Cointyro,
Sorry for not getting back to you in reasonable time... Last week was ultra rough and honestly the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was sit in front of a computer any longer. Then I left town.
I suck.
Anyway, better late then never, eh?
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Where did you get your DX ticket?
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Airline Flight Dispatch Training Center
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What has been your employment history?
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I'll assume you mean as my airline career? I got my DX license on September 5th, 2001... Never did get to start at the job I got hired at upon graduation for obvious reasons... Hired on at Air Midwest in Wichita, Kansas in late November, 2001. Went to Air Wisconsin in January of 2003, where I work now. Prior to that I was in the I.T. field.
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What is your work schedule like?
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Well,
my schedule is screwed up.
I work a "reserve" line, which isn't really reserve, since it gets set ahead of time, but I fill vacation time slots. This is both good and bad. Bad in that you can work a stretch like I just did (6 on, 1 off, 4 on, 3 off). Good because I get this next month (3 on, 6 off, 1 on, 1 off, 3 on, 9 off)! In our office, we have two 10 hour shifts. AM shifts start at either 4am or 5am and end at 2 or 3pm. Evenings start 2 or 3pm and end when the last plane blocks in (usually around 11 for east coast, 12:30am for west coast desk). The shifts are 4 on, 3 off and are bid by seniority. I'm junior and we have more night bidders then day, so I would have been "junior manned" to a day shift. My body isn't built to get up at 2:45am, so I bid the reserve in the thought that I'd get at least SOME nights.
Point is, shifts are typically 4 on 3 off, but can get goofy.
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How stressful do you think the job is?
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Well, that's sort of a loaded question, and depends on how you handle stress, and the company you work for. At Air Wisconsin, there is stress because we fly out of Chicago and the East Coast, and when there is weather (especially when it creates holds and surprise re-routes) you start to worry about fuel and alternates. Alot of stress can be elimiated by thoughtful planning. If there's a cold front moving through the high plains into the Great Lakes area, don't be min-fueling your boys into Chicago. This is what I call "good stress", because it's not insideous. Meaning its stress that you handle on the spot. Its there, you handle it, you move on. Air Wisconsin is very good about not bringing on "bad stress". Bad stress is taking grief from the boss because you decided to bump 20 people off that Colorado Springs flight to Chicago to take some extra gas and ended up not needing to use it. I've guess wrong before, and I've never NEVER been dressed down for it. My worst critic in that place is myself when I guess wrong, but I'd rather get 60 people into Chicago then 88 people into Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
If you ever catch yourself making dispatch decisions based on what you think will keep the most heat off of you from the company, you're working for the wrong airline. Sometimes you've gotta be the bad guy.
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Do you consider it a rewarding career?
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Absolutely. You will find however that it is mostly thankless. Passengers get on a plane, have a great ride, get off the plane and go on with life never even knowing you had a thing to do with it. I find most pilots get into this rut too, but it does cut both ways. I try to make it a point to thank a crew when they bust their butt to try to salvage a schedule or work that extra leg.
Best feeling I ever had was a few months ago. Crappy early spring storms in the Ohio valley. Pilot calls up with that "I gotta bad feeling about this" sort of tone. I look at his route, which I had planned for him about 2 hours ago (we typically work 2 hours ahead) and sure enough it's turned into the dead zone with storms all over the place. So, like I'd done for the last 6 hours, I work up a route that should keep him out of the crap and give him a pretty good ride. I didn't think much of it at the time.. This is what I do; keep the planes from getting dented or smoked by lightning, and try to keep the yack-bags empty.
Few hours later, plane lands and that, in my mind is that; 1 down, 70 more to go... Captain calls and says to me "great re-route. It worked perfectly, we had a great ride and had zero problems." Took thirty pounds of ice to get the swelling down from my head so I could leave that night. <grin> But seriously, that's what it is all about.
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How difficult do you consider the job to be?
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Honestly, at this point, it's not "difficult" at all. Challenging sometimes, yes, but not "hard". There's alot of knowlege involved in it. You need to know and understand the legal and physical constraints you're working with. Obviously, you won't walk onto the job your first day knowing how to interpret that stuff pouring out of the ATC printer or knowing how to deal with the planning and tracking software, but you'll quickly find that most of this job relies on common sense. Does it make sense to fly a plane through a solid line of 50,000 foot top thunderstorms, or try to go around it? Or would it be better to wait it out entirely? Sometimes the only winning move is not to play, and cancelling IS a tool you can and must sometimes use.
Bottom line, you have to be able to make command decisions, regardless of how unpopular they are.
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Do you have a sense of ownership in airline ops in your position?
