Originally Posted by wcursino

I never flew in the Caribbean, but up here in the northeast we have some challenges, but overall you had some miss concepts:

- Dispatch is fair with the schedule, actually the schedule is auto generated by Astro, not sure if they would have time or willingness to mess with your day on purpose.

- The PIC checkride is supposed to check if you can successfully fly and manage the airplane, even if you have a junior SIC with you. Now, having PIC upgrades without experience sounds weird and not very true, at least I never saw that happening.

- Weight and Balance, as a PIC you are responsible to takeoff and land with appropriate weight and balance. I never had any problems removing bags because I was too heavy. On cases of long x-countries flights that I couldn't take much fuel, I normally add a fuel stops and the company never gave me any hard time because of that.

- A tip for you, if you come to your rotation with the mindset that you will work 14h per day, it will be a lot easier to plow through your days.