JetBlue Announces an Ab Initio Program

[PhilosopherPilot]

Did recruiting send out an update after the window closed like they did for the last one? I'd be very interested in reading it.

Not that I'm aware of.

 

[moxiepilot]

The number of applicants in this last window was down 50%, FWIW.

It's not indentured servitude. No one is forcing anyone to participate. It will give people who are talented, but financially unable, a chance to be a pilot. That's a good thing.

I don't know anything at all, but I would garner a guess that the applicant, when accepted, will be required to sign a training agreement because of the financial burden to the company. And if the applicant leaves the company before the contractual agreement, the pilot will be held responsible for a prorate share of the training, which will be a lot of money. That positions the company to abuse their pool of indebted pilots in various ways contrary to unionized labor.

That sir is indentured servitude.

 

[uncreative]

With the complete lack of lateral mobility in the airline pilot career field , the current situation doesn't seem that far off from indentured servitude anyway. In fact , this sort of program might breed a more militant attitude among that particular pilot group given that it would actually be a benefit to them for the airline to go bankrupt.

 

[PhilosopherPilot]

I don't know anything at all, but I would garner a guess that the applicant, when accepted, will be required to sign a training agreement because of the financial burden to the company. And if the applicant leaves the company before the contractual agreement, the pilot will be held responsible for a prorate share of the training, which will be a lot of money. That positions the company to abuse their pool of indebted pilots in various ways contrary to unionized labor.

That sir is indentured servitude.

You act as if they will have no choice in the agreement. If they don't like the contract, they won't sign it. All contracts could be called indentured servitude by your standard. Do you have a contract on your mobile phone? You get a discounted phone, and if you leave early, you pay the difference. Same concept.

Whatever happened to personal responsibility? Do you think people are entitled to a job and free training?

 

[CloudNine]

Cadet programs are widely successful in other regions of the world. Why if it's done on American soil, is it some sort of conspiracy? There is a difference between skepticism and cynicism.

I'm confounded by the fact that pilots will complain that training is just too expensive to finance on one's own, and then criticize a company's attempt to ease that burden.
What's worse: owing jet blue 2-5 years of paid service or not even being able to afford your certificates/ratings in the first place?

 

[Mike Wise]

Cadet programs are widely successful in other regions of the world. Why if it's done on American soil, is it some sort of conspiracy? There is a difference between skepticism and cynicism.

I'm confounded by the fact that pilots will complain that training is just too expensive to finance on one's own, and then criticize a company's attempt to ease that burden.
What's worse: owing jet blue 2-5 years of paid service or not even being able to afford your certificates/ratings in the first place?

Preach.

As a side note, since we've referenced AF447 before, I would be interested in studying the difference in performance, competency and failure levels of pilots from Ab-Initio progams VS conventional flight training programs. I do not think it is fair to judge a cadet's performance or predict their failure, when the pilots of AF447 (to the best of my knowledge) had 19,000 hours of flight experience logged combined and yet still failed at maintaining control of the aircraft.

 

[wheelsup]

I had quite a few MAPD grads come through the Dash training program, and flew with several more who were hired before me. Most of them did well during training and flew the line well too. Better than some of the ones who came through with 1500 hours and lots of bad habits to overcome.

Yes they were good guys. But not many went into the Dash as their first aircraft on property. I don't any that did during my tenure there.

 

[Hacker15e]

Uh, YES, you can.
That's precisely what good training does... Gives pilots the experience to correlate and apply knowledge to unexpected situations. Else, why train at all?? To pretend that we're doing stuff and meeting regulatory requirements by checking boxes???

Were sort of mixing things up here.

Judgment and airmanship are things that can't be taught in a classroom and require experience. Unfortunately, when you don't have any experience, and thus can't really exercise any judgment, you can only fall back on (blindly) following procedures you were taught to follow.

Good training addresses a wide range of possible situations, which then allows people to correlate currently-developing situations to things they saw in training. With time and experience, they're able to correlate current situations with their own personal experiences *and* what they were trained to do.

