A typical day of flying for you

[Archer]

I am interested in knowing the typical day for you...whether you are a 777 captain flying O'Hare-Heathrow, a Embraer 135 first officer, a corporate Citation catpain...or someone who flies Senecas...

let us hear it (and yes, you can complain or be as excited as you want lol)

Archer

 

[bobbysamd]

Typical instructor day

For me, it would be arriving at work at 0700. My first student might be a primary student for a local dual. Hopefully, he/she would have the aircraft preflighted. We'd brief the flight, fly it about 1.3, come back and debrief. Maybe next, I'd have two instrument students who are flight partners. We'd have a back-to-back sims totalling about 2.5, including pre and post. Then, maybe lunch with colleagues at the airport restaurant. Afternoon, a pair of multi students for back-to-back duals. Sometime during the day, I prepare and submit my proposed schedule for the next day. It is posted, and maybe I got everything I wanted, or nothing. In any event, I might finish at 1800. Eleven hours on duty, but paid maybe for six or seven hours. Six or seven days a week.

At least when you have a "real" job, you are paid for every hour you are on duty. But, it was fine . . . . .

 

[antney]

I fly for a regional airline, and my day really changes everytime I go in. Depending on the month it varies. This month for instances I fly what we call stand ups, were you are the last flight out to your desitantion and the first flight out, and the company is nice enough to give you a hotel for 4hours. I'm gone for 4 nights, not getting a lot of flight time and one landing a day. This is for stand ups and in my case I'm junior so this is the line I can hold, whcih for me is better than reserve. Your home everyday and still get overnight pay which you will not spend since you have no time to eat. I average about 14, 15 days off a month, The mimimum is 11 ( I believe) and I know of pilots having 18 days off. I fly a saab and are 4 day trips go from 7 leg days to as little as 2 legs. Most of the time your the morning shift, and then there is a night shift. Meaning, if you have the morning shift your usually in the hotel about noonish, and out the next morning by 5 or 6 a.m. If you have the afternoon or night shift, you usually leave the hotel at 3-5 p.m. and get at your hotel by 9-12 p.m. All in all it's really not that bad of schedule. Your home a lot mroe than your normal 9-5 day. I hope this helps your question, and remember this might and will be different throughout the industry with different airlines. This is just how ares work.
Anthony

 

[bobbysamd]

Regional schedule

I wouldn't care for stand-up overnights, but, all in all, that's not a bad schedule, really. I'd like having 14 days off a month.

Would like a few more landings, though.

 

[CF34-3B1]

As previously noted, the schedule for regional guys can vary a lot even within the same base and seat depending on seniority and personal preferance.

I personally like 2 day trips that have afternoon report times (not a morning person) so my prefered schedule looks (usually) like this:

Day 1: Report 1440 local
DFW-AUS
AUS-DFW
DFW-RDU get into RDU 2325 local

Day 2: Report 1150 local
RDU-DFW arrive DFW 1440, done for the day, go home

Day 3: Report 0700 local (See, we don't always get exactly what we want)
DFW-SDF
SDF-MCO
MCO-SDF arrive SDF 1805 local

Day 4 Report 0600 local
SDF-MCO
MCO-SDF
SDF-DFW arrive DFW 1425 local, off for 3 days

We have a lot of 2, 3 and 4 day trips, plus a lot of continuous duty overnights. If you like to vary the kind of flying you do and the places you go, once you get some seniority, you can usually do so. A typical 4 day for us would be something like this:

Day 1:
DFW-MAF

Day 2: REPT: 0500L
MAF-DFW
DFW-MLU
MLU-ATL
ATL-PIT
PIT-JFK

Day 3: REPT: 0620L
4551 JFK-ATL
4729 ATL-SDF
4555 SDF-MCO
4556 MCO-SDF

Day 4: REPT: 0545L
SDF-MCO
MCO-SDF
SDF-DFW

 

[rattler]

A typical day...well I currently fly for a small fractional, in a PC12, so there is nothing typical about my job. I work a six on four off schedule. The six days that I am on, I am only "on call" and and usually spend my time ralaxing at home. I fly to a wide variety of airports, everything from JFK to to small grass strips. Most of my pax are private owners just going on vacation. The airports I frequent most include: Teterboro NJ, White Planes NY, Nantucket MA, Martha's Vineyard MA, Bedford MA, Jacksonville (Craig)Fl, Hilton Head SC, St. Simons Island Ga etc. I fly approx. 40 hours a month. Job is very relaxed and alot of fun.

