Living the dream

The dream always ends up just being something that pays the bills eventually.
 
It's not what you do, it's who you do it with. And I always fly with my favorite Captain..... There's no 'I' in team, but there's an M and an E!!!!...;):D
 
hindsight2020 said:
It's not what you do, it's who you do it with. And I always fly with my favorite Captain..... There's no 'I' in team, but there's an M and an E!!!!...;):D
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Oh but eventually you’re gonna have to transition back to dual cockpit life and deal with the “personalities” of different captains. It’s coming!
 
If I was going to fly for a living, it would be bush planes, a charter, or something like that. Flying an airliner would bore me to tears in about 3 hours.
 
EdFred said:
I dunno. I'm on two bowling leagues, and have other weekly commits. Can't do that when your schedule is not consistent.
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Mine is pretty consistent. Right now, I am home every night, get the vacation slots I want, and get all my weekends off unless I choose to work one.

Of course, that is what being very senior in a small base gets you. But I have always stayed senior in my seat. Maybe I have left money on the table doing that, but I value quality of life above a big paycheck.
 
The part where the passenger is about to ask a question and the pilot runs off is hilarious!

Even though there’s a ton of truth in the videos, the reality is that I very rarely fly with someone I don’t like, and overall it’s a pretty good gig. Certainly can’t think of any other job I’d rather do.
 
An accurate depiction of my life, living the Pilot Wife dream:

 
Ryanb said:
It can’t be any worse than sitting in a cubicle punching a clock day in and day out... ;)
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Greg Bockelman said:
Oh, it’s definitely better than that.
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Depends on a lot of factors including what you're doing, who you're doing it with, work environment, desired lifestyle, and how your brain is wired.

There are some flying jobs that are just really bad places to work. There are some office jobs that are really bad places to work. There are some lifestyles where you want/need to be at home more, and some where you don't.

But if you have a good desk job where you don't need to worry about maintaining a first class medical and have a supportive work environment with good coworkers doing something that interests you (I am very lucky to have all of that), it's not bad.

When I spent my stint flying for a year it was flying with someone I liked flying with, but pretty much everything else was bad about it. Bad pay (when I got paid), shoddy equipment, etc. Even my worst paying engineering jobs have paid reasonably (although nowhere what a captain at a major gets paid) with minimal travel. The other thing I noticed was that after 6 months or so of flying I did miss the challenge associated with engineering challenges. But, that's my brain.
 
I'm living a dream too. It just that right now, my dream is a nightmare with no way out.
 
"what towering cumulus?" lol
 
I'm not a professional pilot, but I spent some time on the road as a musician, and during some of those times I had a wife and several kids at home. A LOT of similarities. These videos are hilarious... never saw them before. Great stuff! Still have the wife.. and the kids are grown up with their own wives now.. so it all worked out great. When the kids were little and still too young to go to school, my wife chose to stay home with them, then resume her career once they were in school. One time, when I returned home, I found in her on her hands and knees in the kitchen, with one kid wailing and halfway through a diaper change, sponging up a huge puddle of German Shepherd pee (our 135lb Shepherd was on steroids at the time for some major skin issues and had a terrible time controlling his bladder while on them... he would COAT the entire kitchen) while our second kid vomited next to her from the smells. She was crying, and muttering to herself... "I... <sob sob sob>.... went..... <wail>.. to.... COLLLEGE!!!!" We still laugh about it. We were actually laughing about thirty minutes later after we got the entire mess cleaned up (and a beer in us)... but ... yeah.... the glamour ain't always there!
 
Friend just got hired onto Atlas. His first trip he posted on FB and he was literally all over the world for the entire week. There’s not a chance in hell I’d put up with that type of schedule. Living out of a suitcase, Uber and hotels will get old real quick. If you’re young and single and want to travel, more power to ya. Go after that type of gig. If you’re middle aged and still doing that type of schedule, I think one day when you’re old, you’re gonna regret not spending more time with family.
 
Plot Twist: They are trying to spend time *AWAY* from family!
 
Grass is always greener...

I've said it before and I'll say it again. My FO buddy at Delta commutes to Atlanta basically 4 on 3 off and sees his family/is home (excluding sleep time) more than I am with my current cubicle job. It can all just depend on circumstances.

And technically I have an office.
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
Grass is always greener...

I've said it before and I'll say it again. My FO buddy at Delta commutes to Atlanta basically 4 on 3 off and sees his family/is home (excluding sleep time) more than I am with my current cubicle job. It can all just depend on circumstances.

And technically I have an office.
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wow, your job schedule sucks if that's the case. Hope they're paying ya good dough. I always thought Germany was more family time off friendly than that. Unless you work for an American company in Germany....
 
hindsight2020 said:
... Unless you work for an American company in Germany....
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Pretty sure that’s the case. Being in the private sector for the last three years, I realized how much time active duty took, even when in-garrison or in the FTU.

