Africa Lite?

People often ask me about the favorite place that I've been. It's a tough question to answer. I've enjoyed nearly all of our trips, and usually end up liking the places we visit, though for varying reasons. Even many places that have bad reputations for being dirty, chaotic, or crime-ridden have redeeming qualities that overshadow the less savory aspects - otherwise, why would I be going there in the first place? Meanwhile, the downsides aren't always visible to those just traveling through. That's how I assumed South Africa would be. I knew about the crime, the poverty, the racial tension. Given South Africa's popularity as a tourist destination, and its reputation among veteran travelers as "Africa Lite," I assumed the negatives were overstated and would not be apparent to casual tourists like Dawn and I.

I was wrong, very wrong. South Africa wears its ills openly for all to see. Newsstands and cafe TVs blare tales of horrific murders and brutal gang warfare. Gas station attendants tote Uzi submachine guns. Everyone you meet dispenses security advice with their pleasantries. City streets are deserted at night even in fashionable districts. Every city, every town, every cute little forest village has a shadow settlement immediately adjacent, acres of cobbled together shacks devoid of running water or sewers and penned in by tall fences, containing the black workers who serve the nearby white-owned businesses and villas. A surprising number of whites still treat the black majority with open contempt. Many blacks reciprocate in kind. At times it seems far from Mandela's Rainbow Nation, and more like apartheid never ended. I guess in a way it never totally did; the political repression is gone, but much of the infrastructure of apartheid remains, maintaining the old economic order that was the entire point of the whole sorry mess to begin with.

None of this is to say that we didn't like South Africa. To the contrary - we loved it! Our trip there (and Botswana and Zimbabwe) was one of the most ambitious, adventurous, and fun trips of our lives. The fact that we enjoyed ourselves so thoroughly despite ever-present evidence of the country's troubles is greater evidence of its many charms. It's gorgeous from end to end. There's far more to do and see than one can fit into a mere month or two. Good, cheap food and wine abounds. Rugged adventure beckons over every dirt-tracked foothill. Every South African we met, of every race, was friendly and gracious to us, especially once they discovered we were foreigners. Although the crime climate is an unavoidable fact of life and precautions must be taken, I never felt personally threatened. I suspect I was in more danger driving our rented Chevy Cruze like a Porsche around the coast's incredibly scenic, curvy roads.

We started our trip by flying KLM from Amsterdam to Johannesburg, having failed to reach Atlanta for a WidgetCo connection to South Africa. The next day we flew to Cape Town on a South African Airways A340 (seems like overkill, but it was full; this is one of the 10 most heavily traveled air routes in the world). After two days of exploring Cape Town, sailing its harbour, and venturing out to  Robben Island, we picked up the rental car and spent the day driving and hiking the Cape. We slept in quaint, oak-lined Stellenbosch that night, and the following night as well, taking an all day winery tour of the surrounding countryside in the meantime. From there we set out eastward along the Indian Ocean coastline, pausing to whale-watch in Hermanus the first day before stopping for the night in beautiful, rugged Wilderness.

 The next short day we traversed the famous Garden Route to surfer mecca Jeffreys Bay. Along the way we stopped at a small monkey sanctuary and the attached Birds of Eden aviary, the largest of its kind in the world. It was quite good, especially for bird-loving Dawn, so we lingered for several hours, and ran out of time to stop at Tsitsikamma National Park. No matter; we backtracked the 60 miles from J-Bay the next day to hike the beautiful Storm River's Mouth. It was July 20, our tenth anniversary. We had a fantastic anniversary dinner that night at Kitchen Windows. Cost of all-out splurging meal, good bottle of pinotage and tip included? $35. South Africa might not be Thailand cheap, but one can live very well for not a lot of money, as long as they don't earn their meager rand in South Africa.

