Spirit of NKS, Part II
01-03-2016 | 06:56 PM
#2521
Line Holder
Joined: Dec 2008
Posts: 77
Likes: 0
So, what exactly defines a "noob", or "newbie".
Time here?
Time in seat?
Overall seniority?
I'm kinda tired of the "noob" labeling.
Ok, some of us weren't here when "Carlson was the DO"
Some of us here never flew the 80
And some of us here never trained in a wharehouse with no A/C....
BUT....
Many of us here were 10 yr 121 captains...
Many of us here want change.....
Many (MOST) of us are not happy with the current state of union versus management relationship as far as negotiations...
But please, for the love of God, understand that only 30% of the pilot group was responsible for the last contract.....
26 %of those were strong enough....
Enough is enough.
Let's pull together.
No more "old guard".
No more "new vs. old"
No more "noobs"
Nobody in this game is "new".
Let's unify goddammmint.....
Rant over....
Time here?
Time in seat?
Overall seniority?
I'm kinda tired of the "noob" labeling.
Ok, some of us weren't here when "Carlson was the DO"
Some of us here never flew the 80
And some of us here never trained in a wharehouse with no A/C....
BUT....
Many of us here were 10 yr 121 captains...
Many of us here want change.....
Many (MOST) of us are not happy with the current state of union versus management relationship as far as negotiations...
But please, for the love of God, understand that only 30% of the pilot group was responsible for the last contract.....
26 %of those were strong enough....
Enough is enough.
Let's pull together.
No more "old guard".
No more "new vs. old"
No more "noobs"
Nobody in this game is "new".
Let's unify goddammmint.....
Rant over....
01-03-2016 | 06:58 PM
#2522
Banned
Joined: Sep 2015
Posts: 568
Likes: 0
From: A320
This just seems to be the best way to go about things at this point. We all just need to relax and accept what we have for the next few years and let the process play out. Prospective new hires need to be ready to accept our abismal FO pay while while their friends at the legacies make 70-80 dollars more per hour with 16% DC. I mean you'd have to really want to fly yellow airplanes to do that until 2020 but it is the reality. This will go to a strike and it will take a few years. Let's have a few beers and relax or go fly for the legacies and skip the nonsense. Cant wait for this summer when attrition meets bad weather meets management superior planning. Should be exciting. And do not fall for the "we're super close" garbage anymore.
Contract 2020 is my new motto!
01-03-2016 | 07:41 PM
#2523
Line Holder
Joined: Sep 2005
Posts: 89
Likes: 0
From: A 320 CA, retired
Because I spent five days boring holes in the concrete with my shoe leather in June's south Florida heat in order to secure a PAYCUT (based on the company's last offer prior to the strike). Brought to and approved by my MEC, by most of the current NC - you know, the same guys that threatened to quit if we voted NO. I don't want a NC that quits if they don't get their way, and I don't want an NC that uses leverage against their own membership.
Note to Gonyon: don't forget, the douchebag slightly underpaid senior people that you like to trash, went on strike to give up some of our raise to better pay the FO's and increase THEIR signing bonus. So, a 1-year FO got a 7K bonus while the most senior got 3K. It still wasn't enough, but we were faced with a quitting NC, and an NC that didn't put a contingency into the back to work agreement, so we were in "no man's land" (their words, not mine) if the TA failed.
Back to Chimpy: C2010 probably wouldn't have passed if not for the NC scare tactics.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to the NFL and see how the WN ramper's beach volleyball game comes out.
Note to Gonyon: don't forget, the douchebag slightly underpaid senior people that you like to trash, went on strike to give up some of our raise to better pay the FO's and increase THEIR signing bonus. So, a 1-year FO got a 7K bonus while the most senior got 3K. It still wasn't enough, but we were faced with a quitting NC, and an NC that didn't put a contingency into the back to work agreement, so we were in "no man's land" (their words, not mine) if the TA failed.
