Dan Mosher:
Today's SWAPA Number is 649,000. That's the number of new pilots that Boeing projects will be needed to staff the growing demand for airlines in the next two decades. With such a high demand and low supply of qualified aviators, business as usual from the past must change to meet this new reality.
Mike Panebianco:
On today's episode, we will be talking with the Training Committee Chair, Captain Greg Bowen and Professional Standards chair, Captain Jon Ross, about the pilot shortage, how training must adapt to the new and diverse experience of our recruits, and what pilots can do to acclimate to the new environment we find ourselves in.
Dan Mosher:
I'm Dan Mosher.
Mike Panebianco:
And I'm Mike Panebianco. And here's our interview with Greg and Jon.
Dan Mosher:
Greg and Jon, I just want to give any listeners who aren't familiar with you and your committees, a ten-second pitch on what training and professional standards committees do.
Greg Bowen:
Training and standards provide support to pilots that are struggling in training, as well as since our airline is an AQP, that's supposed to be a partnership between the FAA, the company and our pilots association. So we participate in the development and production of all the training products that our pilots see, for recurrent as well as a new hire.
Jon Ross:
The professional standards perspective is we're basically here to make sure that we function as a team, as a crew. Conflict resolution is generally what we do when folks don't get along between, whether it's pilots, flight attendants, many other work groups. We're here to sort that out, to make us a safe organizational or professional organization and handle it at the lowest possible level, but keep the company out of things. We don't need the company how to take care of each other, we can do that on our own.
Mike Panebianco:
649,000 pilots needed over the coming years to properly staff the airlines. That's a massive onboarding of new talent, new recruits in the pilot world. Greg, how's the industry doing with onboarding pilots and what do you see coming with what many denied as being a shortage is actually happening right now?
Greg Bowen:
The entire industry is struggling with the experience level of the new hire pilots that all of us are able to attract. And our training programs have to adjust to accommodate this different level of experience based on where the programs were previously.
Mike Panebianco:
And are the other airlines having the same issues that Southwest is having?
Greg Bowen:
Everybody is.
Mike Panebianco:
I want to ask a follow-up real quick with you, Jon. What are some of the challenges of that great variance, the diversity of experience that is coming on board right now?
Jon Ross:
This is the first time in the history of the workforce in the US you basically have four generations working. So you have 60 plus year old captains flying with, in their early 20s, first officers. So very, very big differences generationally. Then you couple that up with, okay, a high stress work environment, it can become very challenging very quickly. Another piece of this is we have been spoiled as an industry with the mentorship really requirement for what was expected of a captain in comparison to the mentorship requirement for captains now. It's an industry-wide aspect that, okay, all this incurred risk is on line captain's shoulders to mentor all these new folks and help them along. And I will tell you my normal call now is a captain calling day two of a three-day going, "I'm exhausted. I'm giving instruction level I never thought I would have to give, and yet here we are.": So that's probably a big broad brushstroke of what's occurring.
Greg Bowen:
That's a great point, Jon. The other carriers historically have hired lower experienced pilots. Their training departments are structured to support that, especially in the AQP where there's a requirement to do a demographic study of the pilots coming into the program has to match the experience level, which we're heading in that direction, we're not quite there yet. But they've hired traditionally lower experienced pilots in the past. We've always hired the cream of the crop, the most experienced, and that's the pool that's dried up, so we're having to adjust to where some of the other carriers already are. But the level of experience needs to match the training program and that's where we need to get to.
Dan Mosher:
And how's that adjustment going? Are we a little bit behind on that power curve or do we have a good program in place to handle that?
Greg Bowen:
In our AQP, we're currently building our qual program, which is essentially what we used to call new hire training, where those demographic studies are occurring, but that's not an overnight fix. That program's in production right now with a goal of beginning small group tryouts the first of the year, but you're looking at probably early 2025 before it comes online.
Mike Panebianco:
I heard rumor of initial CQT years ago and CQT and the upgrade side years ago, how far behind are we right now?
Greg Bowen:
Well, the initial plan for the timeline, which actually has to be approved by the FAA, we should have initially had our qual program online in 2018. There were a lot of business reasons Southwest had for that not occurring. So from that perspective, we are behind and we need to catch up as soon as we can.
Dan Mosher:
Along those lines, Greg, can we keep up with the sheer volume of training that, not just what Boeing projects for all the airlines, but just specific to Southwest Airlines, how are we doing this year with that and do you think that they have a good plan in place for the following years of growth that they're projecting?
