Firehose, Part 2

Glub....glub....glub....

I throw up my hands; I'm waving the white flag; I throw myself on the mercy of the court. I have officially attempted to drink from the firehose, and it is NOT a pleasant experience. Week two was spent on systems, and I must stress that five days is not a whole lot of time to spend on learning the systems of a fairly complicated airplane. In general, the older the aircraft is, the more complex it is. This is true with most things. Think about cell phones, televisions, ovens. As computers have become more prevalent and advanced in the things we use, our workload has decreased. Well, there are not many computers on my airplane. It's true that we run around with most systems in AUTO most of the time, but I wonder if there are little elves or some more primitive life form behind the panels running the show. If one of those little guys trips and falls while running from the right main bus to the left main bus, a LOT of lights come on.

After the short week learning as much as we could about the systems, we were up against the written test on Saturday. I was panicked, for lack of a better term. Even after spending a month or more of home study, and having a fairly good grasp of the overall workings of the systems, I didn't feel too good about a lot of the minutiae. There are a number of caution light combinations that illuminate in response to certain faults, and I didn't know all of the combinations. There are also a lot of numbers, such as oil, fuel, and hydraulic pressures, that can easily be transposed. We have two primary instructors, that I don't believe are line pilots for our airline. This in and of itself doesn't mean anything, but we occasionally had instructors stop in to teach a system that are line pilots, and they seemed to have a flair for making the system simple to understand. I don't know exactly what the correlation was, but having multiple instructors with different teaching styles only complicated things.

In the end, though, it was all for naught, as I somehow managed to get a 98%. (I'm not trying to brag, I'm still not sure how I got that high of a grade, but I'm glad I passed by a wide margin.) With week two at an end, we prepare to launch into procedures training for week three, which will conclude this portion of ground training. During procedures training we will start to learn what actually goes on in the cockpit, with regards to performing checklists and "flows". A flow is sort of way to visually trace a path around the cockpit and configure systems properly for the phase of flight. By performing flows, and then using the checklist to back yourself up, you can more expeditiously proceed from one phase to the next. In the words of one of the instructors at my old flight school "if you had to sit there and use the checklist as a do list you'd never get off the gate..". Now I see what he was talking about. It's hard to believe we're almost at the end, but I can't get complacent, as I'm already proactively panicking about my procedures practical evaluation...

In other news, we still don't know our base assignments yet, which is causing most of us a good deal of anxiety. I think I'm checking our employee intranet 4-5 times each day to see if it's posted yet. I have flown home as a non-revenue passenger, which, I have to say, is very cool. Our parent airline has very good travel benefits. Specifically, as a non-revenue passenger the only travelers that have a higher boarding priority are secret service agents and a couple of other government agencies. I felt a little weird getting called to board before longtime pilots considering I'm not technically an employee yet. In the end, everyone got onboard so it all worked out.

Firehose, Part 1

Week one of training is officially in the books. Airline training is often compared to "taking a drink from a firehose". It hasn't quite been that bad, but it is a lot of information in a short period of time. In a way, it feels a lot to me like starting any new job. In other ways, I feel more comfortable because of the amount of time spent up front with the home study, something that most employers don't provide you with.

Even though my airline is a wholly owned subsidiary of a "legacy" carrier, our headquarters is located in a different city. The first day was spent at company HQ. This first day was, in fact, much like the aforementioned firehose. We had people from different departments come in for 30-60 minutes at a time and attempt to tell us everything we need to know to interact with that department. For example, in 30 minutes we were bombarded with all the information that we would need in order to work with crew scheduling. Yeah, right. The relationship between pilots and scheduling is one of the most complicated and, dare I say, delicate in any industry that I have seen. It is nothing short of a true love-hate relationship, and 30 minutes is not nearly enough time. I've already decided that I am going to overcommunicate, if anything, in my quest to breach the tension that lies between the two parties. Of course, I won't be answering my phone on my days off once I have a hard line.

Day two was spent in transit to our parent company's massive training facility, which will serve as home away from home for three weeks. The first day was an easy day: we put together our Pilot Operating Handbooks, were fitted for uniforms, and some other miscellaneous housekeeping items. Day two we jumped right in to the Flight Operations manual. We had to get through 4 chapters in a single day, because our first test was the following day. Needless to say, we did it. I guess we didn't have a choice. The most difficult concept to grasp, and one that caused us some headache, is that of crew rest requirements. Basically, a crew is required to have a certain number of hours of rest for a given amount of scheduled flight time. If you've ever been ready to board a flight and had it cancelled or delayed because the flight crew "timed out", this is what happened. The tricky part comes in because rest is based on scheduled, not actual flight time. If you end up flying longer than scheduled, your required rest doesn't change, as long as your next rest time starts within certain allowances. In short, you don't want your pilots to be fatigued, and sometimes just because they are "rested" doesn't mean they are. My airline seems to really be on top of this, as I've scanned some of the lines out there and most have more than adequate rest. Other airlines, not so much so (read: pilots falling asleep over a certain Pacific island chain...)

Friday was test day, and I passed fairly easily. There were some headslappers, and some that I'm still not sure how I got right. But all that really matters is that you pass. With that test (IQT, Initial Qualification Testing) behind us, we moved on to limitations and systems, which I'll save for the next post.

To the Schoolhouse

It has been a couple of weeks, but this is the follow up to my previous post about the interview process. The approaching weekend will be my last prior to entering the frantic world of airline training, which starts on Monday. The anxiety and adrenaline levels are running high. In a way though, I've been at the schoolhouse since March 20th. My airline does what is known as AQP, which stands for Advanced Qualification Program. What this involves is a significant amount of self-study, which, in theory, shortens the actual time spent at ground school somewhat. To ensure you are studying the material, which you receive at the interview if hired, there are three take home test to complete: one on the FOM (Flight Operations Manual, the airline version of the Policy and Procedures manual), one on Systems, and one on Winter Operations. I found the third one curious, as it is as long as the other two, but there is obviously far more material on systems and policy/procedures. You might think "oh, open book tests, easy", and for the most part you'd be right. There are some tricky questions though, and you need a 90% in order to pass. I've heard that people have been sent home the first day for not achieving that number. I feel pretty good about what I have, especially after spending some time with a fellow new hire quizzing each other and talking through some of the systems. My wife keeps telling me I'm over-prepared, although I feel woefully underprepared. You know how sometimes you study something to the point that you start forgetting the material? That's where I'm at right now. We'll find out next week.

The first week consists of a day at company HQ to do the standard HR paperwork, which includes getting into the system to take advantage of travel benefits. We are very excited about this. With aircraft loads at record levels, it's not going to be as easy to travel as "non-rev" passengers as it used to be. Traveling as a non-rev relegates you to standby passenger status, and if you have been to the airport recently you probably noticed that most standby lists are long. At the bottom of the standby list are the non-revs. Despite that, I'm confident that we'll be able to take advantage once in a while. Our daughter is already plugging for a return trip to Disney.

After the first day, it's off to the real schoolhouse in North Carolina for three days of FOM, a week or so of systems, and then procedures. After that first couple of weeks, simulator training starts. I hear that the simulator department is backed up, and people are getting mini-vacations in between, but that remains to be seen. If it happens, I won't complain, as that will allow me to work on the renovations to the new house. Oh yeah, did I mention that we managed to buy a new house in the middle of all this?

More to follow as I progress through training, until then, it's back to the books.