Ameriflight

I find it hard to believe that any pay in any of aviation has kept up with inflation including low tier jobs like CFI's.
 
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I find it hard to believe that any pay in any of aviation has kept up with inflation including low tier jobs like CFI's.

I was thinking the same thing....even at the majors. They haven't even gotten back to pre 9-11 wages yet.
 
From what they are saying in training now, the pilots that AMF are recruiting now are getting worse and worse. The failure rate for some of the classes has been ridiculously high. It is hard to believe that they will continue to find good pilots as the number of corporate and 121 airline job vacancies continue to increase - even with the recent pay increase.
 
I was thinking the same thing....even at the majors. They haven't even gotten back to pre 9-11 wages yet.

Ya, but AMF has has continuous high profits and there hasn't been an increase in salary since I was in elementary school. That's sad.
 
From what they are saying in training now, the pilots that AMF are recruiting now are getting worse and worse. The failure rate for some of the classes has been ridiculously high. It is hard to believe that they will continue to find good pilots as the number of corporate and 121 airline job vacancies continue to increase - even with the recent pay increase.

It's cool. Those pilots will flood into the regional world, pass, and have fantastic careers just as they have been doing for years. I remember hearing about people from my indoc class not making it and feeling so bad, but they are all flying jets and doing just fine.
 
From what they are saying in training now, the pilots that AMF are recruiting now are getting worse and worse. The failure rate for some of the classes has been ridiculously high. It is hard to believe that they will continue to find good pilots as the number of corporate and 121 airline job vacancies continue to increase - even with the recent pay increase.
It might have something to do with how aweful that training department is. Where they refuse to teach anything, you just show up to get evaluated.
 
It might have something to do with how aweful that training department is. Where they refuse to teach anything, you just show up to get evaluated.

If you can't take the time to learn the flows, there isnt much the training department can do with you. Some things can't be taught, you just have to learn it on your own. We have enough to cover without me having to 'teach' flows and callouts. It's not hard. Just learn it, and do it. My last two trainees have been just terrible in this regard and haven't made it through. One of them failed out because they were a terrible pilot with next to no airmanship and the other one (with 5000 some hours) just couldn't handle the flows and callouts. I'm seeing the quality decrease too.
 
Well, it is a setup for failure in some cases. Any initial in a new airplane is 2-6 weeks long. My XLS type was 17 days, Lear 55 was 14. 121 training is a month at least. This is after you have a week of indoc (at least) learning company procedures. AMF indoc is a week of class which has little to do with the airplane. Then you are thrown into a week of cardboard flows and sims in an airplane that you have never flown, and is made more complex than it needs to be with flows, callouts and procedures. To top it all off, you have to do it by yourself. It is a high bar to achieve.

No initial training ANYWHERE are you expected to know the limitations, flows, callouts and procedures before showing up. That is the literal essence of a training dept. AMF isn't in the business of training. So it makes total sense that if you set the expectation of new hires showing up with the knowledge and skill to pass a 135 checkride and oral, a bunch of people won't be able to make that happen.
 
I never received anything like that for my time at AirNet, and my training there mirrored Ameriflight training... Have you gone through AMF EMB-120 training? It's a lot like the 121 training you spoke of.

AMF's entry level airplanes are Cheiftains and the 99. Both are straight forward, they aren't Lears or complex jets. You're given the SOPs and (supposed to be given) a paper cockpit poster to practice flows on prior to arriving.

I've honestly seen that quite a few new candidates lack the basic initiative to study or review the materials they're given prior to coming to class. Be that as it may, a lot of new candidates are also coming to class with lots of glass cockpit time, making it difficult to transition back to steam gauges. The students who take the time to review materials prior are much more apt to pass than those who don't. That's a basic principle, not one solely tied to AMF.

You can blame the AMF training department all you want, but the reality is that it's not even the same place it was back in January.
 
Well, it is a setup for failure in some cases. Any initial in a new airplane is 2-6 weeks long. My XLS type was 17 days, Lear 55 was 14. 121 training is a month at least. This is after you have a week of indoc (at least) learning company procedures. AMF indoc is a week of class which has little to do with the airplane. Then you are thrown into a week of cardboard flows and sims in an airplane that you have never flown, and is made more complex than it needs to be with flows, callouts and procedures. To top it all off, you have to do it by yourself. It is a high bar to achieve.

No initial training ANYWHERE are you expected to know the limitations, flows, callouts and procedures before showing up. That is the literal essence of a training dept. AMF isn't in the business of training. So it makes total sense that if you set the expectation of new hires showing up with the knowledge and skill to pass a 135 checkride and oral, a bunch of people won't be able to make that happen.

They really do make the entry level airplanes more complicated than they need to be but the transition from Seminole to PA31 or 99 still requires way less learning than the transition to an RJ or small jet would - hence the shorter time. Day 1 to PIC checkride runs about 4-5 weeks as well so only a week or two less than a 121 program.

Limitations, flows, callouts and procedures are all learned by rote memorization at first then correlated into training later on. I don't see why it matters when someone memorizes something in the training process and I don't think that adding an extra week in a hotel after indoc is over so that people can learn their VSpeeds makes a lot of sense either. If someone can't memorize numbers and flows on their own, the program doesn't have the time or manpower to hand hold and spoon feed which means the trainee falls behind and eventually out.
 
.... As a first officer? The duties are not that of a captain.

CA training and FO training are very similar, but it is 6 days of Systems/Flow practice, then one weeks of sims. Then your off to IOE for a week. Obviously they have a new program manager and assistant program manager but I don't think it has changed much.
 
They really do make the entry level airplanes more complicated than they need to be but the transition from Seminole to PA31 or 99 still requires way less learning than the transition to an RJ or small jet would - hence the shorter time. Day 1 to PIC checkride runs about 4-5 weeks as well so only a week or two less than a 121 program.

Limitations, flows, callouts and procedures are all learned by rote memorization at first then correlated into training later on. I don't see why it matters when someone memorizes something in the training process and I don't think that adding an extra week in a hotel after indoc is over so that people can learn their VSpeeds makes a lot of sense either. If someone can't memorize numbers and flows on their own, the program doesn't have the time or manpower to hand hold and spoon feed which means the trainee falls behind and eventually out.

It is the environment that is the issue. Take training at somewhere like Skywest (I do not work at Skywest) or similar. It is 6-8 weeks in a controlled, non-hectic setting. You spend almost a month in class learning systems and company procedures. Then you work exclusively in the sim until you take your checkride. THEN you do IOE for what, another 2 weeks? This is to be an SIC in the same airplane (EMB-120) That AMF trains for about 3-4 weeks. Most if it is on the line, in the airplane.

There are people flying in 91, 121 and 135 that can barely tie their shoes. But there has to be a disconnect somewhere in the way AMF trains. I passed AMF training, so did you, along with several others on this forum. The over 50% failure rate is staggering when you compare it to the rest of the professional flying industry.
 
Studying flows and callouts out of context is borderline useless. Until you learn the systems, and why you are doing something, how can you be expected to just randomly memorize things that "may" make sense later. I am pretty sure that this is not the way that CFI's are supposed to teach and how students learn best.
 
Yep. And I just feel like in any aircraft and in any type of environment, you will have have massive failures if you cut training time in half, and expect pilots to come in with flows and systems knowledge down pat on day one of training.
 
True, showing up to class the first day being able to string 100 words in the exact correct order is not the same as being a good pilot, or a good training department.
 
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