The Life of a Newly-hired Airline Pilot
by Captain Wayne (Rusty) Baker
Congratulations! After a lifetime of dreaming of it, and many flying hours crammed into months or acquired over a number of years, you have been hired by XXYYZZ World Wide Air Lines!
Your life is about to change, in a big way. You will meet new people. Some good. Some a pain in the butt. You will be traveling. A LOT! You will see places you’ve only heard of or maybe even dreamed of seeing. And more than a few places you’ve NEVER heard of, and still more that you will WISH you never heard of. But that’s what makes it all the more interesting. It’s hard to explain, but even the bad trips have a way of adding to the thrill and excitement of this, the most interesting of all careers.
You are here now, you embarked upon this path because you are one of the small percentage of people who will never be content to live an ordinary life. Perhaps in previous lives – if you believe in that sort of thing – you may have been a pirate, a riverboat captain, maybe a train robber or a bounty hunter with a big iron on your hip in the old west. Now, today, you begin your life as an airline pilot.
Much you will learn, to add to your already substantial bank of knowledge and skill. You will begin with a full bag of luck and an empty bag of experience. Your challenge, young aviator, is to fill your bag of experience before you empty your bag of luck. And it all begins with Basic Indoctrination.
Basic Indoctrination:
The first weeks of your employment with your new airline will be busy. You will be in a class that generally runs anywhere from ten to twenty new hires, but could be more or less, depending upon your company’s needs. You will meet other new hires with a wide variety of backgrounds. Some may have been military pilots. Others came up through the corporate flying path. Still others may have been toiling away at the regional airlines. It’s good to make friends and compare experiences, but here is a helpful hint that will be quite valuable to you throughout all your training classes for the rest of your career:
NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU DID OR HOW YOU DID IT AT YOUR LAST JOB, OR ON ANOTHER TYPE AIRPLANE!!!
You will not impress or endear yourself to your instructor by disrupting the class with your useless bullshit stories. They don’t like it. Your classmates don’t like it (even though they may do the same thing because it’s only interesting to them if THEY are the ones telling the stories) and it could get you fired if you persist. Put another way, how much useful information that may be on the test are you willing to not cover in detail so you can tell your stories that add no value? So, resist the urge. You can impress your buddies after hours if you choose to drink beer and shoot the shit rather than study.
During Basic Indoctrination you will be assigned your seniority number.
Seniority is Everything
and is based on your date of hire, which will be the same as everyone else in your class. Typically, the oldest new hire will be most senior, and the youngest will be the most junior for your class. You will all be senior to the next new-hire class.
Seniority will determine your bid position for virtually everything beginning Day One and lasting for your entire time with the company.
Normally, sometime during your Basic Indoc, one or more of the union representatives will make arrangements to meet with your class. They will provide you with information that you will need to be familiar with regarding contract work rules, etc. This will of course be presented from a different perspective than what the company tells you. Every airline has its own unique relationship with its unions, so my advice to you is to listen to both sides and think for yourself. Keep in mind that you as a new hire on probation will be walking a tight rope. You want to get along with your fellow pilots. You don’t want to be abused by crew schedulers who are willing to ask more of you than is contractually allowed. And at the same time, the company is your employer, the source of your income, and you don’t want to go around with a target on your back because you come out as a union radical from the beginning. Most companies can fire you at will during your probation. Be careful what you say, and who you say it to. Snitches are everywhere, and they often pose as friends. Common sense should get you through probation just fine.
You will bid on:
The type of equipment you fly – Depending on the company’s needs, some new-hire classes will be offered the option to choose which airplane they wish to fly.
Domicile – Again depending upon company needs, more than one domicile may be available. This may also coincide with aircraft type. One aircraft may be based in one domicile, and another aircraft at a different domicile. Later on, other opportunities to transfer domicile and/or equipment may become available.
Schedules – Typically bid every month. The trips you fly, the days you work, and whether you are on reserve (on-call, you never know where you are going or when, or who you will be paired with) or holding a line (scheduled flights, typically paired up with the same flight crew). If your bid position for your equipment, seat, and domicile is number 45, you will submit 45 choices, in your order of preference. Whatever remains after the first 44 pilots are awarded their schedules will be awarded to you in accordance with your order of preference.
Vacations – Typically bid annually. As with monthly schedules, if your bid position for your equipment, seat, and domicile is number 45, you will submit 45 choices, in your order of preference. Whatever remains after the first 44 pilots are awarded their schedules will be awarded to you in accordance with your order of preference. In the event that you upgrade or change equipment during the following year prior to having used your vacation, you will most likely be assigned vacation time from what remaining time is available.
Every airline does it slightly different, in accordance with contractual agreement, but it basically follows the above format.
One other important thing about seniority is that the last hired will be the first to be furloughed. Hopefully that will not happen to you, but it is a fact of life in the airline industry.
Reserve – Let’s be honest. Reserve sucks. You know your days off, but that’s it. You don’t know where you are going, who you are flying with, or when you will get back.
