Cockpit Chronicles: Landing an airline pilot job just got harder, but here’s one way to do it.

by Kent Wien on

Last year H.R. 5900 was signed into law requiring the FAA to set a new 1,500 hour minimum flight time requirement for any new airline pilots including small companies hiring co-pilots for their 19-seat airplanes.

The law is mandated to take effect by August of 2013 and was one of the recommendations to come from the Colgan Flight 3407 accident in Buffalo, even though both accident pilots had more than 1,500 hours at the time of the crash, with the captain having logged 3,329 hours and the first officer 2,200.

In the past, major airlines culled their aviators from the military and regional airlines. As hiring tapered off, military pilots went to the much lower paying jobs at the turboprop and small jet operators.

Today, fewer pilots are leaving the military, instead opting to make it a career. Furthermore, Air Force Magazine reported:

USAF is already training more UAV pilots than F-16 pilots. Within two to three years, Air Force officials predict, drone pilots will outnumber F-16 pilots, numbering as high as 1,100.

Airlines don’t recognize this as piloting experience, though. Fortunately, these pilots may be able to move on to a flying position after three years in the service, which brings them three years closer to the twenty years needed for retirement, something that may affect their decision to move on to the airlines.

As the military pool of pilots dries up, most new hire classes will be filled with high-time regional airline pilots. But with the 1,500 hour requirement for new co-pilots, (what had been a typical minimum experience at the major airlines) these smaller companies are going to be competing fiercely for new pilots.

So while it’s going to be more difficult to get to the 1,500 hour point, once you get there, the job market will likely be far less competitive.

But getting there won’t be easy. I’ll share with you how I would go about it if I were starting today.For a college-educated new pilot to finish their basic requirements which include a commercial flying license with multi-engine and instrument ratings, and perhaps a flight instructor certificate, they’re looking at a minimum of $40,000 worth of debt, not including their college expenses. After making it through the training, they’ll still only have 250 hours at this point.

Traditionally, these pilots would then become flight instructors in order to build flight time for a few hundred hours. But now they’ll need to extend that employment until they reach at least 1,500 hours. And instructor jobs will be far more scarce, especially as their students drop out after they realize what a daunting (and expensive) task is ahead of them.

If our 250-hour pilot can’t find an instructing job, they would have to spend at least another $125,000 renting a single-engine airplane ($100 an hour for 1,250 hours) until they reach the new minimum flight time requirement.

Let’s add that up, shall we?

$80,000 for a 4-year college degree in whatever subject they choose.

$40,000 to reach the old minimum ratings and flight time.

Another $125,000 to reach 1,500 hours of flight time.

That works out to $245,000!

Now, I find it hard to believe that anyone would be willing to invest that much money to land a $24,000 a year commuter airline co-pilot job, even one that offers a chance to make $80,000 after upgrading to captain after a number of years.

There’s no doubt in my mind that some shortcuts will need to be made. Airlines will likely reduce or drop altogether the requirement for candidates to have a college degree, for example. They’ll also lobby the FAA to allow them to hire pilots with less than 1,500 hours if they’ve gone through an aviation university, perhaps.

Regular readers of the Cockpit Chronicles know that I love my job. I can’t imagine doing anything else. But would I recommend this to anyone given the added expenses involved?

That’s exactly the question (edited for brevity) that Jeffrey asked this week:

Hey Kent,

I’m a student at a Community College in North Carolina and I hope to have an associates degree by July. The few questions I have to you are about aviation and where I should go from this point forward.

1. After earning my instrument rating and racking up a total of 165.4 hours what is the next step for me? I’m really unsure where to go from here and what to do. Should I cut my losses in aviation and change career goals?

My main concern would be a loan for the commercial training which would be at least a twenty thousand dollars to get my commercial single and multi and CFII rating. That would then put me owing thirty thousand dollars in loans. I do realize that in aviation the money is not great especially for someone first starting out. I’d have to endure several years of low pay as a flight instructor and then several more years as a first officer with low pay. I’m not sure that’s something I want to do. I completely understand that money isn’t everything but I’d like to be able to live on my own one day and be able to be happy doing what I am doing with my career choice.

