Training hold

[32andBelow]

There are a lot of questions that are going to have to be answered before training is able to get going again. For one, how they going to catch people up after being off for 6 weeks? My group had about 10 FAM problems to go before hitting the floor when we all got sent home. I’m anticipating they’re probably going to make us restart all of our FAMs at the very least.

Then that leads into another question: we’re going to have to see how many of the SAIC staff end up coming back. This was a part time job for RPOs, and a post-retirement gig for the instructors. After not getting a paycheck for a month and a half, I kind of have a feeling a lot of them will just say it’s not worth it. Particularly if they start firing things up before COVID is really gone, a lot of the instructors are on the older side and several of them have underlying health issues. They’re not going to want to put their own safety at risk. Even if just a handful of contractors decide to quit, it’s going to create an even bigger backlog for trainees.

And perhaps the biggest question of all, how are people supposed to train if traffic is down to a fraction of what it was a few weeks ago? Even if we were to return and they got us through lab work in a reasonably short amount of time, nobody is going to train on a sector with 3 aircraft in it. So, are they just going to have us sitting around until traffic starts to pick back up? If that’s the case, heck just keep us at home. No use in potentially increasing the number of COVID cases in facilities if there’s not going to be actual training happening.

All the saic people came back after the g shutdown. But also the students can remote ina bind. Or washed out people waiting for the nest.

i think we will have to train a mix of live traffic and lab traffic tbh. I was about to start fam 1 of radar class. I’m really sick of relays between gov shutdown. Just waiting around and now this. I want to fucking finish. I’ve had no problem with any actual trusting but then you got years of just sitting around for whatever reason. It’s BS at this point.

 

[Papa_Mike]

There are a lot of questions that are going to have to be answered before training is able to get going again. For one, how they going to catch people up after being off for 6 weeks? My group had about 10 FAM problems to go before hitting the floor when we all got sent home. I’m anticipating they’re probably going to make us restart all of our FAMs at the very least.

Then that leads into another question: we’re going to have to see how many of the SAIC staff end up coming back. This was a part time job for RPOs, and a post-retirement gig for the instructors. After not getting a paycheck for a month and a half, I kind of have a feeling a lot of them will just say it’s not worth it. Particularly if they start firing things up before COVID is really gone, a lot of the instructors are on the older side and several of them have underlying health issues. They’re not going to want to put their own safety at risk. Even if just a handful of contractors decide to quit, it’s going to create an even bigger backlog for trainees.

And perhaps the biggest question of all, how are people supposed to train if traffic is down to a fraction of what it was a few weeks ago? Even if we were to return and they got us through lab work in a reasonably short amount of time, nobody is going to train on a sector with 3 aircraft in it. So, are they just going to have us sitting around until traffic starts to pick back up? If that’s the case, heck just keep us at home. No use in potentially increasing the number of COVID cases in facilities if there’s not going to be actual training happening.

I was in the middle of some class during the shutdown and when we started back up we ran all our lab problems from the beginning. And it was ‘collaborative’ in the sense they asked us if we felt we were caught up.

My bet is when Trump says it’s time to open, we go back to normal schedules and management falls in line and starts pushing TOP again. Training is training...y’all will get an easy cert as traffic is what traffic does. Or you’ll get the short stick with a douche supe who won’t agree to certify you at max hours because this isn’t ‘real’ traffic...even though this is our real world reality now. Remember, there’s still a training initiative of x hours a week.

 

[spider]

I hope they extend the OJTI suspension again. Traffic isn’t going to fully recover but it will come back a bit. We don’t need to be certifying on this traffic. Well, let me rephrase...we know exactly who should checkout and who shouldn’t based on their performance before this. We don’t need to be certifying the dipshits just because they’re at max hours.

 

[CaptainObvious]

There are a lot of questions that are going to have to be answered before training is able to get going again. For one, how they going to catch people up after being off for 6 weeks? My group had about 10 FAM problems to go before hitting the floor when we all got sent home. I’m anticipating they’re probably going to make us restart all of our FAMs at the very least.

Then that leads into another question: we’re going to have to see how many of the SAIC staff end up coming back. This was a part time job for RPOs, and a post-retirement gig for the instructors. After not getting a paycheck for a month and a half, I kind of have a feeling a lot of them will just say it’s not worth it. Particularly if they start firing things up before COVID is really gone, a lot of the instructors are on the older side and several of them have underlying health issues. They’re not going to want to put their own safety at risk. Even if just a handful of contractors decide to quit, it’s going to create an even bigger backlog for trainees.

