Interview Team Visit to JAX
Basically not much, like expected, motivation for the students, however the core of the audience were CFI's new ones and the ones getting close to interview.
they did mention however that they have seen some few problems with CAA Grads in training, and they think part of the reason is because the training is tailored for the experienced pilot doing a transition, pilots who already have experience with turbines and flying bigger Iron than what we are used to flying.
Todd mentioned that the biggest problem they see is people not only from the Academy, but from the Academy especially get to the sim with the attitude of "here I am, teach me", and went on saying that it is somewhat normal because that is what we are used to doing in the Academy. However he also stated that we are not the only ones having the problem and the proble has an eassy fix.
The fix he sugested was from the first day u get your sim partner assigned, you need to get together and start studying together, practising flows, callouts, checklists and such. Basically what everybody has said before, get to the sim knowing everything you can know, so the only thing u have to learn is how to actually fly the A/C, the Sim sessions is not the time to learn procedures or flows , nor to learn how to use the QRM.
He suggested to comit the 2 months of training to nothing but training and studying, the people that have struggled in training and the ones who washed out, are people that were having "issues" other than training, u know like trying to move to CVG while in training, or other pesonal problems, his best advice he said, is to come to trainnig clear minded, or at least recognizing that even if you have "issues" outside of training you should put 100% of your focus on training.
He also sugested that the best idea as far as Sim partner goes is to seek somebody from a background other than CAA, that way we share knowledge, they help us with the High performance Transport Category A/C stuff, and we help them with the Comair procedures; apparently we do have those honed down, so it is not all uphill, but certainly Academy grads will face challenges different to what a 121 background will.
He said they have not seen any trouble with CAA grads in ground school, but we are taking a few more Hrs of sim. they also mentioned that they are reconfiguring the training so that they dont have to invest so much time in extra training, not tone it down, but modify it in such a way that they cover all levels of knowledge in a better way.
John Anstett and Sharon Jones had little to say and when somebody mentioned that I had interviewd already and even worse asked out loud when was my class date; well, let's just say that there was an akward silence, and both me and them were looking fo ra place to hide our faces, this was definitively a place Sharon didn't wanna hear the proberbial..."whens my class date??"
They briefly talked about the future, and pls, dont ask more cuz all I know is what Im posting:
32 planes in 2002, at least 2 of 'em 70 seaters (by the way Capt. Mcgregor referd to it as th e700 seaters.... LOL, he crossed CL-65-700 with 70 seater like 3-4 times....)
Aprox 32 airplanes for 2003 and by Dec 2003 there should be some 5 -700's
They are looking into new domiciles, however with the movements in the northeast, they now don't know what will happen to th eDFW base.
Somebody asked if they had a plan for the next 3, 5 and 10 years to which they answered yes. but they also explained that in this bussines the only guaranteed thing is that which already happened, the started this year with plan A, they are now by plan X, and have made brief pit stops in some letters to use numbers, like plan J-1, J-2 and so on...
what this means is the airline is looking into growth, and looking into expansion, but at the rate things change they have a hard time predicting what will happen 2 weeks in advance. ( I guess that explains class dates?)
All in all, it all looks great, and they are accelerating a few classes for the end of this year. they kkep the pool half full just in case someday they need to fill 40 pilot positions in 1 class, they are very smart people have been doing bussines for a while and really have a feel for where to allocate their resources.
That's about all I remeber, I hope it gives some insight, I know it's not much, but the purpouse of the meeting was more oriented towards people about to interview, not swimers....
best of luck to all, and see you in CVG....
Rich!
P.S.1 Hovernut, Todd had only good things to say about you and the flight in a "small plane" and that you did a great job flying them. he sent his regards back
P.S.2 Hugh Jorgan
I was not able to relay the message, she didn't seem receptive (sorry) but she will be back in CVG tomorrow
