Update on whats going on

Hey everyone, figured I would give everyone an update on whats been going on before I get really busy with training. I haven't made any posts in a really long time because frankly I haven't been doing much of anything. Ever since my last day on the ATR in Dallas I have been at home until the company decided to send me to training for my new aircraft the CRJ-700. This ended up being nearly 5 weeks. I started class on March 5^th but then they sent us home for another 2 weeks to complete the computer based training portion of the curriculum. I will return to Dallas tomorrow to start 3 weeks of ground school followed by 2 weeks of simulator training. If everything goes according to the current schedule I should be out flying the real plane sometime in early May.

I have enjoyed my time off from the job and gotten to do a few fun trips but i've discovered, or should probably say reaffirmed, just how much I love flying. To date this year I have only logged about 15 hours of flight time and I really miss it. I really cant wait to at least get into the simulator and get my hands on the controls again. Im glad to know I still have a passion for flying despite all of the negatives that come with being in the airline industry.

On that note today our management has been meeting with our unions to present what they think the pilots as well as the other labor groups at my company need to give up in order to be “competitive”. Details are still cloudy and most information is still speculation at this point so i'll wait to make any comments on the outcome of today at a later point. I would like to bring up my disgust with the CEO of another regional airline in our business. Details came out last night on how Sean Menke the CEO of Pinnacle Airlines (a regional carrier for Delta) gave himself a 59% raise while for the last couple of months has been demanding a 7% pay cut by all pilots at the airline to help the company avoid filling for CH11 bankruptcy. I just don't know how people can feel good about themselves doing something like that. Your asking a person who can barely put food on the table for their family to take a pay cut of their all ready rock bottom salaries, then decide to give yourself another 369K a year. That pay raise alone would pay for nearly 17 new hire first officers yearly salary. It amazed me how corrupt and disgusting Corporate America is.

I'll try to remember to post a few updates as I go through ground school these next 3 weeks. However i'll have many more things to post about again once I start simulator training and when im back flying the line in the new jet.

The waiting game

Hello followers and a very belated happy new year to you all. Im thankfully in the last third of what has been a very long and rough month. Im not sure if i mentioned it in my previous blog post but due to a screw up on my part when putting in bids for my schedule in January i made a mistake and ended up getting stuck with the "S1" line. This is where i have to be at the airport at 5:30AM each morning im on duty and have to sit around till 1:30PM. This is a very bad schedule for my commute since it means i either have to come down to Dallas the day before or drive through the night. The other thing thats not fun is the fact that overnights are rare when you have this schedule. I have only had 1 over night all month so that means im stuck in the crashpad pretty much every afternoon and night. To compound the bad month, i had to go through recurrent ground school and also have my sim check ride this Monday. With the way they scheduled my training i was stuck working 11 days with just 1 day off in the middle.

As im sure most everyone has seen by now they are indeed getting rid of the ATR in Dallas. The last day is supposed to be the 30th of this month. As discussed in my last blog, the displacement bid closed last night so i should "officially" find out where im going next in the days to come. Although its not official yet, i will almost certainly be retraining on a new aircraft the Bombardier CRJ-700 and I will be based out of Chicago. As it stands now this will be a very good thing for me on several levels. For starters i should be able to hold a line which means i'll have a set schedule every month and no more of this reserve stuff. Also at my company our jet aircraft have a higher pay rate for second year pilots then on the props. Also another great thing is right now i wold most likely be able to get a fair amount of OKC over nights which for me would be like a bonus night at home as i would be able to sleep in my own bed while in middle of a trip. To top it off everyone i've talked to that has flown the plane previously in their careers always talk about how great of an airplane it is to fly.

The hardest thing right now is having a lot of unknowns for the next month or so. Until they get the displacements sorted out i wont know when i will actually go to school to learn the CRJ. I also dont really know what my February schedule will be like. The company decided to basically put the entire base on reserve until you go to training. This could be an ok thing since we wont have any planes in base, the only flying they could assign us would be ferry flights for the most part. All in all it pretty much means we all get paid vacation until we start training for our new aircraft. Although i wouldn't mind a little time off im sorta hoping that i start training pretty quick in February so that i can get it over and done with well before the summer starts.

As for the company as a whole there isn't really any new news to pass along. Most everything is still speculation. There have been signs the past few days that they may keep most of the fleet intact at least for now. This would be a very good thing for all employees at the company, only time will tell. The company is required to tell the bankruptcy court on Jan 27 what it has planned for the future fleet. We should know some more concrete information on that day.

Wish i had some good stories to write about but as you can probably tell by now this month has been very dull. Im looking forward to getting Monday's check ride behind me so that i can pretty much kick back and relax until i start training for the CRJ. As more information becomes concrete over the next week or so i will most likely have another post about what the future holds. Thanks for reading and following!