(Warning! Long Post!)
There have been some questions lately from people wanting to work for Airnet, and as one of the most recent new-hires there I’ve been meaning to write something up about it to give a little insight to any wannabe Starcheckers.
I interviewed and was hired back in April, but didn’t start training until late July because I was waiting to get out of the Army. My times at the interview were 1000/33, and were 1150/33 when I started training.
Training
First off, they put you up in a really nice extended stay hotel about a 20 minute drive away from the airport. You will probably have a roommate, which is really a good thing because it gives you a live-in study partner. They give you $165/week per diem during training.
There was only one other guy in my class, but I think the class going on now has 4 in it.
The first 7 days is all classroom, quizzes and tests. Your days starts at noon-ish and ends anywhere between 7pm and midnight. The classroom stuff can range from pretty dry to very interesting. There is a quiz every day when you start. The ground stuff is not hard at all, if you study, and if you come to class with an already good working knowledge of the AIM, IFR procedures, and part 91.
After the basic indoc test you begin simulator training in a Frasca 142. This training focuses on company procedures and profiles exclusively, and assumes you are already multi proficient, and especially IFR proficient.
I asked if they ever got a student who had never done any NDB training, and they said yes. They said they don’t train them at all on it, and they’ve only made it through if their classmates train them up on it.
The procedures aren’t difficult; they just take some repetition to learn. The hardest thing is actually flying the Frasca to standards. By the second day of sims I was pretty bummed because the thing was kicking my butt. But, I went in over the weekend with my training partner and practiced for about 10 hours or so with the turbulence level set pretty high and by Monday I was confident and proficient, and passed the stage check on Tuesday without a problem.
After that, you move on to fly the Baron – you get 4 training flights before your checkride. It’s a fun time, and you’ll generally fly once or twice a night. Your schedule during this phase is 8pm to about 6 am.
The checkride consists of an oral which is mostly scenario based, and a flight which seems to last just over an hour. By this point, it should be just another flight after doing the same exact stuff in the sim and in the air for the preceding two weeks.
SIC-ing
I SICed for about 50 hours and was lucky enough to do so out of a Columbus based run. If after your checkride you have less than 1050 hours, you’ll get a 135 SIC letter and will have to take another checkride after you get 1200 total. Otherwise, you’ll get a PIC letter, and no additional checkride is required.
SIC-ing was a great experience, though I feel sorry for the guys who have to do it for more than 50 or so hours. After you get a feeling of what is going on, it gets a little boring being a second pilot in a one pilot plane. It would probably get old doing it for hundreds of hours – and it would also get old doing it for $7.69 an hour. The upside to SIC-ing is you get your seniority number right away.
On a high-time run you can expect to get over 100 hours a month. In fact, I did my 50 hours in about 8 flying days. You are responsible for finding your own place to stay wherever you SIC. Most go to a city where they have family or friends – or they find a crashpad.
Overall
I’ve only got a bit over a month with the company now, and I think I made a good choice. Sure, there are problems – and sure, there is your share of bitching and whining going on. Maybe it’s because I’m new, or maybe it’s because I come from a background where there were interesting and sometimes life-threatening problems, the issues I see here don’t concern me that much.
So far, maintenance has lived up to the hype. I’ve heard small complaints about this and that, but having had aircraft break on the line a few times now, I’m impressed with how quickly things get fixed. It also seems true that when something breaks, it’s broken. It doesn’t seem like anyone gives you grief over it – it just gets fixed.
Experience: In 8 days of SIC-ing I learned a lot about what I didn’t know about thunderstorms. (Which was quite a bit!) Unlike the cowboy image you sometimes hear about freight pilots, the most common story I’ve heard usually has to do with pilots teaching themselves a lesson by choosing to fly through weather they shouldn’t have. They own up to it, say they made a stupid decision and won’t do it again. They say they’ve learned a lot about what is actually safe and unsafe to fly through. I’ve seen this first hand already when we blasted off into what I thought was weather of certain death, only to learn my PIC was right, and the weather turned out to be fairly mild.
Hope this helps anyone who is thinking about applying here – I’m certainly no expert about the company or flying freight or anything – but I do have recent new-hire experience and would be happy to help anyone who needs it, just as StoneCold, MikeCWeb, Flysher, and others have helped me.
By the way – some of you are going to beat me about the head and neck for this, but I chose my base: Bradley on 163. (Didn’t get the Birmingham bid!)
