June was a fairly quiet month. Very few overnights and a LOT of airport standby. Unfortunately, due to current overstaffing of FO’s at DFW, I’m still near the bottom of the reserve list, which has its positives and negatives. On the bright side, I get called first most of the time since they call in reverse seniority order (and I would much rather be flying!). The negative is that I don’t get at home reserve (RAP), it’s always airport standby. So there have been some pretty long 8 hour days wandering the terminals. I’d love to be flying more, but I know that will come with patience! Luckily I live in base, so it’s just a short drive each day and I’m back home almost every night.
In June I passed 100 hours of flight time at Envoy, so I’m consolidated and I’m no longer a restricted FO. I even managed to pick up some overtime during a stretch of days 4 off. Here’s how my month looked:
Monthly Flight time: 35.2
Credited time: 80.1 (75 min guarantee + 5 hours OT)
Nights away from base: 6
Days off: 10
31 - DFW-CLL (Deadhead) CLL-DFW-GNV
1 - GNV-MIA-TLH
2 - TLH-DFW-SGF
3 - SGF-DFW
4 - OFF
5 - OFF
6 - DFW-HSV-DFW (APT STBY)
7 - DFW-LIT-DFW (Picked this up from open time)
8 - DFW-HRL (APT STBY)
9 - HRL-DFW
10 - OFF
11 - OFF
12 - OFF
13 - OFF
14 - APT STBY
15 - DFW-SHV-DFW (RAP RSV)
16 - APT STBY
17 - RSV
18 - OFF
19 - OFF
20 - APT STBY
21 - DFW-XNA (APT STBY)
22 - XNA-DFW-RAP-DFW
23 - DFW-MEM-DFW (Deadhead back) (APT STBY)
24 - OFF
25 - DFW-MAF (OT)
26 - MAF-DFW-TUL-DFW (OT)
27 - OFF
28 - APT STBY
29 - DFW-GNV (APT STBY)
30 - GNV-MIA-DFW (Deadhead back)
I’m still unbelievably grateful and thankful that I get to call this my job! Next month looks like more of the same, but there should be plenty of flying during this busy summer. Here’s a nice picture I got at my airport standby ‘office’ near B1 at DFW!
Congrats on consolidating, that’s huge! Those are some fun destinations that you have gone to this time around, I was to SHV in a little ATP Archer back in 2021 during crew, good memories. If I was in DFW all day, I’d just ride on the skybridge and plane spot
Thank you! I’ve been to some pretty cool airports so far, but I’m yet to go to an airport I’d flown into as a student or instructor. My long days in DFW do end up in plane spotting. Several times I’ve walked all 5 terminals in their entirety and I can tell you that it’s about 6 miles! It’s a pretty good way to kill some time and get some exercise. Pretty much every type of modern commercial aircraft comes through DFW during the day (A350, 747, 787, 777, A380, etc…), so I often just grab a window seat somewhere and watch!
I used to do the same thing at O’Hare. Has to be a few miles from end to end but hey it kept off a few pounds from all the free biscoff and stroop waffles! Haha
Last winter I had a four hour mechanical delay in ORD. My FO and I walked over to the American Airlines part of the terminal and found the exact gate that the McCallisters ran to in Home Alone. We looked a bit dorky with our iPhones out, comparing the movie to the real life, but it was fun.
