Originally Posted by
exp96
While I am sure management would like everyone to fly both the 200 and 900, I am not sure how realistic that will be in the beginning. The first scheduled flying is only 7 months away and they have nearly 1300 pilots to send through the schoolhouse. The differences training (as far as time is concerned) is similar to the CAT II training and they still don't have everyone trained on that.
My guess is that they will have a separate bid for the initial crewmembers who will do the 900 flying and train them first. Then, they can take their time to get everyone else trained and eventually integrate the flying. If they try to train everyone by december, its going to be a nightmare.
Difference training does only take 2 days from what I have heard from friends at other airlines, but like you said, imagine sending all 1200 of us for difference training on 1 900 sim in Memphis, CAT II training, and new hire initial training. That is not going to happen in a timely manner unless they start sending us to other locations around the country. Like Phil said on the conference call, this is going to be a difficult year for PNCL, and that is one comment he made that I actually agree with.