When the alarm goes off a few hours before the sun stretches its rays across my bedroom, my eye wanders across the room to my luggage, which pretty much is always ready to go. I accepted a flight which requires me to fly to Miami from my home base. So I am booked on a commercial flight “out of Dodge”.
I will be flying a privately owned Gulfstream IV from KMIA to TNCM. The owner requires the crew to be on standby in order to fly back at a moment’s notice and estimated his stay to be about three days. With a little luck we will catch some rays while we wait. My commercial flight is slightly delayed coming into KMIA.
Somewhere in between I also managed to grab some breakfast-to-go, after which a flight plan was filed. When you work through a crew leasing company you don’t always work with the same people, which can be as good and bad.
The flight goes off without a hitch and we land on the idyllic Caribbean island somewhat behind schedule due to the owner running a little later than expected.
We ended up staying for 2 nights, which I personally very much enjoyed. While waiting for the owner to give us a definite departure date, Another offer for a contract trip was received via NVOII, which I regretfully had to decline, but such is the life of a corporate pilot.
When things do not go as planned, we like to joke amongst ourselves that pilots are “living the life”, which is usually meant pretty sarcastically, but in my case it is true. I love the adventure and I love the challenge.
By the time we reach back I have two options for my next trip. Actually, I had three. I could always choose to say no…