The next morning we were up very early for the long drive to Bulungula Lodge. My good friend Sylvia had stayed there a few years ago while doing a medical internship in Port Elizabeth, and recommended it. Bulungula is located on the so-called Wild Coast, which is actually quite populated, but is two and a half very bumpy hours from the nearest paved highway. The lodge is next to a traditional Xhosa village that occupies a lovely spot on a peninsula defined by the sea and two river mouths. The area is fairly impoverished - 98% of the local families live on less than $160/mo - but the poverty is much less striking than other areas as people live in scattered, sturdy thatched rondavels rather than crowded shantytowns. Employment, however, is scarce if one doesn't farm (cows and sheep, mostly). Many men move away from their families to seek work. The Lodge was established with the idea that tourists could provide employment to local entrepreneurs. We went horseback riding, canoeing up a local river, on a village tour, and hiked to a nearby crepe restaurant started by two young girls. It was a really nice, relaxing time.

After three nights at Bulungula, it was time for one more long drive in the Chevy, this time to Durban. We blew a tire on the rutted, rocky drive out to the highway, but made it the rest of the way on the spare. We pulled into Durban at 4:30pm, dropped off the Chevy at the local Avis branch, and took a taxi to the train station for our overnight train to Johannesburg. Eleven days in, we were about to begin the next stage of our adventure.

A Summer Away

A week ago, an anonymous commenter to my previous post asked if I am still blogging. I can see why he asked the question - I haven't posted in two months, and I did recently start writing for a major aviation magazine (as well as several smaller publications). But no, I fully intend to keep blogging as well. I just simply was not around much this summer. At the moment, I'm enjoying a nice quiet Saturday at home. By my count, it's the fourth full day I've spent in Minnesota since mid-June, and maybe the tenth since the beginning of May. It's been the busiest summer of my life, and Dawn and I have been having some grand adventures.

In early May, Dawn graduated with her master's degree in education, ending the travel moratorium she had imposed on herself for 18 months while she read textbooks, completed assignments, and wrote papers on top of an already full teaching schedule. A few days after the ceremony, we flew out to North Carolina, where I had purchased her a Yamaha FZ6R motorcycle, and me a Honda CBR-600F4i. Inspired by my success buying and selling the DRZ400 for my Baja trip, I found the bikes cheap on Raleigh and Charlotte craigslists, with the plan of selling them once our east coast riding is complete. We started off with four fantastic days of riding some of North Carolina and Tennessee's most scenic, most challenging roads, like Moonshiner 28, the Cherohala Skyway, the Tail of the Dragon, and the southernmost section of the Blue Ridge Parkway.

A few weeks later I came back out with my dad, who rode Dawn's bike (his first experience on a sport bike; he loved it) and covered much of the same territory. This was my fourth time on many of these roads, having crossed them twice during my round-the-country ride in 2010. And then in June, Dawn and I rode the rest of the Blue Ridge Parkway as well as Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park with our friends Brad & Amber, who rode Brad's most recent ebay purchase, a Suzuki VStrom. Dawn and I stashed our bikes near Washington's Dulles airport, where they're still sitting until I get the time to go out and sell them; Brad sold his bike the very same day, a half hour before his flight departed, in true Brad fashion.

The next week, we flew to Ireland for ten days. Dawn's extended family, who has Irish roots, was there on a big trip. There were 24 in all, including her mom and dad, aunts and uncles, and several cousins. They reserved blocks of hotel rooms and were traveling around by coach bus, which sounded pretty hellish to me, but Dawn wanted to take advantage of the rare opportunity to travel with her parents, so we hit upon a compromise. We rented our own car and stayed in B&Bs on an itinerary that paralleled the big group's route, allowing us to occasionally meet up with them for activities, dinners, and pints at the local pubs. It worked splendidly. Ireland was as beautiful as ever, the people still wonderfully friendly, the roads dangerously fun, the music excellent, the beer tasty, and even the weather was shockingly cooperative. It would have been a good trip without the family there, but their presence made it a really memorable one. Despite my expectations, everyone was still on speaking terms by trip's end, and while I've always got along great with Dawn's family, I got to know several of them much better. Getting home was a bit of a pain; we ended up going through London to catch a five hour delayed flight, then spent an entire day picking our way home from New York.

