DashAviator

Good luck! Hopefully your company will allow you to take the leave. Commuting to sit reserve is NOT fun. There may be some other people in your situation, so perhaps you could give us an update in a few months.

hydrostream

There's something to be said for having options and being able to choose your fate. Good luck to you.

Richmond454

Thanks everyone. Still waiting to hear back for VLOA. If they approve it I've decided to take the job. If anyone is interested I'll update in a few months from my cubicle. I'm very hesitant about leaving such a fun job behind but it'll be temporary. I think it'll reenergize me to come back when things are better. All your inputs have been great.

Richmond454

An update since my last post. The VLOA was approved for one year starting on 1 November. I started the new Job already. The job is pretty much what I expected, grinding away at a keyboard inside a cubicle. It's not horrible but definitely not as fun flying around in a jet. Being on the job for the past month and a half I have the following pluses and minus:

Positive:

* Pay. I forgot what I feels like to make a decent living. Living off regional FO pay for the past 2 years and now going to this job is amazing. I'm able to save for retirement again. It's gonna be hard to go back to FO pay.
*. Not commuting to work. It's nice not having to check flight loads and wondering if the jumpseat is open.
*Not having to deal old crusty angry captains. We have a few at my base and it seems I was always rostered with them.
*Having weekends off and able to make plans a few weeks out instead of telling people I have to get back to them when my schedule comes out.

Negative

*I miss flying
*. Not as much to talk about with coworker. Everyone else is from the same IT mode and I can't talk aviation with them. I don't have as much in common with them.,
* I can see working in a cubicle banging away at a keyboard is gonna get old fast.

So overall I'm happy I took the VLOA as it changes my pace for a bit and able to make some decent money. I'll take this opportunity to build up a fund. However even just being on the job for a month and a half I know I'm gonna want to get back to flying. Hopefully with the vaccine being approved things will get somewhat back to normal sooner rather than later. Ideal situation is to have the opportunity to put in for upgrade shortly after I get back. I've put my application into a few ACMIs recently but I doubt I'll be competitive in this environment.

Thanks again for everyone's input.

rswitz

That job sounds almost 100% better than being an airline pilot.

wrxpilot

Have you ever worked an office job? I have, it totally sucked. But I’ll tell you what, changing careers isn’t that hard, so you should definitely do it if you’re miserable flying. Absolutely no reason to live your life working a career you dislike.

123494

Exactly. But people like him who constantly complain about the career are the ones who never actually quit and do something else. If they’re so miserable, why not just go and do something else instead of complaining on an anonymous forum?

Jdj10

Unfortunately, a lot of people do it for the money, or the potential money once getting to a major. You can tell in the first few minutes of flying with these types. Bad attitude, complain about everything. I get excited when I have a partner who is actually interested in aviation, and actually wants to talk about flying stuff. (And I don’t mean about the airplane you bought last year). I’m always trying to improve myself as a professional aviator, and it is pretty nice when you can have conversations to that purpose. But then you get the guy who just wants to talk about hot babes he saw in the airport, how bad the contract is, and how the chief pilots screwed him. No one cares. Go find something you love to do. Stop trying to become rich and make everyone else around you miserable. A safe and high level operating crew environment starts with the crew being in the right state of mind. And in this business, that requires the crew to be immersed and committed in their profession. Otherwise, safety suffers as a result.

Cyio

Yeah no. Clearly crews discussions their disdain for the contract or cpo doesn’t decrease the level of safety or we would have planes falling out of the sky constantly. I mean jump on a mainline JS and listen to most of those guys.

like it or not, the cpo and the contract ARE part of this profession. Personally I enjoy talking about that kind of stuff, ways to improve things, union work etc. always good to get other people’s opinion. If you think me not wanting to talk about how cool you think VNAV is makes me unprofessional or unsafe I don’t know what to say.

Jdj10

I think you misunderstood the context of everything I was talking about.