Typical Day
Joe Jett (cousin of Joan) thought he was going to defend this country in F-16 fighters. He grew up in an era where his parents conceived him about two-thirds of the way through Top Gun.
He tried the military but had a slight twitch in his left eye—he was more than qualified to fly for civilian duty. But to fly a perfect killing machine, the standards were higher; only a hundred or so new pilots a year got the chance to do so. And Joe wasn't one of them. So he finished his four years working for Uncle Sam after having ended up a transport pilot, hauling frozen chipped beef at night between bases in really old propeller airplanes.
So when he became a full civilian pilot, he already had 3,500 hours of flight time. And as part of his last year in the military, he became a fully certified CFI—he knew he'd have a skill when he left the Air Force and he was able to begin finding clients even before he'd fully left.
A couple of years into his life as a CFI, Joe realized that he was a fully self-supporting entrepreneur/"hired gun" although not as "Top" as he might have dreamed. But he had a nice life and a wide range of clients—mostly rich-ish guys who wanted to fly their own iron and who hired him for $80 an hour to show them the ropes or…whatever it is that pilots get shown.
He works, on average, thirty paid hours a week, for which he has to work an additional fifteen hours, dealing with airplanes, maintenance duties, administration, booking his gigs, etc. He carries a fair amount of insurance—it costs him almost $400 a month—and his life is very much at the whim of his oft-moody clients.
It's a Tuesday morning—a bit frosty at 7:00AM when he goes to his client's plane, a Citabria tail-dragger. It's a classic, and also an ideal trainer plane—it's relatively easy to fly, very forgiving, and has a very slow stall speed, meaning that landings don't have to be exactly perfect to work.
Joe's Jet Fuel Coffee steams in the cold air. Hmm, not good. Frost is a big problem in this kind of airplane—it doesn't have a de-icing system, and if its wings end up with poor aerodynamics from ice…bad things are gonna happen. The aieee, splat kind of bad.
This morning, things are particularly tense because there are morning clouds and the ambient temperature on the ground is only forty degrees. Freezing can start to happen at thirty-five degrees or so, and the air cools about 2.5 degrees for every thousand vertical feet. Joe had planned to do maneuvers at 4,000 feet, but things will be freezing up there.
If the clouds don't clear, Joe won't fly. Joe won't get paid. Joe's client will be angry. Joe will get blamed for bad "wx." Happens all the time.
Luckily, the skies clear and Joe's bottle of glycol clears the ice off the wings, along with a little help from Mother Nature. (Here comes the sun. Doo-doo-doo-doo.)
Per their IFR filing, they're supposed to be wu (wheels up) at 7:40AM. After the walk-around inspection, pre-flight checks, engine start, and field taxi, they're at the Hold Short line when they were directed by the local tower to take off, per their previously filed flight route.
Today, they're taking off from KPAO, cutting across the Class B airspace of San Francisco airport, and landing in KSAC, about 150 miles away. The flight should take about seventy-five minutes in total; after they land, they'll get a drink, take a whiz, turn around, and fly home.
This client, Devon Winger, is fairly advanced, having already gotten his VFR license with Joe. Now working on his IFR, Joe doesn't generally have a whole lot to do other than check that Devon was doing things more or less correctly—and not peeking out from under the visual restriction hood that he had to wear for the flight. The hood reduces his ability to see out the windows, forcing him to rely solely on his instruments in navigating the flight.
They land at home at noon. Joe fills out Devon's log book and is able to bill for four hours of time. Nice morning's work. He now had nothing until 3:00PM, when a brand new VFR student is to sit with him for two hours, go through the Private Pilot exam book, and answer trivia questions.
Joe explained OBS slewing, GPS, proper dialog when addressing The Tower, rules of taxiing across runway lines, proper procedures for when you smell smoke in the cabin (first rule: stop screaming like a twelve-year-old girl at Bieber), and fifty other things. This new student scares Joe, frankly. His grandma just died and left him $40 million. He's in the process of buying a crazy-nice jet.
It's a crazy nice jet—and way too much plane. In order to fly it himself, the guy's dedicated the next six months of his life to doing nothing but train. That kind of dedication is great, but this is a plane that even Joe would struggle to get comfy in. A newbie'll just be a hazard.
As Joe drills, he can't stop imagining screaming children running from jet fuel fires. As the flight instructor, it's his job to protect any and all passengers that this guy might someday have. The only thing that gives him at least some peace of mind is that the G280 requires two pilots to fly it, and Joe figures that the other pilot in the left seat will know what he's doing.
The last node on the day is a night flight with another client scheduled from 6:00PM-8:00PM. A night flight carries its own restrictions and minimums. In order to "keep current" in a license to fly at night (that is, to fly passengers), a pilot has to fly a minimum number of hours at night in the preceding ninety days. Today, "night" is defined as 6:22PM forward.
The flight's just done to keep current for the client (and for Joe) and to have some nice sightseeing and get comfier landing in the dark. The client is a kindly little old lady whose flying skills are as sharp as anyone Joe's ever taught. If she were a few decades younger, she could've made a great F-16 pilot.