^ that

With good training a checkride is a non event

 

​​​​​Atlas was also very close to AQP, until it turned into a bargaining chip by management. I doubt we'll see it any time soon, especially with the clowns running the show nowadays. Nobody is expecting to have things spoon-fed to them, but when your instructors start teaching you things that aren't in the FCOM, or can't explain a system to save their life, you have a failure as a training program. When I went through 747 initial, I felt very well prepared almost like I could build the airplane in my sleep. When I went to the 777, I left training with more questions than when I started. One instructor would say one thing, another would say something else, and the FCOM would say something completely different. Left everyone in my class frustrated.

 

I was under the impression that the 777 training program was based on Boeing’s own. Curious what exactly do you think was better in the other fleet’s programs?

 

let me guess…. You are one of those that wants the check profile done repeatedly until memorized.

the Southern 777 training has had no issues until the transition pre-madonnas came through. A few came unprepared with the “teach me attitude” and the “well on the 74 ….” Answer for everything. The dude with 20 years exp in 121 prob had the worst attitude.

the 777 from Boeing was designed to take a guy/gal with 0 Boeing experience through and for many years it worked well if you came prepared.
for a guy/gal coming from another Boeing product like the 74 or specially the 76 it should be a breeze, with the right attitude of course, and when it comes to instructors, everywhere has bad apples, but the 777 training side was good at correcting the problems.

 

I'm not aware of an abnormally high fail rate in 777 fleet. Training at this place has always been and will always be something you need to be prepared to do without guidance. Written guidance IS the guidance to follow. A good instructor doesn't convince his students he's right because he holds his position; he assists the students in learning the material within operational and practical context. That also means letting the students see you when you're wrong and letting the students model self corrections on the corrections you make, receive, etc. It's also inappropriate for students to expect someone simply by holding position to actually be infallible. It's healthy to check what's being said against written guidance and greater practical context, etc.

Unfortunatlely, getting positions and holding positions is based on reputation and networking. This makes the instructors and students alike brittle. Instructors need to be seen as experts in order hold onto their position and advance in the schoolhouse. Students have to treat their instructors as infallible experts in order to preserve their own promotion chances. The whole situation is counter productive, and it takes this realization to navigate the specific pitfalls.

I wont stress the 777 if I have to go there. I'll read the books, barf out the trivia, fly the profiles and ignore the noise. That'll get me through, and it will get anyone else through too.

AQP: We don't have it because we don't want it. All parties own this failure as both company and union have slowed the process at various points in its 10+ years of development. It's not coming. I feel for the instructors ordered to say "AQP Is coming, guys!". Whoever is directing them to keep this up has no appreciation for their own instructor's credibility.

 

Yes rightseater that's it you hit the nail on the head. I'm a moron that needs to fly the SIM ride multiple times to prepare. I obviously fluked the 2 previous 121 programs I successfully completed.

It wasn't the 12 hours rest between sims or instructors using the brief time to complain about the new contract and generally talk about anything other than what they were supposed to be doing.

 

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.

 

Back to Atlas Air (not) Hiring.
Think it’s safe to say we can extend that to the end of the year at least.
With a cancelled Position Notice, a reallocation LoA expiring in July and at least publicly no clear plan to deal with that….who knows.
Combined with at least temporary tanking of the freight market and little attrition this appears to be a perfect storm.
Nobody wants to furlough but if they’ve got too many pilots they’ve got too many pilots.
Thats just the way of the world.

 

Happens when our president decides to tank the best economy our country has ever seen just to save face.

 

SMFH…………..