Unfortunately, since most pre-canned training for a specific job has time, financial, and regulatory limitations, you can't train for every event. This is when judgment and airmanship (and thus, experience) are necessary for situations that are encountered outside the confines of that training.

Ultimately, the more variety of experience a pilot has, the better.

Remember -- we don't sit up in the front of the airplane to babysit the FMS and program the ACARS. We are there for when things go sideways and have to use our skills to get ourselves, the ship, and the pax on the ground safely. The QRH, the checklist, and training can't possibly cover every one of the possible contingencies. Ask Al Haynes and Chesley Sullenberger if they learned everything they needed to know in UAL and USAir's training programs.

 

[Soul Brotha']

@PhilosopherPilot, I believe you are in the schoolhouse. How are the instructors there feeling about it? Just did my recurrent LOE today and the examiner was so against it. Real world experience was his philosophy.

 

[PhilosopherPilot]

@PhilosopherPilot, I believe you are in the schoolhouse. How are the instructors there feeling about it? Just did my recurrent LOE today and the examiner was so against it. Real world experience was his philosophy.

Honestly I haven't talked with anyone else about it. As someone who used to teach at a flight school that had ab initio programs (Lufthansa, Swiss Air, RWL, among others), I'm probably more open to it than others.

Personally, if the screening is good, the training is robust, and the checking is thorough, I have no problems with it. It isn't as if they will move to the flight deck within 6 months. It's a 4 year process.

By the way, I'm still qualified as a sim check airman, but in July I took a position in another department so I'm not as plugged in to the instructor group as I was.

 

[Deleted member 27505]

Were sort of mixing things up here.

Judgment and airmanship are things that can't be taught in a classroom and require experience. Unfortunately, when you don't have any experience, and thus can't really exercise any judgment, you can only fall back on (blindly) following procedures you were taught to follow.

Good training addresses a wide range of possible situations, which then allows people to correlate currently-developing situations to things they saw in training. With time and experience, they're able to correlate current situations with their own personal experiences *and* what they were trained to do.

Unfortunately, since most pre-canned training for a specific job has time, financial, and regulatory limitations, you can't train for every event. This is when judgment and airmanship (and thus, experience) are necessary for situations that are encountered outside the confines of that training.

Ultimately, the more variety of experience a pilot has, the better.

Remember -- we don't sit up in the front of the airplane to babysit the FMS and program the ACARS. We are there for when things go sideways and have to use our skills to get ourselves, the ship, and the pax on the ground safely. The QRH, the checklist, and training can't possibly cover every one of the possible contingencies. Ask Al Haynes and Chesley Sullenberger if they learned everything they needed to know in UAL and USAir's training programs.

Totally agree... and "liked". However, the better, broader, and deeper that initial training is, the more correlation and application takes place when faced with the unexpected, untrained event. For instance, one can learn systems, and systems relations, and systems cascades very, very well without ever actually flying an aircraft. If that is accomplished, then correlation and application of that "unexperienced" knowledge can be applied extremely effectively in an emergency... even by a pilot with very few actual flight hours. It all depends on the individual, of course. And by and large, generally, the more experience, the better. But experience is very subjective. Ten thousand hours of the same hour can easily be less valuable than 45 minutes of the right 5 hours. Proper action is directly related to applicable knowledge contained in the brain of a pilot. It is not directly related to a certain high number of hours. It is related to the amount of knowledge possessed, and the ability to apply that knowledge fluidly, calmly, and correctly in real-time, all the while controlling the aircraft to the best degree possible. Irrespective of hours of experience of the pilot, the pilot who possesses deep, correlative knowledge will win. Of course, all else being equal, the pilot with the most experience wins. But, alas, all other things are never equal.

 

[Ziggyfuzz]

Not what I am saying at all. Teaching an ab initio pilot with extremely low time, unknown quality of training, in a passenger carrying wide body, in extremely complex airspace isn't the same thing as teaching a copilot that has nearly the same amount of experience. Plus or minus a few years. I love teaching but there are appropriate experience levels and settings for those experience levels. An airbus isn't one of them.

