I just got back to cincinnati for five days, and as much as I would like to consider this a vacation spent at home, most of my time will be spent studying. As you might now if you follow my blog, I was recently hired by the biggest regional airline in the world, American Eagle. After enjoying couple days off between my old job and the new one, I flew down to Dallas on sunday, and officially launched this new step in my pilot career. The first night was pretty relaxed and offered me, as well as a few other new hires the opportunity to meet up for dinner and discuss among other things, our expectations. I mention expectation because at Eagle, the choice of base and equipment for new hires is based on age. The oldest of the class getting first pick. I was personnaly anxious to figure out where I situated my self among the class as I was trying to get a specific spot and was not sure if my age would give me the seniority to obtain my first choice. Regardless of the airplane I was really hoping for chicago to be my hub as it would allow for easy commute to and from home and bring me closer to some of my family members. During the first night I also got to meet my roommate. A really interesting guy originally from South Africa with an extensive experience flying humanitarian missions in different war zones around the world. Monday was the first morning of this intense training and the bidding started around 8 am. I was happy to see that I was number 11 out of 22 people which gave me the opportunity to get what I wanted, the Bombardier CRJ700 based in Chicago. When the dust settled, we where given a brief about the training content and quickly started the first part, indoctrination, which lasted the entire week. We reviewed everythings about company policies and operating procedures. I didn't find it hard to understand the bullet points and thought it was pretty much straight forward. During the week, Eagle really showed us what it is like to be part of a sizeable and organized airline. They took care of everything from uniform to ID badge and setting us up quickly with the company website where we can have direct access to our information about health and travel benefits, payroll, discounts and lots of other useful information. I will add that they definitely provide their employees with a great flight academy where, with American Airline, everyday hundreds of people cross each others continously through the maze-like dedicated training space, and where we can also enjoy the museum about the history of American, and have access to a pilot store and a cafeteria. There are also different departments housed in the complex and right across the street there is also AMR's headquarter. Employees nicknamed the training center "the school house" which doesn't quite give it justice. Outside of the center, Eagle provides all the pilots with hotel rooms that are mainly occupied by the new hires and in which they have set up rooms available for group study and cockpit training. After those first five days, we had to pass the indoc test on Monday and for the folks who got awarded a jet position, including me, we got to go home for the week to study the airplanes systems via a computer based training made available by the manufacturer. Once this is done, we will all head back to the academy for the next step of the training bringing me closer to flying the 70 seat jet.
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