I passed another pilot and inquired if he was my Captain. Sure enough he was.

He has been on the plane for 5 years as an FO which is equal to how long he’s been at the company. I let him know I’m new to the plane but have been here for 4 years this month. We met the instructor. He was the same instructor I had for FMS training.

At 4:30PM we got down to briefing what would be done. It was the Captains first time in the left seat, my first time in the right seat. We’d do a normal flight. Start at the gate, taxi, RNAV departure, RNAV approach to a missed, come back to a localizer approach and land. Simple.

The instructor was happy we weren’t both new hires as things go faster. When he has two new hire FO’s together (happens sometimes due to lack of Captains) it takes then an hour to an hour and ten minutes to get off the gate! None believe it takes that long, but for many it’s their first time in a simulator. It’s most pilots first time in the “real” plane after having spent two weeks behind a cardboard mockup.

I’d been in the jump seat of this plane a few times commuting so I ad an idea of how things looked and sounded.

It took me a bit to figure out how to get into the seat. Different handles than my last. I took a few moments to get orientated then got down to business. Even with a few questions on my part we got off the gate in 20 minutes. My questions were mostly, “so this is how that works?” and “ah now I get it.

The Captain taxied a bit rough, it was his first time using a tiller. Taxi checklist done I went through my before takeoff flow as the Captain lined the plane onto the runway centerline.

My takeoff. At VR I pulled back on the yoke and immediately noticed more effort is needed than my last plane. Decent  climb out.

Total VFR flight at night. Vectored for the approach I rattled off a briefing. Still getting used to the PFD and FMS. Decent approach. On the missed I didn’t hit the TOGA buttons just right. Caught it on the PFD and pressed them again. Localizer approach was fine. Landing was a thumper.

The site picture on final is VERY different than what I’ve seen the last 4 years.

Captains turn. He got used to flying with his left hand. I got used to using the FMS. Things went fairly well. The instructor helped me out a bit with the FMS. Four hours went by quickly.

Tonight is another simulator session.

Tonight we will have a normal departure, smoke in the cabin, non-precision approaches and as always a few missed approaches. There are no surprises in the sim. Every session is in my training folder.

Overall this plane is much easier to fly than my last. Hand fly anyway, I just need to master the automation.

When I was a CFI I loved teaching. Seeing that spark light off in a student when concepts become clear excites me.

My students were very different.

One pilot had 4000+ hours and used to fly charter. He hasn’t flown a jet in over 2 years and had never flown glass. He did the short course, he starts at Pinnacle Monday morning.

The next pilot had 400ish hours. Never flown glass. He is young but I could tell he really studied as he was right up on everything but made the normal mistakes a pilot new to glass/jets does.

The last pilot had 700ish hours including Beech 1900 time. He knew everything but had problems putting it all together in the FTD (like a Simulator but an FTD has no motion). He did very well after I gave him a few pointers. I have no doubt he will do well.

I would honestly teach the course for free as I love teaching. The pay is great though…icing on the cake. I did forget how much talking is involved. I talked my throat dry!

Busy couple of days coming up. I commute down tomorrow. Start my 4 day. Very easy.

Day one 4PM start , 3 legs (6 hours flying) and done by 11PM (same time zone).

Day 2 starts at 1PM, 2 long legs (6 hours flying) and back at the same hotel by 9PM.

Day 3 starts at 8AM two legs (total 5 hours flying) and in the hotel by 1PM (different time zone).

Day 4 one leg in and I deadhead home for vacation.

I arrive at my home airport at 2:30PM. I am going to rush home, grab my wife, daughter and vacation suitcase and head back to the airport for a 4:30PM flight.

Tonight I am packing my work suitcase AND a separate vacation suitcase.

I’m no Superman. Just an average guy, yet I have never failed a check ride. The reason being is I am somewhat superstitious and eat the exact same meal before every check ride….a McDonalds Sausage, Egg, and Cheese McGriddle. Seriously. I have gone out of my way to secure the sugary, salty, fatty, artery clogging delicacy…especially hard while in Florida for my CFI initial. I have been very lucky as I felt I almost failed my private single and CFI initial. I was told I used “all limits of the PTS”…..but passed. Nice?

