The First Year on the Line — Year’s End (Machines translated from the Chinese version below)

On the last day of 2025, the original plan was simple: deadhead flight to JFK, then operate JFK–Boston and be home by 10 p.m., just in time to ring in the New Year. Instead, I’m sitting at Gate 23 in Buffalo, watching heavy snow fall outside the window while de-icing trucks work nonstop. The delay, surprisingly, isn’t weather-related. The captain and flight attendants are already at the gate. The first officer was supposed to fly in from JFK, but a mechanical issue forced that aircraft to divert back to JFK. We’re one crew member short—two out of three—so we can’t go anywhere. Flights at the neighboring gates are being canceled one by one. We’re all hoping the company can find a first officer so we can make it to JFK, then finally fly home and welcome the New Year properly. With time on my hands, it feels like the right moment to finish this year-end reflection.

2025 is coming to a close. This year felt profoundly different from those before it—constant motion, constant momentum, as if something invisible kept pushing me forward. There was rarely time to pause and look out the window. Only now, flipping through the scattered journals I left here throughout the year, do I realize that those casual fragments, stitched together, read almost like someone else’s story. I haven’t written a serious year-end reflection in many years voluntarily. Looking back, the amount of change packed into this single year far exceeded what I expected. To reach this point in life—nearly halfway through its course—and still experience a year this dense, intense, and forward-moving is, in itself, something rare.

About a year ago, around this same time, I received a phone call I had waited for a long time—yet never fully dared to believe. HR called to inform me to start on February 11. I’d heard too many versions of this story from others to understand the uncertainty behind it. A notification like this does not always end as expected. The market for airline pilots at the time had cooled down significantly. Airlines weren’t short on pilots any longer. After weighing everything carefully, I chose to hold the news on the down low. For a while, only my wife and I knew. Everyone else, including family, only found out at the beginning of February. At my previous job, I saved up enough vacation time to give myself flexibility. Until things truly settled, being cautious felt like leaving myself enough wiggle room.

The waiting itself was quiet. Communication with HR was minimal; nearly two months passed with no substantial updates. Most of what I learned about airline training came from piecing together bits of information from online forums. It wasn’t until the final weekend of January that I finally received instructions to attend ATP/CTP training in Dallas. By then, after so much mental preparation, it didn’t feel exciting—more like the natural next step. I arrived in DFW in early February and met twelve classmates just like me. One week of lectures of intense information on airline ops, safety, etc., culminated in the ATP written exam. The same day the test ended, we barely had time to exhale before being sent straight to the company headquarters in Indianapolis for indoc. There, we met four more classmates who had finished earlier. Our group of seventeen was finally complete—people from across the country, with different backgrounds and accents, yet strikingly similar journeys. Most of us had come up through flight instructing, and for nearly everyone, this was the first real encounter with jet aircraft.

From there, time seemed to fast-forward. Two dense weeks of classroom training poured rules, procedures, and airline philosophy into us all at once. It was during this phase that I clearly realized how different airline flying is from general aviation—same sky, completely different world. After that, we were sent home for two weeks of self-study on aircraft systems, then brought back to HQ for Systems Validation. Only then did training truly enter the phase of how to fly this airplane. We moved from SHIFT to FPT, and the pace accelerated noticeably. Training also shifted from a full-class format to partnered teams, each progressing independently. Different instructors, different rhythms, different outcomes. Matt and I, having prepared heavily early on, moved quickly and found ourselves sharing notes and experiences with the rest of the class along the way.

After the Procedures Validation came the Knowledge Validation. By this stage, most pilots had already gone through four or five orals and knew the pressure well. Everyone prepared relentlessly, never knowing which angle the examiner might choose. Almost everyone walked out saying the same thing: it wasn’t as bad as expected. The real tension came with the simulator. The full-motion sim closely replicated real-world operations, with a heavy focus on abnormal and emergency scenarios. Eight intense sessions followed. Some moments didn’t go smoothly, but in the end, the two of us completed the entire sim training without additional training, passed Maneuvers Validation and the final LOE, and earned our ATP. Nine weeks—from zero airline experience to being qualified as an airline pilot. Looking back, it still feels unreal how fast it all happened.

In late April, training transitioned into IOE. This time, it wasn’t simulator lights and scripted scenarios, but real flights, real weather, and real passengers. Four trips, twenty-six legs, right in the middle of spring on the East Coast—where gusty winds seemed to be the daily backdrop. Fortunately, the weather usually gave us just enough margin. On May 8, I passed my final line check and officially went online.

