Originally Posted by
motormadness
I just LOL'd so hard. Are you REALLY going to drink the company kool-aid and say that training is taking 5 months to complete because of a HIGHER than expected pass rate??? Are you kidding me?? Why not just own up say the company is struggling with the growth and the sub par applicants are taking 80 hours of IOE in extreme cases to get through initial IOE? I've heard the average is 2-4 trips of IOE to get through initial not including differences. There's just a lack of personnel to handle of all this. It's very simple.
Actually, the company did tell the MEC that they were expecting only 20-22 people to go through IOE per class, and the number is closer to 27. They said that it was "PART" of the reason for the big wait to start IOE. This is one of the most ridiculous things that I have heard, but supposedly it is true. I can't imagine that too many people passing ever being a bad thing, but that is what was said. In truth, large class sizes compounded by the loss of many LCA's in the last year, is the reason for the long wait.
On average, people are taking 30 or so hours to finish OE. That is not terrible. Surely some are taking a little longer due to the fact that they have to wait 2+ months from sims to IOE. Anyone would be rusty if they had 2 months off. There are a couple people that don't finish IOE, and that is to be expected. If they can't hack it, drop them. It has happened, no one will argue that it hasn't, but it is only a couple per month at the most.
There are some that do wash out, and take more than 40 hours. More than half, however, are previously typed guys and breeze through with no issues at all and finish in 25 hours. They are FAR from sub-par applicants.
I would argue that the applicants at the regionals as a whole in the last 6 months are FAR superior to applicants from a few years ago. There are no more 250 hour FO's like many airlines had just a few years ago. The mean applicant at PSA has 5000 hours with prior 121 experience. Sure, there are some brand new CFI's with the bare minimums, but they are at every regional.
I will also say that everyone takes 2-3 trips. Personally, my first trip was 3 days, in which I blocked 13 hours. Me second trip was 3 days, with 3 DH's in it, and I blocked 9 hours. I didn't hit the 25 hour mark until my 3rd trip, and was signed off at 27 hours.