Greg Bowen:
Well, I haven't seen the following year's plans, but I can tell you that previously we were device limited. With the addition to the training center and the additional CPTs, we're in a good place to support it from a device perspective. The constraint is the instructors to operate them and obviously the check airmen that are involved as well. So that's the main bottleneck right now and going forward, it's probably going to continue to be a bottleneck, frankly.
Mike Panebianco:
So Greg, we talked about the origins of CQT. You were there for those and some of our listeners haven't met you on a podcast yet. We talked about the CQ program for initial and upgrade training. Give us a 30 second pitch on where CQT came from, why it's so important that we get that and what it will do for our new hires and our captain upgrades.
Greg Bowen:
Specifically, it starts with what I mentioned earlier, the starting point for a qual program, an AQP or upgrade, if you will, is you do a demographic study and you have to match the experience level of the pilot you're training with the program that's going to train him. So when you meet those metrics and you design a training program under AQP, the intent and it works is it supports that demographic and at the end everybody leaves the training center with the same one level of standard and able to perform. Also in our current environment, in our appendix N and O training program for new hires, all that training essentially happens for the most part below 5,000 feet. So you're learning stalls, you're learning steep turns, you're doing approaches, but if you haven't come from a 121 background previously, how the airplane gets from A to B, you're clueless, you just don't know.
So we have two qual offs that happen at the end of training and that's the first time you have an opportunity to try to put all that together and then hopefully you assimilate it on the line. In an AQP, after about the third or fourth simulator session, you have an event called an MV or maneuvers validation where you check the box on all the technical maneuvers, engine failures, steep turns, et cetera. The next two or three training periods are loft training events, which helps you understand the dynamic of operating the airplane in real time.
And that's really the biggest difference, as well as some other things in terms of how the learning occurs at the front, and it's more of an integrated approach where you start out in ground school on day one and you spend part of your day in ground school and the other part of your day in the training device, starting the engines, learning your flows and working on QRH issues from the things you learn in ground school in the morning. It's more of an integrated approach to learning, so you end up with a much better pilot at the end.
Mike Panebianco:
So Southwest is doing everything they can to ramp up training and cover the wide range of experience of the pilots that are coming in. What are some things that you feel right now they could do to improve the experience? If you're a new hire pilot coming in here and you don't have that traditional 1,000 PIC turbine, what would help them?
Greg Bowen:
For the lower experienced level entrance, if you will, I think we should look towards an expanded, IOE if you will, or fly with a training captain for a period of about 90 days. The training at the training center is structured, scripted, with enough repetition you can get hopefully most pilots through that without a lot of trouble. But when these pilots hit the line and they don't have the experience to draw from and then you have additive conditions and the gentleman sitting next to me, there may be a personality conflict or an inability to communicate well with each other, that's where the cracks start to show up. So I think an expanded IOE or a training captain, where the new hire flies with a captain that's designated to have the experience to be able to be a good training captain, if you will, they spend their first three months or so with those folks before they get released to the line at large. We actually did that here at Southwest back in the '80s once upon a time and it worked really well.
Jon Ross:
I would love to see something like that happen. So let me give you a good example. Okay, an FO that's been here for a month that has very little experience, but they're qualified to be here. They get rerouted. It's one o'clock in the morning, they show up to a fully loaded airplane. The airplane's been sitting there for three hours. They show up to the cockpit and following them into the cockpit is the ops agent going, "Version one." And okay, that individual is, their bucket is long since overflowed, put yourself in that individual's shoes as a captain and go, "Okay, hey, tell the ops agent, we're going to sit here for a little while. Blame it all on me. It's going to be fine. We're going to go when we're ready to go." And take that heat off of that FO because that's, I'm telling you, that's life on the line right now.
And that individual, they're not going to learn anything. It's a drive-by. The mind erases traumatic events and that will be a traumatic event that they won't learn or remember anything other than I got tossed under the bus here and that is up to the captain to control all that.
Greg Bowen:
Yeah, it's really critical for our captains to take an extra step to do a really good briefing, ask a few questions, have an idea in your mind of the experience level of the pilot sitting next to you, maybe even adjust the legs you're flying to support learning. Those are things we have to do now. That's the world we're in.
Jon Ross:
It does nothing but help everybody out. The one thing I will say is the most important, if you take one word away from this entire podcast, is respect. We have to respect each other. That individual sitting next to you, regardless of their experience level, is qualified to sit there. So respect that they're qualified to sit there. And with that being said, okay, now put yourself in their shoes and go, "Man, I was overwhelmed on a good day, I was in the [inaudible]. How do I make sure that I keep them with me, make them part of this team?" Because it is overwhelming, there's a lot going on. Captains, those folks sit down next to you, you need to take in a little, I call it adaptive leadership, where you need to adapt your style to get the best out of the people around you.