Back to Chimpy: C2010 probably wouldn't have passed if not for the NC scare tactics.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to the NFL and see how the WN ramper's beach volleyball game comes out.
The proposal before the strike had nice pay rates. But you neglect to mention the fact that one would not move up a year unless one flew 750 hours. So no one would ever move beyond where they were unless they worked really hard (and the company would ensure they didn't). It didn't matter for those of you at the top off the scale, but for the rest of us it did.
01-03-2016 | 10:42 PM
#2524
Line Holder
Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 50
Likes: 0
I never heard that as part of the company's final offer. That was part of contract 9000. The big change after the strike was payrates were moved from junior captains at DOS, DOS+1, and DOS+2 to First Officers since at the time of the strike all Captains were 8 years longevity or higher (no junior captains)
01-04-2016 | 07:48 AM
#2525
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: May 2010
Posts: 429
Likes: 0
I never heard that as part of the company's final offer. That was part of contract 9000. The big change after the strike was payrates were moved from junior captains at DOS, DOS+1, and DOS+2 to First Officers since at the time of the strike all Captains were 8 years longevity or higher (no junior captains)
That's true. CA pay rates for longevity of 5-7ish did not change from the last contract to the current one. I asked why on a conference call, they wouldn't answer on the "air." On the phone with me SC said it was due to those CA rates were not in our demographic. Yea, well neither was going public in a IPO.
It amazes me how dumb ALPA leadership is. It's no secret what investment groups do to companies. Grow them, take them public, sell them.
I know this....SC and MM got theirs.
01-04-2016 | 07:49 AM
#2526
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: May 2010
Posts: 429
Likes: 0
Follow up.....hopefully Frontier is smarter
01-04-2016 | 12:07 PM
#2527
New Hire
Joined: Jan 2016
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
My Experience with Spirit Training and my decision to leave,
Some things the pilot group may not know, that have been touched upon recently with no answers or nobody going far enough into them. The training department is no longer a training department! Recently the discussion went to why are all the failures occurring and what has changed and some nice things were said about the Flight instructors.
After talking to a line pilot flight instructor this is the story I received:
First it was Ground Instructors began teaching lessons more and more. Now the company has shifted to hiring advanced ground instructors from outside that are able to teach more of the lessons than the original Ground Instructors. Currently they are teaching CPT 1-5 and CSI 1-9. If you factor in two classes of 16 a month which would be 16 pairs of students X the 14 lessons they each need to get to CSI 9 that would be 224 lessons a month no longer being taught by our line pilots. That is 15 mostly senior line pilots a month no longer needed in the training department. If they can eliminate the training line pilots all together, which is the plan, they can send most of 75 training pilots back to the line that are senior to at least 50% of the company. This is a major factor seeing as how one of the pros to coming here was the potential for a short upgrade and one of the few things that make up for the horrendous pay.
How does this affect the pilot group? Well the easiest way to look at it is it puts all upgrades back almost a year. What is the difference in 1 year pay as a CA or 1 year as an FO? That is a question for each individual. The next thing is QOL that also affects the individual and is a personal question that each pilot would have to ask themselves. This affects the new hire pilots the most. They receive less than quality instruction from he Ground instructors and advanced ground instructors and this puts our career on the line. Ask some of the guys you fly with that are just out of training how they felt about the instructors they had! With stories of guys not know anything about a jet, having strange personalities, no knowledge of how Spirit operates, unable to answer simple questions, being condescending to guys with experience hired to be line pilots, being so old they cannot stay awake through the lesson, being so incoherent they can not even show up to work with two of the same color shoes on, and the list goes on….pool conversations and comparing stories are interesting to say the least. Do you know what happens when you fail training at Spirit regardless of your record? They just made it ten times harder for you to leave. Attrition problem maybe not solved but helped out.
