Yes.

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Spot on gouge here.

FAA Oral friend

I wouldn't worry much about that until training. You will get a good gouge in ground school. There will also be a day toward the end of the IPT's where you and 3 other classmates will get together with an instructor and he will give you an "end of course" oral, which serves as a mock oral. This end of course is much more detailed than the actual oral in most cases.


If you must know about it now...

You will meet with the examiner. He will give you a flight release and all required information to complete a weight and balance calculation. It will include a weather packet.

He will ask you to review it all, and complete a manual W&B (this is something that we rarely, if ever, do on the line. Only when ACARS is deferred). He will leave you alone for awhile.

You will review all of the information and figure out if it is a legal release or not. There will likely be several errors.

When he comes back, he will ask you about the release. He will quiz you about weather, did you need an alternate, and why. What was the min fuel? What was the expected burn, reserve gas, and all of the rules about it.

Then will likely be a limitation and immediate action items review. He asks, you answer.

Then will be systems. This is usually keyed around the cockpit posters. What does this switch do? Tell me about that switch. Lets look at the electrics page - how many TRU's - what do they do? Lets talk about the hydraulic pumps - why do we put them in "auto" and not "on"? Things like that.

That is about it. If you studied in ground school, it is a piece of cake.

Thanks. Coming from another 121. Just want sure if I'd get the hammer

It is straight forward and what you would expect. If you study and work hard, it is easy. If you are not prepared, you will fail.

Exactly what I would expect from any professional training department.

The training is really very good here. Lots of great instructors and good facilities.

So I guess my question is this: from this latest upgrade to today, how many guys are in line for an upgrade? I know there are some that will bypass, some won't make it etc., but based off the numbers you've hired does that push out the upgrade past the 3 year mark? My reasoning is someone eluded to the fact that 2015 was a massive hiring wave. Therefore after this pilot upgrades does the upgrade time trend up or remain the same, at the 2ish year mark?

Thanks everyone for the help; former RJ captain that is sitting on the streets (long story short, don't leave a good company for a crappy company thinking that bigger airplane that is painted in the same color that matches your paycheck is a step up) thinking that PSA is the way to go because of the SAP. I just don't want to be right seat loner then necessary if I don't choose to be. Also I'm hedging my bets with the flow if needed. Speaking of flow, how does it stack up? How many guys are leaving a month outside of the flow? Also is there any opportunities for FO's to enter into the training department?

Upgrades are going to the middle 500's on the seniority list and there are just over 1200 on the list. The numbers are all twisted up though because there are many, many, many captains already between 550ish and 1200. If we are able to continue filling seats in classes and grow somewhere near the desired end state, I would think that upgrades would remain in the 2-3 year range for some time.

We are losing more per month outside the flow than we are to the flow... I don't know that anyone has the exact figures but it is safe to say we lose 10-15 a month outside of the flow and 5 a month to the flow.

Initial training prior to sim stage is conducted predominately by FOs in DAY... so yes, there are training department opportunities for you quickly.

Its all speculation their currently upgrading around the 550 seniority number with 1200 on the list now. Theres been plenty of time for the large majorities of the FOs to build their 1000 SIC so I do not foresee any large amount of bypassing in the future. Alot of FOs have their time now and are waiting to upgrade. Question is now how long will it take to upgrade behind 600 or so other FOs at PSA.

Theyve been upgrading at about 8-12 or so the last few months, expecting a large upgrade class coming but Id personally expect to see the upgrade time go upwards of 2.5-3 years.

2015 hires should start seeing upgrades by the summer. In my class, there were roughly 30 new hires. Of that amount, there are only 6 of us left that haven't upgraded or left. A lot of the 2015 hires were CAs so once the list hits the 2015 hires it will be moving pretty quick regardless.

With new hire classes of 25 and the 35 additional 700s coming, upgrade time should drop to ~18 months. If the new hire classes are larger, all the better.

Here's the math: there are currently ~550 FOs that are active (actually fly the airplane, not an instructor or management). We should be upgrading 24 a month minimum moving forward (12 every 2 weeks). Also, we lose about 12 FOs a month to other carrier but being conservative, let's just say that 6 will be above you on average. That means that you should move up 30 spots a month on the FO list. 550/30=18.3.

6 months from now, we will likely have 650 FOs on the list, so if you wait to get hired, it could be back to 2 years by that time.

We did have upgrade classes in 2015 that were much larger than 12 and on some months we upgraded 40. If captain attrition does what they expect it to, and new hire classes keep filling up, upgrade time will be less than 2 years.

Don't forget that we have several months in early 2016 where we only hired 8-10 a month, and some of them have already left. In one month, we could upgrade 6 months of new hires easily.

Expect attrition to increase from the current level of 25 a month in 2017 by at least another 10 a month on average.