[gus140160]

I've read a lot on great lakes...like how they only have half full planes but still make a profit, how the 1900's are no autopilot and you hand fly everything into airports that still use NDB's, how you get paid less than the drive thru guy at mcdonalds, etc.

I've got an interview with them, and i figure in this economy i've gotta take what i can get. Reading the gouges though, it seems they don't really have a sim ride or anything besides a quick tech and HR interview. True or false? Anyone who's gone to an interview recently and has a horror story, or someone to watch out for, help a brother out!

[John Nguyen]

I've read a lot on great lakes...like how they only have half full planes but still make a profit, how the 1900's are no autopilot and you hand fly everything into airports that still use NDB's, how you get paid less than the drive thru guy at mcdonalds, etc.

I've got an interview with them, and i figure in this economy i've gotta take what i can get. Reading the gouges though, it seems they don't really have a sim ride or anything besides a quick tech and HR interview. True or false? Anyone who's gone to an interview recently and has a horror story, or someone to watch out for, help a brother out!

try readytocopy.com . It's a lakers forums but beware. Most are pretty imature and you may not get anything useful out of them. Don't take it personal if someone post something stupid back. i heard and was told training is hard so come in well prepared. Make sure your instrument skills are top notch. Be able to do NDB hold approach and crap. How did you get an interview with them? I got 440 total with 70 turbine and still no interview.

[Steve428]

Training is stressful, but the difficulty is dependent upon your experience coming into it. You will need to be proficient flying instruments, especially as far as your scan is concerned. When you're in the Sim, you don't have time to put too much focus on your scan, because you will be dealing with new emergency and abnormal procedures. If you have to think too much about your scan, things will snowball into a disaster, and you will make mistake after mistake, and you will probably be sent home disappointed. All you have to do to become proficient enough for Lakes is hop in a basic PCATD. Shoot NDB, VOR, ILS, LOC, LOC-BC approaches, along with DME arcs and numerous holding patterns. Upgrades are still happening as soon as you have ATP mins, but that WILL probably change, due to stagnation on the captain side. It may be awhile before the upgrade slowdown really hits, though, as we still need captains and airplanes to serve the cities we've been awarded. When getting advice on Lakes, I would steer clear of information from non-Lakers. There are a lot of people out there who have no idea what they are talking about, as far as Lakes is concerned, but like to think they do. Most Lakers don't really have much bad to say about the Lakes experience. It can be a lot of work, but can be a lot of fun, and pays off with a quick shot of PIC-turbine time. We operate like the commuter airlines of the pre-RJ age. You can't really fairly compare the QOL or pay of our operation to a 70+ seat RJ operation. We operate so, so much differently. I think a more fair comparison would be to compare those ops to major airlines. If they do the same flying the majors do, or used to do (prior to their arrival), why would that be an unfair comparison? We should get paid more, and should have a higher QOL. That is something we are definitely working on...More progress day by day on that front.

PS.- There will probably not be a sim ride during the interview. If that is something that a person worries about, though, that same person probably won't make it through training.

This post has been edited by Steve428: 08 December 2008 - 03:34 PM

[gus140160]

Training is stressful, but the difficulty is dependent upon your experience coming into it. You will need to be proficient flying instruments, especially as far as your scan is concerned. When you're in the Sim, you don't have time to put too much focus on your scan, because you will be dealing with new emergency and abnormal procedures. If you have to think too much about your scan, things will snowball into a disaster, and you will make mistake after mistake, and you will probably be sent home disappointed. All you have to do to become proficient enough for Lakes is hop in a basic PCATD. Shoot NDB, VOR, ILS, LOC, LOC-BC approaches, along with DME arcs and numerous holding patterns. Upgrades are still happening as soon as you have ATP mins, but that WILL probably change, due to stagnation on the captain side. It may be awhile before the upgrade slowdown really hits, though, as we still need captains and airplanes to serve the cities we've been awarded. When getting advice on Lakes, I would steer clear of information from non-Lakers. There are a lot of people out there who have no idea what they are talking about, as far as Lakes is concerned, but like to think they do. Most Lakers don't really have much bad to say about the Lakes experience. It can be a lot of work, but can be a lot of fun, and pays off with a quick shot of PIC-turbine time. We operate like the commuter airlines of the pre-RJ age. You can't really fairly compare the QOL or pay of our operation to a 70+ seat RJ operation. We operate so, so much differently. I think a more fair comparison would be to compare those ops to major airlines. If they do the same flying the majors do, or used to do (prior to their arrival), why would that be an unfair comparison? We should get paid more, and should have a higher QOL. That is something we are definitely working on...More progress day by day on that front.

PS.- There will probably not be a sim ride during the interview. If that is something that a person worries about, though, that same person probably won't make it through training.

Good Info, thanks for all of it. My interview is in Denver in mid january, i've got 750hrs with 100 multi, about 100 instrument if i added up my actual and sim...but i haven't flown the twin much in the past 6 months, and haven't really had to do much hard IFR in quite a while. Looks like i'm gonna be in the sim for a few weeks!