etflies

Ask away, either on here or via PM! Glad to hear you finally got a class date.

kfahmi

Well, since you offered, here goes...

1. What did you guys typically do for breakfast and dinner? I'm quite capable of cooking for myself...IIRC the Candlewood had a stove in each room, which would be super-helpful. It's impossible to cook a proper healthy dinner with just a microwave (I am definitely into eating healthy and haven't eaten at a McDs, Wendy's, BK, Carl's Jr, Taco Bell, or a microwave dinner in years.)

2. Did you manage to get home for any weekends at all during training?

3. How's the light-rail-to-downtown situation on weekends?

4. Normally you get Sunday off, correct?

5. On the flight out there, do they let you check a couple bags without charge?

6. What was the one thing about training that you found the hardest? The easiest?

7. Besides "Study, study, study," any other advice?

Thank you

PS Just so I can add a little value instead of always just asking questions, the latest I've heard today from the training dep't is that they are running E175 classes June 30, late July, and late August. No word yet on E175 classes beyond that.

Piedmonster

Where are they putting you up at??? Its been a few years but all new hires were at the Candlewood. If you are there, there's a full kitchen and fridge in the room.

The comfort suites is only used for recurrent and limited overflow for new hires when the Candlewood can't accommodate.
The Sheraton downtown is also only used for overnight crews and new FAs.

etflies

Hey, I'll do my best:

1. I stayed at the other hotel, and breakfast was provided. It was usually eggs, cereal, fruit, etc. the usual stuff at a hotel breakfast. I generally grabbed a banana or an apple to snack on during the day. For dinner it was usually the stuff we bought from the grocery store. Mostly microwaveable items...I definitely had my fill of sodium those weeks. If the Candlewood does have kitchenettes, make use of the,! I'm with you on the healthy eating thing, so if that is an option I'll take the extra time and effort to make it work.

2. Our class didn't have time, by the time we got our I.D.'s and were activated in CASS we were coming up on the systems exam so everyone wanted to hang out in town that weekend. The only folks who went home lived locally and had cars with which to motor around. (Side note, if you can't bring your car, make friends with a classmate that does and offer gas/beer on the weekends as payment...you won't regret it)!

3. When I went through the light rail didn't come all the way out, but we were able to either get a ride or walk to the nearest station. We used it to get around downtown on the weekends and it worked great. It seemed to be safe, clean and efficient.

4. We had every Saturday and Sunday during ground school off.

5. I believe my classmates that checked bags still had to pay, at least when they traveled out to training. I managed to cram everything into a roll aboard and used my flight case from my previous company as a personal item to carry additional items and avoided checking anything.

6. The hardest was the volume of info (initial for me at this airline was the Brasilia, I'm reasonably certain the engineers were on something when they designed the airplane). You're going to be overwhelmed and have moments where it seems impossible. Trust the process and use your classmates for help. Group study sessions really helped several of us get through. The easiest for me was that I found the information I didn't know to be very accessible through one medium or another. The training department is top notch and does a great job setting you up for success. If you need help all you have to do is ask. Be humble and stay positive and they will bend over backwards to help you learn and get through.

7. The biggest pieces of advice I can offer were given to me by a 30 year airline veteran of several training courses. They are:

1) Use your classmates, be part of group study sessions and work together to answer questions.

2) Please relax. Make downtime for yourself. I made sure to spend an hour or so in the gym after class and we usually took Friday nights and Saturdays off to give the brain a rest. We would go to the Red Iguana or go out downtown (responsibly, no reason to jeopardize anything) and check out the town and have some fun just to maintain sanity.

I haven't heard too much about 175 classes, I finally threw in the towel and bid for the CRJ anytime after August, but it sounds like as the new fleet grows we will have steady classes for both jet airframes.

rickair7777

Group study is very useful for most and absolutely vital for some. But some folks may be better off doing most of their study solo. If you need more solo study time time, do it. Even then, do at least some participation in the group sessions since important gouge is often circulated there.

Exercise is important if you're used to getting it. Stopping cold turkey, combined with the stress of class, will affect your mental state and performance. Even folks who don't exercise (hopefully few) will benefit from going for a daily walk or bike to help clear their head.

Beer...one or two on school nights, OK. But no more than that except on Fri.

Weekends...take Fri night off. Try to do some sort of activity (hiking, movie, ballgame, etc) on Saturday but also leave time to study if you need it. Study Sunday. You don't want to be confronted by failure weeks into the program and find yourself wishing you has studied more on weekends.

Don't plan on going home on weekends unless you've flown the airplane before (in that case go home every weekend).

Do your part and the training department will do theirs. They'll put in the effort if you do. They can tell the difference between someone who's trying hard but struggling and someone who just isn't putting in the full effort.

M20EPilot

I went through last summer and stayed at the comfort suites :/ I am on the Bro so the suites with semi-private bedrooms and full kitchens in LGB were a big step-up.

A kitchen makes such a difference!

M20EPilot

1. The comfort suites provided breakfast. It was standard "free hotel" breakfast and I got sick of it pretty quick. I supplemented that with my own granola, museli, plain yogurt etc from other supermarkets (I could NOT find any breakfast cereal more healthy than, say, Cap'N Crunch at the lousy grocery store the hotel will take you to). Since I only had a microwave to cook that left my other food options as making sandwiches and salads. Now might be a good time to start figuring out healthy meals out of a hotel as that is what you will have on the line.

2. I went home one weekend. Best to plan to be away the whole time, and then be pleasantly surprised if you have your credentials and have a weekend where you're not slammed to be able to go home. On the Brasilia we had to do a jumpseat ride somewhere (familiarization). If you have to do that on the CRJ, get that out of the way first, and then if you have time go home.

3. Light rail worked pretty well, but like most light rail/public transit it is slow

7. Cooperate to graduate, and study with your classmates and/or room mate. You will probably need to help someone else get through who is struggling with something, and they in turn help you. Exercise if you can... a great way to de-stress. The Salt Lake olympic ice center has a great gym, indoor, and outdoor 50M(!) pools. I love to swim and that was a godsend. Its up by the university. I also took a day each weekend and drove out to the mountains and did a nice lengthy hike. The Unitah(?) mountains are beautiful. Again, having a car really helps.

kfahmi

Thanks so much for all the advice, folks. It really helps!

I thought about driving out, but at $4.00/gallon, I'd spend $320 in fuel just driving out to SLC and back....not counting 1500 miles of wear and tear on the car. I can get a rental car for $28/day at the SLC airport, so even if I rented a car for every weekend I'd still come out ahead

I deeply appreciate all the advice and am really looking forward to seeing everyone in class.

abner5

Aloha, any current Skywest pilots that can fill in on the quality of the company. If possible maybe an in site on upgrade time in the company. Mahalo.

WMU05

Did they change hotels for ground school? I thought they were using candle wood suites.