Saturday, September 17, 2011

First day of class

My first day in the classroom was yesterday. There I met a few other pilots I know who are taking the opportunity to swtich from aircraft. All were on the plane I used to fly and in the same predictament. We lived local but were commuting. Silly.

There were 4 of them. In addition to those 4 there were 6 new hires and one pilot returning from a Military Leave of Absence. Since he was gone his seniority increased enough to hold Captain. He was the lone Captain upgrade in the class.

Him and the new hires spent the first part of the week covering company procedures and doing and the paperwork stuff. Myself and the 4 other "old pilots" joined them on Friday.

I thought we were going to hit systems hard. Nope. We review advanced performance maneuvers. This is important for new hires as this would likely be their first jet. Jets and props handle very differently.

We then spent time on dealing with Fatigue, CFIT (Controlled Flight Into Terrain), ILS PRM and something else I glossed over. All of these topics are covered each year in recurrent. I did this back in January. Bleh.

I did get my new books. I spent time assembling them. The training center simply gives a new binder and a celophane wrapped HUGE stack of pages. We have to assemble and tab them. Not hard once you know how. As a new hire it was very confusing.

While on lunch break (I brown bagged it....well it was a black crew cooler bag...but bleh) I saw a former First Officer, Henry, who was upgrading to Captain on the plane I was training on. He was also switching planes.

For Henry it was a little more difficult as he was combining his first upgrade with a new aircraft. He was two weeks ahead of me.

I'm going to spend the weekend reading my manuals cover to cover. Not required, but recommended. Fun!

1 comment:

  1. Hang in there.  Training is a good thing. -Craig.  P.S.  I sure wish that you could reveal your new airplane!

    ReplyDelete

If you are a spammer....your post will never show up. Move along.