FODhopper

I am curious to know more about the limits of the scope clause because from my understanding Republic can buy the C series since they were operating their own airline...Frontier (until they sold it) or some other venture not yet announced.

How can AWAC acquire the C series and still stay within scope, unless they are going back to the good 'ol days when they actually sold tickets on their own routes? But something ells me Appleton to Kokomo, IN is not going to be as lucrative

CAirBear

Well three guys, I guess, started this past Monday. Out of those 3 how many get through our pathetic training dept?

For the month were at 7 CA Resignations and 10 FOs. I would imagine it will be a bit more by the time April 1st rolls around. Sure we are hiring, but we are still negative pilots every month.

buddies8

aa scope does not stop any regional from flying a 747. what it does is limits what they can fly as an aa feed. with that said, mesa can by 787's and approach aa to codeshare the 787 from phx to dfw 24 times a day as a domestic codeshare, which is allowed by aa scope but up to 15% of the aa domestic narrowbody block ours.

mm1989

I know the old timers often mention we have a deal with United to fly 100 seat airplanes. I know nothing about it other than I've heard it throughout my time here.

Flubber

Who says AWAC has to OPERATE the airplanes? They could be positioning themselves to be the next ILFC for all we know.

FODhopper

I'm curious...what is pathetic about our training department? Things can be improved, but our standards are better than most.

Is it the materials? The instructors? The standards?

Flubber

Had a deal. It ended when United rebid the AWAC feed and we ended up flying for US Airways through a craftily played move to help finance them out of BK.

There was specific language in United's contract* that allowed us to fly a certain number of aircraft outside of their scope clause. historically going back to when we were flying the BaE-146, got purchased by UAL (yeah, we were owned by then for a while) and then sold off. Their objective in purchasing AW was to get the ORD slots AW posessed. What was egested was bought by the present ownership and reorganized as Air Wisconsin Airlines Corp. and continued to fly as a United Express feeder until we were deemed "too expensive" a la Atlantic Coast Airlines.

* The aircraft were identified by tail numbers and I beileve there was language that allowed a one-for-one swap for an "equivalent" airframe.

ChipChelios

I think our training department is pretty good myself.

CAirBear

The biggest one is the fact there is, basically, zero consistency between any of the sim instructors.

I will say it seems to have gotten somewhat better as we are getting real line pilots, not the dinosaurs (of which some need to clearly move on) that are doing some part time instruction. I have referred many people here in just the past two years and the consistency and is the biggest complaint. Also, even though I hear there is a syllabus, I never saw it once when I went through. That would certainly be nice to see.

Historically our washout rate is much higher than other regionals. It's not because they all suck and can't do it (for some that may be the case). I know of a number who have failed here and gone onto other airlines and have been successful. At some point you have to wonder why that is.

I get you do CPT, Indoc/Systems and aren't a lifer over there, but this place is far from perfect.

FODhopper

I've heard the same complaint about sim instructors and I don't have any further insight into that other than I agree the next wave of instructors has been much fresher and better.

As for people going elsewhere and doing well...some of that is on AWAC...a lot is on the standards at other airlines...passing our classroom is about learning the material...at other places it is much closer to teaching the test...who would you rather fly with?

Not to say we want to be Lord of the Flies...that is not fun...and to that end...recently (last six months) we have gone away from the numbers game...having to memorize obtuse and arcane numbers when lights trip off rather than understanding basic operation and you will learn more along the way.

Having taught the "new way" a couple of times...I think it has gone much better...classroom pass rates are up much higher, even though our classroom fail rate has always been low (once in a while)..but I think also because of the "new way", it's likely the pass rate in orals will improve.

One of the hard parts is for the instructors to downshift from what was "need to know" before to what it is now...and believe that it will be okay.