Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Cockpit Conversations. This is a place where we share tips and strategies for not only getting hired, but getting the most out of your aviation career along the way. Additionally, we'd like to share thoughts on many things that we find interesting at 35,000 feet.
Speaker: Sit back, get comfortable and welcome aboard.
Speaker: All right. Hey, welcome to the podcast. Today's subject is, so you got the job. How do you not screw up in training? And I've got a couple of experts, a panel of experts, if you will, to help us figure that out. I'm going to let them introduce themselves. So starting in the ah in my top left, A.J. Pope, if you'd introduce yourself and guy a little about your background and how long have you been an instructor.
Speaker: Welcome, everybody. Aaron and I did OV-10s together, F-15s about the same time, and then got picked up by a major airline in Atlanta and have been here 27 years.
Speaker: Been in the schoolhouse more than not all the time there. have Been ah probably 20 out of 27 years in the schoolhouse or standards, line checking on the 88, but mostly teaching on the Boeing 75, 76, 76, 400.
Speaker: OK. And you're at APD now, correct? Yeah, correct. That's probably 90% of my work is maneuvers, valves, rating rides, day two recurrence. Yeah. OK. So we got one with 27 years experience. We're now the opposite end of the experience spectrum.
Speaker: Alex Talley, tell us about yourself and how you got to this point. Well, yeah. I'm an instructor for major airline as well. I've been instructing for about a year and a half now. So just starting to get settled in the job.
Speaker: um I started off my career, I went to the University of North Dakota, majored in commercial aviation there. um i was a CFI UND for the year after I graduated. i was part of the aerobatic team there, um competing against other colleges.
Speaker: After UND, I went to SkyWest. I flew the CRJ and the ERJ there as captain on the CRJ for about a year. um I did a short stint on the 737 at a different airline. And then um on the current airline, I fly the 75 and 76 aircraft.
Speaker: Okay, and you're Denver based for instructing and you were in Alaska prior for those that are curious. All right, kind of in the middle Luke Jacobs, why don't you tell us about yourself?
Speaker: Hey, thanks, Aaron. Luke Jacobs, retired Marine Harrier pilot. I was an instructor on the Harrier for about seven years on and off in the fleet.
Speaker: um Now I retired right as COVID hit. I did a year with Southern Airlines during the merger with Atlas on the trip seven and then moved to my current company here in Denver.
Speaker: I've been with the company just about four years and been an instructor for three of that um on the 737. Really enjoy the job. I find it really rewarding to to help you know my peers as I see them, both civilian and military, ah understand the complexities of the 737 and help them move through training.
Speaker: Okay, fantastic. And then finally, rounding on our panel, ah Wilson McManus, why don't you tell us ah about your background? Aaron, thanks for having me and tonight and welcome everyone. I'm the token Navy Hilo guy here.
Speaker: I started out flying where America's day begins out in Guam, search and rescue out there. Then I switched back to fixed wing, i wound up doing some stuff with the Metro liner and also say the Navy 737 flying logistics for Kim to United in the fall of 2021.
Speaker: Flew the line on the 737 of LAX and then moved to Denver 2022, stayed on the 730, and then came into the building kind of in the fall 2022 teaching here at our our major airline in Colorado.
Speaker: and um I've really enjoyed it. It's been a great experience, and night it's it's been awesome to be a part of getting to shape the future of United and be part of the standardization team. Okay, fantastic.
Speaker: um part of the reason that i've asked this panel to be here is the gamut of experience aj like me has largely a pointy nose background uh luke also a fighter type aircraft although one that uh uh took off and landed vertically with a whole new set of challenges we've got wilson with helo experience and then alex with uh not one but two major training sessions under his belt at alaska airlines and then where he is now as well as multiple type ratings and you experience at the regional airline.
Speaker: So I think we've got about everybody covered. We may not have any business jet background guys, but Wilson's done some similar flying, so I think we can say we've got that covered.
Speaker: So I'll open it up kind of the floor. Well, we talk about showing up for initial training. Every one of us brought something different to the table. Are there some universal things that you might want to tell somebody coming in with a background similar to yours, how they could best prepare for that initial airline training wherever they've been hired? And that includes, you know, regionals or a legacy.
Speaker: And I'll start with AJ. You've been doing this the longest. What nuggets do you have to pass on? You know, it's day one. What do I need to do in the right frame of mind to show up and be successful?
Speaker: Yeah, just like you said, be in the right frame of mind. Have your personal life all squared away back home and not any drama going on there. And if you do have something going on, delay training. Just tell whoever needs to, the yeah training office, say, we need to postpone.
Speaker: It's not a problem. It's just moving magnets and then put somebody else in your spot. um Most of the training failures I've seen have been due to something going on at home. illness, financial, whatever. um Other than that, but won't that affect my seniority if I don't take this first class, right? We hear that. So what would you say to somebody who's afraid of, everybody says my line number is the most important thing.
Speaker: It is. You can start in DOC. That gets your line number. And when the soon time comes three weeks later, you can always pull out and say, hey I'm not ready yet. Okay.
Speaker: Okay. So go to INDOC and then do that. Yeah. Would it be worth taking a later class if you had a major personal thing going on? du does it Does anybody know anybody who's done that?
Speaker: I do. I actually had a friend of mine about a year and a half ago, about a week prior, i was not able to make it to training ah because his his kid got really sick.
Speaker: And he called me up and asked me what to do. You know, do I show up? And said, look, if you don't have this all in one bag, ah yeah, United might initially let you kick the can down in the road a week or two, but you're professionary pilot. And that seniority number doesn't mean much if you're let go, right? So you've got to be prepared.