Holding a line – Most of the time, it is good to be a line holder. You know when and where you are going, and who you are paired with. The downside is, it can be a very long month if you are paired with someone who is hard to get along with. Your only options are to grin and bear it or trade the trips. Chances are that if you are paired with a captain who is impossible to get along with, the word is probably already out, and it will be hard if not impossible to find someone willing to suffer the pain for you.
You will be fitted for uniforms at some point during the first week of class.
You will learn the FAA approved company operations specifications, which will cover all the things the airline is authorized to do. Among other things, takeoff minimums, alternate minimums, type of equipment you're going to operate, where you're going to operate, the types of navigation equipment permitted and flight planning, dispatch, flight following requirements. A written test covering subjects covered must be passed at the completion of the course.
Aircraft Systems ground school – Each airline will provide detailed training which cover all systems and limitations of the aircraft to be flown. At completion of training, pilots will be required to pass written and oral examinations.
Flight Standards – All your training is important. The company’s specific procedures and callouts must be committed to memory. Nobody cares that you flew the same type of airplane at a previous company, and the surest way to wash out of simulator training is to try to impress your new company that you know a better way of doing things. They do not care how you did it at the other airline. The key to a successful operation at this level is standardization. When I do this, you do that. At this altitude, you say this and I do that. It is imperative that crewmembers are all reading the same sheet of music. It makes for a smoother operation, plus if one of you misses a callout, it should alert your fellow crewmember that something is not right. Your new company is signing your paychecks now. Do it their way. Every time. All the time. Cooperate and graduate.
Just a reminder:
NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU DID OR HOW YOU DID IT AT YOUR LAST JOB, OR HOW YOU DID IT ON ANOTHER TYPE AIRPLANE!!!
It is worth adding that, even though you may not immediately see the value in rigid standardization – I didn’t, in the beginning – it will work for you when it matters most. Imagine you are at the end of a long duty cycle, in the shit, shooting an approach to minimums. You are both exhausted. Knowing the callouts and exactly what each of you are supposed to say and do at every moment will keep you functioning. Plus, if your fellow pilot nods off, you will be alerted to it when he or she fails to respond appropriately. And if that’s not enough, it makes the check rides go a lot better if you do it the same way every time rather than doing it a different way every time depending upon the captain you are paired up with. It is literally professional efficiency as opposed to amateur chaos.
Simulator training – This is where the rubber meets the road. The company will provide a certain number of training sessions. If you need more, some companies will commit to training to proficiency. Others will not. At the end of your training, you will fly a proficiency check (check ride). If you know your airplane, and you know the procedures and callouts COLD, you will do fine. Blow it off and you will soon be forgotten. Playing catchup is pure hell.
Just a reminder:
NOBODY CARES WHAT YOU DID OR HOW YOU DID IT AT YOUR LAST JOB, OR HOW YOU DID IT ON ANOTHER TYPE AIRPLANE!!!
I hope by now you have gotten that message. Trying to tell flight standards you know a better way will get you fired.
Initial Operating Experience (IOE), also known as Operating Experience (OE) – Following successful completion of simulator training and proficiency check, you will fly a few trips with a line check airman. In a real airplane! This will be on-the-job training. Make no mistake, you are being evaluated and will be debriefed after each flight. Following the successful completion of this phase, you will be endorsed by the check airman and you are legal to go fly the line.
Flying the line – You will most likely start out on reserve and will be assigned flights to cover trips as the company requirements dictate. Someone calls in sick, someone is on vacation, or any one of a seemingly endless list of reasons occurs, you get the call.
You will learn the company routes, the hotels, the best places to eat and the things to do at layover cities. You will over time get acquainted with several of your fellow crewmembers. Although you should always conduct yourself as a professional, it is also important to remember that you are typically on probation for the first year. Screw up by behaving badly at work, at the hotel, or in public and you can kiss your airline career goodbye. It’s also not a good idea to harass flight attendants, or to show an interest in a flight attendant or a waitress at the layover hotel if she happens to be the object of your captain’s desire. Read the room.
Flying is a great career! – Not perfect – you will miss birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, family gatherings, and many other things that ordinary people take for granted. But as I said, we choose to fly because we refuse to settle for an ordinary life.
I started as a line boy, fueling and cleaning airplanes at a small country airport. Over time, I got my ratings, flew air taxi trips, did some flight instructing and low-level pipeline patrol. I went on to fly corporate for a while, then on to a regional airline before eventually settling in with a freight hauler for the last 21 years of my career. I flew all over the USA and Canada, the Caribbean, Asia, Europe, and Africa. It was a great life for myself and my family, and it paid for a lot of off-duty adventures. I am glad for each of you who will be blessed with this wonderful way of life. Be safe. Be professional. Enjoy it to the fullest and be grateful!
therustyhangar.com/where-to-train
therustyhangar.com/how-to-become-a-pilot
therustyhangar.com/the-life-of-an-airline-pilot