Originally Posted by
nimslow
I don't have a dog in your fight, other than I know several people who have passed the training there. I know it works, my point was it sounds like there is room for improvement. Pilots as a group tend to cling to what we know, and have that "I did it, so whats the problem" attitude.
I'm sure the majority of your instructors are great people, and do what they can, given the limits of the program. And I totally agree, don't blame anyone else for your failures.
Four sims just seems like the company is short changing the new hires. Do they pair two new fo's together, and have them swap seats? Is all the sim time in the right seat, and then you are expected to do the ride from the left? Personally I think all your training time should be in the seat you will be qualified in.
IMHO, training should be a low stress, learning environment, with the end result a competent crew member. I'm not saying a trainee shouldn't have to put in the effort, but training shouldn't give you gray hair and ulcers.
I spent the majority of my career doing non AQP training. At my first commuter (I'm an old guy, so commuter instead of regional) half of my new hire class didn't make it through training. Thats nuts. AQP is a much better way to do things. People will still wash out, but you have to work pretty hard at it.
If the selection and hiring program is doing its job, and the training department is on the ball, the failure rate should be very low.
I don't get the not going home part either. At my current shop, they encourage you to go home and forget about everything on your days off.
Best of luck to your pilot group, I hope you get a decent contract.
Nope the training is like everything else at Spirit. Just enough to check the boxes at the appropriate time.
Everything in new hire training is done in the left seat. Training is done in the left seat, Type rating is done in the left seat. Apart from trying to get the type ride done in 4 sims, the next transition is showing up for IOE with no clue how to do anything as an FO, because the only flying they've done in the right seat is just to watch the other fellow newhire guy do a cat III landing from the right seat, and then they get to do a cat I landing from the right seat for the first time in the entire training program on the checkride sim.
So any right seat time for an newhire showing up for IOE is just the 3-5 minutes they did flying in the right seat for the right seat qual.
The training assumes that the pilot has previous airline/121 experience to draw from so that the transition from training in the left seat as a Captain to line flying in the right seat as an FO is not a big adjustment. But if you have no prior experience, there will be a lot of figuring things out on your own.
Studying for the oral is like studying those old red Gleim books... Every question the examiner can possibly ask you is in the study guide that is given to the newhire. A pilot doesn't need to actually know how to fly or understand anything about the airbus to pass the oral, they just need to be able to regurgitate the answer from the oral study guide from rote memorization.