So far my wife complains less than when I was flying at a regional. Long stretches off are nice, but by day 14 or 15 of a pattern, she starts to get irritated. I also have a toddler. I hate being away from him, and he is aware enough now where he asks when I'm coming home a lot and gets a little upset, but when my wife brought him into the airport to pick me up after this pattern, he lit up like I've never seen before and that was pretty cool.

All in all it seems like it will this tolerable, but hopefully a future contract will get us home some more. If not, my efforts to move on from here will increase!

I'm still in my first year, so things may change, but researching this place a lot (reading majority of this thread was very helpful), and discussing realistic expectations with my wife were key to this working out. I love the job, and would like to stick around, but we really do need some serious improvements in this contract.

Also, for those wondering about bases, things change of course, but I was able to hold CVG starting next month, and I was a March hire.

 

The previous posters are correct. This is very much like life was flying the C-141 in MAC, my 14 month remote tour on Diego Garcia, and the following 14 years with ATA. If you have a strong marriage and a strong self-reliant spouse then you will be fine. If your marriage has cracks then this life will expand them perhaps to the breaking point. Whether it works or not really is more a function of the marriage than it is the job. It most certainly can work. My wife and I celebrated 41 years this year and a considerable amount of that was as described above.

 

I entered the pool 10/12, just got the call today with class date Nov 30th, 747.

 

Congrats Ateam......Knowledge brought courtesy of a firehose. But its all good so far...

 

I recently took the online test and got in the mid 80's. I logged back in and looked at the report to see the score and it said that there were 2 attempts made on the test. Is this a computer error? and should I be worried ?

 

I would not worry to much about the "attempts". Congrats on the score, next up the phone interview.

 

Do you know if there are other dates that week?

 

Interviews are usually three days midweek, so 17, 18, & 19th in November. But that's only a semi-educated guess.

8

 

They are scheduled for 18, 19, and 20.

 

I'd say the percentage of Captains that are still with their first wife is 10-15%. I can say this with certainty because I ask everyone of them or it comes up in conversation on every flight.