When applying for my airline there was a box to check if I had ever failed a check ride (I don’t remember the exact verbage). I know friends that have been hired with one or two failed check rides.

There is one examiner at my old flight school who was known to fail guys for truly trivial and minor reasons. Another who is old school and would fail an applicant if he made a minor mistake, but only once. This examiner wouldn’t charge for a retake and typically wouldn’t fail for minor mistakes again. Of course with the two different examiners the latter started charging for retakes and being a little more lenient of mistakes. For the record I have never had an FAA examiner, only designated examiners, so I paid for all of my check rides.

I am on a 4 day weekend and commuted down to KGKY yesterday , which is my old flight school. It was neat to be around a general aviation airport. Nice day, lots of planes moving about. Funny how a Lear 25 doesn’t sound annoying and loud when I’m at an airport.

The ATP location there isn’t nearly as busy as it was back when I was there. Less than 1/2 the number of CFI’s around. I thought for sure I wouldn’t know anyone. I was wrong.

A CFI was there that I knew when he was still a student. Nice guy. Great guy. I asked the obvious, “You’re still here?” question. He has over 2200 hours. An ATP. Tons of multi…..and 3 check ride bust. He had applied to my airline but didn’t get hired. He has over 500 hours MORE flight time than me! He is hoping to find a corporate gig. Really sucks as he has every right to be hired. I can only assume it was the check ride bust.

While there another CFI recognized me from….here…..this blog. A year or so ago this website had a different name and I was more frank about my gig and life. Small world.

I took a walk around the facilities. Not much had changed. I did find a few “paper tigers” for Seminole training. Back when I was there I practiced flows in a chair and pretended to be in a cockpit. Now students can sit in chairs and practice flows and checklist behind a photo mock up.

Much nicer. The same thing I did when I got hired by my airline. I spent hours in a small room with a mockup of my cockpit going through flows.

I miss teaching. I love teaching. Hopefully the industry picks back up and I can teach the RJ course again.

I’ve discussed in the past that I did all my flight training at AllATPs. I did the Self Paced Program for both the Private and the Airline Career Pilot Program. I started with 0 hours on May 5, 2006 and finished late March 2007 with Commercial Multiengine Instrument (also Commercial Single) and my CFI tickets (Instrument, Single and Multi). After that I sat in the right seat as a CFI for 300 hours or so before heading to my airline.

Before I made that jump though I did take the ATP RJ course.

This is one of the ATP Frasca RJ FTD’s in Jacksonville.

Now before I go further I can already hear the screams, “No one needs an RJ course!”, “The Airline will train you!”. “Why waste that much money!?!?!?”. All valid.

The full price is $4,995. At the time ATP offered the course for free if you instructed for so many hours for them. My total cost was an airline ticket to Florida, a rental car and a hotel room for a week. I used my airline miles for the ticket and slept on the couch of a buddy of mine who lived there. So really I paid for a rental car for a week. But would it have been worth it if I had to pay the full $4,995?

Took this one during my RJ course while in Jacksonville.

My interest in flyingstarted when I first saw Microsoft Flight Simulator back in 1991. I “flew” literally thousands of hours throughout the years. There are some really nice models out there that have very accurate systems. The ERJ145 from Wilco Publications is amazingly accurate with several systems correctly represented. The CRJ they offer is nice, but not as perfect. Anyway, I was used to glass cockpits and basic concepts before I even started at ATP. I really thought I would get little benefit for the RJ Course. I was wrong. I learned quite a bit.

The concepts of flows (going through a series of motions and then using a checklist to make sure I did everything), profiles (a set way of flying the aircraft), dealing with emergencies and true CRM (Crew Resource Management) were heavily emphasized during the week long course. I was a little concerned that I would learn everything on a CRJ (that’s the type of FTD the use) and then get hired flying an ERJ and be confused. Non issue as the course teaches a broad overview of jet concepts.

