Quote:
Originally Posted by Velocipede  One thing to remember about being a Captain. When you look to the left for help/advice all you see is your own reflection. |
Velo, I like that one.
Here's how day one boiled down.
Show up right at 8 AM, and already we're one down. Turns out one of the people in our class had a 709 ride the day before. Not sure if they passed or failed, but regardless they weren't in our class. So, we were left with 7 upgrading FOs, the ACP from MSP and an FAA guy going through the program to evaluate it.
We did an overview of what to expect, which consisted of "If you haven't got the FOM, CFM and a good handle on systems at this point.....you're gonna be playing catch up." Syllabus is more or less loose and fast. It's more of a free flowing class to allow people to ask a LOT of questions and put us in scenario based situations. We did get the syllabus for our CPTs and sim training, and it all looks pretty straight forward.
After that we went around the room sharing negative CA experiences followed by positive CA experiences. From that exercise we got a lot of characteristics of a good CA along with things not to do. Talked about how to act like a CA, ranging from setting the tone for your crew from the start to constructively coaching new FOs. One thing that was mentioned is so many people say "I fly by the book," but we can never seem to find that book they're talking about.
Went over some of the forms that we'll run across like AMLs, flight safety reports, ASAP forms, jumpseat forms, etc, etc. Talked about what each one was and deadlines on some, like the FSR. Then we broke for about an hour lunch.
When we came back the person in charge of assisting with disabled passengers and our HAZMAT policy talked to us for about an hour. This was a resources I didn't even knew existed. Apparently, if there's a problem with a disabled passenger and we can't get it solved locally, she wants us to call her to get it rectified. I think over the day I added about 4 people to my Contacts list in my Treo. There's a LOT of resources at your fingertips as a CA that you never knew about as an FO. Talked a lot about HAZMAT and how we don't carry any on Pinnacle flights, with of course the few exceptions listed in our FOM. Then we took the required HAZMAT test, and that pretty much wrapped up the day.
I've got homework for tonight, though. Looks like we'll be getting a performance problem to take home every night to work out. They give you the ATIS, cargo load, passenger load and a flight release. From there, you have to do a manual W&B, figure the speeds and power settings and the trim setting. Pretty much the same thing we had to do in initial but without the hand holding.
Tomorrow's big topic is risk management, and the acting Director of Operations and the chief pilot will be in for that one. Bonus is they're feeding us lunch.
