Dear MadDog

This is one of the hardest letters I will ever write. I'm leaving you. I didn't make this decision lightly. You're a great airplane, quirks and all, and we had some great times - even when you occasionally tried to kill me or get me violated. I grew to love you despite your faults, or maybe because of them. But now I've met someone new, somebody wonderful, and it's time for you and I to part company.

When we first met, I was both intrigued and intimidated by your age and experience, your heavy manual controls, your various aerodynamic protuberances, and your reputation as the heartbreaker of the fleet. I stayed up late at night studying your systems and practicing my flow patterns, and later flying the simulator in preparation for our first liason. And then we were together, at long last, and at first I was completely overwhelmed. Heck, it takes three hands just to get you started! But over the next several hundred hours, I became comfortable with your heavy demands, your old-school design, and your occasional nonsensical outbursts. I even started to think of them as normal. Right engine spools up eight seconds slower than the left engine? "It's a Mad Dog." VNAV mysteriously levels off at 6250 feet and refuses to descend further? "It's a Mad Dog." Get sent around because your Vref is 30 knots faster than the preceding 757? "It's a Mad Dog." Bumping through the tops because stall margin won't let you climb above FL310? "It's a Mad Dog." Number 17 in line for takeoff in ATL and it's 87 degrees in the cabin with the packs full cold? "It's a Mad Dog." I came to accept that this was just the way things were.

And yet...I heard tantalizing rumors of a sweeter, kinder plane, a pilot's airplane with boosted controls, great big engines, a long efficient wing, and a lithe, sexy airframe free of unsightly strakes and vortilons. Many of my captains knew her before they upgraded to your left seat, and in your more temperamental moments I'd hear them mutter, "Never should have left the ER!" Some of my fellow new hires were fortunate enough to fly her right out of the gate, and I couldn't help overhearing their gushing accolades of her attributes. I tried to defend you. "Yeah, well...the Mad Dog has control cables! She'll keep flying through a nuclear holocaust! And look how senior I am in the Mad Dog! I held a Saturday off last month!" But every time that other airplane taxied past, I couldn't help but cast an appreciative gaze her way. And when this bid came out, with a whole bunch of new slots in my home base, I couldn't resist her siren call. I had to find out for myself what all the fuss is about.

So I'm off on a whirlwind romance with the plane they call "The Boeing" in October. But you and still have the summer to make some last sweaty memories together. I'll never forget you, Mad Dog. And somehow I get the feeling that fate with bring us together once again, perhaps sooner than I think.

Almost Home

Besides the better pay, work rules, and benefits, one of the reasons that so many young pilots aspire to fly for one of the remaining legacy network airlines is the variety of flying available to its pilots over the course of their careers. The "Big Three" have large networks covering the US, North America, and the entire world, with a large number of different aircraft types of various sizes, capabilities, makes, and levels of automation. Once the new American Airlines is fully integrated, for example, a newhire may find themselves flying an old-school MD83, a Boeing 737, an Airbus 320/319/321, or an Embraer 190. Moving up, they might fly internationally in a Boeing 757/767, A330, 777, or 787 - or they might stay on domestic narrowbody equipment for better seniority. They might delay upgrade for a better schedule, or they might chase the highest-paying left-seat position available. They might give up a pay raise to hold a base they live in or which features an easier commute. The options are many, and few pilots will make the exact same choices over the course of their career.

Personally I enjoy variety in my flying, which is one of the main things that made me wait out a class date at a legacy carrier rather than trying to get hired at an airline like jetBlue, Southwest, or Alaska. Those are fine companies that treat their pilots well, but they are also (for now) single-fleet operators with narrowbody equipment confined to North America. That's what I'm doing now and that's just fine for a few years, but I can't see doing it my entire career. My current airline has even greater fleet variety than American. Assuming that both my health and the state of the economy and my employer stays strong, I'll hopefully bid to widebody international equipment in a few years, do that until I upgrade on the Mad Dog or similar domestic narrowbody, and eventually go back to international in the left seat. Changing it up will help keep the flying from getting stale over the next 32 years to mandatory retirement (I hope to retire sooner...said every 33-year old pilot ever).