Now I’m pretty much 7-4 M-F and usually work from home one or two days a week. Guys wanting to scale our company ladder are putting in 10-12hr days and usually Sunday afternoon work from home. Nope, not doing it.

My retirement goal was work less, earn more. So far, I’ve been able to do that, but I don’t know if I can do corporate life for another 14-19 years and I’m not interested in going back to Uncle Sam as a contractor or GS type.
 
TCABM said:
Pretty sure that’s the case. Being in the private sector for the last three years, I realized how much time active duty took, even when in-garrison or in the FTU.

Now I’m pretty much 7-4 M-F and usually work from home one or two days a week. Guys wanting to scale our company ladder are putting in 10-12hr days and usually Sunday afternoon work from home. Nope, not doing it.

My retirement goal was work less, earn more. So far, I’ve been able to do that, but I don’t know if I can do corporate life for another 14-19 years and I’m not interested in going back to Uncle Sam as a contractor or GS type.
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100% agreed. That's my one complaint with American work life, military included. The inability to throttle back. The pay structure is generally too binary.

That's where the allure of job structures like the airlines in my empty nest years comes in. Most part-time jobs pay crap, most full-time jobs demand too much footprint than I want in my 40s/50s. The airlines, if you find the right 'BSE' niche, allows for the ability to ghost work and still net a high 5 figure/low 6 (+15%ish into the B-fund). Which is about all I would need then, assuming the wife is full-time working by then, plus the AD pension. The CASS jump benefits are another thing that would be crucial to my bucket list snowbird footprint back home in PR. That's the one feature that really tilts the scales to part 121 over non-CASS participating work.

One thing is true. We're tired of living places just for the job. I'm grateful TX has panned out so far in allowing me the ability to raise a small family, but it's not home for either me or the wife. We'll probably stick around until the kid graduates HS, but I know she's chomping at the bit to do some traveling to the West Coast and PNW, and I'm trying to spend winters in the diametrically opposite direction (caribbean). So traveling is gonna be a priority in mil retired life for us. It also means that time-off becomes a higher premium than salary in this case. Licking stamps working at whichever alphabet soup for Uncle Sammy for GS-1(n) potato wouldn't really cut it on the schedule flexibility front.
 
hindsight2020 said:
wow, your job schedule sucks if that's the case. Hope they're paying ya good dough. I always thought Germany was more family time off friendly than that. Unless you work for an American company in Germany....
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Yes I work for an American company. Yes the schedule sucks. Yes I make a lot of greenbacks. No, it's not worth it. I can buy a nice A36 if I want though. :rolleyes:

The challenge with being an international worker for an American company is I don't get governed by local laws. Half my people are 35 hour workers. I cannot ask for overtime from them without giving them hour for hour compensation. They won't take OT payments. So when the workload concentrates on a deadline, I can't get ahead of it timewise. Which means my only option is to put in the extra time myself.

The workload is constantly increasing without additional resources and I've warned my boss I'm about done.

But enough about me. Living the dream...
 
NealRomeoGolf said:
The workload is constantly increasing without additional resources and I've warned my boss I'm about done.

But enough about me. Living the dream...
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That sucks man. If it makes you feel better, in a true airline Living the Dream moment, I recently received my schedule for upgrade training in @hindsight2020 's favorite airplane. My start date? December 25th. DOH! At 11am no less, which is too early for me to get out there that morning, so I'll have to fly to the schoolhouse on Christmas Eve. o_O
 
Shuswap BC said:
If I was going to fly for a living, it would be bush planes, a charter, or something like that. Flying an airliner would bore me to tears in about 3 hours.
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It's easy to denigrate something you know absolutely nothing about. :rolleyes:
 
kayoh190 said:
That sucks man. If it makes you feel better, in a true airline Living the Dream moment, I recently received my schedule for upgrade training in @hindsight2020 's favorite airplane. My start date? December 25th. DOH! At 11am no less, which is too early for me to get out there that morning, so I'll have to fly to the schoolhouse on Christmas Eve. o_O
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That’s brutal
 
kayoh190 said:
That sucks man. If it makes you feel better, in a true airline Living the Dream moment, I recently received my schedule for upgrade training in @hindsight2020 's favorite airplane. My start date? December 25th. DOH! At 11am no less, which is too early for me to get out there that morning, so I'll have to fly to the schoolhouse on Christmas Eve. o_O
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No more 777? Wow that’s rough. At Endeavor we don’t have any training scheduled on holidays. The bad thing is you can have an event the day after thanksgiving or Christmas so you’ll have to fly in the night before most likely anyway.
 
jordane93 said:
No more 777? Wow that’s rough. At Endeavor we don’t have any training scheduled on holidays. The bad thing is you can have an event the day after thanksgiving or Christmas so you’ll have to fly in the night before most likely anyway.
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Yeah, it was my fault. They ran a small bid recently because they're putting 787s in PHL, and forgot my 737 CA bid was still out there. I'm shaving one morning and get a text from a buddy saying, "Congrats Captain!" DOH! Rookie mistake. Obviously upgrade isn't a bad thing, but I had gotten myself excited to go do some long haul flying for a bit. Oh well, it's hard to be too bummed about a 55% pay raise. :) I can always bid back to the 777 once the lock is up.