And the best way to get the best out of them is to have a conversation, "Hey man, we're going to go when we go." Greg brings up a great point to where if you look at the weather and go, "Okay, it's going to be a bad weather leg." If you put it on yourself as a captain and go, "Hey, I would really like to fly this leg, if you don't mind, it has nothing to do against you, but it's going to make me feel more comfortable as a captain from a safety perspective, and also as a mentor perspective to try and maybe teach you something about what I'm looking at now we're going to skin the cat." Take that off of their plate and you'll score huge points.
Greg Bowen:
Jon, another part of that is I don't think there's a captain in the airline industry that wouldn't, if he's telling the truth, would tell you, "I remember that night this first officer saved my bacon."
Jon Ross:
Absolutely.
Greg Bowen:
And so you take some of these new folks that you're speaking to, that walk into the environment that they're walking into, it's a challenge for them to feel like they can speak up in the cockpit. It's ingrained into them in training, but in the real world, when he knows you're filling out the probationary report on his performance, they're generally reluctant to say something. So a good conversation at the beginning of the trip to open up that line of communication, stated well, "You're brand new, but I want to hear from you and if I don't, we get in trouble, I'm going to be pointing my finger at you at the hearing saying, I told him to say something. He didn't say anything." There's ways that you can open that line of communication up and that's absolutely critical.
Dan Mosher:
Are there ways that Southwest training department is thinking of helping captains to deal with that new reality? Is that going to be incorporated into a future CQs or leadership training classes?
Greg Bowen:
It's in the leadership training class now, which you see generally about six months after you upgrade. But for guys that have been captains for a decade, it hasn't been discussed a lot. Although I will say that RRM that we have embedded in everything that we do embraces that, it's just really a matter of how well the pilot understands it and uses it.
Mike Panebianco:
I want to push that question just a little bit further. Some of us have been here a while. I've been here 23 years, I haven't flight instructed since 1994. What are we doing to help the captains that are showing up to the airplane with a brand new first officer who might not have heavy airplane experience, what would you two recommend we do to help those captains prepare for what is actually coming out on the line now?
Greg Bowen:
Well, the first thing I'll tell you is the FOM says that you're supposed to be a mentor. The company's opinion is that if a pilot needs flight instruction, that that's what our check airmen are supposed to do. So the expectation really isn't for you to be a flight instructor, so to speak. That doesn't mean that you aren't prepared to make comments that'd be helpful for the successful completion of a flight, in terms of energy management for unusual airports, et cetera. You could call that flight instruction, but it's really not the intent.
If you find yourself in a situation where you're doing real flight instruction that's necessary for the completion of the flight, that's where the probation reports are important. Those tend to be viewed a lot of times as for disciplinary purposes, but they're really not. If you have a pilot that's having a hard time landing the airplane, for example, put it in the probation report because the chiefs look at those and if they see a couple of captains say, "This guy's having issues landing in a crosswind," for example, that's not discipline. They'll probably send a check airman out with him to work with him and fix the problem. And that's where it begins, you got to be honest.
Mike Panebianco:
So you're saying that the chiefs are actively monitoring each report that comes in and they're making decisions on the fly to maybe do flying under supervision or something like that?
Greg Bowen:
Absolutely.
Dan Mosher:
Are those probation reports, are they just paper copies now or have they gone digital as well?
Greg Bowen:
They'll accept both. They're encouraging digital. You fill it out right on the iPad and the probationary pilot submits it. They have a meeting, I think it's once a quarter, with their chief and the chief looks through all the probation reports, asks questions, gets a sense for how he's doing or where he might need some help and if they need help, they'll get it.
Jon Ross:
Yeah, that brings up a point. Has anybody ever been fired from here for a training aspect? No. If folks need extra training, there have been numerous times that Greg and I have worked together to where, okay, I have an individual that's having a tough time, hey man, Greg will work with a company to get that individual the extra time. We will teach you the flying aspect. The company works with us all the time, we'll make that happen. As long as you have the right attitude, it's going to be okay. The one thing I will say about the probationary aspect is fill it out honest and debrief the individual.
There's two relationships with everybody you fly with, there's a professional relationship and there's a friendship that you build up over two or three, four days, however long you fly together. That professional relationship, Greg and I could fly together and read the checklist. I look at Greg, "Okay, man, what do you have for me? "Man, I would've done X, Y, and Z on that arrival. We were like a dog on a linoleum floor at the last minute. Okay, these are techniques of how to fix that problem." "I appreciate that." At the end of that, okay, that's a professional relationship, then after that, "Okay, let's go to dinner." That separation of this is a professional aspect and this is a friendship that you form with people is very important because you have to be honest with people if they're mess something up.
