Got ORD for my IOE. Any tips?
 

New Skywest RJ FO here. ORD is my domicile, and next week I've got IOE assigned. I've heard all the horror stories about sitting in the penalty box for half an hour or more, so...can anyone with ORD experience share some local knowledge? Would be much appreciated. I'd like to show up with at least some sort of advance preparation done, so I don't turn into a blithering idiot when trying to deal with ORD ground procedures.

Thanks in advance...

Got ORD for my IOE. Any tips?
 

I was there for ioe. It won't make any sense on how things work there for the first 2 days but try to have all your freqs in the box when you have a spare second and don't confuse the capt and have him unknowingly stop on any taxiways at all costs... Good luck. You'll enjoy it after you get the hang of it!

Relax and have fun! Ord is a monster but don't sweat it,, ioe check airman will guide you through everything, but I'll tell you this, I did ioe out of ord too and you will never forget that day lol we took off and my rear was still back at the gate lol have fun!

Got ORD for my IOE. Any tips?
 

It's been a while since I've operated out of ORD but watch out for the SIDS speed restriction (if it still exists).

Landing 27R? Enjoy the LONG ride back to the gate...

Just grunt on the radio no one cares

Departure. Don't forget it is 250 kts till advised!! Don't go speedin after 10k. Pay attention to taxi instructions! Don't be a TOTD and check-in on facebook at the penatly box. Last but not least, have fun!!

Since nobody else said it. Glad to see you got through training. Your hard work paid off.

Now this is funny.
Seriously, keep your ears open, head up and eyes outside & you'll be fine. After day 2 or day 3, it will be fine. ORD has some good, no, great Captains that will help you through.

Thank you. Halfway through Sims I figured there was no way I was gonna make it through without needing extra training, but it all came together somehow. Nailed the MV, and I got an 'Outstanding' comment on my LOE from the examiner :)

It was intense, that I will say. But Skywest has a solid training department with some really good instructors who taught us well.

Fortunately I made a lot of dumb noob mistakes in the sim, so I hopefully won't make them online. Such as...one day before engine start in the sim, I looked at the ADG handle and thought that it was merely a cover for the real handle, which I assumed would be something like the emer gear extension handle. I pulled up on what I thought was the cover plate for the ADG handle, and thunk! The ADG deployed. Good thing I figured that out in the sim and not in the real airplane...

Yeah...don't pull or turn anything red. It will most likely turn out bad.

Don't show up hungover and keep away from the gate lice. It's a mad house....... Enjoy

Ord is one of the easiest big airports to get around. Just make sure to listen to what atc says rather than focusing on writing down instructions like most noobies do. Remember your captains will know ord very well they just want you to read back instructions, even if you have no idea what you just repeated!

Sometimes ATC goes on a string of instructions for what seems like forever (it's actually quite impressive) you don't have to really say it all back unless there's a runway crossing involved then I do, but otherwise a simple reply with your call sign and flight number will suffice.

Show up early...allow for every contingency ( traffic etc etc..)

While you're early, take a look at airport diagrams...

-Have an idea of where your gate is in relation to taxi ways
- get a general idea of frequencies
- have an idea of what kind of taxi instructions you can expect

I once jumpseated on AA (MIA-LAX) and the FO ( who was an TWA furlough with plenty of experience but just of IOE) completely screwed up everything from pushback clearance to taxi instructions.. He obviously hadn't bothered to review anything about the airport before pushback( frequencies, operations, ramp procedures) When FO goes to Lav, Captain turns to both us jumpseaters, shakes his head and chastises the FO for a complete lack of preparedness...

Basically spend some time, even the night before, getting the lay of the land..You will find that sooner or later you'll know what they are gonna say before they say it.

Be ready to write everything down..... Make sure you have a pen in hand when you call for taxi...Last thing ya want to do is be fumbling for a pen while ATC is rattling off instructions....

