On the Road Again

After being home for a week, I am back out on the road again for a relatively short 5-day trip. With the first of the fall rains pummelling the Pacific Northwest with a vengeance, driving creeks and rivers over their banks, we took off in the stormy night for the American Southwest. This will be one of those trips when I wonder why I fly jets for a living; minimum crew rest, nearly maximum crew duty days, minimum en route ground times, difficult language barriers to overcome (on the radio), and numerous nighttime approaches and landings at unfamiliar foreign airports with mountainous terrain nearby. But there will be a few new pins to add to the map and a country I've never been to before, so it won't all be bad. The icing on the cake will be an overnight stay in San Antonio on the way back, and an evening on the Riverwalk with great Tex-Mex food and margaritas is hard to beat. Anytime I can get a trip to Texas, I jump at the chance.

By the time we landed in New Mexico, it was late, but we still had quite a bit of work to do. While my loadmasters and crew chief fueled the jet, loaded our cargo, and put the jet to bed for the night, I tried to figure out if we would be able to takeoff the next day. Due to the mountainous terrain surrounding the airbase, the standard instrument departure routing requires a significant climb gradient to ensure terrain clearance. But with the amount of fuel we need to make it to our destination tomorrow, we may be too heavy to meet the required climb profile. I passed the matter off to our command and control agency until tomorrow. I'll check in when I wake up in the morning to see what solution they have for us.

We finally arrived at our hotel in a town near the airbase well after midnight; it's one of those one stop-light towns in the desert where everything but Denny's has been closed since 10 pm. It'll be a short night; we will take off later today for the first of two very long days, only to return here for another overnight stay. We'll be here during daylight hours when we return, but something tells me this place won't be too much more exciting than it is now.

Sometimes people ask me if I would choose this life if I had the opportunity to do it all over again, knowing how unglamourous a pilot's life can be at times. Lord knows the sacrifices this life entails; living out of a suitcase can be trying - times away from family, missing important events, and sleeping in a different bed nearly every night I'm on the road. Despite the trials and tribulations of a flying career for Uncle Sam, I wouldn't hesitate to make the same choice. I cannot imagine not doing this job; it is all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid.

Many of my fellow reserve pilots also have airline careers. I was hired by a major US airline earlier this year, but thanks to high oil prices and a recent change in the mandatory retirement age for pilots, I was furloughed fairly quickly. But I saw enough to know that an airline job does not provide the same satisfaction as flying for the military. It has all the negative aspects of the job - the late nights, bad airport food, lumpy hotel beds, and missing time with family and friends - but it doesn't compare to the camaraderie that I find in the military. When I am away from home, the entire crew becomes a second family, both pilots and loadmasters. It is us versus the system and we must work together to ensure the mission is successful. And while I would eventually make far more money flying for the airlines, I could never buy the esprit de corps shared by the pilots and loadmasters in my squadron.