When I got hired by my airline I was much more comfortable in ground school and the sim. My sim instructor was very skeptical of me passing training as I only had 560 hours total time. He pushed me hard during training. I still remember flying a DME arc single engine to an ILS, in Mexico, in a valley surrounded by mountains, at night, in IMC, no autopilot, no flight director. It started normal and things just went down hill. It wasn’t pretty, but I did it. After that session he was a little less skeptical, and I thought I was ready.

In my initial new hire class at my airline there were pilots with as few as 500 hours to former military guys with 5000+ hours. Sitting next to me during initial ground school as a CFI who had a little more than 2400 hours. He was teaching at a school in Arizona as well as flying a King Air 200 on the side. Lots of experience, but all with steam gauges. Turns out he washed out in the sim. He just couldn’t keep up with the glass. All the time and effort he spent over the months preparing for the interview, studying for ground school and preparing for a nice career was wasted. I am pretty sure he had a “career day”, where the airline takes you in and offers you a chance to leave without having  mark on your FAA record. This way he can go on to another airline without having a negative mark against him. Even if he got hired by a new airline the next week, he was still at least 2 months behind money wise. Would it have been worth $5K to him to take the RJ Course?

For full disclosure, I did get hired by ATP to teach the RJ course for a few months back in 2008, right before the hiring spree at the regionals stopped. I enjoyed it. My background is teaching. I double majored in college in Journalism (with a photojournalism interest) and Sociology. I planned on being a high school teacher for Newspaper and Yearbook. Although I never taught a day in High School I did teach computer repair classes at a local community college. A few of the students I taught in the RJ course I still talk to today.

Five thousand dollars is a lot of money. It’s more than I earn in a month…almost two months. It’s 4 months of mortgage payments. A year of car payments. Another 20 hours or so of twin time. I won’t say the RJ course is right for everyone. Anyone who’s flown glass (G1000 or Avidyne systems are awesome), had lots of formal training with checklist and CRM, and has a basic understanding of jet operations will likely be fine. For everyone else, I would at least give it a good thought as it could (and I mean could) really help ease the transition from flying a prop to a jet.

This morning I arrived at 9AM to an overfull room…not enough seats. After an hour we were released. I was paid a whole $46 for the two days of service. Of course I spent $40 on parking. The county has free parking….but it’s in an isolated and unsecured lot. No thanks.

I did feel a little guilty not going to work. I could have made my 2PM standby. Eh.

Tomorrow I have reserve at home from 4AM until 7PM.

Next month I have a week of vacation. Since most of my reserve stints are 6 days long my 7 days of vacation covers 6 reserve days. One thing I don’t like about my airline is how vacation is assigned. I have to bid on vacation a week at a time. Most line holders work 4 on/3 off. Thus they burn 7 vacation days when they only had to burn 4. It can get really complicated. As is I only have  13 work days next month. I am going to try to “bundle” them to have more time off together. Eh.

I am sending out the videos tomorrow. I had a few people express interest.  The fair way is first come first serve. The first person I believe is still working on his private. The second is getting ready to take his private.

I decided to ship the first person will get all the videos dealing with getting the private pilot license and basic flying. The second person is getting IFR videos, Commercial videos and CFI videos. I am also throwing in some Jeppessen charts in the box as they can be hard to come by unless you know someone.

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My wife and I are taking another trip this weekend. I have Friday and Saturday off so we looked all around for open flights…and then tried to find a city we wanted to visit. Should be fun.

Here is a photo of one of Gulfstreams Beech 1900s in Orlando. I took this photo back in January when my wife and visited Disney for a week.

The Beech 1900 is a great plane. One of my students is flying one for an airline out of Denver.

USA Today:
Airline that trained Buffalo crash pilot fined 1.3 million
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing…lo-crash_N.htm

Airline fined 1.3 million for faking pilot records
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/…-21-fine_N.htm

The Miami Herald
FAA fines Fla. Airline for violations
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/flor…y/1059784.html

By ANDY PASZTOR and SUSAN CAREY

An airline that has trained many of the nation’s commuter pilots — including the captain of the Continental Connection flight that crashed near Buffalo, N.Y., in February — faces a possible $1.3 million government penalty for alleged crew scheduling and maintenance violations.