Most important thing is be prepared...Don't go in expecting the IOE instructor to walk you through it all.... he/she is there to teach you the general operations of the plane and company.. NOT necessarily how to understand taxi instruction or how to decipher SID's...

And as long as you appear to have put some time in preparing, you'll get a lot more leeway when you screw something up..(which ya will!!)

We've all been there.... As time goes along the cockpit will get smaller, and things you get tunnel vision on now
will become second nature within a few trips.

You will also quickly learn that things are generally done slightly different online than in the sim....

I think KingAirFun really nailed it.

Kfahmi, look at our company 10-7 pages for ORD. This will tell you what gates we park at, and also what's expected for Inbound/Outbound operations as far as setting up the radios and that sort of thing. There are also expected (aka "Standard") taxi routes in the Jepps that are pretty accurate.

I haven't been to ORD in awhile, but feel free to send me a PM and I'll help you out however I can.

My first approach at ORD was a VFR go-around because the runway was not clear - be ready to do what you were trained to do: aviate, then navigate, then communicate. Enjoy!

Congrats on making it out onto the line. I hope IOE is going well for you.

If anything, on ground freq in ORD, if you can't muster a readback, just mumble roger. Often times it just too busy to readback and they just want you to follow the plane in front of you.

You'll discover that it's usually the same taxi route to each runway, the captains know how to get there.

If you call for taxi on metering, roger and switch over to ground right away, usually ground is already snapping taxi instructions out to you.

At least you did it in the sim, I pulled it in the airplane, and clunk it comes right out and it sounds like a john deere lawnmower inside the flight deck. Makes it hard to hear the radios or talk to the other guy over the intercom.

How to deal with pulling ORD for IOE?
 

Call in sick! :eek:

Everything that everyone has posted is spot on. So read them through once or twice.

Here's my .02 worth as I'm based there to help get a sense of what it takes to get off the gate and on your way: But before that---we all make mistakes online. First off, don't be afraid to fess up either to the other guy or ATC...Its how we learn and keeps from making what may be a minutiae situation anything worse.

ORD will spit out a taxi clearance with the best of the auctioneers. So I always write this stuff down--every time. I can't tell you how many times taxiways or runway clearances got changed (5 runway changes are my best to date). Therefore when your trying to run checklists and new performance numbers, your not trying to remember what the last change was and how to get there.

Push-backs:For the AA ramp (131.87-if that's what you will be using) I like to put it in COM 2. That way when they switch you to metering (on COM 1---121.67, then ground 121.75)--its just a push of a button. Many times early in the morning when there is little traffic, these guys are spitting out your taxi clearance by the time your flipping the switch--IMO

Make sure "if" your aircraft has the ability, put the altitude rings in your Nav display--you need to be at 3000' by 5 miles and 4000' by 8 miles. Also, and this is a nice "gotcha" if your not paying attention---you need to maintain 250 kts until otherwise directed.

Congrats and welcome to the line.............................................. ..........

ORD is easy and has some of the best controllers in the business. You're always cleared to land, you don't have to read back instructions as others have said when it gets busy. I really enjoyed being ORD based it was a lot of fun. Worst part about ORD is the way they de-ice. At least they got the jetways back on so you don't get ****ed on while you do your walk.

Yes, good thing. Today I was talking about a similar sitaution that happened on IOE, and the guy was sent home (for good).

Don't pull, push, or turn anything at all unless somebody (or the SOP) told you to.

Thanks for all the advice! Finished my first 3 days, which involved a total of 7 turns in and out of ORD. It was way less intimidating than I'd feared. All the flying was on the United side out of the F gates, so the taxi instructions became pretty predictable. This week it'll be some Eagle flying... And I just got Houston as of 1-31, so by the time I figure out ORD I'll be headed elsewhere. I really appreciate all the advice. Flew with some great IOE captains who took the time to explain how ORD works.

Yeah we did all of our landings on 27R, except for one on 28C. Including one landing on 27R and then a taxi to M20 on the int'l terminal... Must've been a 20 minute taxi!