For now I'm just hoping to get home to Minneapolis as soon as possible. There is a Mad Dog base there and it's not really that senior, but there is a huge glut of newhires who happen to be from the Twin Cities who are trying to get home. Among the 2010 hires, I have a several friends who have been trying to get back ever since; they've been commuting to reserve in New York for much of the last four years. Considering this, I was thinking it would be a year or better before I could hold Minneapolis, but nevertheless kept it active in my online vacancy bid. Imagine my surprise when, several months ago, a vacancy award was published that had my name and "MSP Mad Dog FO" on it! Some 19 pilots senior to me and 8 junior to me got back to MSP in the same bid. I talked to a chief pilot shortly afterwards, and he showed me slated for a December 1st "conversion date." I was a bit doubtful; letting 20+ pilots go all at once would decimate the New York base. But as time went on and the December 1st date held firm, I allowed myself a glimmer of hope.

The December category lists were just published - and disappointingly, I'm still in New York, along with most of the senior pilots awarded MSP. The contract gives the company wide discretion on when they chose to convert vacancy awards, and they apparently realized that short-staffing New York immediately before the holidays and the return of winter weather was not in their best interests. That's ok. I know plenty of people forced to commute their entire careers. I'll likely commute again at some point in mine. For now, it's good to know that I'm coming home, and I only have to wait a few more months. For December, I'll be over 50% seniority in the New York Mad Dog base, raising the possibility of holding Christmas off in my very first year. I got Thanksgiving off in November. Minneapolis, like widebody international flying, will be there for me down the road. In the meantime I'm enjoying much better seniority than a probationary pilot would usually dare to hope for.

I Heart NY

Well, it sure didn’t take long to get off low-time restrictions. My seven weeks of line flying on the Mad Dog have netted me 120 hours in the plane despite being on reserve. Reserve pilots usually fly less than lineholders because you're seldom used every day, you do plenty of oddball 1- or 2-leg trips, and you tend to ride around in the back of airplanes a lot (deadheading). This summer, though, my company is doing a lot of flying, especially in the Mad Dog, and it’s all hands on deck. Thus far I’ve been used on nearly every day of reserve, mostly for 3 and 4 day trips.

I’m based in New York City, partially by choice. My airline has a Mad Dog domicile in Minneapolis, but it’s proving to be an extremely popular base among our junior pilots. I estimate that there are 50+ pilots between me and the “plug” in MSP, meaning it could be a year or more before I can hold it. In the meantime I’m forced to either move or commute. Dawn has a good job she enjoys in the Twin Cities, we like our home here, and we’ve become used to having family nearby, so we’ve decided to stay put for the time being. My choice then, is which commute is least painful. I can hold all three other Mad Dog bases, but the first is a small base connected to MSP only by 50-seat RJs, and the second has a ton of employees that commute from MSP, making it difficult to find an open seat or jumpseat. New York, however, has plenty of flights from MSP, they tend to have seats available, and I have higher seniority there than I would in any other base. This is true across all fleets at my airline: NYC goes junior.

This extra seniority comes at a price. NYC-based pilots at my company must cover three separate airports (LGA, JFK, and EWR); moving between them is slow and expensive, and the airspace and airports are both quite congested. Because there’s so much Origination & Destination (O&D) traffic, many of the rotations begin early in the morning and end late at night, forcing pilots to commute on their days off and spend extra nights in the domicile. That said, because so many NYC-based crewmembers are commuters (I’ve seen estimates of 80%), there’s a pretty well developed infrastructure in place. For starters, there are many crashpads scattered throughout Queens between LGA and JFK. One area, Kew Gardens, hosts so many crashpads that it has acquired the nickname of “Crew Gardens” and boasts a cab company that caters almost solely to airline crew. Some crashpads are pretty basic and offer little more than a mattress for the night; others offer all the comforts of home. My crashpad is actually pretty close to LGA, in Jackson Heights, since ¾ of the Mad Dog flying is out of that airport. It’s quite nice, well equipped and clean, with its own free shuttle service to LGA and JFK. It's also not far off the E or 7 trains, making it easy to go into Manhattan on the rare reserve days I'm not being used.