The Federal Aviation Administration accuses Gulfstream International Airlines Inc. of faulty record keeping and substandard aircraft maintenance. Congressional investigators, who conducted their own probe into the airline, allege the company falsified flight time records and forced crews to fly more hours than federal rules permit.

The carrier, and its affiliate, Gulfstream Training Academy, provided training and initial airline experience to Marvin Renslow, the captain of Continental Connection Flight 3407. Fifty people died in the Feb. 12 crash of the plane. The FAA has notified Gulfstream that it could face the penalty, giving Gulfstream 30 days to respond to the allegations, according to a filing Gulfstream made with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month. After that period, the FAA will decide whether to assess the penalty.

Robert Brown, chief financial officer of Gulfstream International Group Inc., the parent company of both the airline and the training academy, said Thursday the company intends to submit evidence refuting the alleged FAA infractions. He said the company would offer additional information to demonstrate that no violations occurred. Mr. Brown declined further comment and referred questions to the company’s chief executive, David Hackett, who didn’t return calls.

Capt. Renslow had flunked a number of proficiency checks as a private pilot and while training at Gulfstream, and he failed at least one other flight test while he was at Colgan Air Inc., the airline that operated Flight 3407, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

Investigators say all of the plane’s systems appeared to have been functioning well and that the crash was the result of pilot error. They are examining whether Capt. Renslow was adequately trained on emergency equipment installed to protect against an aerodynamic stall on the Bombardier Q400 turboprop plane, according to testimony.

Pilots in the two previous fatal U.S. commuter crashes — both caused by pilot error — also spent time at either Gulfstream International Airlines or Gulfstream’s training operations, according to reports by the NTSB.

The FAA said Gulfstream Academy relinquished its certificate as an FAA-approved flight training school on May 12, the day the NTSB opened a public hearing on the Buffalo crash. Not having the certificate limits the type of training the academy can offer.

The proposed possible FAA penalty and other troubles confronting Gulfstream, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., reflect broader concerns about the safety of commuter airlines, which account for 51% of all commercial U.S. flights. Gulfstream International’s shares Thursday were up 2.1% to close at $2.90 on the American Stock Exchange. The shares are up 93% for the year to date.

Major carriers increasingly rely on commuter airlines to ferry passengers to airline hubs from smaller cities. Regulators and federal safety experts are examining whether pilots at some of these commuter carriers receive sufficient training. They are scrutinizing whether independent training institutes such as Gulfstream Academy produce pilots with sufficient skill and experience to fly the growing number of turboprops and jets at these smaller airlines.

Some of the questions about Gulfstream go to the heart of another safety concern: pilot fatigue. Gulfstream, which primarily serves Florida and the Bahamas, and some routes through Cleveland, flies routes for Continental Airlines Inc., UAL Corp.’s United Airlines, and Delta Air Lines Inc.’s Northwest Airlines unit.

According to congressional investigators, the FAA’s probe of Gulfstream Airlines was touched off last summer by pilots who claimed they had been fired or threatened after they raised safety concerns about flight schedules that exceeded the maximum number of hours allowed by federal regulations.

Some pilots claimed they had been punished for refusing to fly substandard aircraft, including planes allegedly dispatched in stormy weather with inoperative systems such as weather radar, according to congressional investigators. The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, according to one of these investigators, began looking into the allegations after some of the pilots said their previous efforts to raise the issue with the FAA’s office responsible for investigating so-called whistleblower complaints had stalled.

House investigators interviewed witnesses, who claim that Gulfstream engaged in systematic falsification of records to cover up flight schedules that exceeded maximum hours allowed under federal rules.

One retired Gulfstream official, according to a House investigator, alleged that when pilots were asked to fly trips which they believed would put them in violation of federal rules, airline schedulers routinely used a second set of flight-schedule books to hide the excess flight hours. The House committee raised the issue with the FAA last summer in response to pilots’ concerns that their allegations had not been properly vetted by the FAA, according to congressional investigators.

In response to questions from The Wall Street Journal on Thursday, the FAA said the alleged crew overscheduling stemmed from a failure to accurately transfer data from manually generated aircraft logbook records to an electronic record-keeping system. “The discrepancies resulted in scheduling crew members in excess of daily and weekly flight-time limitations,” according to an FAA release. An agency spokeswoman said, “We didn’t find any evidence of deliberate action” to falsify records.