Speaker: You know, Charlie Venema used to ah be the hiring official for United. And while he was there, he put in the 100-hour requirement within the last 12 months. And that... was a major roadblock for some pilots because they were close and it just seems so arbitrary and it sounds kind of cold, but his rationale was actually very valid, which was if you go in as a probationary pilot and you struggle in training, I have limited resources per contract that I can provide to you.
Speaker: And if you are eliminated from training, The problem is now you leave Delta and you go up to America and they go, why are you here? Well, I washed out of training three months ago Delta. It's it's a hard sell.
Speaker: So it it sounds arbitrary or capricious, but it's actually to protect you. And I think that comes down to each pilot needs to make their own assessment, right? Where am I? Am I mentally prepared to go in here? Can I give this my full attention?
Speaker: If you can't, I think being honest with recruitment staff and saying, hey, I've got a little issue that I've got working right now at home. Is it possible to delay this class until the next one it's if required? We all want that line number. We want to get in. We've been told for years how important seniority is.
Speaker: But seniority only matters if you keep the job. All right. um Let's talk ah some more about that initial training for a minute. um
Speaker: What backgrounds, if any, have you seen that typically have problems? Are there particular groups or subsets of pilots that you find struggle more than others? Or do you see common threads in people who might need a little extra attention in the initial training that first ah initial airline hiring?
Speaker: ah And if so, what advice would you have or what could these pilots possibly do to prepare a little more, if anything, before they show up for training?
Speaker: um I'll say where I see common struggles are people who have not been actively flying recently. So someone who's maybe taken a break, they've been in the military as a pilot, but then they had a office job more recently, um or for whatever reason, a break from a past airline.
Speaker: And flying is just something that you can lose that proficiency if you haven't been actively flying recently. So Someone who hasn't been in the cockpit in a few years, when they show up for training, I just see that they're a little bit overwhelmed, and those are the ones that consistently struggle.
Speaker: So to those that haven't been flying recently, I'd recommend try your best to go find an airplane, even if it's a small GA plane, to get your flying skills honed in.
Speaker: That way, when you show up, you're ready to study and um have a little bit more brain power to think while you're in in the simulator. Okay, and crunchy is important. Anybody got anything else?
Speaker: Yeah, one of the things I see a lot of it kind of in the middle of the syllabus is usually where it displays itself is folks that are trying to transition or make a big leap from the Airbus back to the Boeing product or vice versa.
Speaker: um The Airbus guys in particular trying to make that jump over to the Boeing. little bit different box set up in terms of, you know, the way the French have designed it, the way that the points are doing, know, to, from versus from to whatever it is.
Speaker: So a lot of times they have some struggles, not only with that, but also with that the actual aircraft handling characteristics, flying some of the single engine stuff around the maneuvers, about kind of in the middle of the syllabus. That's usually where we see some of the flags for that. I'll be direct on this. Is this like when you see somebody coming from, say, a JetBlue or a Spirit,
Speaker: over to one of the legacies is that where you're finding this they've got years like a spirit a jet blue a frontier and then they come into united and for whatever reason they get our bid into the 737 they don't either have any options or they don't try to try to make something else happen usually if you want to be on the airbus or you want to be on the 7-3 it's pretty easy to get into one of those two fleets fairly right out of basic end dock You may not get it on your first day if you're a super you know young junior guy, good on you.
Speaker: um But we do typically have vacancy bids that happen on almost a monthly basis. And those folks can actually get into training a little bit and then wind up trading into the syllabus that they're more familiar and comfortable with.
Speaker: And that usually is a great benefit to them. The other thing I'll say too is trying to go near a body right off the bat is usually a huge benefit here because you wind up learning the network and learning the system much, much better.
Speaker: Not to say that, you know, the 777 or the 787 aren't amazing fleets, but you're going to see some of the crown jewels of the system, but not necessarily learn all the ins and outs of some of the hubs and some of the other places that you would go to on the narrow body fleets. So.
Speaker: And you're gonna see the simulator when you come back for your landing currency. That's it. Right. That's exactly it. AJ brings up a good point. And I am not an instructor of my airline.
Speaker: But where I work, we've hired people directly into the 777. And personally, like you did, I i got started In the backseat at 727, that's how old I am.
Speaker: But I got to sit there for a couple years looking sideways, watching other people do this and kind of learning the lingo, learning to bid, learning to be an airline pilot. Granted, what I did have to learn was very new and had its own challenges, but it was certainly manageable.
Speaker: I have said this to many of my contemporaries, the guys coming out of a completely different world, ah military aviation, single-seat fighters, and going straight to something like the 777. I would have really struggled, not just because of exotic airports at the international. I think that's somewhat procedural and you can get the reps.
Speaker: But I think there was a benefit for me of just flying a different kind of airplane around banging it through multiple cycles early in my career that, if you will, rinsed off what I used to do and trained me to do something new.
Speaker: And you may have the opportunity at at your particular airline. And I'm cautious to tell you not to go for the airplane you want. or take the most lucrative seat you can. But you might give some strong consideration if you have an opportunity like that to the downside risks, which is this is going to be not only ah maybe not necessarily more difficult to fly, but you're not going to have the repetitions that you would have in a narrow body aircraft.
Speaker: There's another factor, and I'll kind of defer to you guys. But All of you train new hires with some frequency, right?
Speaker: um We've hired directly into the 7.5 at ah the Denver-based company. the Atlanta has hired new hires into the 7.6. So that's fantastic.
