Originally Posted by
RemoveB4flght
I’m about 25 years too late to help you with questions about the program you are in. That being said, the important thing to remember for pilots in your shoes is not how difficult the Spirit training will seem, but how much you still have yet to learn on the other side of it.
To put it into context, compare the knowledge level that was expected of you on your CFI ride to what was expected on your Private. You are flying the same plane in the same airport/airspace, but under much different circumstances and responsibility. Coming off your private, you had only the most fundamental understanding of both the plane and how to operate it. This is where you will be at the end of your Spirit training. I’m sure you have had discussions with freshly licensed students to be wary about how much they bite off as they slowly expand their experience. You won’t have that luxury as the very next day when you get line qualified you can be sent to the biggest/busiest/or trickiest airports in the most challenging conditions.
If the training at any point seems easy, it’s because you aren’t aware of how much you don’t know. The same goes for your first few years on the line.
Excellent advice, it really is.
Ill add 1 thing: As an instructor, your student is your customer, and its your job to find different ways to help them learn how to fly the C172 (or whatever), you job is to instruct. Once at a 121 airline, and you are signed off to the line, it is not the CAs job to instruct. The customer is not you, the customers are in the plane behind you. This is also what RemoveB4Flight was saying, training wheels will be off, you are expected to do the job as a qualified 121 FO, operating in the busiest airports, dangerous airports, all hours of the day.
You challenge will not be learning flows or limitations of the A320, the challenge will be staying afloat with the operation and the realities of 121 line flying.
Not to discourage anyone, but the learning curve is steep, way steeper than the steep turns youre current teaching in a single engine piston (sorry, couldn't resist). Its just we had a new knucklehead on this forums a few months back who was convinced the CA is supposed to hand hold all of our new hires, as if they were students and the CAs are CFIs.