THREE WAYS PILOTS FLY FREE // and how you can too!

In this video we're going to travel back in time in Madrid, Spain. I'm going to take you along the west coast of Portugal with my family and I'm going to tell you the three ways pilots fly for free and how you can fly for free too without being an airline pilot. This is going to be a fun one. You ready? Let's go. 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. The first way pilots fly for free is company paid travel. So this could be either a positive space trip or a deadhead. Today I have a positive space from Minneapolis to Newark and they usually give us positive space either for training or for company events or for bad weather or holiday weekends and it's honestly to make sure everyone can get to work who flies to work. Commuting to work and when I say commuting I mean flying to work is probably the most stressful part of the job. There's certain challenges the job has itself but flying to work is what stresses me out the most. So to have a positive space is super nice. Deadheading is a little bit different and that's part of your trip. So duty time and flight time that's all included in a deadhead. So for example you might fly in from somewhere in Europe to Washington D.C. and then you'd have a layover and then the next day you would deadhead from Washington D.C. back to Newark. So that's an example of what a deadhead is. Like they're required to get you back to your base at the end of a trip. So today I have a positive space to Newark and tonight at 5 p.m. I go on short call reserve which means I have a two-hour call out. There's some bad weather so I'm really hoping I get to go somewhere cool. Until then it's time to get to work. One of the main differences between a positive space ticket and a deadhead is that we always get paid for a deadhead. We don't however get paid for commuting. I have just arrived in Newark. I've got about six hours now until I go on call and then it's a two hour call out. Hopefully I go somewhere cool tonight. Until then it's just a waiting game. After a few hours of sitting around my reserve period started and within an hour I got called for a trip. I'm going to go change real quick and then I am off to Madrid, Spain. I cannot wait to get there. I haven't been there for several years actually and I need to figure out what to do but first I need to go get some food and some coffee and then I'll figure that out. If you're wondering where I'm at right now I'm in a secret little back room of the airport and it's set aside for pilots and we just call it our bag room but it's a spot where people can store coats and bags and anything they want to keep in Newark between flying home between trips. It's a nice spot to just drop stuff off. There's also a couple changing rooms here which is what I just used it Let's go to Madrid. One of the websites I use when I'm looking for something cool to do in a city is called Atlas Obscura and you can go into the website and type in the name of the city and it pulls up a full list of like kind of unusual things to do in that city and that's how I found our adventure today. It's a metro station that was built in the 20s closed in the 60s and then never touched again. Since then it's been reopened as a tourist attraction so the first officer and myself are gonna go check out this metro station and take a step back in time. When you descend into the Chambury metro station you're entering the year 1919. One of the eight stations that formed Madrid's first underground railway it was highly successful for over 40 years. However it became a of its own success and when they needed to expand the platforms to accommodate more passengers they couldn't expand the Chambury station because it was built on a curve. Modern day line one train still passed through the station but they don't stop. You might notice however that the trains run on the left instead of the right. That's because Spaniards drove on the left until 1924 which was five years after the station was built. While you can't board a train here you can travel to the which is a good substitute. Wow the weather has shifted. We came out of there and it's pouring down rain now. Three things about that tour. It was awesome. It was like a step back in time. You need to speak Spanish if you want to understand the tour guide and I don't know for sure if you need tickets or not. We stood in a big long line. They just let a bunch of people in. They didn't let us in and then we just kind of told them or showed them our tickets and then they let us down there and never scanned the tickets or anything. So I don't know if you need tickets or not. Whoa branch just fell down. So I don't know if you need tickets or not but it's probably worth having them just in case. Definitely worthwhile. After a quick drink with the first officer I went to the heart of Madrid Plaza Mayor where I met up with my friend Jasprit. Not far from the main square is Mercado San Miguel. A great place to meet for tapas, a glass of sangria and just around the corner is the world famous Chocolateria San Ginés where they serve one thing churros and chocolate. Man I love days like yesterday where everything just kind of comes together like the tour with the first officer was super fun and then I got to meet up with that guy Jasprit last night. He used to work for United and I saw on Instagram that he was here so we got to meet up and hang out a little