I had a blast. IOE captain was great and called me the night before we were supposed to fly together to make sure I knew where I was going, when to show up, how to get in the crew room, etc. I had never actually been to the crew room before that first trip in the real airplane so it was nice to have someone spell it all out. (Honestly, I can't believe the FAs get a "base orientation" tour but for pilots their like "oh, by the way, theres this thing called an "airport" and its got a bunch of terminals. Our crew room is in one of em, most of our flights depart out of there but some depart way over there. You'll figure it out as you go. Cheers!" Guess they figure most of us are smart enough to figure it out on our own
)
I still remember blasting off out of IAH on our way to BNA, feeling that airplane accelerate down the runway for the first time (definitely one of the coolest moments in my life) with me holding on to the tail feathers. Get up to cruise and its kinda like "what now boss? I've never gotten this far into a flight without an engine failure or a flight control malfunction". Plane gets to BNA (I arrive just a few minutes later
) and we have to dodge some thunderstorms. Make it in, rush through a 25 minute turn and blast off to IAH to do it all over again.