2. Would you recommend this industry to anyone that is in my shoes right now? The price of gas is likely causing fewer people to fly. I’m just unsure of the current state of the aviation industry. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

With 164 hours, you’ve already invested a sizable amount of money to get where you are right now. There are three things that will all happen in the next two years that should give you some hope.

First, the lack of movement at almost every airline is about to change on December 12th of 2012. That’s the date when pilots will start hitting the mandatory retirement age again after the number was raised from 60 to 65 back in 2007.

Next, new flight time and duty regulations are set to be announced on August 8th of this year that will likely cause airlines to hire more pilots. In their response to the rule, American Airlines claimed they would need 2,300 more pilots to fly their existing schedule. Currently, American has about 9,500 pilots plus another thousand on furlough.

Finally, the 1,500 hour requirement will likely discourage many potential pilots from putting in the investment and years of training required.

But if you can get to that magic 1,500 hours, you’re going to be in an enviable spot in a few years.

Would I do it? Heck yes. It’s still a great job, and I can’t see myself doing anything else. Although, in fairness not all pilots agree, most notably Sully Sullenberger, that this is still a viable career.

So here’s how would I do it today, assuming I couldn’t find an instructing job, since flight instructors will be staying around until 1,500 hours, creating a logjam at that position:

First, get your ratings. You’ll need a Private, Commercial, Multi-engine, and Instrument licenses, or ‘ratings.’ Each has different flight time requirements, from 40 hours for the private license to 250 hours for the commercial rating.

In order to get from 250 hours to 1,500 hours I would buy an inexpensive airplane to build up flight time, reducing my cost per hour down to as little as $30 to $50, which might cut the $125,000 in half or more after selling the airplane 1,250 hours later. Airplanes generally don’t depreciate much, although it’s a buyers market right now in this economy.

Here’s an example airplane, a Cessna 172. If that link should break, just go to Barnstormers.com and look at the listings for Cessna 152s, 172s, a Cherokee 140, or, if you’re more the type to drive a Mini or an MG, by all means look at the Luscombe, Aeronca Champ, or Cessna 140. All are relatively good values (under $20,000 or $30,000) even if the Luscombe and Champ are more than sixty years old.

You’ll have some great experience, and wonderful memories to go along with that flight time.


The author building time in a 1946 Luscombe that helped him land his first flying job.

So Jeffrey, I think you should stick with it. As someone once said, “The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.”

Let’s just hope your future parking place will be at a jetbridge.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.

Cockpit Chronicles: A farewell to Boston

by Kent Wien on

April was my last month flying from Boston. It was also the month that our company chose to eliminate the last remaining non-stop flights from Santo Domingo and San Juan to New England. These were markets where we’d flown for decades.

Fittingly, on the 2nd and 4th of April, I flew the very last flights from SDQ and SJU-not exactly something worthy of a celebration, but noteworthy, nevertheless.

I made sure to take a group shot of the pilots I worked with on both flights.

The final Santo Domingo to Boston pilots:

And the last San Juan to Boston flight:

We’ve been shrinking the Boston base for the past few years, and while many of my friends took the plunge and went south to New York, I had always planned to be the last one to leave. But facing a commute to Germany for a year, I knew JFK flying would be far more convenient. Lufthansa, Air Berlin, and even Singapore Airlines offer non-stop flights to Germany.

But before leaving Boston, I planned to enjoy two Paris trips and revisit my two most memorable restaurant experiences from the city of lights, and catch one major tourist attraction that I’m almost ashamed to admit that I’ve never seen.
After ten years of flying to Paris, I knew I needed to look around the inside of the Louvre. I’ve avoided it because I’m really not an art museum aficionado, but I suppose everyone should see the Louvre at some point. To be honest, I was more interested in the building that I’d been photographing for years than in the art to be found inside.

After a quick picnic of cheese and wine next to the Louvre Pyramid, the captain, Pete, and a flight attendant, Michelle and I went inside.

So I suppose a brief review of the Louvre is in order:

There are paintings inside.

And a rather large number of sculptures.

Most of the artwork is huge, except, surprisingly, the Mona Lisa. Perhaps that’s why this painting is so popular. People really love smaller artwork apparently. The 50-foot painting opposite the Da Vinci work was largely ignored, I noted.

