July Ends

As they are joking on Facebook, you wonder what fresh horror is headed our way for August.

A bunch of people in the airline world just got their notices that they will be furloughed, bumped to half pay, demoted from captain back to first officer, that their bases will be closed, that their company is going bankrupt.  Like a BUNCH.  That's from the "you can't furlough them until October" thanks to the CARE act, followed by "you must give 60 days notice prior to furlough due to the union", and guess what time it is?  Sixty days to October.  So the whole industry, which had been in the biggest boom I've ever seen, is tanking again.  Two of our instructors were headed to the airlines and now are not.  Several of my friends are at half pay, bases closed, and demoted.  Most of them are just trying to hang on, but the pilot boards are Filled with people looking for jobs.  Crazy times.  So far our little flight school is humming along just fine, as is the company I fly for.  I flew 92.6 hours in the last 30 days.  So we're not slow here right now.  Hoping that holds out.  Places like LIFT Academy out of Indy that were a pipeline for a regional airline have got to be sweating bullets right now.  They took a ton of money from a ton of people who now have nowhere to go in the industry.  Gonna be interesting.

I had a full day that didn't even start too early, so that was nice.  I got some stuff done in the morning around the house, then had to go to Staples to pick up a mouse for a computer, to a store, and to Subway to pick up our lunch.  Flew the other guy's T-6 with Steve briefly for a maintenance check on something.  Flew with my student who is in checkride prep and has his checkride in less than a week.  Then hopped in the Cheyenne and flew to Dallas, picked up 5 people, flew to Oklahoma City and dropped off two people, and then flew the rest of us home to Kokomo.  Went down at 30,000' and was above most of the weather, deviated around some.  And Dallas was BUSY, too.  Dustin was on the ground there and took a video clip of me landing over his head.  :)  Coming home I was at 33,000', and wasn't quite on top of the weather, so went up to 35,000', and was.  Now that's living.  Autopilot, music, not above the storms?  Just go higher.  Because you CAN.  That would have been a completely different and more complicated trip in the 340. 

Home by 10:30 pm.  Yawn.

But that's the diversity I like.  I flew a T-6, instructed in a C-172, and single pilot IFR flew a Cheyenne at FL350 into super busy airspace, in one afternoon.  I like that.

Goodnight.