Trip to the Big Apple

stuckingfk

stuckingfk

Well-Known Member
As a first timer to NYC, all I can say is wow. There is so much there it is unbelievable.

I was part of an aviation student organization (SAMA) that takes a yearly trip to an aviation city. We were able to tour JFK airport (a blast), JetBlue operations at JFK and their headquaters downtown, and Citation Shares in Greenwich. I have so many pictures and I'll post a few, but anybody wants more, just ask.

I was at Runway 31R/13L watching the Parkway Visual to 13L.
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Yay, first to reply to my own post!

Well more about the trip. It was awesome to be able to be 5 feet from the active, taking pictures of landing and departing planes.

Jet Blue airlines, in my opinion, would be great to work for. Everyone we talked to was so generous to take their time out of thier day and show us around.

Here is a pic of me in their A320
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Citation Shares was my favorite. I was a little tired, got back to the Double Tree in Queens at 6 AM, then left for Greenwich at 6:30. All of their top guys were around and gave us some great insight on how their company works. I really like their pilot schedule, 7 on, 7 off. I would do anything to have a schedule like that, work a lot, then play a lot.

Here is one of their Bravo's.

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Another pic from JFK, brand new paint job on NWA 747
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All in all, the trip went well. Too bad it ended almost in tragedy. One of our 4 vans we took to MSP and back went in the ditch 10 miles from home. It rolled several times and a couple students were thrown out. The injuries seemed minor in comparison to what could have happened.
 
I'm not too happy with Jetblue at all.

They're petitioning the FAA to loosen up the pilot rest regulations in order to fly more than 8 hours per day scheduled and reduce the minimum rest that you need after a long work day.

Sixty years of fighting and defending the minimum rest/maximum flight requirements and now since it's inconvenient for a new airline, they want to change the rules.
 
Hey Doug:
I can appreciate airline pilot's concerns about 'turning back the clock' so to speak. But I saw this debate going on at flightinfo, and the jetblue guys were getting beaten up about this.
For me, I don't fall asleep before 1am on any night, no matter that my alarm goes off early every morning for the last 25 years. I have been told to 'change your cycle.' It doesn't work for me, and I have made peace with the fact that I am simply not a morning person. More than a few people in NYC have this trouble, maybe because when the sun goes down there are a lot of lights on here.
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It would make sense for me, if I HAD to leave JFK in an early a.m. departure to the west coast, to double back the same day, grab a beer, go to sleep, and sleep late the next day. Much better then stop on the West Coast for some rest rule requirement minimum time frame in which I probably wouldn't be able to sleep anyway, and then get up with 3-4 hours of sleep to come home. I would think according to the current rules you would be flying a red eye home. Just my thoughts.

Louie
 
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They're petitioning the FAA to loosen up the pilot rest regulations in order to fly more than 8 hours per day scheduled and reduce the minimum rest that you need after a long work day.


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Maybe their pilots should "petition" management to get rid of "5-year" work contracts and then get around to organizing themselves ...

Jet Blue impresses me less and less from an employee standpoint.

Oh and on a semi-related note .. SWA last week announced that they were closing several reservation centers which will "affect" (read fire) some 3,000 res agents (they are allowing them to move but who is going to move across country for an $8/hr job?).

Not all is well in the "poster child" airlines either - contrary to popular belief.
 
Most of the FAR's are written in blood.

The rules in terms of rest aren't some arbitrary rule that some politico made up one afternoon, but it's a hybrid of a strange balance between safety and economics.

The general public may think "Oh, 8 hours of flight and you only need 9 hours of sleep or so, no big deal!"

But that 8 hours of flight time, may have been after 14 or 15 hours of 'duty', and then you're going to have to travel to the hotel, perhaps eat some food because you're starving, sleep, get up in enough time to shower, eat breakfast (if you're really lucky) and then suit up to arrive at the airport an hour before departure.

