Thursday, Sep 4, 2008
Lives of the not so rich and famous: What do pilots do when they're not in the air?
Apr 16, 2004 | The voting period for the Ask the Pilot readers' poll has been extended another week. Please send your choice of favorite and/or least favorite airline prior to next Friday, April 23 to Ask the Pilot. Thanks to everybody who has voted thus far. Responses have been, let's just say, emotional.
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There is no such thing as a typical pilot's schedule. Years of service determine how often a pilot flies, where he flies, and how long he gets to stay there. Having resided on a few seniority lists myself, in both high and low standing, I have fond memories of three-day layovers at the JW Marriott in Mexico City, where the guestrooms showcase exposed beams, Aztec ceramics and floor-to-ceiling views of the mountains (smog permitting). Then again, I get the shakes remembering nine-hour rests at ashtray hovels in Lansing, Moline, and Bloomington.
I once spent an entire month's rotation paired with a captain so distrustful of our usual accommodations that he carried a private stash of sheets and pillowcases on every trip. "Are you an idiot? Haven't you ever heard of scabies!" (This same fellow, maybe it's worth mentioning, also packed a supply of antiseptic wipes in his shirt pocket -- for disinfecting the rims of soda cans.)
There's a presumption -- a holdover, maybe, from the industry's glamour days -- that airline crews are given the poshest digs in town. A frequent flyer once asked me which of the big-name chains, in my opinion, employed the most helpful concierges. I had to look up "concierge" just to make sure it meant what I thought it meant. More often than not we're sent to perimeter properties -- decent places, but the kind of fast food hotel you find everywhere. You've seen their Lego-shaped contours and over-fertilized lawns all over the country: Fairfield, Courtyard, Hampton. My ballpoint pen collection is like a drive down I-95 or a loop around La Guardia, and I possess an unsettling ability to tell a Holiday Inn Express from a La Quinta by the color of the in-room carpeting.
The majority of layovers leave little or no time for sightseeing. Rest and recovery, not local attractions, are the tasks at hand, and thus pilots come to think of their destinations not as cities, but as rooms, beds, and amenities. "Where are you off to?" a colleague might ask.
"Sheraton."
In my cargo-flying days I would choose my trips in strict deference to three criteria: the tastefulness of wallpaper, the firmness of a mattress, and access to free food. Forty-eight hours in New York are arguably more fun than 11 hours in Dallas. That is, until you've spent back-to-back nights at the Sunrise Executive Hotel, out in Lynbrook near Kennedy airport. When the Hyatt at the San Francisco airport stopped allowing us into their executive lounge for hors d'oeuvres, I began bidding Miami instead, where the complimentary breakfast at the AmeriSuites included pancakes and fresh fruit.
Those fortunate enough -- i.e. senior enough -- to hold international runs tend to receive more upscale lodgings. Before the implosion of my career in '01, I'd spent the better part of three years flying back and forth to Europe, chiefly to Brussels, Belgium, home to my airline's main cargo hub and most enjoyable layover.
In Brussels we were spoiled. I figure I've logged close to a hundred nights there in the Hilton on Boulevard de Waterloo, where the facecloths are folded like lotus flowers and the man who comes to fix your toilet is wearing a suit. We'd get the executive floor, up on 23, with CD players and a vista of the imposing, if perpetually scaffold-enshrouded, Palace of Justice. Even on a three-day stint I felt bad leaving the room. Why bother sightseeing when I could lounge around in my Hilton bathrobe watching the BBC and slipping out at cocktail hour to the exec lounge's open bar? And then, each morning, the sumptuous garden-side buffet: full American breakfast with omelets cooked to order.
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