Speaker: um
Speaker: If you go to the triple... if you were to go to a place where you can go right to that, how often are those instructors used to seeing somebody with such a low baseline, right? We'd like to think that everything's objective.
Speaker: Everything is measured. Everything is fair. But if I'm used to flying with guys with 10,000 hours of transport and I'm watching you suffer through your first V1 cut in a triple seven, it might be, you might have a little bit of ah instructor bias. Go, man, this guy is terrible. Well, he's not really terrible for where he is baseline. It's just,
Speaker: They haven't had the cycles. So you can't always control what's available, but maybe depending on your experience, if you've been at JetBlue, if you've been at a regional for 8,000 hours, do I think you could go straight to the triple and probably be successful?
Speaker: Sure. And there have been people that have gone from backgrounds like mine straight to the big airplanes have been successful. But I do think they probably have to work a little harder. And as AJ pointed out, currency and getting the reps ah Is important and it's harder on the airplanes that are doing the international flying to get the landing cycles to keep the landing currency So you are going to spend more time in the single life So Aaron, you know, I did that. When I went to to Southern, I actually was in the worst case case scenario. I was not current.
Speaker: I was out of the jet for about two years. I had a desk job as I retired. Then I got the COVID 777.
Speaker: And I will tell you, as a matter of fact, it is way more complicated to learn a big airplane as a new hire with no experience because it is a different type of flying. It's really not even flying. I used to call it babysat in the jet, right? 98% of the time you're not doing much.
Speaker: And ah the company I was at, I only touched a jet really once a month. You know, so knowing my flows, knowing the cots, most of the time I was sleeping in the bunk and then on, you know, legs between Korea and Cincinnati, babysat in the jet for eight hours.
Speaker: So... like I mean, drop that's a very good point, because I know some of the people listening to this are going to have the opportunity to go to an ATI, to go to an Atlas, to go to a Coletta. Some of them may be coming out of a background like you.
Speaker: um Somebody like Alex that's been doing multiple reps in an RJ would probably have a little bit of advantage. But even then, you're going from an airplane that probably weighed as much as that airplane carried in one fuel tank. So what is it it is a different exercise, isn't it?
Speaker: It is. It is. And the preparation for it was so different. So different. So I mentor guys and say, if that's what you want to do, there's some real risks. You need to do the risk, you know, ah cost but benefit analysis on it.
Speaker: Well, let's take the positive side of that. They say, okay, thank you for that. I want to fly the whale, damn it. It's been my dream. I've got this Atlas class. I'm going to go fly the 7400.
Speaker: Tell me how you would tell an ex-military pointy guy like us, to get to get in the right place to go be successful at that training. Well, so I think it it boils down to preparation.
Speaker: You're not going to retain the information. You know, military training is reps. If you look back at our training, it's, you know, you do four landings every flight. You do ah multiple touch and goes. You do multiple everything, right? By time you get through training with the company that I was with, um you know, we did all the reps, but it's within 30 days.
Speaker: And then we got about two weeks off. And if you're not sitting in the chair like you're back as a second lieutenant in primary, talking to yourself with your kids looking at you, is dad going crazy? You're not going to be successful.
Speaker: Because by the time you touch that jet, they expect you to have nearly a systematic expert understanding of ETOPS, which, you know, as a Harrier guy, i so i flew behind Tinker. They dealt with that problem.
Speaker: You know, ah listening to the Germans on the radio and the French on the radio and the Brazilians on the radio and Hong Kong, you know, they the the the stuff that we consider minutiae as fighter guys – is not minutia.
Speaker: It is the main course. And if you're not prepping yourself for that, you are going to absolutely struggle. I have friends that went ah to the Big Purple and, ah you know, flying the DC tent, and they said, without a doubt, without chair flying every trip, they would have they would have not been as successful as ever. So understanding that you've got to go back to your roots, which is what made you a fighter guy to begin with, is your prep time and understanding how to use that successfully.
Speaker: Okay. We'll talk about that because I think I use some of those techniques even now going to recurrent. we'll We'll get into the subject of recurrent just a minute. You know, Alex, you you made a pretty big leap.
Speaker: You went from CRJ, probably the biggest of the 900, 7576. um How challenging did you find that? And what would you tell your contemporaries coming out of ah RJs and ERJs as the biggest...
Speaker: difference if any as they move into ah say a a mid-sized boy um it definitely was a challenge moving up to such a bigger aircraft and uh kind of picking back off the last topic um i did have the option to go to an even even bigger plane the 787 as a new hire um and my dad has recently retired on the 7-8 as well same airline And um so I thought maybe that would be a great option for me so I could have the opportunity to fly with him.
Speaker: And just talking about currency and actually being in the flying seat, his advice to me was to not take ah that position. He said, ah being new at the airline, you should make sure you're on an airplane, that you're actually in the flying seat and you're getting lots of reps in.
Speaker: You're the one flying. And... I'm really glad I did. i chose the 757 and only two pilots for the domestic legs and I got to get a lot of repetition, a lot of landings that first year there. And that was crucial to learning the airplane.
Speaker: um Whereas if I was typically a funky pilot, I wouldn't get a landing in very often. And after a couple of years at the airline, I probably still wouldn't be very proficient. So ah um as far as learning the new airplane, it is a challenge. I would say go and pick up trips on reserve, fly as much as you can, be in the seat as much as you can, um click the autopilot off, tell the captain you're trying to get better at hand flying. And it's really just time and seat and practice to to get better in the airplane.
