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Originally Posted by Rapture
Also the Delta/NW merger was awesome. My dad was a captain for NW and retired several years ago(right before they tried to gut the pensions). I lost my flight priveledges at like age 23...but I guess Delta has sick employee benefits. Just recently found out I can now fly for free, besides taxes, anywhere in the world Delta/NW goes.
Someone may have misled you on this. My brother's oldest son lost his pass privileges when he turned 23. If things have changed, I'm sure he'd love to get them back.
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What typically are the best flights(times) to fly on for long distance flights (aka the ones that are more likely not to be fully booked) Delta I guess always bumps non-revs to first if there are seats open.
Used to be you could count on a wide open plane on the red-eye flights (departing the west coast after 10 pm), but now those are full too. If flying non-rev and the loads look bad, start early to give yourself the most backup flights. Best days of the week are Tuesday through Thursday. If you're going to the islands, it's a seasonal thing. Go down there during hurricane season; for reasons I can't explain, the loads drop off at this time of year.
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During typical turbulence the pilot just says "its gonna get bumpy, turning on the fasten seatbelt" but during a recent flight after all that the pilot suddenly came and and was all "flight attendants to your seats, flight attendants to your seats" - Do you guys know how rough the turbulence is going to be before you fly through? or is it just vague as in level 1,2,3,4,5.
The only on-board "turbulence sensor" is the weather radar and it will indicate intensity of precipitation using colors (green, yellow, orange, red, magenta). We'll fly through green, though happily fly around it if it's not too far. We'll start thinking of longer deviations for yellow and starting with orange we'll start to go to extremes to avoid it.
The turbulence is usually consistent with the intensity of the radar return, but it's not guaranteed and green returns can have a rough ride in them. If we find ourselves with no alternative and have to fly through yellow or worse, most pilots will sit the FAs down for their safety (and to get that heavy cart secured; no good will come of having that be a loose missile in the cabin).
The best source of turbulence information for the pilots is other pilots. Getting a pilot report on the ride from aircraft ahead on the same route is something we will actually ask for, from either the controller or directly from the other flight. Out over the ocean, we don't have VHF coverage and aren't talking to a controller so we monitor 121.5 mHZ (emergency freq) and also 123.45 which is the air-to-air freq, sort of the open party line out there. If turbulence is encountered, we might make an unsolicited broadcast on 123.45 of something like: "Delta 83 on Track Victor at Flight Level 330 started picking up light to moderate continuous chop beginning at 48 degrees West" Other aircraft will often now chime in with their own observations and someone ahead might even reply with something like "Delta 83, this is Continental 35. We're ahead of you on Victor at Flight Level 350. That turbulence lasted until about 38 West for us."
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Also my dad used to do the flights out to Grand Cayman back in the day which I guess involved some epic layovers. You ever fly any routes where it was known as kind of a party route?
We used to have a 24 hour layover in Cabo San Lucas where the company put us up at an all-inclusive resort. Good times.
Believe it or not, Dakar was getting a reputation as a party stop until the company started clamping down (it was really getting out of hand from what I heard: sex in the pool, naked chicken fights with the FAs in the rooms). This was a stopover point for Johannesburg and Cape Town and there were always four complete crews there at any given time (2 from NY; 2 from ATL), so that's over 40 people with nothing much to do.