Episode 347 of the pilot the Pilot Podcast takes off now.
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Speaker AAnd welcome back to the Pilot.
Speaker AThe Pilot Podcast.
Speaker AMy name is Justin Seams and I am your host.
Speaker AToday's episode is a fractional versus airline pilot.
Speaker ANow, I've made a couple videos and a couple podcasts about this, and I have talked about some differences, but I wanted to create just a podcast in itself that talks about for me personally, what the differences are, because there's a lot of people that come up to me, especially when I used to fly fractional, they're like, yeah, I've never really heard of this, and I think I can make this a career.
Speaker AI really like seeing what you post on Instagram, so I figured I could put kind of the pros and the cons of fractional and the pros and the cons of an airline pilot as well.
Speaker AI promise you, I. I will do my best to not be a jaded former employee at a previous company, because I'm not.
Speaker AI'm honestly not.
Speaker AI could highly recommend that company.
Speaker AIf you're looking in the fractional world, they are the place to go.
Speaker AAnd I could have spent my whole career there and I would have been very, very happy.
Speaker ABut as I said in the why I quit my job video a couple years ago, my life changed when I had my kid, my priorities changed and I just needed something else.
Speaker ASo that's what we did.
Speaker ASo I hope you enjoy this podcast.
Speaker AAnd before we go, you're probably like, justin, you haven't talked about it yet, but we have released the Pilot to Pilot magazine.
Speaker AIt is out.
Speaker AIt is awesome.
Speaker AIt's 13 articles, 13 podcasts, close to 100 pages of actual magazine.
Speaker AWe have a print version.
Speaker AWe also have a print and digital version.
Speaker AYou can order@pilotthepilothq.com backslash mag, the first magazine you order, if you're ordering print plus digital is 9.99 and it's gonna be quarterly.
Speaker AAnd then every quarter after that it's 14.99.
Speaker AAnd the digital only version, if that's what you want, I highly recommend the print version just because it's a very premium product and something that feels great in your hand and feels more like a magazine or feels more like a book than it does an actual magazine.
Speaker ASo the digital version, first one is 4.99.
Speaker AAnd if you want to go ahead and sign up for the quarterly, which when you sign up, you will be, it will be 9.99 for everyone.
Speaker AAfter that, it's, I think it's about 98 pages, 13 articles, 13 podcasts.
Speaker AI feel like I put my blood, sweat and tears, but mostly just sweat and Tears especially shout out to Nick and Ally and Rico.
Speaker ARico, Adventures of Rico.
Speaker AHe did the COVID shot.
Speaker AHe did the Cities at Night spread.
Speaker AAli helped edit all the articles because as I said a million times, you do not want me to write without someone editing.
Speaker ASo we have had that happen.
Speaker AAnd thank you, Ally, for that.
Speaker AAnd then Nick, the video editor, who I call him, he kind of put everything I, I, I reached out to him and I was like, nick, I want to make a magazine.
Speaker ACan you do that?
Speaker AAnd he's like, yes, I can.
Speaker ADone.
Speaker AAnd I, I gave him a template and he's kind of the mastermind of the design.
Speaker AWe, we came up with what we wanted and we're very, very excited about it.
Speaker ASo I don't want to take any more of your time, but I am so excited about this.
Speaker APilotpilothq.com backslash mag check it out.
Speaker AIt's amazing.
Speaker AI promise you, you're gonna love it.
Speaker AIt's amazing.
Speaker AI'm so excited for it.
Speaker ASo, aviation, without any further ado, here's the fractional life versus airline life.
Speaker AWhat is going on, everyone?
Speaker AAnd welcome to the 121 Major Pilot Edition.
Speaker ABecause I can only talk for being a major pilot.
Speaker AWhen I say major pilot, I mean major airline pilot.
Speaker ABecause I haven't flown the regionals, I haven't flown any other airline, so I can't speak for that.
Speaker ABut what I can speak for is my own experiences.
Speaker AI can speak for where I fly now, which I'm not necessarily going to mention the airline and I can fly and I can mention and talk about what my previous experience was as a fractional pilot.
Speaker ANow if anyone was to listen to this, let's say they, they listened to the podcast Hardcore for the first couple of years and then this is the first episode they listen to, they would be very, very confused.
Speaker ABecause I have spent so much time in the past talking about how I'm fractional pilot for life.
