A Day/Trip in the Life…of an Airline Pilot

Greetings TPN! This post was started a while ago, before I wrote my Second Year in Review. I’d been trying to come up with something impactful or profound to write for you…and had failed miserably for quite a while. I’ve started work on a large-scale, exciting project, but it won’t be ready very soon. In the meantime, I figured I’d tell you about a recent day at work, and a little about the rest of that trip.

It’s easy to paint airline pilot life as being all unicorns and rainbows because, compared to the queep/lack of focus/careerism/waste rampant in the USAF, life as an airline pilot is pretty damn rosy! However, I think it’s worth showing the good and the bad. Part of making a decision on whether to leave the military or not (or to pursue an airline pilot job at all for you young civilians) is trying to get an idea of what the job is actually like. So, here’s a day, and a trip, in the life:

January 11, 2018, day 2 of 5

I wake up in a very nice Hyatt Regency in Crystal City near DCA. We’d finished late the night before so I’d gone right to bed and let myself sleep in. We have an uncharacteristically late show time of 11:20 am…plenty of time to get a workout, call home, surf the web, etc. There’s some sort of naval surface warfare conference happening downstairs. For once my double-breasted uniform jacket doesn’t feel totally ridiculous. A uniformed USCG E-8 in the elevator even treats me like a real Commander after noticing the three gold bars on my sleeves. It makes me chuckle.

The hotel is close to the airport so it’s a short van ride through the freezing cold. DCA is a great airport and we breeze through the Known Crewmember checkpoint. (At many US airports, airline pilots get to skip the regular security line altogether thanks to the KCM program. It’s glorious! It will give you back many hours of more meaningful life over the course of your career.) We intentionally took a van a few minutes early so that we’d have time to grab some lunch. After a bowl of delicious Mediterranean food we meander over to our gate. Meet the flight attendants, sign the paperwork, drag your bag to the jet, check the logbook for write-ups before anything else.

The crew arrival at the jet is a beautiful ballet to me because it contrasts so sharply everything about the analogous process in the USAF. Back in the day when I was a B-1 copilot we would spend a full day planning for a mission. That day would include several crew meetings where the Aircraft Commander (AC) gave or checked up on assignments. (Because we were individually incapable of figuring out what needed to be done or meeting deadlines, I guess.)

The day of the flight would include a 2-4 hour mission brief where the AC covered every minute detail of the planned flight, even though most of that brief never changed. (Because we’re bad patriots if we don’t brief The Motherhood ad naseum every time we fly, right?) At the jet, the AC would spend 5-10 minutes pouring of the aircraft logbooks (while the rest of us just stood around waiting) and briefing the crew chief about emergency signals and how the crew was going to enter the jet. (Because the crew chief probably didn’t know the signals, and cared deeply about the boarding order, right?) I could go on, but the point is: the process was unbelievably painful and much of it was unnecessary.

There’s no such thing in the airlines. Everyone knows what must be done and makes it happen. It’s so much more pleasant than anything I’ve ever known before. Everyone stows their bags quickly and without fuss. The flight attendants walk through the cabin, do a quick safety check, and make sure everything is ready. Frequently, cleaners and caterers will be doing their thing as we arrive. They’re always in the way, but it’s easy to be patient and make room for each other.

You want them to be able to do their job well…. The Captain does conduct a flight attendant briefing, but only because the FAA mandates it. It lasts 60 seconds (max) and generally entails the airline equivalent of “Standard. Questions?” Everything happens so quickly and efficiently that there’s generally time to chat and joke around. The flight attendants ask you if you want anything, offering your choice of drink and fancy first class snacks from the carts. (Assuming your airline has a first class.) You even have lots of time to chill and read through old issues of TPNQ while passengers start boarding.

There is no self-important commander, standing on high, majestically issuing commands to the troops because, finally, for once in my life, we’re actually trusted and respected enough as professionals to be left alone to do our job. No “leadership” or micromanagement required.

You military aviators out there can’t fully understand how much stress and frustration your organization injects into your life with this stuff. Someday you’re finally going to take that red pill. You’ll wake up and see how effortless life can be and you’ll angrily turn to me and say, “Emet! Why didn’t you tell me, you jerk?” I will then text you a link to this post without further comment, like a jerk.

I’m the FO and it’s cold outside today, so I get the walk-around. (Emet’s secrets to FO happiness:

1. Nobody cares about what you did in your past life, Colonel;
2. Embrace your current place, knowing what’s ahead;
3. Never miss an opportunity to shut the hell up.)

