Originally Posted by
richardthethird
Yeah. If you like perpetual nights.
Originally Posted by
FlyingStone
Yep, nothing like flying 30-year old frames exclusively at night for less money than pax airlines. You do fly less hours, but every hour of flying at 2-6 am is killing you much faster than the ones flown during daylight.
Ah, those myths again!
deltahotel has quite successfully countered the argument about 'airframe age'. I would also like to add that one couldn't claim that a B747-8F would be a "30-year old frame" (not at all that I am on those!!) There are also B777F and B767F aircraft straight off the factory floor. Also, for those "30-year old frames" that are used, only the types tough enough to last that long are used (haven't seen any A320Fs?). But then, I am not a 'new aircraft snob' so none of that matters to me.
Then there's the 'perpetual night' bit. It's much nicer time to fly if you don't like slot delays, holding and speed controls. There are one or two places where you might queue behind one or two other aeroplanes at the RWY hold before departure but generally you start, taxi and go, without even having to wait for a 'secure cabin'. And none of those horrible 'earlies' with long duty periods (I haven't done an 'early' with more than a single sector of only 65 minutes flying for ages now).
And there's "... but every hour of flying at 2-6 am is killing you much faster than the ones flown during daylight." Well... I've just been for an eye check and my optometrist has said that my eyes are doing better than when I was flying with daylight glare (no significant change with my eyes over the past two years of night flying, the other side of the earth from the sun, must be a good sign). And of course, although I know that some of it is 'sling-shotted' around to the other side of the globe, all that solar radiation isn't blasting us all the time at work. Now for that other bit of the myth: I compared rosters with a 'holiday' pilot for part of last year and over the same period he was flying more hours between 10pm and 6am than I was!! In summer I constantly hear more 'pax' pilots on the R/T at 2am than us 'night flyers'! (And I know that they'll be repeating that relentlessly during the summer while I can enjoy half of summer in my garden with a G&T if I wish.)
So, summing those two up, my health isn't suffering and I actually often fly less
late at night than others
Maybe my pay is a bit less. I compared my average monthly 'take home' over my first year in this job with the same over the last year in my previous job and was surprised how little the difference was (double digit figures!) But I have a huge number more Days Off,
especially in summer.
But here comes the important bit (especially as this is a Job Security rather than a 'Job Ts&Cs' Thread): I spend most of the nights of the year (over 200) at home in bed asleep as long as I wish (no alarm clock unless it is to fit in with any social occasions), sleeping soundly without lying awake wondering if my job is secure.