Originally Posted by Alpine Pilot

This is probably to late to help you, but the answer will probably help others.

Me and my instructors have trained several pilots with no turbine experience at all. We have also trained pilots from the military and pilots with flight time that totals over 10,000 hours. For the BE99 you just need a Multi-Engine, no minimum hours, and for the 1900 you need 100 hrs ME. Since taking over as the 1900 training manager I've adjusted the training program specifically to help get the guys we hire with the bare minimums get through our training program.

Week 1: A new hire will now go through an indoc that last 5 days Monday-Friday then you have Saturday and Sunday off.
Week 2: It's 5 days Monday-Friday for 1900 systems, all 5 days run 8am-3pm in the class followed by an hour in the FTD simulator to learn cockpit switches and systems checks. Saturday is a day off.
Week 3: It's 7 days Sunday-Saturday of simulator sessions, and each simulator session is 2.5 hours long. We also do some some systems reviews in the classroom each day, and a complete mock check ride at the end of the week as a final review. We do not try to perfectly mimic the check ride, that never works anyway, it's mostly to make sure you're ready to go and to help you identify weak spots a couple days before you check. Sunday is a day off, with check rides on Monday and Tuesday.

I've written detailed study guides, designed graphical flows, and have an entire google drive folder full of study and prep material I send everybody that is selected for any of our monthly classes. I also personally call all of the selected trainees a month prior to their class to answer questions and discuss what to expect, which usually helps calm some nerves prior to training.



Kind of depends on the run and the current staffing. Sioux Falls has excellent retention and usually the turnover is minimal. If you or anybody else is still interested in the base I can call the assitant chief and ask how he's been scheduling the line lately. Ideally, they try to keep it either 1 week on and 1 week off, or something like 4 on and 3 off.



There's almost always room for one more. People leave to go to Atlas, Omni, Neptune, Skywest, Southwest, Envoy, Messa, NetJets, FlexJets, etc. Some of us stay a while, some of us like to move around, and some are just chasing the dollars at the end of the carrot stick. The industry is amazing to look at right now, but yeah we probably have one or two spots open or expected to open in any base at any given time.

Also, in case you didn't hear we purchased another 1900 operation on the east coast called Suburban. This means we now have a base in Atlanta to go along with Ontario (California), Salt Lake City, Billings, Denver, and Sioux Falls. I've trained 2 pilots for Atlanta in the past couple months that fly to Pensacola and Jacksonville now.