What do ATPs do to stay sharp?
 

I am less than 100 hours from having the ATP mins and I am probably about a month from my first 135 PIC ride. My question is, what do you guys with tons more experience than I have do to keep yourselves sharp at ATP level?

Keep on top of the FARs.

Review your company's Operations Manuals.

Review your Aircraft Operations Manuals;

Hand fly the aircraft as much as possible including the approach procedures, even if the weather is VFR. After all, you don't want to lose those flying skills that took you so long to attain.

Keep raising your personal bar a little as time goes by.

Never be complacent about your job, or the aircraft your flying.

The thing that prompted my question is that I talked to a guy who said lots of folks who are ATPs probably couldn't pass an ATP ride again. This seemed rediculous to me. I don't believe that it would be most, but more likely a very few who don't care. Regardless, I don't want to be one of those.


How do you go about keeping up on FARs? Do you subscribe to publications that keep you up to date, or do you sit with the FAR/AIM book all day? What publications are good for keeping up on that sort of thing? Sorry for all the questions, I just really want to be a professional.

Atp
 

In the airlines you get the privilage of retaking the ATP ride every 6 months. However automation and the world of glass cockpits make it very diffrent from an ATP ride in a Senica. I would buy a few hours in a steam gauge simulator every year or so with a stern instructor.

SKyHigh

iflyjets, If you obtain the AirlineTransportPilot license in your job as an Airline Pilot, the airline will ensure that you stay up to date. Once you upgrade, you get to pass the ATP ride every six months. You will get a three or four day recurrent ground school every year to keep you fresh on regs and such.

At least that's the way it should be:D In actuality, most of us do try and stay up with professsional publications etc. The checkrides do require some brushing up, so you find yourself making sure that you fly to SOP a little more closely when you have a checkride coming up. I went out and bought a cheap MS sim program to use for the basics of non-precision work, and I boot it up once or twice before a checkride just so I don't have to go into a six month check without having done a VOR approach in the last six months.

However, the longer you do the job, the easier your six month checks become. This probably seems cliched, but it's true.


If you obtain an ATP outside of the airline environ, you might have to spend a little more time on MS sim, or maybe just find a school and buy an hour or two of sim time every so often. If you are financially able, buying a type in something cheap, just for your own skill enhancement would be a great way to keep in "training" shape on your one year ATP anniversary. You can actually obtain big jet ratings for as little as $6000.

All else considered, the best way to stay in shape is to work with/alongside another pilot who has the same aspirations as yourself. The two of you will find yourself challenging each other to maintain proficiency and to advance professionally. I stayed much sharper, with much less effort, when I was a commuter dog, flying with pilots who were still "newbies" than I did when I was a corporate pilot stuck with old crusty "I forgot that crap years ago" pilots.

Good Luck,
skybolt

I lost my skills after I left the MD-80/90 program at Boeing :( Even those were a step down from my DC-9 days, which were a step down from my EMB-110 days. I did do a perfect descent and landing this morning though :)

Best way to keep your skills = hand fly, hand fly, hand fly. No Autopilots, No flight Directors, No Autothrottles. Unfortunately some airlines do not allow you to disconnect the automation to that extent.

TP

I hear ya! Went from 1900 no flap circling landing, no autopilot, FD's etc. to MD80 MAYBE an NDB. To airbus RNAV, GPS, ILS CATIII. The less you work, the more you get paid.?

And as far as hand flying. Never mind the company, the Captain your flying with DOESN"T like you to click off the Automation. OR rubs his hands on his thighs after take off until you put the AP on.

Ditto!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for all the replies. If there are any publications you recommend, please feel free to volunteer that information. I appreciate all of your inputs.

I agree with the guy that said "hand-fly, hand-fly, hand-fly" i did a stint as an MD-83 training capt and i found my students benifited a lot from my "take everything off at 10,000, and let me see you do a visual". requests.

I agree, the top of my game (in the airlines) was flying the 737-200 in/out of O'Hare. No automation, a flight director that was better when it was turned off, and lot's of takeoff and landings. That's hard to do in the 777, but at least the company I work for suggests as much hand flying as possible.

As for the regs, the company ops-specs will make sure that you're following the FARs.

Skills
 

It gets difficult to maintain or build skills once you are with most airlines. Most regional airlines are piloted by kids who really never learned how to fly instruments in the first place and the company and captain doesnt want them to turn off anything. It is easy to let the automation fly the plane and tell you where you are. The modern flight deck can lead to a real false sense of security. Sure a pilot might do several ILS's a day but in reality they haven't added much to their skills set. Flying a hands on approach doesn't mean much if the flight director is on. I am willing to bet that if you shut off all the magic on any typical regional flight deck you are probably less than three minutes from becoming inverted and crashing. However this doesn't prevent these people from getting jobs and staying employed. Therefore true instrument skills in my opinion are rapidly becoming a thing of the past.

