Originally Posted by
Flyhayes
It was mentioned up thread that DEC's were having issues, and that a less than stellar sim might be contributing.
Being a DEC brings with it certain additional challenges as well, like not having the opportunity to gain the collective wisdom of a flight department before being put into the hot seat.
At a previous regional airline 60% of DEC's got washed out in IOE, and that's from people who have benefited from 121 training, many more than once.
In this industry you should ALWAYS be worried about washouts. Many good pilots have stalled their careers because of being washed out for one reason or another. Sometimes, it's even attributed by a poor culture from within the training department. Several airlines have even had the distinction of being known to purposely wash people out.
Here we go again with blaming training departments for washing pilots out of training. Part of training's job is evaluating pilots and for those that don't meet the standards, THEY GET WASHED OUT. That's the way it's suppose to work. Be prepared, current, and proficient and there's no reason to wash out. Are the instructors d***heads? So what, as long as they're going by the book.
For the regionals washing out DECs, there's a far greater chance those candidates didn't meet the standards or flubbed up their orals or checkrides. It doesn't mean they're bad guys or pilots. However, it also doesn't mean that instructors are intentionally trying to fail pilots they need to hire. There is no incentive for that and DPEs have to explain in great detail (and paperwork) why pilots fail checkrides.
Bottom line, about 90% of the time, it's the pilot's fault for failing. Sadly, instead of learning from their mistakes and owning up to it, they choose to complain about the unfairness of the training department and how badly they were treated. Fact is, many of the washouts struggled early on in training, but managed to squeak by as first officers. When upgrade time came, they weren't ready.