There's so much movement, they're training all the time now. For recurrent I can bid for when I'd like to go, but for transition or initial I'm kind of at their mercy unless I have vacation.
 
Doc Holliday said:
It's easy to denigrate something you know absolutely nothing about. :rolleyes:
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I get bored flying at high altitude and not seeing anything, or limiting bank to less than 30 degrees, not circling something i want to see, its just not me. So i do know about it. But thanks for chiming in on what i would like or not like...
 
Can't think of a good paying job, flying or otherwise, without something on the downside about it. Even retirement has its disadvantages.

Do what you do for the love of it, if you can. Then the pros always outweigh the cons.
 
Shuswap BC said:
I get bored flying at high altitude and not seeing anything, or limiting bank to less than 30 degrees, not circling something i want to see, its just not me. So i do know about it. But thanks for chiming in on what i would like or not like...
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Sorry, flying a simple single engine GA plane is not the same as flying a transport jet. Not.Even.Close.
 
kayoh190 said:
Yeah, it was my fault. They ran a small bid recently because they're putting 787s in PHL, and forgot my 737 CA bid was still out there. I'm shaving one morning and get a text from a buddy saying, "Congrats Captain!" DOH! Rookie mistake. Obviously upgrade isn't a bad thing, but I had gotten myself excited to go do some long haul flying for a bit. Oh well, it's hard to be too bummed about a 55% pay raise. :) I can always bid back to the 777 once the lock is up.

There's so much movement, they're training all the time now. For recurrent I can bid for when I'd like to go, but for transition or initial I'm kind of at their mercy unless I have vacation.
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Congrats man! Should be fun. When can you hold wide body captain? My friend from Endeavor has been with AA for a few months now on 737 out of NY. Maybe you’ll fly with him.
 
Doc Holliday said:
Sorry, flying a simple single engine GA plane is not the same as flying a transport jet. Not.Even.Close.
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I love the job but after doing a 3 hour flight and going to a Comfort Inn in some podunk City is not my cup of tea! I realize the international flying is probably a lot more fun and hopefully I’ll get there one day. But at the end of the day, my job is amazing and I’m not sure I’d be able to do a M-F job. Sometimes the grass isn’t always greener. To each their own. I really have nothing to complain a whole lot about. I got in at the right time at my regional, have my Delta interview in December and could potentially have a 39 year career there. Tough to argue with that!
 
kayoh190 said:
Yeah, it was my fault. They ran a small bid recently because they're putting 787s in PHL, and forgot my 737 CA bid was still out there. I'm shaving one morning and get a text from a buddy saying, "Congrats Captain!" DOH! Rookie mistake. Obviously upgrade isn't a bad thing, but I had gotten myself excited to go do some long haul flying for a bit. Oh well, it's hard to be too bummed about a 55% pay raise. :) I can always bid back to the 777 once the lock is up.

There's so much movement, they're training all the time now. For recurrent I can bid for when I'd like to go, but for transition or initial I'm kind of at their mercy unless I have vacation.
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Jesus...¿Congrats? This whole thing reminds me of the scene in Office Space where Peter realizes the software was coded wrong when the ATM collected way too much money to stay under the radar. The exchange in the car with Michael is classic gold, and I can't read your anecdote without hearing that voiceover now. :D

Seriously, I'm glad you guys are DINKS. That's some dramatic change in schedules from a relative seniority perspective. I know it's first world problems, but If I had sold the house on the WB flying sitting reserve back en la casa, and came back with some hail Mary CA bid I forgot about, in what essentially looks like regional flying by comparison, and forced training through the holidays to add insult to injury, I'd have some splainin' to do. Further proof this job is done best without kids. You childless folk, I envy your youthfulness. Cherish it. ;)

I will say, you win the "Living da drreeaaaaaaaaaaam!" award today. Matter of fact, they should make a real man of Genuis about you, and I mean this in the most-lighthearted way possible. Brother you earned it on this one... :D.

Our little @kayoh190 ....
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I still love it, but I’m also VERY protective of that, if a job starts to take the fun out of flying I’m OUT, I haven’t had that happen yet thankfully. Frankly that risk is a major issue, for people who got into flying because they love flying, not just for some status or lifestyle thing, it’s great I mean on my days off I often fly my own plane just for the fun of it, no destination in mind.

I do have friends who ended up turning it into a job job, they don’t really want to be around planes on their time off, don’t do fly ins, no interest in GA, to me this is horrible, I mean for what they have invested they could have become a lawyer or something, made more money, less responsibility, etc.

For a punch a clock, go home, cash your check lifestyle, aviation is not the best choice IMO.
 
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