Pro-Pilot Playbook Podcast #26 // Pilot Life During the Holidays

[Music] hello aviators welcome back to the pro pilot playbook podcast where we bring you insights and hacks and tips and tricks to get through your aviation career all your flight training in the fastest and cheapest means possible i'm sean ritchie and i'm mike martin we are bringing this is our our new year's show i guess this is the first podcast we're putting out here of 2021 today's january 6th 2021 and we we did take a a a week off last week we did not post a podcast it was a very busy week for both of

us well mike was on a hybrid vacation i think actually mike is on location he is uh he's not in his normal spot here uh you might have noticed yeah i think i i see does this look like cincinnati yeah i see palm trees back there i see sunshine and palm trees i'm looking out my window i see dreary cincinnati cold winter weather out there it's in the 30s somewhere hey somebody's got to do it right yeah yeah oh man yeah great so i mean very busy week in aviation you know on the the 26th

of december you know is quite possibly in our realm of you know aviation in the corporate world that's one of the busiest days if not the busiest travel day there is i agree yeah people going to warm locations the day after christmas um i think the faa even uh over the years they're getting smarter i think they even issued i got an email uh about congestion in florida uh you know all the travel people heading south uh they were saying delays and everything yeah yeah you know if you think about it if you're a corporate

pilot or not not even corporate pilot if you're a corporate jet owner what better day to use your airplane than december 26 and fly somewhere warm i mean it's really the greatest thing ever uh uh everybody wants to be up in their cold crap hole where they made all their money with all their family on uh christmas day and then on the 26th like a magic carpet they want to bring their whole family to some beautiful place um and uh uh so you know that's that's all the congestion uh that that comes along with that

um and actually we uh so i've flown for several different operators in this type of flying and uh uh we always fly in the 26th uh typically to miami fort lauderdale naples palm beach or the bahamas is very popular too all those places and we run into what they have as they have flow control issues as the air traffic control goes through the the northern part of florida uh they they have delays they can't they can't handle congestion and you know in the old days uh they they would have everyone take off and then you

would fly to where you're going to get there and there'd be too many planes to land so you would you know fly in holding patterns and they'd stack you up and then you'd land and then you know i don't know 20 years ago somebody's like maybe this isn't the smartest thing to do uh to just have all these airplanes flying around people on a wasting gas and there could be an accident um so now they monitor all the airplanes uh and they have what's called flow control so they know where you're going and when you're

gonna take off and they know if you're gonna be able to land when they get there so they stop you it's called a ground stop uh or gate hold they'll stop you at your departure time and you'll get what's called an edict time and then that'll allow you to take off at a certain time so that when you arrive and your tropical destination there's no delay um so that's getting smarter the computers are able to see all the flight plans in the system and the congestion and they'll start the computers will start spitting these things

out and they'll issue these things for certain destinations yeah so we adapted to this um so you know what time i'll ask the viewers would you want to leave if you owned a private jet you'd like to go somewhere tropical uh on december 26 well 10 a.m right it's perfect you get to wake up at your own pace and then go to the airport it takes you a little bit of time to get the airport jump on the jet and leave well if you leave at 10 a.m you may get delayed two or three hours

in some cases so we've we've shifted our departure our operation to uh uh 8 30 in the morning and we got out uh actually no problem uh but you know an hour or two later they start you start to get delayed and then it eases up again in the afternoon you know when everybody travels so you learn how to kind of game the system uh you know as you as you get better at it where did you go sean did you go uh anywhere in florida or what did you do yeah there was a couple

different trips in there on on chris or the day after christmas on the 26th we were taking some people down to uh the bahamas down to the southern or lutheran islands uh little bitty island uh it's called rock sound i mean there is there's nothing there it's a it's a there's it's a piece of pavement there's no with no runway lights there's no runway markings there's no tower it's just an uncontrolled there's a shack there there's no taxiways it's pretty unimproved i mean there's there's potholes and stuff in this i mean it's it's borderline well

i shouldn't say that because there's plenty of jets that go in and out of there but i mean it's it's a rough it's a rough piece of pavement and yeah because there's no services down there you've got a we were picking our people up in florida anyway but right you know you got to go in there with enough fuel to get back out to go wherever you're going and we happen to be in fort lauderdale which is the perfect spot for this particular jet that i'm flying and you know we fueled up and it was