And perhaps the biggest question of all, how are people supposed to train if traffic is down to a fraction of what it was a few weeks ago? Even if we were to return and they got us through lab work in a reasonably short amount of time, nobody is going to train on a sector with 3 aircraft in it. So, are they just going to have us sitting around until traffic starts to pick back up? If that’s the case, heck just keep us at home. No use in potentially increasing the number of COVID cases in facilities if there’s not going to be actual training happening.

You will train on a sector with 3, or even 0 aircraft. Upper management has to make sure you meet your 12-18 hours a week, whatever they’ve decided the target number is

 

[32andBelow]

I hope they extend the OJTI suspension again. Traffic isn’t going to fully recover but it will come back a bit. We don’t need to be certifying on this traffic. Well, let me rephrase...we know exactly who should checkout and who shouldn’t based on their performance before this. We don’t need to be certifying the dipshits just because they’re at max hours.

There’s a lot of classes that need to be finished.

 

[spider]

There’s a lot of classes that need to be finished.

I’m not talking about classes. I’m talking about people who were approaching max hours and going to wash but now want a free pass. Hence the guy above saying you should get easy certs.

 

[Papa_Mike]

I’m not talking about classes. I’m talking about people who were approaching max hours and going to wash but now want a free pass. Hence the guy above saying you should get easy certs.

Not saying they necessarily should, saying they probably will. This traffic level is going to be reality for quite a while in my opinion. What are the other options? Keep them in training status for a year or more without training and just hope traffic comes back? Just wash ‘em out? Build dysim problems with pre-Covid traffic?

 

[FightingIrish2012]

Even the best labs in the Agency don’t have DYSIM or AT Coach problems anywhere near realistic enough to check someone out on in my opinion. It’s a hard decision but if you were at 90% of your hours and about to wash out, congratulations, you just won the lottery. Use Article 67 (free spool up time) as long as you need until you are ready to check out. This won’t work for the people who are truly very terrible, or people who are hated at their facility, but it’s so hard to quantify management or the OJTI’s forcing a trainee off of Article 67 when they still want it because “your at the same level you were previously at”.

Also I do think you will see increase amounts of certs even at the much lower traffic numbers. The point of training initiative was trying to force that as well. Some facilities resisted by radically extending target hours or giving blanket extensions, but training initiative was to get people certified, and the spirit of the program was to certify them even off season as long as you can work that traffic present at the time.

 

[32andBelow]

I’m not talking about classes. I’m talking about people who were approaching max hours and going to wash but now want a free pass. Hence the guy above saying you should get easy certs.

Well I’m in stage 4 class and you just said I should be on hold indefinitely. The training hold effects us at all levels of training and effects the amount of money we make during our careers.

 

[spider]

Not saying they necessarily should, saying they probably will. This traffic level is going to be reality for quite a while in my opinion. What are the other options? Keep them in training status for a year or more without training and just hope traffic comes back? Just wash ‘em out? Build dysim problems with pre-Covid traffic?

Pure speculation, but I think we will get a glimpse of what our new normal will look like by the end of July/early August. At that point in time, you should train and if they can hold their own with that level then that’s about all you can do.

Well I’m in stage 4 class and you just said I should be on hold indefinitely. The training hold effects us at all levels of training and effects the amount of money we make during our careers.

I don’t consider classes to be OJTI.

 

[32andBelow]

I don’t consider classes to be OJTI.

Well we are all suspended with the training hold.

 

[spider]

Well we are all suspended with the training hold.

Again...my initial response has nothing to do with you or your classes. We're all aware that you're not training.

What would you like to do? Would you like to be sent to the floor to begin training right now? It's not going to go back to pre-COVID levels anytime soon but it will go back to something a lot more than what it is right now and it will come back a lot faster than your natural learning curve. So what do you want to do? Would you like to burn a good portion of your hours now and then try to keep up during the last 25%? Are you going to make it or are you going to complain about how your initial hours were wasted on no traffic?

You're getting paid $85k per year to sit on your ass at home right now. Let me grab a violin to play for you while you wait for classes to resume.

 

[FightingIrish2012]

Again...my initial response has nothing to do with you or your classes. We're all aware that you're not training.

What would you like to do? Would you like to be sent to the floor to begin training right now? It's not going to go back to pre-COVID levels anytime soon but it will go back to something a lot more than what it is right now and it will come back a lot faster than your natural learning curve. So what do you want to do? Would you like to burn a good portion of your hours now and then try to keep up during the last 25%? Are you going to make it or are you going to complain about how your initial hours were wasted on no traffic?

You're getting paid $85k per year to sit on your ass at home right now. Let me grab a violin to play for you while you wait for classes to resume.

