B727DRVR

Welcome aboard, VMO!

The 680 is an awesome jet and a great type to have. Having said that, the 680 fleet along with the X flies less than our workhorse fleet, the Citation Excel/XLS/XLS+.. Your upgrade time will vary on your total time, your time in the jet, and how quickly YOU are ready to upgrade. While there are no “typical” days here, I would guess that the 680 averages 2 legs per day. You might sit at home on Day 1 on Home Reserve, paid of course, or sent home a day early, still paid. You just never know what your rotation will look like in any fleet, but the great thing about a larger Part 135 Company is that you have strength in numbers, i.e., the Company won’t shut down just because you got sick or a family member did. We have depth in all fleets, with no forced overtime, “junior manning”, and you know your schedule a year in advance. They don’t mess with it.

As far as WW goes, you can go back and see what I wrote about him in some of my previous posts.. This one poster considered WW the Antichrist, responsible for Pearl Harbor, 09/11, the Great Recession, Covid-19, and all his personal disappointments and failings.. which is totally ridiculous. WW and I were new hires together, and I could tell that he was sharp the moment that I met him, and I tried hard to get him as a sim partner, but that didn’t work out. WW had come from the highest levels levels of the FAA and wanted to do nothing to do with anything other than to just fly.

However, when asked, he stepped up into Fleet Lead on the XL, and totally cleaned up and standardized the fleet. He kept being asked to temporarily fill open positions, going up to the VP of Flight Operations. There, he got the blame for IMPLEMENTING decisions from above to keep the Company running and people employed when there was blood in the water all around us with other Companies shutting down and laying off pilots. The pilots here that know WW personally, know that he was always a pilots advocate even when that wasn’t necessarily the best political move. He oversaw several pay and per diem raises during his tenure and was always pushing for more. He was in the meeting that decided to keep us at home with full pay for a month during Covid-19’s initial stages where other pilots elsewhere were shown the door. Some of the unpopular decisions he implemented were the temporary 15/13 schedule for all during COVID-19 (policies also implemented by some of our competitors/partners), taking hotel selection away from individual pilots (Travel and Hotels dept. will take a suggestion though.. I am about at 70% success rate with that), and increasing Per Diem, but taking away crew meals (they are back now, but certainly not 3 steak and lobster dinners like Netjets, &#128514. Again, these were policies that he was directed to implement and that made him some enemies. But the Company didn’t hire him to be Mr. Popularity, they hired to lead and implement decisions, sometime unpopular ones like shutting down the Line Pilot Recruiters, including me, because we were unable to reach the numbers set for our Recruiting calls (They brought back two of us shortly after). He resigned that role shortly after that to get back into flying more, politics less, and is a Chief Pilot on our Supers.

Also, WW is a TOTAL smart a$$ with a twisted sense of humor, and I love that about him. He loves to give you shiznit and can take it as well. If you aren’t thin skinned, you will enjoy a rotation with him. So, in a nutshell, I respect WW. And no, if you are wondering.. I’m not WW, nor am I compensated to be his Chief Defender, 😆. How’s that for honesty….