Originally Posted by Albief15

There are extremes...

My old former Pan Am pro instructor during my initial 727 SO training wanted us to understand a "pressure bump" when we adjusted the Packs, even though it would affect the rear area where there were no passengers, just boxes. He wanted to discuss parts of the cabin that were now inaccessible and covered with freight cans. I thought there was a ton of "I don't need to know this..." data bits in that program.

On the other hand, watching the MD-11 skim along 50 feet high and 20 feet low crossing the country during IOE, I asked PB, my LCA, "why do it DO that...?" He explained that an attitude is really just a pressure wave...a wave of equal pressure. The jet was smart enough to not waste energy going up and down to chase a barometer setting but instead used GPS/IRU data to "dampen" the flight path to be more efficient as long as it stayed in tolerances. That was an example of some data that made go "humph. That's pretty cool..." Never got that in class...he was probably a Long Beach product like some of you guys alluded to...

These days, I understand that if I want the next level of knowledge, I am going to have to find it myself. Good news is I don't have to memorize a bunch of non-relevant queep. Bad news is I have to take a bit of initiative to get my general knowledge to the next level.

FWIW...most courses at the other carriers are much, much shorter, and involve a lot of self study. We are using AQP to dummy down the program to save time and money. I still prefer AQP, but I have also realized I am just going to have take more initiative on learning my jet than I did in previous years. I don't want to be the boring captain who quizzes his FOs about systems, but I do think I will be studying more at cruise the next 10 years than I did the last 10. We just don't get as much material thrown at us as we did in the past...