Regional Pilot - Flying The Line

Original: April 2006 Updated: October 2024

Flying the line! Got to spend 1.5 hours on the taxiways in JFK around 6:00PM as every wide-body aircraft painted in the most colorful schemes possible all left at the same time to cross the Atlantic.

Spent 13 hours in Columbia, SC waiting for a plane to be fixed (wasn't released to the hotel, because it'll be fixed soon) and then a repo. flight to Des Moines (don't ask me). That was after rejecting the takeoff at 7:30AM because the stand-by airspeed wouldn't come alive.

What else - finally learning what works in landing the stupid planes - I can't land them, but I can tell much sooner if it's going to be a cruncher. Went to Chicago Midway, first time in a CRJ700 in 2 months, my leg. Floated a bit on the landing :-). Captain says "yeh, that was the runway SouthWest slid off the end - in fact they slid off JUST after the point you stopped" - what a card - anyway, I made the second to last turnoff, there had to be a couple of hundred feet of pavement left - I don't know what he was so worried about.