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

We left a midwestern city at night to pick up cargo in Ohio. We dropped in in Kansas City, stayed overnight, and then took an aircraft with freight on board bound for Mexico. We got to El Paso for customs/fuel, and then took it to Mexico, then returned to El Paso.

As you can see, there is no typical day for us. In the last 6 weeks I've been to Mexico 4 times, Canada 5, West Coast 4, East Coast 1, and TX a lot.

I saw Bob Dole in a little airport in NC, and in TN the Redskins owner's plane pulled up next to us-he was coming in for the Wash-Titans game that day.

Cliff
GRB

 

[English]

I also work for a small fractional, flying the CJ and CJ2. I usually fly two or three days per week. A typical day is showing up at 6 am for a 7 am departure, a deadhead leg to pick up the passenger, then flying about an hour to the destination. Always west coast flying. Wait at the destination about six hours or so, so I usually get a rental or crew car and go have lunch, go shopping, take care of errands, make phone calls, play on the internet, socialize with other crews hanging out at the FBO, or take a nap. The return drop gets me home around 5 or 6. The other typical day is taking a passenger and dropping them somewhere, usually within an hour's flight, then returning a few days later to pick them up. Overnights are rare, with the company's preference to bring the plane home when a client has a multi-day trip, but if it is to a vacation destination they'll let me stay the duration of the client's stay. Typical destinations are Phoenix, Tucson, Scottsdale, Laughlin, Las Vegas, San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, and Santa Monica. Vacation destinations which seem to be recurring are Cabo San Lucas, Lake Tahoe, and Mammoth.

We fly single pilot, which I thought would be a real bummer when I first took the job, after having flown at two different regionals and being used to the crew environment. But I'm surprised at how much I enjoy flying single pilot. The CJ is a fun little airplane to fly. I had no idea when I was flying for the regionals that I could find a job like this that I would enjoy so much. I thought "flying corporate" meant a life on pager. I also had no idea how much better the pay and work rules are compared to the regionals.

 

[banned username 2]

I am a Corporate Pilot, so no 2 days are ever the same...

On a trip I did a couple weeks back, I ate breakfast in Chicago, Lunch overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in Boston... and had a great sunset dinner overlooking the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco...

Our trips vary from quick domestic drop-offs to several day Europe trips to 4-8 day Asia trips... anything and everything... but we only average about 10-12 days a month of work, so I can't complain too bad...

 

[darien]

typical day

Usually up by 600am at the airport by 700 Get my destination weather brief and preflight done by 730. In the air by 800am at my destination with in a few hours. Within 45 minutes from landing I'm eating some delicious eggs, pancakes or french toast. After I chit chat with a few old buzzards (elderly pilots that you find at every fbo in florida) and watch a few planes takeoff, I'll take off for my return trip home. I usally land back to my home base airport by1200 and have to force myself to leave the airport and go to work . Driving home wishing I could to that every day.

Truth be told the breakfast at these small FBO dinners aren't really that great but i'm ecstatic about having a reason to fly some 100knot piston plane to a destination. Not as glamorous as a jet but it's flying and that's what i luv to do.

Great day to ya,

 

[Fr8Dog]

2 weeks of fr8dog life

I really don't have a typical day flying 135 freight so I will just give you a few examples. Basically you can take what atpcliff said and apply it to midwest flying. Two weeks ago on Monday I started off the ground in MKE at 0545 then to Palwaukee, IL pick up 680labs of hazmat (horse piss/ethanol mixture) drop off in Baudette, MN but the weather was $hitt so diverted to an apt 30 miles away then back to Milwaukee.

