Originally Posted by
Springfield
Let me second, or third, the comments about preparing yourself for the flying training environment. Airline flying is precision glass cockpit instrument flying, even in a "visual" environment. When the second career guys have trouble, it tends to be trouble flying instruments and managing the FMS flight computers. With that said, XJT will work with you to get you through if you can continue to improve through training. Good luck.
I also second this. Stick and rudder is a given, but you really don't get to demonstrate that much in training, since it's all simulator. You will be taught to turn the autopilot on quick and off late, concentrating on flight management.
There is some required hand flying of the sim and you absolutely have to master it, but it is a sim. It doesn't properly simulate stick and rudder.
I recently went thru 121 regional new-hire training as an old guy, with a surprising amount of other old guys from GA, corporate prop and small jet corporate. The only thing which gave any of the older guys a problem was the FMS. It can eat your lunch. My saving grace was having 9,000 hours in the plane. I logged quite a bit of after hours time, helping other old guys learn how to work the FMS on the computer sims.
There is no at home trainer available for the FMS, so my advice is to be all over the FMS before you get in the sim. Instructors in the classroom may say "All this will make more sense in the sim when you can actually push the buttons rather than click a mouse." And they are correct, but you have got to be able to initialize the FMS in less than 5 minutes, before getting into the sim- despite the fact that it is a mouse driven computer simulator.
Take it from a fellow old guy.