Do it, play this ungreatful melenial fuck a violin song, make it the last song they played on the Titanic as it was sinking and everyone was dying, this guy is so cocky he thinks he will automatically check out after his Stage 4 class and that’s all that’s holding him back from a raise.

Just kidding (for the most part), just kidding lol. I really just posted that so I could make the Titanic reference. But yes, if your making 85K to sit home and do nothing don’t complain. Plus I don’t agree with this notion that 2020 training will be meaningless and we won’t see pre-COVID traffic anytime soon. Whenever there is even the slightest bit of good news regarding it the stock market jumps up and other economic indicators seem raring to go. If this is cleaned up in summer I think we will see close to normal traffic levels shortly after.

 

[ClearanceClarence]

Damn, $85K sounds lovely right now lol. I can confirm, AG pay disappears pretty quickly when you have to pay to have food and groceries and everything else delivered to your door.

 

[32andBelow]

Damn, $85K sounds lovely right now lol. I can confirm, AG pay disappears pretty quickly when you have to pay to have food and groceries and everything else delivered to your door.

Oh don’t worry I had my d side class cancelled due to the government shutdown. All Of these delays just are turning into years and years of doing nothing. I won’t apologize for wanting to finish training.

 

[ClearanceClarence]

Oh don’t worry I had my d side class cancelled due to the government shutdown. All Of these delays just are turning into years and years of doing nothing. I won’t apologize for wanting to finish training.

Yeah man, this has been some crazy shitty luck for trainees over the past 18 months. At least 20 years from now we’ll have a good comebacks to our trainees who are bitching about losing differentials or something silly. “Try not working for 3 months over year and a half.” Lol

 

[Mike Kilo]

Valid points about certifying with low traffic, but I also think there is something to be said for working by yourself and building confidence. And to top it off I don’t think the traffic is going to from 50% to 110% in a day. These new CPCs will be able to ride the increase up while (hopefully) improving as it rises while getting more experience.

 

[CaptainObvious]

Do it, play this ungreatful melenial fuck a violin song, make it the last song they played on the Titanic as it was sinking and everyone was dying, this guy is so cocky he thinks he will automatically check out after his Stage 4 class and that’s all that’s holding him back from a raise.

Just kidding (for the most part), just kidding lol. I really just posted that so I could make the Titanic reference. But yes, if your making 85K to sit home and do nothing don’t complain. Plus I don’t agree with this notion that 2020 training will be meaningless and we won’t see pre-COVID traffic anytime soon. Whenever there is even the slightest bit of good news regarding it the stock market jumps up and other economic indicators seem raring to go. If this is cleaned up in summer I think we will see close to normal traffic levels shortly after.

Training sucks and I can 1000% guarantee if you were in the shoes of the trainees you would be complaining too. What about the trainees on their last sector who trained all through peak traffic and everyone says 100% that they’ll check out? Should they just suck it up and go on hold indefinitely? 32 is right. This and government shutdown greatly affects overall earnings over a career

 

[BCHOOSIER]

Again...my initial response has nothing to do with you or your classes. We're all aware that you're not training.

What would you like to do? Would you like to be sent to the floor to begin training right now? It's not going to go back to pre-COVID levels anytime soon but it will go back to something a lot more than what it is right now and it will come back a lot faster than your natural learning curve. So what do you want to do? Would you like to burn a good portion of your hours now and then try to keep up during the last 25%? Are you going to make it or are you going to complain about how your initial hours were wasted on no traffic?

You're getting paid $85k per year to sit on your ass at home right now. Let me grab a violin to play for you while you wait for classes to resume.

I completely understand what you're getting at, but the idea of holding up training until "it gets back to where it was" is BS. Half the threads on here are about low staffing, controllers inability to transfer, or how NCEPT is broken. This way of thinking won't help any of those issues. Our job is important and people should demonstrate an ability to do the job but we already waste too much time in the classroom, labs, and on the floor. Then you add in all the additional hoops the ATC gods, I mean trainers, make you jump through and it's just ridiculous.
I've been a controller for over a decade, I have four CTOs and three radar tickets (working on a fourth). Am I'm the greatest controller to ever walk the earth, probably not. Can I confidently say that I can do this job, yes. Why should I wait for some unknown period of time for it to get "busy" again. Hell, with this way of thinking controllers would still be waiting on certification after 9/11, (hope you were in before then because if not you didn't "earn" it).

 

[spider]

All I said is that I don't want to see anyone slip through the cracks due to lack of traffic. If you sucked before this whole thing happened then you still suck. If you were doing well then you're doing well. We had a couple of early certifications when the writing was on the wall that this was going to happen. I am totally against the idea that you get a checkride simply because you have reached the end of your hours.