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Old 01-20-2019, 08:24 AM
  #91  
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Originally Posted by vessbot View Post
I would guess yes. I've heard they teach pilots how to fly in the military. In my vaunted 121 initial, I think I was only ever required to fly 2 "hand flown" approaches. (And that's with the autopilot on until on course configured, and GS intercept, and then with FD on.) And after that strongly discouraged from hand flying at every step along the way. But somehow I'm supposed to feel confident and capable of doing it. The whole thing is very bizarre.
I think those are skills you were supposed to pick up in those 1500 hours BEFORE you gut your ATP. You know, in that 75 hours of instrument time you had BEFORE you could get your rating.

But if you don't actually feel "confident and capable" of doing it, by all means tell your CP. I'm sure they can arrange remedial training.
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Old 01-20-2019, 10:12 AM
  #92  
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Originally Posted by vessbot View Post
I would guess yes. I've heard they teach pilots how to fly in the military. In my vaunted 121 initial, I think I was only ever required to fly 2 "hand flown" approaches. (And that's with the autopilot on until on course configured, and GS intercept, and then with FD on.) And after that strongly discouraged from hand flying at every step along the way. But somehow I'm supposed to feel confident and capable of doing it. The whole thing is very bizarre.
I mean... The VNAV saves the company the most money and most of us learned how to hand fly already. You can always get a 1900 job for a couple months, after 4 months of 6-11 legs a day or so you'll be a hand flying machine. Take of leave of absense tell them you'd like to get some of those hand flying skills down. Speaking as a guy who did it, the trick isnt the hand flying its the comically fast and bizarrely methodical scan. Everything else is finger pressure and trim wheel spinning.
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Old 01-20-2019, 10:20 AM
  #93  
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Originally Posted by vessbot View Post
I would guess yes. I've heard they teach pilots how to fly in the military. In my vaunted 121 initial, I think I was only ever required to fly 2 "hand flown" approaches. (And that's with the autopilot on until on course configured, and GS intercept, and then with FD on.) And after that strongly discouraged from hand flying at every step along the way. But somehow I'm supposed to feel confident and capable of doing it. The whole thing is very bizarre.
Military pilots are required to be interviewed, hired, and advanced under the government contractor program. https://www.dol.gov/vets/vets4212.htm
The airlines get hundreds of millions from the government for misc services, including being a standby military transport operation.

Otherwise, ALPA would require Delta to only hire from other ALPA carriers, which they were able to achieve a certain percentage of in the Delta PWA.
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Old 01-20-2019, 10:46 AM
  #94  
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Originally Posted by Mesabah View Post
Military pilots are required to be interviewed, hired, and advanced under the government contractor program. https://www.dol.gov/vets/vets4212.htm
The airlines get hundreds of millions from the government for misc services, including being a standby military transport operation.c

Otherwise, ALPA would require Delta to only hire from other ALPA carriers, which they were able to achieve a certain percentage of in the Delta PWA.
You seriously believe ALPA at the national level gives a rat's rear about the ALPA pilots at the regionals? I've seen little evidence to support that notion.
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Old 01-20-2019, 10:52 AM
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Originally Posted by Excargodog View Post
You seriously believe ALPA at the national level gives a rat's rear about the ALPA pilots at the regionals? I've seen little evidence to support that notion.
Yes they do, ALPA wants to represent all pilots at all carriers, and yes this causes major conflicts of interest, which is why many believe they don't care.
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Old 01-20-2019, 02:58 PM
  #96  
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Originally Posted by Excargodog View Post
I think those are skills you were supposed to pick up in those 1500 hours BEFORE you gut your ATP. You know, in that 75 hours of instrument time you had BEFORE you could get your rating.

But if you don't actually feel "confident and capable" of doing it, by all means tell your CP. I'm sure they can arrange remedial training.
I just might yet, I've been thinking a lot about this over the last 2 years. I think there's a huge disconnect between the overall company philosophy of the pilots feeling easy and ready about flying, and what actually goes on in the training department and encouraged on the line every day.

Doing a few instrument approaches in a bugsmasher is quite a bit different than in a jet at twice the speeds and where every bit of pitch deviation gives twice the vertical speed. To think that doing a little bit of the former and coming in at 1500 hours prepares one to be comfortable or competent at the latter with no experience, is extremely naive to say the least.

