Kellwolf's Major Airline Experience

kellwolf

Piece of Trash
Figured this was as good a forum to toss this in as any. I know my last couple of play-by-play threads were in the Member Announcements, so mods, feel free to move this wherever it fits best.

First off, I'll preface this with the standard disclaimer of all opinions are mine alone and do not represent those of jetBlue. This is essentially going to be a "day in the life" in training, so I'm hoping to impart a general sense of what it feels like along with some (hopefully) entertainment. I may from time to time compare it to other airlines that I've been employed with. It's not necessarily meant as a dig on any of the airlines mentioned. It's simply a compare and contrast. So, without further ado....


Things first started off last night. The entire class was invited to a local eatery close to the hotel we were all staying in. Yes, even the local boy (me) got a hotel room paid for by the company. Might come in handy when I need to sequester myself for study. The hotel itself is an extended stay suite hotel. Rooms have full kitchens, spacious and free breakfast every morning. Now, back to the dinner. Lots of flight ops management was there. A few chief pilots, the system chief, a few of the higher ups, reps from Pro Standards (who happened to be in town for a training seminar and were invited) as well as students from the class ahead of us. Basically, it was an informal Q&A session where people could be themselves. Think NJC but with less alcohol and an actual job offer. :) We also got our bid sheets. I was more senior than I thought I would be in my class of 12, and there's a mix of A320 and E190 slots available for us. The A320 slots were all in JFK, and the E190 slots were in BOS and JFK.


So, moving on to the first official day of training: orientation. Early show at 7 am in order to get the HR paperwork out of the way. Also got pics taken for our IDs. We were in a group orientation that included us pilots, airport operations, ground operations, tech ops (aka MX) and various support crewmembers from other locations. It started out with an intro to jetBlue and a run down of some terms that are unique to the airline. For example, we don't have "passengers," we have customers. No one is an employee, we're all crewmembers. After about three walls full of management representatives introduced themselves, it was time for all of us new hires to talk a bit about ourselves. After a short break, the CEO, Dave Barger, spent a lot of time going over where jetBlue came from, and (more importantly) where jetBlue is going and how we're going to get there. After Dave, Rob Maruster, the COO, talked about the values and how they apply at jetBlue. After his module, there was a discussion on the routes that included how jetBlue decides what markets and the every popular "Why don't you go to XYZ?" conversation. Break for lunch (they paid for it, too). Back from lunch, we talked some more about the values as well as the government affairs. Venezuela and Cuba are looking good for the future if the political hurdles can be overcome. After that, a rep from marketing talked about how important maintaining the brand is. The surprised of the day (for me) was when someone from finance actually broke down how jetBlue makes (or loses) money and showed how close we can cut it with some real world examples. Lots of charts in this section, and you really get a sense of how badly an airline's financials can get wrecked just with a small increase of fuel costs. Slight wrap up, and we're back for day two of orientations tomorrow. Looks like it's going to be mostly benefits in the morning, and the different groups go their separate ways in the afternoon.

Couple of things that were very different about this orientation than my three previous airlines. First, they invited our significant others to come with us. It's sort of a "You're getting hired here, so your family is getting hired here" type thing. My wife isn't big on airline stuff at all, and she really enjoyed it. Said she learned a lot. Tomorrow, they're actually putting the SOs in the sims for a while! Another thing that was different is I've NEVER had an airline more or less tell me the whole business model the way jetBlue did today. It was almost like they were trying to pitch it to investors the way they laid everything out. I guess if I think about it, I'm investing my career with them, so it makes sense. From route selection to marketing to finances, no airline I've worked for (even Southwest) put it all out there like I heard today. Coming from Pinnacle, where every decision seemed like it was made by some cabal of people in a secret society that feared sharing any kind of info, it was a very refreshing change. I'm hopeful that the free flow of info I saw today continues past orientation and continues like that on the line. It makes it so much easier to achieve the airline's goals if every crewmember is on the same page. Finally, I've been at orientations where the CEO was present for about an hour and gone. My new hire orientation at ExpressJet, Jim Ream was there for about an hour. Trenary was around for about 45 minutes at Pinnacle. We saw Herb in the hallway at Southwest. Dave Barger? He was in and out of the room all day long. For the CEO of a major airline to spend that much time in a new hire orientation class was pretty impressive to me. Taking into account there are still recovery ops from Sandy as well as issues with the current nor'easter going on, and it was more impressive he could take the time to be there. I wasn't expecting him to be able to make it down at all, much less spend most of the day there.

