A New York Christmas Miracle

I'm a bit late in relaying this anecdote, but I think it's a fitting epitaph of my stint in New York as my time here draws to an end this month. On one hand I really enjoy flying out of "The World's Greatest City." The crews based here are great, the chief pilots notably laid-back, and I even like the passengers: I prefer New Yorkers' brusque frankness to the oblique passive-aggressiveness that we Minnesotans have elevated to an artform. On the other hand, absolutely nothing here comes easy. Just getting to work on time can feel like an epic battle. I'm almost always commuting in the night before, often on the jumpseat of an oversold flight, waiting for the crashpad van, finding an open bunk, speaking Spanish while shopping at the corner tienda, reserving a shower time, trying to sleep as roommates snore, waking with a jolt to silence my alarm, trying to gather my belongings in the dark without waking anyone, hunting down the missing iron, waiting for the Q33 bus in the rain, schlepping my bags through crowded Roosevelt station to catch the E-train, running to make the JFK Airtrain, walking half a mile down Terminal 4's B concourse to the crew room. After all that, the ATC reroutes, ground metering, congested frequencies, bewildering taxi routes, and last-minute runway changes are a piece of cake!

Which is why I was dreading the trip that ended on Christmas Eve. When I originally bid it, I looked for an early release but failed to consult the flight schedules. It turned out they were greatly reduced for the holiday: my airline's last flight out of JFK left at noon, and the last flight out of LGA left at 4:25pm. My trip was scheduled to end at JFK at 3:25pm; a one-hour connection between airports during rush hour seemed very iffy. The one other option to get home late that night was trying to jumpseat on a full Sun Country flight at 9pm. Fortunately I was flying with a captain who was in the same boat, and we resolved to get out of Orlando early and fly fast on our last leg. The week prior I had ended a trip with a 45-minute-early arrival from Orlando and a repeat performance seemed my best chance of going home for Christmas.

It started out so promising: the gate agents were gung-ho to get us out early, our dispatcher agreed, and a Mad Dog load of merry passengers showed up at the gate on time. We were loaded and ready to go at 12 minutes prior to departure. Unfortunately the ramp was understaffed, so it took forever to load the bags; we pushed back several minutes late. Then ATC switched our runway from to 18L due to a birdstrike on 17R, and for possibly the first time ever, Southwest was taxiing at a snail's pace - right ahead of us! Once off the ground, ATC was slow to turn us onto our route over the water, and we weren't even to cruise altitude when they slowed us to 250 kts for in-trail separation to New York. Halfway up the eastern seaboard, the vectors started. At one point ATC offered normal speed - if we were willing to turn 80 degrees off course! I thought he was joking, but he wasn't. On descent into JFK, we were switched to Runway 4L (we usually get 4R from the CAMRN arrival), requiring a hasty re-brief, reconfiguration, and running the checklist again. No sooner was that accomplished than the visibility dropped below minimums for 4L and we were switched back to 4R. As soon as we set up for that, the vis came back up and we were again sent to 4L! This all took place while being vectored through a maze of cells with pelting rain and moderate turbulence at minimum approach airspeed. We broke out a couple hundred feet above minimums, the captain made a beautiful landing, and the taxi to the gate was mercifully short. We parked at 3:40pm, only 15 minutes late in spite of everything - and 45 minutes before my flight was scheduled to depart from LaGuardia.

After that flight from hell, the last thing I wanted to do was hang around JFK for 5 hours to finagle a jumpseat. I decided to go for broke. I ran outside to the taxi rank and (for the first time in my life) jumped the queue to tell the marshaller that I had a tight connection to LGA; she waved me to the next open cab.

"Hey bud, how's traffic looking on the Van Wyck?" I asked the cabbie.

He grimaced. "The usual. Not good."

"Well, there's a plane leaving LaGuardia in 40 minutes and it might be my only shot to get home tonight. Think it's doable?"

He thought for a short second and then nodded determinedly. "Get in, I'll get you there!"

God bless New York cabbies; this guy was a pro among pros, flying like the wind, shifting lanes, slithering through snarled traffic, tapping the horn every time a hapless motorist contemplated getting in his way, jumping off the Van Wyck at one point to leapfrog a mess of brake lights in a single bound down a surface street. Ten minutes in he looked back, grinned, and said "You'll make it, no problem!" Sure enough, we pulled up to terminal C at 4:08pm, only 23 minutes after leaving JFK during rush hour! I thanked the guy profusely, wished him a Merry Christmas, and gave him $50 for my $23 fare. I walked up to the gate just as the gate agent called my name with a seat to Minneapolis, and had just enough time to stow my bags, sit down, and text Dawn that I was coming home. We had a lovely Christmas Eve together, and early the next morning we headed to my folks' place for a really nice family Christmas with all five of my siblings and their kids and significant others.

I'll look back on my time in New York fondly, and there's probably a good chance that I'll be back at some point. In the meantime, I'm really going to enjoy my much improved commute to and from work - 25 minutes down US-212 and I-494, maybe as much as an hour in bad traffic!

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!