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Guest
Guest
Well my Thanksgiving got off to an amazing start. I have a good friend who is an intern at Airborne Express in flight operations. He invited me down for the night to check out all the operations. All I have to say is WOW. For those of you who are not familiar with ABX they run the largest privately owned airport in the country (KILN), it's in Wilmington, OH which is about 40 miles southeast of Dayton. They have a fleet of around 100 aircraft: DC-8, DC-9, and 767's.
Night started off with me arriving at flight ops and meeting a couple of the chief pilots on duty (network, network, network). After that we made our way up to the tower and checked out everything up there. Very nice guys who pretty much explained anything and everything we would ever want to know about their side of the operation.
Next we went over to the training center and checked out the sims, they weren't fired up but it was still very cool to just see how massive those damn things are! Best part about it though is that they invited me back for a day of flying in the 76 sim!!
After that offer I couldn't wipe the grin off my face, even though I was sick as • the entire night.
As if that wasn't enough we then went out to the flight line. We pulled up to a 767 that was getting ready to depart for Portland. The FO was out doing the walk around. We asked if we could join him and he said that was fine so he took us around on plane and explained everything that they were looking for during the walk-around. After that hopped in the cockpit and watched them go through all of their preflight checklist right up till about engine start when we had to get off.
By this time it was getting close to 5 am and I was freakin exhausted our last stop was flight control where they track every aircraft to it's destination and record any kind of maintance problems that have occured over the past two weeks with the aircraft. Very nice people in there as well, who were more than willing to show us the ropes. I ended up not getting home untill 7am. It was all worth it though, it's not everyday that a lil ol' private pilot with big dreams gets to go play with the big boys for a night! It was an amazing night that I will not soon forget. Thanks to all at Airborne for giving me this opportunity!!
Night started off with me arriving at flight ops and meeting a couple of the chief pilots on duty (network, network, network). After that we made our way up to the tower and checked out everything up there. Very nice guys who pretty much explained anything and everything we would ever want to know about their side of the operation.
Next we went over to the training center and checked out the sims, they weren't fired up but it was still very cool to just see how massive those damn things are! Best part about it though is that they invited me back for a day of flying in the 76 sim!!
As if that wasn't enough we then went out to the flight line. We pulled up to a 767 that was getting ready to depart for Portland. The FO was out doing the walk around. We asked if we could join him and he said that was fine so he took us around on plane and explained everything that they were looking for during the walk-around. After that hopped in the cockpit and watched them go through all of their preflight checklist right up till about engine start when we had to get off.
By this time it was getting close to 5 am and I was freakin exhausted our last stop was flight control where they track every aircraft to it's destination and record any kind of maintance problems that have occured over the past two weeks with the aircraft. Very nice people in there as well, who were more than willing to show us the ropes. I ended up not getting home untill 7am. It was all worth it though, it's not everyday that a lil ol' private pilot with big dreams gets to go play with the big boys for a night! It was an amazing night that I will not soon forget. Thanks to all at Airborne for giving me this opportunity!!
