I'm sitting in our office as I write this, avoiding natural light in favor of the warm radiation glow of my computer monitor, and chugging a Red Bull (stay away, it's more addictive than candy-coated crack).
Next month I will have been a corporate jet whore for a year, flying my Citation 550's around the planet and accrueing the incredible sum of 396 hours of jet PIC, or about 900 total miles flown
You think my slow speed is funny? You gotta problem with mach 0.6? I didn't think so! //puts away pepper spray.Anyhoo, so far it's been great. I have grown fat and lazy at other people's great expense, and I will only leave if AC calls, which they haven't. I have detailed my flying life in previous posts, and this one is a little heavier on the earthbound side. So let's get into it and maybe the little man in my head will shaddap for a while.
We did recurrent training down at FlightSafety last week which was a hell of a lot of fun - I didn't have to do a ride at the end, so the entire experience was completely stress free. I got to do stuff that I have been too scared to do in the real plane but was curious about and that was cool too. As it turns out, I can press the start button to my heart's content while in cruise and it doesn't melt the engines after all. I guess I owe my F/o a buck. And also, as it turns out, I can fly an inverted ILS pretty damn well, but only down to about 500' before things get squirrely. Assuming the left gear squat switch fails, I can actually pop both thrust reversers in cruise and stay airborne as long as I stow 'em at 1,000'. All of this is very important stuff to know, and I'm glad my employer spend $8,000 on a 3-day course so I could find this out
Anyway, since then the past week has been pretty quiet, with only two flights between both our airplanes since Monday. I chose not to take either of them (early mornings) but I realized, too late, that it left me open to catching up on paperwork. I hate paperwork, but my motivation is to avoid Federal Prison in case we ever get audited by the fine people at TC, so I do what it takes. What's involved in operating a corporate/charter operation with 2 small jets? Well, I know you don't care, but I'm gonna tell you anyway. In the past week...
I. I paid and coded a bunch of bills, like fuel, insurance and landing fees, then sent them to accounting upstairs. Three days later I did the exact same thing again due to a screwup in the accounting department, but this time I used Roman Numerals 'cause I'm a bit of a dick. We spent $MMDC,LXXXV.XLV on hotel rooms in May, nearly $DCC more than in April. Now that I think about it, this might explain the severed horse head I found on my desk this morning.
II. I called about twenty TC people to find out the answers to some burning questions, like "What the hell is an SMS" and "Do I really have to do flammability tests on the ice cubes we have in our refreshment center" and "Why are you a bunch of no-fun havers who don't want anyone else to have fun either".
III. After finding out the answer to the first question in #II above, I thoroughly revised our basic (read: nonexistant) Safety Management System to a super-deluxe (read: legal) model. It essentially involves letting the pilots know they won't be fired if they report hazards to safety on the line, even if they are the ones causing the hazards. Then we try to figure out how to mitigate the risks involved, and then let everyone know what our mitigation plan is. So far, the best I can come up with is to keep all the damn pilots out of the airplanes at all times. Other than that, it gets a little dicey
IV. I arranged for a training seminar for our CASO - Company Aviation Safety Officer (me) through an outside agency that promises to make it nice and legal for the low low price of $1,500 (that's $MD in accounting talk). Then I re-arranged the date about a zillion times 'cause I'm sharing the cost with another charter company's CASO and arranging our two schedules together along with the training person is even more difficult than teaching George Bush to play nice with the rest of the world.
V. I did the flight planning and arrangements for yesterday's trip even though I wasn't a crew member. The Captain involved was too busy being abused by his wife to do it - apparently she had made plans for the day and his job got in the way. His wife is small, but mean as a badger so I thought I'd do my good deed for the week and help the Captain out. The funny thing is they met while he was an airline captain and she was a flight attendant, so one might think she had some idea of the lifestyle when she got involved with him, but I can see in her eyes that she's killed before, so I jus' keep my mouth shut.
VI. I went through all our old training records and added stuff I had missed, like renewed medicals and new exams, etc. and removed old outdated exams and such. Not much fun there, except for the part when I noticed on a license that one of our guys' middle name is Clarice. I hope he likes the dress I bought him for his upcoming birthday
VII. I went upstairs to accounting and apologized as I noticed the error mentioned in I. was caused entirely by me. I brought a flower I pulled from our office garden and everything, but I guess some people have serious anger issues.
VIII. I amended our Ops Manual and SOP's to reflect the addition of our SMS as well as some housekeeping like adding RVR 600 and starting the process for dangerous goods authority. I also added a couple of things in there just for giggles. I can't wait until the first person notices that our SOP's now state that "All flight crew shall conduct their duties while dressed as polar bears" and "All communication with passengers shall be done in rhyme"
IX. I sent out a pile of charter quotes to various people. For every 10 quotes we send out, we get about 3 replies, and one of those turns into a charter. No big deal there, but gosh I sure love the people who have never chartered a jet before. They say they want to go to Vegas for the weekend, and are shocked, SHOCKED when I tell them it will cost a wee bit more than going commercial. Then they get hostile, call me a crook and hang up. For what it's worth, I'm on salary so I could care less if we fly at all but I still hate being called a crook from some skinflint who wants a jet for the price of a Greyhound bus ticket.
X. I drank a lot of coffee and thought about taking up smoking tobacco.
XI. I bought a huge pile of fancy liquor, chocolate and crunchy snacks for our commissary locker in the hangar, and for my kitchen shelves. Wait, forget I said that last part. I also got some bottled water with our logo on it, which turned out to be a LOT cheaper than I had initially feared. I know it sounds like a stupid little thing but it's actually pretty damn cool.
XII. I surfed the net and read AvCanada like a damn junkie.
XIII. I washed the planes and made sure they were fully stocked with blankets, engine oil, customs cards, blah blah blah. We have a guy who does this once a month, but I feel like our 2 jets are family, or at least pets, and I enjoy the occasional afternoon of quality time with them in a calm setting.
So that's my week so far. Tomorrow will likely be more of the same with the bees and the chocolate and the Roman numerals.
I fly every day next week, and I'm looking forward to it. All this sitting around is too damn exhausting!
