V4LKYR1ExONE

Yeah, I can update you. It took over 90 days to get an IOE slot. Because of this, I had to go back to the training center to do a landing requal sim. You can lookup the 121 landing currency reg if you’re not familiar on what has to be done if you lose landing currency. It wasn’t too painful, and in fact after sitting that long I was appreciative of a chance to refresh my skills before the IOE firehose. Two days after requalifying my landing currency in the sim, I got my first IOE trip. I was able to accrue around 20 hours that first trip, I got a second trip shortly after thanksgiving. The second IOE trip included my regular line check and a PC to grant the 30 day extension I needed to even have a hope of consolidation. I was able to consolidate (get 100hrs flight time) within 147 days of my checkride, so I made it with 3 days to spare on the final deadline. I was one of three lucky pilots in my class who had enough time using the extension to pull this off.

The rest of my classmates (around 10 guys) went back to a 3 day requal course before even going to IOE because hey didn’t have enough time in their consolidation window to even get through IOE (which needs to be finished before being granted the 30 day extension). These guys are just now seeing IOE, but they’re starting it with totally fresh 120 day consolidation windows that they will not have to worry about. Once a pilot gets into crew scheduling’s rotation they are used to the max. I wanted to be flying the paint off the jets and that’s exactly what I’m doing.

It seems like they are digging out of the hole slowly but surely. I can’t give you any hard data on that, just word of mouth from others. Some of the June hires were able to get IOE and extensions to consolidate. July & August guys are getting their observation flights, but those are easier to schedule than IOE.