bit. What I don't love is commute days home like this. I love going home but I don't love when all the flights are full which is kind of the case today. So it's off to the airport and then off to Newark and then hopefully home. After arriving back into Newark I ran over to the next flight home which ended up being completely full so I signed up to ride in the cockpit more commonly called jump seating. After most of the passengers had boarded I walked down the jetway and asked the While it's pretty much expected that you'll be allowed to jump seat it's still at the captain's discretion so I'm always very appreciative when they make me feel at home and treat me as part of the crew. Well as much as sitting in the cockpit is not super comfortable it does get me home. Time to go repack because tomorrow I'm going to show you my third and favorite kind of travel. This morning I'm back at the airport bright and early for the third and final type of free travel we call it non-rev travel or short for non-revenue. This morning my family and I are headed to Newark and then tonight we actually bought tickets to Lisbon Portugal. So there's like 10 open seats on the flight and I think we're numbers two through five on the non-rev list. Non-revving is something we can do on any airline it's free on United there's a small fee on other airlines the only caveat is there has to be an open seat so fingers crossed we get on the flight this morning. We've started boarding already just got the text we're assigned seats we have 1F 23CND and 10B so you can be in first class Amelia can sit by herself and Anders and I will be next to each other in the back. That's good at least we made it up. All right something just changed we now have one E and one F so two first class seats. How about mommy and I sit up there? You want to be in first class? Are you sure? You're hungrier? Okay you can be in first class. Anders you and I will sit in the back. We'll give first class to the ladies. We have arrived in Newark and we have 10 hours until our flight tonight which is one of the disadvantages of flying standby you don't always get the most beneficial flight times but we made it here that was the main goal. After hours of sitting around eating and making some new friends we finally boarded our flight to Lisbon. One of my favorite things to show someone in a city they've never been to is a view from the top and since we were fighting jet lag what better way to kill two birds with one stone than by taking a tour of the hilly Alfama neighborhood in a tuk-tuk. Another stop for epic views is the Santa Justa lift. This elevator has been shuttling people up and down the 45 meters to the top since 1902. And you can't visit Lisbon without having their famous pastry the pastel de nada. It's a flaky custard filled bite of goodness that turned into an everyday treat while we were there. More on that later. No visit to Portugal would be complete without seeing at least one castle. We chose to head to Sintra and visit the colorful Pena Palace. Straight out of a storybook Pena Palace is a place to explore and for all of my daughter's princess dreams to come true. From Sintra we headed to the seaside village of Cascais and while mom and dad had drinks on the beach we sent our kids to a playground in the middle of the water. Before heading north up the coast to Porto we made a couple of stops. The first was a medieval walled city called Obidos. We spent the afternoon strolling the streets walking along the exterior walls and of course stopping for Ginja, a famous Portuguese liqueur usually served in little chocolate cups. Our next stop was the world famous surf spot Nazaré known for being the home of the 100 foot waves. The waves are pretty gentle in the summer but it was still inspiring to stand in a place where legendary surfers like Garrett McNamara and Kelly Slater have put their lives on the line braving waves the size of 10-story buildings. From Nazaré it was time to head north to our final stop Porto. Also known as the city of bridges it's most famous being the Dom Luis bridge a UNESCO world heritage site built by Gustave Eiffel who you might know from his other famous structure in the nearby city of Paris. Located on the Douro river Porto was one of our favorite stops from wine tastings to climbing bell towers to casual afternoons in the park it checked all our boxes. The highlight of the trip to Porto came when we found a cooking class on Airbnb and learned to make the famous pastel de nata. We sat down with our host Julia who walked us through her family recipe. We quickly learned why natas taste so good and I'm pretty sure it's the heaps of butter and sugar and while making these delicious morsels was fun meeting new friends from all over the world and sharing a table with them is what makes travel so special. With just one day left we headed outside the city where we found a salt water pool on the edge of the ocean. We spent the afternoon relaxing and preparing ourselves for the journey home. It wasn't going to be easy to say goodbye to this beautiful city but little did we know getting home would also prove to be a challenge. Yesterday we came out to the Porto airport to try get a flight from Porto back to Newark. Unfortunately the flight was full so we ended up staying in Porto and our plan has kind of been all over the place. We were going to take a train from Porto to Lisbon today and then take the flight from Lisbon