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12:28
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Blogging at FL250 
Almost as soon as we were through 10,000 feet, I had my atlas out. It was completely clear along our route - a rarity in November - and on the dark, moonless night, every light for hundreds of miles w
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8:27
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Blogging at FL250
Well, there's no escaping it now. Minnesota has had several days of snow, although none of it lasted more than a few hours; it's currently 12 degrees in Minneapolis. When I got done with a trip yester
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9:30
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Blogging at FL250
I recently had a passenger stop at the flight deck during deplaning to say hi to me and the FO. It turned out that he's a Private Pilot with an instrument rating, and flies a nearly-new Cessna 172 wit
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16:11
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Blogging at FL250
Hopefully you can indulge me one last motorcycle post before I return to our regularly scheduled aviation content; it turned out my riding season wasn't quite over yet.
The bike that we rod
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7:28
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Blogging at FL250
My
one-week experience as a commuter made me glad that I don't do it full time, but it was entirely worth it to get the Saturday be
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17:43
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Blogging at FL250
If you arrive two hours before your flight as the airlines recommend - and you do, right? - it gives you plenty of time for people watching. Among the various subgroups of travelers you expect to find
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14:07
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Blogging at FL250
I've mentioned a few times that NewCo's initial training program was a bit, ahem, basic, and that I felt somewhat underprepared in the area of systems knowledge when I first got on the line. Since the
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4:48
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Blogging at FL250
When I wrote the original "
Good Captain, Bad Captain" post in June of 2005, I'd been a FO at Horizon for just over a year.
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8:41
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Blogging at FL250
The last post reminded me of another post I wrote over three years ago entitled
"Good Captain, Bad Captain." At the time I
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6:52
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Blogging at FL250
The traveling public's aviation knowledge often seems to be solely informed by 50 year old black-and-white movies. I can't really blame them; that's probably the last time Hollywood made an accurate a
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14:55
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Blogging at FL250
Walk through any airport anywhere in the world and you will find pilots trudging through the terminal with their rollaboards and flight kits in tow. The fact that we're often gone from home for days o
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6:13
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Blogging at FL250
I got into flying at a very early age. I'm not sure exactly how old I was when I abandoned my interest in trains for an obsession with airplanes, but there is a surviving third grade assignment wherei
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6:30
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Blogging at FL250
For the most part, I don't particularly care where I lay over. I bid my schedule primarily for efficiency, number of days off, weekends off, and credit hours. I try to avoid really early show times wh
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18:07
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Blogging at FL250
In the summer of 1993, a family friend took me flying in his 1946 Piper Clipper. It was only my second flight ever, but I was already mad about flying; contemporary notebooks saved by my mom are fille
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4:31
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Blogging at FL250
An old aviation axiom is that when considering how aircraft stay aloft, one should forget all that garbage about Bernoulli and Newton - airplanes remain airborne on money alone! The wiseacre's corolla
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4:54
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Blogging at FL250
"NewCo? Why the heck would you go to NewCo?"
My friend (and one-time sim partner) Jill asked me that in June of last year. Dawn and I were at a barbecue at Jill's house, and quite a few oth
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3:16
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Blogging at FL250
"So what'd you do before this?"
It's a pretty standard question asked between pilots flying together for the first time, usually in the early stages of the trip. Inquiring about each other'
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5:42
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Blogging at FL250
Well, if I have any readers left...no, I haven't abandoned my blog. My lack of attention to it even has a good excuse attached. Our internet at home (which is to say, the neighbor's wifi that we've be
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7:09
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Blogging at FL250
Last week Dawn and I had our 5th year anniversary. To celebrate, I took her to Paris. I had five days off and there were empty flights going both directions. It was our first time to Paris. I had a ch
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7:30
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Blogging at FL250
First-year Captains at my airline make about two and a half times what first year First Officers make. I think neither is particularly well-paid for a 76 seat airplane, but the Captain's wage is at le
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2:43
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Blogging at FL250
I've recently been flying with a few first officers who came to NewCo from non-airline jobs like flying Part 135 freight or charter. Since that was my background prior to Horizon, we've had some good
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11:52
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Blogging at FL250
The one thing that connects practically every airline crewmember in the world regardless of the company they fly for is the fact that they spend a major portion of their life away from home. Attitudes
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6:44
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Blogging at FL250
It's official. The US airline industry is (back) in the crapper. With oil at $130+ per barrel, it's just a matter of time before one or more of our major airlines goes back into bankruptcy, maybe for
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14:53
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Blogging at FL250
I've mentioned that we sold our Blazer rather than drive it back to Minnesota. Our experiment in single-car living has mostly been a success. Dawn works about 20 miles from where we live so she gets t
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16:31
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Blogging at FL250
Or, the amusing anecdote of a new captain's dumb mistake....
