ONE WEEK IN THE LIFE OF AN AIRLINE PILOT

My name is Paul. I fly airplanes for a living, but my passion is encouraging you to explore this beautiful world by giving you a glimpse into my layover life. If you follow me on Instagram or TikTok, you might know that I upgraded to captain at the end of last year, which has been a great new job. It's the same cities and the same airplane that I've been flying, but it has come with a new set of responsibilities, which has been really fun. However, it has come with a hit in seniority. Instead of being a really senior first officer and getting all the trips and days off that I want, I'm now a junior captain, which means I'm on reserve. We have three types of reserve. Long call reserve, field standby, and short call reserve. Long call is a 12-hour call-out, which means that I have to be able to get to Newark airport, which is where I'm based, within 12 hours. Most of the time, that means I can sit at home in Minneapolis. Field standby means you're sitting at the airport, so I have to fly in from Minneapolis to Newark and sit at the airport. The third type of reserve we have is called short call, and that's what I'm on today. I'm on day one of six days of reserve. I start a short call at 10 p.m. tonight, and that goes until noon tomorrow. And if they call me, I have two and a half hours to get to the airport. So I can't sit in Minneapolis. I have to be in basically Newark. I could be anywhere within two and a half hours. I'm choosing to be at an airport hotel here in Newark. And at 10 p.m. tonight, they can call me, and I'll have two and a half hours to get to the airport. Will they call? Where am I going to go? That's all up to them. It's kind of like a choose-your-own-adventure book, except crew scheduling is the one making the decision. My invitation for you is to join me for six days as a reserve airline pilot, and I'm hoping we can squeeze in an adventure somewhere. Might be in Europe. Could be in Hawaii. Could be in Los Angeles. But I'm hoping we'll get to do something fun, and you'll get to see what life as a reserve airline pilot looks like. Before 10 o'clock rolls around, I need to get my uniform ironed and grab some food. Then the waiting game begins. Hi, can I have this in order to pick up, please? Yeah, some barbecue wings and a side house salad and a sparkling water. Thank you. Bye. GoPros are notoriously fast, but they are making strides. You've seen this battery. This is the white GoPro battery. This was designed specifically to give Well, it is officially 10 o'clock, and I am on short call. My iPad is charged. My manuals are up to date, and all I gotta do now is wait for them to call. Until then, I'm gonna get some rest. Good night. Well, good morning. No calls last night, which means they're probably not going to use me today, because since I've been on duty since 10 o'clock last night, there's not really a lot that they could do with me. I could maybe go to Florida or Denver or Chicago maybe, but it's not really likely. So the plan now is that I can pick up a trip for tomorrow. It's this automatic thing that goes through the computer. Right now there's three trips in open time tomorrow. A three-day London, a three-day Porto, and a four-day Athens just went into open time. So I'm gonna wait till 11 o'clock let the computer do its thing, and hopefully I'll get a good trip. I just got a text that I picked up a trip to London. All right. Well, that's not bad. So now I go to London tomorrow at 8 in the morning and have a, how long is the layover? 33 hours. That's pretty good. Then I get back to Newark at around noon on whatever, three days from now, which today is my second day of reserve. It's probably my third day, so that'll bring me into day five. And since you have to have 24 hours off after an international trip, that basically kind of gives me the sixth day, sixth day off, because they can't really use me after that. So sweet. All right, back to this workout. After my workout, I got caught up in some computer-based training I had to get done, and later in the day, watch some of my favorite YouTubers before calling it a night. The flight to London started like most trips. I met the crew in the flight planning area where we talked about the flight plan and the weather. We also called our dispatcher for a briefing. After we headed to the plan, I briefed the flight attendants. The relief pilot did the pre-flight walk around while the first officer and I got the cockpit ready to go. Then we all briefed the departure, which includes our plan for a rejected takeoff, an engine failure, and even windshear. After the gate agent brought us our final paperwork, we got a pushback clearance, and we're off to London. United 934 heavy, wind 100 at 4, runway 22 right at whiskey, cleared for takeoff. Just like that, we have arrived in London, and I tell you what, I've done this early morning departure to London a few times where you take off from Newark at 9 in the morning, you arrive in London at 9 at night, and it's so nice to arrive here and just feel normal. You haven't been on a red eye all night, and you can get a good night's rest, and then go have a full day tomorrow. That's what we have, a full day tomorrow, and then we leave early the next day. I've got a tour booked tomorrow, which I'm pretty excited about. Until then, we're going to go grab some food and some drinks, and you're going to want to stick around for tomorrow. I'll see you then. After sleeping in this morning, I've taken the tube over to North Greenwich, and I'm currently standing in front of the O2 Arena. It was originally built in the year 2000, and it used to be called the Millennium Dome. It was an ode to time. Built 356 meters across, there's 12 masts at the top of it, and it's 52 meters high. The 52 meters high part is where today's adventure comes in. I'm going to be hiking to the roof of the arena. It's called the Up at the O2 Experience. It should be pretty cool. As a little trivia knowledge, this is built right on zero degrees longitude, which is where Zulu time, or Greenwich Mean Time, comes in. If you're a pilot, you know what that means. This is where it starts. It's pretty neat. So just a couple minutes from now, I'm going to be strapping on a harness, and we're headed up to the roof. We have arrived at the top. It's quite a quick trip, probably 10 to 15 minutes maybe, and you get up here. It's a 360 degree view of the whole city. It's absolutely incredible. What a great way to see London. Thanks to the staff at Up at the O2. They did a great job, and super helpful helping me film a little bit. I'm going to go grab some dinner real quick, and then we have a super early wake-up call. There's something I want to show you on the Welcome to the pilot crew rest area on the Boeing 767. Unlike the 777 and 787, which have a bunk room with beds, we have a lie-flat seat that's cordoned off from the rest of the cabin. The breaks on a long flight are split evenly between the pilots. This flight from London to Newark, for example, was seven hours long. Since all three pilots are in the cockpit for the takeoff, climb, descent, and landing, that left about six hours of break time, so each pilot had a two-hour break. After watching my favorite show and a quick nap, it was time to head back up to the cockpit for landing. After our arrival in Newark, I said goodbye to the passengers, gave a quick cockpit tour to one of our future pilots named Lily, and then went over to the next available Minneapolis flight. The next flight home was a Delta flight, which was full, so I waited around to see if any seats opened up, but ultimately I did not make it, which surprisingly doesn't happen very often. There was another United pilot ahead of me, another Minneapolis commuter named Karen, and she got there before me, and that's kind of how it works. You get there first, and then you get to go. So with it being spring break, it's not that uncommon to miss a flight, but you know, it's just part of the deal. So I have about an hour before the next flight, which is the United flight leaves, and there's like three seats open on that, and I'm number one on the wait list. So that should work out, I should get a seat, and be home in time for dinner. It is just after 10 o'clock in the morning, which means I'm officially no longer on call, although since I came in from London yesterday, and you need 24 hours off after an international trip, there's nothing they could have done with me anyway today. So last night I got to have dinner with my family, this morning I drove my kids to school, had coffee with a friend, and I'm just about to pull into the gym here. So now I've got six days off, if you count today, and then I start another six days of being on call next week. Where am I going to go? That's up to crew scheduling, but hit the subscribe button, and you can join me on my next flyover. I'll see you then.