Life in the airlines: behind the scenes

[Cessna157]

Tonight I'm flying a bit of a different trip. It is what is called a "high speed", "standup", or "continuous duty". I'm not sure where the first 2 names come from, but the last pretty much defines how it works.

Flight crews must get a certain amount of rest in between duty periods, generally 9 hours but that can be as low as 8. So that means we can only work so many hours in a day before we "time out", meaning we're not allowed to work any longer, so either new pilots must fly the flight, or it is cancelled.

To manage this problem with some late flights, airlines work the system a little bit here. To prevent the crew from timing out and the flight cancelling, airlines created "continuous duty" trips. This allows the to run the last flight of the night, with no danger of the crew timing out, and the same crew brings the first flight back in the morning. I'll use my trip tonight as an example:

My flight leaves at 8:15pm, so I must be at the airport on duty at 7:15pm. We land at 9:05 pm, but then our flight back is at 6:00am. Not enough rest time, right (remember the 9 hour rule)? Nope, here's the trick: we're technically on duty the entire night. We will go to the hotel tonight and take a quick nap (we've got about 5 hours at the hotel), then fly the first flight out in the AM.

Sounds miserable, doesn't it? Sorta like working the night shift. And if your flight out leaves incredibly late, you may only have an hour or two at the hotel. But here's the trick: Although we will only fly 1 hour and 40 minutes on the entire round trip, the pay is for 4 hours. All CD trips pay a minimum of 4 hours, no matter how short it is.

A lot of pilots specifically bid these trips. You go to the same city every night, 3 or 4 nights a week, you're home every day, and you get paid a decent amount for it.

If anyone ever has any questions on anything with airlines, please feel free to ask. I hope to bring this mysterious world of the airline pilot out and make it public for everyone here.