Next month I appear to have the same assignment. Afternoon airport standby. The bids aren’t final yet….but I doubt it will change. There has been a change in the bidding process starting with August bids. In the past if a pilot failed to bid (or did not bid enough lines) they would get whatever was [...]

Doing stuff out of the norm. I had a whole day of it. I had a pretty easy day, just a turn. This was to an untowered airport in the middle of a valley surrounded by mountains. I have flown in an out of this airport a few times. This would be the first time [...]

Lots of pilots have second jobs. Some even have third jobs. I know a few pilots who wait tables and tend bar on off/reserve days. I fly with more than a few Captains that have another business totally unrelated to aviation. Having another source of income not only helps the pocket book…but is also a [...]

Each month around the 20th I bid for the next month schedule. Since I am the most junior pilot in my status…it’s more of a formality as I normally get what’s left over. This month I got the airport standby line I wanted. The afternoon airport standby line this month has partial weekends off (Thursday [...]

Since I started at my airline the following regionals have furloughed (in no particular order): Air Wisconsin Horizon American Eagle Expressjet Republic ASA Comair Trans-States PSA Mesa and soon to be Mesaba. Very long list when just two years ago they were ALL hiring like gangbusters. The only major regional not to furlough is Skywest [...]

So I was sitting airport standby watching the flights like I always do. There was a 6:45PM overnight that had no crew. The flight had been pushed back to 8PM and two pilots were junior manned into flying it. I was assigned a 9:30PM departure. Fine. I was to have a 9 hour overnight and [...]