It's a beautiful day here at home - sunny and warm, high 77. Great day to be out doing things: I'm painting the fence and cleaning up the hard. It's all because tomorrow I have a trip, New York to Barcelona. It should be nice - Barcelona is an interesting city and usually has nice weather. It's a short trip as well, so I'll be back by Saturday.

On another note, one of our pilots was killed while on an overnight - in the Netherlands. He was bicycling around the town we stay in, and was hit by a tram. Of all ways to get it. Shows you can do all you can to be healthy, not smoke, live well and wham!

I'll leave you all with that thought.

Well well - it's been almost a year since my last post. The reason for the lack of posting was I got occupied in getting a new job - it takes a lot of work! Interview prep, interview, waiting, getting everything in order before moving to the new job, etc.

Short story, I'm at a new job, flying a B767 out of New York for a large, US airline. I go to Europe, Africa and South America, but most of the trips are to Europe. I hope to blog more often and include pictures too.

I was in Newark yesterday thinking perhaps I was going to go home the next day or maybe the one after that. Nope! Another Captain called in sick and I had to fill his spot - so it was minimum rest at the hotel, then a flight JFK-Liege. The flight went fine - not as quick as usual because I was tired. That seems to make the flight longer for some reason. We arrived in Belgium to clouds and rain. After flying the instrument approach we landed and taxied to our gate. The fresh crew was there to take over and we went to the airport hotel (the downtown one was full).

Because I go off today, the company bought me an airline ticket to Detroit. I leave shortly for the Brussels airport where I'll catch a short KLM flight to Amsterdam (on a Fokker 50) then get on a Northwest A330 for the flight to Detroit. I should be home by dinnertime.

I am looking forward to going home - although I haven't worked a lot in the past few months, this last week has been intense. It has been almost back to back flying often with the minimum rest required before I fly again.

New York City. That's where I am today.

I didn't get to see much of New York - I took an airliner from Detroit to New York this morning, then a car service drove me to the hotel at Kennedy Airport. Of course, the route had a lot of traffic so the driver got off the highway and went through some neighborhoods. I'm always amazed at the diversity New York offers every couple of streets. Different ethnic groups, different shops and different restaurants.

I am scheduled to fly tonight from JFK to Amsterdam, flight CKS209. I was hoping to get some time in Amsterdam, even a day, but I won't even go to the hotel there. I am getting driven down to Belgium where the next day I'll pick up a flight to Bahrain and Dubai.

Busy busy I guess.

Again, not much flying. I manned the union desk again in August - it was a busy month because our new contract became effective August 1st. I spent some time answering peoples questions and solving problems.

I did get to fly twice - once it was a short flight from our maintenance base in Michigan to Newark but the other trip was pretty cool. Apparently American Airlines had an engine problem in Bueno Aires. The airline needed to get a new engine down there, so they called my airline.

So, at the last minute I got put on a Learjet and flown to New York. The next morning I woke up and went out to the plane and there it was - a 767 engine. Pretty big but not the biggest (that is probably the engine that goes on the B777). We loaded everything up and launched into the afternoon skies for our 12 hour flight to Argentina.

I had never been to Argentina so I was really looking forward to it. I had flown down to South America before but to Brazil, not Argentina. The flight was uneventful and with the exception of some thunderstorms as we crossed into South America, it was smooth. We landed in the chilly morning air - it's winter down there! It was 42 degrees and me with no coat!

The time there was quick - after resting I only got to wander the streets for a few hour. Still - interesting. You can tell the economy isn't doing so well - trash on the streets and a run-down feeling to the place. The First Officer and I had a nice dinner comprising of great Argentinean beep with some potatoes and bread. We didn't get to see much of the city as we had no guide book and only a few hours.

Not much flying lately I'm afraid. I got picked to sit and man the "Union Help Desk" as we're calling it. Basically the company and the union came to an agreement to have a pilot sitting in operations to help solve crew-scheduling issues that may come up. The goal is to provide accurate information to the crewmember about his assignment while acting as a buffer between him and the schedulers. The idea is to make sure no one gets taken advantage of.

Anyway - so that is what I did last month instead of flying. It was nice since I only live 20 minutes from the company's operations center I got to sleep in my bed each night. Nicer than slepping bags to and from the airplane and solving crisises from the other side of the world.

One part of the job that was interesting is that I got to spend some time in the simulator we have observing recurrent training. It was interesting to watch from the back seat and see what the crewmembers did in the sim, both bad and good. I took notes and hope to use them on the line.

Well - time to take the dog for a walk - another advantage of spending time at home!

Ahh.. delays. Well - I wake up this morning to discover that our flight back to the United States has been delayed - for a day. For some reason the plane diverted to Doha and it's still there. There is a certain amount of chaos going on the last few days. I don't know if it is the change of the month (after four years our airline still can't manage the transition) or just a lot of rearranging of flights - but everything keeps being changed around.

So, we've got to limo over to Liege and plan for a departure out of there in the morning. I don't find Liege quite as nice as Leuven, but it's got free internet access so it's somewhat of a wash.

Of course, scheduling has lots of things to consider - my FE just called and said that he just got rescheduled - one of the other FE's mother just died and I guess my FE has to fill in for him. I don't know who's going to replace him, but I imagine it will be the FE who's mother just died. It's a bit late to get a flight back to the US so our flight in the morning might be the earliest one.

It's never easy when you lose a parent. It has to be even harder when you're far away when it happens. I hope he can get back quickly.