I'm still new to being a 121 Captain so it's definitely been a learning experience for me as well. Coming from the corporate and small 135 side, you flew with a much smaller number of people and pretty much knew everyone in both seats outside of the occasional new hire that you quickly became familiar with.
Sharing the flying stuff is mostly the same. I'm super nerdy by nature so I always like to offer the "why" behind my suggestion. Like the other day with a brand new FO right off OE we get slowed down by center going into Sarasota. She opens the speed window and dials it in, which is great. The schoolhouse is emphasizing "top down" flying recently asking to make the changes effective immediately in the MCP first. Most people will then go to the FMS, update the speed on the CRZ and DES page, and close the speed window back, but she didn't. I'm sometimes even too relaxed about letting people do their thing, after all seeing the problem it causes first hand is the best way to learn, and in this case it doesn't really change anything so I make a mental note of it and let it be. We are then given a crossing restriction. She dials it in the altitude window, puts it in the LEGS page, and we get a new Top of Descent. As we keep trucking along towards T/D and seeing no intention of doing anything, this is when I mention that I recommended we start down now because that T/D is assuming a much steeper descent angle from our original descent speed in the FMS that we never updated. She seems confused but starts down, sees the banana bar land beyond our restriction at idle, gets the boards out and we make that restriction comfortably without floating people in the back. On the way down we talk about how the VNAV logic uses the parameters in the DES page to calculate a top of descent and vertical profile, and how when we deviate from that we either need to update it or be aware of our new required path and do something manually. I don't like suggesting one particular technique, but rather prefer to explain the implications of things and suggest various ways to handle it, even though some might be more elegant than others. I see the lightbulb moment and everything went smoothly for the rest of the flight. Overall she was great, just a bit green on the airplane as expected.
That kind of stuff I already had experience with, but this new environment brings some unexpected situations. Another FO I flew with had been here for 1 year and was well prepared but cocky. My line is pretty far out there but it still exists. It started when the lead FA comes up 15 minutes prior to departure to tell us there's a catering issue and they didn't load any of the preorder meals. As soon as she finishes the FO starts telling her that he's comfortable with leaving as long as everything else is onboard. I just let him keep going, staring at him with
this look, and I think he caught the drift because he finished with "but I don't want to speak for the Captain". To which I replied "right.....let's look at the Gate Hold list and see if this is something we need to delay for". It mentioned that as long as there were enough First Class meals for all passengers, preorder meals were not guaranteed and it was not something to hold the flight for. Of course I made sure the FAs were comfortable with that because they would have to deal with the potentially upset customers, and after they said they were, we left. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words and I thought he got the message. Apparently not because on the next leg he jumps on the ACARS and messages crew tracking asking if they had any reroutes for him, hoping to make more money. He seemed genuinely surprised when I told him he shouldn't be doing that. So we had a talk about the importance of following the trip coverage sequence in the contract and how making side deals with the company not only hurts your fellow pilots who abide by the contract, but reduces our bargaining power collectively when it comes time for negotiations. He wasn't flying the line last summer when there was blatant abuse of skipping the trip coverage sequence by both scheduling and pilots making side deals, the issues that it caused, and the resolution to that which IMO was not in the pilots' favor. I also explained that it could get him in trouble with both ALPA, and his peers if he were to get caught. Hopefully he got the message this time. Both of those situations with him were unexpected to me because I've never had to provide mentoring on those items before in my previous Captain experience.
Hopefully I handled them properly and with a positive outcome, I'm still learning myself. The good thing is every trip I feel like I'm getting a little bit better and it's been an energizing feeling. It's making me want to go out and fly as many of my reserve days as possible and keep the improvement going. I'm sure I'll eventually get over it and go back to my old ways of trying to work as little as possible but for now I'm enjoying the journey.