First impressions: I'm very happy with the choice to come here so far. Looks like I'm going to wind up getting exactly what I thought I would as far as aircraft and base goes, and thus far everything is as advertised or better. Health insurance isn't all that, but we'll find out more on that in the benefits briefing tomorrow, I'm sure.
 
Sounds much, much better than where we were. At least you probably won't sit through an 800 slide powerpoint geared toward a 250 hour pilot and then thrown th books and told to figure it out on you own. :)
 
I HIGHLY reccomend BOS 190. Have fun and keep an open mind. I'm a year + deep and do not have any regrets. There is room for improvement but it is what you make of it and I've had a great ride so far. For classroom fun once you get your laptop...click the little green circle icon on the toolbar near the battery. It's like IM for the entire company.

Offer still stands if I can send any info your way.

P.S. Wait till youre a line holder with flica...it is PFM what you can do with your schedule with zero interaction with crew services.
 
Figured this was as good a forum to toss this in as any. I know my last couple of play-by-play threads were in the Member Announcements, so mods, feel free to move this wherever it fits best.

First off, I'll preface this with the standard disclaimer of all opinions are mine alone and do not represent those of jetBlue. This is essentially going to be a "day in the life" in training, so I'm hoping to impart a general sense of what it feels like along with some (hopefully) entertainment. I may from time to time compare it to other airlines that I've been employed with. It's not necessarily meant as a dig on any of the airlines mentioned. It's simply a compare and contrast. So, without further ado....


Things first started off last night. The entire class was invited to a local eatery close to the hotel we were all staying in. Yes, even the local boy (me) got a hotel room paid for by the company. Might come in handy when I need to sequester myself for study. The hotel itself is an extended stay suite hotel. Rooms have full kitchens, spacious and free breakfast every morning. Now, back to the dinner. Lots of flight ops management was there. A few chief pilots, the system chief, a few of the higher ups, reps from Pro Standards (who happened to be in town for a training seminar and were invited) as well as students from the class ahead of us. Basically, it was an informal Q&A session where people could be themselves. Think NJC but with less alcohol and an actual job offer. :) We also got our bid sheets. I was more senior than I thought I would be in my class of 12, and there's a mix of A320 and E190 slots available for us. The A320 slots were all in JFK, and the E190 slots were in BOS and JFK.


So, moving on to the first official day of training: orientation. Early show at 7 am in order to get the HR paperwork out of the way. Also got pics taken for our IDs. We were in a group orientation that included us pilots, airport operations, ground operations, tech ops (aka MX) and various support crewmembers from other locations. It started out with an intro to jetBlue and a run down of some terms that are unique to the airline. For example, we don't have "passengers," we have customers. No one is an employee, we're all crewmembers. After about three walls full of management representatives introduced themselves, it was time for all of us new hires to talk a bit about ourselves. After a short break, the CEO, Dave Barger, spent a lot of time going over where jetBlue came from, and (more importantly) where jetBlue is going and how we're going to get there. After Dave, Rob Maruster, the COO, talked about the values and how they apply at jetBlue. After his module, there was a discussion on the routes that included how jetBlue decides what markets and the every popular "Why don't you go to XYZ?" conversation. Break for lunch (they paid for it, too). Back from lunch, we talked some more about the values as well as the government affairs. Venezuela and Cuba are looking good for the future if the political hurdles can be overcome. After that, a rep from marketing talked about how important maintaining the brand is. The surprised of the day (for me) was when someone from finance actually broke down how jetBlue makes (or loses) money and showed how close we can cut it with some real world examples. Lots of charts in this section, and you really get a sense of how badly an airline's financials can get wrecked just with a small increase of fuel costs. Slight wrap up, and we're back for day two of orientations tomorrow. Looks like it's going to be mostly benefits in the morning, and the different groups go their separate ways in the afternoon.