And then, in July and August, the main event: the most ambitious trip we've ever taken and probably the last big one in a while, a four week journey through South Africa, Botswana, & Zimbabwe. I'll actually be writing a few separate photo-posts on this one. The short version is: we nonrevved to Johannesburg through Amsterdam, bought tickets to Cape Town, rented a car for 9 days up the coast to Durban, took the train back to Joburg, rented a fully tricked out Land Rover for 16 days spent on self-drive safaris through Kruger National Park and Botswana's Moremi Game Reserve & Chobe National Park, crossed over to Victoria Falls, and returned through Zimbabwe in the wake of their recent contested election. It was the trip of a lifetime, at least until the next trip of a lifetime.

How did I get all this time off? Surprisingly, only one week of vacation was involved, in late July. Otherwise I just bid very efficient pairings all bunched up in early June, early July, and late August. This wouldn't be possible if not for my current high seniority level. The reason I say it will be our last big trip in a while is due to some news I got while on the trip: WidgetCo has announced they will begin their long-awaited pilot hiring in November, NewCo flows will start in December or January, and I can expect to be in class in January or February. Nothing's set in stone, obviously, so I'm trying not to count any pre-hatched chickens...but regardless, it's very welcome news, even if my new-found juniority will inhibit big trips for a while.

Here's some other cool news: I wrote another article for Flying Magazine, included in the September issue, on newsstands now. It's titled "Life & Death Flying the Owens Valley," and long-time blog readers will recognize it as an expanded retelling of an old post on here, "Life and Death on Amflight 132." The opportunity to write a second article was due to the overwhelming positive feedback from my first article, and I suspect I have a few of you to thank for that - so thanks! You'll see more of my writing in Flying in a few months, more on that later.

So now - it's time to pay the piper with a busy work schedule for the rest of August, to mention nothing of playing catchup with friends & family and enjoying what little remains of our short Minnesota summer. But regardless, I plan to get busy writing for the blog again. There are some neat stories & photos to share from the Africa trip, and a few things I'd like to say about the Asiana & UPS crashes, an interesting encounter I had at work, and continued regional airline industry craziness. Stay tuned, as they say....

 

 

Just What Are We Doing Up There, Anyways!?

Since my piece in Flying came out, I've heard a lot of feedback - from friends, coworkers, Flying's readership, and those of you following this blog - and the vast majority has been gratifyingly positive. That said, eight years of running a blog with open comments has taught me to expect some haters - and endowed me with a thicker skin to them - and indeed a few did come out of the woodwork. The source was a little surprising: fellow regional pilots, albeit of the anonymous forum variety. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, as the regional forums had a lot of hate for Captain Sully, the most high-profile, eloquent, and truthful spokesman our profession has ever known. So I was prepared to ignore the haters, until I realized that their gripes contained a kernel of truth.

A few of my fellow regional pilots took exception to the second half of the sentence, "The autopilot and autothrottles keep the airplane right on course, flying more smoothly than I am able." The general public already thinks we're overpaid and underworked, the argument goes; I just gave them ammunition by claiming the automation is a better pilot than I am.

I'll admit that sentence was overblown. It's not even particularly accurate: I would like to think my flying is smoother than the autopilot most days, for the 10-15 minutes per flight I fly manually. But it was part of a paragraph describing the high level of automation in the JungleBus, which does result in very low workload in good-weather cruise flight. This was the second beef my fellow regional pilots had with the article: I depicted a low-workload day, thus tempting the general public to think that all we ever do is sit, eat, chat, and stare out the window.