As a new hire observing this, combined with the disgusting, poorly maintained training department that they are using (carpets and break room speak for themselves let alone no coffee machine), the training devices that barely work, listening to the instructor making excuses why it will not fly the approach correctly half of the time. How can I learn under this scenarios? What is pass or fail on a approach that can’t be flown? How did a guy in my class fail on a lesson for not being able to do an approach when it was supposed to be ground training? How can you blame a guy for failing an oral when the lessons that are supposed to be systems are nothing but flying approaches that don't work and the CBTs are ridiculously out of date? Add in the fact that you are like a hostage in a hotel for 6 weeks with no consistency in schedule. Something I realized later, maybe to much later was the contract. I didn't think it protected me but then I read this”
During initial, transition, upgrade, or requalification training, a change of training pilot may be requested by either the student or the training pilot. The Company shall not be required to honor a student’s request more than one time during the training assignment.
But who has the time during training to read the contract and most people will say it doesn't apply to them anyway, because they are in training. Newhire training is tough, I was one of the lucky ones and had a couple of good line pilots after CSIs to set me straight. I can only imagine if I would have had them earlier how much more I would know.
The last shoe to drop was the recent release of the much anticipated new pay rates! For the most part the guys I flew with were happy until then. We all had our training complaints but really thats what the company thinks a pilot is worth in this day and age? I turned down another offer to come to Spirit and only after that moment did I really understand the mistake I had made….
I have flown with a lot of great guys and it is amazing how the tone has changed since I have been here, now not only are the FOs leaving or trying to but the 5-8 year captains are applying to legacy airlines.
Some things the pilot group may not know, that have been touched upon recently with no answers or nobody going far enough into them. The training department is no longer a training department! Recently the discussion went to why are all the failures occurring and what has changed and some nice things were said about the Flight instructors.
After talking to a line pilot flight instructor this is the story I received:
First it was Ground Instructors began teaching lessons more and more. Now the company has shifted to hiring advanced ground instructors from outside that are able to teach more of the lessons than the original Ground Instructors. Currently they are teaching CPT 1-5 and CSI 1-9. If you factor in two classes of 16 a month which would be 16 pairs of students X the 14 lessons they each need to get to CSI 9 that would be 224 lessons a month no longer being taught by our line pilots. That is 15 mostly senior line pilots a month no longer needed in the training department. If they can eliminate the training line pilots all together, which is the plan, they can send most of 75 training pilots back to the line that are senior to at least 50% of the company. This is a major factor seeing as how one of the pros to coming here was the potential for a short upgrade and one of the few things that make up for the horrendous pay.
How does this affect the pilot group? Well the easiest way to look at it is it puts all upgrades back almost a year. What is the difference in 1 year pay as a CA or 1 year as an FO? That is a question for each individual. The next thing is QOL that also affects the individual and is a personal question that each pilot would have to ask themselves. This affects the new hire pilots the most. They receive less than quality instruction from he Ground instructors and advanced ground instructors and this puts our career on the line. Ask some of the guys you fly with that are just out of training how they felt about the instructors they had! With stories of guys not know anything about a jet, having strange personalities, no knowledge of how Spirit operates, unable to answer simple questions, being condescending to guys with experience hired to be line pilots, being so old they cannot stay awake through the lesson, being so incoherent they can not even show up to work with two of the same color shoes on, and the list goes on….pool conversations and comparing stories are interesting to say the least. Do you know what happens when you fail training at Spirit regardless of your record? They just made it ten times harder for you to leave. Attrition problem maybe not solved but helped out.
As a new hire observing this, combined with the disgusting, poorly maintained training department that they are using (carpets and break room speak for themselves let alone no coffee machine), the training devices that barely work, listening to the instructor making excuses why it will not fly the approach correctly half of the time. How can I learn under this scenarios? What is pass or fail on a approach that can’t be flown? How did a guy in my class fail on a lesson for not being able to do an approach when it was supposed to be ground training? How can you blame a guy for failing an oral when the lessons that are supposed to be systems are nothing but flying approaches that don't work and the CBTs are ridiculously out of date? Add in the fact that you are like a hostage in a hotel for 6 weeks with no consistency in schedule. Something I realized later, maybe to much later was the contract. I didn't think it protected me but then I read this”
During initial, transition, upgrade, or requalification training, a change of training pilot may be requested by either the student or the training pilot. The Company shall not be required to honor a student’s request more than one time during the training assignment.
