Originally Posted by bradthepilot

Without providing any evidence or basis for your claim other than "from what I've heard", this is borderline character assassination as you are essentially claiming the new training manager is vindictive.

Originally Posted by Nevjets

The reason that is true is because after reading this thread, it seems like you desperately need these union negotiated protections. And if these posts here are halfway truthful, I wouldn’t say that you have quality training. Training programs are written by management and approved by the FAA. But if you have a truly independent union that has a training committee with its members chosen by the pilots’ elected leaders, then you may have some say in the development or changes to that training curriculum AND how it’s administered by instructors. Right now you have none of these things. So when discussing pilot related issues at an airline that is not unionized, naturally that will always come up as one reason why there may be hidden issues that only come up when pilots are able to bring it up in a “safe” environment, like a discussion board or among pilots with union protections.

Originally Posted by Strenyakov

I was with 2 major ALPA carriers and one teamsters union airline. Teamsters was worse than no union. ALPA never had input into curriculum that I saw and I was in training. Skywest is high quality professionalism all the way. They fly in some challenging areas and have to maintain high standards. Currently, including the majors, they are the highest quality group of pilots in the US.

Originally Posted by PapaJaime

I went through mid-October, we had three resignations - no terminations. From the get-go we were told to “study together, or fail alone.” We took that advice and followed it. After indoc, we were informed of the three strikes and you’re out policy. However, they give you the opportunity to resign and not be terminated.

I came from flight instructing in a Cessna and am a very introverted person, but I knew that I would need study partners and friends throughout the program - so I sucked it up and studied my butt off with my group and then went back to my own room and studied more. If my study group wasn’t clear on something we asked other groups and then would ask for clarification from one of the instructors. We were told at times that we were over thinking something and to not dig so deep, but never were we told ‘sorry, get out.’ Also, there were countless observations of other people’s sim sessions. That different perspective helped me. I admitted I was struggling and not confident during LOFT and requested another session. The instructor was happy to give me another one. In the additional session I set forth my concerns during the prebrief and the instructor answered any question I had and helped me throughout the session. I will admit, there are some better instructors but none of them were unwilling to help me or those in my class.

No, it was not an easy program, Skywest is rumored to have the hardest training program of 121 operators, but I felt prepared when I got to IOE. Since getting through IOE, I’ve learned more from the everyday line captains than we learned in sim.

Originally Posted by Aviator2019

Looking to find out if anyone out there has had issues with the training procedures at SkyWest.

We had 7 hirees (thus far) resign and/or fail the November class. It was very clear that the company didn’t care to put forth any effort to assist those who were having difficulties, and left much to be handled by whichever students were willing to head-up study groups (in our class’ case, there were none). The company loves to pledge assistance, but the “help” they offered us was the advice “You either get it, or you get out.”

To all potential people looking to sign on with SKW, there are some stringent rules that the company adheres to, and will absolutely not deviate from:

“Three strikes - you’re out” policy, even if you are struggling and have asked for help. (in my case, my sim partner resigned, and I was not given a replacement to work with)

SKW considers “failure” to be anything below 80% (even on internal tests and exams), and accumulating 3 failures throughout the training program (even on small company tests) results in a termination on the pilot’s PRIA report.

Struggling during FTD / Sim means that they will intentionally limit the amount of help they will offer. You’re allotted exactly 10 hours of extra instruction, and to exceed this will result in a termination (again, on the PRIA report).

I feel very strongly after going through the SKW groundschool that the training department is run on fear. Anyone going into SKW should be aware of these policies and take a long, hard look at which airline they’re choosing. These are things I wish I would’ve known. SKW prides itself on having a very positive, caring culture for its employees, but their actions do not foster this kind of environment. Instead, they seem to pride themselves on the number of pilots who don’t make it through the program.

Originally Posted by Strenyakov

I was with 2 major ALPA carriers and one teamsters union airline. Teamsters was worse than no union. ALPA never had input into curriculum that I saw and I was in training. Skywest is high quality professionalism all the way. They fly in some challenging areas and have to maintain high standards. Currently, including the majors, they are the highest quality group of pilots in the US.

Originally Posted by viper548

I wouldn't expect much in the way of union protection while in new hire training. Everywhere I know of has a probation period for pilots.
I left Skywest 5 years ago, but the training there was excellent. Having been there 10 years, I've done training with the guys with the reputations. Show up prepared and have an attitude that you are there to learn and those guys are just fine. When I went thru initial training in 2004 they had the 3 event failures, you're out policy. All but two in my class of 40 made it thru (one was the infamous "Candlewood crapper"), and that was typical attrition. There were no extra sims and IOE was a max of 50 hours. Part of being a pilot is being able to perform when the pressure is on. The interview was difficult then. A lot of the guys not making it thru training now wouldn't have passed the interview before they decided to let the training department and check airmen do the weeding out.
Anyone needing advice on training- I don't remember if they had the syllabus with all the maneuvers for each day of sim published, but I thought they did. There aren't really any surprises, you should know which maneuvers are going to be done each day. Practice chair flying the maneuvers coming up on the next sim. Practice going thru QRH procedures. Know your flows and callouts. Aviate, Navigate, Communicate. Review the approach charts you are expecting to use. Do some observation flights.

Originally Posted by Nevjets

I never said that any of the pilots were anything but good people. Out of all my interactions with them, I’ve only had one person who I felt was a bit over the top. But there are those in every group. But if you had ALPA then there is a good chance that their training committee had a hand in the development of the curriculum whenever it had been written.






Typically the only union protection the probationary pilot doesn’t get is the ability to arbitrate being fired. But what I was referring to was the protections I mentioned on an earlier post that are already negotiated into the existing contract.

Originally Posted by viper548

Everyone there wants you to succeed, even K.A.