Originally Posted by N9373M (Post 1055720)

IFR Magazine has funny radio exchanges on the back page. IIRC this was one of them for a flight landing Guam:

This exchange occurred 100 miles from landing

Controller: Flight 123 radar contact, report field in sight
Flight 123: Roger, believe it or not we've actually got the field in sight
Controller: Really, you have the field?
Flight 123: Affirmiative
Controller: Roger, Flight 123 Cleared to land
Filght 123: Cleared to land? Really
Controler: Really, cleared to land.

Originally Posted by Zoomie (Post 1031491)

There are definitely some distortions or mis-speaks on Guam from Otto, probably because he just looked at schedules, so I'll correct a few things, no offense.

1) All Japan flying is day flying. You take off at somewhere between 6:45 am to 8:30 am and land anywhere from 3:15 pm to 5:30 pm. This is about 60% of the flying schedule in Guam. If you can hold a percentage around 50%, then you could have all day Japan out and backs if thats what you like, each with a value of roughly 7.5 hours per day. That means you could have 11 single day out and backs for the month with a 77 hour line and have 18-19 days off each month. Thats if you're senior enough to hold it. If you are, its a darn good and easy life. GUM used to be all -800s which made all the flying mid-body pay, but now they have -700s out there and about 55% of the flying has gone back to the SNB pay scale.

2) There are a lot of red-eyes for the junior folks, but they aren't Japan. They are Australia (CNS), HKG, MNL-ROR, The island hopper (to HNL), and Fiji(soon to be gone if not gone already) some other crappy island flights that are worth about 3-5 hour red eyes that end up going mostly to reserves. The good thing about the red-eyes is that most of them are pretty productive red-eyes. Most of them are 3 man trips worth 8-10+ hours, so it really ends up 2 calendar days of flying, but in reality your only gone 1 night. So you might have a schedule that says you only have 12-13 days off, but in reality, if you have a lot of 8-10 hr red-eyes, you really end up with an equivalent of 18 days off.

3) There are only 2 (real) layovers in GUM, 3 if you count Koror, Paulau (ROR) year round. One is HNL, the other is Fiji, but Fiji is going away. The ROR layover is normally the worst trip at a 2+55 hr trip red-eye that leaves GUM late at night, you lay over in a hotel for about 4 hrs, then return to GUM at around 7ish in the morning. These fall into open time all the time and end up being an easy reserve trip. The HNL layover is anywhere from 1 night to 3 nights layover, which are good for HNL commuters, or at least they used to be, but now with some changes that have occurred, some commuters don't like them. There are some seasonal layovers in Australia and Japan, but only go for a month at a time. There are also always charters to some pretty exotic locations from the military or just Korean, Chinese, or Japanese tourist groups. These tend to go very senior.

4) Trip trading for FOs was always 10x easier than trading back on the mainland. Many times you can do a straight drop if you call up when the trip trade window opens. That is almost impossible to do back on the mainland since reserve coverage sux. If you want to drop a productive red-eye or a japan turn, someone will pick it up from you very often since almost all trips are pretty productive, so if you want a birthday or special occasion off that isn't a big holiday, you probably wont have problems, even very junior. Some schedulers will let you drop trips even when they are below min coverage for the month because they know some of the trips will get picked up from open time almost immediately

8) Don't believe the old hype about snakes, you'll never see them in inhabited locations.

9) Crime is prevalent, but its not violent, mainly thieves stealing stuff from neighboring islands, so lock up your goodies or live in a gated community


Thats all i can think of for now. It is a place that you will either love or hate. Travel to the mainland has been difficult in the past, but since UAL is putting a 777 on the HNL-IAH flight(instead of a 767) in the fall and now passes are free for both carriers, travel back to the mainland could be easier, or perhaps could be more of a nightmare with a lot of new UAL non-revs that want to see GUM or the other islands. It will probably be slightly easier since there are more options from HNL with UA, but somehow it seems Hawaii flights are always full.

Originally Posted by MooneyWise (Post 1561815)

This is from a couple years ago. Is the info still accurate? Are there any other 'words of wisdom' from those operating there?

Originally Posted by Sputnik (Post 1567994)

What is the accurate info?