Well, since that went so well
I guess I can rant about other stuff I know. Essentially, everyone's planning on going home this first weekend, we don't learn a TON of stuff that basically, we all didn't all ready know this week, or, thus far. If you don't understand duty time, alternates, and all the stuff typically found in a Operations Manual, I guess it could be fairly rough, but I've found it to be not bad, as I'd guess everyone else has also. You'll get the "man we're glad to see new hires" spiel from almost everyone in the company numerous times, and in between those, literally, you'll slowly work through the ops stuff. 2 round trip passes per/month for the first 90 days for people in your JA(jumpseat agreement list), being you, your parents, kids, wife, and if no wife, your "companion" being your boyfriend/girlfriend. Of course you can jumpseat for free anywhere, and don't necessarily have to be IN the cockpit to jumpseat, so that's nice, and this is once your on the line. Yes they take care of your TO/From training on the weekends, just you lose your hotel room. One time payment of ~$1482 for training, ie food, plus hotel is paid for. You won't spend that much for food/day, trust me. Uniform guy will "attempt" to sell you TONS OF SHIZIT, we didn't know any better, we all bought it. There are NO MINIMUMS on stuff you have to own, get it where it's cheap, except for the pants, get from him. Uniforms are payroll deducted, minimum $10 per check, $20 per month, NO INTEREST, so essentially, I plan on being on payroll deduct for the rest of my life. Emergency memory items are a joke, probably 10 emergencies with memory items, approximately 3-6 memory items per emergency, and if you can remember "press and hold", your half way there. Limitations, a "little" different story, about 70 different, fuel, battery, operational, flap, gear, vspeed, etc limitations. A total of around 100 memory items to know cold, flash cards are great, I learned them all in one night, no problem. Training department is TOTALLY REVAMPED from pre 9/11 standards, none of this weeding out, drop-kick bs I hear some airlines are doing. Knowing what I know now, I can honestly say I have ABSOLUTELY no idea why anyone would go anywhere else, if offered a job here. All through this first week, people have been called by chq, mesa, skywest, tsa, for interviews, job offers, etc, and we all agree, we got the sweeter end of the deal. Hiring is supposedly ramping up pretty quickly, I've met LOTS of interviewees in the mornings on the rides over from the hotel, and have done everything to calm their nerves, make them understand what they're getting into. If you fly down the night before for a morning interview, all new hires stay in the Holiday Inn airport, come up, say hi, I'll answer any/all questions as best I can, since everyone has done the same for me. I'm assuming all my class would, everyone's equally as nice. Lowest time in our class is like 1500, highest is probably 2900, Multi ranges from 250 for recalls(most haven't flown a ton) to roughly 900-1000. Average multi is 500-700, I'd say 2000 is the total time average, most have less, causing the high timers to average down. All I have time for.