I considered writing up a "day from hell." I actually started on it. But the reality is that such an article, besides being boringly boastful, would have been less truthful than the one I wrote. Maybe I have extraordinarily good luck, but I would guess that I have a "day from hell" less than 10% of the time. Conversely, at least half of my flights pass with nothing out of the ordinary happening. I chose to use such an ordinary day - and uneventful cruise flight - as a framing device for talking about the regional industry and regional pilots as a whole. I thought it was more truthful, more interesting, and it was what I really wanted to write about.

But the criticism isn't entirely unwarranted. Several non-flying friends & family, upon reading the article, remarked on their surprise that I do so little at my job. Furthermore, Bob Collins, who writes the News Cut blog for Minnesota Public Radio and frequently comments on this blog, had the same takeaway. And he's a pilot! So while the ennui of uneventful cruise flight is a major part of the modern pilot's life, perhaps I should have been less glib in writing about that aspect for the uninitiated. Even on an uneventful day, there actually is a lot of work that goes on, more than I really think about. Yesterday was a great example - on the same routing as depicted in the article, no less.

Yesterday morning began with a soaking thunderstorm in Dallas. Dawn had come on the overnight with me, and we braved water-clogged freeways to have breakfast downtown with two good friends. The storm had moved to the east by the time we showed up at the airport, but it had delayed many inbound flights. I put Dawn on a delayed Minneapolis flight and waited for our aircraft to LaGuardia. It pulled up to the gate only 20 minutes before scheduled departure time of 12:20. To make the turn go faster, I read through the release at the gate, pulled up the radar to confirm that our dispatcher's routing up the backside of the storm and through a gap in mid-Arkansas was doable, and ran my own fuel calculations to see how much holding fuel we would have if the storms starting to pop up west of LaGuardia shut down the airport. As soon as the last of the inbound passengers deplaned, my crew dragged our bags down the jetbridge, greeted the inbound crew, and began our preflight checks. For me, this consists of scanning the logbook for errors, recent service checks, and recurring writeups, checking emergency equipment, "making my nest" with my flight bag, headset, and jepp binders, performing my flow items, and programming our flight plan and performance perimeters into the FMS. That complete, my FO Eliot and I briefed the weather, our ATC clearance, expected payload, takeoff performance, engine-out procedures, abort items, departure procedure, and our programmed route. Eliot then read the Preflight Checklist. By now passenger loading was complete, so I made a welcome aboard PA, the ramp lead brought our load manifest, Dottie the "B" flight attendant brought the passenger count, and Eliot programmed these all into the FMS and sent a Weight & Balance ACARS request. Our takeoff performance data came back a few minutes later, and Eliot entered the thrust and flap settings and Vspeeds into the FMS while I reviewed the data. Inga our "A" flight attendant announced that the cabin was secure and shut the cockpit door. I ran through my before start flow and called for the checklist, which Eliot read before calling ramp control for pushback. When we got our clearance, I released the parking brake. Then and only then did Eliot and I start getting paid. All the above was a freebie for the company, even though it is hugely important to the safe outcome of the flight.

We were moderately heavy at 82,000 lbs - too heavy for single-engine taxi - so I had Eliot start both engines as we were being pushed back. After wave-off I asked him to set our planned takeoff flap setting, Flaps 1 - relatively rare, used in this case to aid engine-out climb performance in the scorching Dallas heat. We ran the before taxi checklist, and Eliot called ramp and then ground control for taxi clearance. The route - "Taxi 17R via Kilo, Echo Golf" - was straightforward, but we reviewed it on the airport diagram before beginning our taxi. Six minutes later, we were cleared for takeoff, and I pushed the thrust levers up to the rating detent as we began rolling down the 13,000 foot runway, scanning the engine instruments for any abnormalities. When Eliot called "rotate," I was careful not to pull back on the yoke too hard. It's fairly easy to strike the tail on Flaps 1 takeoffs, and because we use average passenger weights, it's not uncommon to have imperfect weight & balance that results in a mistrimmed aircraft.

