I need to chime in on this. This is not my opinion of the company, just stating a fact.

One of the last new hire groups on the 777, a mix of regional/corporate/mill pilots, had a 50% failure rate…..

 

When you look at all the fleets at Atlas over a year or more the pass/fail rates are almost the same for all fleets. So where do you think the problem is? C208 pilots do not necessarily make instant 777 FOs. The ACS standards are what they are.

 

Do you mean 50% washed out from that group? Or 50% had some sort of unsat during their training?

 

Failure rate: Does this mean failed their initial type ride or failed to complete training? A "normal" ratio is about 5-10%.

 

When the failure rate is 5-10%, the problem can arguably be the students. When the failure rate is 50%, the problem is most definitely the instructors or the entire training program.

 

Or the hiring criteria.

 

So the problem is indeed with the training program.

You design the training program based on your "targeted audience". For example, the regionals know that they are someone's first airline job, first jet, first multi-crew airplane, first high-altitude airplane, first RVSM, first FMC, first EFIS, first transport-category airplane. So their curriculums are designed for people like that.

If Atlas designed the 777 curriculum for ex-Emirate CAs, then Atlas should be hiring ex-Emirate CAs or the like. If they are not, then they need to redesign the curriculum.

 

The Atlas training programs are not designed for the same set of pilots the regionals are targeting. If a pilot does not see themselves capable of flying a complex arrival into a challenging international airport at night in crap weather while managing the energy of a heavy jet, they have no business applying to Atlas. If the hiring board chooses to hire someone who built hours in a C208, barely finished OE in a B737 at a marginal carrier (now defunct), and then struggled through 777 training despite excess OE, that is a problem with the pilot and those that hired him. Some pilots have above average skills and learning capability that overcomes their lack of experience. Some do not.

Atlas training is not a guaranteed pass. It’s big boy/big girl training with ATP ACS standards as the “minimum acceptable”. I make no apologies for that. Not everyone gets a trophy buttercup.

 

Doesnt your flight department have some say on what the hiring criteria is? If all you advertise is ATP minimum, then dont complain when you actually get candidates with barely ATP min. If all you just mentioned is the hiring criteria, then advertise as such.

When you interview candidates, have a filtering mechanism to filter out those whom you dont think would pass the program you design. After all, only you know what kind of people your program is designed for.

 

LGAflyer makes a good point here. If we are hiring people at ATP minima, we can't claim to have a "big boy" training program; we have a poorly set up and poorly implemented one. If candidates need explanations about basic turbine theory and high altitude maneuvering, as basic as that is, that's what we need to teach. "Big Boy Training" is something we used to say at a previous employer where I wore some hats. That mentality just masked systemic shortfalls which we failed to fix.

Back to the 50% fail rate. Are we talking 50% washed out of training, 50% failed their initial type ride or 50% took an extra recommend ride or something? Big differences in those things. Anecdotally I'm not seeing the rain of failed transitions, etc. reflective of that kind of mess. But my sample size is small.