But who has the time during training to read the contract and most people will say it doesn't apply to them anyway, because they are in training. Newhire training is tough, I was one of the lucky ones and had a couple of good line pilots after CSIs to set me straight. I can only imagine if I would have had them earlier how much more I would know.
The last shoe to drop was the recent release of the much anticipated new pay rates! For the most part the guys I flew with were happy until then. We all had our training complaints but really thats what the company thinks a pilot is worth in this day and age? I turned down another offer to come to Spirit and only after that moment did I really understand the mistake I had made….
I have flown with a lot of great guys and it is amazing how the tone has changed since I have been here, now not only are the FOs leaving or trying to but the 5-8 year captains are applying to legacy airlines.
01-04-2016 | 01:20 PM
#2528
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,577
Likes: 0
Did NK stop service to TLC? Just noticed you can't buy a ticked on the website. Didn't they just put out a memo re inspections down there?
01-04-2016 | 01:34 PM
#2529
Line Holder
Joined: Oct 2010
Posts: 1,499
Likes: 0
My Experience with Spirit Training and my decision to leave,
Some things the pilot group may not know, that have been touched upon recently with no answers or nobody going far enough into them. The training department is no longer a training department! Recently the discussion went to why are all the failures occurring and what has changed and some nice things were said about the Flight instructors.
After talking to a line pilot flight instructor this is the story I received:
First it was Ground Instructors began teaching lessons more and more. Now the company has shifted to hiring advanced ground instructors from outside that are able to teach more of the lessons than the original Ground Instructors. Currently they are teaching CPT 1-5 and CSI 1-9. If you factor in two classes of 16 a month which would be 16 pairs of students X the 14 lessons they each need to get to CSI 9 that would be 224 lessons a month no longer being taught by our line pilots. That is 15 mostly senior line pilots a month no longer needed in the training department. If they can eliminate the training line pilots all together, which is the plan, they can send most of 75 training pilots back to the line that are senior to at least 50% of the company. This is a major factor seeing as how one of the pros to coming here was the potential for a short upgrade and one of the few things that make up for the horrendous pay.
How does this affect the pilot group? Well the easiest way to look at it is it puts all upgrades back almost a year. What is the difference in 1 year pay as a CA or 1 year as an FO? That is a question for each individual. The next thing is QOL that also affects the individual and is a personal question that each pilot would have to ask themselves. This affects the new hire pilots the most. They receive less than quality instruction from he Ground instructors and advanced ground instructors and this puts our career on the line. Ask some of the guys you fly with that are just out of training how they felt about the instructors they had! With stories of guys not know anything about a jet, having strange personalities, no knowledge of how Spirit operates, unable to answer simple questions, being condescending to guys with experience hired to be line pilots, being so old they cannot stay awake through the lesson, being so incoherent they can not even show up to work with two of the same color shoes on, and the list goes on….pool conversations and comparing stories are interesting to say the least. Do you know what happens when you fail training at Spirit regardless of your record? They just made it ten times harder for you to leave. Attrition problem maybe not solved but helped out.
As a new hire observing this, combined with the disgusting, poorly maintained training department that they are using (carpets and break room speak for themselves let alone no coffee machine), the training devices that barely work, listening to the instructor making excuses why it will not fly the approach correctly half of the time. How can I learn under this scenarios? What is pass or fail on a approach that can’t be flown? How did a guy in my class fail on a lesson for not being able to do an approach when it was supposed to be ground training? How can you blame a guy for failing an oral when the lessons that are supposed to be systems are nothing but flying approaches that don't work and the CBTs are ridiculously out of date? Add in the fact that you are like a hostage in a hotel for 6 weeks with no consistency in schedule. Something I realized later, maybe to much later was the contract. I didn't think it protected me but then I read this”
During initial, transition, upgrade, or requalification training, a change of training pilot may be requested by either the student or the training pilot. The Company shall not be required to honor a student’s request more than one time during the training assignment.
