I may have mentioned in posts past of my love for this concept whereby the harder you work, the more money you make. It's great! The more I fly (something I love), the more money I make (something I also love). For the most part, I've been given the freedom to fly as much or as little as I would like. In my case, the former is always the preferred choice. It is a veritable buffet of flying.
And then November happened. My mom came and visited at the end of October which slowed my flying down quite a bit but it wouldn't have mattered anyways. Hurricane Sandy was trotting up the coast with her course set for New York. While she didn't hit here, her massive wake sure did. Operations shut down for the better part of a week as winds stayed steady at almost 30 knots and would routinely gust about 45 knots. While it isn't impossible to fly in that kind of weather, it has limited training value. It was almost convenient that my mom came to town when she did. No one at Epic was flying...which also means no one was making money and I got to spend some quality time with my mom.
As I dropped my mom off at the airport in Orlando, I mentally prepared myself for my all-you-can-fly meal that I was about to partake in. I had set it up so that I would fly non-stop for the next two or three days to make up for the bad weather and fly I did. Then November 1st happened.
At a minimum, airplanes are required to go through an "Annual Inspection" every 12 months. Think of it as your 3000 mile oil change except instead of just changing the oil, they replace the tires, check the engine to make sure it runs right, inspect all the moving parts that make your car move and more. It is essentially to make sure the airplane is working and won't start falling apart on you a mile above the earth. Unlike a car, if your airplane breaks down, you can't just pull over and call a tow truck. So, one of our three twins went down on November 1st and into its annual inspection. Well, at least it was supposed to.
On Friday, November 2nd, my life came to a screeching halt. Early in the morning, the other two remaining twins "timed-out." Every 50 hours an airplane flies here, it is taken into maintenance and inspected and given an oil change at the very least. It's pretty much a "does anything look super broken here? No? Moving on." While it's not that simple, I don't really feel like boring you with all the details. Every 100 hours it flies (so, every other 50 hour inspection for those doing the math), it comes down for a more thorough inspection. If this happens during the week and an entire day devoted to by a mechanic to inspect it, it'll take take an entire day to do. So, it's a pretty taxing inspection.
Both of the twins went down into a 100 hour inspection with the third in annual. Since the annual is the most time consuming, it is a lower priority. The priority is to get the money-makers back on the line as soon as possible. Unfortunately, this happened on a Friday. Slowly but surely over the next three days, our single-engine airplanes started timing out and the skeleton crew maintenance department became inundated. By the end of the next week, our fleet of 16 airplanes would be whittled down to just 4. With 40 instructors, four planes wouldn't be enough to make a living.
This is when my world became that of Mad Max. Resources were scarce and instructors frustrated. Within a week, the singles and one or two of the twins were back up but tensions still ran high. Some instructors, desperate to get theirs, woke up before midnight to schedule at the earliest possible time. Upon closer inspection, 3 flights were all scheduled at 00:00 am by one instructor. Another followed his lead at scheduled at 00:01 am. It's almost like they were sitting in the same room.
Luckily for me, I signed that contract back in the summer to allow me to be get time in the other twin. Being one of 3 of three instructors allowed to teach in it saved me. I didn't need to resort to desperate tactics to get paid. I found out there was a student who wanted to fly it and because the airplane was available (it is a significantly more expensive airplane to fly so most students avoid it) and coincidentally so was I, he was given to me.
Slowly but surely, maintenance was catching up but another problem showed up in the middle of last week. A cold front turned stationary front parked itself over central Florida bringing the worst possible weather for flying. For three days straight, stubborn fog blanketed the area and lounged until shortly before noon. With the abundant moisture and relatively cool air, super low clouds often kept the airport under instrument flight rules most if not the entirety of the day. Flying an airplane without GPS equipment at an airport only equipped with GPS approaches really hampers what you can do...not to mention the limited training value of "VFR-on-top" operations and the added stress due to the proximity to sensitive airspace (Orlando to the west and Cape Canaveral to the south).
So you wait...and wait. Every hour you hope for improvement but none comes. For the majority of the last week, I would spend 10-12 hours at work making as little as 2 hours of billable pay. One particularly frustrating day, I had to cancel 3 flights in a row and even though I could have possibly flown the 4th scheduled for 7 pm, I gave up in disgust. I had been at work since 7 am and only billed 4 hours. My friend and I capped off the night with a beer and enjoyed getting summarily dismissed by the only two semi-attractive girls in the bar. It was a good day.
Now, it is impossible to point fingers. It would be easy to blame maintenance but they aren't at fault. They are doing the best they can. You could blame the owner, the economy, the guy who had to come inspect the props but didn't, the DC-7, God, my boss and even me but it does no good. Instead, I binge on days planes are available and take a few extra days off.
It is getting old though. Now more than ever I yearn to move on.
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