Speaker: Okay. Aaron, for those guys that don't understand the operation yet, on a three-man aircraft aircraft, Usually boss is going to take it to first destination and the next senior FO is going to fly at home.
Speaker: So if you're junior, you're going to pilot monitor in the right seat on the way over and your relief boy on the way back. And you're going to the sim every 90 days. so So it's it's hard to really get that muscle memory of what the airplane really feels like.
Speaker: It might be exotic to say, yeah, I had a... 72 hour layover in the Rita or Paris. But if you're having to go to the SIM, especially at a fragile early point in your career, maybe that's not a good strategy.
Speaker: I think we're jumping ahead and i like this. We're, we're we've leaked ahead a little to, okay, on the line, what's your point to pick and how to manage your, ah approach to getting out there, and getting the reps. But what about when you're just showing up going in and in the box for your first maneuver valve in the eight, three 20 or the seven, three, seven or the seven, six, um,
Speaker: What are some things that you have found that help people new to the airline, maybe new to this particular airframe, maybe new to transport category airplanes, get their hands around what they're getting into, and ultimately be successful and able to fly these maneuvers?
Speaker: Well, I think the first thing is ah for, again, military guys, and honestly, even, even some guys you know, peers that showed up with me from Kalita and Atlas, um is understanding that the legacy, it's a quick timeline.
Speaker: You know, this is going BI maybe three, four days off, and then right into the sims, right into systems training. So you've got to know, you've got to know in order, flows, call outs,
Speaker: limitations and your non-normals period and a story period. You've got to dedicate your off time to that. um The successful students that I see, particularly in procedures or the guys that understand how to prioritize that, they may not have all your CBTs done yet, but they know that the procedures, they know the costs, they know the flows.
Speaker: I can teach them something. If I'm having the spoon feed on the call outs, they're missing in a whole section of the training, which is why line guys are doing the training at our airline. So yeah I think that's the big piece. The second piece is just understanding that you don't know what's going on. ah If you're coming from SkyWest,
Speaker: That's a different operation than than a legacy airline, and particularly military guys that make that are very fortunate to make the jump into the legacies right off the bat. It's a totally different type of flying.
Speaker: The expectations are different. We cannot do 500 knots into the break. You know, the 250 rule at 10,000 feet is important.
Speaker: ah And a lot of the details that, ah quite frankly, the stuff that I didn't really care about 20 years ago are the things I care about now. And understanding that and being ah willing to acknowledge that this is different. Not all flying is the same.
Speaker: One of the things I'll offer maybe a positive slimmer sliver of hope here a little bit, at least at our airline base in Colorado here, you wind up seeing and our our maneuvers now is on full flight five.
Speaker: So you wind up seeing the same event essentially twice on three and four before you wind up actually going and being tested on it in five. So the good news is you can get an idea, you know, while you're back at the hotel ah studying with your study partner or your captain upgrade. Hey, you know, here's here's the stuff we need to do to kind of chirp life through this and get a little bit of the muscle memory built into your head.
Speaker: um The other thing, too, that see a lot of successful crews, too, is actually take notes during the brief and listen during the brief. Because a lot of you'll have a gamut of different instructors that will throw out some different techniques.
Speaker: You go in there and at least on flight full flight three and four and try and see some of those techniques and see what works for you. And a lot of times some of the more seasoned instructors will have some really good ones to help you out. So if you're taking good notes, you're paying attention before you actually get into the box, um you're going to you're going to have some good success there and then have the opportunity to see this thing a couple of times before you actually go get tested on it.
Speaker: that's a that's a good point when you come to techniques one of the things that i learned in my various airline upgrades and plane changes over the years was i could fly with three or four different instructors but each would sometimes reference something different they used to set parameters for instance some guys were big on fuel flow ah okay on a v1 cut i like for about this fuel flow on the good engine when i'm you know on a downwind uh some guys were in one or in two um It was interesting to see what people gleaned. And maybe that's one tip we could give new new people is, hey, where are you looking when what yeah information is important to you in this particular phase of flight?
Speaker: I know for v1 cuts, you know, losing an engine. I'm 95% outside. Initially, I'm looking off the end of the runway, right? i I don't even really always know which engine just failed.
Speaker: I just know I have this subconscious thing that wants to keep the nose straight. And I do that I straighten the nose. And then I kind of figure out, okay, which legs dead now i glance the engine gauges. Now I actually start to let the front part of my brain figure out which engine just failed. And then I think about the call outs. But um I don't know who taught me that years ago. but You know, if if your eyes are outside in certain phases, it makes more sense.
Speaker: And then more importantly, okay, if I want to snapshot, where am I looking for a piece of particular information? and You know, when we're talking about RNP approaches or things, what's the important part of this cross check now? So learning or or asking the instructors, what do you look at a particular phase is something that that I took as somewhat valuable.
Speaker: Alex, you came from a one, frank from a regional to a legacy airline to another legacy airline, probably different call outs, different procedures, slightly different of procedures at each place.
Speaker: What did you find that helped you where you are now? How do you how do you keep the good stuff and rinse the other stuff off? What what was your approach? And what would you tell a student coming from, say, a guy going from Alaska Airlines to Delta or from JetBlue? He's following the A320. He gets to United. He's lucky enough to get an A320 there.
Speaker: But we're going to a different airline. What's your advice? um Well, definitely like Luke mentioned, number one, you have to show up to the lesson with call outs, memory items, nailed.