But who has the time during training to read the contract and most people will say it doesn't apply to them anyway, because they are in training. Newhire training is tough, I was one of the lucky ones and had a couple of good line pilots after CSIs to set me straight. I can only imagine if I would have had them earlier how much more I would know.
The last shoe to drop was the recent release of the much anticipated new pay rates! For the most part the guys I flew with were happy until then. We all had our training complaints but really thats what the company thinks a pilot is worth in this day and age? I turned down another offer to come to Spirit and only after that moment did I really understand the mistake I had made….
I have flown with a lot of great guys and it is amazing how the tone has changed since I have been here, now not only are the FOs leaving or trying to but the 5-8 year captains are applying to legacy airlines.
Some things the pilot group may not know, that have been touched upon recently with no answers or nobody going far enough into them. The training department is no longer a training department! Recently the discussion went to why are all the failures occurring and what has changed and some nice things were said about the Flight instructors.
After talking to a line pilot flight instructor this is the story I received:
First it was Ground Instructors began teaching lessons more and more. Now the company has shifted to hiring advanced ground instructors from outside that are able to teach more of the lessons than the original Ground Instructors. Currently they are teaching CPT 1-5 and CSI 1-9. If you factor in two classes of 16 a month which would be 16 pairs of students X the 14 lessons they each need to get to CSI 9 that would be 224 lessons a month no longer being taught by our line pilots. That is 15 mostly senior line pilots a month no longer needed in the training department. If they can eliminate the training line pilots all together, which is the plan, they can send most of 75 training pilots back to the line that are senior to at least 50% of the company. This is a major factor seeing as how one of the pros to coming here was the potential for a short upgrade and one of the few things that make up for the horrendous pay.
How does this affect the pilot group? Well the easiest way to look at it is it puts all upgrades back almost a year. What is the difference in 1 year pay as a CA or 1 year as an FO? That is a question for each individual. The next thing is QOL that also affects the individual and is a personal question that each pilot would have to ask themselves. This affects the new hire pilots the most. They receive less than quality instruction from he Ground instructors and advanced ground instructors and this puts our career on the line. Ask some of the guys you fly with that are just out of training how they felt about the instructors they had! With stories of guys not know anything about a jet, having strange personalities, no knowledge of how Spirit operates, unable to answer simple questions, being condescending to guys with experience hired to be line pilots, being so old they cannot stay awake through the lesson, being so incoherent they can not even show up to work with two of the same color shoes on, and the list goes on….pool conversations and comparing stories are interesting to say the least. Do you know what happens when you fail training at Spirit regardless of your record? They just made it ten times harder for you to leave. Attrition problem maybe not solved but helped out.
As a new hire observing this, combined with the disgusting, poorly maintained training department that they are using (carpets and break room speak for themselves let alone no coffee machine), the training devices that barely work, listening to the instructor making excuses why it will not fly the approach correctly half of the time. How can I learn under this scenarios? What is pass or fail on a approach that can’t be flown? How did a guy in my class fail on a lesson for not being able to do an approach when it was supposed to be ground training? How can you blame a guy for failing an oral when the lessons that are supposed to be systems are nothing but flying approaches that don't work and the CBTs are ridiculously out of date? Add in the fact that you are like a hostage in a hotel for 6 weeks with no consistency in schedule. Something I realized later, maybe to much later was the contract. I didn't think it protected me but then I read this”
During initial, transition, upgrade, or requalification training, a change of training pilot may be requested by either the student or the training pilot. The Company shall not be required to honor a student’s request more than one time during the training assignment.
But who has the time during training to read the contract and most people will say it doesn't apply to them anyway, because they are in training. Newhire training is tough, I was one of the lucky ones and had a couple of good line pilots after CSIs to set me straight. I can only imagine if I would have had them earlier how much more I would know.
