aileronjam

just recently had a 19 hour SJD layover. so… there ya go.

snackysmores

This company is cheap. They won’t even buy SATCOM / CPDLC for the MAXs, why would they spend millions ETOPSing a new fleet just for Hawaii when the 737 and 777 already fly there? And send all those pilots back to the school house?

the NEOs will fly the 757 BOS/EWR transcons. The XLR will go to Europe and they will only have to ETOPS one fleet and one base of pilots. The Hawaii flying will be easily absorbed by additional MAXs.

I hope I’m wrong but that’s how I see it going down.

snackysmores

nice, I was only looking at the May flying.

KodiakJack

Yes the bus is the new regional, except for that you’ll fly more legs than the regional trips, rarely just 1, 4 more than you’d think, and the layovers are shorter. But, most of the bus pilots love efficiency and don’t care where they go, so as long as you go into it with that knowledge, great! If you prefer longer layovers and do care where you go do the 756 or 737. Bus has the least red eyes and the least international flights so that is a really big perk to a lot of pilots. If you like domestic routes, repetition, predictable schedules and usually quick increase in seniority, the bus is for you. 737 seniority will go up as fast though, but on the 737 you’ll have more trip variety options.

Airhoss

You might be right. They are sending all the initial and transition pilots through ORCA “training” currently. I put it in parentheses because I hear it’s a pretty weak training block.

Hedley

I did the ORCA training on the 737 and to call it weak is an understatement. In all fairness, I was coming off of the 777 and was used to oceanic flying, so the instructor could have been just skimming through the program. Either way, it’s more of a familiarization than actual training. I’ve deliberately avoided the pacific qual as a captain because the trips usually involve a red eye leg (and I don’t want to deal with oceanic flying without CPDLC, WiFi, ACARS, and SATCOM), but it’s not uncommon to go down to the islands with a FO who has no clue how to do the cockpit preps, run a master flight plan, tune HF radios, or make position reports. If we’re going to operate in airspace with different procedures, there should be more training involved and currency requirements.

ninerdriver

They probably weren't skimming through it. Our ORCA training was an LAX-HNL leg run at 5x speed. It wouldn't surprise me if the instructor hadn't actually flown a real ORCA leg themselves.

Fortunately, most captains do a good job of teaching ORCA on the line, regardless of whether it's their jobs to do so.

C11DCA

so it makes sense to equip the entire 737 fleet as ETOPs but not the 321’s? The percentage of ETOPs flights the 737 does is a small percentage of its overall usage. And it won’t be just Hawaii. Carribbean flying too. 200 seats on the Neo’s. The extra seats means bigger potential profits compared to the 737. Will it being doing hub to hub and transcons? Sure. But there many places it can and will go.

the number of XLR’s is planned to be 50, more then the number of 757-200’s we have. Not all of those will be flying in one hub. And getting pilots to/from another hub via DH or W flying is not cheap nor efficient for the company.

TurquoiseLine

Just did it. To say it was a weak was an understatement.

It was designed to use the NEO CPDLC so we just looked at slides in the cockpit.

The instructor also has never flown international.

Hedley

I lost my sim partner right before ORCA training. The actual sim instructor had extensive experience on the 756 and was really good, however the instructor who filled in for seat support had no clue. When we lost the engine just past the CP she didn’t know how to manage the aircraft. She tried to argue my plan and the instructor intervened and told her that she was wrong. In the debrief I told her that if she is going to instruct this stuff, she should learn it first. She admitted that she had never flown in either the Pacific or WATRS airspace and that she needed to go do that to gain the necessary experience to teach students.

Flying in oceanic or even the WATRS airspace is completely different than anything most people have done at the regionals or flying fighters prior to getting here. A quick CBT WOM test and a familiarization sim session is pretty weak training. There’s a reason why we require WB crews to receive training in the aircraft with a LCA, perhaps we should be doing the same thing on the NB fleets. Make it a qual for both seats requiring a checkout with a LCA, however that would cost money so we know where that idea will go.