It’s not as bad as I expected and I’m back upstairs within a few minutes. That amount of time was about twice what the captain needed to load the FMS and do all the interior checks, so we have the next 45 minutes to not do much more than sit around, chat, and sip from bottomless cups of free Starbucks brand coffee.

We push back on time. Engine start is a simple procedure on the 717. The checklists are also relatively simple and smooth. The taxi to RWY 19 is easy, and before you know it we’re blasting off for Detroit.

DTW is a short flight from DCA and the air is smooth. We get assigned a runway we weren’t expecting so there’s about 60 seconds of conscious work reloading the FMS and briefing the new approach.

The landing and taxi-in are uneventful. We’re early and our next jet hasn’t arrived yet (as usual) so I end up spending a few minutes talking to my wife, reading MMM, and relaxing at an empty gate. When the jet does arrive, we repeat the boarding/preflight process all over again with a new set of flight attendants. Easy peasy.

Our next stop, AUS, is about as far away as the little 717 can handle. We’re topped off with gas and I’ll admit I’m dreading a planned 3.5 hours in this seat. I rate aircraft seats in hours until serious discomfort sets in. The B-1 had a 2- or 3-hour seat. The U-28 had a 4-hour seat, extendable to 5 hours if you have an extra cushion from Oregon Aero. The T-6 has a 1.5-hour seat. That’s perfect for most flights, but makes it a less-than- ideal cross country airplane. The E-11 does not have a 9-hour seat, but the fact that you’re luxuriating in pajama pants and slippers at FL470 makes you notice it less. The 717 has a 1.5-hour seat. DTW-AUS is a long flight for my scrawny backside.

Thankfully though, I have a good captain. We share some common background and end up deciding that we’re both avid readers. We swap war stories from teaching UPT and each end up with several titles and authors excitedly added to our to-read lists. We start hearing reports of turbulence both on the center frequencies and from our company through ACARS (a handy, text-based datalink messaging system so common in modern airline ops that even the archaic MD88 has it.) We have a very cool proprietary app on our tablets that shows us a graphical turbulence model based on real-time data from every aircraft in our company and NWS data, fed by a secure/hidden channel on the jet’s satellite internet. We use the app to choose a different altitude and end up with a far smoother ride than we’d expected. Though far from anything that might fit the definition of “taxing,” the process of pursuing excellence in our jobs by avoiding turbulence is engaging and helps pass the time.

My seat tolerance has definitely expired and I’m ready to be on the ground when we start hearing things like “min fuel” and “divert” on the radio. It seems that Houston just got slammed with some thunderstorms (in January!) and a lot of aircraft are having to go elsewhere. That’s about the time we get a “Ding!” from ACARS with a message from our dispatcher: “Houston has weather and traffic is diverting. There is a jet at your gate at Austin right now. It should be just a gas & go, so hopefully it won’t affect you much.”

Great. We had a relatively short turn time scheduled here. We’re both looking forward to food from Salt Lick BBQ, and don’t want a big delay getting to our final destination, MSP, that night. We’re also flying into a 100kt headwind while all this is happening. Dispatch had planned for the winds, but they have unavoidable psychological effects too. We have an easy arrival and approach at AUS and land on 35R. We see three aircraft clogging the taxiways near the end of the runway. We get sent in a circle to line up on a parallel taxiway behind another Delta 717 waiting for a gate. I’m at 3.5 hours and counting in this seat….

Despite the fact that there’s a company jet in front of us, we get cleared to our gate as soon as it opens up because we were scheduled for it and they weren’t. #sorrynotsorry There’s an AeroMexico Connection E190 sitting all by itself at the absolute departure end of the taxiway. They keep calling company and ground asking what gate they can expect and how long it’ll take. The gates are jam-packed and ground both doesn’t know and doesn’t care. The company side is an interesting story.

One of the many reasons that Delta has massive profits, minimal debt, and a market cap as large as the other two major airline competitors combined is that our execs are great strategists. They’ve set up a bunch of “Joint Venture” (JV) arrangements with major airlines around the world. These aren’t just codeshares. These are arrangements where we buy as much as 49% of the company. This usually buys us a seat on their board, a share of that airline’s profits, and exposure to that airline’s risks. This gives Delta execs more control over a global airline strategy and they work hard to give our passengers reason to connect on JV partners for routes that we don’t cover with our own metal.