I love how everyone can confidently say that without actually being here. I'm sure from the outside looking in, it must seem nice. I get to FLY JEETTTTSS OMG HOW COOL. And yeah, it is cool! I get to be a captain! That's awesome! And yeah, it is awesome.
That's the good part. And if the good part existed in isolation, I'd never leave. Move up, sure if it happened it happened, and that'd be cool.
What you're not seeing, and what people on the outside can't seem to understand no matter how much you explain it, is how grueling this job is at the bottom.
People often try to compare it to other industries, or other lifestyles. Even people in the airlines, once they have some seniority under their belt, tend to forget how much it sucks at the bottom. People at majors tend to forget the trauma pretty damned quick, by my observation.
But when you're on day five of getting woken up at 3am to work a 14 hour day, when you're running on two hours of sleep, when you're so tired that your muscles don't want to move anymore and lifting your coffee hurts, when you're stressed because you woke up to find that you'd been reflowed into five legs ending at 7pm (but it's legal because two are deadheads), giving you min rest in Fresno, and you just want to yell "•" at the top of your lungs, but you have to put on a big grin and say good morning to the TSA agent who says "God, you're back again?"
When you show up to the plane, barely hanging on, and you find that your APU is out, your brand new FAs are grouchy because they got min rest from the night before and your FO finished IOE yesterday, and you know that you're going to have to spend the next thirteen hours coaching and mentoring, and explaining vertical modes, and watching them bang through procedures with no idea of why, and you know that you're going to be doing the mental work of both seats . . .
when your first leg gets two hours of flow, and you push back, and then flow cancels and you get a wheels up time in three minutes with your engines shut down, and then you get airborne and get holding instructions, advise ready to copy . . . and you're messaging dispatch, and they don't answer, and they didn't give you reserve fuel anyway, so you declare min fuel, and your green FO is looking at you with wide eyes and a "what do I do" stare, and you're telling the FAs and ATC that you're probably going to divert, and then dispatch comes back and says "Your burn to destination is 2,300 pounds," and then ATC tells you "Reroute, advise ready to copy," and you're cleared to your destination via a new arrival, and you start flying there, then you're below 18,000' on vectors, and they give you another reroute to a different arrival, different runway, and your FO puts it in entirely wrong, and you want to help them but they don't understand what you're saying, and you're PF and responsible for flight-path-management, and now you're showing low landing numbers, but your FO can't figure out how to give you direct fix on the arrival, and you have to coach them through it . . . and then you land, and you're on a minimum standard turn, so you have 22 minutes to get people off and get airborne again. But your FAs are exhausted, too, and you offer to run in to get them coffee, and come back, check in on everybody. And everyone's boarded, and the gate agent is huffy, but you're good to go. You knock out the checklists and get off the gate, when you get DING: ... and now you're pulling out the QRH, calling maintenance, doing a reset procedure, and it's fine but you won't have autopilot for the next leg. And you're so tired that your head is swimming, but you can't call out fatigued every single day, can you . . . ? And on the next leg while you're trying to hold altitude, ATC tells you they need you at 340, and you tell them unable, and they tell you "Ok, well, you need to go down to 24 then." And you're bouncing along at 24,000', and there are people meowing on guard, and your FA is calling you to tell you that the passenger in 14B just managed to defecate in such a way that the ceiling of the forward lavatory is coated, and they've closed that lav, and you tell the FO to message the company to get a hazmat cleaner to meet the plane, and your FO is talking about how they just got into the United Pathway Program, but they earned it because their dad paid for flight training and the airplane he bought needed maintenance once, and nobody is going to read this wall of text, but that's kinda the fun part. It's like a little rant-themed easter egg. And if you've read this far, you're the lucky winner! I'm a nigerian princess, and I have a jillion dollars that you can have if you just pay to withdraw it, but anyway, you land at your destination, and the gate is occupied. And ops tells you no, you can't use the gate beside it, despite the fact that it's empty. So you make a PA, but ground is yelling at you to get you to move, but you've already shut down your right engine, so to turn back to the left you have to wallow around or start #2 up again. So you taxi to the back acreage, set the brake, tell the FO to wake you up when they call. But then they need to move you because they've got a heavy coming through. With a sigh, you swing around, let the heavy past, and then turn around to park in the same spot. At that point, the gate opens, and you taxi in. The rampers have just pushed the previous plane out, but as soon as they disconnect, they pull back into the gate and disappear to their lunch break. And you call operations, and operations tells you that they'll call somebody. And you make another PA, and you can hear the groans and anger even through the flight deck door. And your cabin call goes BING, and you're like "Hey, what's up?" And they're like "Hey, so what's really going on?" And you're like "I told you." And they're like "It's hot back here, and smells like sewage. And the passengers are complaining." And you check, and the ECS synoptic page says it's set to 22 degrees, but it's actually 26, and you make a PA to apologize, then recycle the bleeds to see if it kicks the fans back on. You're still waiting on rampers, and eventually they mosey out to their positions, then they all come back in to "huddle." The huddle goes on longer than it takes to sing "happy birthday" twelve times. You get a message from dispatch, asking what's going on, and a "INQUIRY" for the ground delay program. The rampers finally come out, and you go to release the brakes, and DING. "Hey, what's up?" "Yeah, we just had a passenger go into the aft lav, and now there's a line." BUT EVENTUALLY you get into the gate, 15 minutes later, get through the shutdown checklist after yelling out the window for someone to give you the "chocks in" signal, and you're finally ready to go. However, there are no wheelchairs, despite having two aisle chairs and five wheelchairs on board. You go up to check with the gate agent, and she's surprised by the request for wheelchairs or hazmat team, but she says she'll call. You get back to the plane, and find that you're now swapping to a different plane in a different terminal. At least you get to get out of this piece of crap, right? So you get to the gate with your new plane all there waiting for you, and all the passengers are giving you the stinkeye, and the gate agent is giving you the stinkeye. You get on board, start the APU, start programming the box, and the FO comes up and says "Hey, cap, looks like there's a bird strike on the right wing."
... and you still have a million legs to go.
And when you finally do get a day off, you're an absolute zombie. You can't even smile to greet friends and family. You collapse into bed around 22:00, when you get home, because you're so exhausted that it overrides your circadian rhythm, but you have to wake up at 9am because you have an appointment. The next day you get up at 1100, and it's amazing. You've finally had a good night of sleep. You stretch, yawn, and head downstairs ... but the fatigue is still there behind the eyes, and you look at the calendar only to see that you're back on reserve in sixteen hours. People around you are oblivious to how tight your timing is, and they laugh and joke while you sit there, stressed by knowing what's coming.
Again, five on, two off, five on, three off, four on, two off ... every time you submit for early release: DENIED. Gold day: Denied. Vacation: Denied. Time off request: Denied. Move reserve day: Denied. Talk with crew support: Denied.
Yeah, we have a megalomaniacal dictator and a facile band of complicit toadies who are dead set on running this place into the ground to rebuild it as a christofascist oligarchy/kleptocracy, which is an existential threat to my safety and those of my mates, who I'd do anything for.
We're literally looking at buying a sailboat and going "cruising" to wait it out.
Totally support your decision. It's not an option for us.
I doubt degree is a factor here. But I had to leave my animschool classes, which I was absolutely passionate about, due to lack of time to do the work. I was contributing to an old game project that is incredibly dear to my heart as a 3D artist, and I had to abandon my projects there—with deep apologies—due to absolute lack of time in my schedule to do any work.