A 9 hour layover actually equals about a seven hour sleep opportunity if you're not going to eat and are able to quickly hit the sack and sleep. And if you're in the wrong time zone, it's even worse because your alarm might be set for 0400 for a 0500 van ride to the airport for a 0615 departure, but when the alarm goes off at 0400, it's actually 0100 body clock time.

Jetblue is a good airline to it's passengers and may be a good airline to it's employees, but when they start petitioning the FAA to reduce already minimally acceptable rest rules, they need to back off.

Jetblue needs to dig thru some of the NTSB reports and see how many synopses list "pilot fatigue" as one of the causal factors.
 
Didn't NASA do a study a while ago that showed even the eight hour rule isn't a good one, since it's time awake that causes fatigue? Didn't one of their findings show that just being awake for more than ten hours has an adverse effect on people?

And I find it highly ironic that when the trucking industry is being forced to increase rest time and count hours spent sitting around as duty time for truckers, you've got someone pushing to do the opposite for pilots.
 
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And I find it highly ironic that when the trucking industry is being forced to increase rest time and count hours spent sitting around as duty time for truckers, you've got someone pushing to do the opposite for pilots.

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Tony, remember, we're overpaid, underworked hot shots that work with always beautiful flight attendants, laying over on the beach in the French Riviera, right?
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You know where the captain and the FO are lounging back in the chair with a tropical drink with their Ray Ban Aviators on and their shirts off with all of these 18 year old hardbody giggling hotties going "Oh captain! You're so funny! I need more suntan lotion!"

That's probably why the general public hates pilots.
 
You mean you guys don't "why don't we go to a hotel room, and shower, and dry off, and play some volleyball?" All while playing Kenny Loggins on the boombox?

Damn! That's the whole reason I was becoming a pilot. Guess I'll have to rethink that now.

Man!

Naunga
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You mean you guys don't "why don't we go to a hotel room, and shower, and dry off, and play some volleyball?" All while playing Kenny Loggins on the boombox?

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Nope!

Probably the most exciting layover I've had this month is when I walked down to "Freds" in San Diego (in the gaslamp) and watched some bar patron kindly offer to rip off the bartenders head because he was handed my ID.

"Blankity Blank, you think we all look alike, mother blank?"

Me "Oh, it's an easy mistake"

"Ammo kill that bartender, stupid lousy Blank!"

Me "Check please!"
 
Thats getting more an more often around the country. I could see (and have seen) it happening to me, since I am only 23 (almost 24) but for like Doug (not that you dont look 21 Doug
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), what a joke. Even my DAD was carded, and he's over 55. The guy working at the convienant store said it was "mandatory at all Shop Rite Louisiana Centers, yaddy yaddy yaddy".
 
Its nothing new for someone to try to get the FARs changed. If not Jetblue it will be some other airline or group. This seems to be one area the FAA is very stubborn on and so is ALPA
 
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Probably the most exciting layover I've had this month is when I walked down to "Freds" in San Diego (in the gaslamp) and watched some bar patron kindly offer to rip off the bartenders head because he was handed my ID.

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That's pretty funny. San Diego is for the most part a pretty mellow place.

So, what was your WORST layover ever?
 
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So, what was your WORST layover ever?

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Christmas in Monroe, LA. The hotel restaraunt was closed because the workers were having a holiday party at a different hotel, downtown was completely dead. The captain and I ended up having a couple of hot dogs from a local gas station and watching some old Lawrence Welk rerun.
 
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Christmas in Monroe, LA. The hotel restaraunt was closed because the workers were having a holiday party at a different hotel, downtown was completely dead. The captain and I ended up having a couple of hot dogs from a local gas station and watching some old Lawrence Welk rerun.

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Would the qualify as "living the dream?"
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Would the qualify as "living the dream?"
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Ahh yes.

Or Xmas dinner at Jack-In-The-Box, then you go back to your hotel and listen to some doofus talking head on television spout off about overpaid pilots -- now THAT was a depressing Christmas that year.

Especially the part where the next day passengers would ask, "So how was your Xmas, co pilot?"

The holidays are an especially 'sucky' time of year for airline people.
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