PSA New Hire Questions

It seems like my company has a different flavor every few months for there approach to typing FOs. I'm not sure how I feel about that. This new reg was supposed to arbitrarily make flying safer by taking the current experience requirements and just specifying ATP required. So, the intent was simply now requiring the ATP. The regs already have it laid out. This is not how it has actually worked, however. What concerned me was that my training dept was asking "how do we type FOs?" My answer would have been "by typing them the same as any other ATP candidate." That's the way it should be.
 
Funny story. A class at an airline that shall be not named, claimed that they had an excessive delay in receiving Systems Manuals. The aircraft program manager at "Aeronautics Assurance Worldwide" assured us that it was a blatant lie. The class in question said to us "why would we lie to you? It benefits only you to know what to expect". We had to listen about how horrible that class was the entire 2 weeks of classroom. So sad to hear about all the silly cat fights...
 
EDUC8-or said:
PSA has a PRM (Pilot Reference Manual), FOM, and POH all available online. Contrary to popular belief the oral isn't 80% switches and systems, there's lots more to it. We've had some recent complaints that the oral was too in depth on weather and the flight release, but if we're issuing someone an ATP with a PIC type rating I would hope they would be strong in all areas. Blame Congress for the ATP rule on that one. Probably the biggest step back in safety I've witnessed during my short career with the airlines.

I think we're somewhat getting caught up on the lag between ground, the oral, and sim. There were some scheduling issues about 2 months ago. I too would have liked some time off between ground school and sim (got home from ground school Friday night, left for my simulator training on Sunday afternoon) but too much time off is also not a good thing. Everyone is getting paid during their time off, how they use it is up to them. That being said our goal is to provide the best possible product to our customers, the students.
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Yes the FOM, POH, and PRM are online, in addition to systems powerpoints, preflight walk around, and many more powerpoints. The oral is not 80% switches. My oral exam was a little over an hour. 30 minutes alone to do weight and balance while the examiner did paperwork. Went over the flight release for about 5 minutes. Spent 15 minutes on the walk around powerpoint. Spent 10 minutes on systems and switches. What does this fault light mean, how many loops for each systems, etc. Very basic stuff. My examiner made the exam more of a conversation/learning lesson. He would explain stuff we may not be familiar with that happens on the line, etc. Obviously this was just my examiner. Everybody is different.

The CRJ Oral Exam Guide by Aaron Boone helped a lot as well. There is also the Redtriangle excel spreadsheet for the CRJ systems that helped tremendously. Some guys had an app for their ipad that showed the panels and what each switch does and means.

As far as Oral exam dates, it is now a few days after ground school. This has had better results in success rates.

The time off is nice, I only have to wait three and a half weeks. I spent that time traveling to Europe. It's nice to have travel benefits ;). The only thing to review for sims is profiles and flows which were nailed down during IPT.
 
EDUC8-or said:
PSA has a PRM (Pilot Reference Manual), FOM, and POH all available online. Contrary to popular belief the oral isn't 80% switches and systems, there's lots more to it. We've had some recent complaints that the oral was too in depth on weather and the flight release, but if we're issuing someone an ATP with a PIC type rating I would hope they would be strong in all areas. Blame Congress for the ATP rule on that one. Probably the biggest step back in safety I've witnessed during my short career with the airlines.

I think we're somewhat getting caught up on the lag between ground, the oral, and sim. There were some scheduling issues about 2 months ago. I too would have liked some time off between ground school and sim (got home from ground school Friday night, left for my simulator training on Sunday afternoon) but too much time off is also not a good thing. Everyone is getting paid during their time off, how they use it is up to them. That being said our goal is to provide the best possible product to our customers, the students.
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There you go. Lag between ground and SIM is getting shorter. If you don't feel you are getting what you need to succeed then say something. You are ultimately the one responsible for your own success.
 
I'm based in Dayton, if you need anything shoot me a PM on here and I'll help the best I can. Just remember your success depends as much on you as it does anything else. Put in the work but also take time to unplug and refresh yourself. You're going to have bumls along the road, just keep moving forward and you'll do fine.
 
