ACA -- what is going on?

[hotwing]

Has anyone heard anything about ACA? I have an interview with them coming up in Dec. I have heard all kindf of rumors but nothing concrete.

 

[CRJ puppy]

Scroll down the list to the ACA classes thread. It is all fairly acccurate and will give you the latest info. Needless to say, if you got an interview, you are among the lucky few. Unfortunately, you won't see a training room if hired until late next spring at the earliest (probably). Keep your fingers crossed that United has a good holiday season and beyond.

 

[hotwing]

thanks

Thanks for the reply. I was told that if I was hired that I would not see a training date until around the end of March. Has the growth stopped or will it pick back up?

 

[BlueRidger]

The J41s were suddenly going to go away by Nov 2003 so the company cancelled the J41 classes. There were some seriuos issues about current J41 FO's being witheld from class while new hires and junior 41 FOs and FRJ FOs were going to the CRJ FO slots. Essentially some serious seniority issues. Many of these 41 FO's are now being sent to training like they were supposed to be. This caused the cancellation of some new hire classes. So things were very confused.

Now there may be a light at the end of the tunnel (and it probably is not a train). As of yesterday it appears as if the J41's are going back to the original retirement schedule of April 2004. This means that the company is going to have to have some more J41 classes. They may still try to weasel out of this though. But more than likely there will be a couple of new hire classes in the J41 in the near future. because of the seniority issues listed above it would appear that most of the new hires in the near future will go to the J41 or else the FRJ. I am sure that they will also still have some CRJ slots as they cannot release all the currently withheld J41 FOs to the CRJ in one shot. I hope this is of help. Good luck to all of those in the pool.

On a side note. The evil CRJ program goes to AQP (Advanced Qualification Program) starting the next class. Hopefully this will create a much more friendly training program. The J41 AQP program is the easiest training program out there.

 

[northmountain]

Blueridge... Your best guess, please. It seems that most who interviewed in July are now in class. Those in August and later interview slots are awaiting class dates. When do you think classes will resume? And, secondly, for those who interviewed in August, do you think a class date will be forthcoming in January, February, March or perhaps later than this. Thanks in advance.

 

[USC***]

Blueridger,

I'm in the hiring pool with ACA. Just wondering what is AQP (Advanced Qualification Program)? Is that some sort of new training program?

Thanks

 

[BlueRidger]

I would not even to venture a guess as to when the new hire classes would start. There are just too many variables. As for when you interviewed and when you were hired that would be even more difficult to ponder. I have no idea how many people are in the pool. How many of those people have offers with othere companies and might take them. As I said before, with the seniority issues associated with the departure of the 41s and the actual timing of the 41s leaving the fleet, the company does not even have a clue how the class schedule and sizes are going to pan out over the next few months. It has also been pointed out that ACA appears to be overstaffed. Unless we get more growth, the pilots who are hired today are going to be permanent reserve FOs.

 

[sideshow]

As for the "evil" CRJ training I am just tired of hearing that and it is just bad information. The CRJ training at ACA has improved tremendously over the past few years and is only getting better. To characterize it as "evil" is just plain ignorant or uninformed. Whether AQP or not the CRJ program is fine. For anyone that did not bid the CRJ they now find themselves unable to get an IAD slot regardless of their seniority.

 

[House_X]

I beg to differ...ask the CA's from the 328 who transitioned this past fall...the more things change, the more they stay the same. As for the new AQP, two words for ya..."test pilot".

 

[acaTerry]

Hotwing,
Check your PM's

 

[DarnNearaJet]

As for the "evil" CRJ training I am just tired of hearing that and it is just bad information. The CRJ training at ACA has improved tremendously over the past few years and is only getting better. To characterize it as "evil" is just plain ignorant or uninformed. Whether AQP or not the CRJ program is fine."


Tell that to the unklucky half of the class that failed in May.

 

[zkmayo]

The CRJ program at ACA has improved trememdously over the last year or so. There is still room for improvement though. I believe AQP could only help it even more bc there is only a 3 things they can fail you for: crash sim, put ac or pax in danger, and/or exceed limitation. there is some subjectivity there, but a lot more latitude for mistakes than near perfection required for a tradtional checkride. I thought the J41 AQP system was very fair and you learned something by doing it.

 

[sideshow]

Tell that to the unklucky half of the class that failed in May.

I beg to differ...ask the CA's from the 328 who transitioned this past fall...the more things change, the more they stay the same. As for the new AQP, two words for ya..."test pilot".

Do you have the breakdown of the "unlucky" half of the class that failed in May? Did you speak to the entire half of the class that failed and determine if they failed just because some "evil" person in the training department wanted them to? Have you been through the "evil" training on the CRJ at ACA? I've spoken to plenty of people that have failed an oral or checkride and when you dig into it you discover more often than not they should have failed.

A rumor I heard a couple of weeks ago is that an examiner failed a Captain that was upgrading because he didn't have any tabs in his FOM. That seemed a bit extreme until you read the debrief and found out that he didn't think ACA could use lower than standard take-off mins, was unsure if we had any special use airports, did not think we could accept a LAHSO clearance and evidently had not read a page of the Airworthiness chapter. So, the comment from the examiner was that he found it helpful to locate some items by using tabs for those pages he found important. But of course once it goes through the airline rumor mill it came out as the equivalent of Chuck Yeager failed his oral because he didn't have any tabs in his FOM. But you believe what you will. From my experience the training department has made leaps and bounds over the years. Not perfect, never going to be perfect, but defintely better and trying hard to be better. And no, I'm not in the training department.