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-   -   Flying Magazine's Day in the Life of RJ Pilot (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/regional/75212-flying-magazines-day-life-rj-pilot.html)

RyanP 06-01-2013 06:39 PM

Auto-throttles and crew meals? What are those? In 7 years I have yet to see that stuff in any of the planes I flew..

W T F

TheTransporter 06-01-2013 06:40 PM


Originally Posted by Trip7 (Post 1420215)
Looks like the "union with balls" succumbed to the economic realities of the business

Economic reality is that someone with no experience in the industry will do your job for less because they don't understand that it is perpetuating the downward spiral of the profession. Or is it that one can always find a way to justify their actions. Only reason most of our jobs exist is due to a lack of unions with balls.
Cheers

Al Czervik 06-01-2013 06:59 PM

This guy tells it like it is. Funny stuff:

This Is Your Copilot Speaking / Pilot X | Nowhere

mojo6911 06-01-2013 07:01 PM

Les Abend invented the term first officer because he is never second.

MrMustache 06-01-2013 07:14 PM


Originally Posted by Al Czervik (Post 1420227)
This guy tells it like it is. Funny stuff:

This Is Your Copilot Speaking / Pilot X | Nowhere

Amazing book

80ktsClamp 06-01-2013 08:50 PM

Kudos for having the manly bits to out yourself for writing this article, Sam. :)

I already gave you appropriate crap for the AP/AT comment, and I get the artistic license thing. You own a freaking tail tragger and can fly circles around me I'm sure, so that's where we're at.

Sam has fought the good fight and continues to do so for the recovery of the overexpansion of the regionals back to mainline (and thus higher wages and more good jobs). We've worked together to fight ALPA on the divesting of Compass out from mainline ALPA.

If he keeps this up, I'll have to renew my subscription for Flying that I cancelled years ago!


Curious, Trip7- didn't AC just start a new low cost carrier with 767s? Is that flown by AC seniority list pilots?

ShyGuy 06-01-2013 10:32 PM


Originally Posted by Trip7 (Post 1420215)
Looks like the "union with balls" succumbed to the economic realities of the business

At least they made it that long, compared to the pilots in a country below theirs voting yes to pay cuts and scope concessions.

flyingreasemnky 06-02-2013 12:05 AM


Originally Posted by 80ktsClamp (Post 1420274)
Curious, Trip7- didn't AC just start a new low cost carrier with 767s? Is that flown by AC seniority list pilots?

The Canadian government forced AC pilots to accept the spin off into an LCC. The ERJ's are no longer flown by "mainline" there.

Captain Tony 06-02-2013 04:50 AM


Originally Posted by JungleBus (Post 1420205)
Yikes, so many questions, where do I start :confused:.

Long story short, I've had an aviation blog since 2005. Have been a subscriber to Flying since I was 13 (1994). Current Editor-in-Chief of Flying reads my blog, liked what he read, & asked me to write for them. I started doing a straight day-in-the-life piece and it bored me to tears, and the average non-airline pilot, having no context of the regional industry, would be hard-pressed to understand how it's any different from a day in the life of a major airline pilot. I could have gone the eight-leg-day route but that's quickly becoming obsolete in the regional world. I chose to use a day that would have been performed by a mainline pilot <10 years ago, now done at RJ wages, largely by pilots who have already been furloughed & reset to year one wages at least once. That seems to be the way the regional world has been going, and not much of the general public or even GA world is aware of it. It was never going to be a "woe is me, I'm so overworked and underpaid" piece because neither Flying's editorial staff nor their readership is very interested in that sort of thing. It was an honest look at the ups and downs of the industry as I've seen them, and I felt fortunate to be afforded that honesty with very little editorial input. Keep in mind that much of Flying's advertising revenue comes from the flight training industry.

"flying more smoothly than I am able" = a bit of artistic license, a bit of wry self-effacement, and a bit of the truth. The vast majority of airline pilots these days leave the autopilot on for 95% of the flight. In reality I take pride in hand-flying smoothly, accurately, and for a decent portion of climb & approach, but I recognize that the autopilot usually does as good of a job and it's not what I'm paid for. I'm paid for my experience & judgement.

When writing it the two things I kept in mind were 1) will the average GA pilot understand this and find it interesting? and 2) will this ring true to my fellow regional pilots? The article has already garnered positive reaction from Flying's readership; hopefully most of the regional guys who read it understand where I'm coming from better than a few of the posters here. :o

I understand your motives, but why write an article like this at all? I get that nobody wanted a "poor me", but it definitely doesn't serve a purpose to glorify our existence, with long mainline legs, autothrottles and crew meals. You should have jumpseated around with an RJ-200 crew. Until pilots stop selling their souls to fly a Big Shiny Jet, we will continue to get treated like a commodity by management, and continue with the "seniority recycling" you mentioned. Articles like this, as you say, cater to the training industry. They used you.

avi8tor220 06-02-2013 06:45 AM


Originally Posted by Al Czervik (Post 1420227)
This guy tells it like it is. Funny stuff:

This Is Your Copilot Speaking / Pilot X | Nowhere


It's a shame this guy stopped writing. If anybody knows this guy tell him to start back up. His musings are hilarious.


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