exams,exams,exams.

[semi-rigid]

:sad: I hope someone on this forum can provide me with some basic information.
I am a pilot for a very large Canadian helicopter company. When I started in the 60s there were no written exams other than for your basic license and IR.
Over the last 20 years starting with the dangerous goods exam the amount of garbage you are tested on has increasd to ridiculous level monopolizing what would otherwise be free time. We now have about a dozen written exams a year and several oral ones. Also check rides, training, Sim sessions at 3am etc. etc.
Much of this stuff is proper and necessary especially where it is safety related or to maintain profiency, but some of the written stuff is pure rubbish
A statement commonly heard is 'I bet airline pilots don't this much hogwash to put up with as we do'
Just out of curiosity can someone enlighten me as to what exams, checkrides,
training, SIM sessions would an average airline captain with a major carrier put up with every year?
A reply from both sides of the pond would be dandy.
Cheers

[parabellum]

Hi Semi-Rigid.
I was with SIA for over ten years on the 747 and other long-haul stuff before that.
We had to complete two licence renewal checks in the simulator each year as well as two recurrent training sessions that followed a given programme. Ideally the recurrent would be the day before the licence renewal check but this rarely happened!
Additionally in each twelve months we had to do a Line Check, this was a witnessed normal line flight, the Checker sat on the jump seat, captain did his P1 check outbound, FO did his PI(S) check inbound.
We also did a one day Safety and Emergency Procedures (SEP), day in the ground school. We had a few lectures and updates on equipment etc. and also had to sit a multi choice exam that covered the subject, not hard but the books had to be read. Every other year we did a swimming pool exercise, in and out of life rafts etc and on the alternate year we did the cabin evacuation exercise from a cabin simulator. Only one written exam throughout the year then.

A lot of what you are required to do today may come down to CYA exercises for the sake of insurance rather than a positive effort to wards improved safety?

[flyblue]

At the Airbus Training Symposium, a lady from the NTSB presented an accident where a pilot (cargo flight) managed to detach the only useable slide from the A/C by pulling both the manual inflation handle (the slide was not inflating quickly enough on his opinion) and the ditching handle.
It is certainly true that there were big flaws in the company's training (the cabin and slide mock up lacked the slide's flap attached to the door sill), but it is also true that details that might be considered "minor" can become "major" in case of accident, and that some aspects of training might help you to get out of the A/C after having landed it!