Command Courses
 

I spent my life in an area where command courses were not a feature, just wanted to ask the question what did they involve and cover. Thanks lads and lasses.

They can be quite different between airlines, both in the amount of time and the amount of stuff to learn even between airlines in the same regulatory area. A friend of mine had one lasting roughly half a year, my first one in a previous airline was around 3 months and in my current airline it is around 3 to 4 weeks. Quite often a command is coming with a change of type, therefore a full type rating has to be included in the course, but even if you are not changing types there are big differences between airlines. Best to check your training manual about it.

At my current airline, it’s a day (or maybe two) of mostly HR stuff. People skills etc. can be scheduled before, during or after your actual training. Otherwise, there’s no captain-specific training.

A320 LCC. 2 days ground, 4 SIMs, 20 hours OE/Line training.

In a previous airline it was 9 simulator sessions of training, followed by the LPC/OPC and a full session landing training for zero flight time training. Followed by three weeks ground course, brushing up on everything from legal stuff, performance, a week alone for CRM and leadership training, a visit to all airline departments etc. After that 100 hours and 60 sectors of line training, both things had to be met which meant usually more sectors in the end.

In my current outfit it is three days of ground school, 5 simulator sessions followed by 2 days of LPC/OPC/LOFT, and after that 28 sectors of line training.

Comparing both is not straight forward, the first one was based on seniority only, if your number was up you went into the training, no further assessment was done, the average time of 16 years on the line was quite enough to weed out the chaff, only a check for line check/simulator check fails within the last three years was done. In my current airline the selection process is quite thorough and very much subjective as most of it is based on how the base captain feels about you, it takes roughly two years although i have seen one case who managed it in around 11 months from application to final line check as captain.

In my first airline after leaving the military every captain was required to write a report on the first offers performance on every flight. If these were consistently above average, and you passed two consecutive base checks above average, and you maintained this standard, you would go into the pool for promotion to command. Seniority was only used for redundancy (LIFO). I was promoted from 197 on the first officers seniority list. This method ensured that FO's performed to their best ability all the time instead of just warming the right seat until their turn came round. It also reduced the failure rate to almost zero thereby saving the company a fortune in wasted training time.

sounds ripe for corruption too.

Only if you work for a crappy company.

Not necessarily. What of the FO who isn’t there to kiss anyone’s ass, but is just concerned with doing a good job and going home? He probably gets to watch his brown-nosed colleagues get upgraded ahead of him.

Not saying you’re one of the brown-nosers, but your company’s system seems HIGHLY subjective.

One would hope by the time we become Captains, we should be able to sort out the ass kisser from the guys/girls that "just do a good job", but unfortunately, we are pilots.

Very much agree though I suspect it may depend to some degree on the size of the airline.

Having worked for a large organization that used a report based system IMHO it’s very easy for your solid, quiet competent but unspectacular performer to be overlooked in favour of the individual who has made more noise (and I mean noise) around those that matter when in the office/in the bar/on the golf course…

Time served and only then, when the time comes, a crack at a rigid upgrade process has to be the fair way to do it …..again IMHO.