After all your hard work you've finally been hired by the airlines as a first
officer but now what how do you prepare for your airline pilot training what is
day one going to be like I'm going to explain all of that coming up
Hey 74 crew welcome back if you don't know me my name is Kelsey I'm a
747 pilot my channel 74 gear is all about aviation so whether you're a pilot
or an aviation enthusiast consider subscribing in this video I'm gonna go
over everything that you need to know in order to prepare for your new job as a
first officer at the airlines how to prepare for pilot training and
what to expect I know when I got my first job at the airlines I was super
excited I know it takes a lot of work and he did a lot of preparation to get
there so I want to tell you congratulations congratulations so first
let's talk about your training timeline as a first officer and what to expect
your first week is gonna be indoc and that is when Human Resources is going to
come in and have you fill out a bunch of paperwork you're gonna have to fill out
a bunch of forms about how do you want your pay where do you want your pay sent
all those things are gonna get done during that first week of indoc
you're also gonna do things like uniform fittings you're possibly gonna do
another drug test these are some drugs and if you're doing international flying
you're gonna be getting shots and if you don't mind getting shots it can get a
little bit entertaining because someone in your group is gonna hate getting
shots at my class when we went in we win in pairs of two and the guy sitting next
to me hated getting shots but we went in together I didn't realize he was really
nervous until we got into the room and he said yeah I don't really like getting
shots well this individual is going to remain
nameless because we were still really good friends but it looks something like
this and then after that he passed out but we're still good friends and he
still jokes about it to this day so it's all in good fun
now all that stuff is gonna take place during your first week it's gonna be a
lot of stuff that's going to be happening and it's gonna be a little bit
confusing and it's not gonna have anything to do with what you're there to
do which is learn how to fly a plane but that's what your first week is gonna
look like net you're going to get into your systems of your aircraft and that's
going to be taught by an instructor and they're gonna break down each of the
different systems on your aircraft and every night you're gonna have to go home
and study and they're going to be reviewing piece by piece each of the
different systems after you complete the systems training you will generally have
an oral exam and that's where they're going to ask you all the different
systems and a lot of the different aspects of your job so
during that time while you're going through the ground school and doing all
the system training you're also going to be needing to learn in the rules or
regulations that the company abides by that is all going to come up in your
oral exam so it's important that you study everything after you complete that
and pass you'll do your Sims your simulator training and that's gonna be
anywhere from four to ten simulator sessions it depends on your airline but
after the simulator sessions you're going to do your final check ride so it
gets usually broken up into two parts but that final check ride is going to be
completed and then you'll do a line oriented flight training or some type of
additional training afterwards that will complete everything it's going to take
you about two to three months to finish training depending on your airline and
by the time you're done with all the training and all the simulators and all
the stress that's involved in that training event you're just gonna be
saying I just want to get out there and fly hey girl you ready to bend gravity
over and have our way with it now when you get out there and start flying
you're gonna be flying with someone known as a check airman it's a captain
that specially qualified to help get you oriented to flying he or she is gonna be
there to help get you oriented to actually flying in the real world in
the simulator it is one way and in the real world it is usually a little bit
different and that check airman is gonna get you up to speed so you're ready to
go out and be a regular line pilot now every stage gets significantly easier if
you prepare ahead of time and it's something if you've watched some of my
videos I'm always talking about preparing and it's very true in this
scenario because airline pilot training when you become a new first officer they
say it's like drinking from a firehose and it's true because you're getting all
new information on a new plane all the new rules and everything that goes with
it and it can be like drinking from a firehose so it's important to prepare as
much as possible before you get in there now for my first airline job I knew what
aircraft that was gonna be flying so before I even showed up for training I
went and bought a book that explained overall a general explanation of the
systems of the aircraft now I didn't understand all of it and there was a lot
of questions that I had but it gave me a basic idea of what was going on with the
systems of the plane and that made it so when I showed up in training and the
instructors were talking I had an idea of yeah I'd seen that but
and I had a question about that and it wasn't my first time hearing or learning
about something so that will give you an advantage because you already heard it
once before so now you've heard it a second or maybe a third time and that
will make it easier for you to grasp the concept of what you're trying to learn
next it's going to be memory items in some airlines you're going to have
memory items and they may give them tea before you show up or you can ask for
them but getting those memory items or limitations at the aircraft like I
talked about in that checkride video you're able to make flashcards and
prepare and you can start doing that several weeks before you even show up
for training it's gonna make training a lot easier like I said it's going to get
very intense once you show up for training so if you had time to learn all
the limitations and learn all the memory items and practice those in your head
and knowing each step of what's coming up that's one less thing that you really
have to focus on I'm not a smart person bit of an understatement govna' so I
showed up and I had all my limitations and all my memory items I had read the
systems book of the aircraft twice because I wanted to make sure that I
didn't have any problems in training and I went through training on my very first
plane and it was no problem at all my simulator partner had already flown the
plane and he always laughed about how much I had been studying but that's just
how I am I wanted to be over-prepared because I didn't want to have any issues
when I went to training you don't want to have problems in the airlines because
at this point now you're a professional pilot okay you failed your private or
you failed your instrument training you're still new you were in training
you didn't really know what to expect at this point you have enough flight time
and enough flight experience you know what to expect so it's important that
you show it prepared and treating this like a job because it is your job to
know these things so that's going to save you a lot of time and a lot of
heartache if you have your memory items limitations and a basic general
understanding of the systems before you even walk into class and it's gonna make
training a lot easier now I'm gonna give you a quick story of when I was at the
regionals we had several pilots wash out one of them that comes to mind was a guy
who didn't want to study and didn't spend a lot of time in doing anything so
as he was going through training I saw him goofing off or not studying or
messing around and he took a trip he did a bunch of other stuff besides studying
when it came time for the oral portion of the exam he said hey Kelsey do you
mind coming over here and quizzing me so I said yeah sure I'll go do that so we
went met up and I started ask him a bunch of different
question and he knew maybe 10 or 20 percent of the questions I was asking
him nothing nothing and I think at that point he started to realize how far
behind he was and he started getting really nervous he had about 48 or 72
hours to his oral exam now he is an example of somebody that did not prepare
and didn't take it seriously and he ended up washing out of that program and
never finished training so it's important that you take that time to not
be like that individual unprepared and unwilling to even put in the time during
training and not passing training it's important when you show up that you're
as prepared as you can be and that's gonna make training a lot
easier we were given a couple weeks off in the middle of training because the
simulators were backlogged I ended up having time to go to Barcelona and hang
out with my friend out there for a week and I still passed training and it was
really no big deal but other guys just didn't have the time or didn't have the
discipline to put in the effort and they ended up washing out and there was quite
a few of the pilots that went through training with me that washed out so it's
important to put in that work early while you have time before you show up
because it gets overwhelming for a lot of pilots and they can't take all that
information in time all right crew that's everything that I have as far as
what you need to do in order prepare to go to Airlines as a first officer in the
comments section below let me know what about going to the airlines and starting
your job makes you the most nervous I look forward to hearing from you until
then keep the blue side up