Tours in Vegas…
0600 – Briefing: Usually amounts to, “No TFRs, no NOTAMS, It’s gonna be hot, and maybe a chance of TS this afternoon (we all hope so). Some of you have been screwing up (you know who you are) – stop it! Good Day.”
0615 – Out to the line. Preflight, “How much fuel do I get?” Thinking is not an issue, as we either get “one way” or “round trip” fuel determined by dispatch after pax. weigh in.
0700 – Pax. arrive. (earlier if you’re not ready, later if you’ve been ready to go now for 15 min.) “Do you have any questions re. your briefing?” (invariably no) Re-brief all pax. on use of seatbelts and how (not) to open doors. “Ok, my manifest says you’re seated as follows…” It now becomes clear they paid no attention to video or hands-on brief. Seatbelts are now in states that are topologically impossible. Re-fasten seatbelts for pax. in need (as a rule, hot chicks have no trouble, but corn-fed Midwesterners need remedial seatbelt training.)
0710 – (Ten minutes late) Start-up, hover out, call tower for clearance on the Tropicana 2 departure. Up we go. “XXX Over the Garage 2,700”, “XXX proceed east on the Trop” As we near 3,500’ we get handed to departure “LAS departure, XXX 3.5 on the Trop.” “XXX, LAS approach roger” (It’s funny 70% of the time if you call ‘em departure, they’ll call themselves approach, If you call ‘em approach, they’ll id. themselves as departure, I think contradicting us is the highlight of their day.)
Once clear of the “B”, squawk 1200, change to the Lake Mead advisory freq. (120.65) and fly the route.
Talk about the Dam.
Talk about the Lake,
Talk about stuff you’re pretty sure the company made up in order to entertain the tourists.
Answer questions.
List of sample answers:
- “No, there are no sharks in the lake.” (or sometimes, “yes, they escaped from Dr. Evil’s lair and they have frickin’ laser-beams attached to their heads.”)
- “The lake is manmade. It’s created by the Hoover Dam.” (this answer is invariably used within the five minutes AFTER flying s-turns around the dam, and explaining how it was built in the 1930’s, etc…)
- “The presidents heads? You mean Mt. Rushmore?, No we won’t be seeing that today, it’s about 800 miles northeast of here.”
- “Usually three or four times a day.”
- “Nope, I never get tired of seeing this!” So as to avoid lying, make sure to look at something other than the unchanging scenery when you say this. I try to look at my dark C/W panel and it’s true, I never get tired of seeing the panel dark. NOTE: for some reason Aussies have the unique ability to discern that flying the same route three of four times a day would get old no matter how spectacular the scenery, and so, refreshingly, when there’s Aussies on board you often get to answer truthfully, “Yeah, it gets pretty dull after awhile.”
Fly straight and level a lot.
0755 – Land in the canyon and set up picnic baskets, pour champagne (from California, I hear it’s good / awful, I haven’t tried it.), chat with pax. (see above for answers.)
0825 – Round up pax. (should have as many as started the journey), load up, fly back.
0900 - Land, shut down, let out pax., and hope they’re clued into tipping.
0930 – Repeat.
1200 – Repeat.
1430 – lunch break (Timing varies depending on scheduling.) Look at JH, JSFirm, etc. for dream job (which will, of course, be advertised any day now.)
1700 – Repeat. Hope you don’t exceed your 14 hour duty day.
When we’re lucky, the thunderstorms will blow up in the afternoon, and we’ll dust off our thinking caps, and attempt to make a decision. This is a new and interesting experience, but can be hard, since it’s been so long since we made our last one.
If we do turn back, there’s often the challenge of explaining to the irate (insert non English speaking nationality here) pax. that were not going to the Grand Canyon because of weather that they can’t see.
That's about it. It's not BAD work, I tend to actually like my employer and our maintenence is good, and I love my schedule (7/7) ...It's just
.