Originally Posted by theUpsideDown View Post
I mean... The VNAV saves the company the most money and most of us learned how to hand fly already. You can always get a 1900 job for a couple months, after 4 months of 6-11 legs a day or so you'll be a hand flying machine. Take of leave of absense tell them you'd like to get some of those hand flying skills down. Speaking as a guy who did it, the trick isnt the hand flying its the comically fast and bizarrely methodical scan. Everything else is finger pressure and trim wheel spinning.
If "most" of us did, why not keep up some practice here at 9E in the CRJ? In 2 years and 1000 hours, I've seen someone else fly an instrument approach literally maybe twice. And even on the nicest and calmest of VFR days into quiet out of the way airports, a handful of times. If everyone was such a "flying machine," I wouldn't be hearing them say things like "I'm gonna have to hand fly this one in!" or "Now I'm gonna have to do a descending turn!" in an elevated voice when we get vectored in too tight or whatever. That would make me rest a little easier when riding in the back.

I did a bit of freight dogging but it wasn't the Midwest winter experience, it was from the LA basin into the desert. After that I got a tiny bit more IFR experience flying charter up and down the West coast, .1 at a time through the marine layer. Here at 9E, extrapolating from what I see from the left seat, I would easily surmise that I hand fly the most out of the entire list, so I feel better about my own skills now; but I'll still refuse an airplane without an autopilot if we're going somewhere IMC (as I would hope that anybody would). Forgetting about me, a sample of 1, what about the rest of the group, the chief demographic being 1500 hour CFI's? Is everyone supposed to take a sabbatical to go fly a 1900 around? Or, instead, should the Endeavor training department ensure that their pilots can fly? (To be clear, this involves more than 2 approaches from the final approach course, with the FD, to tick a box in the training record and move on). What about senior Captains who I can only extrapolate have flown decades without flying a single instrument approach? Should they take a sabbatical to go fly a 1900? Or should they maybe practice their craft at least every now and then (even if they don't like flying) in the CRJ, an opportunity already available to them every day at their current employer?
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Old 01-20-2019, 05:08 PM
  #97  
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Originally Posted by vessbot View Post
If "most" of us did, why not keep up some practice here at 9E in the CRJ? In 2 years and 1000 hours, I've seen someone else fly an instrument approach literally maybe twice. And even on the nicest and calmest of VFR days into quiet out of the way airports, a handful of times. If everyone was such a "flying machine," I wouldn't be hearing them say things like "I'm gonna have to hand fly this one in!" or "Now I'm gonna have to do a descending turn!" in an elevated voice when we get vectored in too tight or whatever. That would make me rest a little easier when riding in the back.
It sounds like you're on the 900. That mentality is a holdover from the Mesaba days. A lot of the instructors, particularly in management, originate from the Mesaba side. Hence why hand flying isn't exactly encouraged on that fleet. Hand flying is very common on the 200, even in New York and in IMC. People aren't hand flying every approach by any means, but in my experience, it's a marked difference from what I observed in my time on the 900. This isn't supposed to be some 9E vs XJ ****ing match, its just what my experience has been. You may have noticed that hand flying has been an area of emphasis during CQ PVs for the past couple years. An annual training event is not going to keep someone proficient in manual handling. We have a ton of leeway for hand flying in our manuals. If they refuse to make the effort to stay proficient in day to day line operations, that's on them. Not the training department, the hiring department, or anyone else.
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Old 01-20-2019, 05:30 PM
  #98  
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Originally Posted by vessbot View Post
I just might yet, I've been thinking a lot about this over the last 2 years. I think there's a huge disconnect between the overall company philosophy of the pilots feeling easy and ready about flying, and what actually goes on in the training department and encouraged on the line every day.

Doing a few instrument approaches in a bugsmasher is quite a bit different than in a jet at twice the speeds and where every bit of pitch deviation gives twice the vertical speed. To think that doing a little bit of the former and coming in at 1500 hours prepares one to be comfortable or competent at the latter with no experience, is extremely naive to say the least.



If "most" of us did, why not keep up some practice here at 9E in the CRJ? In 2 years and 1000 hours, I've seen someone else fly an instrument approach literally maybe twice. And even on the nicest and calmest of VFR days into quiet out of the way airports, a handful of times. If everyone was such a "flying machine," I wouldn't be hearing them say things like "I'm gonna have to hand fly this one in!" or "Now I'm gonna have to do a descending turn!" in an elevated voice when we get vectored in too tight or whatever. That would make me rest a little easier when riding in the back.