Afterward, reservations were made for my favorite restaurant in Paris.

“Le Hide” is ‘hidden’ just off of the Arc de Triumph in a little residential neighborhood. It’s full of typical French cuisine such as escargot and pan-seared fois gras appetizers and a main course of salmon and scallops that flake off with a fork. It’s the most flavorful food I’ve found in Paris, and yet it’s reasonably priced at €22 ($32) for a two-course meal and 29 ($42) for three courses. Reasonable, at least, by Paris standards.

The same flight attendant, Michelle, was on another Paris trip with me the next week. I sheepishly suggested we eat at Dans Le Noir, which is the most unusual restaurant in Paris. She immediately knew what I was talking about and said she was thinking about suggesting the same place.

In the past, I had been rather unsuccessful in getting others to join me for what is truly a dining adventure.

When you walk into Dans Le Noir, facing you is a small pub where you place your dinner and drink order. After removing any cell phones, watches and purses and placing them in one of the provided lockers on the right, you’re guided into a pitch black dining room by one of the waiters, who happen to be blind.

The idea is to experience food as a blind person would, to take in the senses and try to identify what you’re eating without any visual cues.

I had been to the restaurant with two pilots when it first opened years earlier. Today there are versions of this same restaurant in New York, London and Barcelona.

There was so much laughing during the first visit, especially when a pilot’s foot became stuck in the table as the blind waitress was guiding us out of the place, which left him alone in the dark wondering just how he was going to find his way out.

The second visit was just as amusing. As I was guided to my seat, I felt what I thought was a wall next to me, and my hand landed directly on ‘the softest part’ of the lady sitting to the left of me. I felt relieved when the flight attendant sitting across from me also put her hand right on the gentleman to her right, who was with the French lady I had inadvertently accosted. Many apologies and giggles later and we were ready to explore our meal.

You don’t really choose your meal, since this would ruin the surprise, so part of the dining experience is to try and determine what exactly you’re eating. The three other flight attendants and two other pilots with me described what was on their plates, which may or may not have been different than our own. We just couldn’t tell for sure.

After an appetizer of cheese and fruit, we were served a steak with potatoes, and vegetables. Pretty safe food, for sure, but it did take some touching and feeling to understand what was on our plates.

On the last trip of the month, we had a spectacular view of the Northern Lights. It was a fitting sendoff that I won’t forget.

I’m going to miss my friends in Boston, but I’ll enjoy seeing the ones who have already gone south to NY, and who have jokingly referred to JFK as “South Boston” since half of Boston is now commuting to the larger base.

I’ll especially enjoy seeing the captain and relief pilot that were ‘featured’ in my 2004 ‘Vertigo’ video that depicted a typical Paris trip from Boston to New York. Both of them are now flying out of NY as well.

Maybe I’ll discover a few other ‘hidden’ spots in Rome, Zurich, Barcelona, Brussels, Budapest, Manchester, Madrid, Milan or even Rio de Janeiro, to talk about in an upcoming Chronicles.

Just thinking about the options has given me a renewed enthusiasm that’s sure to make the commute from Germany to New York a bit more palatable. Stay tuned.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.

Cockpit Chronicles: So what’s it like when your brother is also your captain?

by Kent Wien on

The temperature was fifteen degrees in Anchorage and it was getting dark. But we didn’t care, we just wanted to fly.

My older brother Kurt and I were inside rushing through the final steps to build our styrofoam rubber-band powered Citabrias. Once finished, we still had to wait until the Elmer’s glue was dry. If the white stuff wasn’t set, the fuselage seams would split in half and we wouldn’t be able to fly until the next day.

While flying the airplanes under a lamp that lit up the frozen lake behind the house, Kurt’s model managed to fly well above my head. I began to wonder what it would be like to ride with my brother in an actual Citabria, a two-seat airplane that he would later fly on his first solo when he turned sixteen. He was so lucky, I thought.

But I’d get my chance, I knew it. In fact, I was sure that Kurt and I would fly a Boeing together someday, for the airline my dad flew for, and where my sister had just become a flight attendant.

