Died And Went To Heaven

"Died and went to heaven", "in hog heaven", these were things my old first sergeant said all the time.  He usually applied it to a situation in which someone had come upon a pretty good deal.  That is how I would describe becoming a captain on Boeing 757s and 767s at UPS.  

I remember when those airplanes first came on the scene, it was around the time I started being an airline pilot at Pacific Express.  I was flying old, beat up BAC 1-11s and these newer planes were way off my scope at the time.  I was hearing things about what they did and it was like science fiction to me.  Now nearly 15 years later, I was flying them.  

At first, there was one domicile for these planes at UPS.  That means all the pilots on that plane were on one bid.  The domestic and international flying was all done by that domicile.  Later, the company would split off all the international flying to another bidding domicile and later there would be another in Ontario CA and one in Miami, for Latin America flying.  When I started flying them and the 767 was brought onboard, I was able to bid some trans Pacific flights to Narita, the Tokyo international airport.  I had done this before on the classic 747s. 

The new planes, with their glass cockpits and flight management systems made the work much easier. I wasn't too worried about having 2 fewer engines, because the engines on these jets were much more reliable.  I had been involved in about 3 engine shutdowns inflight on the Whale.  The good thing was that you could proceed to your destination on 3 engines on a 4 engine airplane.  If you lost an engine on a twin, you had to land at the nearest suitable airport.  In nearly 15 years flying the 75/76 and a year on the 747-400, I never had to shut down an engine.  In 4 years on the DC-8 as an engineer, I never shut down one of the CFM 56 engines they had been retrofitted for.  The newer turbo fan engines were becoming very reliable.

As I said before, income was increasing and eventually, I was making much more than I had ever made before.  Except for the challenges of working for UPS and flying mostly at night, this was becoming the career of my dreams.  I was in hog heaven.  Ol' Top would have agreed.