Although NewCo has been flying to Memp
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Blogging at FL250
My fed ride on Monday went very well. It was a short flight from Minneapolis to Madison, with pretty good weather on both ends, and everything was working on the airplane, so it wasn't especially chal
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3:10
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Blogging at FL250
It was a strange feeling, to be entering the flight deck as I had many times before but then to turn left instead of right and to sling my flight bag beside the captain's seat. I took off my blazer, f
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6:33
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Blogging at FL250
Spring has, it seems, finally decided to show up and stay a while. There've been many reported sightings and tantalizing clues of its return over the last month, hopes always brutally squashed by anot
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6:58
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Blogging at FL250
...Continuing the photo-blog of our spring break trip to
Singapore & Malaysia...
On Monday afternoon, after a
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Blogging at FL250
I'm starting Captain IOE later today and am fighting to stay focused with all the hubbub surrounding Monday's announcement of the merger between RedCo and WidgetInc. I'm trying to stay positive. I'm p
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Blogging at FL250
So that bit about wanting to "roast in the tropical sun blazing directly overhead" two posts ago? We took it a bit far. We returned from Malaysia today looking like that tropical sun got the best of u
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Blogging at FL250
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Blogging at FL250
Well, I now remember what I dislike about wintertime in Minnesota. It's not really the cold snaps that get to me - there are only a few per winter and you can minimize outdoors time during them. No, i
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8:27
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Blogging at FL250
When I rebuilt my March flying schedule from trips in open time, I was able to give myself three Vancouver day trips. These are pretty highly sought after because they're so efficient: you fly two leg
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7:17
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Blogging at FL250
I have my cell phone set up so that a call from Crew Scheduling brings up the caller ID "Satan," and the accompanying ringtone plays "I Hate Everything About You" by Three Days Grace. The animosity is
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18:47
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Blogging at FL250
As of today, I have 161 hours in the JungleBus. While I'm a long ways from "experienced" in the airplane, I've moved beyond the beginner stage where you have to think about everything you do to the le
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4:20
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Blogging at FL250
Unlike Horizon, Newco has a fairly specific employee internet policy. It does not directly prohibit blogging but does forbid the internet posting of pictures that include any visible portion of a comp
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10:08
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Blogging at FL250
A while ago, a fellow airline pilot told me emphatically that "if I knew then what I know now, there is no way I would have gone into this stupid industry." That got me thinking. This pilot started fl
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3:45
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Blogging at FL250
It's snowing in Minneapolis. An hour ago huge flakes were blowing sideways and obscuring even the shops across the street; now the wind has died down and the snowfall looks more picturesque than malev
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Blogging at FL250
Last week, months of persistent rumors were given credibility when one of the major US airlines publicly announced that they were holding merger talks with several other major airlines, including NewC
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Blogging at FL250
When I was new at Horizon, I was on reserve for about a year and a half. I knew it'd be significantly shorter at NewCo, but figured I'd probably do at least one month. Actually, it turned out to be on
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Blogging at FL250
Last Sunday I experienced one of the most completely screwed up days of flying I've ever had. Everything that could go wrong - except loss of life, limb, or license - did go wrong. The entire time I
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Blogging at FL250
An old aviation axiom says "Never fly the 'A' model of anything!" While perhaps overstated, it does illustrate the truth that new aircraft designs inevitably have kinks that need to be worked out of t
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7:58
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Blogging at FL250
Wow, it feels great to be flying again! I hadn't touched an airplane since mid-Septembe
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4:20
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Blogging at FL250
A few posts ago,
Fred asked what general aviation pilots could do to "attain or attempt to attain the same kind of safety levels the a
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2:14
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Blogging at FL250
On my flight bag, I have a sticker that says "Dash Trash" in large type and then "Silly Pilot, Jets are for Hot Tubs!" It's a (now ex-) turboprop driver's playful rejoinder to the jet jocks' standard
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Blogging at FL250
I actually got it a week ago, last Wednesday. The fact that I was able to do the
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5:36
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Blogging at FL250
My sim partner and I had our Maneuvers Validations (MV) on Friday. It went really smoothly, we actually flew better than we did in our first five sim lessons. The MV is the AQP equivalent of a profici
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3:50
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Blogging at FL250
As a pilot, I often get the question "are the airlines safe?" I don't know whether the people asking it think I'm privy to some horribly damning information that's been hidden from the public, but I t
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7:11
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Blogging at FL250
I didn't have any training on Monday and it was a nice day so I took the Metro downtown and spent some time walking around Old Montreal snapping photos (which I will post soon). While I was there I he