And why shouldn’t I think that? My grandpa flew with his brothers from the ’20s to the ’50s, and my dad flew with his brother at that same airline.

I’d have bet everything on it. I imagined Kurt and I would fly a 737 from Anchorage to Seattle someday, and Kim would be the flight attendant. It was going to happen.

Like most older brothers, Kurt never passed up an opportunity to teach me something, and occasionally the ‘lessons’ weren’t even related to flying.

On the lake between flights, he stopped me mid-sentence after I apparently took something for granted. It was long enough ago that I don’t remember exactly what I had said.

“So, would you say you assumed that?” He asked, referring to whatever I said at the time.

“Uh, yeah, I guess so.” I responded.

He then proceeded to give me the lesson about assuming. You know, the one in which the act of assuming will often make an ass out of you, and me. He drew ASS/U/ME in the snow with a stick. These are the kind of lessons older brothers specialize in.

The ‘other’ far more helpful thing he taught me was how to fly an airplane. It was my brother who soloed me, well before my sixteenth birthday and without anyone else knowing, just a few hundred feet from where we flew those foam airplanes.Kurt managed to buy an EagleXL ultralight when he was just eighteen years old. He became an instructor, which is a bit of a challenge, considering the airplane only had one seat. But the first step in the lessons were pretty simple; taxi up and down the frozen lake on skis.

It was a rather rough ride, bouncing across the tracks created by snow machines that ran seemingly in every direction on the lake.

By this time, I figured I was a seasoned flyer, since the year prior, Kurt pulled me (and a few other neighbor kids) up in his hang glider behind a snow mobile. And I had flown with my dad in the Citabria on skis, performing a dozen or so touch-and-gos. And of course I flew model airplanes.

So I wasn’t so sure I needed to spend so much time taxiing around the lake on the frozen ice. It felt like I was going to lose a filling in my teeth.

But I discovered if I went just a little bit faster…

It was heaven! I was airborne. Just five feet off the ground, flying down the mile and a half long lake. Toward the end, I pulled the throttle back with my left hand and settled back down on the skis. I taxied to turn around and then flew back to the other end of the lake. It was a feeling I’ve never been able to re-create, although I’ve tried, much like a druggie who tries to relive their first hit. I kept going back and forth while my brother was warming up inside.

The introduction of ultralights, which didn’t have an age limit, allowed me to take to the air and satisfy a longing that I had been trying to fulfill for years with balsa and foam airplanes and subsequently, R/C models.

From then on, Kurt was my aviation mentor. I ‘soloed’ the ultralight in front of my dad a few weeks later, without my father knowing at the time that this wasn’t officially my first flight.

Of course my dad played big part in my early flying lessons. He let me operate whatever he had access to, which gave me flight time in a variety of airplanes. But Kurt helped me to reach my goal to fly as a professional pilot, since he had more recently navigated the hurdles to earn his private, commercial and multi-engine ratings that were needed to land a job with a commuter in Alaska. He motivated me, gave me guidance and even loaned me the money needed to pay for my flight training after he started working for a major airline.

“Have you taken your private written [exam] yet?” He’d ask every time I’d talk to him on the phone while I was at Washington State, a university that didn’t have a flying program. His help kept me on track just as if I were attending a flying college such as Embry-Riddle.

Finally, in 1993 it happened. I was hired at the same major airline where my brother was now a captain. He told me it was like a race-car owner that had invested so much time and money into a team and had just won the Indy 500.


Kurt pinned my wings on in New York after new-hire training

My timing wasn’t so good though, since I would be the last pilot hired at the company for the next five years, and a few months after I was on the line they laid off six hundred pilots. I was, naturally, the first to go.

On the second to last trip before my three-year furlough, the New York flight office arranged for me, a New York 727 flight engineer, to fly a trip with my brother who was a 727 captain based in Chicago.

Naturally, Kurt didn’t stop with the lessons.

While I was hanging my coat up, he pointed out that the captain’s jacket goes on the far left.

Duly noted, I thought.


Flying together in the 727. Captain Kurt and Flight Engineer Kent.
Over the next three years, as my wife and I moved around the country while I was chasing flying jobs, I looked forward to getting recalled and hopefully flying with my brother again.

