Originally Posted by
Banana Joe
I am going to be straight with my question: was gender part of the selection criteria?
Jet2 has to be the company that asked me the highest number of questions concerning my gender, sexual orientation and ethnicity. And they are not the only UK carrier I've applied to in my life.
As an aside (kinda), a group of us started as cadets many years ago, straight on to the A320 with an excellent (training-wise) large Airbus operator in Europe. Everyone had their ups and downs with the landings, however only one of us was tough enough to ask to repeat base training as they had lost their confidence with their landings. It was of course the only woman in the group. Youthful me probably found that quite funny and would have sadly gossiped about it
with the rest of the guys, but grown up me realises that myself, or many of the other men would have probably done the same if our machismo hadn't gotten in the way of our development.
We all made it through, but I can't think of any more accutely stressful time of my life - which would probably have been resolved with another six landings at a quiet European airport.
Originally Posted by
Check Airman
If I read that right, the FO had amassed 60 landings over 80 sectors and still couldn’t figure it out? What’s the “standard” line training footprint across the sea?
Here, we do 25 or 15 hours on narrowbodies. Not sure about how the widebody guys do it. Granted, the FO in question had very low time, but the most I’ve ever heard of is someone new (first jet) getting 80ish hours of training. After that, the company usually cuts you off. This pilot got 285 hours.
Unfortunate that it didn’t work out for this person, but I suppose this is the system working as intended. I wish the person the best in future endeavours.
285hrs is indeed a lot, but the 757 was probably used for medium-haul work mostly (eg fewer sectors than city hopping round the US). Jet2 does a lot of sunny island work so there will have certainly been fields with little more than an NDB and a guy that likes to dress up as an air traffic controller.
These guys that enter airlines as 'cadets' over here might join with approx 150hrs. They might not have spoken to European ATC during their whole training period. The learning curve is tricky and steep. I assume that when you train someone for 25hrs, most of them will have at the minimum trained in the US under FAA regs, but more than likely have flown other commercial ops or have 1500hrs of ATC comms under their belt. Of course I'm just highlighting ATC specifically but it must take a little more refinement over here. Without getting into a debate over the merits of one system over another, largely, safety doesn't seem to be compromised by this approach at all. This is a rare incident that isn't alien to many experienced pilots who were never 'cadets'. After all,
Delta managed to smash a 757 into the Azores in equally CAVOK conditions.
The thing that worries me most about this is that through the control wheel; the captain knew exactly what inputs the FO was applying and that they couldn't react well enough to avoid the paperwork. It's trickier on the Airbus but surely on the Boeing, it's inherent?