Most of these guys are getting out or have been out for six months being with their families nonstop and now dad or mom is gone again for 6 weeks straight. United's training philosophy where you have two days off and they fully expect you to go home with positive space passes is extremely rare. There are airlines that don't care about your family life and will punish you up to termination if your space available flights don't work out getting back to training. Training can be stressful and failure rates at some of these 121 airlines is eye opening. The regionals are one thing but the smaller major airlines where they are hiring experienced people still have a respectable amount of people ding something. I think Spirit had a 95% pass rate on their oral exam (no AQP) and about a 92% pass rate on the type ride. Unless someone really dorks it up and pink slips both you could have up to 10% of a class with a fresh failure leaving training.

We have it good here now but that is because people fought for us to have a very relaxed training environment. Laundry expensed, positive space home, one hotel room throughout training, great instructors, ... United's training was the least stressful I have experienced.

I haven’t seen as much as some, but having been through several military training programs, Xjet and LCAL, I heartily agree with you. And I thank the union for fighting for a lot of the benefits we have surrounding training, as well as a professional and well-aged contract, and for their aggressive enforcement of it. It seems that their guiding principle is that we are professionals in the top tier of our profession and will be treated as such. There are things to improve upon, but it’s now light years from where it was. For me anyway.

No military here, but also XJT and CAL, and I totally agree with you.

When I was at AirTran, I was training on the 717 with a guy upgrading whom the company didn’t like. One day, we were told to wear the headsets and there was an additional management evaluator in the simulator. When we were taking the runway, I hear “don’t help him “ in my headset. We get an engine failure at 50 feet. He dances with the rudders and I’m calling out headings and radar altitude etc while listening to “stop, shut up” in my headset. I wasn’t wired that way. That place ran like a 1970’s image of airline training. CAL was much better (both the 737 and of course the 757/767) and the current UAL even better. We should all be grateful for what we have and thankful to those who worked to make it this way.

I was a 2007 AirTran hire on the 737. Never experienced anything like that during training and can honestly say that their 737 training made transition to UAL 737 relatively easy. The 717 training program did have a rep though.

Did you come to United before AirTran got bought by SWA?

I left AirTran pre-SWA, but didn't come to United until a few years later. So no SWA 737 training to compare.

Can we close this thread? Every time somebody bumps it, I get my hopes up for a CURRENT vacancy bid.

Bump.

Haha
You’ll get nothing and like it.