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No airline flight operates without a dispatch release that is signed by both the Dispatcher and the Pilot in Command. This is spelled out in FAR part 121.533 (b) and (c) (for domestic operators...) Further, only the dispatcher is authorized to cancel a flight.
So, ownership? You bet. You
ARE the airline, and your decisions directly effect the safety of your crew and passengers and the profitibility of your airline.
And though you're underpaid and seldom praised for saving the company money, I still love the work.
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How often are you faced with a decision that you feel safety demands but that your company may frown on?
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80 times a day.
Okay, maybe not that often. Honestly, I can't accurately answer that question, because, frankly, I don't care. The company knows that I make my decisions based first on safety and legality. Neither of these are money makers. Here's a good acronym you probably won't be faced with at school, but it's a good one to remember in the Real World(tm).
Safety
Legality
Efficiency
Economically
Profitably
In that order. Never OUT of that order. Thus endeth the lesson. <grin>
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Do you have to "love" weather to be a good dispatcher?
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Heh... "Love" weather? Oh, you'll develop your own love/hate relationship with weather. I don't "love" weather in that I enjoy dealing with it, since it invariably leads to decisions that have to do with not moving people or making money. I do, however, make it my personal mission to fully understand the weather. Of all things you deal with, weather is far and away your most worthy adversary, and to defeat the enemy, one must first understand the enemy. Anyone can look at a radar, point at the big red splotch and say "well, that ain't good". Maybe, maybe not. Radar is just one part of the puzzle. How did it get there? Where is it going? What's going to happen to it? How big is it really? Does it have friends? What are they doing in relation to this storm? Can I expect more of this? Where? How do I get around/over/through this? What can I do to stop this phone ringing? (you'll understand when you're in the office
)
You'll need to know how the weather interacts with your airplane too, so you can adequately explain why, even though there's 13,500 feet of pavement at Colorado Springs, you're STILL weight restricted when it's hot. You might need to know how to explain this diplomatically to a person who should already know this but for some reason his brain is on MEL (read: pilot)
.
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How much of your job is based on memorization? I.e. do you find it hard to remember all that you need to know?
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No, not really. At first it seemed overwhelming, but after a few months on the job using this stuff every day, you'll know it. There will always be instances where someone will ask you something and you'll blank and have to reach for a book. Honestly, your worst part in terms of memorization will be during school. With a little effort, you'll have no problem absorbing the material.. Especially if you find it interesting. It's not like Calculus <grin>.
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What are your recommendations for future studying / mindsets / etc. for others getting into this career?
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If you want to start working on something now, I recommend weather. Weather by far is going to be your most challenging subject, and is almost always what the FAA examiner will drill you hard on during your oral exam (that being said, I got the systems expert for an examiner, so we got to dissect the 727 rivit by rivit... Seeing that I knew this plane inside and out, we moved onto the 777, which I knew very little about).
Mindsets... Okay, first off, your FAA Examiner is NOT interrigating you for the Enigma codes. He is there to test your knowlege. He can, and will, ask you questions you might not immediately know the answer for. His job is of course to make sure you know the material you studied, but what he REALLY wants to see is a dispatcher that can think on his feet. Here's a problem, you don't have all the answers for it, so devise an answer with what you DO know. It doesn't have to be "right". He's interested in the thought process and your ability to utilize your resources (yes, the examiner is a resource... ask him some questions to try to help you answer his, if need be).
Here's an interesting example. You have a 727. You are going from Denver to Los Angeles. So he gives you the MEL list, which indicates that pitot heat is inoperative. He then hands you the weather, which shows Denver weather at 33 degrees and light rain.
This can't be good.
So you get the MEL book out and sure enough, the MEL stipulates that with pitot heat inoperative, you are not authorized to operate in icing conditions, which there most certainly is in Denver. So, what do you do now?
A few other things. Contrary to how it might sound on here, there ARE jobs out there to be had. A fair amount of them actually. To be most marketable to an airline, you need to be willing to relocate to where the job is. This is by far the best catalyst to being seriously considered for a job. Have a positive attitude about the job, about the industry, about everything.
Continue to have a positive attitude when you're IN the job. You'll find that this industry is unusually full of bitter, angry people. Even I've been known to "go negative" occasionally. To understand why this is, you have to remember that the airlines have just recently evolved into the 1970's in terms of how to manage a business. Most of the people you work with are part of a union. A union that probably has an adversarial relationship with the management of your airline on the good days. Airlines and airline workers unions are "old school" in their way of doing business.
I promise I'll be quicker to respond to the next batch of questions! <grin>
Paul
