Welcome to my ASA training experience!

6:05 PM - Friday, Sept. 30, 2005
Welcome to my ASA training experience!
Week Five
ASA New Hire Training
September 30, 2005

Thanks to another new hire First Officer at a sister regional airline and her post on the Professional 99s (women pilots) listserve, I learned about this cute little way to let you all in on my airline training experience. It's free and easy and if you're interested check out www.diaryland.com.

Since 5 weeks of new hire training at Atlantic Southeast Airlines have already passed, I'm starting this journal a bit late. But most of the other stuff was boring to read about and a lot of you already heard about the rare exciting parts over the phone or in emails. The rest of it is just filler that took up about 93% of each of my days... ;)

So today we completed all most all of our classroom training. The first two weeks were Basic Indoc -- company procedures, rules, regulations. What's expected. What's forbidden. Essentially how to look and act like a pilot at ASA. The next two weeks were packed full of buttons and levers, gears and switches, lights and bells. And hydraulics and generators, TRUs and BTMSs, EICAS and CRTs, doors and wheels…. If it’s a part of the CRJ-200, chances are I know about it. I know where it is, what it does, what else it’s connected to, which way it moves, what it lights up, what disconnects it and how to stow it. In theory. There are 85 knobs/buttons/switches on the overhead panel alone. The center console is about 3 times larger than the overhead! Thankfully most of the information we look at in flight appears on 6 giant cathode ray tube screens. Kind of like TV!
The Flight Control Panel (autopilot) and adjacent Bad Things Warning Lights Panel have 33 things to push. Crazy!

Soon we’ll have to find a way to integrate all flows with all the checklists with all the buttons with all the profiles. Should be interesting….