Speaker AI'm never going to leave the fractionals.
Speaker AI, and I truly meant it when I said that.
Speaker AAnd I always tried to caveat or use the caveat that you never know what is what you are going to want.
Speaker AYou never know how your life's going to play out and how your, your needs and your wants from the job that you have are going to dictate what you actually want out of your job.
Speaker AAnd when we had our kid in 2021, everything kind of changed.
Speaker AYou know, my priorities of what I wanted at a job, I went from not minding being gone for seven days At a time I went for not minding, really just like grinding on the work week because I had seven days off and I could just sleep.
Speaker AI could just do this.
Speaker ABut then you have a kid, it's like, all right, your seven days off sometimes are just as busy as your seven days on.
Speaker ASo I really realized that I wanted to try to find a job that gave me the ability to work less some months and then work more and more months and not get in trouble if you try to play a game to capitalize off of working less and making as much more, whether it's premium, whether whatever it may be, and how you can kind of play the game and game the system to work out in your benefit.
Speaker AAnd that's what I did.
Speaker AI came to the conclusion after the contract negotiations on my previous job that, you know, quality of life wasn't really being touched.
Speaker AAnd that was.
Speaker AWhat was most important to me, was my quality of life.
Speaker AI would have taken less money to stay at the same company if quality of life would have been improved.
Speaker ABut it didn't.
Speaker AAnd that's fine because you can kind of make your own quality of life in that world.
Speaker AYou can.
Speaker AYou can to an extent.
Speaker AYou have the ability to say, hey, I'm too tired to fly.
Speaker AI need 14 hours off.
Speaker ABut, you know, I just didn't want to.
Speaker ADidn't want to play that game, and I didn't want to go down that road and eventually, you know, put a target on your back for trying to game the system because of the previous job.
Speaker AIf you game the system.
Speaker ANot a fan, they.
Speaker AThey don't like it.
Speaker ABut, yeah.
Speaker ASo when we had the.
Speaker AWhen we had our child, it just really changed a lot in me and what I wanted.
Speaker AAnd then I. I probably should have left immediately after having our kid, just because if I would have left 20, 21, 2022, my seniority would probably be 2,000 numbers higher right now.
Speaker AI'm going to retire around probably like a thousand.
Speaker AAnd if I would have retired, if I would have come over two years ago, probably be like 10.
Speaker ASo when they tell you a seniority number really does mean something, it really does.
Speaker ANow my.
Speaker AWhat I retire with will let me have the ability to fly pretty much any airplane that my current company has.
Speaker ABut if I was to retire number 10, I mean, just the quality of life in those airplanes just drastically goes up.
Speaker ASo I'm not complaining.
Speaker AI'm really glad that I gave, you know, every minute that I could to my previous company because I would have retired.
Speaker ANumber two, there.
Speaker AThere's only one person in the whole company that was younger than me and senior to me.
Speaker AAnd that was by like two months.
Speaker AAnd I just thought it was worth giving it the chance, see what the contract was going to be and see if there was any quality life improvements.
Speaker ANow, when that didn't come out, I realized that it was time to jump ship and it really came down to one place which just worked out best for us.
Speaker AAnd that's what we did.
Speaker ANow, what I've seen as the difference in between the two, the first thing I'll say is previous company, extremely professional.
Speaker AYou go to training there, you train like a 121 pilot, you do AQP training.
Speaker AIt's extremely professional and it's extremely impressive.
Speaker AThey train to very high standards.
Speaker AIt's not a mom and pop shop.
Speaker AIt's not cowboys.
Speaker AYour experience there is every bit of your experience that it's going to be at a major airline when you go train.
Speaker ASo shout out to them and shout out to their training.
Speaker AThe planes they fly are some of the nicest planes that you can possibly fly.
Speaker AI mean, you have Textron Aviation's finest.
Speaker AI got to fly the latitude.
Speaker AI was most likely going to upgrade into the longitude next.
Speaker AAnd then if you ever wanted to keep going, you know, they have the nicest of the nice globals that you could fly.
Speaker ASo equipment, avionics, especially Garmin Aviation, that was one of my biggest holdups when I was making my decision, honestly, is I was just worried about making the transition from the nicest avionics in the world to kind of just like FMSS that couldn't do half the stuff that Garmin could do.
Speaker ASo I was a little bit nervous about the transition and turns out it was not a hard transition at all.