Speaker: um If you're learning that during the brief, the instructor asks you to go through the V1 cut profile and you're stumbling through it while you're sitting in a chair in a brief room. um there's almost no point in going in the sim that day because you're not ready for it. So um make sure you have the call outs down.
Speaker: Different techniques to make sure you have it down. If you read it in front of you, turn your iPad's screen off or flip the page over and then you know say it out loud to yourself, that's maybe not the best method um to really retain the information. I would say,
Speaker: um different techniques but the chair fly with the sim partner do something physical with your hands throw ball back and forth um do something so that way the call outs are automatic so when you are in the sim and you have that v1 cut and just like you mentioned darren going down the runway you're focusing yeah on your feet on your rudder keeping the nose straight doing a good rotation and that way 95 your brain power can be on flying the airplane and only 5% is used on actually seeing the callouts and applying the correct profile.
Speaker: As far as switching airlines, I would say in high stress situations, I found myself always reverting back to those old call outs. I'd brief it perfectly fine with the new airline. And then when I'm task saturated, i would revert back to that old call out every once in a while. And i I see it in the sim today while I teach new hires or someone new in this airplane, they'll say an Airbus call out or something.
Speaker: um So really just practice repetition, making sure the call outs are ah um Very easy to say. That's fine. And a mispeak or an old procedure is just a debrief item. But if you show up or or in the box and you're saying, this is how we did it at Brand X, I don't want to hear it. We don't have time for that. that You got to get rid of it.
Speaker: totally Totally agree. I know. I actually have no patience for that. you know You're here on a date with me. I need you to know my stuff. Well, I actually appreciated that.
Speaker: Because when I had experienced that was when I went to the MD 11. And my training partner had come from the Airbus. And whenever the instructor would go into a detailed point,
Speaker: he would then say, Well, you know, on the bus, we did it like this. And that gave me about 120 seconds to check into my own private Idaho or whatever, as he babbled, and I could see the smoke coming out of the instructors ears.
Speaker: And it was also a reminder of, hey, I'm not the one that this instructor is going to have a beef with, it's going to be this guy. So it it it was kind of humorous to me. But no, I agree with that. Nobody cares what you used to do.
Speaker: ah What matters is we've got seven or eight boxes, we want to get you to a certain proficiency level. um Before I start diving into maybe a little more nitty gritty about the psychology of training and where what you see people struggling with and the techniques that you found to help them.
Speaker: For people who haven't done 121 AQP course, One of the things that I found anecdotally talking to former clients that have been hired, that was their big stress was they would say to me often, I just don't feel ready.
Speaker: I just don't feel ready. And when you look back and I think Luke alluded to this, when I used to train people in the F-15, we would go up and we do three rides and then a solo ride.
Speaker: And on that solo ride, they had done everything that they had done on the first three rides. There was there was nothing really Okay. okay ah Then we had to get them an instrument check.
Speaker: Before they ever did an instrument check with an evaluator pilot, there was a practice instrument ride. I won, it was called. Instrument won. And I ended up doing a lot of this. And it was almost exactly what they were going to do on a check ride.
Speaker: And as I look back at my military history, it was always like you got to a p plateau. Somebody told you before you were evaluated, hey, that was good. Now show the evaluator the next day what you just did.
Speaker: Airlines realized a long time ago, we're wasting a step, right? If you're going to be okay by box number nine, why am I making you do box eight and then nine and then another nine?
Speaker: Why don't we just put it all together? And what I found when I got to my airline was I always felt like a fledgling bird being pushed just a little faster than I wanted to go. And now i I had my standards of what I thought were good performance from my previous job.
Speaker: And I'd come out of a box for a debrief going, man, I stumped today. And the instructor would say, that was a pretty good SIM 3 or a pretty good s SIM 4. And I'd go, yeah, but I sucked.
Speaker: And he'd go, yeah, but you'll be better tomorrow. And that extended up to the ride before, the check ride, the Chloe or whatever for the initial. Not talking about recurrent, not talking about upgrade, but that initial. It's like, are you telling me that that I'm good enough to be evaluated tomorrow? Yes, I am.
Speaker: So I didn't feel like i was all ace of the base. And you're so used to, especially if you've been in another genre for a while, you've been a four ship flight leader, instructor pilot, an aircraft commander in a previous airplane, you're used to being pretty good at something.
Speaker: And this is the first time you're just kind of hanging on the tail, flailing along. And that alone is a big psychological jump for guys. We're so used to being absolutely rock solid that when we're struggling just to meet the men there,
Speaker: because we haven't got a lot of reps, it's extremely uncomfortable. And what I have learned, again, not as a instructor, so i'm I'm interested to hear your perspective, but I would tell guys, trust the training, trust yourself. If that instructor tells you, hey, tomorrow, it's going to come together, you completely blew up this RNP approach, your call outs are stupid, the V1 cut was a little sloppy today, you know what to do to fix it.
Speaker: And you're like, oh my goodness, I'm flying with an evaluator tomorrow. But he says, you're going to be fine. You know what happens? You typically are. And it's getting used to not being comfortable and maybe being pushed just a little faster because in the airlines, time is money, right? In the Air Force or the ah Marine Corps, proficiency was what we were training to. Well, we want to get that proficiency, but we'd like to do it in a very cost-effective manner.
Speaker: So understand you're not going to be great sometimes. You're not going to be as good as you've been in the past at what you were doing. But trust yourself to be good enough. i don't know if that helps anybody, but what do you guys have to add? What do you see people struggle with specifically?
Speaker: And whether it's a task or an approach to training and what kind of advice or mentoring have you given them along the way to get them over those hurdles? And we'll keep this limited to the initial training.
