S. D.'s Leter
 

Reading the Flight Ops weekly update, its says that they will hold Indoc classes starting in August and going for THREE months. (50 Guys a class)

I thought they didn't like that setup last time they tried it back in late '07 early '08.

Nu;
I did not know there was even a possibility of a change? Contract Bulletin 09-01 stated there were no changes to the PWA. That summed it up nicely. :rolleyes:

No...I never did. Here's the reason: I'll have nobody to back me up in the event I move those flaps or gear beyond the placard speeds. Why would I keep my highly experienced F/O's out of the loop like that?

Not a superior aviator, just a highly standardized part of a team. See the difference?

You totally miss the point. Task saturation is a massive threat indicator. If I see task saturation in myself or in my F/O, I don't try to reduce that by moving items that the other pilot should normally do. I remove the task saturation by purposely slowing the process down (delay vectors, holding, etc.) You never fix task saturation by trying to "catch up", you fix it by slowing things down. And unless you/re out of fuel or on fire, you can always afford to slow things down.

Again, the most important issue is HOW you reduce perceived task saturation. Reaching and doing things yourself is reckless in my opinion. You lose the backup of your other crewmember, and you probably don't reduce task saturation at all. It's just an attempt to catch up.

None of this are my musings alone. This is all well worn, well tested policy of many operators and regulators.

Carl

The class roster posted at the Training Center as of yesterday showed 25 guys in the class for Monday, Aug 2nd. There will be two classes a month at 25 each.

Carl, I am curious about how many Delta crews you have flown with and observed. I have a friend who is a check airman out of DTW on the 755. He has flown with a lot of Delta crews. The first thing he said to me after doing a bunch of observation flights was he that everything he heard was all wrong. He said your cockpits are every bit as standardized as ours. We heard you were cowboys and after several flights I realized we were all wrong.
You may not like Delta's methods but they have produced results. Delta went 7 years flying over the Atlantic without a single gross navigational error. A record even more impressive when you consider we had more flights over the Atlantic then any other airline. In a MAC inspection where they rode on large number of cockpit observations flights Delta got the first 100 percent grade they ever awarded and a big part of their grading system is cockpit standardization.
We do have some differences from how NWA did things. We give our copilots a little more responsibility and give a little more authority to the Captain. The FAA however has never had a issue with how are cockpits are run in the last 20 years. I fly out of a large base with a different crew almost every flight. We operate very standardized cockpits. Everyone does know what they are expected to do contrary to your opinion.
Take the time to talk to some or your check airman who have actually flown on a large number of Delta flights.

Every part of the flight. Here's just one example. When I began to move the aircraft after pushback, my first command was: "Flaps 20", the F/O responded and moved the flap handle. If I taxiied the aircraft more than about 10 feet and I hadn't made the command, my F/O new instantly that I had forgotten. He didn't have to sit over there wondering when/if I would do it. Then after I got corrected, I could think about why I got distracted and say to myself "get back in the game numb nuts."

That was the basic philosophy behind every action being standardized.

Carl

Same here.

If I do not move the flaps after the salute the Captain knows my head is somewhere else.

You ask a question in the beginning of your post, then give your own answer at the end. It shows that once again you cannot see anything negative about your operation. So even though your questions are clearly rhetorical, I'll answer them anyway.

What I see in Delta South cockpits is a high degree of adherence to policy. The problem is that the policy is too lacking in standardized roles. That's my opinion from what I see.

Carl

Here's the problem: Since there's no command, what happens if the captain doesn't notice that you didn't move the flaps uncommanded? This double distraction scenario is exactly why the industry has moved towards commands and responses. With our operation, this important system activation is entirely silent.

Recent events should give you and all of us pause about the wisdom of this current policy. I know you know which ones I'm talking about.

Carl

Or 12 times a day on the 88: ATL-RSW-ATL-PNS-ATL-RDU-ATL-BNA-ATL-MIA-ATL-MSY-ATL-AUS...

Nice New.

I'll save us both 80! I started looking for pics of Hayden Panettiere and hoped to find one with a nerd and her in a cheerleading outfit to complete New's concept of a pilot preflighting and cheerleader. Then I thought, find a picture of a pilot doing a preflight on a phone and make fun of it... when that didn't work, I tried Star Wars, Titanic, Dumb and Dumber and finally gave up and am proud to give you a pic that has nothing to do with anything.

http://www.treehugger.com/Jennifer-Aniston-Cherry2.jpg

A moment of pause for Miss Jennifer Aniston.

BTW, is it an okay time to complain that in the past two months or so, but especially this month, evidently the schedulers have tossed out looking at the PCS requests. #1 several times and blown off, no conflicts on my schedule, no conflicts with the other pilots. Just blown off and each time I've gone back to the RUO rules and the PWA and can't figure out how they got what they got other than arbitrarily assigning things. It wasn't like this until recently, my requests have always been honored and if they weren't I either could find the reason why or I made a call and the schedulers explained why and the reasons were sound. I've made one call recently and I'm not making any more, I'll leave it at that and we'll see if it gets better soon.

Now I'm going to go back to the beginning of the standardization conversation and start over...