5 trip. Five legs on day one, two on day two and five legs on day 3. A total of 13 hours of flying. Simple math shows they legs average an hour a piece. Lots of up and downs. I traded into this trip so I could be off Monday since my daughters day care is closed and my wife no longer has Presidents Day as a paid holiday. The things you do for love! My original trip was MUCH nicer.

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