There have been some questions lately from people wanting to work for Airnet, and as one of the most recent new-hires there I’ve been meaning to write something up about it to give a little insight to any wannabe Starcheckers.
I interviewed and was hired back in April, but didn’t start training until late July because I was waiting to get out of the Army. My times at the interview were 1000/33, and were 1150/33 when I started training.
Training
First off, they put you up in a really nice extended stay hotel about a 20 minute drive away from the airport. You will probably have a roommate, which is really a good thing because it gives you a live-in study partner. They give you $165/week per diem during training.
There was only one other guy in my class, but I think the class going on now has 4 in it.
The first 7 days is all classroom, quizzes and tests. Your days starts at noon-ish and ends anywhere between 7pm and midnight. The classroom stuff can range from pretty dry to very interesting. There is a quiz every day when you start. The ground stuff is not hard at all, if you study, and if you come to class with an already good working knowledge of the AIM, IFR procedures, and part 91.
After the basic indoc test you begin simulator training in a Frasca 142. This training focuses on company procedures and profiles exclusively, and assumes you are already multi proficient, and especially IFR proficient.
I asked if they ever got a student who had never done any NDB training, and they said yes. They said they don’t train them at all on it, and they’ve only made it through if their classmates train them up on it.
The procedures aren’t difficult; they just take some repetition to learn. The hardest thing is actually flying the Frasca to standards. By the second day of sims I was pretty bummed because the thing was kicking my butt. But, I went in over the weekend with my training partner and practiced for about 10 hours or so with the turbulence level set pretty high and by Monday I was confident and proficient, and passed the stage check on Tuesday without a problem.
After that, you move on to fly the Baron – you get 4 training flights before your checkride. It’s a fun time, and you’ll generally fly once or twice a night. Your schedule during this phase is 8pm to about 6 am.
The checkride consists of an oral which is mostly scenario based, and a flight which seems to last just over an hour. By this point, it should be just another flight after doing the same exact stuff in the sim and in the air for the preceding two weeks.
SIC-ing
I SICed for about 50 hours and was lucky enough to do so out of a Columbus based run. If after your checkride you have less than 1050 hours, you’ll get a 135 SIC letter and will have to take another checkride after you get 1200 total. Otherwise, you’ll get a PIC letter, and no additional checkride is required.
SIC-ing was a great experience, though I feel sorry for the guys who have to do it for more than 50 or so hours. After you get a feeling of what is going on, it gets a little boring being a second pilot in a one pilot plane. It would probably get old doing it for hundreds of hours – and it would also get old doing it for $7.69 an hour. The upside to SIC-ing is you get your seniority number right away.
On a high-time run you can expect to get over 100 hours a month. In fact, I did my 50 hours in about 8 flying days. You are responsible for finding your own place to stay wherever you SIC. Most go to a city where they have family or friends – or they find a crashpad.
Overall
I’ve only got a bit over a month with the company now, and I think I made a good choice. Sure, there are problems – and sure, there is your share of bitching and whining going on. Maybe it’s because I’m new, or maybe it’s because I come from a background where there were interesting and sometimes life-threatening problems, the issues I see here don’t concern me that much.
So far, maintenance has lived up to the hype. I’ve heard small complaints about this and that, but having had aircraft break on the line a few times now, I’m impressed with how quickly things get fixed. It also seems true that when something breaks, it’s broken. It doesn’t seem like anyone gives you grief over it – it just gets fixed.
Experience: In 8 days of SIC-ing I learned a lot about what I didn’t know about thunderstorms. (Which was quite a bit!) Unlike the cowboy image you sometimes hear about freight pilots, the most common story I’ve heard usually has to do with pilots teaching themselves a lesson by choosing to fly through weather they shouldn’t have. They own up to it, say they made a stupid decision and won’t do it again. They say they’ve learned a lot about what is actually safe and unsafe to fly through. I’ve seen this first hand already when we blasted off into what I thought was weather of certain death, only to learn my PIC was right, and the weather turned out to be fairly mild.
Hope this helps anyone who is thinking about applying here – I’m certainly no expert about the company or flying freight or anything – but I do have recent new-hire experience and would be happy to help anyone who needs it, just as StoneCold, MikeCWeb, Flysher, and others have helped me.
By the way – some of you are going to beat me about the head and neck for this, but I chose my base: Bradley on 163. (Didn’t get the Birmingham bid!)
