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I also heard the Managing Director of GOC say that Zurich was going to be a FDA - it was a done deal, unlike CDG.

Our old VP of flight ops said all 727's would be gone by 2006, 2012, then 2015....

I think there is much truth to the old saying "until it's sitting on the ramp and painted purple...."

 

Perhaps you haven't heard the AN-124 rumor?

 

Yah and a Djibouti FDA....

 

I'm just saying that as a department, our training department lacks the credibility to be respected and admired, but there individual exceptions. Our training department represents 15% of the non-members (okay, I admit that's small compared to the top three seniority groups who combined, represent 69% of our non-members) and is comprised mostly of pilots who just camp out in the training complex in MEM, dishing out obscure insignificant trivia about the plane and procedures when very few of them ever really get out on the road to experience it themselves. I think if our instructor force wants to be taken seriously (maybe they don't care, I don't know), they need to be highly experienced in the procedures we deal with every day so they can teach from both a book knowledge basis as well as a personal experience basis. How many times are we supposed to endure a higher-than-thou instructor telling me how to operate in CAN who himself has never been there? Why must my guest-help instructor actually be an FO who has received some sort of bastardized left seat checkout so he can play captain for my evaluation but has never actually been a captain? And yes, it makes a difference.

As to the rumors attributed to being sourced from the training department, past experience has demonstrated that they're usually false. I wonder if the stuff coming from our instructors is intentional mis-information because it's the home to so many non-members and/or they are a captive audience for our management's manipulative behavior.

Listen and enjoy their rumor mill if you want but for me I harbor no admiration for them and ignore their silly little stories.

 

I'm sure they enjoy spending time with you as well! Yes, there are some non-members and people that never leave Memphis, but I would say most are pretty decent guys. Maybe you ought to put in for a Flex position so that we have a highly skilled pilot that can teach us without telling us silly stories.

Would you rather have non-seniority list pilots giving our training/evaluations?

 

The tired retort of “...if you don’t like it come here and try it yourself...” is a throw-away response meant to silence opposition without having to address the issue. Our former union officers tried that on us. The real answer is why can’t our training department be comprised of highly experienced pilots who have significant line experience?

Whether they’re nice guys is irrelevant to my point.

 

I'm not sure why it is a "tired retort". You think that the instructors suck, but someone else (that is line experienced) should do the job. Since you would rather ***** than do the job (or union work) yourself, what do you propose to do? I hear complaints about all of them being "Memphis guys", however, anyone that meets the minimums are clear to send in a resume. There are some commuters that work as Flex instructors, but they have to spend a lot of time being away from home. You usually end up with local guys.

Many of the Flex instructors were competent line pilots at one time. Those that make a career of it sometimes only leave the planet to fly an out and back or two to keep current. Many of the pilots that fly the line everyday are very good at what they do, but they aren't the best guys to instruct new guys how to learn the airplane. We have pretty good LCAs to teach line operations.

I think the MD-11 has a vastly improved training department. It's much better than it used to be.

 

Having been on the jet for 13 yrs now (and still only 95% ), I couldn't agree more!

 

Well luckily ALL FedEx pilots have been captains...