Speaker: yeah ah I think the one one of the things I see all the time, ah particularly from C-130 crews and ah he ah pilots with helo backgrounds, is jumping all over the rudder pedals.
Speaker: Nothing is more frustrating as an instructor pilot in the back of the sim getting tossed left and right uh during either an approach or uh upset training uh which is could be a really fun sim uh the 73 has really bad dutch roll tendencies um you know and and it's the standard response well you know in my previous aircraft this is how we did it i get it i hear you there's some stuff that in the harrier i would do can't do it now You've to stay off the rudder pedals. And so it's some of the, again, intricacies of what you used to do to what you're trying to do now.
Speaker: And then trusting us, trusting instructors. I had a crew literally today that every after every ah ah event, they're like, did we how are we doing? of Hey, man, this is B3.
Speaker: You're exactly where I need you to be. You're making no unsafe, minute you know, procedural errors. You're missing some stuff, but you're catching some stuff. you're You're right where we think you need to be, but you need to use your time on your off time to sit in front of the Paper Dragon, to say the calls, to do the immediate actions, to do the procedures.
Speaker: That's what our company will need you to do is is that prep time between the events You need to use it effectively. Just like ah Tom Brady was talking about before the Super Bowl, if you saw that was.
Speaker: Every minute before the Super Bowl was an opportunity to be more prepared than the other team. That that is what we depend on our students to be, is the most prepared student for every event.
Speaker: Okay. So talk me through a good preparation. if you're going to go for a B3, an initial, maybe a ride before the first maneuvers validation, what... the Walking and tackling.
Speaker: What do they need to be doing? Well, ah you know, what I told my crew today was if you know your flows inside and out, cold, and the best way to really know that to test each other and to test yourself is to do them out of order.
Speaker: Start backwards. Hey, I'm going to do my shutdown flows. I'm going to do my after landing flows. I'm going to do my pre-flight flow. If you know how to do them out of order, you know ah how to do them in order.
Speaker: The next thing is the call outs. Just like Alex said, if you're not doing them when you're doing push-ups or running or throwing a a ball against the wall, hopefully not your hotel room and taking off your neighbors. But if you don't know those call outs, you will not know them during the go around when the stress level is high and we're on brainstem power.
Speaker: You've got to be able to do them cold with your eyes closed, doing something else other than focusing on the words. And then finally, it's just a little bit of confidence knowing that, you know, you've put the time in, you cannot do well in this training program. If you're only studying for 45 minutes a day, you're not going to do it.
Speaker: You really need to put in two to four hours depending on, you know, your, the age of your brain and your your study tech tactics. But if you know what you need to do to study, like I'm a note card guy.
Speaker: I write everything on note cards. And I also talk to myself. Wilson will tell you this. He hears me talking myself all the time like a crazy person. I talk to myself constantly. That's how I study. But you've got to lean on your tools that made you successful in the first place.
Speaker: Okay. other things that we have to Along with the studying, um the be ready to study. you know Be nutritionally squared away, get a little exercise in, whether it's walking, going getting your pump-a-tute on or whatever.
Speaker: But probably most important, especially for single-seat guys, you cannot study alone. You've got to study with somebody else. um Probably 80% of the training failures, yeah, I studied alone. Well, can't help you, dude.
Speaker: Okay, well that brings up some questions. right I'm going to circle back to study partners because I think that is a vital thing. But I'd like to hear from Wilson and Alex if they've got any other, yeah know, blocking and tackling things for success.
Speaker: One thing I'll add is most airlines I've been to, they give you the whole training footprint and a lot of the briefs, the PowerPoints ahead of time and the lesson ahead of time. and so The students I see who do the very best are in the brief, they already went through the the slideshow, the PowerPoints, and they say, hey, I have a question on this slide and this slide.
Speaker: Can we talk about that? Then it's great. We can dive into that topic. and Really, the brief is then a refresher for them. It's the second time they've seen it and they do really well. so If you're able to study one lesson ahead, and um I see that's a huge help.
Speaker: I totally agree with that slide deck thing. That's a, our Colorado based company has all of your slides available throughout the entire syllabus that you can absolutely, uh, ping off of early. And I think that's fantastic to be able to come in the brief, having seen it at least once, if not reviewed it a couple of times already in your hotel room before you ever walk in the door to the training facility.
Speaker: Um, the other thing I'll touch on too, just an overall big picture is, uh, we build this, uh, the syllabus on a building block bridge. So it's a k crawl, walk, run strategy where you're learning the systems of the aircraft. Now you're learning the normal procedures and the gate to gate normal operations.
Speaker: Where this breaks down sometimes is folks start to get into a different phase of training and maybe they forget or they regress on some of the previous stuff that they learned. um So we'll see guys that'll come into the maneuver space. They'll really focus on learning to fly the jet, the monkey skills and the stick and rudder stuff.
Speaker: And then they'll come into the line oriented training phase at the very end and they will have forgotten some of those normal procedures that they meet they needed to know to make everything work. um So it all builds on each other. And once you get to the end, it's more of an application phase. So we're, hey, you know, when are you gonna actually slow the jet down? how are you going to switch the modes here? How are you going to get the jet descended into, you know, Seattle or wherever it is for its emergency landing that you're going make?
Speaker: um So yeah, keep in mind that everything is a building block approach that builds on each other and it's not just stuff that you know you're gonna use for one phase and be validated and be done. You've gotta continue to use that but that knowledge to work um throughout your entire time in and the syllabus.