And Like HSLD mentioned you will be forced to learn many different rules sets as you progress from company to company. Over time your mind will get scrambled with layers of regulations that come from all over the industry. The more you study can make it difficult to re-learn later with the next company. Though it is important to strive to become proficient at the regs it can be self defeating at times.

SKyHigh

I've been trying to hand fly as much as possible. The last two times I flew the 350, I hand flew the trips. I have a captain who encourages it. It was very good to do, and it got intense on the back end of both trips trying to come down, but maintain a certain speed while making a tight turn to final and intercepting the loc at the g/s intercept. I felt like it was a pretty good workout when things are busy and you are still trying to hand fly precisely.

From last year-
Airlines' Business Plan Won't Fly

Aviation - the human ability to fly and, more important, land safely - celebrated its 100th birthday just over a year ago. You'd think someone could have figured out how to make money at it by now.

In 2003, the latest year for which we have figures, the airline industry suffered net operating losses of $3.6 billion. Every day brings reports of new troubles to the most venerable logos in the air. One of those venerables, Delta, has cut fares, which means it will lose money on every flight. Not to be outdone, other companies are doing the same.

The airline industry as a whole has flown in the red since 2002. It lost $2 billion in the last three months of 2004. The industry had profitable years from 1995 through 2001, but they followed five years of losses. Counting bad and good together, the industry has had net operating losses of more than $5 billion over its history. These are Department of Transportation numbers, which the Air Transport Association, the trade group, keeps on its Web site in convenient tabular form.

Forty eight years ago last month, my bride and I flew off on our honeymoon in a Northwest Airlines Boeing Stratocruiser, from Chicago to New York. The plane was designed, according to Jane's Aircraft, from the B-29. But whereas the B-29 looked like a weapon, a bullet with wings, the Stratocruiser looked like a hotel. It had a lounge in the nose under the cockpit. We sat there and looked down at the Christmas lights of the small towns and big cities of Pennsylvania. Coming home, we were served Canadian bacon over Canada.

As you can imagine, that airplane has a place in my heart. In the early 1960s, while talking to a Northwest executive about another matter, I mentioned my fondness for his old four-prop Stratocruiser. Everybody loved it, he replied, but even when it took off full, the airline lost money on it.

The jets, which were just coming into service, would save the airlines by being cheaper to fly and carrying more passengers. Or so he said. Airlines did get through the 1960s in good shape, but they lost money in 1970, when oil prices rose.

The "carry more passengers" prediction, though, turned out right. Boardings more than doubled between 1961 and 1967, and then quadrupled again by 1995. Before about 1956, non-movie stars flew only on special occasions, like honeymoons. Otherwise, we took the train. The airlines were just starting to become what they are today, a common carrier for VIPs, sales reps, students and families.

Nobody has a lounge in the nose anymore. Despite talk of theoretical piano bars and hot tubs on the new generation of Airbus monsters, expect those spaces to be filled with seats for customers.

Whether they will make money for their owners is another question. We hear now that it's only the "legacy airlines" such as Delta and United that have problems. They spend as much time before the bar as at the gate, but that's because they have "antiquated" - which means high - salary structures and big pension-fund overhangs. We'll always have, we hear, the leaner, meaner new airlines with salary structures more like Wal-Mart's and no pensions.

But that's not new news. As Pan American and Eastern Airlines were going under, we heard there would always be People Express. Remember People Express? The fastest-growing - to that point - airline of 1983 was merged into Continental in 1987.

Taking everything into account, air fares are a lot cheaper than they were in 1956. But then, most airlines were profitable. Now, most aren't.

There are many things in the business that an airline can't control, among them the price of fuel, weather and delays for security inspections. But if the business is based on losing money, it's not a viable business. The old joke about the guy who was going to make up a loss on every sale with volume is a joke because it describes the expectation of the impossible.

If an airline tried, like any normal business, to make a profit by charging a bit more than it costs to fly someone from point A to point B, it probably would lose its lunch to money-losing competitors. If all of them tried it, fewer people would fly. The airlines wouldn't be the common carriers they are. The national transportation system would have to adjust, just as the passenger railroads did when the airlines started eating their lunch.

But would that be so bad? Nowhere is it written that everybody has to get from point A to point B at below cost.

By Tom Blackburn
Palm Beach Post

As a young boy I remember flying on a PAA Stratocruiser from Paris to New York and back. We were stationed in Paris and went back to the states halfway through dad's tour for a month's vacation. He worked for the CAA - today known as the FAA.

I remember the downstairs lounge and being up in the cockpit while in-flight. To this day I remember all those cockpit windows! :)