Hacker15e said:
No idea if he had the systems manual or not -- again, the only info I have is what is in that email I posted. I agree that if the systems manual was available that should be enough, but my impression from that email was that he didn't have the required information in hand during that time off to study. No idea if he was actually being paid during that break or not.

This particular guy who wrote that is a heavy background pilot (KC-135 and T-6 instructor), so I don't have any post-undergraduate common training experiences with him and I can't speak to his particular expectation level based on his military experience. As a undergraduate pilot training student (which we both were), there is a massive amount of information thrown at you in a short period of time, and it is up to each student to invoke their own personal study ethic to consume it all and learn/memorize what will be important to perform. In many ways, there is no hand-holding at all, so I don't think there is an expectation from military training that all the information needed to succeed will be served up on a big silver plate. Clearly, though, he was nonplussed with the level of information provided by PSA compared to what was going to be expected at the Oral. On the other hand, he is at another regional currently and had only good things to say about the training there, so clearly it isn't a simple mis-fit between the expectations of military/USAF training plainly compared to civilian/121 training -- there was definitely something about PSA that rubbed him the wrong way. <shrug> I don't have an opinion either way, just presenting the story as a piece of the puzzle for folks thinking about going to PSA.

If 121 training is anything like the initial Type ride/ATP check I did at FSI, I think it was considerably easier (and provided less information and more shallow in-flight training) than the fighter and trainer qualification courses I've been though in the AF. But, again, I have zero 121 experience personally so I don't know how a FSI type compares.
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Only thing he would not have had available was the switch book. He would have been given posters with all the information he would have needed. Also note taking during systems would have covered everything he needed.

I'm not defending the interval or changes to his scheduled oral but saying that he didn't have adequate materials available just isn't being honest. 4 weeks without studying? Why?
 
desertdog71 said:
I'm not defending the interval or changes to his scheduled oral but saying that he didn't have adequate materials available just isn't being honest. 4 weeks without studying? Why?
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I don't know -- I can't speak for him, as that email is the singular piece of information that I have about it. He isn't a close acquaintance (someone I've only corresponded with digitally through a common friend we have), so I don't really know much more about him or the situation he was in. He could be a completely wet noodle who expected to have things served up to him on a plate and was irritated when it wasn't that way, I have no way to know.

Certainly seems from the other posts that there are other ways he could have handled the situation, and that his perceptions about the content of the orals may not have been accurate. In the email he does say that more than one other guy in his class busted the oral, so I'm assuming that he got a debrief from those guys after the fact about what was asked during the oral but that's just an assumption.
 
The training department is not without its flaws, and things have changed a lot in the year since I went through. They have 4 sims running now and hopefully things are taking less time to be completed. The problem with rapid growth is that you have to train new hires, check airman, and do upgrades at the same time. It's like having 2-3 training events for each new hire. They are also doing differences training back to back with initial training. So yeah, things can get to be a mess at times and some folks are going to fall through the cracks. This is why I say that you have to be proactive and take some responsibility for your own success. Ask for help if you need it, and talk to the instructors and training supervisors if you're not getting what you need out of it.
 
I went through the training process at the start of the year..it seemed they were in a catch up process trying to figure out how to handle the influx of people. Thought I was super prepared for all my stuff. (not without outside study of course) All the stuff, aside from the switch book, and a seegee wheel are available online in some format. We were told a month break between ground and sim, then got a call and ended up being 3 days. Just depends on your timing. Things are really shaping up. Im happy here. Live in CLT so that makes life a whole lot better. I hear people gripe, but I hear them gripe everywhere (99% of the time, its the guys who commute) so just live in base if you can and it will make life easier. But welcome, hope you like it, and good luck..
 
Horrible news for Envoy.

PSA will have no shortage of applications once this news gets out. They will be the new Compass
 
What a colossal waste of resources and money.

Think of what it costs to train 500 pilots.
 
Nick said:
What a colossal waste of resources and money.

Think of what it costs to train 500 pilots.
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Training costs are probably offset by a) reseting 47 airplanes worth of crews (figure about 4 crews per plane so 375 pilots) back to year 1 FO pay and b) going to a single fleet type at Envoy.

Doesn't make it any more palatable but I'm guessing that it will be a cost savings to them or they wouldn't be doing it.
 
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