Kyle,

 

You have no idea how most of us would love to do that, for a lot of different reasons, including your reason. Don't get me going on our representatives.

 

@Alpha

 

This one F/O was based in Seattle, a high seniority base. He was an F/O on this plane for 20 years and, oddly, when 5 captain seats became available at this base, there were no waiting bids (very unusual) for them. I won't go into the complex bidding system with the carriers but IF you put in a Captain bid on a certain plane at a certain base AND the seat became open, the company would pull pilots based on who bid for the seat at what date. So in this case, if a pilot made this specific bid BEFORE you, they would tap him or her to go to Captain school.

 

In this case, there were no standing bids for Captain seats (which as I said before is very rare) so what they do in that case is is take the top 5 senior F/O's (in this case there were 5 open seats) and say "You're going to Captain school" (whether you like it or not or want it or not).

 

Bob (forced F/O to Captain candidate) was in my class but he had not been to school on a plane in 20 years and it showed. He barely passed the course, but he passed. It was during his 25 hours of line flying with a check captain in the right seat that he couldn't pass. He couldn't make decisions. The check captain said every time a decision had to be made it took him a long time to make it. The check pilot failed him. Bob would not become a Captain and more importantly, he would not be allowed to go back to the safety and security of just being a professional F/O where he felt most comfortable. He was let go. In the middle of his career he lost his airline flying job.

 

When I heard that story from the check pilot who failed him, I said gee that's too bad. The check pilot said, oh, don't worry about Bob too much. He can now run his multi-million Dollar business full time now. Like many airline pilots back then (maybe not so much these days), with so much time off and making good money, many started businesses on the side and many were successful and many became very rich with their "side" businesses. Bob was one such example.

 

For those pilots who started side businesses, in the beginning, the flying job was the main activity but as the businesses became more and more successful, these million Dollar businesses became the primary focus and the airline job became the 'hobby'. I knew many pilots who ran big successful businesses and still flew because they loved too but didn't need the money any more.

 

In fact, I'll finish this story by telling you about one pilot in Seattle I knew and flew with. He always bid reserve. For those of you who may not know it, an airline has about 10% to 20% of their pilots on reserve. This means they have a schedule each month of when to be on call to fly for a sick pilot, etc. They may or may not fly, just depends. They get 80% of their line pay whether they fly or not. This pilot always bid reserve and on average, flew only 2 trips per month.

 

He wanted a lot of time off because (1) he was a millionaire already and (2) he flew KC-135's for the Guard up in Seattle and loved that flying. So while he had this airline job, he didn't actually fly that much.

rfresh737s post (a name would help) sums up quite well one of the reasons, perhaps the major one - why not every competent FO can be a captain.

Captain is a manager, he is the head of the crew, the decision maker. Not everybody is cut out to be that. They may be perfect pilots, they might just suck at decisions.

 

 

rfresh737s post (a name would help) sums up quite well one of the reasons, perhaps the major one - why not every competent FO can be a captain.

 

Definitely.  It's even a corporate thing, too.  Some people are made for management, while others are not.  I don't particularly like managing people, so I've avoided it for the most part (spent a while managing a training team - enjoyed it mostly, but hated the forced interaction with the people I wasn't particularly fond of; ME?!? NO!!!)

 

 

rfresh737s post (a name would help) sums up quite well

 

RalphF

Kyle

 

How did you add that photo to your post? I don't see a link to do that when I post...do you have to have x number of posts before you can do that?

 

I also wanted to add some photos to the Gallery in my profile but I don't see a way to do that either!

Both of those items can be controlled by "voice" along with a lot more commands, using Multi Crew Environment (MCE) !What happened to my selective quote?

One the easiest planes I own to fly. Very well behaved.

 

Sure, for the experienced simmer or real-world pilot. Not for a newbie as the OP claims himself to be. So, if you just want to fly a nice-looking 737 airframe around without too much hassle and without having to deal with real-world procedures and intricacies for the most part, there might be better suited addons out there. Or even use the default FSX 737 with some custom skinning.

 

 

How did you add that photo to your post? I don't see a link to do that when I post...do you have to have x number of posts before you can do that?

 

I host my images on Google's Picasa service and then link to them using an image tag.  There's a tutorial here:

http://forum.avsim.net/tutorials/article/16-how-to-include-pictures-in-your-posts/

 

 

Sure, for the experienced simmer or real-world pilot. Not for a newbie as the OP claims himself to be. So, if you just want to fly a nice-looking 737 airframe around without too much hassle and without having to deal with real-world procedures and intricacies for the most part, there might be better suited addons out there. Or even use the default FSX 737 with some custom skinning.

 

Read the rest of the discussion...

 

He was referring to the discussion where people were saying it was important to start out in something like a Cessna because it's easier.

Well.. I did not intend to create such an uproar ... However, I understood that to fly this 737 is really hard as a "real" 737 is . I was concern about whether the saved flight could keep or not the settings. I'll check my PC, my FSX, since the opinion is that I can't lose prior settings.

 

Thanks :rolleyes:

Regardless of entry requirements you will almost always get the lowest time pilots in the right hand seat of the smallest airframe in the fleet.

 

 

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Sure, for the experienced simmer or real-world pilot. Not for a newbie as the OP claims himself to be. So, if you just want to fly a nice-looking 737 airframe around without too much hassle and without having to deal with real-world procedures and intricacies for the most part, there might be better suited addons out there. Or even use the default FSX 737 with some custom skinning.

I don't agree that the NGX is not suitable for beginners. People starting out on the default 737-800 will learn far too many bad habits. Best to start out on an accurate simulation. Anyone who can follow Ryan's excellent tutorials should be able to cope.

 

 

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