Speaker AI still highly, highly, highly recommend Garmin Aviation and would prefer to fly a Garmin avionic airplane or Garmin avionics on an airplane any day.
Speaker ABut you can.
Speaker AIt's not hard to make the transition.
Speaker AYou can still learn it and it's relatively easy.
Speaker AThat was one of the things that I was a little bit afraid of when I was making that transition to.
Speaker ABut yeah, fractional is great.
Speaker AI really enjoyed my experience.
Speaker AI kind of talk about a little bit about what I liked about fractional.
Speaker AMy favorite things, by far my favorite things were having seven days off.
Speaker AYou can get seven days off in the airline, but it's not going to be consistent every single time you get seven days off.
Speaker ANow there are things that you can do, there are ways that you can Just drop everything and you won't get paid.
Speaker ABut you will have your time off where at the fractional we had a set salary and you got paid whether you flew or you didn't.
Speaker AThat's why it wasn't very beneficial for them to have you take extra time off.
Speaker ASo it was harder to play the game when it comes to working less and making more, if that makes sense.
Speaker ABut seven days off was great.
Speaker AI did mention earlier that, you know, it did come to the point where it wasn't enough for me to recharge at home to get ready for.
Speaker AFor kind of the workload on the road.
Speaker ABut seven days off consistently was pretty fantastic.
Speaker ANow one of my fav.
Speaker AI mean this was amazing.
Speaker AThe vacations were fantastic.
Speaker ASo you got.
Speaker AI was.
Speaker AWhen I left, I think I had seven year seniority.
Speaker ASo that gave me three weeks of vacation.
Speaker ABut each week turned into 21 days because you had your off seven days, you had your vacation, then you had off seven days again.
Speaker ASo you would essentially get three 21 day vacations throughout the year.
Speaker AAfter 10 years you got your fourth vacation.
Speaker ASo you had four 21 days.
Speaker AAnd if you space that out right, you know, you could work a little bit then have vacation reset, rewind.
Speaker ASo having those vacations was.
Speaker AWas awesome.
Speaker AAnd I mentioned this earlier, but it was the texture on aviation, it was flying the latitude, having the ability to hopefully fly the laund to it eventually and then just the greatest of the best, you know, the greatest of the great Garmin avionics.
Speaker AI felt comfortable, felt like I knew everything I needed to do and you had everything in front of you and it was beautifully laid out and just worked so, so well.
Speaker ABut those are kind of the three things that I really, really, really enjoyed.
Speaker ANow what I didn't necessarily enjoy was this is a caveat that seven days off was meant you had seven days on.
Speaker ASo seven days on was a grind.
Speaker ANow this changed drastically in my tenure at this company.
Speaker AThe first years, I'd say, you know, it was pretty manageable.
Speaker AYou didn't fly as much.
Speaker AYou probably had maybe on Tuesdays and Saturdays, you really didn't fly that much.
Speaker AMaybe one leg to reposition, maybe two legs, sometimes nothing.
Speaker ASo sometimes I remember waking up and getting able to watch college football in the hotel and I was like, this is awesome.
Speaker AGetting paid to do this.
Speaker AFantastic.
Speaker ABut then after Covid and they kind of learned how they could really utilize all the crews, which is great for the business.
Speaker AI mean, they need to make as much money as possible.
Speaker AThat's Kind of their goal.
Speaker ABut it came on the, the side effect of that was the fact that crews got worked harder and the optimizer, the scheduler got kind of determined that they thought it was optimal for you to work about 10 to 11 hours every single day and then have about 11 to 12 hours off every single day for seven days in a row.
Speaker ASometimes the duty day would stretch to 14 hours on and sometimes the duty your off period would stretch to 14, 16 if you got luck.
Speaker AUm, now this does kind of determine what air.
Speaker AThis is kind of based on what airplane you're in.
Speaker AI can only speak on flying the latitude, which is one of the busiest fleets.
Speaker AUm, but it was pretty standard I thought.
Speaker AAnd especially in the, the smaller cabins, once you got to the narrow or the larger cabins, your life got a little bit better, a little bit more predictable.
Speaker ABut it was still kind of a grind.
Speaker AUm, it's kind of like wide body first, narrow body on airline.
Speaker AUh, if you talk to a 787 captain, they'll kind of be like, oh, it's the best.
