mrivc211
Well-Known Member
Well, I'm back from my first week of ground school. It's been an interesting and exciting week. I'll start on sunday of last week. My previous job with the company was ramp work. Well when I worked in PSP we served both the United Express and Delta side of the system, thus we were able to ride on both carriers. When I transfered to LAX for a few months till ground school came up, the Delta portion was taken away b/c delta connection doesn't come thru LA for Skywest thus I can't ride on Delta Mainline. I didn't find this out until saturday night when I called Delta reservations and tried to list for a flight from SNA to SLC. The fun began!
I realized I had to get to SLC by riding only United or Skywest. As many of you may know, going to SLC and trying to avoid Delta is like going to Disneyland and trying to avoid not seeing Mickey. Well, after figuring out this and that, my route took me from SNA-LAX-PSP-SLC. Hopefully none of these flights would be oversold. I didn't have jumpseat privelages at the time since I was still considered ramp. Off I went, and I got all the way to PSP without any thing happening. Then........the RJ in SLC is delayed due to maintenence. Evidently SLC was experiencing Thunderstorms thus they needed the wipers to work on the plane, and they were broken at the time.
So wait and wait and wait for the wipers to be fixed. Now from what I was told its two simple screws that need to be popped off. I guess they had a hard time unscrewing the thing. So our 1pm departure was now still in PSP at 6pm. I began to think the flight would be cancelled and I would end up having to drive to SLC. NO JOKE! I wasn't missing first day! Finally as I'm arranging a rental, the plane gets fixed and off we go!
First day of training. But before I talked about that let me tell you the night before is hell! You WILL have nightmares about it. I had a weird dream that someone had died in our room and big drama scene was unfolding meanwhile I was missing ground school! Yup! The things that go thru your mind. Hhahaha. Anyways, I awoke from my nightmare if you will at around 5 am and to my surprise realized it was a dream. Hehehe.
So....the first day! We all came in dressed in white shirt and black ties. (We had to take pictures for our company id's.) It was funny because they made us put on fake FO bars on our shoulders but in the photo it looks like the real thing. Anyways, we all sat down and the instructors introduced themselves. Then it was our turn.
The room was filled with 51 newhires! YIKES! Yup 51! 30 for the EMB-120 and 21 for the CRJ-200. Since indoctrination training is the same no matter what aircraft your in, they figured to put us all in the same room. So they went around person by person and introductions were made. Let me tell you guys something................out of the 21 CRJ newhires, about 13-14 were furloughed UNITED. They were brought over for the jet for jobs program. Thats a lot! Others all had PIC turbine time. Their introductions went something like this................Hi my name is Joe Shmoe, I flew in the navy for 8 years flying A-10's, then went on to United and plumbed for a few, then onto the 75/76. etc etc etc. Every single one of them made you feel pretty insignificant with your CFI credentials. I mean, here I was, the biggest thing I had flown was a seminole and I was sitting in a class with not one or two but a large number of guys from UNITED that were flying the big iron. Thats startling for a person whos new to the game like me.
So after the RJ side completed their intro's they started at the back of the EMB class and worked their way forward. Since I was in the front I went last. I didn't see ONE person in that class with less than 4 years of CFI expereince, there were only a hand full of CFI's. The rest were guys from Great Lakes, Big Sky, and some private charters flyting Beech 1900;s. So you could say I had the least amount of experience in the class with my woping year and a half CFI time. (Thanks Chris!).
After introductions they outlined what straining would consist of and off we went. Ordered uniforms, which we had to pay for. With two sets of pants, a belt, 4 shirts, a tie, a sport coat, and a leather jacket it came to around $700 bucks. The leather jacket was optional but I had to have it. That was $367 bucks! Way cool.
Then the Jepps were ordered which came to about $125. All of this was mandatory. So the first day was a bunch of paper work, filling out this and that and making photo copies signing a bunch of letters etc. We were given all our books and such to begin out studying.
By the way, we had been sent a limitations page to study 2 weeks prior to class since we would be tested on day one. (we weren't tested). They talked about how many people we were still going to hire within the next year. We have about 42 more CRJ's coming by the end of 2005 and we need 8.7 crews per airplane for staffing. So roughly 365-400 pilots. Give or take a few for people also leaving.