A June 2008 inspection, according to the FAA, revealed that “unapproved automotive air-conditioner compressors” were installed on certain aircraft between September 2006 and May 2008. The airline grounded the affected aircraft and replaced the suspect compressors with approved aviation parts.

In October 2004, a Pinnacle Airlines regional jet without passengers crashed outside of Jefferson City, Mo., after the two pilots flew too high, induced an aerodynamic stall and both engines flamed out. Both aviators were killed. The captain on that flight was a captain at Gulfstream Airlines from 2000 to 2002, and the first officer attended Gulfstream Academy in 2002, then flew as a first officer for Gulfstream Airlines, according to the NTSB.

In August 2006, 49 people died when a Comair regional jet took off from Lexington, Ky., on the wrong runway which was half the length of the one it was supposed to use. The first officer was the sole survivor. He joined Gulfstream Airlines in 1997 as a captain, then was a simulator instructor before joining Comair, a unit of Delta Air Lines, as a co-pilot.

Write to Andy Pasztor at andy.pasztor@wsj.com and Susan Carey at susan.carey@wsj.com

Family of pilot who died in midair crash sues flight school

Edson Jefferson, Andrew Marc Rossingnol and Bryan Sax died when their planes collided in December near Everglades Holiday Park.

JOHN VANBEEKUM / MIAMI HERALD FILE

• Photo

BY LAURA FIGUEROA

lfigueroa@MiamiHerald.com

The family of a pilot killed in a midair collision between two flight school planes over the Everglades in December has filed a lawsuit against one of the schools.

Rick Ellsley, an attorney for the family of Edson Jefferson, 30, an aspiring commercial pilot who was killed in the crash, said the family is seeking an unspecified amount of monetary compensation from Airline Transport Professionals — the Fort Lauderdale-based pilot school that owned the Piper aircraft flown by instructor Andrew Marc Rossingnol and student Bryan Sax, who also died in the crash. On the afternoon of Dec. 6, the two planes slammed into each other three miles southwest of Everglades Holiday Park, at Griffin Road and U.S. 27, in airspace where flight instructors routinely take students to practice.

According to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board, the Piper plane was traveling 126 knots while the smaller Cessna was at at speed of 86 knots.

First you are in a good position getting flight training as well as a degree. Awesome. Some people jump from high school to an airline, skipping college all together. There is more to college than just getting a degree.  To prepare for a regional the best thing is to fly as many hours as you can. I learned a ton teaching as a CFI….more so than I did as a student. Teaching in the Piper Seminole taught me a lot. I have about 450 hours in the Seminole and kind of miss it. It’s a great plane for training and teaching. The regional jet course that ATP offers is great for those that have no experience with formal checklist or glass cockpits. The training isn’t cheap, but they have a 99% pass rate for those that continue on to a regional. I learned a few things in the course. I did teach the course a few times last summer and enjoyed every minute of it. Taking a regional jet course will not hurt you in anyway. I was concerned about learning flows and being trained in a CRJ….but being hired to fly an ERJ. The course ATP offers is a very general course. There isn’t a lot of focus given on just the CRJ, rather its the big picture. Between now and then you can grab a copy of Microsoft Flight Sim. I prefer the 2004 version. I would then grab a really good CRJ or ERJ model and get used to the glass cockpits and how the autopilots work. Getting used to glass and flight directors is a huge hurdle for most pilots regardless of how much time they have. If you go to www.feelthere.com they have really acturate models of the ERJ. The ERJ model is nearly 100% accurate. Don’t waste money on a type rating. Save that money for Ramen noodles. Besides you might get a type in a CRJ but hired into a ERJ or vice versa.

Good luck and keep in touch,

Geek

The biggest obstacle between a normal person and a cockpit isn’t normally a door….it’s money.

Flight training is expensive. The training is so expensive that many would be pilots will never get a chance to experience the joy that flying brings. When I started looking at flight training the cost for the program I completed was a total of $38,000. Of course back then I was just out of college and was trying to get my first real job.