Speaker AYou know, I fly here, I stay there for 36 hours and I fly.
Speaker AIt's kind of similar when you're on the global over there or you're on the bigger airplanes, but it's not to the same extent.
Speaker AYou're still flying a little bit more, you're still getting a little bit less rest.
Speaker ABut it is definitely a different airline when you make it to the globals.
Speaker AKind of mentioned the daily schedule.
Speaker ASo the seven days on a grind, your day one.
Speaker ARealistically for me, when I was, when I say I was living in Raleigh, which is where I currently live in North Carolina, there was a lot of times it was airline you to an airplane and then you'd fly two legs a day, maybe three, sometimes one, but usually two to three legs a day.
Speaker ASo people, they, one of the big selling points is you don't have to commute, which is fantastic.
Speaker AYou do not have to commute.
Speaker AThey will airline you to the airplane, but they will also work you that same day.
Speaker ASo which is fine, that's what they can do.
Speaker ABut it's not necessary.
Speaker AIt's kind of just like you're thrown into the fire.
Speaker ADay one here we're going to airline you here, maybe it's a two leg airline depending on where you live.
Speaker AAnd then now that you got to the airplane, pre flate that airplane and then we're gonna have you fly two legs and start your tour.
Speaker AAnd from then from day one to day six or day Seven it is.
Speaker AYou are essentially on short call reserve for seven days in a row.
Speaker AYou will go to bed with a schedule.
Speaker AThat schedule will sometimes most likely change by the time you wake up.
Speaker ABut what will not change is the time that you're supposed to report for duty.
Speaker ASo if you go to bed with the 6am schedule, a report, you have to be at the airport at that time.
Speaker AAnd that's the only thing that is pretty much guaranteed.
Speaker AThe only thing that else is guaranteed is that there's gonna be change.
Speaker AEven if you're taking off, flying to a place, say there's a couple times.
Speaker AWe're flying Dallas, love to Midway.
Speaker AWe were getting ready to start our approach in the Midway or start our arrival in the Midway.
Speaker AGot a message on our fms.
Speaker AIt was like, hey, guys, would you mind actually flying to Grand Rapids to pick up these passengers?
Speaker AAnd you're like, all right, let's see if we have the fuel.
Speaker ALet's see if we have this.
Speaker AWe'd go through our checklist to make sure we could do it.
Speaker AAnd then bada boom, bada bing, we are in Grand Rapids and our whole day has changed.
Speaker AChanged.
Speaker ANow, I used to say I love that.
Speaker AI used to love the changes.
Speaker AI used to love everything about it.
Speaker AThe changes were great.
Speaker AI always thought I like chaos.
Speaker AI always thought I liked change, but I got a little bit tired of it.
Speaker AAnd that's just something that kind of changed.
Speaker AAnd then just every day, you know, with more changes, flying three legs at a minimum, usually to about five every once in a while.
Speaker ASix legs.
Speaker AThose six legs, you'd be up in the Northeast.
Speaker AYou'd be going like Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Bedford, Boston, Beverly, like that little area, maybe back down at Teterboro.
Speaker ABut not every day was that crazy.
Speaker AAnd another thing I didn't like is, yes, you can make airline money at the fractionals, especially the fractional I was at.
Speaker AThe problem is, is that you usually have to work more and you have to work extra days in your schedule.
Speaker ASo if you have a seven on seven schedule, you would have to go out a day early or stay out a day later.
Speaker AAnd that's means that you lose a day off.
Speaker AI wasn't willing to play that game to make more money.
Speaker AThe game I wanted to play was, all right, if I fly premium on this trip, then that means that I will go into my next trip, they'll drop that trip, and I'll actually have extra two days off at home.
Speaker ABut my pay is the same.
Speaker ASo that was kind of the game that I wanted to play was try to figure out if I could work less and make more.
Speaker ABut at my previous company it was definitely a work more to make more, which is very fair for the company.
Speaker AI totally understand it and it's a win win for a company and the pilot if they need extra cash.
Speaker ABut it just wasn't what I wanted out of the career.
Speaker AI didn't want to work anymore.
Speaker AI didn't want to be taken away from my family any more than I already was.
Speaker AThe constant theme is try to be home as much as I can be for my child and for my kid and for my wife.
Speaker ASo that's kind of what I really didn't like about it.