Day 2 consisted of going thru company Ops Spec (operation Specifications) A bunch of stuff thats specific to what skywest can and can't do. We also got into FAR 121 stuff. Man thats confusing stuff. it's kinda like throwing out all the Regular IFR regs you know and learning new ones.
Class was from 8am to 5pm. but many days we were let out by 4pm. Let me tell you this, when your in there all day learning when you get home all you want to do is crash on the bed and sleep. BUT you can't cuz you have so much to do. Read up on FAR's, Specs, practice your FLOWS etc. oh yeah, and somewhere in there find time to eat and exercise. You can forget TV time or anything stupid like that.hehehhe.
Day 3 we pretty much went over more of the same stuff as well as go over security issues. The coolest thing of the day was Jerry Atkin, El Presidente y CEO of Skywest Airlines came and talked to us for about 45 minutes! I thought that was very impressive. I mean, this guy has a million important things to be doing and he finds time to come and meet us. He talked a lot of about company where we're headed, whats rumored and whats real! (I dissolved many rumors that I had been hearing, ie buying out Air Willie, Starting up our own LCC, our future in SLC etc etc). Jerry's a very down to earth kinda guy, you got the sense that he was a good hearted guy in a important position. His main message that he wanted to get across was Quality of Life, Respect amounst employees and management, and Health and his top priorites. And by all these things I mean applying the all employees of the company and not just himself.
Day 5, today we did more 121 stuff and were visited by the Director of TSA for the State of Utah. Surprisingly, he was different than what I expected. A very genuine man with good intentions. A guy the TSA needs more of. He discussed good things and bad things that I can't discuss here but I feel his visit made a big impact on our perception of the TSA.
On Tuesday is our Indoc test, which we have to score with a 80% or better, then it's off to systems. Afte systems we are off the KFAT for FTD training, followed by KLGB for sum training at FlightSafety.
I'll give you guys updates as time comes by.
By the way I some cool pictures to post but unable cuz I don't have a way to host them on a website. So if someone wants to I will send it to them and they can host it and post it on this thread. Phew! I talked a lot! Off to bed!
Laterz!
Oh oh oh, by the way! I'm famous! Heheheh. I had 3 people recognized me from Jetcareers! Yup 3. You Lurkers better sign up! Or I'll reveal who you are! One was a flight attendant, and two were pilots!
We're WORLD FAMOUS! ahahahha
I realized I had to get to SLC by riding only United or Skywest. As many of you may know, going to SLC and trying to avoid Delta is like going to Disneyland and trying to avoid not seeing Mickey. Well, after figuring out this and that, my route took me from SNA-LAX-PSP-SLC. Hopefully none of these flights would be oversold. I didn't have jumpseat privelages at the time since I was still considered ramp. Off I went, and I got all the way to PSP without any thing happening. Then........the RJ in SLC is delayed due to maintenence. Evidently SLC was experiencing Thunderstorms thus they needed the wipers to work on the plane, and they were broken at the time.
So wait and wait and wait for the wipers to be fixed. Now from what I was told its two simple screws that need to be popped off. I guess they had a hard time unscrewing the thing. So our 1pm departure was now still in PSP at 6pm. I began to think the flight would be cancelled and I would end up having to drive to SLC. NO JOKE! I wasn't missing first day! Finally as I'm arranging a rental, the plane gets fixed and off we go!
First day of training. But before I talked about that let me tell you the night before is hell! You WILL have nightmares about it. I had a weird dream that someone had died in our room and big drama scene was unfolding meanwhile I was missing ground school! Yup! The things that go thru your mind. Hhahaha. Anyways, I awoke from my nightmare if you will at around 5 am and to my surprise realized it was a dream. Hehehe.
So....the first day! We all came in dressed in white shirt and black ties. (We had to take pictures for our company id's.) It was funny because they made us put on fake FO bars on our shoulders but in the photo it looks like the real thing. Anyways, we all sat down and the instructors introduced themselves. Then it was our turn.
