My last post was about my dad and his thoughts on college and such related things. I followed up with him by asking how things are now that he is working in the industry. He has worked for two aviation companies: ABX and Atlas air. ABX was bought out by DHL while he was still employed there. He then left that job for a totally unrelated job at L3 Communications (KDI and Cincinnati Electronics devisions), but then ended up returning to aviation to work for Atlas air out of our home.
I asked him his thoughts on a couple topics, followed by some miscillaneous stuff. I though he said this well, so I decided to quote him.
ABX - loved it. Good people, smaller, hometown feeling company. Conservatively operated (before DHL). Maintenance work was done on site, making it easy to write instructions and see it first-hand. Pay could be a little better, but they were in the average range for industry. [I was] Able to fly company planes for free and sit in cockpit. 9/11 ruined that.
Atlas- best pay of any aviation job I know about, working from home. Disadvantages are not being based at an airport, most flying is done overseas, many maintenance vendors are overseas.
Favorite plane - commercial = Lockheed L1011. Very cutting-edge for its day, automated systems like auto-generated worked much better than competitor's. First planes I worked on.
Favorite military = SR-71. Also made by Lockheed. No plane has still matched it's performance in 49 years. Was a secret for years. Flew at mach 3. Special alloys, special fuel. Way ahead of it's time.
Extra thoughts - I think aviation has made the world smaller. No other travel gets people across the world more quickly. It's a shame that the "glory" and prestige of flying is gone. Now it's like a flying cattle car filled with nasty people in sweat pants. :) You can quote me on that!
(Blog post #2)
No comments:
Post a Comment