Commuting to reserve is a notoriously tough gig, but the work rules at my airline make it a lot easier than it was at either of my last two companies. Most reserve days are “long call," meaning I get at least 12 hours notice before report time, and I usually know about trips by 3pm the day before I start reserve, making informed commuting decisions much easier. On the first day of reserve we cannot be assigned a trip that begins before 10am. Many of the trips begin or end with deadheads; our contract allows us to “deviate” from a scheduled deadhead positive-space. So if I begin work tomorrow and am awarded a trip for which the first leg is a deadhead LGA-ATL, I call crew scheduling, tell them I will deviate, and book positive-space travel MSP-ATL for around the same time as the original deadhead. I save myself a night away from home and get a confirmed seat to work - score! Reserves can put in “Yellow Slips” that tell crew scheduling their preferences for awarded trips. I have a permanent yellow slip for trips that begin or end with a deadhead, as well as for trips that have a report time after 1pm and/or release time before 6pm (allowing a same-day commute). Obviously if a trip needs to be covered and I’m next in line, I’m going to fly it regardless of preferences, but if there are several trips to be covered and one meets my criteria, that’s the one I get. This has worked very well over the last month, giving me multiple extra nights at home and eliminating several potentially stressful commutes.

The Preferential Bidding Software (PBS) that my airline uses also gives reserve bidders much more flexibility than my last company. If you wish, you can lump all 17 reserve days into a single giant block, giving yourself a stretch of 13 days off (or 26, if you go back-to-back across bid periods). Of course, under Part 117 you are required to have 30 hours free of duty every 168 hours (7 days), so unless you are awarded a trip with a 30-hour overnight, you’ll end up with extra days off in the middle of your reserve block. This has happened several times, and the timing has worked out to give me several extra nights back in Minnesota.

Because of all the flying this summer, crew scheduling is offering a lot of “green slips” – basically, last-minute trips on your days off for premium pay and/or additional “payback days” off later in the month. A lot of senior pilots, anticipating the ability to make extra cash by green-slipping, purposely bid reserve with the first two weeks off, during which they pick up enough green slips to get the next two weeks off, during which they greenslip yet more, essentially flying the whole month at 200% pay. This is known as "Rolling Thunder." Those senior enough to buddy-bid with check airmen often get their trips bought off for IOE and then greenslip the entire month, basically making 300% pay. We have one Mad Dog FO in NYC that reportedly made over $300k last year doing exactly this.

As for me, I value summer days off far more than extra cash, so I don’t bid with green slips in mind, and I don’t hang around NYC any longer than necessary hoping I’ll get one. Thanks to the fact that reserve is going fairly senior, and that I’m already #80 out of 105 FOs in my category, I got a regular line for August, and a pretty nice one at that! All the trips are commutable on at least one end, I got partial weekends off, and I got a mid-month 8-day stretch of days off for a sailing trip I’m doing out of LA. Not bad for my third month! So yes, New York can be a pain to get to, and it can be crowded, dirty, and expensive, and the airports can be pretty hectic places – but these things, much like the Mad Dog's quirks, keep senior FOs away and afford me much better seniority than I'd otherwise have. So I don't care what anyone says - 'till the day that I can hold Minneapolis, I love NY!

Juniority

I came off medical leave and was released back onto the line at the beginning of April, which means that I didn't have the opportunity to bid an April schedule in mid-March. Instead, crew planning built me a schedule for the remainder of the month from a combination of trips in open time and reserve days. There wasn't much flying in open time, which meant that I sat on reserve for 9 days. It was the first reserve I've done in nearly 5 years.

Roughly two of my 3.5 years at Horizon was spent on reserve, a function of their stagnant seniority list. Because NewCo was growing so rapidly when I came here, I was on reserve for less than a month both as a FO and as a new captain. Since sixty of our pilots flowed up to WidgetCo in 2010, our list has become fairly stagnant, and we now have pilots who have been stuck on reserve for nearly two years. We have quite a few senior FOs who have bypassed upgrade for this very reason. Some people don't mind reserve, but a lot do. It's not so much the uncertainty of not knowing what you're doing day-to-day; it's moreso the fact that you typically get minimum days off, don't make more than minimum guarantee pay, the schedule is hard to commute to, and you're generally called upon for all the crap duty that nobody else wants to do. For example, at NewCo reserves often get called in for checkride seat support in the sim. Pilots sitting seat support, even though the checkride isn't for their sake, are checked and can fail the ride. Imagine that: being forced to take a checkride with your job on the line with two hours notice, without studying beforehand. No wonder nobody wants to do it.

