Originally Posted by
JungleJim
^^This
And it's worse for upgrading PICs. Minimal training on things like flight planning, performance, and airworthiness. It's a joke to basically throw someone in the left seat to figure that stuff out on their own with no dispatch office or anything like that to back them up. If you don't come into it with a solid background, good luck to you.
While agree that they do lack in providing adequate training for things like flight planning, we do have FMOD that can provide guidance for those difficult to plan trips. As mentioned above a captain's responsibility doesn't stop at commanding the airplane they must also mentor the SIC and help mold them into a captain role. We have a lot of good CA's who take the FO's under their wings to help show them how things work, but unfortunately we also have CA's who treat SIC's like seat warmers. On the flip side; we have SIC's who care about each decision made by the PIC and would like to be as involved as possible but we also have some who feel they just pre-flight and get coffee, ice and papers. It is also the SIC's responsibility to learn and inquire when the situation presents itself. When I was an FO I was constiently watching the captain's I flew with to help me later in my career. I took note of the things I liked in a captain and have applied them in my style of flying and interacting with a crew. I also took note of the things I didn't like and have tried my best to not do those things.
I personally enjoy flight planning and when things don't seem to be ideal I enjoy finding solutions to help accomplish the flight. For example: Sometimes our schedulers choose horrible fuel stops that would require us to do a lot more work and take a lot more time during a turn. Well if I do a few minutes of flight planning I can find a fuel stop that has more desirable weather, customs, traffic, etc and save myself and the customers lots of time and headaches.
JungleJim, I hope you are taking the time to help our under educated and under trained pilots learn the ropes of flight planning when you fly with them.