I might add. Enjoy the "whole" process. Take time to unwind, workout and have a nice dinner with drinks. If you just dwell on school work, you might get too wound up and $crew yourself. I even recommend commuting home on multiple days off. Recharge, relax and pay attention in class. All the gouge is out there.

TEN

 

Might I also suggest googling "How to speak Southern" for anyone not from the South? It will cut down on having to keep asking, "What did he say?"

 

Hmmmm. I don't know about that. Everyone's learning style is different and some people just have to be doing something or it drives them nuts, which I get, but I just don't see much if any value in trying to do prodecures in a plane you have no idea about with new manuals and self guided negative training while burning the midnight oil just to show up to training 1% more prepared (with bad habbits to boot) and an oversaturated brain for no reason. Do the CD first, do nothing for a couple days, and then maybe start hitting the procesures. YMMV.

 

What airplane are guys going into? The 88? 717?

 

I'm sorry, but that's bad advice. I know you have to do the CD, but it's really a waste of time, getting ground school from a CD on an airplane you have never seen before. You need LOD and Flows down day 1. I remember as a new hire showing up day 1 to FTD and didn't know much of any flows. I got ripped a new one. The way Delta has set up their training you need to show up a little prepared.

 

Okay, if you're going to the 717, let's just go ahead and get you squared away first, this is what training is going to be like for you...



A) Your airplane is smart,

B) You get a simulator thing to play with,

C) Your LOD has pictures, and

D) Your procedures are simple.

Just be quiet. Read all your books cover to cover, highlight them, it won't take you long. Practice and practice on the VFD. You're golden. Walk a mile and it's going to look like you walked 10.







Now to the MD-88 guys....



Walk 10 miles and it's going to look like you haven't gotten out of bed.

 

for the 88 guys it all depends on how you learn, some of you are very smart, will read all of the books in a night and remember everything, immediately correlate it and seemingly download the CD to memory in a day. You won't even look at the LOD, waste of time, you remember everything.



To the rest of us. There is no point trying to be the smartest guy in the room, nobody cares, it's an electronic oral, so don't get lost on the wrong stuff or have the wrong purpose.

You are given a bunch of manuals and an LOD, it's kind of hard to correlate things and you can easily spin your wheels. You could just go rote for the test but one train of thought on training, if this works for you, is

1) Get a lay of the land, skim through the table of contents for each book and each chapter of each book. It helps me because I get a tad irritated when the LOD mentions something I've missed and I wonder what else I've missed.

2) Your LOD has no pictures. It's a lot of words. But a vast majority of the questions deal with cockpit controls. Each section of the VOL 2 has the Controls and Indications, helps if you look at the LOD with that part of every chapter in VOL 2 to give you the picture to correlate the LOD with.

3) When you do the CD, look at the LOD first and skim the questions. Screw the answers because they're a bit long sometimes, just skim the questions and at least you know what it is they want you to know. Then go back and read the answers after you complete that chapter on the CD.

4) Yes you have flows, if you're new to the concept, sometimes it helps to count out how many items you're doing. 4 up (overhead) and 5 down, 3 up and 2 down. YMMV. You are kind of an FE and an FO, a lot more than say a E145, E175 or 717 FO is. A lot more ON/OFF than AUTO.

5) The FTD at the training center is good but it has some limitations. Doesn't hurt to open up VOL 1 and go step by step in there, same thing you'll do on Day 1 but at least you've done it before. It's good practice at least for flows if you have a hard time making it work for you. It's good for engine starts, hot starts (which is similar to a normal start), hung starts, etc.

6) You have a lot of First Flight items to review and you'll get to do them all of the time. Get them right the first time. Doesn't hurt to really concentrate on them and they're a relatively simple thing to study because it's a rote exercise.

7) You've got a lot of manuals and one subject can be spread through all of them. For instance, windshear. It's all over the place. One thing to do is take your computer and get all of the manuals downloaded to your computer and then learn to use CTRL+F to keyword search for stuff. For instance with windshear, go to VOL 1 and CTRL+F: windshear. Then do VOL 2, FCTM, FOM, AM, etc. It is nice because you do it faster. Sometimes with the LOD it helps to go to VOL 2 and CTRL+F because it's expeditious.

8) The OE guide has some good gouge. Sometimes it provides a bit of correlation the other manuals don't offer.

9) Go through the student version of the DIG (deltanet -> training -> reference material) once you start into training. Don't ignore the FCTM.

10) The 88 does whatever you tell it do and more. A lot of the times, it's you. It's telling you what it's going to do, learn to read what it's saying. It climbs easy, cruise is simple, descents are where it gets complicated. Everyone seems to think they know what to do, read the books and do what they say to start.

11) There's a good burrito place down the road called Willy's. I think it's only open during the week though.

12) Don't ignore the walk around slides. We were told to ignore them until the day before our final ride, don't do that. For instance, as you look at the pictures you'll notice strakes, what are those? Are they heated? How are they heated? Is the 90 different?

13) It's an easy jet to land nice, enjoy. Welcome to Delta, you'll love it.

 

Do new hires go straight from Indoc into training on their jet, or is there a break between the two where they send you home to study and then start aircraft training?

 

Meh. Everyone should have to go through 727 FE training, the old school way....by building it.

Nu
"Lord of the Panel"

 

Heard today that DAL was authorized to hire 45 more atop the 300. Not quite 600 total, but moving in the right direction.

In similar news, new hires today were told to expect Q4 training dates. Maybe earlier if they spun up the machine faster.