| Perspectives: Michael Orensteen |
| Written by Michael Orensteen | ||||
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While based in Jacksonville, Florida went to an airport in town and signed up for flying lessons at North Florida Flight Center to earn a private pilot's license. I became a private pilots in about 6 months.
A few months later, my commitment to the Navy was complete in June of 1990 and headed back home to Minneapolis. I plan was to find a part-time job, learn to fly and begin college. Within
a couple weeks, I got a job at a flight school in Minneapolis as a dispatcher.
The dispatcher answers phone, schedules rental aircraft, and billing
for customers. I also enrolled in school at a community college that
offered a 2 year degree program in Aeronautical Science. I went to school
in the evenings so I can work and continue with the rest of my flying
lessons. By July 1991, I became a Certified Flight Instructor and the flight school I had been working at for the past year, hired me on as a CFI. Our flight school also had a contract with a local radio station to fly a traffic reporter around in the morning and afternoons which I was involved in as well and that was 4 hours of flight time a day. The downside to all this is that I overloaded myself. My day began at 4:30am so I can be ready to fly at 6am for the traffic report. I had students from 8am until 5pm and then off to night school from 6:30pm until 9:30pm, Monday through Friday. But it all paid off. After about 1 year of flight instructing, I had 1,200 hours total time and 151 multi-engine.
A year later, Mesaba Airlines began phasing out the Metros and I was retrained as a captain on the Saab 340 and earned another type rating! The flight time you receive flying as a captain (turbine PIC) are some of the things major airlines look for when screening resumes. Like every other pilot, I applied to all the big named major airlines as well as some of the smaller ones. After about 5 years with Mesaba, I was hired by America West Airlines in Phoenix flying my first jet; the B737! It's true what they say, they get easier to fly as they planes get bigger. The big difference between flying a turboprop and flying a jet, is that a jet doesn't slow down and descend simultaneously very well. You have to learn to stay ahead of the plane. Landing is the easy part!
Later that night, United organized a very nice dinner for all of the new pilots and spouses. I was very impressed! My class consisted of 26 new hires. Experience ranged from retired military pilots, corporate pilots, freight/cargo pilots, commuter airline pilots and pilots from other major airlines.
Not
everyone was hired into the same airplane. It is all based on seniority.
I was number 5 out of 26 pilots in my class, so based on the airplanes
that had openings, I chose the B737. Other pilots chose flight engineer
or first officers on the B727. In a class prior to us, they actually
had a few new hires assigned to the B757/B767. Flying for a major airline
is everything I expected it to be. I couldn't imagine doing anything
else!
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