a mad house i mean oh yeah that's where i was i didn't know we were there the same day then on the 26th you were i was at fll or where were you yeah yeah fll yeah all nice yeah i didn't see a shelter i was there yeah i was at shelter too are you unbelievable yeah yeah that's funny actually that brings up right there next to customs yeah yeah yeah that's great what time did you land i mean that ramp was uh a mess it was a mess man yeah it was a war zone

they told me they had 100 arrivals uh is what they told me there wow yeah so we got out there i don't know yeah the line i mean we were waiting and then they gave us another time they kept adding to our time adding to our time and um sitting there burning fuel and you know i'm doing math real quick to make sure yeah i still got enough fuel to get back and meet the reserve requirements whatever but it got close it got close to where i was getting ready to if it went any longer

i was gonna have to pull out of line and go back get some more fuel [Music] yeah that little jet i fly doesn't like uh you're in a different animal that thing the thing you fly you know can tanker some fuel around but you have a challenger you got that baby off man and go to uh i remember when i was flying a 604 uh challenger 604 which is slightly bigger than what i'm in now we did um we did lax to bermuda with still enough fuel to get back to north carolina you know because

you got bermuda is like a rock in the middle of sure the freaking nowhere and we flew one guy i remember from lax uh uh all the way to bermuda which is way out in the atlantic ocean in the middle of nowhere and then of course we had enough reserve if if the runway because there's only one runway there bermuda if you had to go around you could just go back to the us but uh yeah that that's uh one thing the big airplanes they they they make you sweat fuel a little bit uh less

that's for sure and in those situations i can remember uh i used to fly lear 31 and man that thing it was like a fuel emergency right when you left oh yeah yeah you feel that airplane i've been in an airplane too oh yeah that's a two-hour that's a two-hour fighter jet it's yeah it goes really fast looks cool and uh yeah but yeah yeah yeah that but yeah you're always sweating the gas man and that is not uh yeah it's not not a fun thing you know uh yeah in sporting events you know you're

taxiing out you're number 30 for takeoff oh yeah i've i've left some nascar races before that yeah it's just nuts and the nascar races are are they're even you know all those race teams have have air aircraft also you know so yeah and you're not always at a big airport either where they're used to handling that amount of traffic so those things can get nuts but yeah the sporting events uh you know another i said it was a busy week you know like the day after new year's january 2nd is also a very busy day

yes i did the uh the same flight as i did the day after christmas on the day after new year's only it was even more involved there was six legs that day dropping off all his friends and family everywhere after we brought him out of the bahamas but uh yeah just busy busy week but sometimes sometimes it doesn't work out like that you know i didn't get to stay in any cool beach locations but um you know i have had the opportunity to get to live like the passengers every now and then and i remember

a trip one year where we left christmas night christmas evening they wanted to get down there christmas night they had to wake up on the beach and i wasn't very happy about going and working on christmas evening but i i get it now because i got the i got to wake up on the beach in the bahamas again this time different island but uh there is some magic in waking up on a beach the day after christmas toes in the sand you got the surf the sun the heat and that all that christmas stuff is

behind you oh man it probably is the best day to travel yeah yeah yeah you know um like you brought up new years i remember a story uh when i was flying for a charter operator now this is probably about 10 years ago we took a guy into this island called uh anguilla and it's in um it's down by saint martin it's very exclusive there's no airline service in there um and we had a we had a celebrity on board we were actually picking up a celebrity it's a big time movie star and um i

i hear at the time there was like a four seasons there that everyone was at i mean there was a ton of jets there you know some very very famous people um like uh there was a basketball player that would remain nameless but he flies a north carolina blue gulf stream he was down there um but i uh it in we the way it's set up this this um this uh it's one runway and there's no taxiway so there's just a ramp in the center of the airport um so a relatively big ramp for i

guess for the islands but there's only one small little taxiway that leads to the ramp in the middle of the airport so no matter what you're back taxiing or taxiing on the runway oh yeah no matter which way you're landing yes so picture an airport setup like that and you got 40 g5s and falcons and citations just stacked on the ramp like cord wood right so we land uh empty to pick up this person and uh we got enough fuel we didn't need fuel and then it's just straight grid like they have a tower there

