My REAL Day - Airline Pilot, Hawaii

For the most part, you guys have seen the best aspects of my job. You know, flying down the north shore of Maui followed by a day of snorkeling at the beach is how I dream of living every day, but that's not reality. So in this video, I want to show you guys what a real day is like as a first officer out in Hawaii. Most of my mornings out here begin at about 5 a.m. That leaves me just enough time to get up, get changed, get packed, and head down to the airport for my 6 a.m. showtime. When I started working here last summer, I bought this old 1990s Volkswagen from a buddy of mine who was a first officer and moved on to another regional airline. She's pretty much my definition of an airport car. You've probably driven one in an FBO as a courtesy car near you. You know, it gets from A to B, but that's about it. The locks don't work. The A.C. definitely doesn't work, which gets hot out here. The windows work sometimes. I don't even know what's in the trunk. About every imaginable engine light and warning light's on. I have to put a liter of coolant or water in it every time I drive it. You know, the suspension doesn't work. It bounces like a trampoline every time I go over a bump. And last week, I had to disconnect the heating system altogether because steam started suddenly pouring through all the vents, probably from a leak in the heater coil. It's one of those cars that gets from A to B. It's cheap, it works for me in my commute, and it gets me to the airport. That's pretty much all I care about. When I get to the airport in the morning, the first thing I do is print out one of these daily trip sheets. It has all of our routes for today, and that's eight lines. We're flying from Kona to Kahului, Maui, back to Kona, back to Kahului, Maui, on to Molokai, back to Kahului, then out to Hana, back to Kahului, and finally returning to Kona in the afternoon. It's a busy day with eight legs, but when we have a sheet like this that gives us our call signs and departure times for each airport, it makes it pretty easy. As the first officer, it's my responsibility to file the flight plans for the day. We always file IFR, even when we're flying VFR during the day, so that in case we need to pick up a clearance, it's on file. In Mokulele, all of our flight plans are in this little booklet right here, and when we call flight service in the morning, all I have to give them is my route number, call sign, and time of departure. In the meantime, the captain is normally checking the weather, getting a full weather briefing, and checking maintenance discrepancies as well. Normally, I'm the first one to make it out to the airplane while the captain's inside finishing the fuel loading for the day. We each do a full pre-flight check, and we normally do that individually. Today, we're flying November 835 Mike Alpha. It's one of our Cessna Caravan Legacies. After each flight, we do a cabin check to make sure we're ready to go. I check each seat back pocket to make sure that there's a life jacket, a safety briefing card, as well as a sick sack for each passenger, in case they feel sick during the flight. These are important items to make sure that every passenger has on board before we're ready. It falls on us many times as the pilots before each flight to make sure that none of those items have gone missing during one of the flights, and I'm also checking to make sure that each seat belt is ready to go, that it's not tangled, and also that nobody has left anything on board. Depending on who's busy, the captain or first officer grabs the clearance from ATC. It's either because we're going IFR, or we're departing a Class Charlie or Class Bravo airport. Good morning Maui Clearance, Mahalo 3-9 at the CAT with Lima requesting a VFR departure southeast bound to Kona. Mahalo 3-9 at Maui Clearance, southeast departure, turn right, direct to the quarry, direct McKenna, maintain 1,000. Departure frequency 119.5 and squawk 1733. Mahalo 3-9, we'll be right turn to the quarry, then McKenna, 1,000 feet, 119.5 departure frequency, squawking 1733, Mahalo 3-9. Mahalo 3-9, readback correct. And even after all that, we're still not quite ready to fly yet. The customer service agents have to call for the boarding of the flight and lead the passengers out to the airplane. Normally the first officer and captain swap back and forth on individual legs who boards the passengers and who briefs the passengers. Since we don't have a flight attendant on board, one of us is responsible for making sure all of the passengers know the safety features of the aircraft. Keep in mind, none of us have started getting paid yet as pilots. We're paid hourly based on flight time. So what we do before and after the flight doesn't really factor into how much money we're making. A fast flight crew can coordinate getting flight plans filed, checking the weather, check maintenance records, brief the first flights of the day, do a full sweep inside and outside of the airplane, grab a clearance, board passengers, give a safety briefing, and depart all in about 15 to 20 minutes. MAHALO 3-9 now cleared for takeoff at 8 left at Lima, MAHALO 3-9. Thank you. Once we finally get to our destination, it's always the first officer's job to deplane the passengers through the door. We don't have a jet bridge to lead passengers, so people have a tendency to try to scatter across the ramp once they get to the destination. It's my job to make sure they stay here right next to the airplane and we lead them to the gate. All of that goes into just one flight. In between flights, we have to deplane passengers, clean the cabin, check for loose items that people might have left behind, get a new clearance, brief the next flight, and reboard all in about 20 minutes or so between flights. At the lowest end, we might do it in even 5 to 10 minutes. And that's why the job can get tiring. When we're doing eight legs a day, it definitely can get tiring hopping between islands like that. When you fly for an airline like Mokelele, all of the normal flight responsibilities that are shared by multiple crew members on larger airplanes that are equipped with flight attendants are shared by just the captain and first officer on our flight. That makes it a little bit busy and it makes our flying fun and fast-paced and tiring by the end of the day.