At 400 feet I called for "NAV" and began following the FMS-generated guidance for the AKUNA2 RNAV departure. At 1000 feet I called for "VNAV, Speed FMS," but kept the airplane pitched a bit higher than the flight director guidance, as we had a relatively steep crossing restriction to make despite the hot air and heavy airplane. I hand flew through 13,000 feet, and then asked Eliot to turn on the autopilot. We had climb checks at 10,000 and 18,000 feet, and then at cruise altitude we asked ATC for ride reports and turned off the seat belt sign for a while, until we reached the line of weather we had to pick our way through. This was less eventful than I feared, for although we were in restricted visibility due to blow-off from the storms, we were able to use the radar to find a pretty wide gap that let us pass unmolested. Even after the line, we deviated six or seven times for cumulonimbus popping up along the route, although it was all scattered enough that we never had to turn more than 10 or 15 degrees. Midway through the flight, I ACARSed our dispatcher inquiring about the storms west of LaGuardia, and he replied a few minutes later saying there were multiple cells popping up. I kept refreshing the LaGuardia D-ATIS every half-hour, but good weather prevailed at the airport.

Over central Pennsylvania, we were given a new clearance changing our arrival from the Milton 4 to the HAARP 2. Soon we began hearing LGA-bound aircraft on the Milton 4 being issued holding instructions, and I remarked on our luck to escape this. No sooner had the words escaped my lips than we were cleared back direct to Milton, hold as published, expect further clearance in a half hour! Eliot programmed the hold into the FMS and I began calculating our bingo fuel. A half hour of holding would put us right at it, with a diversion to Allentown a distinct possibility. I was just about to text our dispatcher when New York Center cleared us direct to BEUTY, deleting the hold. Whew! For the rest of the arrival, we passed big cells on either side, but only had to deviate slightly once. On the descent, Eliot retrieved the newest ATIS, obtained landing performance data, programmed the arrival and v-speeds, sent our in-range message, and read the descent and approach checklists when I requested them.

LaGuardia was landing 22 and departing 31, so over the Verrazano Narrows Bridge approach control sent us direct to LGA, and then heading 070. I heard several aircraft ahead of us being cleared for a short approach, so I slowed down and configured early, and thus was able to get down when we were turned in early to a short approach from 4000 feet. I commanded flap and gear extension in sequence, and was slowed to approach speed in landing configuration with the engines spooled up by 1000’ AGL, our mandatory stabilized approach altitude. The wind was gusty and we had ice speeds due to an earlier encounter – rather ridiculous, since it was 82°F at the airport – giving us a rather fast approach speed of 149 knots to a 7000 foot runway. I made sure not to float much but still made a fairly soft touchdown, applying the brakes and reverse thrust quickly and decelerating briskly to turn off at Taxiway Charlie.

I called “Flaps zero, after landing checklist,” and Eliot’s hands went through the flow pattern as he switched his audio panel to Comm 2 and called ramp control to check on our gate. Meanwhile I turned left onto Bravo and talked to ground control, who told me to turn right on Echo, Left on Alpha, hold short of Foxtrot. Eliot came back on to inform me our gate was open but the alley was occupied, and would be for 10 minutes. He relayed this information to ground, who shunted us back over to Bravo short of Juliet behind an idling American Eagle E145. I made a PA explaining the situation to the passengers, and then we listened to both ramp and ground control frequencies for further instructions. Ramp apparently forgot about us, for when Eliot made an inquiry six or seven minutes later they immediately cleared us into the gate. Ground sent us in via Juliet, Alpha, November. We had landed on time, but blocked in late due to the delay.