I didn't mind my half-month bout of juniority. I don't think juniority is actually a word, but it ought to be, because it describes a real condition much better than seniority does. Senior pilots live somewhat normal lives; junior pilots work odd hours, weekends, and holidays. Whenever I move on from NewCo, I know I'm going to be junior for a long time, and probably a commuter to boot. That's one reason I've been enjoying my two-year blip of regional-pilot seniority, and perhaps getting a little too comfortable waiting for flowthrough to WidgetCo.

I was used eight out of nine reserve days, two of which were spent on airport jail, i.e. ready reserve. I normally avoid the crew room at all costs, but having just returned from a four month absence, I was eager to meet up with friends I hadn't seen in a while, and was able to withstand the typical crew room negative energy most of the eight-hour shifts. I was informed about most of the other assignments the night prior, as opposed to a two-hour callout. Considering I live a quick 25 minute jaunt from the airport, and didn't get used for anything too silly, it wasn't too far removed from a normal schedule. And I got to bid for May with my old 14% seniority, resulting in a very nice 19-day-off line.

My bout of reserve got me thinking, though - why is it always automatically left to junior people? Being brand new at a regional airline is hard enough, what with the ludicrously low first-year pay - why force people to endure reserve as well, particularly commuters? I know a few places overseas, as well as some flight attendant groups in the US, where crews do 6-8 weeks of reserve a year, regardless of seniority. If this was the rule among pilot groups in the US, I suspect some of the more onerous reserve work rules would get fixed in a hurry. And in any case, it's not like my seniority at NewCo is the result of dozens of years of faithful service. In many cases, I got here mere months before captains who are far below me on the seniority list. Seniority here was largely luck of the draw. That said, I rather doubt I'm going to have much luck persuading my fellow senior pilots to make our contract more equitable between the seniors and the juniors.

Beyond the Fishbowl

The vast majority of the trips I fly involve multiple landings at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP). It's where I'm based so at the bare minimum the trip will begin and end there, and in between we usually connect through MSP at least once a day. This recent trip is fairly representative:

Day 1: MSP-GRR-MSP-OMA-MSP-IAD
Day 2: IAD-MSP-MSO
Day 3: MSO-MSP-IAH
Day 4: IAH-MSP-JAX-MSP

Minneapolis is a great airport to fly out of. It's not ridiculously busy, has a pretty efficient layout, has very good ATC, and delays are few except in the worst winter weather. All the same, constantly landing at the same airport can get a little old. Moreover, being the home of my company's headquarters and its largest crew base, MSP is "the fishbowl." You're always running into chief pilots and check airmen and company bigwigs, most of whom are very nice people eager to shake my hand and call me by my first name and say nice things about me. I hate that. It's been a longstanding goal of mine for my employer to forget I exist. Jeppesen updates necessitate an occasional stealthy foray into the crew room, but otherwise my "productivity breaks" are spent in the opposite corner of the airport.

Last year we were doing a bunch of flying out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, Washington's National Airport, and Atlanta. Some of our trips avoided Minneapolis altogether, and you were virtually based in one of those three airports during the trip. The change of scenery was nice, but I hate east coast flying. It's just too much work - and not fun, interesting work like, say, a VOR-A approach to minimums in the mountains. It's constant frequency changes, inflexible routing, impatient controllers, and ever-present delays. You're not really out of the fishbowl either, it's just filled with different and much bigger fish. Given the choice, I'd fly nothing but Minneapolis-Missoula, thankyouverymuch!