Speaker AAgain, it's a great company, great place to work.
Speaker AI could have seen myself be there for a whole career.
Speaker AIt just wasn't kind of in the cards anymore and needed to change.
Speaker ANow we can get to the big stuff.
Speaker AWe can get to 121.
Speaker AWhat I like about 121 and it is you turn left, you literally turn left.
Speaker ASet up the FMS as the fo.
Speaker ASet up the fms.
Speaker AYou know, you do your checks, you walk around, you come back in, you say hi to the captain and you make sure you get everything done and then you go be a team.
Speaker AYou go fly the flight, you land, that's it, game over, day over.
Speaker ASometimes, sometimes you fly two legs.
Speaker AWe're the base that I'm in.
Speaker AWe very much so fly one to two legs a day.
Speaker AHave anywhere from 16 to 20 hours off.
Speaker AThe longest overnight I think I've had, it was 31 hours.
Speaker AI think I was in Barbados one time for the Super Bowl.
Speaker AFantastic.
Speaker AIt was sick.
Speaker AJust flew JFK to Barbados overnight for 30 hours.
Speaker AWatch the super bowl, fly back the next day, that's it, go home.
Speaker AI mean, it doesn't get much easier than that.
Speaker AI do love flying.
Speaker AI do enjoy being in the air.
Speaker AI do love flying and I don't mind flying two to three legs a day.
Speaker ABut when you get used to one leg, two legs, it's really hard to go back or even think about a previous life when you flew four or five.
Speaker ASo turning left is great.
Speaker AI like knowing consistently knowing where I'm going to be at night.
Speaker AYes, there are changes every once in a while.
Speaker AYou know, you're going through a major hub, they'll be like, hey, we actually need you to fly this flight.
Speaker ABut there's a penalty for that and you actually make more money.
Speaker ASo it's not a terrible thing.
Speaker AAnd a lot of times they try to catch you up on your original trip and then you get back to where you want to go.
Speaker ABut I'd say 90% of the time, you know, when you show up for a trip, you're gonna fly the whole trip.
Speaker AAnd that's kind of nice to have that and not have the chaos of what I previously had.
Speaker AAnd then one of the next things that I like is not having a massive sit every once in a while.
Speaker AThere are sits, but there's a lot of times the FBO rotting that was just.
Speaker AWas not a fan of that sitting in.
Speaker ASometimes you'd be in the smallest FBO you could imagine.
Speaker AAnd I love FBOs, I love them all.
Speaker ABut when you see the couch and you're like, that couch definitely has bedbugs, you know, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker AYou can just see the couch.
Speaker AYou can probably visualize the same couch I'm seeing right now.
Speaker AAnd you're like, I don't want to sit there for the next five hours waiting for a flight or being wait to told to go home.
Speaker ASo not having a crazy sit.
Speaker AAnd if you do have a sit, you know, I don't mind the terminal life.
Speaker AWhen I was at my previous company, I always thought the terminal was the worst place in the world.
Speaker ABut pilot lounges, you know, you just go there, you sit or put headphones in and work on the podcast, work on anything.
Speaker AAnd it's been, it's been a lot better.
Speaker AAll right, Some of the differences in the jobs, fractional.
Speaker AYou are definitely more hands on.
Speaker AIt is definitely more customer service oriented.
Speaker AYou're going to be loading bags, you're going to be cleaning up after flights.
Speaker AYou're going to be making sure catering shows up.
Speaker AYou're going to be calling the catering, you're going to be calling the company.
Speaker AThere's going to be a lot of kind of like you're going to go back and forth to make sure everything is there, because your job is to make sure that that one flight is the best flight experience that this person will ever have in their life.
Speaker AYou want to make it as personal as you can.
Speaker AYou have to be able to, to read their body language.
Speaker ADo they want to talk?
Speaker ADo they not want to talk?
Speaker ADo they want to hear jokes?
Speaker ADo they not want to hear jokes?
Speaker AYou have to really be a chameleon with the owners.
Speaker AThat's not necessarily the case in the 121 world, right?
Speaker AYou're just turning left.
Speaker AA lot of times.
Speaker AYou shut the door, you Push back and you're on your way and you land and all you say is goodbye.
Speaker AA lot of times you don't even say good morning because a lot of times you're up doing your checks, you're doing loading of the fms and then they're going and boarding and doing their thing.