Choosing the Boston base was initially just about proximity to home, but it turned into a small stroke of good fortune. With new routes expanding the base and a bit of timing luck in seniority, I ended up better positioned than expected. I spent only two weeks on reserve in June, held a line by July, and continued to receive solid schedules each month after. In hindsight, it feels like simply making the right choice at the right time.

Since officially flying the line at the end of May, everything has been steady. Early on, nearly every detail had to be written down—taxi instructions, frequencies, fuel numbers could be missed. Complex airports made me tense before taxi, worried about keeping up with the controllers. The notebook was always close at hand; only after repeated checks did things feel settled. Gradually, those notes moved from paper into memory. Checklists became second nature. Systems knowledge turned more intuitive—when to use which mode for efficiency or comfort, when to relax, and when to pay closer attention. Taxiing, once stressful, became routine. Attention finally shifted from individual details back to the big picture of the operation. Proficiency didn’t arrive all at once; it quietly accumulated through repetition. Much of the learning happened simply by observing—absorbing captains' feedback, crew coordination, and cockpit flow. There were no dramatic moments, just repeated executions of tasks that looked ordinary but weren’t simple. Familiar routes, crews developing good collegial relationships, and the countless unseen roles—dispatch, maintenance, cabin crew—supporting everything behind the scenes.

And standing here now, at the very end of the year, waiting at a snowy gate, it feels like the right moment to acknowledge how much of this journey was never a solo effort.

Total time 560 hours Mileage 149522 miles Trips 37 Legs 296 Aircrafts operated 109 Airports visited 49 Overnight cities 33 Hotels stays 46 hotels for a total of 147days

2025年的最后一天，本来的计划是乘友航航班去肯尼迪，然后执飞肯尼迪到波士顿的航班，晚上10点就可以落地回家了。可现在在布法罗机场23号登机口，窗外大雪，除雪车全力以赴，但飞机晚点。竟不为天气，机长和乘务员已经在登机口，副驾本应该从肯尼迪飞来却因为飞机问题半路返航，备降回了肯尼迪，三缺一，走不了。旁边登机口的航班在一班一班取消，希望他们公司找到副驾，让我们顺利飞去肯尼迪，晚上可以顺利飞回家跨年！正好用这个时间下这篇年终笔记。

2025 年眼看就要过去了。这一年和以往很不一样——一直在跑，一直在赶，像是被什么力量推着往前飞，很少真正停下来看看窗外。等到年末翻看这一年来零零散散记下的笔记，才意识到，那些当时随手写下的片段，连在一起，竟像是在读另一个人的故事。很多年没有认真写过年终总结了。回头再看，这一年发生的改变，比预想中要多得多。走到人生将近一半的航程，还能迎来这样一个密集、紧张，却不断向前展开的年份，本身就已经很难得了。

大概一年前的这个时候，我接到了那个等了很久、却始终不敢完全当真的电话。航空公司 HR 通知我，2 月 11 日报到。这样的电话，在别人那里听过太多次，也太清楚其中的不确定性。通知并不等于结果，计划也随时可能被现实改写。更何况当时的行业环境并不明朗，各家航司并不缺人，民航飞行员的市场正在悄然收紧。反复权衡之后，我选择了按兵不动，把真正的准备留到 2 月以后开始，把这件事先放在心里，不声张、不铺陈。那段时间，只有我和爱人两个人知道这个消息，其他所有人——包括家人——都是等到二月份之后才慢慢知道的。我在原单位也提前攒够了假期，给自己留足了余地。事情尚未尘埃落定之前，谨慎一点，在自己心里多留了一条退路。

等待的过程并不热闹。和公司 HR 的沟通少得可怜，两个月几乎都没有什么实质性的更新，只能靠自己在各个论坛里搜集到的零星信息，拼凑出一个民航培训的大概模样。直到 1 月最后一个周末，才终于收到了前往达拉斯参加 ATP/CTP 培训的通知。那一刻，可能是做足了前期的心理建设，说不上激动，更像是理所应当。2 月初抵达达拉斯，见到了 12 位和我一样的新同学。一周的 PPT，一周的高强度信息输入，顺利通过了 ATP 笔试。笔试结束当天，大家几乎来不及松口气，就被送往印第安纳的公司总部，开始入职前培训。在那里，又见到了提前完成笔试的 4 位同学，17 个人的小班终于凑齐。来自全国各地的人聚在一起，背景不同、口音不同，但经历却出奇地相似——大多数人都是从飞行教员一步一步走到今天，对喷气式飞机，都是第一次真正接触。

