I would like to follow a realistic schedule of a airline pilot for say southwest over a few days work. right now I have no idea and im just picking out routes by southwest but realisticly I know they follow some type of stipulations/hours ect and would say never do certain types routes maybe due to flight hours in a day ect.. If a real pilot could give me a realistic scenario for a southwest pilot over a few days then i could get an idea how to perform a realistic work schedule with my pmdg 737's. www.southwest.com has schedules but I have no way of knowing what routes a single crew would fly during a work day. a few days routes would give me an idea.. thanks

>I would like to follow a realistic schedule of a airline>pilot for say southwest over a few days work. right now I have>no idea and im just picking out routes by southwest but>realisticly I know they follow some type of stipulations/hours>ect and would say never do certain types routes maybe due to>flight hours in a day ect.. If a real pilot could give me a>realistic scenario for a southwest pilot over a few days then>i could get an idea how to perform a realistic work schedule>with my pmdg 737's. www.southwest.com has schedules but I have>no way of knowing what routes a single crew would fly during a>work day. a few days routes would give me an idea.. thankshere are two different typical 3 day trips...Flt Out In Blk Pay Remarks 1117 MDW MCI 06:45 08:10 1:25 1.6 300 1117 MCI ABQ 08:35 10:40 2:05 2.4 300 1117 ABQ TUS 11:05 12:10 1:05 1.2 300 1117 TUS SAN 12:35 13:45 1:10 1.3 300 1117 SAN SJC 14:15 15:35 1:20 1.5 300 16:20 10:20 7:05 8.0 2433 SJC LAX 08:55 10:05 1:10 1.3 300 729 LAX OAK 10:30 11:45 1:15 1.4 300 729 OAK RNO 12:15 13:00 0:45 1.0 300 2199 RNO LAS 13:30 14:40 1:10 1.3 300 2199 LAS TUS 15:05 16:25 1:20 1.5 300 14:55 8:30 5:40 6.5 1031 TUS ABQ 08:20 09:20 1:00 1.2 300 1031 ABQ MDW 09:45 12:20 2:35 3.2 300 1031 MDW DTW 12:45 13:45 1:00 1.1 300 2664 DTW MDW 14:15 15:15 1:00 1.1 300 7:55 5:35 6.6 TAFB 58:00 26:45 18:20 21.1OR for more long haul type stuff...Flt Out In Blk Pay Remarks 1205 MDW LAX 16:00 20:30 4:30 5.3 700 chg 2961 LAX SMF 21:40 22:55 1:15 1.4 300 2961 SMF SEA 23:15 01:00 1:45 2.0 300 15:15 10:30 7:30 8.7 2220 SEA MDW 17:15 21:10 3:55 4.7 700 2220 MDW DTW 21:35 22:30 0:55 1.0 700 12:35 6:15 4:50 5.7 1044 DTW PHX 12:05 16:30 4:25 5.2 700 chg 2811 PHX MDW 18:30 21:45 3:15 4.0 700 10:40 7:40 9.2 TAFB 55:15 27:25 20:00 23.6

Hoah!25 minutes turn-around time? That doesn't seem to be enough to get the pax of and the next load on! Wow! And I thought 45 minutes turn-around was pretty much standard.Interesting to see Dave.Cheers,

awesome thank you!! printing it now and yes I have read articles about the fast turnarounds southwest makes. I have flown a few southwest routes and I remember some turnarounds that quick at kdal and kmsy.

any listed turn time of greater than 30 minutes at SWA is almost always a crew change where we are switching planes. it is rare ever to have an individual plane itself on the ground for greater than 30 minutes... ever. :-)

dave what is the last digits 300? 700 chng? also do you keep the same plane all day most times and switch to a different plane next day? thansk for info some great stuff!

300 = 737-300700 = 737-700chng = plane swap after that leg... ie. you get off the one your on and get on a new one.you never have the same plane the next day. if you finish in the evening the plane leaves in the morning and you don't report to the airport to the afternoon. if you finish in the afternoon the airplane obviously continues flying with a new crew right away.

thanks, this is some very helpful stuff.

>25 minutes turn-around time? That doesn't seem to be enough to>get the pax of and the next load on! Wow! And I thought 45>minutes turn-around was pretty much standard.actually those trips are weird... many of our turns arounds are 20 minutes. 137 passengers off, 137 passengers on. it can be done!

Man, I'm jealous... a little. Not much repetition in those pairings, different cities, one after another. Must be nice... at CAL, we're slaves to the hub and spoke, and with me being IAH based, every other leg is back to the hub. Houston. Again. Booooring! And I just hate it when I get a captain that insists on flying every outbound leg, so every landing I get is at, guess where? Yep, Houston. Sometimes a cool captain will recognize this and divvy up the legs to keep it interesting. Now occasionally we get to flow thru the other hubs... but guess what? They suck too! EWR is just too busy and crowded, too much time waiting for takeoff, or too much time spent droning on the Opec One Arrival to 22L. CLE is the same, for a relatively small airport they get all kinds of jammed up. Nothing like being vectored almost to Erie, PA before a base leg turn. I hate that.But on the other hand, you guys work pretty hard. 5 legs a day? I've done that at CAL, but it's rare. In my commuter puke days in a 1900 at Mesa I thought nothing of 9-10 legs a day. Easy. But now? Man, 4 legs is a workout. I don't like that much typing on the FMC's...Waaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!There, got that out of my system, I'm better now.JohnB-737 FO

Are you guys allowed to use VNAV at Southwest? I thought I heard from someone you guys cant use it. Is that true?

Well John, just give me a call next time and I'll be more than happy to ease your burden and help you with all FMC reprogramming ;-)

>Well John, just give me a call next time and I'll be more>than happy to ease your burden and help you with all FMC>reprogramming ;-)Deal! You can have it, LOL... Once or twice a month on my days off I go to the local aerodrome and rent a Citabria, just for fun. It's real flying, a stick and rudder ragwing taildragger. And the best part? No FMC, no typing, yeeaaaa! Just set the altimeter, check the mags and off you go. Easy!Don't get me wrong though... even though I get kinda tired of all the typing in the box, I wouldn't want to go without. It's amazingly useful, and it's nice to select LNAV/VNAV, engage the A/P, and let 'er rip across the country. Plus, the abilty to turn just about any non-precision approach into an "ILS" of sorts is amazing... select a VOR or NDB approach with a gradient path to the runway, hit LNAV/VNAV with the A/P on and watch it fly a surprisingly accurate "ILS" down to a couple of hundred feet off the deck. How do it know?? LOLJohnB-737 FO

Hi John,I can imagine you can get a bit tired of reprogramming the FMC all day long and that it's nice to just jump into an a/c where you can take off and purely have fun.And yes, I agree that the FMC and what it can do for you is quite amazing. I feel that way just flying virtually in FS and I can only imagine what a cool feeling it must be IRL!All the best and happy flying John,

no VNAV, no autothrottles, no autobrakes (except RTO.) all our airplanes are fully capable of this be we have chosen to disable the features. it is likely some will be reenabled in the future. PS: just because we don't have VNAV doesn't mean we don't use the VNAV profiles in the FMC to judge our own descents etc. we will fly the FMC information for cross restrictions etc. just we have to force the airplane to descend rather than it going down on its own.