Speaker AThere is more crew, right?
Speaker ASo in the 121 world, you have me being a first officer, you have the captain, and on my plane you have four flight attendants.
Speaker ASo you obviously have more of a crew environment and there's more personalities to manage and talk to.
Speaker ABut that's been great.
Speaker AI haven't had any negative experiences, I'd say, with that.
Speaker AAnd it's been kind of fun to work as a team for one common goal, to have the best flight you can possibly have.
Speaker AI do want to talk about kind of the customer service orientation of fractional loading bags can be annoying, but it's not as bad as you think.
Speaker AThe latitude had a massive absolute.
Speaker AIt was the SUV of the sky.
Speaker AIt had a massive baggage compartment.
Speaker AAnd especially when you're moving kids to and from college, that was always tough because they'd show up with two SUVs and you'd be surprised what you could fit in there.
Speaker AAnd then cleaning up the planes, that is not as big of a deal as you want to think.
Speaker ATexture.
Speaker AAnd aviation has done a great job designing the airplane to be as easy as possible.
Speaker AThe bathroom, you just say, hey, here's $5, I need a laugh.
Speaker AAnd then you're going to do some light vacuuming and some light wiping down.
Speaker AAnd one of the great things that they've done is that they have service hubs.
Speaker AAnd at all their major markets, they have service hubs where as soon as you land, I mean, nine times out of 10, as soon as you land, as soon as the passengers are off, there's a big old van coming up to you.
Speaker ABe like, hey, Captain, how can I help you today?
Speaker AAnd they're like, all right, well, we need to restock the sodas.
Speaker AWe need you to restock the alcohol vacuum and a quick wipe down.
Speaker AAnd they're like, all right, we'll be on our way.
Speaker AAnd then 30 minutes later, your plane looks and smells and feels brand new.
Speaker ASo they've made your life as easy as possible.
Speaker AYes, there are times you have to wipe down the bathroom.
Speaker AYes, there are times that you have to load some really hard bags.
Speaker AI remember one time being in Jackson Hole loading what felt like everyone's ski equipment in the whole entire world.
Speaker AIt really wasn't.
Speaker ABut the higher elevation I remember getting back, and I was just so out of breath and like, oh, wow, you had a breath.
Speaker AMust be altitude.
Speaker AAnd I was like, well, it's probably the bags you got, but, yes, also the altitude.
Speaker ASo, yeah, there is.
Speaker AThere's a little bit more customer orientation there, there.
Speaker AAnd then with fractional, as I talked about before, you never really knew where you're going.
Speaker AYou went to bed with an idea of where you're going.
Speaker ANine times out of 10, you did not go there.
Speaker AMy favorite things about the airline world, as I said, you turn left and that's about it.
Speaker AIt's as easy as that.
Speaker AThere are months where you can figure out, like, all right, I'm going to bid that with seniority, you can do pretty much anything you want.
Speaker AAnd I'm in the middle of the seniority, about to change bases, where I'm not going to have as much seniority.
Speaker AI'll probably be back in reserve.
Speaker ABut you do have the ability to some months be like, all right, I don't want to work much this month.
Speaker AWe have a lot going on at home.
Speaker AI understand.
Speaker AI'm not going to make more.
Speaker ASo the SEC the month after that, I will try to work even more to make even more that month.
Speaker AAnd you can play that game, or you can be in reserve.
Speaker AYou can try to fly over your guarantee.
Speaker AYou can try to sit there and pick up premium.
Speaker AThere's a lot of people when you're very senior, you drop all your trips and you just wait for premium to show up, and you just fly premium.
Speaker AAnd it is a sick deal.
Speaker ASo you can work less and you can make more by doing that.
Speaker ALonger overnights, there's something to it.
Speaker AI mean, I remember my first.
Speaker AIt was IoE my very first overnight, it was 18 hours, and I was like, I don't want to do myself.
Speaker AThis is more time than I have normally had in a long time.
Speaker AAnd I got bored.
Speaker AIt was after, like, 14 hours.
Speaker ALike, all right, this is weird.
Speaker AWhy am I still in the hotel?
Speaker ANow I get 18 hours.
Speaker AI'm like, all right, this is nice.
Speaker AThis is what it should be.
Speaker AThis is what I'm used to.
Speaker AAnd I like this.
Speaker AUm, so, yeah, longer overnights have been great, because at the previous job, I always said you can do two or three things.
