He couldn't pass his checkride, the company gave him several chances with different instructors. A lot of the 146 guys struggled several were let go.

He went nuts, the company knew he was an FFDO and reported it. The manager who reported it was the guy who hired me. Couldn't have been a nicer guy at that company (he now works for the FAA).

This lawsuit was more about giving airlines immunity for reporting incidents like the above than defamation.

If an armed pilot went nuts on the staff, and boarded a flight soon afterward, would you want him on your flight? We don't even allow drunk people on board.

This incident has absolutely nothing to do with initial training and the failure rate. There is one guy on here who had issues with training yet the vast majority of us on here had zero and in fact praise the training there.

I knew guys who failed checkrides at AWAC. All of them, in one way or another, deserved it. Sorry that's harsh, but it's reality.

If you have the physical ability to fly the airplane, and the attitude that you want to be there, you'll make it.

When I went through, I had a green instructor, and had the hardest checkpilot at the time (Clint M...back then he was a hard ass) and both my sim partner and I both passed no issues.

 

It's "an article" on it. Not the court document that's a book long. Either way it doesn't suggest that there is a culture, as you put it, of discrimination at AWAC.

To emphasize once again, I don't know anything about your sim partner. I wasn't there. "I don't know". All we have to go by is what you tell us, and frankly you sound biased. One of my best friends a class ahead of me failed out of ioe after 100 hours. I've known him for over 10 years, awesome dude, flown together for years prior. He just couldn't do it. At no point in time did I ever feel the training department were out for blood and discriminated against my buddy. The guys I talked to that were his instructors thought he was awesome and they hated it for him. That's life. He moved on and is doing just fine now.

Why do you work here if you feel the company has a culture of discrimination and lackluster people in the training department? You sound disgruntled and are obviously new to the company. A lot of new hires are ecstatic to work here, but not you.

 

I didn't know he was an LCA, that's news to me. I do remember he tried to fly us out into the Atlantic Ocean descending into bwi from phl when I was on rsv as an fo. I said, " hey I haven't heard Potomac in a a couple mins" and he was like, "nah it's good." I said " ok but we are on an east heading at 3000 ft and the airport was passing off our right." A couple secs later I realized he had switched to the standby freq and hadn't said anything. Not exactly chuck Lindbergh if u ask me...

 

No, I'm not saying they will sign off unprepared individuals in the context that you'd like to hear.

 

If you really are "out on the line" as you claim you should just enjoy your job and stop worrying about this crap. I'm not sure who or how you feel slighted by but wow move on. You act as if the Training Department is the SS.

I suspect you probably didn't make it here at AWAC, failed a checkride by showing up to CPT and/or sim planning on breezing through and got knocked on your can and now you spend your nights drinking alone, crying, in your parents basement and posting nonsense on APC about how someone else must be at fault because it couldn't be you.

Simple fact is if you fail out it's your fault. Everyone including AWAC needs pilots and if you are any good at all they will keep putting resources into your training but at some point it's a loosing proposition.

Also stop referencing a court case about an event that happened 10 years ago that you know next to nothing about. I mean none of us are bringing up how ten years ago you wet your pants at recess because the little red haired girl said she was going to slap you. So move on.

If you are here do us all a favor and quit. Go where you're needed most, away.

 

I haven't read through this entire thread, the last 5 pages or so, standard internet ****ing contest. I will add my honest .02 as I was hired by AWAC back in 2013 but landed another job that paid much more, so I walked away but I did nearly finish training with AWAC.

My background is USN, retired, with the majority of my flight time in the C-2A (1700 hrs), T-45C Goshawk (700 hrs) and the T-34C (500 hrs), along with various other aircraft in training. I retired with 3025 hours from the navy and decided I might want to try 121 flying, start with the Regional's then hopefully move on.

My first impression and still to this day, is that AWAC is a professional group of aviators, very motivated to be the best. I loved the ground school, though I probably partied a bit too much down town on the weekends..if that's possible. Made it through ground then two weeks later, travled to USAir training facility for the simulator.

I do believe the two largest issues with AWAC training is the outdated sim (2013 so things may have changed) and the lack of structure/standarization of the simulator training. I'm not saying it's bad training and it's certainly doable. I thought the training was very tough, flying the sim was tougher (very sensitive simulator) and it was not easy for this prior military pilot. I came out T-45C Goshawks, flying in formation or leading formations for about 75-80% of all my flights. Head outside, looking through a HUD, flying solo, a completely different type of flying, very dynamic flying. So, this 121 type of flying was very new to me.

While I was in ground school, I became a bit disenchanted with the pay and had applied to an MC-12 gig out of Afghanistan. I was hired at L3 the start of the second week of AWAC sim training. To be honest, it made it tough to stay, there was no reason to stay but I thought I'd tough it out for the last week of sims. It went okay until the check ride when I screwed up a portion of a procedure and though I recognized something was amiss in what I did, my follow on explanation of the system/checklist that I dicked up didn't go well; the sim check ride had actually gone well up till that point. I did not fail the check ride but was asked to come back, re-take it. I decided not to as it wouldn't be the right thing to do, I had a new job and besides, those AWAC check rides are brutal

I will say my heart was not into it as I was ready to go elsewhere and make money but AWAC training IMO is tough, thorough and certainly not to be taken lightly. I wish there was bit more standardization during the sim training...for example, when I did the King Air 350 training, simulators rides were very standardized, you knew exactly how each was going to go, the brief was outlined and you knew the exact order of the check ride (that may or may not be a good thing I suppose). I just remember at AWAC things being slightly all over the place at times, the instructor forgot to do things in the simulator, we forgot to brief something, etc. However, all the instructors I had were tough, they demanded a level of excellence and professionalism as a future AWAC pilot.

I did rather well with the King Air simulator, it is a King Air afterall, and it was certainly not due to my fabulous piloting skills but rather I would tell them, I just came from AWAC, that was some ball busting, hard core sim instructing and flying

 

If you choose to believe that I lied about being out on the line, there is nothing I could do about it. I cannot prove to you without revealing who I am and I dont need to prove anything to you.

The "article" is water down and you don't get the whole picture. Unless you choose to get a partial picture then that's your problem. The court document was what the jury heard, so that what I went by as to what happened before and after he "blew up".

If you can read, pitchtrim was the one who used the word "discriminate" first, NOT me. So if they can do it to one guy, what makes you think they cannot do it to other people at their leisure? If 10-year-old case is irrelvant, then why do we do case study of some accidents dating back 30years?

http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.av...08FA018&akey=1

"The POI stated that he was not aware of the amount of time AWAC pilots needed to complete IOE, and that, if he had known, he would have been very concerned. He stated that if a lot of pilots were requiring a lot of IOE, it might indicate something wrong with the training."

The POI said that, NOT me!

 

Don't believe he was... nothing mentioned about it in the NTSB report (attached).

 

Good grief, I've never seen people complain so much about training that they passed.......That being, all sarcastic remarks and telling me to go elsewhere,I wanna be at AWAC, any tips of trade to get through sim? This is my first part 121, I did however take a CRJ systems class and about 10 non full motions sims at my university that was "designed" to be somewhat be like a airline ground school since they figure most of us 121 bound will fly the CRJ.

 

Wanna get through the sim? Know your profiles and call outs. Know what to do and when to do it and what to say and when to say it.

Profiles are what the simulator is all about.

The profiles are in the books and if you do a lot of chair flying before the simulator it goes a long way to being successful. Sit with your sim partner in front of your paper tiger mockup and talk through it. Over and over and over again.

That helped me at least.