Speaker: I'll offer a couple of things looking back at my training and I think overall my training always went well. And while I don't think anybody relishes time away from the family or anything, I i can't say it wasn't a fun experience at times.
Speaker: um But I think about study hygiene. what What do I mean by that? um You need to have a nice place to study. Now, i think at your most major airlines right now, they're actually providing hotel rooms unless you live locally, which is a benefit. At my company, that's not the case.
Speaker: um But I learned that spending enough on a nice crash pad, having a private bedroom, having a nice area where could study, where I could wander into a kitchen, grab something to eat when I wanted,
Speaker: In your relaxing environment helped me like AJ said ah showing up fit showing up arrested I wrote a bike a lot on some bike trails when I was going through my most rigorous training MD 11 training and then again when I went through my captain's upgrade training on the 7.6 and that that really helped the other thing that helped me ah was we've gone digital in a lot of places. Here's a cockpit mock-up on your iPad and things like that.
Speaker: I'm old school. Having a printout, having overhead panels and cockpit mock-ups to sit there and practice my flows ah in my crash pad by myself was was extremely important.
Speaker: I didn't have to worry about waking up three other roommates or getting mugged. You know, if I had to get up to go into a q and box where I was staying because I chose to stay in a nice place.
Speaker: I think there is sometimes a mindset of I want to save as much money as I can. But I remind our clients out there that you're a major airline pilot now. And the money you invest in yourself to make sure you're comfortable and secure and able to execute here is going to set you up for success for the next 20 or 30 years.
Speaker: So this is not the time to go super cheap. You know, this is a time to actually invest in yourself and make sure that you got an environment, a car that will get you there safely, ah everything that you need to be successful.
Speaker: um But one of few mentioned, hey, this is something for you single seat guys you need a partner for. And this brings up a very funny story because the same guy that loved to tell everybody about the Airbus When I was there and that's not you know gonna necessarily help the training, but he wanted everybody to know what we used to do This was my brief. Hey um So this is my first glass airplane and I'm looking forward to working with you and all this and the answer I got was oh Well, you know my place is on the other end town and I generally got a lot to do and I I i don't like to study but be Okay, well and we got that settled
Speaker: He was 62 years old. He was coming back from the backseat of 727, and he didn't give a shit about me personally, professionally, or otherwise. I was his sim partner.
Speaker: I was the umpteenth sim partner he had had. ah As we worked together, um we interfaced pretty well. we got We got through the training just fine.
Speaker: But what advice would you give somebody who has a sim partner that maybe has a different approach to training, doesn't want to study as hard, doesn't want to go out and memorize the call outs.
Speaker: Is this something they can work through? Or is this something that you think they should approach training about and ask for another partner? What's some advice? And I'm sure you've had people who've struggled say, well, part of the problem is my partner.
Speaker: And we've also seen, you know, the the danger here too, sometimes is you'll have a a new hire person who's on probation, and somebody who's in for a captain upgrade and the stakes of failure are very very different for the two of them right i mean if that captain fails upgrade he's going to back to the right seat the major legacy airline and that can be a happy ever after life for some people this person on probation could lose their job so tell me how you would recommend or give me some examples or war stories about how to deal with partners that may not be the perfect mesh
Speaker: Well, ah I think the first part of that is that you need to stand up for yourself. You know, know your limits. I had a crew probably about a year ago, ah Captain Upgrade, jumping the trash bag from the right seat on the 7-3 to the left seat, the seven three ah Very strong personality, much like mine.
Speaker: ah The company that Wilson and I were with gives us a personality test. So it's nice to know your own personality, ah positive, negatives. And then the FO was a really young junior in experience as well.
Speaker: And I could see the captain totally dominating the training. ah It was not a good sim really for either one of them. ah And so I sat him down. I said, hey are you guys studying the together? First question. They said, no, I live on the north side of town and I live on the south side of town. I was like, well, when do you guys meet up? well We don't. We meet about 20 minutes prior to the sim and we might talk on the phone.
Speaker: i I looked the FO in the eyes and I said, you you're going to have to figure this out. The captain knows what he's doing. just That's a fact of life. um It's very disappointing that he's showing a lack of leadership in this, but you're going to have to figure this out.
Speaker: Luckily, most of these classes now, and the new hire classes, create WhatsApp groups. I'm still part of my WhatsApp group from four years ago. um You're all in the same hotel.
Speaker: Right. So part of it is it' going to be on you. We're we're in the varsity league of flying here. So you're going to have to put the shoulder, the weight on your shoulder. The next part is then bring it up to instructor.
Speaker: Right. You can approach me or any other instructor to say, look, I'm not ah I'm not studying right. I need help. What techniques? I'll totally sit down for as long as it takes to tell you you know how I learn.
Speaker: Understanding how you learn, I think, is really important. And then the final piece is you got to go to management. ah The company we're with here in Denver, ah we really do care about the new hires.
Speaker: I have I can tell you from personal experience, I struggled on OE. I did not. I had about a 30 plus day break. I didn't really put the time in and I needed help.
Speaker: I called the company and I said, I need a SIM. I'm not ready to go hit the line. And they're like, Roger that. Come back, get my SIM in. I'm ready to hit the line. and then, you know, I walked away from that. You know, A, the company cares.
Speaker: They're investing thousands of dollars in you. But it's all about you. You've got to fight for yourself and you've got to recognize that maybe the captain is taking away from your training or your partner's training taking away from your training.
