DANCING WITH PILOTS
Note: On August 29th, a Tuesday, I will be
hosting a telephone interview with my friends
Kevin and Warren of Natural Point Inc., based in
Oregon. The call will start at 11:00 AM West
Coast Time (adjust for your time zone) and a link
will be posted on my site later if you can't make
it. Details including the number to call and how
to submit your questions will be sent out in next
week's Update. The call will last from 30
minutes to an hour.
We'll be talking about their fantastic and
innovative product, called the Trackir
(pronounced "tracker”) which I had the fun of
trying out at the recent International Flight
Simulator Convention recently here in Denver.
The device, which clips onto a cap or visor,
allows the pilot to see not only straight ahead,
but out the side windows with only a slight turn
of the head and keeping the eyes focused on the
computer screen.
The reason I like it so much is that in addition
to the side views, I can also tilt my head just
slightly to see my overhead panel or look down
slightly and see my center pedestal. Everything
is displayed ahead of me on the screen, but the
view changes with just slight inclinations of my
head while keeping my eyes straight ahead.
Anyone who is interested in flight simming should
tune in to this call, and you'll hear how to get
a nice discount on the product as well. This is
the first of my planned series of interviews with
the makers of add-on products for home flight
simulators. If you're at all familiar with
TrackIR already and have questions, submit them
to me at support@fromthecockpit.com and put
TrackIR in the subject, please.
Now, on to this week's Update. I received an
email out of the wild blue yonder from an old
friend of mine, a former crew scheduler for
United Airlines named Myrna. She wrote to tell
me she was hospitalized, having just had some
cancerous brain tumors removed. This is her
second bout with cancer, the first one having
caused her to retire from United several years
ago. Another lousy break for someone who
certainly deserves better.
I immediately called her in the hospital. We've
kept in sporadic touch over the years and I even
bumped into her a few years ago at the terminal
in Chicago. She was arriving on a flight and I
was picking up the airplane to fly out. She is
the only crew scheduler I ever visited at home
and certainly one of the all-time pilot favorites
to work with.
Let me tell you a little something about airline
crew scheduling. Line pilots, meaning pilots
holding a regular schedule because their
seniority is good enough, deal with crew
scheduling at times, but reserve pilots are on
call and in almost constant communication with an
airline's crew desk. This is less true than it
used to be due to advances in computerized pilot
scheduling, but it's still the reserve pilots who
work most closely with an airline's crew desk.
A pilot can choose to be junior in a senior rank
and fleet, or senior in a junior rank and fleet.
For instance, at the end of my career, I could
have been an extremely senior captain on a
smaller airplane, like the B-737. Or I could
have been a very senior copilot on a big airplane
like the B-777 or B-747. By choosing to be a
captain on the biggest airplane I could hold with
my seniority, I was a very junior captain on a
very senior airplane, and that meant being a
reserve or on-call pilot.
Lots of pilots (as well as flight attendants)
live in cities other than their home bases. I
live in Denver but flew out of Chicago as a B-777
captain, and being on reserve in other than your
own city can be a frustrating challenge. I felt
it was worth the aggravation of commuting in
order to fly the airplane I wanted to fly on the
routes, some international, that I wanted to fly.
International flights are often assigned or
picked up by pilots through a computer system a
day or so in advance, but domestic trips can be
assigned as little as just a few hours prior to
departure. That means if a pilot is on reserve
and nothing is already assigned, it's necessary
to travel to the home base and just hang out at a
hotel or crash pad hoping to be assigned a trip.
There is an old joke about a pilot union meeting,
where the guy running the meeting says something
like, "Gentlemen, you'll be pleased to know that
according to the new contract we just negotiated,
we will now fly only on Wednesdays."
There is dead silence in the room while the
pilots mull this over. Finally, one crusty old
captain at the back of the room stands up and
says, "Is that EVERY Wednesday?"
No matter how good a schedule a pilot might have,
there seem to always be some changes desired, and
that means rather extensive interaction with the
crew desk. Some advanced programs have picked up
some of the load now, but there is still plenty
of interaction directly between pilots and
schedulers.