Last week, though, I flew the trip of my dreams. We didn't pass through Minneapolis once and never ventured east of the Mississippi River. I didn't fly more than two legs a day. The weather was beautiful except for five minutes of marine layer IMC each day. We got fed crew meals. It was productive, with 25 hours of pay for four short days of work. The layovers were long and the happy hour specials lucrative. I don't know why I didn't bid this trip all month long. It looked like this:

Day 1: MSP-MCI
Day 2: MCI-LAX-MCI
Day 3: MCI-LAX-MCI
Day 4: MCI-LAX-MCI (Deadhead MSP)

This was my first time back to LAX since flying for Horizon. It's even more ridiculously easy coming from the east; they sequence you 200 miles out and clear you for the approach while you're at 18,000 feet over Big Bear Lake. The majority of my 2400 non-airline hours were spent flying out of Southern California, while my FO had never been there, so on the long flights out west I regaled him with tales of near-misses and lost students and 3-mile VFR days and lunch at Flo's and the time I just about took out the powerlines at the end of Big Bear's runway (the west end, fortunately). Fortunately for my FO, we had clear weather and spectacular scenery to occasionally shut me up. Here are some good samples:


I would've bid this trip for all of November except I, um, forgot to bid! My "standing bid," which exists for such a birdbrained eventuality, is very basic, requesting only maximum days off. Accordingly, I got a very good 19 days off, despite having three very inefficient training days at the end of the month. More surprisingly, I got Thanksgiving and a random Thursday I needed off despite my standing bid neglecting to mention either requirement. Perhaps I should forget to bid more often!

How Not to Build a Trip

Last month I was assigned a trip that is an excellent example of how the current rest and duty rules are woefully inadequate and change is long overdue. I have reproduced the trip key below with only format changes to improve clarity. I hasten to add that although this is a NewCo pairing, every airline out there has these trips to some extent, and they are relatively rare here. Since their work rules were stripped away in bankruptcy, even the major airlines build some rotations like this one, and a few regionals build trips far worse than this one as a regular practice.

M7284 BASE REPT: 1050L

DAY FLT DEP-DEST STD STA BLK TURN

MO 5694 MSP-YYC 1135 1343 308 37

MO 5876 YYC-MSP 1420 1803 243 132

MO 5778 MSP-MDW 1935 2103 128

BLOCK 719 DUTY 1028 REST 1658

DUTY END: 2118L REPT: 1416L

TU 5749 MDW-MSP 1501 1635 134 230

TU 5755 MSP-BHM 1905 2134 229

BLOCK 403 DUTY 733 REST 926

DUTY END: 2149L REPT: 0715L

WE 5887 BHM-MSP 0800 1038 238 237

WE 5784 MSP-OMA 1315 1425 110 30

WE 5729 OMA-MSP 1455 1606 111 254

WE 5657 MSP-MSN 1900 2004 104

BLOCK 603 DUTY 1304 REST 926

DUTY END: 2019L REPT: 0545L

TH 5649 MSN-MSP 0630 0740 110 240

TH 5696 MSP-MKE 1020 1132 112 35

TH 5696 MKE-MSP 1207 1332 125 208

TH 5850 MSP-ORD 1540 1657 117 103

TH 5850 ORD-MSP 1800 1925 125 E75

BLOCK 629 DUTY 1355

DUTY END: 1940L

TOTALS BLOCK 2354 LDGS: 14 CREDIT 2354 T.A.F.B. 8050

Since most readers don’t likely see many trip keys, I’ll break this one down. The first two days are pretty easy, with three and two legs, respectively. The first layover, at Chicago-Midway (MDW), is a long one of nearly 17 hours. The following day, two legs to Birmingham (BHM), has less than 8 hours of duty time. That night, though, has only 9 hours and 26 minutes of rest time. In this situation, 9 hours is the legal minimum. It might even be adequate if followed by a moderately easy day and a long overnight. The trip, however, goes rapidly downhill from there.

On day three, there are four legs, three of them short, which combine for 6 hours of block time. Duty time, however, is 13 hours and 3 minutes thanks to two lengthy sits in Minneapolis. The day ends in Madison, WI with another barely-legal overnight. After 9:26 minutes of rest time, day four begins at 5:45am - completing the circadian swap from a trip that began on a P.M. schedule. There is a nearly three-hour sit in Minneapolis after the first leg, followed by a Milwaukee round trip and another two-hour sit. The day concludes with a Chicago O’Hare turn, with a little over an hour spent in Chicago. Block time and pay is 6 hours 29 minutes, but duty time is nearly 14 hours.

