Those of you who may be considering a second flying career as an airline pilot are probably in the same boat I was in not too many years ago. You hear or read about a lot of unfamiliar terms like bidding, sitting reserves, being a line holder, block time, open time, and other ancient Chinese proverbs that you have a vague understanding of but wish you could comprehend more in depth. Wait no more my friends, much like the FAA; Cockpit to Cockpit is here to help.

In this article, I will first give you the basic definitions or building blocks you will need to wrap your brain around what follows next. Then, like any good instructor pilot, I will walk you through an example, complete with illustrations, because we are pilots after all, and pilots need lots of pictures to keep their attention. If I could turn this article into a pop-up book I would…but my origami skills aren’t that good. The example I will use is my actual airline schedule from January 2018 and it will help you see how all those mysterious airline terms are used in action as I walk you through a month in the life of an airline pilot’s schedule.

What is a Rig?

You may have heard airline pilots discuss certain “rigs” in their contract. Just what exactly are these rigs? I thought the airlines were about flying airplanes. Aren’t rigs something used in the trucking industry? In airline lingo, a rig is a protection written into the pilot contract to provide additional compensation under certain conditions. These conditions are designed to make your quality of life better by ensuring you are adequately compensated for working longer shifts, being away from home more, etc. The best way to understand rigs is to look at some of the more common rigs contained in airline pilot contracts.

             One common rig is called Duty Period Minimum (DPM). DPM is the minimum amount the airline can pay you for one duty period. A pilot duty period begins at scheduled report time. Report time is the time you must show up at the airport for the start of a trip or at the gate on subsequent days of the trip when away from your base. Duty period ends when you clear customs or 30 minutes after block in time, whichever is later? As an example, a DPM rig may stipulate that a pilot will be paid a minimum of 4.5 hours credit per duty period. Without the DPM rig, the airline could, for example, schedule you to fly what we call a “turn.” A turn means you are scheduled to fly from your domicile to another airport and then back to domicile. In the air force we called that an “out-and-back.” Let’s say that each leg of the turn was only 1.0 hours of block time. Without the DPM rig, that turn would only credit 2.0 hours total…not nearly worth losing a day away from your family, especially if you’re a commuter. With DPM, the minimum the airline can pay you for that same duty period would be 4.5 hours credit. If you actually fly more than 4.5 hours block time then you would get paid for the amount of block time actually flown. Sounds a little more reasonable right?

Your first year as an airline pilot will be very similar to your UPT experience. It’s a fire hose for sure! You’ll be learning to fly all over again, training on a large, multi-engine, jet aircraft that may be very different from anything else you’ve ever flown. All the while, you’ll be trying to decipher a maze of new acronyms. Additionally, there are a whole new set of procedures, and rules to learn. There will be an entirely foreign system of compensation and benefits to navigate. You’ll have to choose an aircraft type and domicile that will have a huge impact on your seniority (another unfamiliar concept) and quality of life (something you often sacrificed in the military but hopefully, you’re about to learn how great it can be). 

Just when you finally start to feel comfortable with the airline-training world, they will kick you out of the nest and onto “the line.” The line is a fast-paced, hectic world that introduces a whole new set of virgin experiences like commuting, bidding, reserves, probation, contracts, non-revenue (non-rev for short) flying, crashpads, and adjusting to life on the road (good news, no sleeping in tents or wearing gas masks this time!).

I spent the next six seconds listening to, in this order: two seconds of cursing from the IP, two seconds of deafening silence, and two seconds of, "BAIL-OUT, BAIL-OUT, BAIL-OUT" commanded from the rear cockpit instructor pilot, in a tone I would describe as somewhere between pained and impaneled. Well yes, the infamous three little words that we always "brief" before the flight and that you wish you would never hear in flight. An order which, of course, is given by the aircraft commander and no one else (if we are all conscious on board). The fact is, upon just hearing those words spoken, my blood froze in my veins, something didn't add up, it was a hasty decision, I was not ready. In a millisecond, I cast my eyes to the altimeter, 12,000ft, regained clarity and coolness, and with an ounce of remorse for something I would never have dreamed of doing, I shouted a

"NO WAIT"

The last several years in the airline industry have been a boom for pilot hiring. We saw some unprecedented industry trends including hiring many zero-PIC turbine time pilots into the right seat at major airlines.  Unfortunately, the recent pilot hiring slow-down has put the brakes on the, “ATP minimums and you can fog a mirror” hiring spree. Pilots hoping to get hired in the next several years are going to have to go back to the tried and true principles of hard work, flying your ass off, and making yourself a more valuable new-hire candidate than your peers.  So how do you do that? Use this time, when hiring is slow to non-existent, to improve your application and résumé. Here are few suggestions of things you can be doing now, to improve your chances of an interview later.

If you ask anyone who has read Cockpit to Cockpit (www.cockpit2cockpit.com), they will tell you one of my recurring themes throughout the book is “getting a job is a full-time job.” Your success in career transition is directly proportional to the amount of effort you put into it. Early in the book I discuss some of the reasons why the airlines love to hire military pilots, but many military pilots in transition make the mistake of thinking that their aviation experience alone will get them hired at a major airline. Many of us (myself included) quickly discovered in transition that flight hours/experience are just a small part of the total equation that translates to an interview invite and getting hired at a major airline.

Knowing what scenarios could play out during an industry downturn helps you develop a plan to weather the storm. The worst-case scenario would be that your airline declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy.  I’ve heard horror stories from legacy airline pilots who literally lost millions of dollars in pensions and profit sharing when their previous airline folded. Yikes! 

You probably had a flight plan for every military sortie you flew, and you did the necessary mission planning ahead of time to increase the chances of success for each sortie. Deviating from the flight plan was OK as real-world circumstances such as weather, mechanical issues, and enemy actions dictated; but…