On day one as a new hire, conversation in the class began with introductions, and in short order the subject of upgrades came up. Someone quipped that it wouldn't be an issue for a few years. I pointed out that today was day one of upgrade class. The company didn't hire first officers; just captains who had to wait a little until seniority allowed.

My sim partner didn't want to bother to learn the captain flows. We did our training in four hour blocks; two hours in the right seat, two hours in the left. Although we'd be going on the line as a first officer, we had to do left-seat duty while our sim partner sweated in the right seat. My sim partner saw no point in learning the duties, flows, callouts for the captain. He was going to be in the right seat, after all. He only focused on the first officer checklist responses. He didn't bother with anything other than the minimum.

He didn't make it through OE. He wasn't a lot different than one or two others who didn't last, and who didn't want to put in the effort.

I've seen many, upon arriving at class or the sim for their captain upgrade, who wanted to know what they shoud start studying.

The time to do that was day one, in initial.

A golden opprotunity lost.

It's a lot easier to do one's job in the right seat if one is familiar with the left, and part of the duty in the right seat is to observe the captain and know if all is well, if steps are skipped, things are missed. It's hard to do that if one doesn't know what the captain is doing over there. Learn those flows. There are things the captain does that trigger actions by the first officer, and things the first officer must do before the captain can do his flows. What's he looking for? What should you be looking for?

For the lazy direct-entry captain: know the F/O's job, too: the flows, the call-outs, the works. It goes both ways.