Here’s my 777 training experience.

This was my 9th Part 121 training program. 6 airlines. 4 Boeing type ratings and 2 RJ type ratings over 29 years of flying.

I have not failed any checkrides and I didn’t fail the 777 checkride either. In fact, I scored mostly “4,s” in my training record with nothing but praise in the comments sections. I passed both my oral and type ride with no issues.

The experience however, was miserable. 10 SITs were useless. The instructor literally sat there reading the slides off the monitor in the briefing room. His systems knowledge was abysmal. He was used to training new hires and I found myself correcting him multiple times or just keeping my mouth shut to get along. Yes, 10 SITs is a lot. But when you spend the first 5 of them practicing how to use HDG SEL and V/S you don’t get much out of them.

I actually really liked my FFS instructor who was a contractor. But as such, he wasn’t immersed in the Atlas (Southern) way of doing things. We couldn’t get the sim to properly fly a NON-ILS the entire 8 FFS sessions minus two times. Going through the 747 program here many years ago you could basically teach the airplane by the end of ground school. It was mostly run by ex USAF pilots. The 767 program had an absolutely excellent ground school instructor (Caesar). In both of those programs you trained hard and checked easy. The type ride itself was cake compared to the pre-rating ride. It’s the exact opposite on the 777. My 767 captain upgrade checkride was 1 hr 39 minutes. My 777 type rating was 3 hrs. 10 minutes. It “feels” as if the DE’s go out of their way to overload you and are looking for reasons/excuses to fail you. One particular DE actually told me he enjoys watching guys reach their breaking point.

During UPRT, he gave me a 20 knot gusting wind, which doesn’t sound bad…but he programmed it as a shifting wind. So it would suddenly shift from a 20 knot left crosswind to an immediate 20 knot right crosswind as soon as you compensated for it. It made the aircraft almost uncontrollable.
The other issue I had was the lack of consistency among the instructors. One would give you his technique which differed from the FCOM and then the next would tell you that’s all wrong and teach you his technique which was still different from the FCOM.

I knew going in that you were on your own as far as obtaining the knowledge and I planned accordingly, studying months ahead of showing up in Miami. But the books are extremely watered down and you have to piece a profile together from multiple sources. For example, the 767 FCOM has the SMAC which is excellent. A one stop shop for all your maneuvers. A v1 cut is spelled out in 9 pages, from the description and philosophy of it to the step by step script on how they want you to fly the procedure. You wont find that in the 777 books. You have to reference the FCOM, the FCTM and the QRH to obtain the info and piece together your own script. There isn’t one published.

They also have this outdated “must memorize every number” regional airline B.S. way of doing things. They will ask you every weight for both models during the oral. So that’s 10 sets of 6 digit numbers. Why? Just why? Airlines stopped doing that years ago.

The second to last sim was Landings training. The instructor put us on a 5 mile final at 320 knots and gave us a cargo fire and told us if we didn’t get the airplane on the ground we were going to die so “make it happen”. Which we both were able to. Then he lowered the sim and said we were good to go. One landing. That was it. During ‘Landings” training. And an unstablized one at that. Later, I checked in AIMS and he had logged 9 landings for me. Mind you, not only is this illegal….but my landing currency was based off of it. Got nothing out of it.

So, for you all you guys blathering on about “If you can’t get through the 777 training program you shouldn’t be here to begin with”…go pound sand. I’ve been here 15 years and I can absolutely tell you, this program is dysfunctional.