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EatSleepFly

EatSleepFly

Well-Known Member
I posted this on flightinfo too, but I'd really like some opinions from some of the more experienced folks here as well.

Honest question for you all. I just finished training at a regional. Its been a bit of a rough road. I did great in ground school. Best grades in the class on all of the written tests. Oral went great as well, didn't miss a beat. When I got to the sims, I managed to piss off an instructor early on, and it seems like since then they've been especially critical and short with me. I passed the sim PC with no problems, but I have two unsats. One I got for the disagreement with the sim instructor early on. He said I didn't run an abnormal checklist properly, and showed how I "should have" done it. I told him that I thought that was what I did (and it was what I did, according to my sim partner) and he tore me a new one. Learned my lesson there to keep my mouth shut and smile and nod even if I'm right. The higher ups that I went to talk to didn't really agree with the reason for the unsat, but it couldn't be undone. Went on to finish sim training with no problems. Last night, during aircraft training in the middle of the night, we were doing an ILS with the GS out. Autopilot was on, left initial altitude at the marker to go down to MDA. Approaching MDA, the rate of descent (around 1000fpm) looked like it was going to be too high for the AP to capture without going below, so I initially set the AP to slow the rate of descent. It was immediatlely clear that this wasn't going to work in time, so I clicked it off and recovered. Went about 20' below MDA but immediately got back up, finished the approach with no problems. Went around again, and the same thing happened. Don't ask me why I let it...if I had just hand-flown the darn thing from the get-go, it would've been fine. But anyways, 20' below again. Instructor said I was "slow," and gave me another unsat for my collection. I know better than to let the AP fly me, I don't know why I let it happen. I'm not going to try to make excuses. I •ed up, simple as that. I think getting an unsat for that was a little harsh, but the point is I screwed up, so it doesn't matter what I think.

So anyways, I'm pretty fed up here. Morale here is low, upgrade times are insane, contract and pay sucks. I never particularly wanted to fly for an airline, I just applied for the heck of it, interviewed and got hired. I would rather go fly for someone like AirNet or maybe Mountain Air Cargo (with my new ATR 42 experience...hehehe) until I can get on with a good charter or fractional company.

I guess my main question is: Is it going to be a big bruise on my career if I just say screw this and leave with no place to go (except Home Depot, until I find something else)?

Any advice would be appreciated. And please keep the flames to yourselves, I feel like a big enough tool as it is. Thanks.
 
If you feel inside that something is wrong, you are usually right. So go wtih your gut feeling.

I know how you feel about elders thinking they are always right. I hate it when someone higher up says I am wrong just because they can when they are actually clearly wrong. Nothing pisses me off more.

I know most have the experience are are usually right, but there are times when they are clearly wrong and it sucks they can't stomach the fact about making a mistake.

Anyways, I came across a job posting in the Minneapolis area. I would really like this job in the future but am nowhere near the times. It is a copilot position on the King Air 350 with Elliot Aviation out of FCM. Mins are 1500 tt and 500 ME. I am sure it might me lower with your King Air experience.

Anyways, good luck with your decision.
 
Mate, the first weeks/months of any job is hard - that is the way it is! You are doing a lot of learning, adjusting, and fitting in! I would suggest anyone and everyone stay with a company 3 months - at that point you have seen the ups and the down, been in the slums, and the high of highs. Stick it out, see how it goes. Leaving so soon, would certainly be a black mark on the record, which is not good!
 
I agree. Stick it out for a few months at least. It's more time in your book and more importantly experience to draw on. If it really is a different route that you want to pursue keep in mind that it's almost always easier to get a flying job while you have a flying job.
 
121 ground school, sim training, and IOE, all in two months, is enough to drive anyone crazy. It's a very stressful experience for a lot of reasons. I've known guys who hate training so much they have sacrificed a lot to avoid it. Heck...I stayed on the 727 for several years longer than I needed to partly so I wouldn't have to go to training.

There are times when relating to an instructor that you just need to smile and nod your head and say, "thank you very much sir." It sounds like you figured that out, though.

Who cares about unsats once you are released to IOE? You say you "finished" training. Put the crap you just went though in the past, where it belongs, and press on.

After 727 F/O upgrade, I shared many of your feelings. My instructor was an impatient, screeming, type A, pain in the butt who had a quadruple bypass not long after me. I felt awful when done with the sim but then went out an had a blast during IOE with a GREAT instructor. The ground school/sim enviornment and IOE were like night and day.

I'd highly recommend you give it six months and see how you feel then.
 
"I guess my main question is: Is it going to be a big bruise on my career if I just say screw this and leave with no place to go (except Home Depot, until I find something else)?"

