Not to mention seniority.

Most everyone should be able to hold their first choice in base, and be close to getting off of reserve, before IOE is finished.

 

Well back in my day reserve was 1-2 years. Wait, wait, no it wasn't. It was just a month.

 

Quit yer whining old timer.

 

So now they give a warm up sim before the actual sim training? Is it because so many people couldn't pass after having a few weeks off or because they just can't pass in general? When we got hired it was normal to have a few weeks off before sim and there was no warm up sim. My sim partner and I had 5 weeks off between leaving Dayton and going to sim out in St. Louis and passed with no issues.

 

Congratulations...you are awesome.

 

My point is that the company never used to give a warm up sim nor did they go past the two additional sims that were allowed. Now it seems to be the norm. So it makes me wonder where the issue is. I'm sure you are a great instructor and make the company proud.

 

I just don't see the point in being negative for no particular reason. Yes, things are different, but change itself isn't something to fear.

The "Sim Zero" is a great orientation day that saves a great deal of wasted time in the next 8 sessions. It also helps identify problems immediately (lack of studying, poor knowledge of flows/callouts, etc..) and gives the instructors a baseline knowledge of the students. If the student is absolutely lost on that first day, they can be sent back to be recycled through the program again instead of wasting additional sim time.

If you can put 4 people in a sim for a a total of 2 hours and in turn save 8 hours of wasted time later in the week, it helps both the company and the students. The lessons subsequent to "sim zero" seem to be much more productive than without it.

In addition, there are many new sim instructors. From the newer ones that I have seen, they are all very experienced from other airlines, and most are pretty good instructors. It takes time, however, to learn to do it the "PSA WAY" 100% of the time. From what I have seen lately, the 2 extra days have been as much of a teaching problem as it has been a student problem. That is part of growing pains. In PSA's defense, however, they are working hard to fix it, and would rather give the students a couple extra sim sessions rather than to pass them through before they are doing it correctly.

 

Listen I am not better than everyone else. But the fact that is that for years no one got the zero sim. And now everyone gets it. So it makes me wonder if it is the quality of students that are being hired. Hell they have even made the initial ground school longer. So tell me. Why should these guys/gals not show up day one and not know there call outs/flows/etc?

 

They should, and are expected to. If they do not know them, they are likely to be sent home. I would say that well over 90% of them do. That has nothing to do with the Zero day.

As far as new hires, I would guess that the new hires now are MUCH better than in past years as a whole. I can not imagine that there has been more experience in new hire classes at any point in PSA's history. More than half of the classes are prior 121, and another 25% at least are prior military. Out of a class of 30, about 8 of them are 1500 hour guys (and some of those were part 135 cargo pilots).

It is not uncommon for new hires now to have 5,000 hours in the CRJ. There are usually a few prior 121 Captains in each class as well. If you were to average the turbine-only time in the new hire class, I bet it would be well over 2000 hours per student.

It may be true that the expectations for new hires now are much higher than they were in the past, thus the additional class time. That is another theory.

 

Wow, you really don't like PSA You seem to be the only one complaining though in this thread. What's your experience been with them?