The industry picked up again and I was back to work in 1996. In 1998, I bid Boston and two years later, Kurt came to the base as well. The pieces were aligning for another chance.

Finally, in 2001 we flew together on the 737 for two months in a row, mostly flying between Boston and Seattle. And last year we worked together on a 757 from Boston to Miami before we deadheaded (rode in the back) home.

And eight years later, we managed to fly a single Boston to Miami flight together in the 757. Since it was just one leg, we had to flip to see who would fly the leg. But that hardly qualified as ‘flying together’ I thought.

It’s a challenge for us to get on the same schedule as I’m in the international division and he’s domestic. I told him that we needed to figure out a way for me to get on one of his trips one last time since I’d be leaving to fly out of New York in May.

After some trip-trading gymnastics, I was able to drop two one-day San Juan ‘turns’ in order to pick up the three-day LAX and NY trip from a domestic co-pilot who was scheduled to fly with my brother for the month.

For a domestic flight, it looked sweet. One leg to Los Angeles with a short overnight there, followed by one leg to JFK with a long 24-hour layover in Manhattan. The last day day had us going to Miami and then Boston.

On the day of our trip, the phone rang as I was in the shower.

“I’m just driving by your house, and I thought I’d grab a sandwich at the country store. I can pick you up if you want a ride to the airport.” Kurt’s message said.

Kurt likes to get to operations early to take a close look at the weather and to have time to co-ordinate a revised routing with the dispatcher if warranted. Every pilot has their pet issue, and for Kurt, it’s finding the smoothest ride.

I grabbed a sandwich from the store and drove myself to work. In operations, Kurt was asking about the ride and the winds along our route of flight. Today’s routing had the potential for some turbulence, so he and the dispatcher added fuel in case we changed the route while airborne to avoid the bumps.

At the gate, I came in from the walk-around inspection while Kurt was setting up his side of the cockpit.

“Which leg do you want? The first one? Second one? All of them, or none of them?” Of course, he was kidding with the last two options. I wouldn’t fly every leg, nor would I give up all of mine, especially since there were four legs to be flown on this three-day trip. For me, and many pilots, flying the airplane is like the sugary part added to a frosted mini-wheat. It’s what you look forward to when coming to work.

I deferred to Kurt, so he gave me the first leg, which today was in a 757. We’re qualified to fly both the Boeing 757 and 767, and in fact the next day we’d take a 767-200 to New York. I knew he enjoyed that airplane, and this was probably his motivation to give me the first leg in the 757.

As is usually the case, the cockpit was silent during the taxi out and climb through 10,000 feet during the FAA mandated sterile cockpit period. The only comments were related to checklist challenge and responses, airspeed call-outs and ATC communications. Takeoffs and landings are the busiest time of flight and you don’t want to miss an important radio call or become distracted while taxiing.

Up to this point, flying with a family member isn’t much different from flying with any other pilot. The words said are essentially identical. It’s at cruise where you notice a difference.

Conversation is a big part of flying, and it helps you to stay alert. It’s what we do after leveling off and the PA has been made to the passengers about the route of flight, weather and flight time. We talk.

But when flying with a sibling, you’re often caught up on the latest events by the time you hop in the airplane. I see him all the time. We talk every few days. So the conversation can sometimes get slow.

“You call mom lately?” I said at one point.

The monotony was broken up when we one of our flight attendants, Chris, visited the cockpit. After 43 years, she was retiring and she had a clever way to mark the occasion. She wore a sign around her neck that counted down the days until her last flight.


Chris retires after 43 years

We got busy as we approached the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Dispatch sent a text message to us via ACARS describing an area of light to moderate turbulence associated with some thunderstorms that were at our altitude and lower.

Kurt dialed a frequency and began talking with the dispatcher.

“What if we went Chicago and then Hector? You think that would keep us out of this stuff?” He said while I listened to the other radio for any calls from ATC.

After sorting out the best route with dispatch, Kurt called the center controller.

“We’d like to put in a request for a turn to Chicago and then direct to HEC.”

All waypoints are identified by three or five-letters; HEC (short for the Hector VOR) marked the beginning of our arrival into LAX. Amazingly, the controller came back immediately and said our query was “approved as requested.”