but they don't really know what they're doing and there's barely enough room for us to get on the ramp and then there's airplanes that are trying to get out that you know planes are streaming in so they can't let the guys that have been there out because we gotta get out of their way for them to even get out and then as soon as you land you immediately have to get off the runway so somebody else can land so there's all these planes coming in nobody can get out the fbo is a complete war zone

they're fueling no one can get fuel people need more fuel yeah that was probably um one of the most congested situations yeah that i've been in the island so speaking about the fuel thing you you need to make sure you're you're prepared for that because uh you land down there and then you sit for two hours and you don't have enough fuel now to go where you're going and then you got these uh crazy you know island people uh with you know they're running out of fuel or whatever it's all mismanaged it's empty yeah yeah

yeah then you got rich people in the back that aren't used to waiting right yeah they don't understand this no no no but yeah but uh i would agree uh waking up in the warm climate uh now a lot of our viewers probably live in a warm climate so it's not a big deal to them but uh you know us midwesterners buddy or nor people in the northeast or something that i mean there's nothing like it um and it's it's a big perk so what i've been doing is uh on these trips is i'll have

uh and i think we talked about this in another podcast but it's good to bring it up is i'll have my family come down and meet me on the airlines and then you know that saves money because i'm already down there and then uh we'll stay somewhere you know tropical so this this year we went all throughout the florida keys so i had a flight into fort lauderdale as we mentioned and it was for 10 days so they came down and we drove to all the different keys and stayed in different hotels all the way

down there and uh it was just fantastic and nice family joined you yeah your family joined on on the job yeah that's yeah you got it that's happened to me a few times too actually it's it's happened before where uh the owner let me bring my family on to the on to the jet i mean now there's a perk right there yeah yeah i mean that doesn't happen all the time but right it has happened before and uh but it's just as easy to well not just as easy but you can also throw them on

the airlines and have your family meet you if you're gonna be somewhere for a few days uh somewhere nice the hotel's already paid for uh your rental car is already paid for um so yeah airline them in and make a vacation out of it just another little perk of of being a pilot yeah yeah you know and hang in there i mean i know we talked about the hotel points you know you get all those points to stay um uh so so when you're you know in new york you're building and you're staying in a

hotel the company's paying for and training you're accruing these points and then you can use them at these luxury resorts and i mean i'm talking some of these these hiltons and marriotts the high-end ones and vacations are unbelievable so so now you got you know free airline ticket or a free way down there and then you know your free hotels and you the rental car places all give you points i mean there's a lot of really really really nice perks that we you know we covered in different aspects of this but but you know it's

good to bring up the people because it it is good and i think sean you airline a lot so you get a lot of sky miles right from all your travel yeah actually yeah these sky miles that's the delta na i do uh that's my yeah you're getting a little glare there huh yeah yeah yeah yeah it's when you get into this type of thing it's good to stick with one brand you know so for airlines i'll use delta and then you know that's how you get your status up and it's not just you know

for the airlines it's not just the miles you know that gets you your free flights for you and your family but once you get that status you know then you start getting upgrades you know you buy a seat in the back but you get upgraded to first class every other flight um so yeah i you know i stick with delta um the airlines i stick with marriott in the hotels and um actually i just became a lifetime uh uh platinum member at or well they call it titanium now at marriott so i'm going to switch

over and start building those that that status up but the rental cars even you know the rental cars you get i use enterprise a lot so i think it's five or six rentals rental days you get a free uh rental day so even the rental car companies are doing it but you know we're kind of talking you know what it's like in the corporate world but as far as flying during the holidays for an airline guy you know the it's a little different thing you know you're either gonna be doing your normal thing uh during

the holidays or you're gonna be off basically are your two choices yeah it's busy for them too i mean those airlines are packed during right during the holidays and and they're busy as well but it's just another day i mean if christmas falls on a thursday your the airline's normal thursday schedule is is still the same typically um right you know so based on your seniority you would you would bid your trips you would bid that month out to either be on or off during the holidays and you know as you get seniority you can

be the guy that doesn't work at all during the holidays yeah yeah i've heard of i've heard of guys that if even if they had the seniority though they'll go ahead and if if they don't have a family maybe it's some guy you know he's not married doesn't have any kid his kids are all grown or something and whatever i've heard of those guys that are that go ahead and just fly during the holidays so the younger guys can have time off you know to be with their kids and whatever but yeah that's uh that's