The room was filled with 51 newhires! YIKES! Yup 51! 30 for the EMB-120 and 21 for the CRJ-200. Since indoctrination training is the same no matter what aircraft your in, they figured to put us all in the same room. So they went around person by person and introductions were made. Let me tell you guys something................out of the 21 CRJ newhires, about 13-14 were furloughed UNITED. They were brought over for the jet for jobs program. Thats a lot! Others all had PIC turbine time. Their introductions went something like this................Hi my name is Joe Shmoe, I flew in the navy for 8 years flying A-10's, then went on to United and plumbed for a few, then onto the 75/76. etc etc etc. Every single one of them made you feel pretty insignificant with your CFI credentials. I mean, here I was, the biggest thing I had flown was a seminole and I was sitting in a class with not one or two but a large number of guys from UNITED that were flying the big iron. Thats startling for a person whos new to the game like me.
So after the RJ side completed their intro's they started at the back of the EMB class and worked their way forward. Since I was in the front I went last. I didn't see ONE person in that class with less than 4 years of CFI expereince, there were only a hand full of CFI's. The rest were guys from Great Lakes, Big Sky, and some private charters flyting Beech 1900;s. So you could say I had the least amount of experience in the class with my woping year and a half CFI time. (Thanks Chris!).
After introductions they outlined what straining would consist of and off we went. Ordered uniforms, which we had to pay for. With two sets of pants, a belt, 4 shirts, a tie, a sport coat, and a leather jacket it came to around $700 bucks. The leather jacket was optional but I had to have it. That was $367 bucks! Way cool.
Then the Jepps were ordered which came to about $125. All of this was mandatory. So the first day was a bunch of paper work, filling out this and that and making photo copies signing a bunch of letters etc. We were given all our books and such to begin out studying.
By the way, we had been sent a limitations page to study 2 weeks prior to class since we would be tested on day one. (we weren't tested). They talked about how many people we were still going to hire within the next year. We have about 42 more CRJ's coming by the end of 2005 and we need 8.7 crews per airplane for staffing. So roughly 365-400 pilots. Give or take a few for people also leaving.
Day 2 consisted of going thru company Ops Spec (operation Specifications) A bunch of stuff thats specific to what skywest can and can't do. We also got into FAR 121 stuff. Man thats confusing stuff. it's kinda like throwing out all the Regular IFR regs you know and learning new ones.
Class was from 8am to 5pm. but many days we were let out by 4pm. Let me tell you this, when your in there all day learning when you get home all you want to do is crash on the bed and sleep. BUT you can't cuz you have so much to do. Read up on FAR's, Specs, practice your FLOWS etc. oh yeah, and somewhere in there find time to eat and exercise. You can forget TV time or anything stupid like that.hehehhe.
Day 3 we pretty much went over more of the same stuff as well as go over security issues. The coolest thing of the day was Jerry Atkin, El Presidente y CEO of Skywest Airlines came and talked to us for about 45 minutes! I thought that was very impressive. I mean, this guy has a million important things to be doing and he finds time to come and meet us. He talked a lot of about company where we're headed, whats rumored and whats real! (I dissolved many rumors that I had been hearing, ie buying out Air Willie, Starting up our own LCC, our future in SLC etc etc). Jerry's a very down to earth kinda guy, you got the sense that he was a good hearted guy in a important position. His main message that he wanted to get across was Quality of Life, Respect amounst employees and management, and Health and his top priorites. And by all these things I mean applying the all employees of the company and not just himself.
Day 5, today we did more 121 stuff and were visited by the Director of TSA for the State of Utah. Surprisingly, he was different than what I expected. A very genuine man with good intentions. A guy the TSA needs more of. He discussed good things and bad things that I can't discuss here but I feel his visit made a big impact on our perception of the TSA.
On Tuesday is our Indoc test, which we have to score with a 80% or better, then it's off to systems. Afte systems we are off the KFAT for FTD training, followed by KLGB for sum training at FlightSafety.
I'll give you guys updates as time comes by.
By the way I some cool pictures to post but unable cuz I don't have a way to host them on a website. So if someone wants to I will send it to them and they can host it and post it on this thread. Phew! I talked a lot! Off to bed!
Laterz!
Oh oh oh, by the way! I'm famous! Heheheh. I had 3 people recognized me from Jetcareers! Yup 3. You Lurkers better sign up! Or I'll reveal who you are! One was a flight attendant, and two were pilots!
We're WORLD FAMOUS! ahahahha
