My First 100 Hours _ United Airlines Pilot (Boeing 757_767)

The first 100 hours of flying a new jet is something called consolidation. I've been so busy and having a ton of fun in the past few weeks and now that I'm done, here's a recap of my first 100 hours flying the 757 and 767 for United Airlines. On a 757-200 trip and if you think there's any chance that I could hold a schedule like this during a normal month, absolutely not. Bergen goes extremely senior during the summer season and frankly the only reason that I'm here is because I only have a few weeks left to get my 100 hours towards consolidation. I'll explain how getting trips like this works in a few minutes but long story short, when you get the chance to experience an absolutely incredible overnight like this, you just have to soak up every second because you don't know when you'll be able to come back. Every pilot has to log 100 flight hours within 120 days of taking their final checkride. That's so that with recency of experience you're starting to feel comfortable with the jet after taking a checkride on an airplane that you've never flown before. Now if you're flying an unaugmented fleet with flights less than eight hours, that's pretty easy to do but if you're flying flights over eight hours, you don't get to count rest breaks towards that minimum. So if I'm flying with three pilots and a relief officer, I only get to log 66% of the flight time and with four pilots, 50%. So on augmented fleets, it's a little bit more difficult to meet that 100 hour threshold. Specific to my fleet, I had to log 25 hours or five flights in the 757 and 25 hours or three flights in the 767. That's so that I can feel comfortable flying both types because there are pretty substantial differences between this and the 767. It's also another reason that Crew Scheduling has a dedicated consolidation desk to help assign specific trips. Once I got close to expiring within a few weeks or so, I was able to start hand-picking specific trips both so that I could get experience on specific airplanes and so that I would meet the overall flight time requirement. Before getting into specific trips, in my first 100 hours at United, I flew 20 flights between 12 cities and visited six new countries that I'd never visited before. When I first decided to become a pilot 10 years ago, the flying that I'm doing today is really what I dreamed of and I'm just thrilled to be here. I started IOE on June 10th, flew a four-day domestic trip in late June and passed my line check on the return from Dublin, Ireland on July 13th. So just over a month to complete IOE. After that, it took just over a month to log the remaining 75 hours. In reality, I flew close to 130 hours of flight time but again, rest breaks aren't counted towards consolidation. I hit my 100 hours of flight time on August 21st, completing the last step of training as a new pilot for United. Now here's the fun part, the flying in between. During the summer, over 90% of our trips from Newark on the 75 and 76 are to Europe. My first trip after IOE was a normal reserve pickup to London and I had the chance to fly with my friend Zach who's been at United for a few years and taught me everything I need to know about being a relief pilot. I'll make a video soon about what it means to be scheduled as an IRO. We were swapped into a 767-400 which was a little unusual for a Heathrow trip but that wasn't the only unusual part of the three-day. We were in London for the hottest day in recorded history at 104 degrees Fahrenheit so we skipped all the touristy stuff and found a swimming pond to cool off. Up next was my first true consolidation trip and I requested Dubrovnik, Croatia. We're the only airline to fly Dubrovnik direct from the United States and the plane was packed. The city itself was beautiful and my other first officer joined me on a history walking tour and then we jumped into the Adriatic which was my highlight of the trip before meeting the crew for dinner. Dubrovnik, Croatia is one of if not the most senior trip on this fleet. In fact my captain had been flying for United for over 30 years and even had a Dubrovnik station lanyard on. He was senior enough to hold Dubrovnik all summer. I on the other hand won't be seeing a trip like this for a long time. After that was another normal reserve pickup from open trips. I found a six-day Zurich with four Atlantic crossings. One night in Zurich, one night in Washington DC, and another night in Zurich before flying back to Newark. That's 35 hours of flight time in just a few days. I was the relief pilot for the whole trip and had a new crew every leg since I was mixed into Dulles routing. I had never been to Switzerland before so I hit the ground running to explore the city on my first overnight with a friend from my new higher class. For the second overnight I was a little bit more ambitious and took the train to Lake Lucerne which was well worth it if you get the chance. This was the longest trip I'd done to date as an airline pilot. Bergen Norway was next on my consolidation list. It's another seasonal route on the 757-200. The trip started a little rough with a lengthy delay leaving Newark so we didn't get airborne until 2 40 a.m. five hours late landing just before 3 p.m. in Bergen. Fortunately we still had 45 hours left on our extra long layover. It didn't take much convincing from my other fo to join him on an incredible 13-hour day trip through the fjords and glaciers to explore a tiny fraction of what Norway has to offer. Again this is another trip I won't be able to hold on my normal schedule for a long time so I'm planning to go back on a personal trip. The last trip I requested to hit my 100 hours was Tenerife in the Canary Islands offshore West Africa. Another 757-200 trip this flight was actually unaugmented with just two pilots because the block time both ways was under eight hours so no rest break on the red eye to Europe. This was hands down my most adventurous overnight to date. With over 48 hours on the ground I had enough acclimation time to spend the first afternoon scuba diving to a 1940s era ship that sank offshore. It was eerie diving on a wreck for the first time and I can't wait to do it again. The next day a local to the island whose son is in flight training in the United States gave me the most incredibly personal tour of Tenerife. The island is diverse with a combination of volcanic landscape mixed with Spanish culture. Finding someone passionate to show you around their home is an experience that just can't be topped. I wanted to share these experiences with you not to brag about a cold plane or overnights but to trigger a memory of what it was that made you want to become a pilot. When I imagine my definition of a dream job it's experiencing incredible overnights with great people and diving deep into the culture of somewhere that I've never been before. No matter what that definition is for you I just want you to know that no matter how young or how new you are to this industry there are amazing opportunities surrounding this job if you choose to chase them. Now I finished my 100 hours on time but what happens if you don't? It's not the biggest deal ever. You can go back to the simulator for a one-day course that extends your consolidation another 30 days or you can do a two-day course and fly with a Czech airman to fully renew your consolidation limit and gives you another 120 days. Finishing consolidation really is a once in a career event for pilots and now that I've done it on the 75 and 76 I'll never have to do it again at United. Even if I go to another fleet and then in a few years come back I've built my 100 hours on this airplane which checks that box for the rest of my career and it was a ton of fun doing it.