Summer internship\Continental Airlines\Rambling

[air-cool-me]

After finishing my junior year at Embry Riddle (a small aviation school) I packed up my truck and headed east for an internship with Continental Airlines. It’s been about two weeks since I started as the “Chief Pilots office intern” and I have come to a few conclusions:

Staying in a “crash pad” full time is a bad idea. Even though it’s really cheap pilots will eat all your food, drain the hot water and drink your beer. I’m not even going to describe what happens if you ever bring a girl home…

If you’re ever going to spend any large amount of time walking around an airport you need to be agile. The airport electric carts that are used to help passengers make connecting flights and to ferry the elderly are downright evil. They are no doubt piloted by the silt that settles to the bottom of the gene pool who race them around with no regard for life limb or property. If it wasn’t for the faint hum of the electric motors and quick reflexes I wouldn’t be here today.

Pilots are useless at doing anything besides flying. Half of them can operate a full glass cockpit but can’t work a Deskjet 660c. I watched one guy make a copy of his medical 4 times because it spit the copy out on the bottom tray instead of the top.. Each time he would look at the top tray… scratch his head… and repeat. I didn’t want to embarrass the guy so I pretended like I wasn’t watching when he grabbed the extra 3, looked around the room cautiously and then threw them away. Faxing something? out of the question.

Free flight rocks my socks. This weekend I had breakfast in Omaha, lunch in Houston and dinner in Seattle. That was just saturday, yes im crazy. Maybe ill fly to Denver tonight for dinner?

All joking aside I think I’m going to learn a lot from this internship and I am really glad I decided to do it. Just talking with the exsperanced pilots around here is a treat.

I’ve said it before but if anyone has any place to recommend or a floor to sleep on I would love to hear from you.

Hold on…..I have to go un-jam the printer again….. They can fly a $220,000,000 boeing 777 but cant unclog a 5 year old LaserJet 4300????

-Nick
(Soon I hope im the one jamming the printers in the lounge)

[Joeaksa]

Nick,

If you head out to the airline's Guam base, pls let me know. I know one of the chief pilots out there...

Joe

[Jeff Alton]

Or, if you catch a flight up here to CYVR, I would be more than happy to show you around the Tower and Apprach/ACC facility.

Cheers

[MRM]

Are you in Cincy? Have a cousin who is also a good friend who did the Embry Riddle gig and is working for Continental in Cincy. Would be happy to put you in touch.

[thamlin000]

My buddy, who I grew up with, just took a job flying for Continental Express. He graduated from a flight school a few years ago and bounced around from one flying job to the next; flight instruction, Katrina relief planes, cloud-seeding over West Texas. Earning ~$10 / hr with student loans to pay off, he sure paid his dues. Now with Continental Express, he should hopefully be able to make a stable career. Fairly tough road to get there and get those hours, though.