And even then, when it tells you to, you'll still have a unconscious momentary pause before you lift up that guard to push, pull or whatever - IDG disc, EMERG DEPRES, ADG deploy, APU GEN OFF, GEN 2 OFF, GEN 1 OFF... I've noticed that every-time.

And then you get to an Embraer plane, where it is normal procedure to lift a guard to do normal things, like start an engine... which desensitizes your reluctance to lift guards, or think about what you are really doing.

Well, IOE all done. I don't know what all the fuss regarding ORD is about...it was a pretty straightforward airport to operate out of. Did a total of 12 turns out of ORD, including during the morning/ evening push and during some pretty interesting weather, and had no trouble with taxi instructions.

American Eagle Ops, on the other hand...whole other story. 75 minutes to get gas. 97 minutes in the 32R pad waiting for a gate. Just unreal.

Oh that's normal.... Other airlines like Skywest, and republic are getting priority treatment over Eagle airplanes when it comes to American Eagle operations.

It used to be marginally better when it was just Eagle, but ever since the emphasis has been on the ground handling operation (the last 3 years), it's gone downhill.

It's the way they schedule their ground crews. --- dynamic manning.
They don't have a crew for each gate waiting on the airplanes, they only have crews to work the flights they actually have, and when the crews are done working the flight (i.e. flight blocks out) they get shuttled off to another flight... the problem is that pilots block the flight out to get an on-time or something like de-ice, and upon block out the ground crew gets assigned to work another flight (i.e run to another gate to park it, unload it etc) , but because the flight hasn't physically left yet the ground crew can't leave. - then when the plane finally leaves, pilots for the other flight and ops are screaming at the ground crew for not being there... and it just snowballs from there.

Then when the shift ends, they just walk off, and the supervisors are scrambling to find crews to work the rest of the day's flights, even though the end of the day was at 2300, but it's now 0100 and everything is running late and all the planes are in the penalty boxes and hold pads waiting for gates....

I've never witnessed anything quite like it. SFO, LAX, IAH...all complete dream operations compared to Eagle @ ORD. I did not think such a cluster was possible. We are extremely lucky in SFO, it's all Skywest ground handling and they're totally on it. At least in my very limited experience so far.

You gotta wonder...all the extra fuel burned on the pad, all the extra missed connections that require the company to put up pax, all the furious customers...has GOT to be costing more than what AMR is saving by going with the lowest bidder for ground handling. It's got to.

Good luck…..you will do great…..Just don't ask ORD ground to "say again."

Well LAX, MIA, NYC, ORD, those are all Envoy ground operations, even though they may no longer have a pilot or flight attendant base there any longer. It's all in-house AAG so it doesn't cost them anything. Plus turnover is horrendous.

Pax delays and reaccommodation? Doesn't cost them anything either, because it's all coded to WX, so the airline doesn't owe the pax anything.

About the only thing that is constant - and the thing you need to watch out for as a OAL American Eagle operator - is that the gate and ramp agents are watching your every move, if there is a way to code the delay to you, your flight attendants, your crew... they will do it in a heartbeat. When you show up at the gate and you see the gate agent tic-typing away at the SABRE terminal - they're putting in notes in the GFAR, time you arrived, time you allowed them to start boarding, did you tell them to hold boarding for a maintenance problem, flight attendant(s) flight crew stepped off the aircraft to get food? restroom break? etc... all that goes in the big computer so that management can go back and assign blame for the delay...

They (envoy and AAG management ) play the delay blame game all day long - transferring who's responsible for the delay, but won't do anything to fix the root cause of the delays. It's been that way for years, just more exacerbated with the additional American Eagle branded carriers and a shrinking Envoy flight operation.

Fuel burned on the pad? I don't believe AAG pays for fuel any longer. They've capped that cost so the extra fuel is being paid for by your airline nowadays.