At the hotel Timbo. We have the LAX red eye that gets in at 6:40 AM or so. If you decide to come downtown, please look me up. I'm there until Monday afternoon. I'll shoot you my cell number via PM. Love to swap some stories. We just missed each other in the ATL as I recall.

Buzz

Put mine in on 16 DEC. Called about it yesterday, and they said being processed as we spoke. Should receive it by the 6th. They said they had to run extra trials on it this year.

Pro Diem. Have used them for 3 years... Never longer than 72 hours.

Agreed.

As the saying goes, sometimes we are our own worst enemy.

Just don't understand the desire to force more people into working on the weekends.

If we can carry an overage of pilots and they are working during the week, that is a good thing.

Not to mention that an increase in staffing levels on the weekend means those currently forced into weekend reserve will be stuck there for even longer.

A little warm interruption...

If you're on weekend reserve, you're stuck there anyways. Nobody is moving around here anyways.

But this is the thing for me, we used to cap out at 70 hours but now in my category this month you can go to 91 this month. Weekend fliers tend to fly every week until they were capped, but now that cap is near impossible to exceed.

What I am saying is if we can live with 50 pilots M-F, we can live with 50 on the weekend. Bring staffing up. They can hire. Personally I'd rather see every category above me need more pilots instead of getting by on GSs and WSs. But I guess I'm kind of pro Bow Wave.

I'm with Doug.

Is being paid ALV-2 better than being paid 70 hours? Sure. Does it screw me over in the long term? Absolutely. Because while being paid 74 hours on the 88 is nice it's not worth having the involuntary ALV+15 system (fewer pilots in every category) given I could make more money flying the 73N with a 70 hour cap.

After seeing the Caribbean way too much as a corporate pilot, I began to hate all things Caribbean. Tack on a bad experience at a Margarittaville and I have to say my desire to listen to Jimmy Buffet descended faster than an MD-88 busting its altitude capture after displaying ALT HLD.

However, I always liked his cover of that song.



Speaking of covers, I really like Mumford and Sons cover of The Boxer. I'll just throw that out there.



And a little clearer version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQpUs1qNxMM

Question. I doubt there has ever been a reason to do this but can you transform a 744 BCF back into a passenger jet?

Can you make it a combi?

We can have the 3 F's of 744 Combi ops: First Class, Freight and Forget the rest.

Don't know about turning a freighter back to all pax but do know the FAA will not certify a Combi in the US. I believe it is because the PAX have to sit behind any cargo.

Well, someone better tell Alaska, because they've been operating them for years.

Aircraft Information 737-400 Combi - Alaska Airlines