Tuesday cell phone rings speed to MKE then fly to some little hole in the wall south of Chicago (C18 was the indentifer) then over to Willow Run(YIP). Drop off the freight and sit in the pilots lounge at Active Aero for 3 hours then the cell phone rings so I am off to Peru, IL (VYS) pick up thousands of door handles for toyota, a full 402 load including the nose and wing lockers, drop off in Georgetown, KY(27K) and back to MKE for a 15 hour duty day, and 7.95 hours of flying.

Wednesday morning had a PAX trip over to LaPeer, MI (D95) so that was easy, except that they had no WX reporting so I had to go in there VFR, and pump my own gas while I am in a shirt and tie. But on the bright side the pax were only gone for just over 3 hours. Got back and headed home to ge some well need sleep, only to get a call for a pop up pax trip for a 4am departure from Milwaukee up to Marquette, MI (SAW) and return from there at 1200.

Thursday afternoon I went home got changed only to get called back out to the airport to do a Green Bay, to South Bend trip with 2 skids of pistons at 400lbs each in the 402 then back to Milwaukee for some sleep.

Friday morning I went into the office early and set up a schedule with FedEx Custom Critical for a departure out of Green Bay to South Bend every 3hrs through Sunday Afternoon with 2 skids of pistons in the Beech99 and the 402. Friday night then flew 2 of those trips and got off duty at 2345 on Friday night.

Sunday morning at 0005 after getting 24hrs of rest in a 7 day period I went back on duty to do two more Green Bay trips and then I was done until monday morning because I was at my MAX flight time limitation in 7 days.

Last Monday night I did fly though to Kansas City and waited for 7.5hrs because of late freight, and when it did come there was only 3pcs instead of the orignal 7 and off to Janesville, WI to drop them off and repo back to MKE at 230am. If any of you have waited at KCI ground/Air Freight Center in MCI you know how much fun it would be there for 7.5 hrs.

Tuesday and Wednesday I didn't fly which was kind of nice to have a couple of days off, then I Thursday and Friday I flew some extra stuff for Airbone from Milwaukee to Central Wisconsin and then just repositioned back to Milwaukee.

You can see how much of a normal week, or day you can have when you fly ondemand freight and just how exciting it can be when you have weather and lack of sleep to deal with!! In the last couple of months I have been to airports everywhere from Georga, South Carolina, to New York, to Minnesota. I can't think of any thing else I would rather do then fly around freight in old airplanes by myself.

 

[HAL]

I'm from a fairly small base for Hawaiian - we usually only have two flights a day out of Seattle.

I'll show at the plane (767) an hour before departure. Dep times are 0845 for Honolulu, and 1000 for Maui. First I check the cockpit setup, and do the external preflight. Usually by the time the outside is done the Captain is there, and one or the other of us loads the flightplan and performance info into the FMS. Once the other paperwork and checklists are done we wait for everyone to get onboard, get a clearance, and go.

We're usually over the coastline within 15 minutes, and shortly after that SEA center hands us over to enroute (AIRINC) on the HF radio. We make position reports every 30 - 60 minutes depending on the groundspeed but other than that, there's not much to do. Check the 'official paperwork' (i.e. newspaper), eat our pretzels & Mac nuts, order lunch, monitor the plane and watch the Pacific roll by.

Normally we alternate legs, so one will fly over and the other flies the return the next day. If you are flying there's not much to do other than monitor the plane. The non-flying pilot talks to AIRINC and plots our location if we're flying off-route. Since there's so much quiet time and the SEA base (and Hawaiian in general) is fairly small, there's a lot of small talk about what's going on in our lives, and you get to know the other pilots pretty well. It's like a big family. Once we're within range (about 300nm) AIRINC turns us over to HNL center and from there it's pretty straightforward descent, approach & landing. We can't do a return flight the same day because of the FAA rules allowing only 8 hours per day for a two man crew. A round trip would take a little over 11 hours.

We get about 24 hours in the islands on each layover, so the van takes us to the hotel where I usually change and go to the beach for a swim, then back for dinner. Up early again for either a run or snorkeling, then breakfast, watch TV or back to the beach, then leave around noon for the airport and the trip home. Normal arrival time in SEA is 2145 to 2300. A few days off, the repeat. We'll normally do seven or eight of those a month.