So far, we hadn’t experienced a single bump. But Kurt was going to see to it that Chris, and everyone else on board, would be getting the smoothest possible ride.

I was surprised when we crossed the Rocky Mountains, an area that’s notorious for at least some light chop, without having to turn the seatbelt sign on.

Our route, courtesy of FlightAware.com

In the end it cost us some extra time and fuel.

The strong jet-stream that we had been bucking on the first part of the flight was scheduled to move off to our left after crossing Lake Michigan. Instead, by turning left toward Chicago we continued to have the 115 knot headwinds for the entire flight. It meant that we’d be arriving 45 minutes later than planned, for a total flight time that was nearly 7 hours, a record for both of us.

Kurt and the dispatcher made the right decision to sacrifice a few minutes and some extra fuel for a smooth ride.


It’s not always serious. Kurt and Kent enjoying a laugh.

On the ground in LA, the passengers didn’t seem to mind, and while deplaning, a few of them said, “Nice flight, brothers!”

Apparently one of the other flight attendants mentioned that we were related in her PA. But the biggest reactions came from our co-workers and the hotel staff when we checked in.

“Wait a minute. Are you guys related?” They asked. After explaining that we were brothers, they questioned whether we got along ok–I suppose sibling rivalry could be a bad thing in a cockpit–and then admitted that they hadn’t realized it was possible or even allowed for two brothers to fly together.

Continue to part II…

Cockpit Chronicles: Is it time for pilots to ditch the hat?

by Kent Wien on

Call it civil disobedience. Or, for some, it’s a way to express displeasure at management. Maybe the hat just doesn’t work well with their haircut. Whatever the reason, pilots have been ditching their hats lately at airlines across the country.

Some companies have heard enough complaints that they’ve changed their policy, making the hat optional for their pilots.

In fact, effective March 15th, that’s the case at American Airlines. It’s the most significant change to an AA pilot uniform since the Roosevelt era. Which isn’t saying much, since the uniform hasn’t really changed at all since then.

No surveys were taken, although getting rid of hats would surely have been a popular move among most pilots. Doing away with hats started years ago with flight attendants before gaining momentum among pilots.

American Eagle went to the optional hat years ago.
There’s been a movement to bring back hats for men regardless of their profession. But it doesn’t seem to be gaining any traction as far as I can tell.

Internal employee message boards have debated the policy at length. Some pilots say the hats are keeping with a more professional appearance, while others cite examples of being mistaken for a skycap while waiting for a hotel van at the airport.

The hat has proven to be useful during an evacuation, as passengers can recognize who the pilots are as they’re assembling outside the plane. But it doesn’t really serve any other function. We certainly don’t wear them in the cockpit (something that is sure to get a laugh when pilots watch a flying movie where the aviators are all wearing their hats and jackets).

I actually have mixed feelings about the change. I’ve become rather used to wearing my ‘helmet’ over the years, and while it isn’t being done away with entirely-it’s the pilots option whether or not to wear it-I suspect I’ll go for the convenience of leaving it at home. Especially given the long commute ahead of me starting this summer.

Maybe I’ll bring it back for my retirement flight. Or should switch to an entirely different kind of pilot hat like this one.

I’m curious what you think. Are pilot hats a goofy throwback to a bygone era? Or do the hats add a touch of professionalism to the job?

%Poll-61949%

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.

Cockpit Chronicles: It’s official. I’m moving to Germany

by Kent Wien on

Apparently I’ve run out of things to complain about, aside from the occasional gripe about the glossiness of the paint on the office walls which was supposed to be flat. There is little in my life that I can truly complain about, especially in light of the current events unfolding after the earthquake in Japan this week.

Let’s live a little, shall we?

Both my wife and I have discussed changing things up a bit lately-doing something more radical than switching to LED light bulbs in the living room, for example.

I even agonized publicly about a few new flying options on my personal blog last month.

Fortunately for airline pilots, there’s an easy way to thoroughly turn your life upside down-at my company, all it takes is a simple keystroke on the computer: 3P/LGA/767/FO/I.

