Originally Posted by
Sunvox
Yeah. In all honesty if 30 years ago I understood what it meant to be a pilot in terms of years spent working night hours and holidays I would have picked a different career.
I will say - I lived on the west coast for a while and was SFO based doing JFK red-eyes.......
I grew up in an airline household. In the 50's-70's, red eyes were a very small part of any airline schedule. Most of the fleet sat on the ground at night in maintenance or repair. The same could be said euphemistically for the pilots.
I remember when Eastern started a red eye LAX-ATL departure in late 70's. Many were skeptical, but they filled the belly with mail. Seats were cheap and the flight was usually full. I got left behind a couple times on a mil stdby ticket.
I too was based in SFO in the early 80's and flew coast to coast redeys, (freight) both ways. I was senior but gave it up for daytime "airline flying". My first month on the line was doing red eyes in the 10.