Couple of things that were very different about this orientation than my three previous airlines. First, they invited our significant others to come with us. It's sort of a "You're getting hired here, so your family is getting hired here" type thing. My wife isn't big on airline stuff at all, and she really enjoyed it. Said she learned a lot. Tomorrow, they're actually putting the SOs in the sims for a while! Another thing that was different is I've NEVER had an airline more or less tell me the whole business model the way jetBlue did today. It was almost like they were trying to pitch it to investors the way they laid everything out. I guess if I think about it, I'm investing my career with them, so it makes sense. From route selection to marketing to finances, no airline I've worked for (even Southwest) put it all out there like I heard today. Coming from Pinnacle, where every decision seemed like it was made by some cabal of people in a secret society that feared sharing any kind of info, it was a very refreshing change. I'm hopeful that the free flow of info I saw today continues past orientation and continues like that on the line. It makes it so much easier to achieve the airline's goals if every crewmember is on the same page. Finally, I've been at orientations where the CEO was present for about an hour and gone. My new hire orientation at ExpressJet, Jim Ream was there for about an hour. Trenary was around for about 45 minutes at Pinnacle. We saw Herb in the hallway at Southwest. Dave Barger? He was in and out of the room all day long. For the CEO of a major airline to spend that much time in a new hire orientation class was pretty impressive to me. Taking into account there are still recovery ops from Sandy as well as issues with the current nor'easter going on, and it was more impressive he could take the time to be there. I wasn't expecting him to be able to make it down at all, much less spend most of the day there.

First impressions: I'm very happy with the choice to come here so far. Looks like I'm going to wind up getting exactly what I thought I would as far as aircraft and base goes, and thus far everything is as advertised or better. Health insurance isn't all that, but we'll find out more on that in the benefits briefing tomorrow, I'm sure.

I enjoyed reading your post. Thanks
 
Great write up! My company was great, but definitely didnt involve the family like JB did. Thats great to see. Good luck over there. Keep us updated on what AC and base you end up with.
 
So, on to day two.

Started out with a little "Welcome back" song and dance in the auditorium, and went right into CrewTravel. I have to say, I haven't had travel benes this good since my days as a ramper at SWA. Couple that with jumpseating, and it's the best I've ever had. No annual fee like Delta, and for you Pinnacle and Mesaba guys, remember Fly Confirmed For Less? We can purchase revenue tickets over here at a 20% discount. That's essentially the same program we had before Delta yanked it from the DCI "contract" carriers. We've got WAY more ZED agreements than I'll ever use. For S&Gs, I looked up JFK-DUB on Aer Lingus. My whole family could go for around $230 round trip thanks to the Zed Low agreement. However, no Tickets at Work deal. That's something Pinnacle had that jetBlue doesn't, so we don't get discounts on theme parks or Vegas shows through them. Give it time. I mentioned it today, and the benefits people had actually never even HEARD of it. Maybe the ball will get rolling.

After CrewTravel, it was on to benefits. This is the sore spot for a LOT of people, and probably the thing I like least about coming to jetBlue. The health insurance here really isn't on par with a major carrier. It's not completely horrible, but if you've got someone that's in and out of a doctor's office or hospital a lot, you're going to be out a lot of $$$$. There's a few different plans to choose from, though, so I still have to balance a few decisions before I decide on which one I'm going with. We also covered retirement, short and long term disability, vision and dental insurance. Tossed in the day were also the mandatory talks about drug and alcohol as well as harassment. That was it for the overall orientation part of training. Had lunch and then started in with what we're all waiting for: pilot stuff.

Step one, get laptop. Step two, try to come up with a new password every 90 days. :) I have to say, I really don't understand (other than the start up costs) why other airlines DON'T do it this way. If Pinnacle liked to hoard information, jetBlue is COMPLETELY opposite. Our laptops have every manual you could ever think of on them along with training for the A320. The E190 stuff is on a CD, so I think only the E190 guys have the training programs for both airplanes. We got our e-mail addresses, logged in, and there were our bid awards. Seemed like most people got what they wanted. I'll be heading up to BOS on the 190, which was my #1 choice. We kinda got walked through where everything was on our laptops, but I could seriously spend hours just going through the manuals and the sheer amount of information available on the company websites. On time performance along with the metric customer service is based on are presented, along with the target numbers for the month. Digging around, I found something that would bring a tear to any reserve guy at 9E's eye: reserve grids for every base and seat generated that morning and placed on line for everyone to see. Pretty detailed grids, too. You can see who is on short call, who's on long call, when they start, if they were assigned anything, how close they are to 30/7, if they commute and from where, etc, etc. For an information geek like me, I'm going to love just digging into this stuff.