The return leg was much like the first, except that we were severely load limited due to a high fuel load, hot temperatures, and LaGuardia’s short runways. I ran a preliminary performance calculation, consulted with the rampers to find the number of bags, and concluded that we could take up to 72 people, or 74 if at least 4 were “half-weights,” ie children under 12. I took a walk through the gate area, counting the number of children, and told the ground agent we would be able to take all 68 confirmed passengers and 6 nonrevs who had been told they wouldn’t get on the plane. In fact, when our final performance came back, we were 500 pounds under Max Runway Takeoff Weight, thanks to an outside air temperature 1°C cooler than planned. The takeoff required Maximum Thrust with no derate, Flaps 4 (normally only used when runway length is the limiting factor), and Bleeds Off. I was even more attentive than usual to the slightest flicker of engine instruments on the takeoff roll down Runway 31; the EGTs were very nearly at their maximum. An abort anywhere near V1 would require us to do everything absolutely perfect if we weren’t to go sailing into Flushing Bay. The engines stayed running, though, and we lifted off at 145 knots with about 1500 feet of pavement remaining.

We spent the return leg dodging scattered thunderstorms that had grown a bit since the previous flight, and raced an isolated cell approaching DFW. We won the race handily and touched down on Runway 35C a few minutes early. I said goodnight to the deplaning passengers, shut down the ship’s power, collected my bags, and headed out to the curb with my crew. The hotel van took 25 minutes to come, and then it was 15 minutes to the hotel. We had a 14 hour overnight, affording me enough time to visit a nearby bar & grill for a slice of pizza and a pint of microbrew.

For all that, if you had pulled up a barstool next to me, ordered a Moose Drool Brown Ale, and asked me how my day was, I would’ve shrugged and said “Pretty much the usual. Dodged a few storms. Almost got held going into LaGuardia. Pretty heavy on the way out. Fairly typical day.” And it was. Eliot and I still chatted quite a bit in cruise. I pulled out the atlas and followed along. We called the flight attendants halfway to New York to tell them a joke because we were bored. We still worked plenty over the course of the day, and we still had numerous opportunities to use the skill and judgment we’re paid for, but having relatively little to do during the interminable hours of cruise flight is an undeniable part of the modern pilot experience, and it’s silly to pretend otherwise. That wasn’t really what the article was about, but since the topic has been brought up…now you know the rest of the story!

Flying Magazine Article Now Online

For those of you who haven't been able to pick up the June issue of Flying Magazine, today they made my article available on their website free of charge. You can find it here. Enjoy!

Published

I've hinted about this coming out a few times, and a few readers have already seen it and commented or written me about it. But now that I've come home from a few days of motorcycling in the Appalachians and have seen the article in print for myself, I'd like to share it with the rest of you. I have a piece in the June issue of Flying Magazine, currently on a newsstand near you.

I was approached about writing for Flying late last year. Robert Goyer, Flying's Editor-in-Chief, had read my blog, liked what he read, and took the leap of faith of offering me an assignment. For my part, I've been a Flying subscriber since 1994 and grew up reading the likes of Richard Collins, Len Morgan, and Gordon Baxter, so I was thrilled to be invited to write for such an esteemed publication. I put a lot of effort into the article, polishing it considerably more than the typical blog post, and was pretty happy with the result. I've had some great feedback so far.

When I started writing this blog in 2005, it was mostly just as a creative outlet that I doubted anyone outside of my family would read. At first there was a lot of unimportant rubbish; later the focus and writing improved and there was more of it. More recently my posting has fallen off because my own career situation is fairly static and fairly satisfactory (providing me with the time and money for hobbies other than writing!), and I feel like I've said a lot of what there is to be said and I hate feeling like I'm repeating myself. But as I come across fresh topics worthy of some thinking and writing I'll continue to post about them, and I expect that I'll have a lot more to write about when my career takes its next step forward. In the meantime, I don't mind rehashing some of the old stories and topics in new venues, and so you may see a few more of my pieces in print. In any case, thanks are due to all of you who've taken the time to read my scribblings over the years, and especially to those who've commented, encouraged, and doled out creative criticism. You've made the whole blogging venture considerably more rewarding than I ever anticipated.

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.