In all fairness, I bid for this trip, although not intentionally. I set my computer bidding preferences to look for efficient trips, those that have the most pay per day. This one is fairly efficient from that standpoint, with nearly 24 hours of pay in 4 days. It is inefficient from the standpoint that much of the down time is spent at airports, where there is no possibility of sleep, instead of at layovers. This is not, however, a criteria that our bidding system can sort. I was surprised when this trip appeared on my line, but on closer inspection saw that it did indeed meet all my criteria. There was nothing to do but fly the trip and get as much rest as I could in the little time allotted.

The first two days went fine. Everything was on time, the weather was good, and we even got into Birmingham a half hour early on day two, lengthening the layover to a full ten hours (although a late hotel van meant that less than nine was actually spent at the hotel). Day three was pretty long and tiring. We had plane swaps on each of our long sits, and the Omaha turn was delayed for a late inbound and for deicing. When we got to Madison, I was ready to hit the hay. Instead, we got to wait a half hour for the hotel van, and then spent twenty-five minutes riding to the complete opposite end of Madison. It was 9pm by the time we got to the hotel. I hurriedly ate a late dinner and went to bed. I tossed and turned for a long time before finally falling asleep, and then woke repeatedly throughout the night for a noisy fan that wouldn’t turn off.

The 4:30am wakeup call came bone-achingly early. The long ride to the airport, coupled with a shuttle that leaves on the top and bottom of the hour, meant we had to take a 5am van for a 5:45am show time. A hot shower and early cup of coffee didn’t do much to break my stupor. The short flight to Minneapolis seemed to take forever. A nap on our long break would have done wonders, but there was nowhere to sleep at MSP. The crew room is constantly busy, bright, and loud, and the designated quiet room off the side has been declared off limits to all but airport reserves. Instead I had another large cup of coffee. It worked, for a while: I was practically jumping off the seat on our way to Milwaukee.

Then I came crashing back down on the return leg, and I found myself missing radio calls and messing up simple things. On the descent, I fought an aggressive case of the nods by using the oxygen mask on 100% oxygen. We still had a two hour sit in Minneapolis – often more tiring than actually flying – followed by a four hour Chicago turn. There was no way I was going to make it. I called in fatigued shortly after landing.

The crew scheduler sounded incredulous. “Fatigued? You’ve only done three legs!” I told him to take a look at the trip, but that didn’t move him. “You’re going to have to talk to a chief pilot about this!” he exclaimed, obviously annoyed that he would need to find someone to cover the O’Hare turn. I told him I would go downstairs and talk to the base chief pilot that very minute, and hung up.

I’m happy to report that the base chief pilot was very supportive. I showed him the trip key and explained how the cumulative shortage of sleep was affecting me, and he agreed that the trip wasn’t exactly conducive to obtaining sufficient rest and thanked me for doing the safe thing. I know that fatigue calls are handled in a much less positive manner at certain other airlines, and that previous flight ops managers at NewCo reportedly took a different tack. In this case, the only negative effect I suffered was the loss of around $180 in pay.

It’s worth noting that none of my other crewmembers called in fatigued. They all said they were tired, but felt they could battle through the day safely. Fair enough; fatigue affects different people differently, and they may have been more successful in getting sleep the previous night. It’s impossible to say how the loss in pay may have affected my poorly paid flight attendants’ and First Officer’s decisions.

In any case, it’s hard to see how our crew planner could put together that pairing without it occurring to him that chances were excellent that at least one crewmember might become severely fatigued. At most airlines, not just NewCo, there is a prevalent attitude that “If it’s legal, it must be safe.” From a statistical perspective I suppose they’re right. We just finished the third year out of the last four without a major airline fatality in the United States. If pilots are flying around tired, they’re doing a remarkable job of not killing people in the process. The ATA and RAA’s obstructionism of the new rest and duty regulations shows they’re utterly willing to accept an occasional Colgan 3407 here, an American 1420 there, right up to the point that the body count causes passengers to start booking away.