So in short - life is good and the flying is easy

Yes we sometimes have to do a CAT II approach back into SEA, but that just keeps the rust off of our flying skills.

Hope this helps.

HAL

 

[HappyFlying]

We fly part 91 and 135 in a King Air 100 and also a 300. I mostly fly the B100 on the part 91 trips with the owner and his wife. Most of the time we fly less than an hour, sit around the FBO for hours until the PAX (never on time) return then fly home. I take my laptop and play Freecell and Spider until my brain goes numb. Sometimes I get to dog sit their poodle. That's actually a blast because I've taught him a bunch of tricks. I fed it too many SlimJims as rewards one time and it game him really bad breath. By the way, never give a poodle coffee before you fly home. It makes them airsick. My other responsibility is cleaning up the cabin. Boring but I get to log the part 91 trips as PIC. It also pays better than a day at my other job.

Happy flying

 

[IAHERJ]

Typical 4 day trip for me last month. Thursday evening I take a 767-400 from IAH-EWR and spend the night in the Wyndham hotel at my own expense since I chose to live in one base and work out of another. Day 1 of the real 4 day trip goes something like this:

Check in at 0700
Meet crew then take elevator up to C concourse and depending on the gate for first leg go to one of 3 weather rooms. Get release and weather information and see what ramp fuel has been loaded onto the ERJ. Either go with that or request an upload if I want more. Sometimes you have to go through the dispatcher for this and be ready to have a good reason for more fuel. Then off to the gate to board and stow the bags. The agents usually let us know how oversold we are and how many jumpseaters are trying to ride etc.

Day 1
EWR-MEM
MEM-IAH
IAH-BTR

Arrive around early evening and layover at the Marriot until around 2 p.m. the next afternoon. Have a few cold beverages that evening with crew.

Day 2 mid afternoon

BTR-IAH
IAH-MKE
MKE-CLE

Layover in Cleveland, our second largest ERJ hub. Holiday Inn Select is the hotel and big CAL and Southwest are staying there as well. This makes for a fun time in the lounge or sometimes the reserve guys or pilots living in CLE that we know will take us out on the town since they have cars. Report to airport the next day around 1300 in the afternoon.

Day 3 Afternoon
CLE-ATL
ATL-CLE
CLE-YUL
Layover in Montreal although my layovers in YUL have all been 15 hours or less I've had friends spend 33 hours there. I have not been so lucky.

Day 4
YUL_EWR
EWR-SAV
SAV-EWR

Finish the 4 day just in time to catch a flight home to IAH but flight is full so I have to sit in 767 cockpit and play engineer for the pilots. This involves opening and closing the door, getting coffee and even changing the printer paper roll in the ACARS printer. I am rewarded with a first class meal that went uneaten and all the expresso I can handle as the F/A was testing out the new cappuccino machine. I wish we had those on the ERJ! I wish we had her on the ERJ as she was nice looking.

That is a typical 4 day for a EWR based ERJ pilot. My last 2 day was a 31 hour Halifax Nova Scotia layover last month. Not much flying (11 hour 2 day with 2 credit hours for the dead day in Halifax) but a lot of fun at the waterfront bars until late the first night and some luck at the casino.

With the new longer range ERJ's comming many day trips will be available with some West Coast turns being the whole day. Example will be IAH-Palm Springs-IAH. I don't know the 3 letter for Palm springs.

Yes I'm extremely bored right now. I'm on a 27 hour BHM layover.

IAHERJ

 

[TurboS7]

Amazing you freight guys are flying the same stuff going to the same palces that I flew years ago. No GPS though. I had a chance to become the manager of the VLY airport when it was first built. How is it there now???

 

[DitchDriver]

6:00 am: wake up in the pilot lounge at FBO. I had an inflatable matress so it was really comfy!

6:05 am: Snikers bar from vending machine, coffe, WX briefing on computer, file IFR if necessary. Convince the briefer you are not a weekend warrior so they'd let you file.
(Using "TN" prefix with approach conrollers commanded short approaches and all other shortcuts and favors. Not using it meant they felt obliged to hold your hand every step of the way)

6:10 am: Rub frost off the wings & windshield, check fuel and pick up the clearance, if necessary.

