Originally Posted by ForeverFO

^^ Yes, plenty of accidents have been avoided due to systems knowledge.

A four hour oral? and...


The idea behind "doing great" is that you're going to smoothly sail to the end of the ticket risk event because you're doing great. The last thing I want to hear... "Hey, you're SE downwind for the RNAV RW 11 after the fire; doing so great, I think I'll toss in a flight control failure on top, and drop the weather down. You guys can handle it."



I can't disagree more. Are you being paid for A&P duties now? And are you authorized to do that kind of thing airborne? We're not, and for good reason.

Sorry, the last thing we need are more systems wizards and professional flight engineers teaching ground school.

Originally Posted by ForeverFO

^^ Yes, plenty of accidents have been avoided due to systems knowledge.

A four hour oral? and...


The idea behind "doing great" is that you're going to smoothly sail to the end of the ticket risk event because you're doing great. The last thing I want to hear... "Hey, you're SE downwind for the RNAV RW 11 after the fire; doing so great, I think I'll toss in a flight control failure on top, and drop the weather down. You guys can handle it."



I can't disagree more. Are you being paid for A&P duties now? And are you authorized to do that kind of thing airborne? We're not, and for good reason.

Sorry, the last thing we need are more systems wizards and professional flight engineers teaching ground school.

Originally Posted by Bad-Andy

There needs to be a balance between the two. Neither extreme is good. We certainly don't need to be able to build the plane, but Mike is right, understanding how the systems interact/work together is critical to safely operate the Bus. Too little systems knowledge is even worse than too much, in my opinion.

As for training, soon we will go to the 9 month CQT cycles, so that will help in two ways -- fewer events to cover in each event and greater proficiency going into the events (less time to get rusty between events).

Lets just hope we keep our structure (training and standards combined and run by pilots) intact.

Originally Posted by cactusmike

The training and standards are lower than what we had at AWA. Not having a 6 month PT (proficiency training) event weakens your non normal skillset. On every check ride we did a direct law approach from a fallure that led to the degradation in control laws. I don't mind AQP but I don't like how they chop up the scenarios. The sims generally don't like it either, lots of resets. We also trained to lower minimums. We would have hand flown ILS approaches set to 100', that was part of our qualification for flying the Silver ILS into RNO.

Systems knowledge has gone out the window now. And to be told "you don't need to know that" is BS. I can't tell you the number of times I have been able to reset the right system and get home rather than have to deal with a contract MX guy who knows zero about a bus and is just going off a fax from MX control. When I did my types on the 737, 757 and airbus we had to do the switch and light explanation for our oral. My 757 oral was 4 hours, mostly because the Fed was really old and he had to take a pee break every hour. Overkill? Yeah, but when you learn so much the important things stick in your memory better. I was a maintenance check captain on the airbus my first go around on it (I took a six year break to fly capt on the 757) and I relied on the stuff I learned in systems quite a bit. When I came back to the bus all those details came tumbling back out of my memory. When I took my oral for my requal I was way ahead of the game that training is playing now.

I think that is why we have had such a good safety record at AWA. Pilots are all the same but we were trained to a high standard. The checkairmen always made it fun as well. It was always "hey, you're doing great, lets load it up a little more". Our training department came from Eastern and Frontier and they were very, very experienced. The idea was you train to 100%, you check to 90, you get 80% on the line. Now it seems the numbers have gone to 75%, 60 and 50%. What we do have is a lot of peer pressure to get it right. Guys are not afraid to call someone out for substandard flying. And that goes both ways.

This will all go away soon. I do hope that training and stanards gets sorted out quick because there will be enormous pressure to fly a safe operation. Lots of eyes will be on this, especially as crews get integrated. I don't see any problems with whoever we wind up flying with.

Originally Posted by DCA A321 FO

Been flying for 30 years, both military and civilian, and have never come close to a 4 hour oral. The BS flag is going up or you kept missing questions and they felt sorry for you.

Originally Posted by R57 relay

I sometimes think that our training department has become over reliant on automation(like the restrictions on autothrust

Originally Posted by DCA A321 FO

Been flying for 30 years, both military and civilian, and have never come close to a 4 hour oral. The BS flag is going up or you kept missing questions and they felt sorry for you.