It would look bad. You'd better have a darn good reason for walking away. How do you think it would look to a prospective employer that you didn't complete training at a 121 airline? (and you haven't completed training until finishing IOE).

I'd at least stay until you can get another flying job. A future employer might question your commitment to the career if you left a 121 airline for Home Depot.
 
Anything less than a year there will give other potential employers the impression that you couldn't hack it. You're young, tough it out for 12 months then apply somewhere else.

The training people at AE know this is your first airline gig and thus an unproven quantity in the Pt 121 world. So of course they're going to intentionally push you to see where your limits are. They're under pressure to ensure they don't pass anyone who doesn't really have what it takes, so whenever you give them an inkling that you might not--procedurally or emotionally--they're going to prod deeper to see what the bottom line is.

Good luck, and remember, we're all counting on you.
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Thanks a bunch for all the advice guys.
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I'm going to stick it out and God willing I'll be on IOE by next weekend. Flying the airplane has always been my strong point. No sense in quitting over a couple of stupid mistakes that I surely won't make again. Besides, I don't want to have wasted the past six weeks of my life.
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Thanks again...and of course I'll keep you all informed.
 
On a different note, curious what the check pilot said about the a/p capturing MDA on your approach? My guess is that the a/p was doing fine and would have done the job, even though the way it was doing it got you nervous. More important than the unsat was what you learned from the experience.

On the checklist thing with the sim guy, without being there, hard to say for sure. The sim partner may or may not be reliable to evaluate what happened. Sitting back and not challenging would not go over too well with me, if my student was right, he'd better tell me so I can correct what I'm doing/teaching. If I found out that I goofed and the student knew it and didn't correct me, now THAT would be something to debrief!!

Bad to teach someone not to do that, which is really that instructors worst offense from what you've written.
 
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On a different note, curious what the check pilot said about the a/p capturing MDA on your approach? My guess is that the a/p was doing fine and would have done the job, even though the way it was doing it got you nervous. More important than the unsat was what you learned from the experience.

On the checklist thing with the sim guy, without being there, hard to say for sure. The sim partner may or may not be reliable to evaluate what happened. Sitting back and not challenging would not go over too well with me, if my student was right, he'd better tell me so I can correct what I'm doing/teaching. If I found out that I goofed and the student knew it and didn't correct me, now THAT would be something to debrief!!

Bad to teach someone not to do that, which is really that instructors worst offense from what you've written.

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The first time it absolutely wasn't going to capture what was set in the ADU (though it always did in the same scenario in the sim). I clicked it off at about 420' because it was still coming down quick and "our" MDA was 400'. I just couldn't get it leveled out in time to stop it at 400. Ironically, MDA for the approach was 380', however since we can't set 380 in the ADU (its in hundreds) we have to round up. So I never really went below the true MDA...not that it matters.

As for the checklist...my sim partner was a CA upgrade who has been with the company for 6 years...has 700 hrs. in the ATR and about 3000 in the Embraer. He went to bat for me, agreeing that the IP was out of line, that my execution of the checklist was proper, and that the IP was being impatient and misunderstanding. Unfortunately, there was no way to reverse that unsat. I went as high up as I could go trying to get rid of it. They basically said that if they could they would, but they couldn't. He was also in the jumpseat last night during my flight, but I haven't talked to him today. Not sure what he thinks of what happened.

Ah well...lessons learned. Hopefully in a few weeks the worst of this will be forgotten and the lessons retained.
 
OK, sounds like your first "down" was bogus overall, so definitely let that one slide. Still erks me that an IP was so closed to you telling him anything, and I hope that doesn't influence your future behavior. Personally, if I were that Capt upgrade and saw that happen to my f/o, I would have let him have it with both barrels.

It also bothers me that the instructor in the airplane ride didn't debrief what happened with that a/p capture. That is a big issue and absolutely should have been talked about. One of my soap-box items is that you make the airplane do what you want, and downgrade to handflying if that's what it takes, but then on the ground, you debrief to understand what happened and what could have been done differently next time. The MD11 is literally the most automated commercial transport flying (sorry 777 fans, but it's the truth!), but that doesn't mean that the automation can't mess up, however, there are usually reasons for it, and those reasons should be explored when you see them.
 
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It also bothers me that the instructor in the airplane ride didn't debrief what happened with that a/p capture. That is a big issue and absolutely should have been talked about.

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Yeah, he really didn't go into much detail other than making sure I know to click off the AP sooner next time if it was doing something I didn't want it to.

This wasn't a checkride or anything, just a training flight. Now I basically just get an extra hour of checkride prep.
 
Well, I'm going to offer up my advice, even though I'm not an airline pilot (but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express
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).

Airlines like any other company exist for one reason: makin' money.

That being said they don't tend to care about their employee's feelings or ego's.

