All 27 of my IOE CA's were awesome.

 

After around 3 weeks off after my sim ride, I was deadheaded in to my base in EWR. My DH was on company metal so I asked the captain if he minded if I sat in the jumpseat so I could observe and refresh my memory. My IOE was supposed to start the next afternoon and in my stupidity I hadnt touched my flows, checklists etc since I passed my sim ride almost a month prior. The plan was to get in to my crash pad a day before my IOE and review it all.

On Descent in to EWR we get an ACARS message: "FO ###### (Me) must report to Gate C105"

They were short on FOs and they had a captain who happened to be an IOE captain. So they literally threw me in the seat.

I show up and the captain already had most of the things done. Passengers were all boarded and everyone was waiting on me. Captain looks at me and asks:

CPT - "How long have you been with the company?"
Me - "3 months"
CPT - " When did you finish IOE?"
Me - "I havent started."
CPT - siiilllleennccce and deep thought
CPT - "Have you received your IOE briefing and orientation?"
Me - "Nope"
Cpt- "hmm... well, this is a Dash 8...."

Sufficed to say that the first flight was a cluster. We landed in ORF and I was still trying to finish the climb flow, LOL! We got back to EWR and I got paired up with my IOE captain the next afternoon and it was MUCH better.

 

My first 121 IOE was too long to type, but my second was great. The captain never contacted me piror to me deadheading 3 hours to meet him in his base and on top of that, he showed up 40 minutes before push back (20 minutes late for a regular flight). Our airplane had 1 pack MELed and we did about 4 1 hour legs. His biggest complaint was that when ATC descended us, I failed to change the TCAS display to "below" immediately.

My third IOE experience in the 135 world was even better. I showed up with the IOE paperwork and the captain said, "I don't do that." We did an entire trip with zero training and zero problems. A month later they start trying to upgrade me and realized I never finished IOE.

 

How did anyone miss this?! Classic

 

Day 1 started in DEN and several legs later, somewhere around LAX I wasn't hanging onto the tail anymore. The first time briefing the pax (no FA, B1900.. figure it out) was pretty awkward. F'ed up one seemingly very innocent thing in my post-start flow pretty bad that got 'caught' as the power came up for takeoff. But after the awkward first leg things went pretty smoothly. The 2nd leg was mine... we flew the length of the Grand Canyon and then landed on a short & narrow runway since the main rwy at the destination was under construction.

I had a great checkairman who has now gone on to much bigger and better things. I thought his personality was, at first, a bit rough but by the end of the trip I realized what he was doing: Making sure I had a healthy pair to confidently fly the airplane to its limits, succeed and stay legal in a fast moving operation, and not annoy the guy in the left seat. He started me off well and I feel very fortunate to have flown with him.

The nice thing about that operation, at the time, was we still got a few nights of flight training in the airplane in the middle of the night to put it through its paces, fly approaches in the snow, all that kind of fun stuff. IOE was not our first time in the aircraft.

Training and IOE events subsequent to that have not been a big deal, other than the usual amount of work and dedication required.

 

I always thought my company wanted the autopilot on at minimum altitude and off at minimum altitude. I read a bunch of stories about how that's what the airlines wanted, so I went through all my sims turning autopilot on at 600ft and never had an instructor with the foresight to just ask me not to do that once. I mean it was in our profiles, on at 600! So that's all I knew for my 10 lessons and a checkride. So I get in the plane with my first ioe captain, he flies the first leg which is great because I'm still mentally back in tsa precheck line wondering why they are telling me to go to this kcm line. But then my leg comes, a departure with an initial altitude of 4000. So I depart, and at 600 agl I call autopilot on. The instructor just laughs at me and says no. I was not expecting that at all! I didn't think they'd want me to actually handfly! But with that said, 4000 came up very quickly and I ended up floating the lap projectiles I'm sure to catch that level off. The rest of the trip went well.

Fast forward a few years and one of my debrief items on my last recurrent was, "you know, turn the autopilot earlier while in sims, reduce your workload!" I laughed because as soon as I got in the box I was just in normal line flying mode and forgot to turn it on for a while.

 

First guy was 100% dildos and said I would never succeed at the company or 121 ops. I was shattered, demoralized and thought I would get fired.

Next LCA said forget that guy (first guy was about to get relieved from being a LCA for being a dildo), was super cool, and I was signed off.

Just be confident in yourself and the flying will follow.

 

My first guy was an absolute tool. I hated every millisecond with him. He later would strike a wingtip while on an ioe trip. The 2nd guy was a normal human, enjoyable to fly with, and a good instructor.

 

Everybody just skips over his comments.

 

This is great