Mike Panebianco:
I think what it opens next though is that feedback, that communication between captain and first officer. Like I said, in years past, we had a higher experience level, but right now feedback is critical, especially for the lower experience levels. Talk to me a little bit about what you're hearing.
Greg Bowen:
The thing that sticks out the most, and that's why I brought up the probationary reports, is the call start out with, "Hey, I just flew with this guy," and so forth and so on, whatever the issue was, "What do you think I should do about it?" The first question I asked him is, "Did you fill out his probationary report and did you put it on there? And the answer's almost always no. So that's where we have to get better, frankly, we can't fix something if we don't know it's broken, and that's the methodology that's in place to address that.
Dan Mosher:
So Jon, you touched on how we can do a better job from the captain's perspective, but what are you hearing from the first officer side when it comes to how we can encourage more or better feedback?
Jon Ross:
That's a good question. The one thing I will say is you have the, and I will put the generational aspect of it here, you put the mid to early 20s FO sits down next to the 60 plus year old guy with a big mustache, it can be an intimidating scenario. And the one thing I will tell folks is, first of all, you're qualified and deserve to be sitting in that chair, and if something were to happen to the captain, you're in charge of 185 lives. So have confidence in yourself and know that you deserve to be there. Now that being said, everything in life is in the delivery and how you address things. I rode this horse a long time when I was new that I would ask and tell captains all the time, "Hey, I'm just a JV player. Don't let me develop a varsity problem."
So don't be afraid to tell the captain you're new. To use that as a learning opportunity and also a way to address things that if the captain's not doing something that's not standard, then the first time you put it on yourself and go, "Hey, it would really help me out if you did it this way, the way the training center taught us." So you put the emphasis on yourself, but in reality, you're telling the captain what you're doing is not standard. So the next time you bring it up, you go, "Okay, hey, it would really help us function as a crew if you did it this way." Now you're making it a we issue and it's all in the delivery. You're not telling that captain, "Hey, I don't like what you're doing." You're just gently bringing out the point of, "Hey, that's not the way they trained us to do it."
So everything is in the delivery and teaching new hires to have the confidence to be there. It can be intimidating sitting down next to some old guy like Greg and having the strength to know that you deserve to be there, you should be there. And if Greg's doing something that you don't appreciate, how do you professionally tell Greg, "Hey, that's not the way they trained us to do it. Is that a different way? Because in the training center this is how they taught us to do that." So I will tell you, I get more calls from probationary pilots than I ever have, which is fabulous, because the word is getting out that, hey man, if things aren't standardized, then help them out.
This is the one thing I will say, the folks that we are getting are qualified to be here. Experience wise though, they come to work in the yellow. Any deviation from the training center puts them in the orange. The more we stick with the script that the training center taught them, the faster and better they will learn. So if you're the captain that doesn't do the departure or arrival brief because we've never done it that way, and I know all the way points, hey man, give that individual a break, give them a chance to perform to the level that the training center taught them. And your deviation from what the training center has taught them is throwing them off. You're not helping them out.
So I ask that, okay, if the FO, things aren't going the way the training center, bring it up to the captain. And if you're the captain and they bring that up to you, take that on board. Because my calls, I get a bunch of calls from FOs, I never did a single departure arrival brief, and they've been off IOE for two trips and they're like, "How do I tell them I really need that?" And that's an honest question.
Mike Panebianco:
So if I just crushed a landing on and by crushing a landing on, I mean, got comments from the back, how does that conversation go and what is the process?
Jon Ross:
You just have to go, "Hey man, before we go our separate ways here, let's have a little professional development here. How do you think that went?" Get their perspective. And then, "Okay, this is probably a way to make sure that we don't get into that arena again, pulling the power back to idle at 30 feet, let's talk about a technique to not do that. That's not going to work." So take the time, make the time to debrief it, that's how you learn. When things are going down, generally you don't learn as much going down when things are happening. Afterwards, it's just sit down and go, "Okay, hey man, that landing was pretty rough. What do you think?" "Yeah, probably was kind of hard." "All right, this is a technique aspect I want you to think about from now on, and every time you're crossing the threshold, don't have the instinct to have snapping the power back to idle. Okay? Teach yourself to walk it back. All right? Get rid of that habit pattern."
Take the time to learn from it. It's a mistake if you don't learn, we're human beings, we're going to make mistakes. That's how we learn. It is unacceptable if you don't learn from it, then it's just a mistake that, hey man, that was a lost opportunity. So when it happens again, it's on you. So we're human beings, we're going to mess stuff up. It came with the manual. That being said, okay, we have to be professional enough to learn from those mistakes.
