jynxyjoe
Queso King
A story of two jumpseating pilots.
Pilot A: One week ago, graced our jump seat, what a pleasure, quite honestly. Happy, grateful, and above all professional from top to bottom. We took a delay leaving Minne just to get as many nonrevvers and jumpseaters on as we could (slow gate agent). Anyone flying in the STL area can attest, last week was hell. Lots of windshear, lots of chop, crosswinds which make the stupid CRJ autopilot look stupid (I admit it doesn't take a lot). The jumpseater was kind to me considering the mess of the approach and took time before he left to really compliment the Captain on how he ran his ship and his great CRM work. He didn't have to do all that, couldn't say enough nice things to and about us. What a guy.
Pilot B: Horrible body language I could see through the cockpit window while he was at the gate. We kinda chuckled about "grumpy" and the captain said after a second, "well crap I hope he's not jumpseating because we don't have the oxygen." Honestly I didn't even look, we were shy by about 100psi. I said, "crap, let me check". I hoped out of the seat and just made the turn on the jetbridge when I saw the guy. He was just angry as I thought, and I have no idea about what. I asked him if they'd got him a seat in the back and he kinda snapped saying that he was planning to be up front. I told him about the oxygen situation and apologized as sincerely and politely as possible. I told him feel free to stop by the cockpit I'll run up to the gate agent and see what I could do. The Gate agent couldn't do anything, we were full in the back. The jumpseater wouldn't even say anything to the captain, he just stared him down and wouldn't even make contact with me as he left the cockpit and aircraft even while I apologized again. I sat in my seat and we continued finishing up, the clown sat up top and eyeballed the both of us the rest of the time. Talked to the flight attendant later and she said he wouldn't even talk to her. Captain also apologized and told him we were limited on our options because of the time left to departure and not having a MX base there. Firstly flight out of BNA, what could we do?
Obviously this is a story of both 5%'s. There's a 5% of a group who are just stellar, and a 5% who are nuts and jerks. The rest are just normal guys with varying levels of good and bad.
There's more of a story here. We have two pilots from the same company and apparently same base, both Captains. My other captain and I spoke 5 minutes about what a great guy pilot A was, and this captain today and I spent upwards of 30 minutes talking about Pilot B. The guy's face is burned in my brain. Isn't it amazing how easy it is to focus in on negativity? Maybe we expect too much of our fellow man, to be great people and don't give them enough thanks when they are.
Remember to focus more on the positive.
Pilot A: One week ago, graced our jump seat, what a pleasure, quite honestly. Happy, grateful, and above all professional from top to bottom. We took a delay leaving Minne just to get as many nonrevvers and jumpseaters on as we could (slow gate agent). Anyone flying in the STL area can attest, last week was hell. Lots of windshear, lots of chop, crosswinds which make the stupid CRJ autopilot look stupid (I admit it doesn't take a lot). The jumpseater was kind to me considering the mess of the approach and took time before he left to really compliment the Captain on how he ran his ship and his great CRM work. He didn't have to do all that, couldn't say enough nice things to and about us. What a guy.
Pilot B: Horrible body language I could see through the cockpit window while he was at the gate. We kinda chuckled about "grumpy" and the captain said after a second, "well crap I hope he's not jumpseating because we don't have the oxygen." Honestly I didn't even look, we were shy by about 100psi. I said, "crap, let me check". I hoped out of the seat and just made the turn on the jetbridge when I saw the guy. He was just angry as I thought, and I have no idea about what. I asked him if they'd got him a seat in the back and he kinda snapped saying that he was planning to be up front. I told him about the oxygen situation and apologized as sincerely and politely as possible. I told him feel free to stop by the cockpit I'll run up to the gate agent and see what I could do. The Gate agent couldn't do anything, we were full in the back. The jumpseater wouldn't even say anything to the captain, he just stared him down and wouldn't even make contact with me as he left the cockpit and aircraft even while I apologized again. I sat in my seat and we continued finishing up, the clown sat up top and eyeballed the both of us the rest of the time. Talked to the flight attendant later and she said he wouldn't even talk to her. Captain also apologized and told him we were limited on our options because of the time left to departure and not having a MX base there. Firstly flight out of BNA, what could we do?
Obviously this is a story of both 5%'s. There's a 5% of a group who are just stellar, and a 5% who are nuts and jerks. The rest are just normal guys with varying levels of good and bad.
There's more of a story here. We have two pilots from the same company and apparently same base, both Captains. My other captain and I spoke 5 minutes about what a great guy pilot A was, and this captain today and I spent upwards of 30 minutes talking about Pilot B. The guy's face is burned in my brain. Isn't it amazing how easy it is to focus in on negativity? Maybe we expect too much of our fellow man, to be great people and don't give them enough thanks when they are.
Remember to focus more on the positive.
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