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.