The last shoe to drop was the recent release of the much anticipated new pay rates! For the most part the guys I flew with were happy until then. We all had our training complaints but really thats what the company thinks a pilot is worth in this day and age? I turned down another offer to come to Spirit and only after that moment did I really understand the mistake I had made….
I have flown with a lot of great guys and it is amazing how the tone has changed since I have been here, now not only are the FOs leaving or trying to but the 5-8 year captains are applying to legacy airlines.
Great points.
Parity for all or it isn't parity at all
01-04-2016 | 02:35 PM
#2530
Gets Weekends Off
Joined: Jun 2010
Posts: 1,577
Likes: 0
My Experience with Spirit Training and my decision to leave,
Some things the pilot group may not know, that have been touched upon recently with no answers or nobody going far enough into them. The training department is no longer a training department! Recently the discussion went to why are all the failures occurring and what has changed and some nice things were said about the Flight instructors.
After talking to a line pilot flight instructor this is the story I received:
First it was Ground Instructors began teaching lessons more and more. Now the company has shifted to hiring advanced ground instructors from outside that are able to teach more of the lessons than the original Ground Instructors. Currently they are teaching CPT 1-5 and CSI 1-9. If you factor in two classes of 16 a month which would be 16 pairs of students X the 14 lessons they each need to get to CSI 9 that would be 224 lessons a month no longer being taught by our line pilots. That is 15 mostly senior line pilots a month no longer needed in the training department. If they can eliminate the training line pilots all together, which is the plan, they can send most of 75 training pilots back to the line that are senior to at least 50% of the company. This is a major factor seeing as how one of the pros to coming here was the potential for a short upgrade and one of the few things that make up for the horrendous pay.
How does this affect the pilot group? Well the easiest way to look at it is it puts all upgrades back almost a year. What is the difference in 1 year pay as a CA or 1 year as an FO? That is a question for each individual. The next thing is QOL that also affects the individual and is a personal question that each pilot would have to ask themselves. This affects the new hire pilots the most. They receive less than quality instruction from he Ground instructors and advanced ground instructors and this puts our career on the line. Ask some of the guys you fly with that are just out of training how they felt about the instructors they had! With stories of guys not know anything about a jet, having strange personalities, no knowledge of how Spirit operates, unable to answer simple questions, being condescending to guys with experience hired to be line pilots, being so old they cannot stay awake through the lesson, being so incoherent they can not even show up to work with two of the same color shoes on, and the list goes on….pool conversations and comparing stories are interesting to say the least. Do you know what happens when you fail training at Spirit regardless of your record? They just made it ten times harder for you to leave. Attrition problem maybe not solved but helped out.
As a new hire observing this, combined with the disgusting, poorly maintained training department that they are using (carpets and break room speak for themselves let alone no coffee machine), the training devices that barely work, listening to the instructor making excuses why it will not fly the approach correctly half of the time. How can I learn under this scenarios? What is pass or fail on a approach that can’t be flown? How did a guy in my class fail on a lesson for not being able to do an approach when it was supposed to be ground training? How can you blame a guy for failing an oral when the lessons that are supposed to be systems are nothing but flying approaches that don't work and the CBTs are ridiculously out of date? Add in the fact that you are like a hostage in a hotel for 6 weeks with no consistency in schedule. Something I realized later, maybe to much later was the contract. I didn't think it protected me but then I read this”
During initial, transition, upgrade, or requalification training, a change of training pilot may be requested by either the student or the training pilot. The Company shall not be required to honor a student’s request more than one time during the training assignment.
But who has the time during training to read the contract and most people will say it doesn't apply to them anyway, because they are in training. Newhire training is tough, I was one of the lucky ones and had a couple of good line pilots after CSIs to set me straight. I can only imagine if I would have had them earlier how much more I would know.
