zippinbye

My experience as a junior West Coast 7ER/A was the opposite. As the NRT hub spooled down, my preferred flying went away (who doesn't like 34 hrs at the beach on a Pacific Island?), I became a charter guy in order to break-up the MCO and Central America redeye monotony. Most often these charter trips came to me through open time and they were carrying a team from a Pacific Time game back East to home, so normally a later p.m. op, but not really a redeye. Nice hotel to rest up for the DH home, or Ironman it home for the win and a bonus day off. Also, a lot of empty repos to get the jet east, often daylight ops. I'm sure my memories blur the MLB/NBA/NFL gigs, although I do recall particular trips quite clearly. Sometimes short hops, like MDW-ORD or EWR-JFK and generally fun flying, especially if you find "threading the needle" at biz jet locales like HPN "fun!" The food was simply amazing, and offered with generosity after the clients had their fill (day-old lobstah anybody? But of course - I'm a garbage disposal). Mil charters, honor flights and college sports were excellent as well. Clearly with the other comments, the charter stuff is a mixed bag, but my time at it was all good. Like all things here, having choices is awesome!

Trip7

Another reason I'm looking at the 7ER. Some of that charter flying looks pretty cool and the food is just icing on the cake.

2StgTurbine

If you love charter passengers showing up 2 hours late... then yeah sure those charter trips look fun. The cluster of getting from the passenger terminal to the GA ramp is also "fun." And the food isn't worth it either. You want some old bagels and bag of chips? Do you want to pick through a fruit plate after all the FAs have been through it?

CX500T

Anyone else not able to see the last page unless you reply?

CX500T

Some charters are AWESOME.

Basketball teams, hit or miss.. Some super cool guys and nice..

Others.. Well they are playing poker with more money on the table than a green slip ninja 350A makes in a year.. And are playing 3 hours after landing.. After the sun has come up. And there's no sign of it ending.

Hockey, they have been rowdy, but cool.

Baseball teams, as a whole have been awesome to work with. I flew the Padres owners around as they were taking AAA and AA players and some prospects to Mexico for exhibition games. Total class act people. Owners invited us to the owners box next time we were in town for a game. I went to the owners box for the San Diego Supercross, because he was there for the race, and recognized me when I was in the pits, and brought me and all the people I was working with (Veterans' group that is Motocross related) up to the owner's booth. And made a most generous donation to the foundation. Growing up in Boston, I was the last person you'd think would be a Padres fan, but I will cheer on the Padres, unless they are playing the Red Sox.

Trip7

Fantastic perspective. Thanks for sharing. I flew several UGA Charters on the 717 and they were an absolute blast even though the working hours could be quite strange.

tcco94

I’m a diehard sports fan but I just never understood what’s cool about the sports charters since we have virtually no interaction with the teams or players. The food is good. But mid season charters are some of the worst trip builds in this company. Back side of clock flying, multiple day overs, short layovers, repo planes, waiting for people always delayed, etc. Best is when you land and NBA team won’t get off because they’re playing cards at 230 in the morning and coaches are already driving home. Like the plane is their personal casino and they’ll sit there for hours if someone doesn’t kick them off.

Never been offered anything like box seats, seats in general, nothing. Cardinals did give me a grocery bag of their leftover Coors Light though. To me the whole thing is so overrated minus the very few golden trip builds. Like deadheading around to fly 1 leg. Or the rare day charters. I’ll do stuff like that but I’ll never seek out a charter just for the flying of a sports team.

NFL charters I’ve never done. Not sure how those go.

tcco94

It really depends. There are 1% charters where you get chick fil a catering and that will be told to the other fleets like a norm. Most of the time is those burritos we’ve all eaten 100 times. It’s like getting the meatballs going to Hawaii. Every damn time. But I still eat it…

also the snacks are top notch candy/junk food. It’s just whatever isn’t eaten by the teams. But I’ve gotten some really good snacks from charters. And there’s enough fruit plates, salsa chips, etc that you can find the untouched **** on your 2:30am 3 hour repo flight while the FA’s go to the hotel for a 2 day layover. Enjoy your 12 hour reset in Atlanta!

tcco94

LAX isn’t much of an NFL charter base anymore. We do majority NBA/NHL and that is almost exclusively night flight and 2 leg redeye flying. Canada in winter, sometimes having long layovers in Canada since they don’t repo into NBA as much. NBA charters suck because we do almost the whole league, so they always need the plane repo’d somewhere after you land.

What you are describing is <5% of our charter flying. It’s 3-5 day trips where you go from redeye mid rotation to day layovers, to normal passenger ops. It’s not very lucrative and definitely the most junior ER trips.

MrMustache

YES. Charters suck