Great question. I know ALPA recently audited and found company was well within compliance. How it compares to pre contract, no idea.

Recently retired VP of training told depts to keep hiring, unsure the rationale, but definitely appears some are overmanned.

The 73 is manned for the max, we'll see how that works out.

 

In my experience, ive had a great experience with all the DPS instructors. (When did it change from DGS?) I've only had 2 instructors rub me the wrong way and they were both SLI guys. One guy was my first recurrent checkride on the ER, and it was just me....I had the 75/76 fleet training Captain (GP back in 2009)as my captain seat filler. During the brief, this SLI was trying to convey to me how important he was doing a bunch of name dropping of senators and congressman. He had some position in ALPA and spent a lot of time on Capitol Hill. Then during the checkride, I was literally single pilot, because my seat filler wanted to make sure he didn't help too much, by not helping at all. It was a pretty bad experience, after only being on the fleet 9 months, but I made it through. The next recurrent I was absolutely dreading, but it went so smoothly, and the instructor was great again and I decided I was really going to like the fleet and my first experience was a one off.

 

No it isn’t. Delta didn’t hire pilots in 2023 for a plane it expects to take delivery of in 2025.

 

100%. The worst are the ones that lead off with “I took the early out during Covid and after being home all the time my wife told me I had to go get a job.”

 

I found the DPS instructors to be awesome on the ER. The SLI’s that are FO’s really stand out… and not in a good way

 

as a 7ER LCP I agree with this. The amount of incorrect items students have been told in sim training is amazing.

 

As someone who was a 7ER FO but have been off the plane for 4 years (going to ER Captain training next month) is there any specific thing to watch for?

 

In my experience, DGS (or whatever they call it now) have been some of the worst instructors I have ever had in my career. I've been through 6 type ratings at Delta, so I've seen a lot. It seems most of them have never read our current manuals and seemed to be teaching stuff that might have been in the manuals 10-20 years ago, but now aren't. Had one tell me that LGA and JFK airports would never let you fly runway heading after a V1 cut because it would cause other aircraft to go-around. Had another insist that I add 5 knots to the approach speed during a QRH procedure. When I told him that actually the Airway Manual says to NOT add additives under this condition and he said, "Yeah, but the examiner is going to expect you to add 5 knots." All the SLIs seem to be very sharp and can actually back the stuff up they teach with actual references.

 

Sadly I have to agree.

All the SLIs I've had have been excellent. I flew with an SLI not too long ago and he said 50% used to be considered the max but now is more like a goal. Based on how much most SLIs make I'm not surprised they are trying to cut costs. But you know what, you get what you pay for and the SLIs are worth the extra cost over DPS IMO.

 

I had the opposite experience going through ER IQ.

all my SLIs were solid, some DPS guys were good, others less.

on the 737 I thought both SLIs and DPS instructors were pretty solid

I will say as a pilot group, I would like to see us get away from non seniority list instructors.