I decided to get back to blogging after a long while. The first and last time I wrote here before now was when I was still a biz jet captain flying VIP-charters around Europe, Middle-East, Africa and Asia.
A lot has happened since. I became a Safety and Compliance Monitoring Manager of the VIP-charter company. I was happy doing it for about a half a year and wanted to get out for twice as long. I missed flying because times were quite bad and there were not enough flights for me. The only thing I made fly were sheets of paper into the trash can.
So I took a job as a regional airline first officer with a fast tract to captain - with a starting salary of almost ⅓ of that of the previous job. But I got to fly - in about 14 months I flew more than 800 hours and did about 400 landings as pilot flying.
We flew mainly several short sectors per day which was fun. The people I worked with were fun too. The only thing that wasn't fun was the airplane. The ATR-72-500 really is a strange design with many weird and unique features. A demanding plane to fly and operate. The prospect of flying that thing for maybe ten years without a chance of an upgrade just wasn't the ticket. They say that planes like the ATR do not need all the fancy automation as the big planes have, because they fly only short sectors. On the contrary! We flew 4-5 sectors per day, if all that repetition and workload is not the place for automation, then what is??
So when airBaltic in Latvia offered a 2-year contract flying the Boeing 737 as direct entry captain, typerating provided by the company, I didn't stop to think about it for too long.
So here I am, in Riga, Latvia, after the very first day as an airBaltic-employee. Today was a long one, company conversion training from nine to six, covering EFB, safety, security and other matters. The company seems to be taking care of things and us, which is nice. But they make us work hard.
The atmosphere is very relaxed and western. We are, after all, in an EU country and about 22 % of the staff are expats. Now I need a rest, another nine-to-six day tomorrow. Happy endings.
A lot has happened since. I became a Safety and Compliance Monitoring Manager of the VIP-charter company. I was happy doing it for about a half a year and wanted to get out for twice as long. I missed flying because times were quite bad and there were not enough flights for me. The only thing I made fly were sheets of paper into the trash can.
So I took a job as a regional airline first officer with a fast tract to captain - with a starting salary of almost ⅓ of that of the previous job. But I got to fly - in about 14 months I flew more than 800 hours and did about 400 landings as pilot flying.
We flew mainly several short sectors per day which was fun. The people I worked with were fun too. The only thing that wasn't fun was the airplane. The ATR-72-500 really is a strange design with many weird and unique features. A demanding plane to fly and operate. The prospect of flying that thing for maybe ten years without a chance of an upgrade just wasn't the ticket. They say that planes like the ATR do not need all the fancy automation as the big planes have, because they fly only short sectors. On the contrary! We flew 4-5 sectors per day, if all that repetition and workload is not the place for automation, then what is??
So when airBaltic in Latvia offered a 2-year contract flying the Boeing 737 as direct entry captain, typerating provided by the company, I didn't stop to think about it for too long.
So here I am, in Riga, Latvia, after the very first day as an airBaltic-employee. Today was a long one, company conversion training from nine to six, covering EFB, safety, security and other matters. The company seems to be taking care of things and us, which is nice. But they make us work hard.
The atmosphere is very relaxed and western. We are, after all, in an EU country and about 22 % of the staff are expats. Now I need a rest, another nine-to-six day tomorrow. Happy endings.