This Euro Carriers have been successfully doing this for decades. This is why it is called ab-initio. "From the beginning", they are fed everything they way the company wants it and by experienced pro's whom have developed the program. In the end, when a well screened candidate meets the selection criteria, they are very qualifed to sit right seat in a Boeing or Airbus and sling gear. I know some of them personally, trained and checked them too. With stringent standards these programs do well. For a while now, I have been saying that this is what our carriers should be doing; even as far as sponsoring them in some way, you then have highly motivated people. Hell, half of my new Starfleet Academy graduate FO's, whom have not been thru this type of strict training, but have their 1500 hrs and a fresh degree on the wall, are not even of the caliber that the ab initio grads were. Most of the european kids are right seat in a big bus by 500 hrs total with a JAA/EASA frozen ATPL which can be attained at 500 hrs in a level D sim with a multi-crew course (crm).

 

[Ziggyfuzz]

AF447 - autopilot disengage no primary flight displays, so most definitely yes. How many PAX do we need to kill with ab initio students at the controls to prove that this is a bad idea?

One major issue yes, but out of thousands of guys that have come thru those programs, you cannot use AF447 as the benchmark for making statements like yours. FWIW, france has the worst of the ab initio's--they're French! It sounds like your statements come from someone who is placing speculatory judgment, and do not speak from direct experience with these types of programs. Have you actually flown with someone who has successfully completed a program like this?? Do you have experience as an evaluator?

 

[Ziggyfuzz]

AF447 - autopilot disengage no primary flight displays, so most definitely yes. How many PAX do we need to kill with ab initio students at the controls to prove that this is a bad idea?

They had a problem with how they taught basic instrument flying. I saw it coming years ago, however, as with all of hour rules and methods (written in blood) they have appropriately changed their ab initio training to include a proper cross check and interpretation of the basic "6 pack". We have done that for years here in the states, but you know the damn Frenchies....short guy syndrome had to come by it honestly unfortunately.

 

[Ziggyfuzz]

Well, if the AP disengages and you have a plane with no primary flight displays because you lose pitot heat... Yeah, that's not a training problem. Good training would still help, but, NO, not a training problem. See the issue? #flyboeing

It is.....its called instrument cross check and interpretation. Even without airspeed...you can do this

 

[Ziggyfuzz]

The training problem is that they did not recognize what was going on. Delta had an A330 do the same thing not long afterwards. Different outcome. Why? Because the Delta crew was able to use their experience, gained over a long time, to recognize the issue and take proper corrective action.

You can't train experience into people.

Actually in this case you can. Train for this scenario in basic instrument training. We did at UND 17 years ago, and I called it on the 447 accident before they ever released the findings....( and i was not a seasoned astronaut, just understood haw the instruments worked) this could have been avoided with proper training, from the beginning, period. Fortunately now they are training properly.

 

[Ziggyfuzz]

While airmanship does take time to be developed I have seen great airmanship even at the 50 hour private pilot level. Airmanship certainly is taught, mor so an aspect of how you model it to your student. Airmanship should always be modeled.

 

[Flyboy57]

Throw me into the camp that believes this will become the standard path to 121 flying. The historical pipeline to the majors remains at a trickle while the world-wide need for pilots continues to grow. As others have pointed out, effective implemendation is the key.

 

[Cazadores]

The legacy carriers are looking at ways to start ab initio however it seems they are focused on using it to perpetuate the regional payscale rather than fill seats at mainline, which doesn't seem to be too big a problem for them.

I am surprised like many of you this hasn't happened already. Seems like a great way to control pilot cost and instability. Even if just 20% of the pilot group is ab initio you have a built in check on collective bargaining, a group of voting pilots who are indentured, just happy to be there, and never knew any different.

 

[Deleted member 27505]

The legacy carriers are looking at ways to start ab initio however it seems they are focused on using it to perpetuate the regional payscale rather than fill seats at mainline, which doesn't seem to be too big a problem for them.

I am surprised like many of you this hasn't happened already. Seems like a great way to control pilot cost and instability. Even if just 20% of the pilot group is ab initio you have a built in check on collective bargaining, a group of voting pilots who are indentured, just happy to be there, and never knew any different.

Hmm. I think the recent actions at Lufthansa might support an alternative analysis.