What the heck is a stand up trip?

mrivc211

mrivc211

Well-Known Member
Boy did I find out the hard way. I guess we fly trips where your at a layover less than 8 hours but more than 5 so they have to give you a hotel room. So I jumpseated on SWA to SMF and picked up a easy standup to ACV-CEC. 8:07 hours of rest, then back the next day by 8:00am and back in Orange County by 9:20am on SWA again.

Well, I get to SMF start getting the plane ready and low and behold, the PTT hot mic is stuck on the captain's side. The captain I'm flying with is also getting a line check I find out upon arriving! Great. (Even though its for him, he's watching you too!) So we end up waiting there for an hour for a part to arrive on our RJ WITH a mechanic in it. Turns out, neither made it to SMF and WE don't find out until an hour after the RJ has left SFO. (bad communication) So we end up having to ferry the plane over to SFO to get a PTT fixed(can you say waste of money). When we arrive they tell us we're just gonna leave the plane there and take the spare. So we get out, shut the airplane down, and start up the spare and do all the first flight of the day checks. 5 minutes after we're done with them, they tell us we're gonna go back into the original plane and take it back to SMF and finish the trip.
insane.gif
We finally get back into SMF at midnight and load up people and go to ACV, then finally onto CEC.

Got to the hotel room at 2AM!! Woke up at 4:45AM(thats 2 horus and 45 minutes of sleep, not really, it takes a while to calm down) for a 5:45AM show and back to SMF! OMG- how do these people do this? I finally realized I can never fly for UPS or FEDEX. I will never be able to hold up on a red eye. Or maybe I just am not used to it. My bed time seems to get earlier and earlier every year. I'm gettin old.
 
We did a couple of those at Skyway. At first I didn't mind them, but I slowly started to loathe them because they added on a MKE-MDW turn after flying down from MQT and two dog tired pilots, without an autopilot, playing twisty-turvy with ATC departing MDW ain't safe!

It takes me a day to recover after flying a red eye.
 
My sim slot is 9 PM to 5 AM which is tough, especially when your turn comes at 2 AM and you have already been briefing and PNF for 5 hours. 3 more sims until the checkride and then the real fun begins..sorry to hijack your thread, just trying to relate to the whole late at night discussion..
 
I was sleeping on and off today and I just got up from a 3 hour nap. Man, now I can't sleep so I think I'll go running.
 
Dan, I had the midnight sim also...brutal. I made it through though after a LOT of Red Bull.

As far as "stand-ups" or "naps" go, we actually have a lot of people at ASA that prefer them. They are big with commuters and also the guys that have small children or day jobs...i.e. real estate. There's always a bunch of people who bid down to get them.
 
Stand-ups SUCK.

I hated them with a passion. The worst was when wx or what-not delayed you so bad you only ended up with 2 or 3 hours on the ground. There were several times we all just made little nests on the plane and napped for a bit. Why bother going all the way to the hotel.

Even the all nighters from the west coast I did when I was LGA/JFK based with AA were better than those miserable standups at Eagle. I didn't especially like all-nighters, but at least you could fill up a month with hours with them, tiring as they were.
 
Welcome to my world.
smile.gif


Try 6pm to 8am, with 8 hours of flight time, 6 legs, single pilot in all sorts of Mother Nature's crap. That's special.
crazy.gif




Good luck w/ the rest of your sims, rausda!
cool.gif
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top