Fair enough. They have tickets to sell and profits to make, and these days corporate responsibility in this country tends to start and end with the stockholders. It’s not like the majority of passengers disagree; I suspect the vast majority would willingly sacrifice 100 strangers every few years to keep ticket prices low. As a pilot, though, safety is my only concern. Sure, I put in the effort to run my ship in a timely and efficient manner, but I don’t lose any sleep if I block out a few minutes late or burn an extra hundred pounds of gas. My real job, indeed the very core of my professional identity, is to minimize the risk to my passengers in every way practical.

This is also, theoretically, the FAA’s only job. They do not have a responsibility to ensure the airlines turn a profit. Congress removed their responsibility to promote aviation economically a few years back for the very reason that I’m writing this post. Now, the FAA’s only job is to manage risk, and fatigue is clearly the chief risk factor they have allowed to go unaddressed for too long. It’s high time to put the new rest and duty regulations into effect and end the silliness of asking pilots to fly exhausting trips that tempt them to fly fatigued.

Senior

The course of a flying career may be measured in terms of one's progression between two extremes. At one end, you work your butt off for very little pay. At the other pole, you fly your choice of trips only rather occasionally and seemingly rake in the dough. In general, you do everything in your power to move from the former position to the latter, but for the most part one's career progress is a matter of time and luck.

Meanwhile, this progression is repeated on a smaller scale at the individual employers one might fly for over the course of a career, and even within individual fleets at companies with a variety of equipment. Aviation is a 24/7/365 sort of industry, and whether the unions forced its use or not, seniority is the only workable method of determining who spends Christmas with the kids and who spends it shooting ILS approaches in the snow. Consequently, one's career progression more resembles the game of chutes and ladders than one continuous incline. You start completely over at each individual company over the course of your career. Within each company, your relative seniority suffers as you bid onto larger aircraft.

This does introduce some element of control in an often out-of-control industry. You can choose whether to leave for a more lucrative job, or whether to bid for the bigger airplane or for a Captain slot. By choosing to pass those things up, you can gain more time off, more control over your schedule, and greater stability; in turn you often forfeit a larger paycheck or future career opportunities. At every step of the career you see pilots who have made this choice. There are grizzled old freight dogs flying tattered Metroliners long after they needed to. At the major airlines, there are thousands of widebody FOs who could've held a Captain slot on narrowbody equipment ages ago. At the regional airlines, there is an increasingly huge contingent of lifers who are content to keep a decent schedule and a middling paycheck rather than play "furlough roulette" at the bottom of a major airline's seniority list.

With the recent departure of 60 senior NewCo Captains flowing up to WidgetCo, I suddenly find myself in the unusual position of being quite senior; next month, I will be #25 out of around 400 pilots. I've never been senior anywhere I've worked. I was the designated mop-up guy at AEX (my first part 135 gig), couldn't even get my choice of Lance routes at Ameriflight, was only around 50% of the Q400 FOs after 3.5 years at Horizon, and wasn't an FO at NewCo long enough to enjoy the fruits of seniority. I'm not complaining, because those moves were all the right thing to do from career and personal standpoints. I have, however, become quite accustomed to reserve, working weekends and holidays, inefficient trips, and other things that go along with being junior.

Earlier this year, my company closed our Memphis base and most of the Captains, many of whom were junior to me, came to Minneapolis. I went from 55% seniority to 45% seniority in my seat over the course of a few months. That small change was like flipping a switch. I went from being able to hold only one or two weekend days a month off to holding a cushy Monday-Thursday schedule. I was able to hold efficient trips. I was able to bid a lazy 75 hours instead of an excruciating 95. I was getting 3-5 more days off every month. This was a revelation: flying can be a really nice gig! Suddenly I get why regional lifers stay put, particularly at high-paying places like Horizon.

The thing is, being senior is no guarantee that you'll stay senior, particularly at the regionals. Our seniority list is riddled with pilots who had a good gig before their last airline went belly up or fell on hard times. That's enough to put any thought of sticking around at NewCo out of my head. I'm keeping my options open, but at this point there's a decent chance I'll wind up at WidgetCo sometime next year. If that happens, I'll be tickled, but I will be very, very junior for a long time. Therefore, I'm enjoying the benefits of being senior now - starting with having the 24th through the 31st of December off, heading to Spain with Dawn and my brother, and ringing in the New Year in Barcelona.