Launching the #OnReserve Team via Slack →

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Slack syncs seamlessly across devices, features a powerful internal search engine, and is highly compatible with dozens of other programs that keep businesses running. But Slack’s truly innovative offering goes unlisted: It is a cool office culture, available for instant download.

I spent the last few days setting up onreserve.info and onreserve.slack.com. With the help of an awesome guy named henry from another slack team, I was able to find out that you can register domain names for free, have it hosted via a github page, and use an entire library of awesome images via unsplash.com.

I've been blazing away at lightening speeds setting it up and getting it going. Now, with many various channels ready to go up and running, I want to invite all various Pilots and Flight Attendants to come and join up in an online Live Chat / Bulletin Board / Forum. The end goal really is to become a productive and cool culture where everyone can talk, meet up maybe and or even plan things. No negativity just plane talk... and whatever else.

If you have any more ideas to add, email me or like I already mentioned, join in by navigating to onreserve.info and following the sign-up process. I'll also have a write up shortly on how I did the nitty gritty with more details. Thanks again!

Do You Actually Fly the Plane? →

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And a copilot becomes a captain not by virtue of skill or experience, but rather when his or her seniority standing allows it. And not every copilot wants to become a captain right away. Airline seniority bidding is a complicated thing, and a pilot can often have a more comfortable quality of life — salary, aircraft assignment, schedule and choice of destinations — as a senior copilot than as a junior captain. Thus, at a given airline, there are plenty of copilots who are older and more experienced than many captains.

One of the best paragraphs that sums up who the "co-pilot" of an airliner really is or can be. I had no choice whatsoever in my progression. It took me seven years to the day to where I was able to hold a Captain seat at my previous airline and now that I've moved on, I'm back to being a First Officer / Co-Pilot / Co-Captain / Right Seat by virtue of my hire date. It will take pilots above me leaving or retiring and / or the airline expanding with more aircraft and routes before I can hold the title of Captain again. Even at that point, it'll also depends on where I am in my life in terms of having to be away more since I'll be on reserve. More on that later.

Back to the topic, I've known Captains downgrade to First Officer due to a lifestyle change where they wanted more time at home. Some are able to afford to take the 35% pay cut but in all circumstances, their skills did NOT degrade just by switching seats or epaulets. The media needs to get this right and do a better story overall on a pilot's life. I'm starting to get rather annoying. Just my Tuesday rant.

Make sure to read the entire post via Patrick Smith's AskThePilot

Major Airlines Creating Their Own Pilot Shortages

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This is one of the most comprehensive views on the current state of the airlines in the United States. Read the article in its entirety. I'm living it along with some of my best friends and it's getting rather ugly.

The nation's big airlines want you to know that there's a dreadful pilot shortage and they apologize profusely if their commuter-carrier partners cancel flights to your hometown airport due to the debilitating shortfall.

The nation's big airlines don't want you to know that their commuter carriers, which operate half of all the nation's commercial flights, often pay pilots so little that it's often financially wiser to drive a truck or flip fast-food burgers than fly a plane.

A first-year co-pilot at a commuter airline may earn as little as $19 per flying hour. After five years with a commuter airline, the average salary is just $40 an hour. For the lowest-paid pilots at a carrier such as Mesa Air Group, which operates flights for both United and US Airways, a 60-hour work week means an effective pay rate of just $8.50 an hour. That's barely above the national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour and below the more than 10 bucks President Barack Obama is making federal contractors pay their workers.

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At American Airlines, senior management that came from US Airways to run AA netted $79 million in stock sales during the last month. At the same time, however, American pressed for another concessionary contract at American Eagle, its wholly owned commuter airline.