Originally Posted by
Turbosina
Did they change systems training recently? I went through pre AQP and I will say the short duration (7 days) between the start of systems and the systems oral was a challenge for all of us. We worked pretty darn hard studying everything while practicing the presentations we had to give in the oral. I've completed training at three airlines (OO, SWA and UAL) and the SWA systems oral stands out as the one section that required the most work of any portion of those three programs. If you pick flight controls, bless your heart.
We all found that teamwork was essential. It's one thing to take a CBT exam or even just answer questions, but to deliver an oral presentation explaining every system and switch was a different length of challenge. Maybe that's just me though...
In 2018 the approved solution for the oral involved being able to discuss everything on any panel, either going through all flows describing what actually happens with each step or just going from panel to panel describing each one, and then picking one section of the panel and going into silly detail on that system. Electrics, hydraulics, and fuel are pretty standard. If you pick bleeds you might run out of things to say before you run out of time, which can lead to a short stump-the-dummy session. If you pick flight controls, bless your heart.
It felt to me like we had "enough" time to prepare for the oral especially if you were able to gonk through the systems lessons and videos ahead of the class schedule so you could spend the class time picking up anything that wasn't clear in the electronic courseware or fine-tuning your understanding in prep for the oral. If you don't stay ahead of the classes by going through the courseware ahead of time, it can be a bit more stressful and you'll waste time trying to chase down answers after class for things that weren't gone over in enough detail.
I think we had only one new hire in my class have to re-do the oral, not sure what happened there. Only one guy had to re-do a portion of his checkride and that was just for the single engine stuff because if I recall correctly, he came from a multi-engine centerline thrust aircraft and somehow didn't get the word that the key to the single engine sim profile is to get the plane trimmed out and back on autopilot before doing pretty much anything else, so he was trying to hand fly the profile with the plane not quite trimmed out, with predictable results. He was a good pilot and figured it out quickly after the fact, so the re-do was apparently not a problem and it sounded like he got plenty of friendly help getting it done.