Dream Job?

[ratherbeflyen]

Type equipment?
Route?
Company?
Location?

Dont care
Dont care
Dont care
Draw a line from Santa Fe to Sandpoint, anywhere along there.

The dream is to work about 7-14 days with 14-21 days off in the middle.
I believe that working for a living is highly over rated, it's all about the free time. Have you ever seen a grave stone that said "I should have spent more time working"?

 

[joe_pilot]

Too much spent on Katrina hotel rooms this year, not enough to prevent homes from burning down. I can hardly wait to see what they're going to use to fund all the hotel rooms for the persons who's homes burned down because we couldn't fight the fires because we spent too much paying for hotel rooms for all the people we didn't evacuate from nawlins. My head hurts.

Careful avbug, you keep making sense like that and well...you'll never get elected to office.

 

[LJDRVR]

All right boys and girls...what's your dream flying job?

Believe it or not Eric, the job I have right now. Coincidently, the previous three jobs I held in Aviation were my dream jobs also, and I've got a sneaking suspicion the next one will be too.

 

[BushwickBill]

All right boys and girls...what's your dream flying job?

Type equipment?
Route?
Company?
Location?

What say you?

Eric

Billabong was fixin up an Albatross to take surfers around to the sickest waves the planet had to offer. Might not be a bad deal...

 

[vballindaytona]

Least amount of flying time. Most pay.

 

[avbug]

I can't possibly imagine why anybody would want a flying job with the least amount of flying...virtually everything pays better than flying, so you really ought to have a better reason than pay to stay in the game.

Personally, I want as much flying as I can do in my lifetime, and I want as much of it as I can to be as hard core as possible.

 

[LJDRVR]

Avbug gets it. Flying is my art. It's all I ever wanted to do with my life. What a treat everytime I get to step to the jet.

Some of these posts remind me of something Rick Drury said once. As he was making his way across the country, he pointed down at the front range, regaling the FO with the story of a world record sailplane cross-country he had set there. The FO's response? "Why would you fly on your days off?"

Some folks just don't get it.

 

[deafsound]

Have to chip in:
dream job: splitting my time between making music and ferrying small airplanes on long X/Cs (and on off days playing golf).
Of course this=very little $, but it'd be as close to goofing off for a living as anything I can think of.
As my grandfather used to say, "Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life".
I've been following his advice for about 16 years now.

 

[avbug]

Lrjtdrver,

I had a F/O not long ago who had been an aircraft mechanic for eight or nine years before a furlough caught up to him. From his description, not a very dedicated mechanic, but a paid one, none the less. He had a pilot certificate, and decided to see if he could make a living at it. He made CFI, and after instructing for a short while, began flying a Caravan doing freight.

I suspect most would agree that a night freight job is a good place learn and get some good experience...but he got out of that as soon as he could, checked the box that said he needed multi time by flying a Seneca on a night run between two points. Three or four hours a night, and in short order, he had his time.

One evening we flew into PHX, and were confronted with some severe weather. We were discussing weather, and out of the blue, he told me he didn't think thunderstorms were a big deal. (This is an ATP). He then told me his one experience with a thunderstorm was flying his Seneca through one, apparently a very, very weak one, and he said "it wasn't that bad."

As we flew together, I found he knew nearly nothing about his craft. Not just the business, but the craft of flying airplanes. The rudder was a foriegn object, and systems and proceedures were nothing more to him than the bare minimum required to pass a checkride. I mean the b-a-r-e minimum. He never studied, he partied every night. He told me on several occasions that he wasn't very serious about flying, that he's probably go find something else to do if he didn't upgrade within a year.

He's not really upgradable. A nice guy, sure enough. But it's just something to do. It's such a foriegn concept, I can't wrap my my mind around why someone would be here, doing this, if they weren't completely absorbed in it. I suppose it's the difference between doing a job, and being a part of the job. (Standing in a FBO years ago, talking about someone, someone commented, "That man doesn't just wear a flight suit..." and someone else in the background called out, "...yeah, he IS a flight suit." Silly, but true).

I've met a few folks lately who have paid their tribute to the effort gods in the business, they're still here, but barely...they keep talking about going elsewhere, about how the business isn't all they thought it might be. Good heavens, folks. Dick Scobee made the comment that it's a crime to get paid for doing something one loves so much. I'm all for getting paid as much as possible, but I don't go to work to collect the paycheck. I go to work to fly the airplane. There's a BIG difference.

I could never afford an airplane...certainly not one like anything I fly or have flown. But for the time I sit in that seat and play pilot, it's my airplane, 100%, and that's like a little one or six or fifteen million dollar bonus, to me. I don't get to take it home, but most don't...and I certainly treat it like it's mine. Treat it like you own it, return it in better shape than you found it...and savor every moment you get it, because it won't last. Gotta land some time.

This discussion is a little like the question regarding one's dream airplane, or favorite aircraft. My answer has never changed...it's the one I'm flying right now. Whatever that may be.

Yours too, I'll wager.

 

[LJDRVR]

Yours too, I'll wager.

How did you know?!

I fly with quite a few nice guys who are great pilots, but will make some comment about how they'd love to be a ble to do something else for a living and just "fly for fun."

Fly for fun? what the heck have I been doing all these years? I guess I can understand that sentiment, but I remember walking as a kid across the polished black and white linoleum checkered tiles in the terminal, with the red, rocketship-shaped gumball dispenser next to the stairs that lead up to the observation deck. I recall smelling the heady, intoxicating aroma of burning Jet A on the observation deck as I looked into the 707, 727 and DC-9 cockpits and wondered where they were going and delightedly basked in the profound amazement that there was magic at work. And that someday, I too, would understand how.

I'm curious now. How many others of us are there here? Who else on this board just knew right from the begining and never had a doubt? Who else knew even in elementary school that the dewey decimal 629.13 will take them to the glorious airplane books in the library? Who else daydreamed about every last detail of their first solo when they were eleven, five years before they actually did? Who rode their bicycle to the airport every chance they got? Who else filled out the reader service card of every aviation magazine they got their hands on, so they were constantly awash in some brochure? Who else read Jonathon Livingston Seagull in sixth grade, quickly followed by Gift of Wings, Biplane and Stranger to the Ground?

Avbug, here's a happy thought: Just think how many types of aircraft are out there that we still haven't flown? Boggles the mind...