I was hired at AWAC in 2005. They were literally hiring anyone with a pulse back then. That was during the UAL/US transition and people were quitting left and right. Upgrade for me was 30 months just to give you an idea of how quickly people were leaving, and that was while shrinking 18 airplanes and around 200 pilots system wide. Avg of 18 CA's leaving a month for 2.5 years, that is a lot of guys for a small operation. It's about half that now from what I was seeing on the resignations list, and people think the movement is quick now...
Anyway, out of a class of 9 back then, 3 didn't make it thru training.
- One fired during training due to attitude issues (Colgan Saab captain)
- One let go in sim due to inability to operate the automation (Beech 1900 captain)
- One let go in OE for lack of ability to fly the plane/attitude issues on the line (high, high time CFI, ex-mil Lt Col)
So about a 33% washout rate in that class, all were ATP rated with some being current 121 guys.
Meanwhile the rest of us were relatively lower time CFI's and ex-freight dawgs, some had ATP's but most of us did not.
AWAC training is about attitude - or at least it used to be. The same people doing check rides are still there now when I went thru, I assume it's probably still the same.
On a side note, 2 guys are left in that class. Thankfully, I am not one of them
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My experience working with the new hires was vastly different than the others posting above. I loved working with them. They knew their stuff, were fairly happy/positive, were great pilots and didn't bitc* about the 22 hour overnight in Jackson, MS. OK maybe they'd complained about that one, but so did I. Who could blame them
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To sum up my experience with the company, on my VERY LAST LEG I was junior manned into another turn. I had swapped in to the trip, had me done before 7:00 AM on my last day. I honestly thought that Scheduling was playing a joke. Would've been the perfect time to say "what are you going to do if I say no, fire me?". Ha. Anyway I still did it, not sure why, I hated every minute of it and was bitter and just bitc*ed the whole way to the brand new FO who took it like a champ (sorry). OK enough rambling. I made it home still that night (barely). They canceled every flight after the one I got on! So glad I'm done with the place. Get in and GTFO as fast as you can.