After we played around with the laptops for a while, it was time for an overview of the AQP program and how training is going to be laid out. I was guessing a M-F schedule with weekends off. Hell no. I've got a few stretches of days where I've only got 1 day off, followed by 3-4 days on, 2 days off, 3 days on, 4 days off, etc, etc. My schedule is already up from now until my final sim, and I'm paired with someone who's going through upgrade on the 190, which is probably best for both of us. We also got flight deck posters for chair flying, a lights and switches guide, and overview book with flows, limitations and memory items. The limitations are about a page, and there are only about 6 memory items. Two of them are of the O2 masks don, EMER and 100%, crew comm establish variety. Two are one liners, and the other two are basically pull, identify and transfer.

Not really sure what tomorrow's got in store, but I can feel the pressure in the fire hose being turned up. I'm looking forward to learning a new airplane, and I'll likely start digging into the systems training CD tomorrow as well.
 
Sounds like a great place to work! (You might see me one of these days, only nonstop I can get to Boston, my home town)
 
Nice write ups Kell. I'm reading them because a long time friend, who is a JetBlue pilot, just popped by for a 1 day visit. It's not easy to pop by Dubai for a day, so I appreciated that he made the effort.

Anyway, in regards to benefits he made over $250K last year as a 10th year Captain. An American Airlines 21 year captain neighbor of his, who has better benefits, made $140K. While it would be nice to see JetBlue have better medical benefits one must be careful how they go about pursuing that goal. I'd say right now, the scheduling flexibility and pay rules that JetBlue pilots have trumps the higher premiums they pay for medical.

Keep the write-ups coming.


Typhoonpilot
 
Interesting insight to an airline a step up from a regional. However, isn't JetBlue a "Low Cost Carrier"?... or are we considering them a "major" now?
 
Why did you want the 190 instead of the 320? Will you hold a line faster on it? Or is the MCO base only 190s?
 
Nice write ups Kell. I'm reading them because a long time friend, who is a JetBlue pilot, just popped by for a 1 day visit. It's not easy to pop by Dubai for a day, so I appreciated that he made the effort.

Anyway, in regards to benefits he made over $250K last year as a 10th year Captain. An American Airlines 21 year captain neighbor of his, who has better benefits, made $140K. While it would be nice to see JetBlue have better medical benefits one must be careful how they go about pursuing that goal. I'd say right now, the scheduling flexibility and pay rules that JetBlue pilots have trumps the higher premiums they pay for medical.

Keep the write-ups coming.


Typhoonpilot
You can buy a LOT of insurance for $110k.
 
Hey Kell, any talk in indoc of any future hiring plans? How many are still swimming? Hopefully they open up something next year.

On another note, reading your updates gets me depressed. Have to start CRJ200 training in a few weeks and well, for anyone that's been through long term training at 9E, you know how it's like. Nothing like Jetblue, I can assure you of that.
 
Holy crap you started already. Welcome aboard man. My advice to you is 1st week is supposed to be fun/relaxing. I believe you have your first exam coming up soon. After you take it you'll see how this place rolls and it will relieve a lot of worries you might have. Once you get going listen to these words, "Lights and switches guide, memory items, and limitations." Guys get all bent up and try to rebuild the aircraft. Don't be that guy. Study those three things and you will be just fine. Good luck and you have the e-mail if you need anything.
P.S. Knock out that CPAT as soon as possible. It drags on.
 
Thanks for the write up! Keep it coming! jetBlue has always been in my top 3 places to work for!
 
Thanks for the write up! Keep it coming! jetBlue has always been in my top 3 places to work for!

This makes me feel old. When I first saw a JetBlue Airbus I was a DC9 FO for Airways. We got off the jetway in BUF and the captain remarked that JetBlue sounded like the name of a mouthwash or dishwasher detergent.

Nobody would have guessed that they would survive much less thrive.

So to hear someone say they "always" wanted to work there makes me feel old. Always is a long time. Please stop that. ;-)
 
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