I call it "The Pilot Dance" and here is how it
goes:
A pilot calls up the crew desk to ask for some
vacation time, which can be taken a few days at a
time, and drop a trip if there are enough reserve
pilots. The crew scheduler answers but it's not
one of the ones with whom there is a reasonable
chance of getting what is asked for. Pilots
typically know their schedulers in terms of which
ones can be hit up for various requests with a
reasonable chance of success. The pilot asks
half-heartedly if he might drop his next trip for
vacation and the crew scheduler says, "No, I'm
sorry but we're over max usage right now." Just
as expected.
The pilot hangs up and waits for the next shift
change, and this time Myrna answers, or another
one of the Santa Claus variety of schedulers.
This time when the pilot asks, she answers, "No
problem." Schedulers like Myrna didn't look at
the schedule and then say "no." They invariably
said "yes" and then worked out afterward how they
would manage it. They gave the pilots what they
wanted and needed and in return got very
cooperative pilots when they got into a squeeze
and needed someone in a hurry.
The pilot-crew scheduler interaction is
representative of a lot of dealings in life, I've
discovered, and that is, "If you don't get the
answer you want the first time, just keep asking
until you do get the answer you want." This
seems to be common knowledge among
pilots--especially reserve pilots.
Now, having said that, being a crew scheduler is
a really, really challenging affair at times and
I’m not being critical. It's a position I could
never handle myself. I always felt empathetic
toward the schedulers, realizing their
challenges, and had a good relationship with them
as a pilot, as do the majority (hopefully) of
pilots.
For instance, once when I was living just about
fifteen minutes away from Denver International,
where I was based at the time, I got a frantic
call from a crew scheduler who informed me a
captain had just called in sick after he had
already checked in for a flight to Miami. There
was a plane-full of passengers sitting at the
gate with a copilot but no captain. Normal
call-out time was four hours but they asked me if
I could go immediately, which I could and did.
The scheduler informed me I would spend the night
in Miami and come back on the first flight
available at 6:00 AM the next morning, but this
was a beach layover, and if my readers know
anything about me they know I love the beach.
The scheduler also knew this and offered me an
extra day at the beach if I wanted, which of
course I did. The scheduler got her trip
covered, the passengers got their captain and I
got to scare everyone off the beach in Miami.
Perfect.
Next week I'll tell you about something I
consider extraordinary having to do with my
friend Myrna, something that gives me hope with
regard to the basic generosity of the human
spirit.
Now you can go wonder about that for the next
week.
hosting a telephone interview with my friends
Kevin and Warren of Natural Point Inc., based in
Oregon. The call will start at 11:00 AM West
Coast Time (adjust for your time zone) and a link
will be posted on my site later if you can't make
it. Details including the number to call and how
to submit your questions will be sent out in next
week's Update. The call will last from 30
minutes to an hour.
We'll be talking about their fantastic and
innovative product, called the Trackir
(pronounced "tracker”) which I had the fun of
trying out at the recent International Flight
Simulator Convention recently here in Denver.
The device, which clips onto a cap or visor,
allows the pilot to see not only straight ahead,
but out the side windows with only a slight turn
of the head and keeping the eyes focused on the
computer screen.
The reason I like it so much is that in addition
to the side views, I can also tilt my head just
slightly to see my overhead panel or look down
slightly and see my center pedestal. Everything
is displayed ahead of me on the screen, but the
view changes with just slight inclinations of my
head while keeping my eyes straight ahead.
Anyone who is interested in flight simming should
tune in to this call, and you'll hear how to get
a nice discount on the product as well. This is
the first of my planned series of interviews with
the makers of add-on products for home flight
simulators. If you're at all familiar with
TrackIR already and have questions, submit them
to me at support@fromthecockpit.com and put
TrackIR in the subject, please.
Now, on to this week's Update. I received an
email out of the wild blue yonder from an old
friend of mine, a former crew scheduler for
United Airlines named Myrna. She wrote to tell
me she was hospitalized, having just had some
cancerous brain tumors removed. This is her
second bout with cancer, the first one having
caused her to retire from United several years
ago. Another lousy break for someone who
certainly deserves better.
I immediately called her in the hospital. We've
kept in sporadic touch over the years and I even
bumped into her a few years ago at the terminal
in Chicago. She was arriving on a flight and I
was picking up the airplane to fly out. She is
the only crew scheduler I ever visited at home
and certainly one of the all-time pilot favorites
to work with.