For those of you who aren’t fluent in SABRE codes, that means that I have officially transferred to NY. I’ll be flying the same airplane, thus saving myself six weeks of simulator and ground school training. Nevertheless, it’ll add some commuting time to my day.

I’ve been fortunate in my career to fly from an airport in Boston that’s just an easy hour drive from my home in New Hampshire. I heeded the advice of my brother, a former commuter from Seattle to Chicago.

“Commuting turns a good deal into an or-deal.” He’d say.

But my wife and I aren’t stopping there. Since New York is rather nearby to our home in New England, we decided to do something really extreme (for our family at least), and move to Germany.

For a year.
Paying back a debt

When I asked Linda to marry me, she was more than half way through a degree at Swansea University in Wales. She gave up her degree aspiration temporarily to join me in Alaska. And then Queens. Then Long Island. Followed by three places in Dallas. And on to Denver, then New Jersey before finally landing in New Hampshire which we’ve enjoyed for the past twelve years.

But now it’s payback time. Linda has been attending a nearby university part time, but she wants to study full-time to get her German and English teaching degree sooner.

Studying in Germany, where her mom could watch the kids while I was away at work and she was attending classes, seemed like a surprisingly logical idea when she mentioned it. Not only that, the kids, ages 9 and 5, could really hone their German language skills (i.e. be able to say more than “guten tag.”)

As a pilot, it’s possible to live pretty much anywhere in the world. We have crew members based in New York who live in Anchorage, and a few who live in Europe and fly out of the northeastern United States.

“I can do anything for a year.” I told Linda. And deep down, I know I owe her. She never complained about our moves while I was chasing flying jobs for cargo and passenger operators around the country.

How about the rest of the family?

The kids are surprisingly excited about the temporary relocation. Every night at dinner we’ve been practicing our German vocabulary and they’re able to retain what they’ve learned far better than I can.

To be honest, my German language skills are limited to about ten words. But this experience can only help me get serious about learning more, I’m sure.

So the plan is to rent our furnished house for a year, pack up the pets and just a few ‘comfort’ items and move to the village where Linda herself grew up, near Cologne.

The 3,700 mile commute

My plan is to back up my trips, so that I’ll fly two, three or four three-day Europe flights in a row, with 26-hour breaks after each Atlantic crossing. Instead of a crashpad or hotel near the airport, I’ll be staying with a friend in Manhattan, where I can keep some clothes and do laundry.

If I align my schedule right, I may be able to fly nine or twelve days in a row, followed by nine or twelve days off. This will limit the time spent in the back of an airplane and train riding to and from Brussels or Frankfurt and New York.

It sounds tiring, but commuting responsibly, with 26 hours off before starting my trips should make it easier.

The logistics

Of course there are so many questions about being an ‘expatriate.’ Do I have to pay taxes in the U.S. and Germany? Will my health insurance cover the family overseas? Will the pets have to be quarantined? How do we even transport two cats to Europe? What kind of car should we buy? (Linda has vetoed my choice of a used Alfa Romeo, unfortunately).

As I searched online, one website, How To Germany continued to pop up that answered almost all of my questions.

We’re still looking into those questions, and Linda is currently in Germany signing up the kids for school. I still expect someone to throw a wrench into the whole process at any point.

“You can’t do that. It is verboten!” I imagine someone saying as we apply for a residency permit. But so far, we haven’t run into any roadblocks.

Alas, the perfect writing cubicle

So you should see more posts now that I’ll be spending more time in the back of an airplane, a place where I’m the most productive when writing, since there’s no internet available and few distractions.

And I suspect I’ll have some things to talk about, especially since the two European destinations I’ve been flying to from Boston, London and Paris, will expand to so many more out of New York such as Rome, Barcelona, Budapest, Milan, Madrid, Manchester, Brussels, Zurich and even Rio.

Since today’s Gadling theme is focused around Europe, I’m looking forward to reading about the other parts of the continent I’ll need to visit according to the rest of the Gadling team. In exchange, I’ll be sure to let them know where they can score some LED light bulbs.

All photos by the author.

Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston. Have any questions for Kent? Check out the Cockpit Chronicles Facebook page or follow Kent on Twitter @veryjr.