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So in summary Uncle Joe has: 1. Screwed the Afghanistan Withdraw. 2. Torched the stock market (all gains since the election now erased). 3. Brought inflation home to America. 4. Failed to stop the virus as promised. 5. Opened the door for Russia to invade Ukraine. 6. Allowed China to rage in the South Pacific and now launch large force packages at Taiwan. 7. Tried bring us all back together by destroying the filibuster. He sure has re-established America on the world stage. Yes Trump is an ass, a horrible person, but this was worth all your hate? Simply unreal.

https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-warns-russia-that-if-they-invade-ukraine-america-will-evacuate-haphazardly-and-leave-86-billion-of-weapons-behind

No they can specialize. They can specialize in night 1 SEAD, DCA, etc.... I don't care if they specialize but theyre going to specialize in the shit that cost casualties and money, not flying around uncontested and won battlespace delivering an occasional JDAM. This is their country. If they aren't willing to die for it why should I be?

If it comes to locking horns with Putin, this will not just be in the Ukraine. What side deals did Putin make with China, will the Russian Pacific fleet support Xi's Navy on an invasion of Taiwan? How many troops families are we willing to send a flag and purple heart to? Don't have much faith in the American people to support this especially with the leadership team voted in and installed. Will true warriors emerge and take charge and be violent and merciless enough to end this nonsense? It's amazing when your young you want this but after a long career you bang your head against the wall to think the human race is so stupid.

I quoted my last summary for comparison purposes. I was hired in March 2018. Here's how 2021 went. I'm a line holder. The alternative would be reserve, which at AA means 18 days per month (in blocks of 3-7) where you are either on a 2-hourish callout (76 hours pay/month) or 12-hour callout (73 hours/month). I get a schedule every month from the bidding software. I then use the trading tools to drop my entire schedule, with some rare trips being "sold" to others (I pay them to take my trip). I then wait for what we call makeup flying, trips leaving today or tomorrow that he company needs to fill dues to sickness, weather events, fatigue calls, delays, etc. I fly these trips because they usually have a high pay-to-flight-hours ratio, due to contract intricacies that aren't germane to the conversation. My entire goal is to maximize my efficiency. As an example, at AA these trips pay the same DFW-OKC-DFW vs DFW-ORD-DFW - Both pay 5:15 hours DFW-OKC, overnight, OKC-DFW vs DFW-OKC-DFW-JFK, overnight, JFK-DFW - Both pay 10:30 hours Anyways, in 2021 I flew 295 hours in the cockpit. I spent another 150 or so riding in the cabin as a passenger (fully paid at the major airlines). Lets call it 450 hours of actual uniformed work. I was paid 1310 hours (this includes vacation and training pay, which are done as work-hours) plus per diem, which worked out to $241k Gross earnings, plus $30.4k of company contributions to my 401k. So $270k in my fourth year. Recently the junior captain bid went to someone below me on the seniority list, but I will stay where I am and accrue seniority-in-seat which will allow me to further enhance my pay-to-hours-flown ration by picking up even shorter trips that pay the same as longer trip, as in the examples above. Please note though, I am an extreme case. You have to really work the contract and scheduling tools to do what I do, but anyone can if they can tolerate the uncertainty. I spend more days home than most, so when I say uncertainty I mean you don't know what you're doing until the day before at the earliest. As a side note, $270k seems like a ridiculous amount of money to me, but I fly with people who make quite a bit more than me, yet still live paycheck to paycheck. Please get yourself financially savvy before you start making eye-watering money. My neighbor, a wide-body captain married to a specialty doctor (total of ~$750k/year), spent years wasting everything. They tell me that Dave Ramsey saved them, and I'm a fan of his work, though I've never needed it.

Absolutely. This has been my message to military dudes and dudettes, and most particularly my message to their spouses. You may think you know why you want to live somewhere, but you might not be considering the totality of what that decision will entail. My wife has absolutely no family in DFW, except for of course me. And living in one of the mega hubs has allowed me to run this hustle, which means not only am I home more, I'm home on more of the days that I want to be home. All the while making much more money for much less work than I would as a commuter, or even at a smaller hub. That's not to say everyone has to do what I do; I remember how many friends getting out were moving to where their wife's family lived. Understandable. After 10 to 20 years of getting jerked around by the military so your husband/wife can do awesome things with awesome people in awesome airplanes while you sat at home, it's completely reasonable to want to make a major decision for once like where to live. But the airlines are a strange and stupid career, and they are most heavily influenced by where you live. So everybody choosing not to live at a primary hub for whatever airline they work for needs to very strongly consider the implications. I think we take for granted that the airlines allow you to live anywhere. Telecommuting for other jobs has similarly detrimental effects on your career outlook and earnings. If you look at all of the factors and determine that earning less and working more is a price you're willing to pay to live somewhere else, then by all means, I'm happy for you. But for my wife and I, as we get ready to have kids, we decided it would be better for me to be home more often than for our kids to have more time with the rest of the family. As for the money stuff, I think the rest of the world is waking up quite suddenly to the financial reality of the last 2 years of pandemic fuckery... It's going to be fascinating and terrifying to watch the Fed juggle inflation and the associated social unrest it causes, with their true and unstated primary purpose, propping up the stock market. The market is eating shit on the potential of going from unfathomably low interest rates (0-.25%) to mildly less unfathomably low interest rates (1-1.25%). Last time we had an inflation panic, it followed the government expanding the monetary supply by around 13%. It took interest rates of 20% and two recessions to beat that inflation back down. This time the government expanded the monetary supply by around 25%... Buckle up. How does that relate to the airlines? Pilots always lose in recessions. Spend accordingly.