Homecoming

Yesterday, I flew my first revenue flight since December 21. The three and a half months in between are the longest I've gone without work since I started flying professionally in 2001. As noted, I at least had the Cub to occasionally putter around the wintry skies, so I wasn't completely grounded, and I managed to keep myself busy through most of the downtime. I partook in the various family Christmas festivities, journeyed to see friends in LA and Alaska, had a grand adventure dirt-biking down Baja California for three weeks, and even worked on a few side projects - one of which will be hitting newsstands near you in a week or so. So the break was pretty nice, and wasn't the downer I feared it would be when I left the line in December.

But it was time to go back. I've actually had my medical back for over a month, as the FAA approved the special issuance more speedily than expected. But because my landing currency was about to expire and my annual line check expired in January, training was required to return me to the line, and it took NewCo a while to fit me in. When they finally scheduled the training, they decided to wait another week and a half so I could combine the landing currency simulator session with my regular six-month checkride on April 1 (the first day of my "early grace" month). I used the intervening time to return to Mexico and ride solo from Loreto to Cabo San Lucas via some interesting backroads & trails. When I got back, I had a few days left to study for the checkride, during which I wondered just how much I had forgotten in 100 days away from the JungleBus.

As it turned out, not much. As soon as I was in the simulator and sank down into the familiar captain's seat, each control was exactly where I'd left it, my hands flew through the flow patterns and the callouts dropped from my lips like they were natural instinct, and I moved through the intricate steps of low-vis takeoffs and Cat II approaches and V1 cuts as though I'd never left my old dance partner's side. I don't note this to brag, but rather to show that I've been flying the JungleBus for too long! After five and a half years and over 4000 hours, during which I've taken 13 simulator checkrides, it would be more noteworthy if I didn't ace the ride after a mere three months away. This airplane's behavior and quirks and procedures have been deeply imprinted on my brain over time, to the extent that I worry about learning another airplane - almost certainly one far less automated - when the time comes to move on from NewCo. I haven't had to learn anything thing new in some time, and I wonder if that part of my brain has atrophied.

The fact that the checkride went so well eased my mind, and yesterday's two legs of Supervised Operating Experience with a check airman became less of a test to be passed, and assumed more of the flavor of a homecoming. For once, I enjoyed ironing my uniform and driving to work and even the drudgery of updating my Jepp plates. Where I usually avoid the crew room, I lingered there yesterday, visiting with old friends who were excited to see me back to work. As I sat in our airplane's first class and reviewed the maintenance logbook, I happily eavesdropped on our flight attendants' latest crew gossip and workaday chatter. Such a simple chore as tearing the flight release into its constituent parts and placing each in its usual spot around the flight deck brought a smile to my face. When we rolled down the runway, I called "rotate," the nose lifted off, I felt the wings load up, and the dirty brown grass of MSP just smoothly faded away, I suddenly realized just how much I'd missed this. I talk a big game about the drudgery of airline flying and how much more fun flying small planes is and how nobody should give up a good ground-bound career to jump into the insane airline business, but the simple act of lifting off in the pointy end of a small jet for the five thousandth time is still enough to give me goosebumps. Either I'm really easily amused, or this flying business I've been immersed in since the age of 13 is pretty seriously ingrained in the very core of my being. I suspect the latter.

So, losing my medical and being grounded for three months, rather than making me consider what I might do if I couldn't fly, has further convinced me that I must fly, come what may. It's one of very few things in this world that I can't do without. That doesn't square very well with the diagnosis of an incurable, unpredictable, and perhaps eventually career-ending disease like Crohn's. So I'll just take each day as it comes and do what I can. If I can't fly professionally, I'll fly small planes. If I can't hold a medical, I'll fly light sport. If I become too ill to do that, I'll hitch a ride with friends. In the meantime, as long as I can, I'll continue to practice the time-honored profession of Airline Pilot. And while I can't ignore airline industry turmoil and the various challenges facing my profession, I'll do my best to focus on the positive and appreciate what I get to do on a daily basis, for as long as I'm allowed to do it.