~6:30 am: Freight arrives (50 - 150 lbs of bank junk)
Taxi to the nearest RWY intersection real fast, runup on the roll. Ground control gives clearance for takeoff and all else until I have to call center. (local time is actually 5:30, this run crossed a time line)

Watch a beautiful sunrise sometime during a 90 minute flight.

~8:00 am: Land and hand the freight to the courier. This is when I went off duty. Adjust times ON and IN to meet 14 hour duty day requirement and call them in to dispatch office. If freight was late, run and hide just in case if Feds show up.
Lay down in *warm* FBO lounge and finally regain feeling in fingers and toes. Fall asleep.

~10 am: Another pilot lands, now we can take the only company car to the company apartment. Once there, cook & eat some real food. Fight sleepines whole day by inventing stuff to do in a strange town. If unable, fall asleep on another air mattress. However, that meant I'd be restless next night, trying to invent things to do in another strange town, only in the night time.

~5:30 pm: get going to the airport. Get weather, file if necessary. Preflight the plane.

Morning IN time +10 hrs: Come on duty, check in with dispatch.
~6 pm: freight arrives, take off

Dream up a new excuse for being late (schedules were timed by dividing straight line distance by the book cruising TAS of company's quickest twin, and I was not in it).

~8 pm: Land, call dispatch, go get some grub.
10 pm sharp is your cutoff for 8 hours til 6 am (see above, 'nuff said)
~Midnight: FBO cleaning staff leaves and it gets quieter so I can fall asleep on the air mattress. Welcome any transient pilot "into my bedroom".

See above for 6 am next day.

Repeat for a week (Sun night - Fri night), going home on weekends. And now I *kinda* miss it, but there's another thread about that.

That's why I quit freight. It is different (much better) now. Flying PAX = (half) sane schedules.

 

[uavchaser]

Here's my average day

wake from my own bed at 6am drive for 1:30 to an airport in a s-hole in the desert. Get a phone call to bring the 210 out. Pull out, preflight, and fuel the airplane. Get another phone call to bring the 206 instead and hurry. Repeat above. Fly 15min to a bigger s-hole in the desert. Sit in a trailer or office with no food availible for 3 hours after being told to hurry. Tirelessly search for a new job on the internet or goto flightinfo.com. Takeoff around 1130a and fly in slow flight formation in circles for 2-4 hours. Land and wait to see if I can go home or not, no one knows for another 2+ hours. After waiting for nothing, fly back to base, finish paperwork and drive home. If I run out of luck I will get a call to come back because someone shouldn't have told me to go home. Repeat above. Home every night and every weekend.

 

[utahpilot]

wake up at 6 to be at airport by 7 AM (1/2 hr drive). Wonder to myself on the way 'how much longer will I have to do this?"

meet up with first student, take off by 7:15, practice approaches, steep turns, blah blah blah. Roll past the twin while taxiing and wish I had more multi time/students. Turn COMM 2 to SLC approach and hear all the 'good mornings' from DAL, AAL, SKW, etc. and wonder 'how long til I can be there?"

on the ground by 8:30, 2nd student waiting. repeat as above.

on the ground by 10:15, check e-mail, flightinfo.com, nasdaq.com, study some in the red book, and wonder to myself how I'm going to keep doing this.

off the ground with student at 11:30, fly until 1 or so, done for the day. go home, worry on the way about how little money I'd made for spending 6-9 hours at the airport. At home, check email, etc.

Go to another airport where I freelance, fly for 1.2-2.2 or so, wish to myself that all my students were freelance (more money, do my own thing, no uniform), down by 8 PM.

home, give my 2 year old a bath, read him a story, etc. (kids are where it's at!)

talk to my wife, relay all the rumour mill info about who is hiring, who will be, etc. try to put a positive spin on it while I wonder,

'how much longer will I have to do this?'

still, beats working.

 

[Archer]

utahpiliot,

your situation seems pretty drastic

I've always wondered how the life of a CFI is...and I bet it varies from day to day...for example, my CFI goes to school for some time, then flies the rest part time. Everytime I try to schedule, I have a hard time getting on his schdule...he has a lot of students...he is one of the best at my local FBO, which proably explains things.

