AWAC training AQP? How big are classes? Wash out rate during training?

Thanks

 

Classes are anywhere from 4-15 people, washout was high in the beginning of the year but I think it has tapered off significantly. Just study hard and you'll be ok.

 

AWAC does have AQP but it is for recurrent only.

Classes are anywhere between 3-14 but average around 8

Can't give you a number on a washout rate because there are too many factors...many beyond the control of AWAC. But...

...the majority of new hires are making it through...but a much smaller number are doing it in the designed footprint. Also, another problem is how long new hires are staying on IOE.

AWAC, and to a smaller extent, other airlines haven't forgotten how to train people to fly our airplanes and while improvements can be made it seems that candidates are coming a lot less prepared.

By this I mean, it's not that they don't study, they are just not ready. Mostly due to lack of general experience in airplanes.

Also know that Air Wisconsin does give plenty of chances to succeed, including extra training sessions and bringing them back for additional training. But like most airlines, we can't be preschool or remedial school...the training budget is there to teach our procedures and how to fly our airplane...not make up for a candidates deficiencies.

It is important a candidate seek out a diverse range of flying experiences and have highly developed basic skills before applying to an airline.

 

Frontier uses foreflight for weather. They also use jepps for charts. Foreflight doesn't have smgcs charts.

 

So many people today say guys don't make it through training now due to the lack of experience. How do you explain the 05-08 era of guys hired with 500hrs TT that nearly all made it through? Same airplane today as then, except today the candidates should be more "qualified." If you say it was the dire need of the industry for pilots, then why aren't these guys getting through now with 3x the experience, and also such a pilot shortage?

 

How many of those pilots back in 05-08 learned instrument flying on the G1000? There is a serious lack of skills in needle ball and airspeed when the glass display goes dead or just stops working fully.

There will always be those 250 or 500 hour wonders....but in general there has been a paradigm shift in the level of airmanship that candidates possess. Some of those low time wonders at least had enough experience with raw data that moving to glass was merely an enhancement to their base skills.

With glass now there seems to be a step that is skipped. I was just having a discussion with a colleague who said that one college program teaches all their primary students in Citabrias before moving onto aircraft that have all the modern conveniences.

Do all students need to go out and get tailwheel instruction? No...but there is a benefit to having a grasp of the airplane from a basic level through instrument. It is that path that has will deliver a higher percentage of pilots who will be successful as the layers of sophistication are added.

 

Still fail to see your logic. Even a G1000 guy trains partial panel on standby instruments. Probably more often than a 121 guy in a glass cockpit. When was the last time you flew solely on standby instruments in a crj? It doesn't happen. You can start out training in whatever you want, most guys don't start on glass. If anything,the guys in a G1000 training environment with a couple hundred hours would have the edge of the guy dusting crops for 3 years vfr.

 

Your crop dusting comparison misses the point.

Look at it this way...can a G1000 pilot find out easily where they are with just an HSI and no moving map? It seems there is an uncomfortably high number of glass generation flyers that can't keep SA when all the features are not working.

The CRJ has the ability to display round dials such as the HSI or even an RMI...navigating by those instruments alone...sometimes without DME are skills that are underdeveloped or missing.

In today's modern airliner do we do that? Not really...but the ability to maintain SA and stay ahead of the airplane no matter it's sophistication is built in those basic skills.

So much time is wasted in the sim teaching or reteaching candidates how to figure out where they are because they are not seeing the big picture.

 

You can't really deny that a lot of people's attitudes about training have changed too, my generation, the young guys that is are more relaxed about a lot of things. I got through training this spring within the foot foot print, no extra sims, no failure and 2 trips of ioe. But I know many former colleagues of mine that I taught with at a flight school are out and about with other airlines that I wouldn't get caught dead in one of their airplanes.

The attitude they had was all through their training was they wanted to have the "cool instructor" the guy that would write in their logbook everything was completed fine when maybe it wasn't, the person they wouldn't push them. I noticed quite a bit that students don't want to go above and beyond anymore, there's no drive to study that extra hour or to be pushed. I think a lot of it is a generational thing. It's a more relaxed attitude about training.
I'll be the first to admit I was that instructor and that student, but when the time came, I studied my butt off and still got the job done.

 

Simple to explain: Back then the check ride was for an SIC type rating. Now it is for PIC, and that makes a significant difference.

AWAC is a good company but I found that their Training department lacks standardization which is a contributing factor to a high percentage of initial check ride failures. Yes, most re-test and move along fine, but that significant percentage (nearly 50% I was told by more than one instructor) get through with the initial "fail" on their record.