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How many jobs do you know that have what the airlines call “Proficiency Checks”?

A proficiency check for an airline captain, someone that flies passengers under Part 121, has to go to the simulator roughly every six months. It usually consists of two hours of briefings where you cover what your company would consider “hot” topics. Items of interest that other pilots, albeit mostly captains, are doing that are wrong, i.e., busting altitudes, landing with out clearance to land, etc. Then the checkairman covers their pet peeve like the electrical system or the hydraulic system or failure of the fire monitoring system. After this is done, and the necessary paper work is completed, you go to the simulator for a battery of situations that you never see in real life but always prepare for like engine failures at V1, hydraulic anomalies, upset recovery, and windshear encounters. Then there are the single engine approaches, non-precision approaches, and the ever present go-around. The funny thing is that they always start with steep turns and departure stalls. In real life you never get close or experience any of these situations, but the amazing thing is that eventually, after you start doing these things each and every six months, it becomes ingrained in your subconscious. The steps you need to take are automatic. In fact, you don’t even realize you are doing them most the time. All the mystery of it is gone and it is just “your job.”

How many other jobs do you know that do this type of thing? Doctors, like many other professions, get constant training, but how many jobs do you know that, you are constantly evaluated and on which your career can rest? Anyway, I’m glad that I have to go to simulator training often. As an airline pilot, you are responsible for hundreds of lives, thousands of dollars worth in luggage, and don’t forget the airplane that is worth millions of dollars—I would rather be prepared!

To Your Flying Success…

Jeffrey

P.S. OK, it is no joke that the airlines are raising the price of tickets, so you owe it to yourself to search for the best options available when you travel. Priceline is still the way to save you money. Name Your Own Price & Save up to 30% on Rental Cars!

Different airlines have different ways of scheduling.

SkyWest has a combination of locals, 2-day, 3-day, 4-day, and “stand-up” trips. Locals mean that you are home that night. A “stand-up” means that you do one leg late in the evening somewhere, go to the hotel, get maybe 3 to 5 hours sleep, maybe, then head back to the airport and do one leg back. The whole time you are on “duty” making money for very little work. I hate “stand-ups.” I don’t need a lot of sleep but “stand-ups” wear me out.

Anyway, I just finished a four-day trip last night. It wasn’t your typical four-day but it wasn’t the worst I’ve been on either.

Day 1: The first day was COS to LAX. An early show, but very straight forward. Ended up watching Tiger and Rocco battle it out at the US Open.

Day 2: We went from LAX to DFW and back. Thunderstorms popped up in DFW unexpectedly and caught us and a lot of other airplanes with not enough fuel so we diverted to SPS. I wrote about this last time.

Day 3:Another easy day but long. We flew from LAX to SAT to ORD. Beautiful day. We had a jumpseater from United. Very nice guy. Flies F-16. What a deal he has! He works for United but is active duty Air Force and keeps all his United privileges. He and his family were just coming back from a week in California. — A word about jumpseaters. I don’t mind having jumpseaters but I would rather not. I am all for giving a pilot a ride home or to work, and I would rather help them out than not help them out, but in the same breath, it’s a little bit of a hassle to accommodate someone in the jumpseat.

Day 4: ORD to ICT to ORD to COS. It started out nice but after arriving in ICT, thunderstorms started building. Personally I would rather experience snow than thunderstorms. On our trip back to COS, we had to go way north to get around some weather which turned a 2 hour trip into almost a 3 hour trip. I felt bad for the passengers. It was a long trip. Our routing caused problems for Denver Center I think because basically we had to jaywalk across the arrivals into Denver which was beginning to experience thunderstorms. So they kept us at mid-altitudes and slow, which just added to our trip.

Once we landed in COS, I was wiped out. And just after we landed we discovered that DEN was in a ground stop because of thunderstorms.

Just another day.

To Your Flying Success…

Jeffrey

It is always confusing to the general public what a “regional airline” is.

Regional airlines are synonymous with “commuter airline.” Regional Airlines are generally feeders to a main airlines hub. For instance, SkyWest is a regional airline. There are over 50 regional airlines alone in the United States but only 13 or so fly for heavy metal. 

You can see a list of regional airlines by visiting http://www.raa.org/statistics/regionalairlinecompanies.html.

Today I am in Durango, Colorado. It is a relatively small town in Colorado, near the ”Four Corners” that has airline service. The runway here is not long enough or strong enough to hold say a Boeing 737 or Airbus 319. The impression that I got from the people I talked to was that they appreciate the services provided their community by Delta and United even though it is only a “regional” airline that is providing service.

One thing I find over and over is that travelers don’t even know that they are flying a regional airline, which is how the majors want it. It appears to the traveler that the travel is seamless.

Regional airlines provide an important service though. Regional pilots and flight attendants are paid less than major airline pilots and flight attendants and fly airplanes that use less fuel and less maintenance hence helping to keep the price of a ticket in check and helping that companies bottom-line. Now I know, gas prices and subsequently ticket prices are shooting even higher but if there wasn’t regional airlines providing the service, the costs would be even higher.

One final note, we are well trained and our number one goal is always safety. So rest assure, if you are flying a regional airline, we have been trained well and our airplanes are maintain in great condition!

To Your Flying Success…

Jeffrey

Jeffrey is a captain at a regional airline and flies the CRJ200, CRJ700, and the CRJ900. He has over 4000 hrs of flying experience in many different airplanes and is a Gold Seal flight instructor to his credit. He has recently written “The CRJ200 Quicknote Study Guide” that simplifies the systems of the CRJ200 into a easy-to-understand, downloadable eBook. Click here to get your copy today!

If you have ever flown into ORD, you know it can be an interesting experience, especially if something goes wrong.

Well, last night we were in CVG waiting out our “flow time” to ORD. To set the stage, we had 7 passengers on board, only about 150 lbs of bags, and not much fuel. This makes the CRJ700 very difficult to land well. It lands a lot better when you are heavy. When you are light…it makes it just a little more difficult.  Anyway…we made a little money while sitting on the taxiway getting ready to go. ORD was having some weather, so we had to wait.

Anyway, most the flight was uneventful. It seems to be the last five minutes that is always the most exciting.

We were being vectored to runway 27L in KORD. The controller gave us a turn to heading 290 degrees to intercept the localizer. I started to read it back but my FO said that the instruction wasn’t for us. So we continued on our present heading. Unfortunately that took us through the localizer. The controller gave us a turn to re-intercept and all was good. On short final we got a message that our GLD were now unsafe which is normally related to the radar altimeter going bad. The GLD deploy upon landing and ruin the lift of the airplane which helps it land. Well short final, I am not going missed. We had plenty of runway and our thrust reversers were working so we were going to land. The only other issue was that we had almost a direct crosswind from the left. My FO didn’t have a chance! We were light, our GLDs weren’t going to deploy, and we had a crosswind. The approach was near perfect; on speed and on glidepath. Once we touched down though, we bounced right back up in the air. We settled down and upon landing, albeit a little hard, made the first high speed exit. The FO wasn’t happy but he got over it. It was a good landing all things considered.

The lesson learned? Never underestimate the airplane, fly it till it stops, and be ready for the unexpected. All this happened in the last five minutes of the flight.

To Your Flying Success….

Jeffrey