Justins Logbook

St. Simons island GA

2009-07-01T11:19:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was another long one. Did a trip to St. Simons island on the
east coast of Georgia. I forget they even have coastline there but
they do! Anyway, the trip was in the baron so it took about three
hours to get there and three and a half home. The trip out is not so
bad because a passenger was sitting up front with me. However, three
and a half hours home with nobody to talk with but atc is a long time.
I did get a chance to get some real seafood though. Raw oysters and a
shrimp po' boy. Yummm!

Not always fun and games.

2009-06-23T08:40:00.001-07:00

Had a pick up in Atlanta yesterday. That meant a five am wake up to be
wheels up a little after six. Always real fun flying directly at the
sun in the mornings. Not to mention being single pilot in Atlanta in
a jet can be a handfull! "551 golf echo the airports at ten o'clock
and two miles, sorry we left you at five thousand feet, if I clear you
can you make it down?" Me -"sure". Good thing a citation will come
down like a brick if you need to!
After that excitement it was off to beautiful Russelville where I got
to sit in a chair for 7 1/2 hours. Those of you that think my job is
always going somewhere fun, eating well and enjoying myself, it's not
(always). Just try sitting in the Russellville airport for that long.
I finished my book in the first hour. I nearly ran my iPhone out of
battery the next hour. It was too hot to go walk around. Board out of
my mind. Then a quick trip back to Atlanta and home to Jonesboro.
Almost made it back in time for my softball game. Congrats to the guys
for a big 27-6 win!

Great co-pilot

2009-06-21T06:24:00.000-07:00

Got a quick pic of Courtney and me flying back from Little Rock.

Busy, sad day

2009-06-20T16:40:00.001-07:00

Today has been an interesting day. Started out back at the airport
trying to clean the seats in the citation (without much success). Then
I made a couple of trips to Mountain Home. A friend died at the lake
on Friday and we were bringing his wife, some friends, and their
aircraft back to Jonesboro. Please say a prayer for the family of
Brown Lacy.
After leaving Mt home the second time we (Courtney has been able to
fly with me all day) came to Little Rock to pick up a plane I have a
trip in on Monday. It is a single pilot certified citation II.

Cheated death again!

2009-06-19T21:06:00.001-07:00

Well, I survived another day at the office. I flew to little rock,
picked up se of our bankers, took them to Greenville MS. Went to eat
at the original "Doe's eat place." Took them back to L. R. Came home.
1.7 hrs flight time. Great trip except the passengers spilled juice
from their tommollys on two seats. No it 11:00 pm and I get to clean
airplane swats for a while:(

Some pics from Vegas trip.

2009-06-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

I went to Vegas for 4 days a couple of weeks ago. Here's some pics!

Got it figured out

2009-06-17T15:25:00.001-07:00

Well here I am in Dallas (McKinney) and I finally got time to figure
out how to update the blog from my phone. Hopefully I will be able to
update a little more easily a d more often.

Justin Shipley
AirSouth Inc.
870-761-1836
justin@airsouth1.com

Climate Shock

2009-01-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

The last two days of flying have been a little shocking to the system. We took off at 7am on Tuesday the 27th for a trip from Jonesboro to Galveston, Houston (Sugarland), and overnight in Dallas. This afternoon we will head back to Jonesboro.

I was a little worried about the weather taking off in Jonesboro. We had clouds at 600 feet and freezing rain. These are not the best conditions for flying, but being freezing rain I knew the atmosphere would warm up quickly as we climed through 1500 feet or so. The other worry was fog at Galveston. Being a 3 hour trip I figured that the fog would burn off by the time we got there so I was not to worried. So we blasted off for warmer climates.

And boy, did we find them!

Partly cloudy and 78 degrees. I spent the whole time we were there outside. In fact, because the airport looks like a ghost town and they don't have a crew car, I walked about 5 miles to get to a KFC and back just so I could get a bite to eat.

After enjoying some much needed sunshine it was off to Sugarland, a suburb of Houston. Same temps, but mostly cloudy and windy. Then came the big shock. From there to McKinny (NorthDallas) the temps fell to 30 degrees with freezing rain again. Today it has warmed up and the sun came out so I was able to get some neat pics of the ice on the trees. Hopefully we can make it back to Jonesboro before the ice re-freezes tonight.

Quick update

2009-01-14T07:32:00.001-08:00

Just as I finished the last post, here come the snowplows again.

A long time coming

2009-01-14T07:09:00.000-08:00

Well it has been a long time since I made a post, but there is a reason for that. December is a pretty slow month for me. I usually deal with business travel and the Holidays usually slow that down quite a bit. Add to that some bad weather that cancelled a couple of my trips and I really didn't do much. It has started to pick up the last few weeks though starting with the U of A vs, Texas basketball game. Sorry, all I got is a bad cell phone pic. We had great seats, in fact we sat directly behind the parents of several of the players.

Since then, I have done trips to Longview, Corpus Cristi, and College Station Tx. Yesterday I went to Cincinnati and Columbus OH. Yeah, Beautiful Columbus Ohio!

Yes, that is a snowplow on the runway outside my hotel. Actually, I wish I could have taken a better picture, there were 12 plows in a row running down the runway to clear it. These people really know how to deal with snow!

Here is one last pic for this update, my typical blogging office space. Gotta love the high speed wireless in hotels.

