Tuesday, September 09, 2008

On Call... Only this is the 1st Month in Years...

From the past 6 years, ever since 2003 while I have been on call it has been a FULL, BUSY month of flying! Again I'm on call this month and thinking to make life a little easier... I would fly a trip of my choice bringing time into the month. I picked up a SJO trip (so of course I could sleep in my bed one more night w/ my honey and see my cute dogs 1 last time...) which was commutable. I had a great crew in which 4 of us were thinking the same thing, bringing time into the month.

I have had MANY days, hours, minutes of Miami productivity! After working my last SJO trip... we flew SJO-MIA-JFK-MIA which equalled 10 hours in 1 day of flight time.... Talk about a LONG day! I sat around the following 2 days spending time visiting my awesome girlfriends! Never getting the 'dreaded' phone call. Then... just as luck would have it... while having dinner at my friends house I found out that for the 1st time EVER I was released for the following day! Now, had I thought that I might have been released the day before....I just might have been able to catch the last flight home. At least I was able to spend some time w/ great friends eating an amazing dinner! I have to add that my friends are amazing cooking the best meals!!

I had an extra day at home, the 3rd. I ended up having the 3 through the 6th off. I flew back to MIA on the 6th... to be 'around' for my following 5 days on call. Many of my commuter friends will kind of 'wing it'. Meaning they will try to stay at home as long as possible, hoping they don't receive an assignment that signs in before they are able to commute in.

My commute doesn't quite allow for that. See, the earliest I can get into MIA is by noon, IF the flight gets in on time... and then I still have to clear customs. So I came in the night before. Crew schedule was actually quite nice to me... on the 7th I had standby... (which is the exciting opportunity to sit at the airport in our crew lounge for 6 hours (getting paid for 5, which we only used to get paid for 3 hours) sleeping, reading, playing on the computer, listening to music, watching TV, catching up with friends, etc, etc) from 12:30pm to 6:30pm. I used my productivity time wisely... completing all of the above activities! I was back at my friends place by 7pm.

I relaxed all day yesterday... sleeping late, working on the computer, working out, shopping, window shopping and wishing at least perhaps I would get the phone call that I was needed to go somewhere! A few coworkers were called out for work... which brought my 'relative position' (meaning supposedly the lower the number the likely hood that you would be called next) down to 4. When I called for today... I was AGAIN #4. This made me think that perhaps I would get the dreaded (though after sitting so many days... ALMOST welcomed) phone call at 2 or 3am. Nope... it is almost noon and I'm still here!

I'm good to work the next 2 days... then I'm off the 12-29th. So far I ONLY have 15 hours (5 from sitting at the airport). This is the LEAST amount of time I have EVER flown in over 10 years! Totally crazy! I am almost hoping to get called out! *Note I said ALMOST!!!*

1 comment:

Heather said...

I'm still amazed at the high- flyin life you live now. You're still s'posed to be Steph who lives just on the other side of town. How exciting for you though, bet you have some fun times! Love ya and miss you tons and tons~~~~Heather
p.s. whenever I see flight attendants in movies I naturally always think of you and imagine what it must be like!