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what I learned from reading this book
Nov. 8th, 2009 07:20 amThe book: 
Since his heroic water landing on the Hudson, Cap'n Sully has been trying to leverage his fame in a good cause by testifying before Congress on the lousy pay and working conditions of pilots and other airline personnel. But nobody seems very interested.
I already knew that even senior pilots are paid so poorly most of them have second jobs (both Sully and his co-pilot had consulting businesses), and that "down time" starts from the moment the plane reaches the gate, cutting severely into the hours allowed for actual sleep. Here's a couple more things about the life of a pilot that I learned from reading this book.
1) Even on those few domestic flights where meals are still served in first class, pilots don't get any. (I don't suppose the flight attendants do, either.) They can smell the hot dinners wafting forward from first class, but they have to eat the likes of bananas and tuna sandwiches that they bought and brought on board themselves. (The only personal possession Sully didn't get back from the Hudson after the plane was dredged up, he reports, was his sandwich.) Denying the crew the meals served the passengers seems the acme of corporate pettiness.
2) Sully originally moved to the Bay Area because his airline had based him here. When they closed the station as a base, he stayed because he didn't want to uproot his family, but he had to commute to work. (And his base has changed once since he started doing so.) On the several-day tour of duty which ended with that famous flight, he began by catching a ride as a non-fare passenger (in a middle seat, because that's what non-fare passengers get) all the way to his base in Charlotte, at which point he immediately turned around and captained a flight back to San Francisco. Does that strike anybody else as insane personnel management?
Since his heroic water landing on the Hudson, Cap'n Sully has been trying to leverage his fame in a good cause by testifying before Congress on the lousy pay and working conditions of pilots and other airline personnel. But nobody seems very interested.
I already knew that even senior pilots are paid so poorly most of them have second jobs (both Sully and his co-pilot had consulting businesses), and that "down time" starts from the moment the plane reaches the gate, cutting severely into the hours allowed for actual sleep. Here's a couple more things about the life of a pilot that I learned from reading this book.
1) Even on those few domestic flights where meals are still served in first class, pilots don't get any. (I don't suppose the flight attendants do, either.) They can smell the hot dinners wafting forward from first class, but they have to eat the likes of bananas and tuna sandwiches that they bought and brought on board themselves. (The only personal possession Sully didn't get back from the Hudson after the plane was dredged up, he reports, was his sandwich.) Denying the crew the meals served the passengers seems the acme of corporate pettiness.
2) Sully originally moved to the Bay Area because his airline had based him here. When they closed the station as a base, he stayed because he didn't want to uproot his family, but he had to commute to work. (And his base has changed once since he started doing so.) On the several-day tour of duty which ended with that famous flight, he began by catching a ride as a non-fare passenger (in a middle seat, because that's what non-fare passengers get) all the way to his base in Charlotte, at which point he immediately turned around and captained a flight back to San Francisco. Does that strike anybody else as insane personnel management?
