Another delightful airline experience, but all the fault of Mother Nature:

Made it to Midway with precisely 2 hours to check in the car and bags and go thru security, as planned, but  arrived at the gate only to see my flight was still on the ground at Newark and not due for another six hours... apparently ceiling was too low at KMDW for arrivals, so they were delaying their clearance. Terrific.

But I got a free ice cream cone for my trouble ($4 snack voucher).


I've decided that airport terminals need to be more pleasant places to camp out in without spending a lot of money...I'm sure many of you have worse horror stories, but I got my share and then some today.

Very glad I brought a good book, or I would have gone bonkers.

All for 1.5 hrs flight time... LOL.
The landing was a bit too smooth; I thought we were going to roll off the end... but not a bad flight .

Going to be doing a lot more of it in the coming months: got another restaurant to do in the Chicago area next month, and there are something like 50 more nationwide that we might get...  and I'm probably going to be the point man on all of them.

If I get my instrument ticket by early next year and convince the boss to throw me a little dough towards the rentals, I might just be able to enjoy these trips...

Sounds like the new job is working out.

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I hate hanging around in airport terminals. It's all the faffing around on the ground that takes the time. This has always been the worst part about air travel & with all the security it must be worse now than ever. Flight times are relatively short once you're on the aircraft & in the air.

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That might be fine in ideal conditions. Going by the photos Sean posted of his recent trips the delays were caused by some awful weather. In this case I would rather leave it to the pros & put up with the holdups in airport terminals.

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I realise that & I'm quite confident that Sean is sensible enough to know when it's safe to fly. I suppose my main point here is that if anyone is working to a strict schedule it's just possible they might take a chance on the conditions to avoid being late on the job. At least with an airline you have a good excuse for any delays.

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Agreed but on the other hand, airliners regularly fly in all sorts of weather conditions that would keep GA aircraft firmly grounded. Especially at this time of year & no matter how skilful or qualified the pilot. I was thinking of Sean's recent trip to Niagara Falls. I'm not sure it would be very pleasant flying a 172 in these conditions. http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=photos;action=display;num=...

I've considered talking to the CEO about buying a plane... he's only got staff in Orlando and NYC, but projects all over the US and a couple in Europe... they spend a fortune every year on airline tickets. These trips are often thrown together at the last minute, and the airline tickets are not cheap.

But it can't hurt to ask...

And sure, why not make a deal where they'd pay me what an equivalent ticket would cost...they'd ultimately save in down-time, etc... if I'm traveling during normal business hours, including sitting around at an airport, they have to pay me.
They'd have to pay me for my time flying, either eway... so I'd have the bonus of sort of getting paid to fly (although not technically so as per the FARs). AND I could write off much of my share of the flight expenses on my tax return...

As for the utility of it for work:

The possibility of having to cancel a GA flight when it's too late to get an airline ticket does make it tricky, but I think in general it would work.  Lots of people do it in the US. An instrument rating is a must for any real utility, but it is done often by people who must travel for business.

But even a non-IR pilot has plenty of opportunities...
The trip to Niagara Falls, for example: on the way out, it was beautiful VMC, and I know for a fact that flying direct to Niagara Falls instead of KBUF, I'd have made it to the hotel faster door-to-door...and cheaper. And my parking at 47N or KLDJ would be free.
The return trip would have been fine, because with "my own" plane waiting at an airport justr a couple of miles from my hotel, I could have left much earlier that day and avoided the snowstorm entirely. See my pictures at the falls- those were taken that morning, my work finished and me ready to go if I only could...it was lovely flying weather all the way from there to the East Coast, the storm being a "laker" coming from the NW. It was excruciating. I'd have booked a rental for that one-day trip if only I'd been assigned to it earlier !

On this trip to Chicago, again, conditions were very workable for a light single with minimal IFR equipment on the trip west (prob'ly could've done it VFR below those clouds), and again I'd have had more scheduling flexibility to choose the best weather window, especially for the return flight, where being stuck with an evening departure meant I was forced to wait until conditons were really bad. AND in that case, my delay was caused by the plane being in Newark, unable to get a clearance into MDW... not sitting on the ramp at Schaumburg ready to go whenever I was ready.

I expect it would be much the same as using a company car.

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If you're getting paid to be a pilot by a third party... flight instructing, banner towing, sight-seeing, etc. ...  You need a commercial rating. You can even ferry passengers, on your own, 50nm or less. Now.. if you work for a company that carries passengers on flights longer than 50nm... you "can" do it without an ATP rating.. but the company you work for has to sanction it (and their insurance has to OK it).

As far as getting yourself around while being paid by a company. The company is paying you for your time (whether in your own plane or on a commercial flight) serving their business. They aren't hiring you as a pilot (this might get tricky if you take a co-worker along), anymore than they're hiring you as a taxi dirver, if they pay you mileage for taking your own car on a business trip..

Edit: I didn't see the two previous posts while typing.. sorry to be redundant..