Years later when I finally did start flight training….the price climbed to a total of $53,000. Yowzers!

The training I completed was a package deal with ATP. Learning to fly can be done for much less money than ATP charges. I carry the same piece of plastic from the FAA that the guy who learned to fly from a mom and pop school in Nebraska does. I chose ATP because I wanted professional training and access to a large fleet of planes. I read too many stories in forums about pilots who had training delayed because of a broken plane. There were even stories where a pilot trained and was ready for a check ride in a Cessna 172. Come check ride day the flight school sold the 172 and now the pilot has to spend more money learning to fly a Piper Warrior or wait around until another Cessna 172 comes along.

I took the time to price out how much it would cost if I pieced together my training. I looked at getting my private and instrument from one school, the multi-engine rating from another and build time to get my commercial from the first school. Sometime after that I would get my CFI ratings. I would have saved at least $8000. The difference? Well I would only have 15 hours of multi-engine time going that route.  My training might have been inconsistent and it might have taken longer. I wasn’t in a hurry, but I did have a rough plan on being done before I turned 30. I beat my goal by less than a week!

In order to pay the $53,000 my wife and I took out a second mortgage. We then sold both of our cars and took the money to Vegas. We went to the Tropicana and placed all the money on black (after all Wesley Snipes said always bet on black right?). Somehow we won! Nice!

Well okay…so we didn’t do any of that. We did what most people wanting flight training do and took out a loan. Before we did this we worked the numbers to make sure we could afford it. I used a calculator over at Airline Pilot Central (click here for a link) to estimate how much I would earn my first year. Airline Pilot Central has pay rates for most of the airlines in the United States and a few in Canada. We used very conservative math and figured we could do it without having to eat ramen noodles. I would spend most of my pay to pay back the loan. Thankfully my wife is able to support me. I married a woman beyond my league that for some reason agreed to support a broke pilot. It must be love. The 15-year loan would be paid off in a little more than 8 years. Not great…but it could be worse.

The loans used for flight training at Part 61 schools are private loans. If you get training done at a Part 141 school you can get a federal student loan. The differences are huge. Private loans tend to have high interest rates and are more difficult to get approved for. Federal loans have lower interest rates, easier to get approval for and the interest that is paid is likely tax deductable.

When I was looking for training I wanted a program that was standarized, affordable and flexible. When looking at pilot training there are two main types, Part 61 and Part 141.

Part 61 training is the most common. Part 61 training is more relaxed training and allows students to take their time on each topic and skill. The amount of flight hours for needed for each rating is higher than 141 due to the more relaxed curriculum.

Part 141 training is closely watched by the FAA. Part 141 is very rigid in the curriculum. Students go through stages and flight checks. Because the program is closely watched by the FAA the flight hours needed for each rating are lower. One big advantage of Part 141 training is that Federal Student Loans can be used to pay for the training. Interest rates for Federal Student loans are normally much lower than private loans (used for Part 61).

Regardless of which training program you choose, both produce the same ratings printed on the same piece of plastic.

I looked at both programs and felt Part 61 was a fit for me. At the time I was working 40 hours a week in a cubicle job. I wanted the flexability to study at my own pace, and to choose when I took my checkrides. With Part 141 checkride events are scheduled throughout the program and can not be changed. After completing X number of flight hours a checkride event must be accomplished. If the student fails they will have to go back through a portion of the training and try again. With Part 61, if the student or instructor feel they need more time before a checkride….no problem.

Since I settled on Part 61 I had to find a place for training. My situation at the time required me to keep working while training. I looked at several flight schools in my area.  Most of them were Part 141 only. The Part 61 schools were affordable, but the facilities and planes seemed worn. I didn’t care about training in a brand new fancy plane….but I wanted something clean and well kept. All the schools I looked at simply didn’t compare to one I looked at years ago….ALL ATPS.

ALLATPs is a proven flight school. They have a large fleet of planes that are inspected and maintained very well. They have a set price for training (something that MOST schools I contacted did not have!) and allowed me to train at my own pace. I chose the Self Paced Private Pilot and Self Paced Career Pilot Program.