This really pisses me off. I filled out their online application thing how many times? AT least 5 times over the past year. I go over there and fill it out every time I hear even a peep about them needing people. I haven't heard a peep from them not even once. Maybe I need to start wording the application to make them think I'm a huge scrub or something, because that is what they seem to want in their applicants...
Hey, I resemble that remark. I should have been more clear...my experience was in 2005 when you couldn't beg borrow or steal a pilot...it was an open cattle call...if you showed up and had a logbook that could be attempted to be believed, you were "in class". I have no idea how things are done now. I will say that I rarely saw a super "high time" pilot there (unless they'd been there for ten years...hi Jerome), but that might have been a product of the aforementioned dearth of available pilots at the time, dunno.
Unless things have changed pretty massively, I would be extremely surprised to see any kind of jumpseat agreements. When I was there you'd have been laughed out of training if the word "commuting" even came out of your mouth. Getting days off was like pulling teeth. Think less "pilot job" and think more "long hours blue collar weekday work-a-day job that happens to involve flying airplanes". If your turn-ons include uniforms, rollaboards, autopilots (ok, I like those too), air conditioning, airline jargon, and GPSes, you might want to keep looking. If your turn-offs include touching the cargo, getting sweaty, nonprecision approaches, bad weather, making decisions, dark ramps in the middle of the night, and being occasionally a little bit scared, you might also want to keep looking. Mind you, I say this as a guy who really enjoyed my time at FLX. I still cherish the memories.
Taxiing through snow drifts at SGF in my iced up 210 so I could transfer my cargo to another that had just landed and was icing up just as fast while I was trying to pick up ammo cans full of chemo with fingers that I literally couldn't feel, then taking off a few hours later to go home in a thundersnow storm.
CRG in the morning, always foggy, always smelled like the tropics to this KY boy.
Parking next to the DCI ramp (I think? Riddle? Some puppymill) at SFB after some weather diversion disaster or another and smoking a few cigarettes with my five day beard staring at all the toolbags doing their 30 minute preflight. I hadn't slept for days.
OPF late at night when lots of dudes who don't speak english (or at least want you to think they don't) unload beautiful old airliners full of palletes that you just know are full of AKs.
Getting sort of seriously pudgy after flying to ASG for six or so months and eating at the greasiest greasy spoon ever overlooking the runway. Good times.
I miss it terribly, but one suspects its the sort of thing it's better to feel nostalgic about than "get" to experience again.