Speaker: Because if you don't say anything, you're going to end up a guy with ah like with AJ doing your line check. It's too late. It's way too late then to be like, well, I'm not studying right and I need help. The company's already invested 10 sims plus in you.
Speaker: you've You've got to make that call early and often. And the company will, I can speak at least from our company, we will go trip over ourselves to make sure that you are successful. Okay, well, um I know your personality, my cat says hi, everybody.
Speaker: ie You're a 20 year marine harrier pilot, I could expect you to advocate for yourself. ah Alex is a soft spoken real gentleman, you know, maybe not quite as aggressive.
Speaker: I know he'll speak up for himself. I'm not disparaging him. But Alex, from your perspective, you see anything like that? Do you have other advice? Um, really similar advice, um, to be honest, uh, which is most classes do have that group chat. So go find the right study partners. And I will say, maybe you've found a group of people and you're just not studying, uh, the way you want to be. Maybe they're not the right group or not the right, you know, people to be working with. So message other people, try to find someone else where it works well for you.
Speaker: Um, but the other things I'll add, which which is um every instructor is very happy to help. You should have the instructor's phone number at our company. It's pretty common practice to give our phone number at the beginning of the lesson.
Speaker: And a couple of times I've had students I've worked with in the past text me asking for help. And I think every one of us is more than happy to give them a call and use all of our resources to help as much as we can.
Speaker: um And then that it that includes adding an additional s SIM. Training is fast paced. It's there's not much time to be wasted, but if needed, you can get an extra SIM from the company um because they do want you to be successful. So reach out to the instructors um as well as your classmate. It's ah probably a little bit of a gut check, though, to raise your hand and say, hey, my captain's blowing me off or I'm really struggling. I could use an extra SIM.
Speaker: um How how can I convince people that that's not going to put them in a bad light or or get them in trouble? I think ask the instructor, get their opinion, tell them what's going on. and And if the instructor is the one requesting the extra SIM for you, um the company is happy to help. So trust the instructors, trust the company. Okay.
Speaker: AJ, anything from the last side to add to that? Yeah, just like would say, the company owns you until you're done with training. So if you get an extra SIM or procedures trainer, it's free training. Take it.
Speaker: yeah I don't think there's any stigma and we'd much rather do that early than late. Okay. Thanks. I was to offer as well, Aaron, if you're a military guy in particular, find ah find a study partner that offsets some of the knowledge that you don't necessarily have.
Speaker: I came into United knowing already how to fly the 737, have the type rating, but I'd never done any part 121, stopped flying. Thankfully, I was paired with the SkyWest guy. So i was like, hey, why why would I call a ramp or why do I need to talk to metering or what is ACAR is actually going to give me some of the stuff that you're not used to initially doing that point to point airline cell transport flying, you know, hey, find somebody that that's going to be able to help you answer some of those really basic questions.
Speaker: that you don't necessarily yet have the knowledge base into ah specifically for the scenarios that you're going to get thrown into on each sim so that helped me a lot actually being paired even though we were first officer first officer with somebody who has uh had had 121 experience already whereas i did not that's a that's all good stuff i'll tell you as a non-instructor about my my sim partners Uh, like you, Wilson, I would have loved to had somebody with previous 121 experience, uh, in my initial new hire class on a, as a 727 second officer.
Speaker: But my class was all military. And who did I get paired with? I go, well, at least let me fly with a heavy guy. Nope. I got a Harrier guy. And, uh, you know, we, we, we laughed always trying to figure out who was the stupider one and how are you going to get through this?
Speaker: But what we did do pretty well is we did pair up, we did study, and we tried to pull in our study group, ate intel from the other guys, and we sought resources. And you know what? Both of us passed and got out of line with with zero problems, zero initial IRE problems.
Speaker: When I came back, my first transport category airplane, 727 Wright-C, I get paired with another Wright-Seater. And that's a nasty thing because for either of us to get the best training.
Speaker: When we were in the left seat, we needed to be able to kind of be captainists with the call outs with the flows and do what we were expected. So I kind of felt like they took the two dumbest guys and then they doubled our workload.
Speaker: But that's the card I got dealt. And I can tell you you know, 2004 2005 other airlines were furloughing. I was just glad to have a job. And you know, when you it's kind of like being in the military out and not a remote or someplace crazy.
Speaker: You go, this seems really dumb, but everybody else is doing it. I guess this is normal. So you just get through it. Then when I finally get to get a captain for my first ah modern glass jet, he's the guy that I talk about. He's 62. He's coming back from two years on the panel and wants to tell everybody about the airplanes that he used to fly, has no time for me.
Speaker: And I found I did a lot of self-study. Now, we cracked the ice. We got to be friends. And like Luke said, i was strong enough to advocate for myself or when I needed to. But I also realized that a lot of this training was going to be on me.
Speaker: But because I knew some MD-11 instructors that had the kind of spirit that you guys do, I leaned on them. I asked them for advice, reading materials, and things like that. And and I got through the training again. ah No hits, no problems.
Speaker: And then finally, I went to the left seat. And I got a real FO, and that one was absolutely enjoyable. It was finally a great SEM partner. We studied together.
Speaker: So I feel like I've had every combination along the way. But I will say that a good partner makes it so much more effective. So if you don't have one, speak up and and listen to what these guys are telling you because that's important.
Speaker: Thank you for joining us today. This has been Cockpit Conversations with Aaron Hagan from Emerald Coast Interview Consulting. Have some ideas for future interesting episodes?
Speaker: Contact us at emeraldcoastinterviewconsulting.com with your ideas and inputs. We look forward to hearing from you.