Part of the problem is that they don't tell you that in the first day of training. They usually tell you how great it is that you're part of their team, and how "valued" you are. It kinda true, but most people take being valued as being valued as a person not as an asset -- a piece of equipment that makes the company's money.

The problem is that a lot of people who have been around (especially trainers who "are always right"), are aware that their assets. They also tend to be aware that if you don't make the company money they my lose their pensions (whether it's true or not).

Obviously this isn't what someone expects when they get their "dream" job. Which is what a lot of pilots think working for the airlines are.

BUT the first job out in the corporate world, and that's where you are like it or not, always sucks. The bosses are ALWAYS unreasonable, they ask too much, pay too little, and never understand that you have a life outside of work.

The other thing that is always common about one's first corporate job is that the grass always seems greener on the other side.

I've known a couple people who bailed out, because they choose to run off to the other side. Did it hurt their careers? Well, hurt is kind of subjective, but it certainly didn't help them move up in the world. In fact one friend of mine is still basically working junior position. This is mostly because most employers promote from within. So as far as you never being able to get another job as a pilot, nah, job hopping isn't going to result in that.

But I'll offer you this piece of advice as fellow corporate warrior fightin' the man: Stick with it. From your perspective you may have hit rock bottom, but you're still employed, and you've nowhere to go, but up (no pun intended).

Hang in there man!

Naunga
 
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I never particularly wanted to fly for an airline, I just applied for the heck of it, interviewed and got hired.

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If this is how you feel, I would say that you should stay only for as long as it takes you to find another job. I don't think that a freight or charter company is going to care that you aren't satisfied working for a regional. I've known a couple people who have quit either during training or shortly afterward, one from Eagle and one from Mesa. I think they were both happier in the end.

Just my 2 cents.
 
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So anyways, I'm pretty fed up here. Morale here is low, upgrade times are insane, contract and pay sucks. I never particularly wanted to fly for an airline, I just applied for the heck of it, interviewed and got hired. I would rather go fly for someone like AirNet or maybe Mountain Air Cargo (with my new ATR 42 experience...hehehe) until I can get on with a good charter or fractional company.

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I think that the fact that you never really wanted to fly for an airline is the main problem. Since this is not really a goal of yours, the problems in training merely reinforce your idea that this is not for you.

Even if this is true, I would tough it out. You have made it through the hardest part. It will be a good experience and you will be getting paid to fly. If you do decide to leave, it will be easier to find another job if you are already employed. Your skills will stay sharp and you will be 'current'. Many employers want to see a certain amount of time in the past 6 months. This ensures they will not be hiring someone who is 'rusty' and will have even more difficulty in training than usual.

If you get a job at Home Depot, you will probably not have enough money to fly much. The less you fly, the less marketable you will be.

I would not worry about staying a set period of time at AE if you are not happy there. If you get an interview somewhere else, they are at least interested, or they would not bother with the interview. If you explain that the airline thing is not for you, I think most would respect that. AE will provide some 'quality time' for your resume and the fact that you made it through the training would be reassuring to a potential employer. I would not quit before IOE for this reason.

I am not sure about the autopilot thing. I know that sometimes when changes are made close to an altitude capture, the autopilot can get confused. I also wonder why this was not discussed in the debrief. It sounds like you did the right thing and the fact that the autopilot did not should have been discussed. I know that MDA should not be broken, but I do not think that 20' is that big of a deal. I am not saying that we should be lax, but I also think that we should not be unreasonable.

Overall I would say that even though it is hard, you should try to be as positive as possible. It is easy to dwell on the negative. I know from personal experience. I never thought that I would get my instrument rating. Every flight I just knew I would screw up, and I usually did. I only succeeded after I convinced myself that I could. Don't let some • instructor get you down. You will be out flying while he is still festering in the sim.
 
Excuse my ignorance but what is an 'unsat'?

One who will be making my way up the ladder wants to know.
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Thank you!
 
Generally, Unsat = Unsatisfactory. If you didn't perform up to the given standards for a particular aspect of the checkride the instructor will unsat that portion of the ride.
 
Alright dude, here is my info... Yeah you probably screwed up some stuff, but if you passed you passed. Suck it up, take the criticsm and work on it, its a skill youll have to learn as an FO sometimes....
About Eagle, My advice would be not to leave but start applying else where. Get out as soon as you can and start gaining seniority elsewhere.
 
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If this is how you feel, I would say that you should stay only for as long as it takes you to find another job.

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Perhaps I should have been more specific and said another *flying* job.

I wouldn't get too hung up on your training difficulties as long as you learn from your mistakes. There are very few people who have a spotless record.

Also, it's best to follow your own path and go with your gut feeling about a job/career. For example, don't let the fact that all your pilot friends aspire to the airlines influence what *you* want.
 
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