Let me tell you a little something about airline
crew scheduling. Line pilots, meaning pilots
holding a regular schedule because their
seniority is good enough, deal with crew
scheduling at times, but reserve pilots are on
call and in almost constant communication with an
airline's crew desk. This is less true than it
used to be due to advances in computerized pilot
scheduling, but it's still the reserve pilots who
work most closely with an airline's crew desk.
A pilot can choose to be junior in a senior rank
and fleet, or senior in a junior rank and fleet.
For instance, at the end of my career, I could
have been an extremely senior captain on a
smaller airplane, like the B-737. Or I could
have been a very senior copilot on a big airplane
like the B-777 or B-747. By choosing to be a
captain on the biggest airplane I could hold with
my seniority, I was a very junior captain on a
very senior airplane, and that meant being a
reserve or on-call pilot.
Lots of pilots (as well as flight attendants)
live in cities other than their home bases. I
live in Denver but flew out of Chicago as a B-777
captain, and being on reserve in other than your
own city can be a frustrating challenge. I felt
it was worth the aggravation of commuting in
order to fly the airplane I wanted to fly on the
routes, some international, that I wanted to fly.
International flights are often assigned or
picked up by pilots through a computer system a
day or so in advance, but domestic trips can be
assigned as little as just a few hours prior to
departure. That means if a pilot is on reserve
and nothing is already assigned, it's necessary
to travel to the home base and just hang out at a
hotel or crash pad hoping to be assigned a trip.
There is an old joke about a pilot union meeting,
where the guy running the meeting says something
like, "Gentlemen, you'll be pleased to know that
according to the new contract we just negotiated,
we will now fly only on Wednesdays."
There is dead silence in the room while the
pilots mull this over. Finally, one crusty old
captain at the back of the room stands up and
says, "Is that EVERY Wednesday?"
No matter how good a schedule a pilot might have,
there seem to always be some changes desired, and
that means rather extensive interaction with the
crew desk. Some advanced programs have picked up
some of the load now, but there is still plenty
of interaction directly between pilots and
schedulers.
I call it "The Pilot Dance" and here is how it
goes:
A pilot calls up the crew desk to ask for some
vacation time, which can be taken a few days at a
time, and drop a trip if there are enough reserve
pilots. The crew scheduler answers but it's not
one of the ones with whom there is a reasonable
chance of getting what is asked for. Pilots
typically know their schedulers in terms of which
ones can be hit up for various requests with a
reasonable chance of success. The pilot asks
half-heartedly if he might drop his next trip for
vacation and the crew scheduler says, "No, I'm
sorry but we're over max usage right now." Just
as expected.
The pilot hangs up and waits for the next shift
change, and this time Myrna answers, or another
one of the Santa Claus variety of schedulers.
This time when the pilot asks, she answers, "No
problem." Schedulers like Myrna didn't look at
the schedule and then say "no." They invariably
said "yes" and then worked out afterward how they
would manage it. They gave the pilots what they
wanted and needed and in return got very
cooperative pilots when they got into a squeeze
and needed someone in a hurry.
The pilot-crew scheduler interaction is
representative of a lot of dealings in life, I've
discovered, and that is, "If you don't get the
answer you want the first time, just keep asking
until you do get the answer you want." This
seems to be common knowledge among
pilots--especially reserve pilots.
Now, having said that, being a crew scheduler is
a really, really challenging affair at times and
I’m not being critical. It's a position I could
never handle myself. I always felt empathetic
toward the schedulers, realizing their
challenges, and had a good relationship with them
as a pilot, as do the majority (hopefully) of
pilots.
For instance, once when I was living just about
fifteen minutes away from Denver International,
where I was based at the time, I got a frantic
call from a crew scheduler who informed me a
captain had just called in sick after he had
already checked in for a flight to Miami. There
was a plane-full of passengers sitting at the
gate with a copilot but no captain. Normal
call-out time was four hours but they asked me if
I could go immediately, which I could and did.
The scheduler informed me I would spend the night
in Miami and come back on the first flight
available at 6:00 AM the next morning, but this
was a beach layover, and if my readers know
anything about me they know I love the beach.
The scheduler also knew this and offered me an
extra day at the beach if I wanted, which of
course I did. The scheduler got her trip
covered, the passengers got their captain and I
got to scare everyone off the beach in Miami.
Perfect.
Next week I'll tell you about something I
consider extraordinary having to do with my
friend Myrna, something that gives me hope with
regard to the basic generosity of the human
spirit.
Now you can go wonder about that for the next
week.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home