I'll take a nickle also for every time I heard, even while on the 88, "did you find going straight to the ER hard?"

Why would it be harder than flying any other airplane in the fleet?

The RA still counts down "50, 40, 30, 20, 10" so you know when to pull and whats hard about coloring a map, using HF, being diligent over the plethora of rules crossing the ocean and watching every other airline in the world fly right by on the tracks.

Heck, my buddy that sat next to me in indoc was also on the ER and two months after hitting the line we were on a JFK-GRU trip together poking through the thunderstorms while the Captain was on break. Its the same thing you've always done except now you had a much better st. elmo's fire show going on. The windshelds on the 767 were entertaining.

Now, he, there was one thing hard about flying the ER. And that was hearing the words "Delta" while over France and oh I did call Scottish by the name London once. Thought the Captain was going to jump across the cockpit to stop me but by then it was too late.

I will say, I think training was a real gentlemans course but there were a lot of gaps in it and I just plugged in previous RJ training and everything worked great, but I was surprised that there would be gaps on this level. And it also doesn't hurt to go to the training center and jump in the CAPT trainer after hours when nobody is around.

 

Little surprised to see a LCA do this work on the behalf of the CPO, FWIW.

 

Well ACL, he just said "Hi this is Capt so-and-so from ATL CPO ...."

So perhaps he wasn't a LCA. I just assumed he was.

 

Ah, probably a Asst CP then.

 

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FTB;
Some of this sentiment comes from pilots who started on steam guages, then got a single FMS, then got glass with 2 FMS's, then got international qualified. IOW it was the stepping stone approach from mostly military folks who had no glass, no fms, no int'l experience.

I had a buddy go from 727 eng to the -er. It was such a giant transition for him, he was on the 6 month extra training program. Now we dont have the panel, and very few new folks will have zero glass experience. So, times have changed.

RJ folks didn't have to be befuddled by glass and the FMS, so all you had to do was get aircraft and int'l qualified. I still call them TVs, not pfd/nd by the way.

I'd suspect most military folks are glass masters now too. However, I think wat I have explained previously in this post is where those questions about difficulty came from.

I jumpseated on a -9 a few weeks ago and looked in the cockpit, man I was a dog watching TV. I cant do that stuff anymore.

 

You would be amazed how quickly it comes back.

 

Scambo, it's funny you mention that. Captain I was flying with was an F15 driver, he said he came to Delta thinking he was coming to the latest and greatest everything when he got here... he then was on the 727 panel and amazed of what a dinosaur it was- and no INS??!? The jumpseater was a P3 guy that came in 85, he said he was blown away by the 727s technology.

Funny. Everything is relative.

Btw, never met so many 1985 DALS hires until I did the ATL-DFW shuttle. I'm usually slack jawed meeting a 1988 hire, but 85?!? Whooooa.

 

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I was also pretty surprised how behind DAL was on technology - INS' not in every jet, darn few GPS', etc.. Some of you folks came to the party a little later than me, but it is a relatively recent development that the company actually has been run like a business.

It is my opinion that it can be run like a business and still preserve most of the elements of the DAL family. Sadly, the DAL family approach is non-existent in many parts of the company.

 

Apparently you never flew a 7ER ATL trip!

 

I heard they were avoiding KC-10 guys because they're afraid they might accidentally hire "Tanker Clown" from flightinfo...