Are you saying you would concede the LVP if they don't take the OE trips? This is the equivalent of giving up a week of vacation if they let us keep our pay rates. We already have OE trip pulls.

A couple huge issues with AQFO's doing the probationary check. While we've had SO' Check Airman in the past, this is unprecedented in that you have a non-capt giving a check ride in the line environment. Very much the camel getting its nose under the tent. It was one thing to have FO PCA's do checkrides in the sim (can monitor them pretty easily both through trng surveys and their scoring). The AQFO has never checked out as a Capt and and has never undergone any formal training as an evaluator. The PWA requires evaluator training for evaluators. The AQP plan requires training and electronic monitoring of Check Airman. The LCA group as a whole is all over the place in their standardization and allowing a non-qualified group evaluate is unprecedented. The probationary pilot has no ALPA recourse because he/she is on probation.

***??? Do you really anticipate dALPA bringing this $h!t to us again? If so, they clearly weren't listening.

NO CONCESSIONS!!!

Exactly...not a road we should go down. Think this is just a precursor to JT and JG wanting them to do all line checks.

I doubt it....why would they change their philosophy on the subject now?

Actually in the situation described, the FO would not have been "released with pay" but would have had to ride along anyway.

Is a "check" given by an FO a jeopardy event for captains? Can the FO bust captains?

Yes.

In fact, I think the last sim checkride given me by a Captain IP was in about 1995.

Not really material...they are neither trained, certified or a Captain. The company is getting around it with semantics by calling it a validation. Technically there is no such thing as a mid-phase probationary validation ride in the lexicon of FAA events. This is a Delta event. Regardless, the Probationary pilot is being scrutinized by the AQFO. I doubt it's a jeopardy event in the sense of certificate action. But what's next? How about AQFO's validating Captains who do poorly on CQ or IQ? Do we really want an uncertified, untrained pilot to validate another pilot. Remember...there are no rules with the AQFO system. A new hire could be signed up if they wanted too.

From what i was told, the answer is no. They are not LCA's and they couldn't write anything up anyway. Like I stated before, the reason given at the head shed was Captains were getting so many line checks by LCA's giving 6 month probie rides that this was a way to get the check done without a jeopardy event for the Captain. I will say that it is a pretty big departure from being a seeing eye dog, of sorts, going into very specific airports to evaluating FO's.