I’m on my way to Memphis for part 2 of upgrade training.
Part 1 was ground school. I finished that up and had a couple weeks off. Part 2 is simulator training. I have a total of 12 sessions between tomorrow and March 19th. The first one, tomorrow, is a panel orientation (on the Flight Engineers panel). The next three are FTD’s (Flight Training Device… which is the simulator but with the motion turned off .. mostly for familiarization purposes). Then there are seven simulator sessions and, finally, the type rating checkride on the 19th.
I’ve had probably 6 or 7 different schedules so far. If you count additions as different schedules, I just got probably number 8 (I lost count). Part 3 of the training is a couple days of ground school covering long range navigation, and two LOFTS (Line Oriented Flight Training) which are simulator sessions flown more like line flights as opposed to the type of training flights with maneuvers, repeated approaches, and lots of emergencies that we get during the 7 sim sessions above. That has been scheduled (subject to lots of change, I’m sure) for March 26-30. The ground school part will be in Atlanta and the sims in Memphis.
Part 4 would be OE (Online Experience .. called IOE, or Initial Operating Experience by everyone else in the airline business). That consists of quite a bit of actual line flying (live revenue trips) with a check airman, and, somewhere in there, an observed leg with the FAA. It will be no less than 4 legs and likely at least 40 or 50 hours of flying. It’s likely to be more than that (particularly more legs, and likely more hours). It’s possible to probable that it’ll take more than one trip to accomplish that. It hasn’t been scheduled yet (and won’t for a while), but I’d guess it’ll start sometime in April and might possibly extend into May. If they get backed up, it could go longer.
Anyway, so that’s the latest…
V-