Good question! In any event, I propose that Hunter B. is appointed as Ambassador to Ukraine. Or one could make him a regional ambassador, you know of that whole area. He's been there before and knows one or two of the words they speak. Plus... Payday!

Was the no show job Hunter had in Ukraine from the pro Russian side or the pro Ukrainian side? Just curious which side we're on when the marker is called in.

Well shit. Now I have to burn my new commercial airplane driving career to the the ground...ok maybe not entirely...but I'm very glad my current Boeing ride outdates him. Either way, I'd never trust my life to ANYTHING that asshat is involved in. I wouldn't trust him with a wet paper bag. If it's not clear, presented face to face, I'd punch that guy until teeth fell out...then I'd keep punching.

Well, out of the goodness of my heart, I suppose I could fall on that grenade for you guys.

Bite your tongue and punch yourself repeatedly in the balls. That...[expletive deleted]...was not, nor will he ever be, a herc guy. Never. He might have been a tanker guy, but I don't want to put that on any of the tanker bros either.

Lets face it, there are two events we all don't want to happen: a military intervention of Russia invading Ukraine, and Russians directly threatening more countries. No western nation has the stomach to stop the current (continuing) invasion, yet no one wants Russia on their own doorstep either. It's a Catch-22. If we (western nations) don't want to deal with an increasingly power hungry Russia tomorrow, we have to do something today...which we don't want to do. Long game, or short game. Sometimes winning at one means losing at the other. I don't have the right answer. All I know is that America's current leadership is clearly not up to the mental and moral gymnastics needed to successfully navigate these waters to an outcome that is beneficial for our nation, not to mention beneficial for other nations and our collective future.

Wow, no more fighters I guess

FAA doesn’t give you wings. Hence they can’t take them away. FAA has no right to know who you are when operating military aircraft. Never identify yourself to the FAA.

Agreed. I was blown away by how good Spider-Man was, given the wacky plot. Matrix was dog shit. Watched No Time To Die. Meh. It took all the fun and ask the action out of James Bond in their attempt to humanize him. Yet unlike Casino Royale, the action was not at all realistic. And way too long. Daniel Craig is a really good actor, but the story was a dud. Red Notice was pretty good. Basically the criminal version of National Treasure. I really don't like Gal Gadot I'm anything. Her accent is terrible and her acting is wooden and forced. But Ryan Reynolds and The Rock are great.

I genuinely think we need to get out of the military model of rotating troops home after committed to action. Don’t come home until the war is over. See how hawkish the political elites are to attempt the recent bullshit we’ve seen with that model. And also maybe the Congress could do it’s actual job WRT declaring war and/or preventing presidents from just sending military wherever for however long.

If working at AA means living in base, and working at the other airlines means commuting, then go AA. That goes for all airlines. If you wanna live in Houston, go United. Dallas, AA/SWA. Atlanta, go Delta. For NYC area I would consider Jet Blue. Lots of potential there and good pay now. Anyways, where you want to live is the first metric. Now, as for AA, it's a dumpster fire. But the airlines all rotate who sucks the most. AA and the other majors are "too big to fail" so you aren't going to end up on the street. You might get furloughed if the world goes to shit again, but that won't be different at the other airlines. We might merge, and when we do some of the younger pilots at the smaller airline will hit the jackpot. Happened with American West and US Air. If we collapse entirely (too big for that), then you can end up like the TWA pilots who got screwed on seniority integration. And furloughed. But here they are, all working now, and you can find many, many, many similar stories at DAL, UAL, and SWA. The industry, like many others, is run by Wall Street shysters looking to use a fancy new accounting trick to bump the EPS a couple cents per quarter. So you really can't guess what will happen. But AA is the trailing airline right now, and I'm still doing pretty well. I'll make my next post covering 2021 earnings and work.