The last shoe to drop was the recent release of the much anticipated new pay rates! For the most part the guys I flew with were happy until then. We all had our training complaints but really thats what the company thinks a pilot is worth in this day and age? I turned down another offer to come to Spirit and only after that moment did I really understand the mistake I had made….
I have flown with a lot of great guys and it is amazing how the tone has changed since I have been here, now not only are the FOs leaving or trying to but the 5-8 year captains are applying to legacy airlines.
Some things the pilot group may not know, that have been touched upon recently with no answers or nobody going far enough into them. The training department is no longer a training department! Recently the discussion went to why are all the failures occurring and what has changed and some nice things were said about the Flight instructors.
After talking to a line pilot flight instructor this is the story I received:
First it was Ground Instructors began teaching lessons more and more. Now the company has shifted to hiring advanced ground instructors from outside that are able to teach more of the lessons than the original Ground Instructors. Currently they are teaching CPT 1-5 and CSI 1-9. If you factor in two classes of 16 a month which would be 16 pairs of students X the 14 lessons they each need to get to CSI 9 that would be 224 lessons a month no longer being taught by our line pilots. That is 15 mostly senior line pilots a month no longer needed in the training department. If they can eliminate the training line pilots all together, which is the plan, they can send most of 75 training pilots back to the line that are senior to at least 50% of the company. This is a major factor seeing as how one of the pros to coming here was the potential for a short upgrade and one of the few things that make up for the horrendous pay.
How does this affect the pilot group? Well the easiest way to look at it is it puts all upgrades back almost a year. What is the difference in 1 year pay as a CA or 1 year as an FO? That is a question for each individual. The next thing is QOL that also affects the individual and is a personal question that each pilot would have to ask themselves. This affects the new hire pilots the most. They receive less than quality instruction from he Ground instructors and advanced ground instructors and this puts our career on the line. Ask some of the guys you fly with that are just out of training how they felt about the instructors they had! With stories of guys not know anything about a jet, having strange personalities, no knowledge of how Spirit operates, unable to answer simple questions, being condescending to guys with experience hired to be line pilots, being so old they cannot stay awake through the lesson, being so incoherent they can not even show up to work with two of the same color shoes on, and the list goes on….pool conversations and comparing stories are interesting to say the least. Do you know what happens when you fail training at Spirit regardless of your record? They just made it ten times harder for you to leave. Attrition problem maybe not solved but helped out.
As a new hire observing this, combined with the disgusting, poorly maintained training department that they are using (carpets and break room speak for themselves let alone no coffee machine), the training devices that barely work, listening to the instructor making excuses why it will not fly the approach correctly half of the time. How can I learn under this scenarios? What is pass or fail on a approach that can’t be flown? How did a guy in my class fail on a lesson for not being able to do an approach when it was supposed to be ground training? How can you blame a guy for failing an oral when the lessons that are supposed to be systems are nothing but flying approaches that don't work and the CBTs are ridiculously out of date? Add in the fact that you are like a hostage in a hotel for 6 weeks with no consistency in schedule. Something I realized later, maybe to much later was the contract. I didn't think it protected me but then I read this”
During initial, transition, upgrade, or requalification training, a change of training pilot may be requested by either the student or the training pilot. The Company shall not be required to honor a student’s request more than one time during the training assignment.
But who has the time during training to read the contract and most people will say it doesn't apply to them anyway, because they are in training. Newhire training is tough, I was one of the lucky ones and had a couple of good line pilots after CSIs to set me straight. I can only imagine if I would have had them earlier how much more I would know.
The last shoe to drop was the recent release of the much anticipated new pay rates! For the most part the guys I flew with were happy until then. We all had our training complaints but really thats what the company thinks a pilot is worth in this day and age? I turned down another offer to come to Spirit and only after that moment did I really understand the mistake I had made….
I have flown with a lot of great guys and it is amazing how the tone has changed since I have been here, now not only are the FOs leaving or trying to but the 5-8 year captains are applying to legacy airlines.
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
downinthegroove
Regional
2
06-03-2008 05:55 PM
