Mem Items-AF/Airline Difference
Hi!
I noticed a dramatic difference between the AF and airlines as to what were Memory Items, and their basic philosophies.
At TSA, the J41 had about 17? mem items, the ATRs 20+ and I think the ERJ was around the mid 20s.
That shocked me, and I was very worried, until I found out how the airlines handle their "Memory" items.
I flew the KC-135R (tanker-basically the same airframe as a Boeing 707). It's max TOW was about 340,000. We had 4 engines, 3 generators, and a whole bunch of old (read very complicated) systems. When you consider this, it is amazing that we had 5, that's right, five, memory (AF calls them Bold Face) checklists, and they also had very few steps on them, usually 3.
When I heard the J41 had 17? I couldn't believe it.
Here's how it's different.
In the AF, the memory items ARE memory items. You have to know them verbally and in written form, backwords and forwards.
If it says: "Flaps - 45 degrees." and you write
"Flaps-45 degrees." (you left out the spaces), you FAIL the Oral or the written test it is on.
If it says "Generators - OFF.", and you the examiner hears you say, "GeneraTOR - OFF." (you changed it from plural to singular verbally) you FAIL.
The AF only took what they believed to be life threatening situations, where you had to know instantly and exactly what to do, and made those the memory items (some of the Bold Face items are just PART of a longer checklist, and you use the checklist for the rest of the items).
In the airlines (I assume it's like TSA), you had to be able to perform the actions in the sim, and explain it to the examiner, not have to know each space and dash and Capitalized word. We could change the wording, for example, it the item was to be turned off, we could say (or write) "Item - Shut-off" or "Item- OFF", as long as the instructor knew that we knew what we were doing. It didn't have to be EXACT as it did in the AF.
We had about 4-5 memory items in the J41, that were very similar, but some of the wording was very different, even though the actions were the same. We were allowed to re-word these items ourselves, and learn/write/say them in a standardized format, that was slightly different that what TSA had (this would never be allowed in the AF).
Also, we were only required to write these memory items once, and it was a test that our systems instructor made up on his own-it wasn't part of the TSA training. In the AF, we had about 30 million written tests of these items. In the oral, I don't think (at TSA) I was even asked all of the memory items, just a sampling.
Once I learned how TSA wanted us to learn and how they tested their memory items, it was pretty easy.
In general, as far as the training went, the AF training was MUCH harder and MUCH more precise and demanding, but we had a much longer time to train up to that standard. They were quite a bit different. In the AF, 90% of my KC-135R training was in the aircraft, and at TSA I would've had probably 3 or 4 patterns in the plane total.
Cliff
GB,WI