接下来的时间像是被调到了快进档。两周密集的 PPT，把民航体系里林林总总的规则、程序和理念一股脑儿塞进来，也是在这段时间里，我第一次如此清楚地意识到：民航和通航，虽然同在空中，却是两套截然不同的世界。随后，公司安排我们回家两周自学飞机系统，再回到印第安纳马上考核，然后训练才真正进入“怎么飞这架飞机”的阶段。从最初在电脑前反复演练 SOP，到后来进入平板模拟机，节奏明显快了起来。也是在这个阶段，训练也从“全班一起走”变成了“两人一组、各自推进”。不同的小组，不同的教员，不同的节奏，最后的进度自然也不尽相同。我和 Matt 因为前期准备得比较充分，一路高歌猛进走在最前，也顺势承担起了整理笔记、和同班分享经验的任务。

标准操作流程实操考试之后，紧接着就是口试。走到这个阶段的飞行员，大多都经历过最少四五次口试，也都深知其中的压力。大家在课余时间反复准备、反复推演，谁也不知道考官会从哪个角度切入，但几乎每个人考完之后，都会说一句类似的话：好像没有想象中那么难。真正让人绷紧神经的，还是模拟机。全动模拟机几乎复刻了真实运行环境，大量课程集中在异常和紧急状况处置。八堂模拟机课，强度很高。过程中当然也遇到过一些不太顺的时候，但最终，我们两个还是在没有额外加训的情况下，走完了这一段流程，顺利通过了机动动作验证和最后的航线运行评估，成功取得了航线运输驾驶员执照。短短九周，从零经验小白到具备民航飞行员资格，回头再看，确实快得有些不真实。

四月下旬，训练进入初始航线运行经验阶段。这一次，不再是模拟机里的灯光和程序，而是真正的航班、真实的天气、真实的乘客。一共四趟行程，26 个航段，正值美东春季，阵风几乎成了每天的背景音，好在大多数时候，天气还是给了我们一点余地。5 月 8 日，通过了最后的航线检查，正式上线。

当初选择波士顿基地，只是因为离家近，却没想到这又成为了一次小确幸。公司因为新增航线扩充基地，而我因为入职时间的巧合，在资历排序中反而靠前，最终只在 6 月备份了两周，7 月便顺利持线，之后的每个月都能拿到一条不错的线。回头看，只是在对的时间做了对的选择。

自五月底正式上线以来，飞到现在，一路平安。最开始的那段时间，几乎每一个细节都要靠笔头记下来：滑行指令、通信频率、油量需求，一样都不敢漏。遇到结构复杂的机场，滑行前总会不自觉地绷紧神经，生怕听错一句、走错一个转弯。那时的驾驶舱里，笔记本几乎不离手，起飞前、落地后，总要反复确认，心里才踏实。后来，这些东西慢慢从纸面移到了脑子里。各个阶段的检查单记得越来越熟，流程不再需要反复对照；对飞机系统的理解也多了几分直觉，什么时候用哪种模式最省油最舒适，什么时候可以放松一下，什么时候需要自己多盯一眼，逐渐摸索出了一套顺手的逻辑。曾经让人紧张的滑行，如今也变得轻车熟路，注意力也终于可以从细节中抽身，放回到整体节奏上。熟练并不是一瞬间发生的，而是在一次次重复中，悄悄站到了自己这边。更多的时候，是在驾驶舱里观察、学习，把机长的提醒、机组之间的配合，一点一点消化下来。没有什么惊心动魄的时刻，更多是一次次看似平凡却并不简单的完成。渐渐熟悉的航线，逐渐形成默契的机组，还有那些在背后默默支撑运行的调度、机务、空服和无数看不见的岗位。

航线飞行的日子，也因此多了一层生活的质感。有些过夜的城市成了意外的惊喜，也是在那些短暂的停留里，慢慢意识到自己正在适应这种生活。有些城市反复出现，哪怕只是从酒店到机场的一小段路，也渐渐变得熟悉。比如几乎每个月都会去一次诺福克，沿着海边的那条栈道，吹着海风，看船厂里正在维修的军舰——同样的地点，却总能看到不一样的船，不一样的人。也渐渐有了自己偏爱的餐馆，每次路过都会去坐一会儿，但又刻意提醒自己，不要把所有地方都变成固定选项，鼓励自己多看看不一样的东西：走进一家没去过的小店，拐进一条陌生的街道，或者抽空去看一个新的博物馆。有重复，有变化，我便学着在这种变化里，把生活慢慢安放下来。

走到这里再回头看，这一年里发生的很多事，都不是单靠一个人完成的。能在这样的节点，顺利起飞、平稳巡航，本身就已经值得珍惜。最后，还是记录一下数字吧，给这一年一个具体的坐标。

总飞行时数 560 总里程 240632公里 航程 37 航段 296 飞过的飞机 109 去过的机场 49 过夜城市 33 住过的酒店 46家酒店一共住了147天