I've been putting wings on uniforms for about 25 years. Sure, most of the time was a Velcro patch! Lol! Oh, they were enlisted aircrew wings btw.

 

Anyone have a clue how many people started the ATP/CTP course this week?

 

I believe it was 14.

 

Is the max size of those classes (seems like we were told it was between 12-16) becoming a mitigating factor in pushing larger amounts of people through at an accelerated rate?

 

I think that 14 is the max right now. I talked to one of the students in the last class, and that is what they told him. He had very good things to say about the class, which was great to hear. I have heard rumors about a second class being offered if needed, with 1 being in CLT and the other in CVG. Not sure how true that is.

We supposedly are starting to get a large number of applications from other regionals that are starting to shrink - namely AWAC, ExpressJet, and Mesa. If that is true, it is doubtful that we will need more than 14 ATP/CTP in each class. Remember in 2014, we were hiring classes of 30+ every 2 weeks, but about half of the new hires came from other regionals.

 

Nope

Nope, all or nothing. Don't remember what the threshold is but if you break it "No soup for you!"

 

We don't have the sim capacity for much more than that at the moment. Securing an additional sim has been brought up.

 

Rumors have been floating of leasing sim time from Air Wisconsin's 200 sim in CLT...

 

I heard this also. I have been told by numerous instructors AWAC 200 sim is just sitting there not being used and we are thinking about renting it.

 

My experience was the same. I would see trips pop on and off quite regularly. Usually, if it was a really ugly trip, like a 12 hr 4-day or something like that, I could count on keeping it the whole time. If I ever got a nice trip, line holder usually returned to that bad boy. Also, being a TYS reserve and no hot reserve, I usually stayed out for the max days, then spent the last 2 days or so on SCR, with maybe a PHL out and back or something where someone called in sick.

I did, admittedly, one time planned my commute around what I saw on my schedule and had crew scheduling pull the rug out from under me and give me an entire different trip. That was totally my fault, but just to underscore the fact they wait until the last possible second to put that stuff on you. Like someone else said, it leaves them the ultimate flexibility to move trips around.