Originally Posted by
rookie1255
Why would rotor guys not be ready for 121? Coming from a military environment they’re familiar with studying SOPs and procedures. They have good study habits from military flight school and almost mandatory college these days to be an officer.
The only weaknesses I personally have seen from transition training is that rotor guys don’t use the rudder when flying since helicopters fly in trim automatically. A bad habit certainly, but not really an issue flying jets compared to light aircraft. The second problem might be stick and rudder skills. Again, I would argue not the biggest deal. If stick and rudder skills were the primary consideration then airlines would only recruit aerobatic and bush pilots.
I might be stirring up trouble, but when it comes to having the discipline to study the relevant procedures, memory items, and flows, I would think these guys would be on top of it.
If folks are seeing otherwise I’d be curious as to what theories are as to why these folks are having trouble.
I don't think the issue has anything to do with work ethic or natural talent, it's just a totally different flying environment with different challenges that you're not gonna learn from a book. You can read the AOM and do your flows all day long, but it takes a few flights to figure out the pacing, the significance of things that aren't made obvious from the book, etc, and whenever you discover a hole in your knowledge, it's going to be a distraction and have a cascading effect, so it takes experience to iron everything out. I can't imagine Army rotor guys frequently do SIDs to J routes to STARs to IAPs into Class B airports in hard IFR (basically, the airline profile), now throw in all the distractions of learning to fly a passenger jet vs a tactical helicopter (after thousands of hours in said helicopter) and I can see where it's a firehose to get proficient in 12ish sims