Originally Posted by
DieselMan
Okay, so how in the world does a new hire get a 330 over an on campus FO? Do the guys not under a seat lock get the first crack at it, or did absolutely no one have the bid in place and got caught by surprise? That seems pretty wild.
The way our contract reads is that all positions have to be offered to pilots on property first. Only those positions that were untilled on a vacancy bid can go to a NH. We had some odd circumstances, combined with a couple larger bids, which left some WB's unfilled, so they were offered to NH's. Those 'openings' are reset every AE, so with a bid about to close on Monday, I fully expect that era to close, and return to (mostly) a historical norm for holding a WB.
...Since I am new to the 121 side of this world, what can I be studying? I've gotten nothing from the onboarding team, and I don't want to come in and make the class slow down to catch me up on stuff I could have down pat.
You'll get time to study everything you need once you get here, you won't slow anybody down. Especially given you won't know what aircraft you are getting until right before you start, I would just take this time to relax and get ready to hit it hard once you get here. I came straight from the military here, and there was a huge amount to learn given not just a new airplane, but a new civilian system, regs, acronyms, and in my case multi-crew ops, etc. It's a bit like drinking from a firehose, but so long as you put in the work once here, you'll be fine.