For the fans

2008-11-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

Okay. You are right. I got lazy on the last one. Actually the reason I did not post pictures on the last post was that I didn't think they turned out very good. But because I'm here to please...

Here is a shot of the restaurant. Horrible picture but you get the drift.

The inside was kinda cool. Seating for 20-30 people. Everyone else gets to stand at the counters. You can see some of the merchandise that they sell on the shelves. You just grab a burger and belly up to the bar wherever there is room. This was just before we got our food. By the time we left the line came all the way down the aisle!!

2008-11-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

Well here I am bored again so I will update you on the last week or so. Last Monday was an out and back trip to Naples Florida to pick up a gentleman from Little Rock along with his wife and mother. The trip itself was nothing spectacular but the reason for going was a little strange. See this guy ownes a Diamond Jet. The diamond is alot like the Hawker/beechjet 400 that I fly. (Older with smaller engines and less fuel capacity. ) It seems that after takeoff, climbing through about 5000ft. the pilots felt a strange wiggle and heard something. They turned off the autopilot and checked the controls and everything seemed fine. Occasionally they just hiccup. So they continued from Little Rock all the way to Naples. after landing they got out of the airplane and found that the upper cowling for on of the engines was GONE! Missing. Not there. Further inspection showed that two screws were missing, but the rest were all still in their holes. It must have just ripped off over the screws that were still there. So Lance and I picked up two mechanics in Little Rock and went down and dropped them off, picked up the passengers and came back to Little Rock. Needless to say the passengers were a little on edge for the trip. Cant say I blame them.

I spent last Wednesday and Thursday in beautiful Fort Worth TX. Hey, at least it wasn't Dallas again. Phillip Gilespie went with me in the Citation II for that trip. We decided that we would find the best burger places in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex area to eat at. After some research online we found Kicaid's burgers and grocery. This joint ranks in the top ten of all burger joints on some websites. It did not disappoint. That was pretty much the highlight of that trip.

That brings me to today. Today the alarm went off at 4:00. Out the door by 4:30 to the airport to get my flight bag and my bosses spare car. Then the 2:30 drive (due to rain and traffic) to Little Rock to pick up the Law Offices of Gary Green's airplane and one passenger. They have a Citation II that is single pilot certified. Airborne at 7:30 to Springfield MO, then on to Colombia MO. Hopefully the mediation won't take long and well be out of here by two. Then it's back to Little Rock via Springfield. By then Lance should be back to Little Rock from New York (or wherever he is) and we get to drive to Jonesboro. Nothing like spending 5 hours in a car to fly for less than 2 hours!

2008-11-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

The last few weeks have been pretty busy for me at work. Some of the trips that I have done in the past have given me a chance to snap a few pictures on my phone of some things that I found interesting. You see, when we are out on a trip, my job is to get people where they want to be and then home safely. However, the time between those flights is pretty much mine to do what I want.

Take for example last Friday. The trip was to Manasses VA, just outside of Washington D.C. Lance (one of the other pilots at Airsouth) and I were to pick up three passengers at 7:00 pm. We left Jonesboro empty and because we figured we could kill a few hours there better than we could in Jonesboro, we left at lunch. By 2:00 we were in Manasses. If you are a history buff, you may remember that Manasses was the site of the first major battle of the civil war.

(Aside - the confederates named battles after the town nearby, Manasses. The union usually named the battle after a nearby body of water - Bull Run)

So Lance and I decided to get a look at this Historic Battle Field.

This is where Thomas Jackson rode up to rally troops. Another Soldier said "There stands Jackson as a stone wall..."thus he became Gen."Stonewall" Jackson.

Here are some pics from other recent trips

You probably know this guy. This was the day of the Obama rally in Jonesboro. We picked up some staffers in Pine Bluff and brought them to Jonesboro. After the rally we took some of the Congressmen back to Little Rock. The best part was getting to talk to the secret service guy on the airplane Clinton was on. Oh, the airplane in the background is the Hawker 4oo aka Beechjet that I fly.

This is the Mackinac Bridge. It connects the Northern Peninsula of Michigan to the South. It is HUGE!

A cool covered Bridge near Lewisberg WV.

A good thing the leaves were pretty, because there is NOTHING to do in Lewisberg. We were there for 4 Days. Lest you think that all I do is drive around and look at cool stuff, let me say that some days are not so much fun. My day today started at the airport at 6 am. From Jonesboro it was a slow 3 hours to Galveston TX. Here are the pictures I was able to get before the rain got to bad.

Here was one of the buildings at the airport. Apparently, this is what most of Galveston looks like after Ike.

From about 10:00 until 2:00 pm this was my view.
I am typing this in a Holiday Inn at McKinney Texas. McKinney is probably my most common destination. It is a suburb of Dallas that was apparently nothing a few years ago and has exploded over the last ten years. Optus communications has an office in North Dallas and the airport here at McKinney is a lot easier to get in and out of, both by the air and on the ground. Anyway, today's trip started at 6:00, airborne at 7:00. I made it to the hotel at 7:30 PM and it has been storming all day. Not a fun day to fly, but the others make up for it.

I guess that will wrap it up. I know that was a huge post but I had so much to start with. I promise I will keep the posts smaller as I do them on a trip by trip basis.