So sad though that someone as important and fundamental as a CFI get not payed properly...I mean, what is this, just a "cult" or "way of things"? some airport manager or whoever pays CFIs one day had one too many CFIs and so payed them all very little...and since then all CFIs get payed like crap?

I think this is pretty seriuous, because not every CFI is willing to teach just for the joy of teaching new students...but more for "getting the hours" to move on to bigger and greater things...

I think this is pretty bad, as you can't have anything worse than a teacher who doesn't like to teach...

I mean, I know money is great motivation...so for those who are not "born CFIs" and need that extra incentive...the CFI pay really screws things up...

I'm guessing getting a CFII or MEI and balencing it out with CFI is helpful as you vary your teaching, and don't get as bored teaching a student how to fly the pattern 5 times a day, 7 days a week...

btw...today really sucked...I go to the airport, the weather is just great, clear skies, beautiful sun...except there winds were at 12 gusting to 18, and for my solo, they exceeded my limits a little...so I had to wait half an hour till they calmed a little...then I go to preflight the Warrior...and then spend the next half hour or so trying to start the freakin engine...all the other planes were gone...so I ended up not flying for the second time I tried to solo...the time before the DG was spinning out of control...

oh well

Archer

 

[flywithruss]

Five Days of Excitement

I fly a King Air 200 corporate, and there's no such thing as "typical" ... we flew very little in September, but October has been busy. This is a snapshot of my last five days, beginning Wednesday:

Weds.
0455 Show at RWI (Rocky Mount, NC)
0555 Depart for TEB to drop 4 pax
0800 - 1500 Off-duty in NY Go downtown, be a tourist, lunch
with an old friend in the financial district
1530 Depart for MRH (Morehead City, NC)
1800 Off-duty, get local seafood dinner and hit the hotel

Thurs.
0745 Show at MRH for 0830 departure only to find our pax
there and ready to go by 0800. So we preflight quickly.
0800 Depart for INT (Winston-Salem, NC) w/ 5 pax.
0930 Off-duty, crew car to meet a friend, then lunch
1200 Call from pax, 1230 departure now 1415. CNN at FBO.
1415 Depart for MRH, drop five pax.
1530 Quick turn, reposition to TEB.
1730 Another quick turn, 4 pax back to RWI, box dinner.
1930 Another quick turn (would've been quicker if I didn't have
to drive my car across the ramp to find the line guy!), then
reposition to BDL. Go to hotel, slip in to coma.

Fri.
0730 Show at BDL for 0830 departure. Pax arrive early. What
else is new?
0815 Depart BDL for RWI. Do ILS apch ... today is IFR in fog,
low clouds, rain all over the east coast.
1100 Released home for three hours ... file more flight plans,
listen to Rush for a bit, grab lunch, then back to the airport.
1530 Depart RWI for FRG. Another ILS apch, another quick turn,
another crew meal for the trip home.
1800 Depart FRG for RWI. Another ILS apch in rain. As soon as
I get tug out of hangar, skies open, I get soaked. Finally go
home to dry out.

Sat.
OFF! However, I have to drive four hours across the state for a wedding.

Sun.
Breakfast and four hour drive back home in pouring rain.
1400 Grocery store to buy beer and peanuts for airplane, file and
get WX, head to airport.
1700 Depart early for RDU, arrive to find pax waiting, almost an
hour early. (Anyone else detecting a pattern here?)
1745 Depart for MRH. Early arrival means no ride for five pax.
Get courtesy van (five big guys and two pilots in a Caravan,
not fun ... at least I'm driving). Drop pax at hotel, then find
more seafood for dinner. Nobody takes American Express on
the beach, we discover, so dinner goes on personal credit
cards ... I hate when that happens.
2000 Arrive back at MRH for reposition back to RWI, just before
we walk to the a/c cell phone rings. Company VP says wait
20 minutes for me to get there, need to give you an envelope
to take back to home office. We wait, he shows, we go.
2030 Depart for RWI. Co. messenger waiting at hangar for the
envelope, put airplane away, home to sleep for a week.

So that's it ... pretty busy couple of days. Not exactly typical, but then what is?

R