Making Capt.

[BobDDuck]

Why is that? If you're captain and they start laying off you'd be back to first officer no?

Right now he is a senior FO and pretty much gets the schedule he wants. If he went to CA he would be much more junior and wouldn't get the schedules he wants or maybe would even be on reserve and have no real schedule. Sure, the pay is better as a CA, but when are are actually making a decent living anyways, it may not matter so much.

 

[flyover]

Having said that, if the B744 ever gets based out of Louisville and not just Anchorage (commuting would be a nightmare:crazy: ) I'll bid it in a New York second only because it's my dream machine to fly before I retire.

I can't believe that's your dream machine whey UPS is still flying the DC-8. Why not fly a real classic?

 

[A300Capt]

I can't believe that's your dream machine whey UPS is still flying the DC-8. Why not fly a real classic?

Have you ever flown/jumpseated on a DC8?!? My Gawd man, the crews get WAY to dirty shoveling coal into the boilers and it gets WAY to hot with all that steam being produced. All that would just add up to one bad hair day! Push'n buttons and sip'n tea is more my style.

BTW, I did fly one of the classics (B727-100) before they butchered it with TAY engines and first generation EFIS.

 

[flyover]

Have you ever flown/jumpseated on a DC8?!? My Gawd man, the crews get WAY to dirty shoveling coal into the boilers and it gets WAY to hot with all that steam being produced.

Oh, yeah. In fact I engineered on and flew most of the ones UPS is probably still flying. We used to say you didn't really fly the DC-8, you herded it. One of the rules of DC-8 flying at my company was you weren't allowed to shine your shoes, clean your tie or press your jacket (or replace any of those items for that matter) as long as you were in that category.

 

[A300Capt]

Oh, yeah. In fact I engineered on and flew most of the ones UPS is probably still flying. We used to say you didn't really fly the DC-8, you herded it. One of the rules of DC-8 flying at my company was you weren't allowed to shine your shoes, clean your tie or press your jacket (or replace any of those items for that matter) as long as you were in that category.

Yep....in the early days when we first started flying the B757 (Atari Ferrari), you could see us (the nerd group) coming a mile away. Hair combed, shiny shoes with tassels, creased and starched shirts/pants, our "Top Gun" sunglasses (even at NIGHT! ) and reeking of Old Spice. The only pilots that paid less attention to us then the "Deltoids" strolling through the terminal in ATL (sorry, Doug..much love man) were the DC8 guys who just viewed us as an oddity in their domain. Looking back now I wish I had flown it but I just didn't think I was man enough...and still don't.:laff:

Funny story (to me anyway):

When I was a new hire I had to jumpseat back to SDF on the venerable diesel 8. The Capt was close to retirement and was definitely old skool. In fact, the whole crew looked older than dirt and I remember feeling really out of place as a fresh faced 26 yr old.

Anywho, somewhere enroute on our way to Louisville, one of the engines hiccuped and spooled down for whatever reason. I remember the sense of concern that this "emergency" was beginning to unfold in front of me and yet I was excited to see how this experienced airline crew would handle such a "life threatening" situation. Yea, that's it..life threatening!! I expected a flurry of activity from the crew, the Capt barking orders like Capt Bly and the engineer sweating through a mountain of checklists and procedures. To my surprise, the engineer, almost sounding bored, announced to the Capt, "Hey boss, looks like #3 just spooled down". The Capt, ever so nonchalantly, bumped the other three engines up just a tad. Then, what seemed to me like an agonizing few minutes, turned to the engineer and asked, "Was that turkey or chicken salad sandwiches they put in the catering today"? He then told the engineer that whenever he found the time he should write up the engine in the maintenance log so they could fix the problem in Louisville. They then proceeded to eat the catering. Priceless!!

BTW flyover, what part of Georgia are ya from? I'm a Georgia boy.

 

[DE727UPS]

I was on an 8 jumpseat going into ONT a couple months ago when they had some sort of hydraulic problem going through about 10K. I couldn't really figure out what was going on but we ended up landing okay. The F/E used to be my Capt on the 727. They just ran the checklist and the F/E fliped some switches and pounded on the C/B panel a little. I think they get so many non-normals in the 8 that it's just no big deal.

I like the 757/767 ONT. To get what I'd consider a good line, I'd need to be in the top 20, (I'm about 60), so I've been doing reserve, lately. I only flew 5 days in my last 30 on, so I hang out near the beach a lot. It's kinda like a mini-vacation every other week. After a week of it, I'm ready to go home, and after I'm home a week, I'm ready to go back to "work".

 

[flyover]

I was on an 8 jumpseat going into ONT a couple months ago when they had some sort of hydraulic problem going through about 10K. I couldn't really figure out what was going on but we ended up landing okay.

The 8 doesn't have much in the way of hydraulics anyway. It's probably the only transport flying that can have a full failure of the hydraulic system and land safely. But it's not pretty. I saw a UPS 8 coming into ATL in 2004 in full "manual reversion" as it's called. Even though it was a fairly calm day the airplane was noticeably yawing and rolling as it came down final. Great fun.

 

[flyover]

BTW flyover, what part of Georgia are ya from? I'm a Georgia boy.

Yeah, that's about as exciting as it gets on a four-holer. What part of Georgia? The middle part about half way between Kansas City and St. Louis. But I've been TDY on the south side of Atlanta for about 30 years.