basically the difference in the airlines in the corporate world during the holidays yeah and let's not forget if you're an airline pilot you can move your family for free um on standby you know on flights so that might be yeah yeah the flights are you know yeah that's all based on there being an empty seat and it's been pretty full here and this year was even worse because we had the coveted restrictions so it's unless you're sitting with your family it's you know every other seat's blocked out you know so yeah i i think that's

another reason why florida was so busy um is is uh no one wants to leave the country as much with the you know with the coronavirus and everything so that probably added to that we we also had it was probably in the news i think it was in the news on monday uh jacksonville center which is the controlling agency for all of north florida um they had a controller uh with the coronavirus um and they decided to i guess evacuate the controlling agency and sanitize it for like three hours or four hours it costs huge

delays yeah that's a disaster i mean that jack center jacksonville center that's the entire north that's the entire corridor getting in and out of florida and part of the gulf and and the atlantic over the i mean yeah what a dessert yeah nightmare what day was this uh that was monday afternoon and i was looking at flightaware actually we were doing a crew swap in fort lauderdale so we had a guy coming down and his flight was doing four five hours but i was looking on uh you know there's there's on flight of where they

had flights coming from new york that were going over to louisiana all around north florida over the gulf and then a minute to avoid uh jacksonville's airspace but i mean what a what a nightmare man so you do have you know it's not all peaches and cream when it's uh a busy time i mean these things happen but um and that's a reminder for any of our viewers that you know anybody that's an aviation lover if you don't have that app on your phone flight aware it's incredible man you download this thing it's free and

you can actually press a button it'll show every single plane above you uh where they're headed what type of plane it is and then you can put in different airports and you can see you can put the flight numbers and it's really fun i mean if you're involved in aviation yeah yeah flight numbers for the airlines or uh you can put in a tail number for an individual airplane if you got a buddy with a plane or something yeah it is your block right yeah unless you block your tail number a lot of a lot

of private corporate people will block tail numbers and somebody famous or something like that yeah the famous scene from uh uh the movie wall street the original wall street you remember that sean when charlie i mean i remember the movie i'm trying to remember so they're trying charlie sheen is a stock guy and this company is either it's merging with another company or buying another company and one's in minneapolis and the other one's like in houston and they don't know uh which one uh this company's gonna buy but they're trying to figure it out because

they're gonna short sell all this stock so so this is in the 80s right so right they're on the ramp i think it like peterborough or something and the they have private jet of this company is taxiing out so charlie sheen waits behind the fence until right uh right with a wallet in his hand and he's going oh my god i got my boss's wallet uh he's gonna kill me do you know where that plane was going he has to fuel her and they go minneapolis and then he gets on this you know 1982 cell

phone he's like selling oh no so yeah the uh the corporate uh operators will block the tail number for those reasons right because you can tell certain strategic business deals that are going on based on where those jets are going you know right but we're digressing yeah yeah um yeah so what's your prediction for this year i mean 2021 happy new year everybody we're uh new year uncharted ground maybe i think it's going to be a great year sean i think we're going to start off slow like we are and uh i think that this

summer once this vaccine is in circulation uh is going to be a complete jailbreak for travel that's my prediction i think you're going to see demand you know snapback there's a lot of pent-up demand these events are going to start to roll out in the fall you're going to start seeing fall concert tours you're going to start seeing conventions back uh vegas will be turned back on um and and there's just going to be a lot of pent up demand on the part of the public to get out and do things and travel and they're

going to want to get on airplanes and all of that and i think it's going to be great and i think if uh if anybody watching this is thinking about jumping into aviation you got to remember your your training takes you know a couple years or a year at least if you really so um what's going to happen is you've got all these layoffs right now that occur due to the instant drop in demand over travel which has prevented any hiring and uh as soon as it snaps back you know they're they're not going to

have enough pilots again and that could be sooner rather than later and if you guys are jumping in now you have all your ratings pulled up you'll be in a good position man in a year or two uh this is gonna be uh back to normal i think uh would you agree sean i i sure hope so i i mean yeah that yeah that would be my prediction too i mean fingers crossed you know we were already before the covet thing we were already on the brink of a disaster with with the pilot shortage the