Greg Bowen:
Yeah, those are all great points. But I'll also say, Jon, that almost borders on flight instruction, which is what we talked about earlier in the podcast. And our captains, by and large, at least intentionally try to do things the same way in a standardized manner. But when you start individual instruction without the knowledge of standardization that our check airmen have, that's problematic also. And that's why, again, if there's an issue, we identify the issue. Our check airmen need to work hard to maybe not release a pilot to the line until he is absolutely certain that he's ready to go. So swings on both sides there.
Mike Panebianco:
Yeah. And I think that there is that balance because I think we've all found ourselves in that situation recently. It's like where is the line between me giving a debrief and putting it in a probationary report and saying that this kind of rises to that level where check airman probably needs to roll back into the conversation.
Jon Ross:
And if that happens, then it happens. I mean, that's just factual information. And like I said before, you're not going to get fired for needing more training, the company will work with you
Dan Mosher:
Aside from this podcast, for those who are listening, and the takeaway is the probationary report is not a disciplinary report. It's a means of identifying both strengths and weaknesses in the first officers and then if they need some help, some additional training that's identified in that report, that's an avenue to get it to them. How can Southwest training and how can flight ops communicate that to the pilot group at large? Are we doing a good job at that?
Greg Bowen:
I think we're getting better at it. To Mike's point about, is it going to a probationary report or just something we debrief, you're typically flying with folks for a few days at a time. If it's a one-off, that's a debriefing item, you discuss it. But if you see a trend, obviously you have to indicate that so it can get addressed. When it's time to ring the bell, ring the bell, put it in a probationary report.
Jon Ross:
That's not bad, that's just factual. I mean, this is a trend that Jon Ross does. Okay, Jon Ross, every time you flaps forward, you pull the power a little early. Okay, that's a trend. Put it down. It's not personal, it's professional, and it's going to make you better.
Mike Panebianco:
Yeah, one of the leadership topics that they brought up is giving critical feedback, make it about the issue, not the person.
Jon Ross:
Yeah, it has nothing to do with what a human being does. It's a technique, it's a professional, this is a better way to do that. It's not a personal thing and you can't make it personal, it's just making us a safer group of professionals.
Mike Panebianco:
So gentlemen, as we roll out of the podcast today, give me your top two recommendations for a captain and a first officer that are going to make their life easier in trying to bring these recruits onboard.
Greg Bowen:
Well, for our captains, they need to be aware. We've all gotten comfortable based on what we've hired previously that was in the market. So we do have lower experienced folks that we're working with, and we need to do a good job of understanding as best we can, where that pilot's at in their professional life and adapt and adjust to that in order to help them grow. And for our first officers, especially the new ones, if you guys get in trouble, it's not going to be just the captain, it's both of you. So you've got to speak up. You're protecting your own license as well. I can tell you as a captain around here for a long time, I want to hear from you. I don't care if you've been here one day or 20 years, speak up.
Jon Ross:
I will tee into that as new first officers, you're qualified to be here, you deserve to be here. So have the confidence in yourself and know that you deserve to be here. You've worked hard and you earned this. In that same breath, that individual sitting next to you deserves to be here, treat them that way. Like I said before, respect works both ways, you have to treat people with respect to earn respect.
Mike Panebianco:
What's the best way for a captain or a first officer to reach out to you?
Jon Ross:
My cell number is 559-309-3211. Go to the SWAPA webpage, I'm the committee chair, call me whenever you want.
Mike Panebianco:
And that's for professional standards and for training and standards?
Greg Bowen:
My cell number's 704-277-7081, or you can go to the SWAPA website. I've got two incredibly talented folks on my committee with me. They're listed there, as well as their phone number, so either way.
Mike Panebianco:
And that's for training and standards. So our members, you have the resources at your fingertips. We just told you how to get in touch with them. And thanks gentlemen, for coming in today.
Jon Ross:
Thanks for having us.
Dan Mosher:
Thanks to Jon and Greg for taking the time to speak with us about the pilot shortage, and the reality of today's training and line environments. Effective training and an adequate supply of pilots remain critical to maintain the health, safety, and prosperity of Southwest Airlines.
Mike Panebianco:
As always, we want to hear from you. If you have comments or ideas for a future SWAPA Number podcast, drop us an email at [email protected]. Finally, today's bonus number is five. That's how many years delayed Southwest Airlines training is in implementing new hire and captain upgrades, CQT or continuous qual training.