I did a bit of freight dogging but it wasn't the Midwest winter experience, it was from the LA basin into the desert. After that I got a tiny bit more IFR experience flying charter up and down the West coast, .1 at a time through the marine layer. Here at 9E, extrapolating from what I see from the left seat, I would easily surmise that I hand fly the most out of the entire list, so I feel better about my own skills now; but I'll still refuse an airplane without an autopilot if we're going somewhere IMC (as I would hope that anybody would). Forgetting about me, a sample of 1, what about the rest of the group, the chief demographic being 1500 hour CFI's? Is everyone supposed to take a sabbatical to go fly a 1900 around? Or, instead, should the Endeavor training department ensure that their pilots can fly? (To be clear, this involves more than 2 approaches from the final approach course, with the FD, to tick a box in the training record and move on). What about senior Captains who I can only extrapolate have flown decades without flying a single instrument approach? Should they take a sabbatical to go fly a 1900? Or should they maybe practice their craft at least every now and then (even if they don't like flying) in the CRJ, an opportunity already available to them every day at their current employer?
Let's start with this:

- There are far more captains, including senior captains, who hand fly versus run 600-on-400-off. Maybe you haven't flown with the folks who turn the FD off and go raw data at 400 feet after departure, or the folks who stick it in pitch mode, because they understand the relationships among pitch, power, and airspeed.

- If you aren't watching folks hand-flying approaches often, then you aren't doing the ILS 4 at LaGuardia right.

- Refusing a plane without an autopilot just because IMC is involved? The FMC still works. Just fly the FD and keep an eye on the raw data. It works fine, even when in turbulence and/or dodging thunderstorms. Is it easy? Not always, but it's safe.

- It is *not* the training department's job to make sure one feels comfortable hand flying an airplane. It's their job to make sure that one is safe flying 121. It doesn't take a lot of observation of hand-flying to tell whether someone can or can't do it safely, regardless of comfort.
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Old 01-20-2019, 05:48 PM
  #99  
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Originally Posted by Excargodog View Post
I think people tend to mischaracterize what legacy airlines want out of “flow.”

For them flow is a mechanism of assuring a fairly steady supply of pilots AT THE LOWEST PRICE POSSIBLE. The delta (no pun intended) in payment between even the most senior pilot at Endeavor and where the senior pilots at mainline will retire is over $200K. Yet the DCI guys do what? Maybe 45% of Delta’s flying?

The longer the legacies can keep their codeshares working on the “c-scales” of the regionals, the more they benefit.

Does anyone REALLY believe that the retired USAF O-5 or O-6 who flew a single seat fighter for 2500 hours until he was sent to a staff job ten years ago is a better candidate FOR 121 FLYING AT A MAJOR than someone who has successfully been doing 121 flying at a decent regional for the last five years? That the UPT class the retiree finished 19 YEARS AGO was really THAT MUCH better than the civilian ratings, type-ratings, and recurrent recurrency the regional guy has been through while the military guy has been working staff proposals? The idea is ludicrous.

What the majors REALLY want is competent pilots they can hire reasonably late in their careers, get 15 or 20 years of work out of them at an average pay well below the max pay, and then retire that guy and fins another 45 year old to replace him/her. What they DO NIT WANT is to hire everybody at age 25, have that person max out the pay scale at 37, and then continue to have to pay that person that max pay for another 27 years. Their pilot personnel costs would go through the roof.

Majors really don’t want flow, they want a trickle, enough to keep the pipeline filled but with upgrade times and flow times long enough to keep those pilots on the lowest pay scales they can fir the longest time they can do it while they continue to plug older and (career wise)cheaper OTS hires in above them in mainline seniority.
Oh, they’ll take a few very young OTS hires too, just to keep all the applicants hopes up, but the real incentive is to keep pilots working at the cheapest place possible for as long as possible.

Anybody who thinks differently is kidding themselves.
You sir made this old tired 9E pilot sign in just to say bravo...you are correct in your assessment of this industry.

Thanks for a honest (and rare) post.
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Old 01-20-2019, 06:10 PM
  #100  
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Originally Posted by gojo View Post
I can’t tell if you’re serious on all points or not? But at any rate, I’m looking forward to Gaurd Police’s response

I have no response to him as it wasn’t directed at me as far as I can tell as he didn’t quote me. Regardless, Delta doesn’t want a flow therefore there’s nothing to “mischaracterize” to use his phrase.

If your anticipation of my response has something to do with Propel then all I have to say is if Delta’s sole purpose is to staff the 5 participating DCI carriers through this program, then there would be no other paths available. As it stands, the student has a personal choice as to which path to take, DCI, military or DPJ/CFI. There is nothing at any point that directs/forces these students to a DCI carrier.


GP

Last edited by GuardPolice; 01-20-2019 at 06:22 PM.
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