pilot shortage was there and it was intensifying and then the covet thing really leveled everything out but i i've said it before on this podcast about how you know once everything spins back up again now that all these airlines have laid guys off or furloughed guys well there wasn't i mean they've definitely stopped hiring you had flight schools that went out of business you had people that stopped flight training because of uncertainty yeah it's it's going to spin back up way fast and we're going to be right back in it again it can be a

lot worse than it originally was so if just like you said mike if if anybody listening watching this is on the fence about becoming a pilot i mean there is no greater time in history to start flight training right now yeah yeah i i agree because you know you guys may be watching like well all these airlines are laying off why would i be a pilot but you got to look at the trend man and and uh right uh you know it's all about timing and uh you know now if you if you are a

guy that's looking for a job right now just coming out of flight school okay yeah it's probably not the best but just hold on a little bit and it'll come but for a person just getting started i don't i don't even think they're going to be affected by the chronobytes no no i would say no not at all if any it might be something well no i'm not going to say that no yeah a new year's resolution a great new year's resolution for somebody watching this that wants to be a pilot would be go to

your local airport and take an introductory flight get out there and and take one of their intro ride intro flights and and uh just start doing it take action take action man that's it man that's it that's all you got to do you know if you want to be a pilot go to the airport meet somebody and take a flight and uh start researching this stuff start reading books and and get this done you know you you're not gonna get anywhere uh sitting on your couch you know and remember doing nothing is doing something i

mean if you're just sitting around in in a job you don't like uh uh you you're just perpetuating that by sitting there so uh yeah yeah it's i still think it's a great opportunity you know we we started this uh course uh in this podcast when the there was an unprecedented demand for pilots and we wanted to get information out there to get people in the business and then of course that went away like a light switch with the coronavirus but when you really analyze the situation um and you know the trends and what was

occurring pre-corona and what's about to happen after corona um i i i would not be discouraged to jump in right and you know this industry's always been uh cyclic anyway you know there's always ups and downs that you know would follow the economy and and uh but this was i this is like a little bubble i mean like i just said we were on the the the pilot shortage was real it was there it was happening and then this thing came in instantaneously and killed all that temporarily i think it's gonna i think it's gonna

go away just as fast as it came in and we'll be on the other side of it even worse yeah yeah that's right that's right well good man uh well everybody enjoy 2020. so uh yeah real quick what what's the temperature like where you're at i mean i see uh you're in a t-shirt yeah um it's about so i'm in north florida um and it's about uh price 65 right now so it's beautiful i mean almost no wind and it's yeah yeah really calm you know you you get uh there's almost three uh different climate

zones with florida at the north side you know in the dead of winter central florida um pretty moderate and in south florida which is just like the chuckle i mean tropical you go you were in fort lauderdale man it's like you can swim every day it's incredible you know so so uh to me actually this is probably the perfect climate because you get like a touch of winter i had a guy tell me uh here he said uh we have uh two seasons summer in january so you get a you can get a little touch

of you could get a jacket out you could build a little fire and then it's gone and then it's summer time again but but uh yeah yeah so i'm here and then you know key west of course i mean all of the keys i was in marathon and all that was in the high 70s to 80 81 82 um it's the dry season in the in the uh in the winter so it never rains uh you know you got that crystal blue water i mean it it really is paradise you know but uh but yeah

yeah but um that's the thing you know sean you get this job and you get to uh experience all this stuff and then you know where to go on vacation you know i i always tell my my family i have i don't like to take them on vacation anywhere that i haven't already been i gotta go test it out first you know make sure they're really gonna like it so yeah it's a it's a very unique thing you know and i have a lot a lot of my friends call me that aren't pilots asking where

to go you know where where are you like where would you go because they know i've hit all the good places you know exactly yep right yeah all right well um yeah so there you have it this was our podcast on being a pilot during the holidays um yeah yeah so if you have a question one of the things we've been doing a lot i know uh those of you who watch we've been answering a lot of questions on the podcast uh if you have a question for us you can send us a question and

we'll answer it here on the podcast podcast at pro pilot playbook you can email us podcast pro propoutplaybook.com and uh we'll answer it here awesome we'll have a great new year and uh keep keep the questions coming we love them it gives us topics to talk about and uh uh everybody needs to get to the airport and start flying yes exactly that's a great resolution drive to the airport all right all right thanks for watching folks and we will see you next week bye [Music]