to Newark tomorrow but that flight filled up so we decided just to come out to the airport in Porto and hopefully we get on this flight home today. There's zero open seats right now. We're the first four non-ribs on the list so ideally maybe three seats will open up and I can sit in the cockpit. If we don't get on this I don't really know what we're going to do. Probably buy tickets home tomorrow which would be a huge bummer and really expensive but if you think about the 20 years I've been flying for free I guess it's a small price to pay if you average it out. So fingers crossed we get on this flight. I just got an update from my friend Miguel who's one of the gate agents here. He said there was two people that had some documentation issue so there's potentially two open seats so one more and I can take the jump seat and we're out of here. The seat map shows three in the back. That's all we need. Three in the cockpit. My heart's like beating. After a few stress-ridden minutes we got seats. You ready? Let's go. Pack up. We got seats and the three of us are together. Awesome. Daddy will be in the cockpit. You'll be in the back. As you can tell all of us are super excited to be out of here and I'm super excited that I don't have to pay three thousand dollars to fly us home tomorrow. If you're curious what it costs when we depart out of a foreign country there's departure taxes. So I paid the jump seat tax which is like 25 euros and the taxes on our actual non-rev tickets were about 45 euros a piece. It's different in every country. The UK is the most expensive. It's usually about 200 dollars to depart out of there but everywhere else in Europe it's usually around 50 euros. So we're about to board and I'm ready to get home. When we got back to Newark I stopped filming because honestly I was really really tired. But ironically we ended up in the exact same scenario as we did on the flight from Porto to Newark. The flight from Newark to Minneapolis again was completely full and somehow I ended up in the cockpit and my wife and kids got the last three seats in the back. Commuting and non-revving is not for the faint-hearted. It can be incredibly fatiguing and stressful and some people ask why I live in Minnesota and not in one of our bases. It's kind of the blessing and the curse of working for an airline. The blessing is you can live wherever you want and the curse is you can live wherever you want. So your options are very very great but it does add some stress to the job. So I choose to live in Minnesota because that's where I grew up that's where my family is and I like living there so that for me that's what works out best. If you are interested in flying standby there's a couple ways to go about it. One is you can get a job with the airline and full-time or part-time whether you're throwing bags on the ramp, a flight attendant, pilot, gate agent, working in RIT, working in the corporate office, all of that stuff. Everyone gets the same travel benefits that pilots do. You can't sit in the cockpit but you can fly standby just like my wife and kids do. The other option is to find someone who has travel benefits and get in good with them. My friend Adam is on our travel benefits. We're allowed to add one person per year meaning you can have one person on your travel benefits and they're on their your benefits for the entire year. So my friend Adam is on our travel benefits and he can go wherever he wants whenever he wants. He doesn't have to be with me he can go by himself but you know what he hasn't used that in a while so maybe it's time to kick him off and add somebody else. Actually I tell you what hit the subscribe button I'll pick one I'm just kidding I can't do that uh but if you want to join me on the next layover you could hit the subscribe button and I'll see you then. And that's where the Chambrie, Chambrie, that's where the Chambrie station came up when I searched and that's where I found out Where do I, where do I look? I don't know, wherever you want. Do I look ahead or at me? Whatever you want. Just don't look at yourself in the camera. Look at the camera lens if you want. But turn it down. What are you talking about? Ice cream. I told you turn it down. How's it buddy? Good. All right maybe hold it by the cone. There you go. Start looking over here. Okay let's just turn it off. It's distracting. Okay it's fine. I will be starting my own YouTube channel. You don't have to be so awkward just because the camera's on. We just stopped at this really cool McDonald's. Don't judge, we needed food for the kids and ice cream. There's a lady walking around with a hawk and I think she's employed by McDonald's or the city to scare away all the little birds. It's pretty cool. Do you work for McDonald's? Yeah. McDonald's hires you to scare the pigeons away? Yeah. That's amazing. Okay so what's been happening at every restaurant we've gone to over here? People have been patting my head. People have been patting your head. How many times does that happen? 10. Do you think it's going to happen again? Probably. Do you like it when people do that? No. No? What else has happened? I got a nose poke and like that. I think they think you're cute. I think that's true too. Hi it's me again. As you know if you watch my dad's videos they are awesome. If you like watching people like travel and YouTube videos then go to mylayoverlife.com or mylayoverlife on YouTube and his videos are awesome.