Speaker AYou can either work out, sleep or eat.
Speaker AAnd you had to choose two of those three.
Speaker AIf you wanted to work out, you probably went back to sleep if you wanted, or you could work out, then you eat, you get less sleep.
Speaker ASo you can only choose two of those three at the airlines, especially at the major that I'm at, you have a much better chance to do all three of those things, which is fantastic.
Speaker ATry to think that's.
Speaker AI wanted to say something else, but I can't think of it anymore.
Speaker ABut that's about where I stand with fractional and 121.
Speaker AI hope this was helpful to anyone that has thought about this.
Speaker AAnd if you have any questions, you always email me@justinpilothepilothq.com I appreciate your time.
Speaker AI appreciate you listening.
Speaker AThis has been fun to talk about it because I got to kind of relive some memories that I've really enjoyed at my previous company.
Speaker AWorked with great people.
Speaker AAs I said before, there's no kind of bad, bad love.
Speaker AThere's no negative connotations.
Speaker AThere's no bad thoughts about that company.
Speaker ALoved every minute I was there.
Speaker AI hope they're very successful and I hope they continue dominating that world.
Speaker ABut I'm very happy with the decision I made.
Speaker AOh, I remember.
Speaker ASo I will say short call reserve in a base where you don't live is awful.
Speaker AAnd it is worse than any fractional schedule that you have, especially over the holidays.
Speaker AThat was really tough.
Speaker AVery, very tough.
Speaker AAnd I think I underestimated how long that was going to last.
Speaker ASo you need to make sure that you are on the right side of the wave and understand that that time is very temporary.
Speaker ASo it got extended for me because hiring freezes.
Speaker ABut now there's probably no scenario unless I upgrade to captain to where that could happen or if they have displacements in the future.
Speaker ABut it was.
Speaker AIt was harder than I thought it was gonna be.
Speaker AI did understand that that was probably going to happen and that it was a possibility that it could be extended.
Speaker ABut, you know, you always think about the good times.
Speaker AEveryone tells you you're gonna get the base of what you want in two months, three months, four months.
Speaker AAnd then I went to six months, and it went to seven months, eight months, nine months, ten months.
Speaker AThe good news is I started getting more seniority in New York and I actually learned that I love the people that fly to New York.
Speaker AI love the trips that they have.
Speaker AAnd the commute really wasn't as bad anymore now that it was off short call reserve.
Speaker ASo short call reserve can be very tough.
Speaker AHave that conversation when you're making that decision with your loved ones to let them know that this is a possibility, that it could be extended a little bit, because the Junior pilot is probably going to be on short call reserve.
Speaker AIt's different for some bases but it can be a little bit tough and it can be a little bit more straining on our family but it is temporary.
Speaker AThere is me opportunity eventually when you get off that for you to get a line long call and your life will get better.
Speaker ABut that short call reserve when you don't live in base can be awful.
Speaker AThat's all I'll say.
Speaker ASo yeah Aviation I hope you're having a great day.
Speaker AThank you so much for listening to this.
Speaker AAs I said Pilot, the Pilot magazine has officially landed.
Speaker AHoly smokes.
Speaker AWhat a last crazy last few months getting this together.
Speaker AQuarterly magazine digital and there's also digital and print.
Speaker AThe print magazine is unbelievable.
Speaker AI cannot wait to get it in my hands.
Speaker AIt's me shipping.
Speaker AThey said it was going to start shipping on the 15th which should be yesterday.
Speaker AIf you're listening to this, it's amazing.
Speaker AShout out to all my sponsors.
Speaker AThank you so much for for wanting to be a part of the magazine as well and thank you for anyone that contributed to it.
Speaker AThe idea of the magazine is to truly be for pilots by pilots.
Speaker AIf you want to hear something, if you want to contribute, let me know.
Speaker AYou know you don't have to be a 10 time whatever winner or you don't have to be a crazy influencer to be on this.
Speaker AYou have a story and if you want it to be shared just like the podcast, let me know and send me the story and we'll do a podcast and we'll talk about it and then we'll turn into article and it'll be the magazine.
Speaker ASo you can always email@justinpilotthpilothq.com and if you want to sponsor if you want to help out this magazine you can also immediately email me as well.
Speaker AAva Nation I hope you're having a great day and as always happy flying.
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