Originally Posted by
rabbo
This is sort of a philosophical question as I read it. My perception is some places treat you like any other FO where others might have a better comprehension of what you're good and bad at. Sure, we're all "equal" in the eyes of the FAA but we didn't do the same sort of flying.
Commutair and SkyWest both have RTPs that don't so much "transition" you as they do pay for your airplane time, then boom you're in as a FO. Some places really have the RTP factory going, like Envoy, Trans States, GoJet so my poorly educated [not an airline pilot] opinion is they probably have a better understanding of the unique helicopter pilot to airline stuff. If you go somewhere like Envoy, where they've trained 300 students at a specific flight school built to transition helicopter pilots to airlines, you'll find people all along the way that sorta understand your background.
Not saying Envoy/TSA/Skywest is any better or worse, that's just my perception having been researching this stuff ad nauseum.
Yes! This is what I was looking for! I’m looking for the opinions of the airlines that are in tune with rotor pilots coming from a different type of flying. I am not suggesting that there should be different standards of training just a different approach to hammer out weaknesses almost all rotor pilots have that your typical FW CFI won’t have. A good example is rotor pilots have turbine engine experience but lack experience flying around in the system in complex airspace. Another would be most rotor pilots have lots of weather experience that a CFI might not ever be exposed to. Most rotor pilots are completely comfortable flying in crap weather but not very experienced at flying published SIDs and STARs.
Thanks for the replies so far!