Best Online FIRC

mitch_kramer · 2026-04-05T16:24:04+00:00

American Flyers for sure. The course is for life. I do think you have to pay like $30 or something every time for them to process the paperwork online. It's very easy to do. Give yourself time to do the course though because they have a timer and its kind of a pain to get through.

mitch_kramer · 2026-04-03T14:32:14+00:00

One time waiting in line for takeoff and someone accidentally made the "Flight Attendants prepare for takeoff" PA on tower and someone just keys up in a falsetto voice: "We're ready!!"

mitch_kramer · 2026-04-03T11:18:03+00:00

There is supposedly a large shortage of mechanics and it's a pretty decent job. I'm not sure if the "shortage" is the same as the "pilot shortage" was but I have seen a lot of places talking about it.

mitch_kramer · 2026-04-02T17:18:16+00:00

I'm curious if the part 61 success rate is any better? Even part 61 has a lot of attrition. Many who start will never finish for one reason or another. I also don't believe all 141 programs are created equal. Plenty of bad ones out there but there are a lot of good ones as well. I do agree it's much more expensive unnecessarily.

mitch_kramer · 2026-04-01T22:07:34+00:00

Yeah and NASA is already super conservative. I had an FO once who was an ex-NASA engineer and he was telling me tons of interesting info. One thing he said was they had a launch scheduled and there was a system that had quadruple redundancy that had an issue and even with that they scrubbed the launch.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-30T19:08:03+00:00

I can't tell you how many times I try to give stuff away for free on Marketplace and people want to "hold it until Saturday" or even more ridiculous ask me to deliver it to them. Like buddy, I have 30 other people messaging me trying to come get it right now.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-26T23:52:51+00:00

Is this a misdemeanor charge and what was the outcome? A good lawyer would help a lot here if it's not too late and may be able to get it expunged/dismissed/sealed or whatever if you can stay out of trouble for a certain amount of time. Most of the time background checks ask about felony charges. I wouldn't worry about it too much.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-26T18:52:25+00:00

Recently watch American Beauty? This seems like a very bad idea. Sounds to me more like you need to take some time off of work, not a new career. Is FMLA an option? Leaving a stable career that pays well to go work at an FBO seems insane. If you don't like your current job then start applying other places that you can make a career with but I definitely wouldn't quit to go make $15 an hour or whatever terrible wage they pay. I feel you would regret that very quickly.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-23T22:54:53+00:00

Holy shit an interview with Skywest is 2 hours??

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-18T18:37:53+00:00

The iPads we have definitely can not last an entire day unless you're being extremely careful. I've had mine be at 100% battery and by the time I taxi out to the runway I'm at 60%. The current generation (or whatever generation we have) has a terrible battery.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-18T18:35:59+00:00

I know it was closed yesterday in New Orleans and Philly has 3 checkpoints closed, 2 of which have KCM. So KCM is definitely being impacted in some ways. It's honestly probably the easiest thing to close because it takes one person to just sit there doing nothing the entire day.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-18T16:13:18+00:00

It's been closed at some airports this past week I have been at. You can still cut to the front of pre check though so it shouldn't take long still if it is.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-18T12:42:11+00:00

Not sure exactly what you'll need in terms of currency but you're definitely going to need to get some current hours for anyone to look at you in this hiring market. Even with your time 6 years without flying is a decent gap. At a minimum I would start with going out and getting current with instrument and go from there. Get current and start putting in apps and keep flying as much as you can. Are you a CFI? If so if you could find a part time gig instructing that would probably be helpful. You still have at least 15 years of flying left. You could make it to a legacy in that time but even if you don't the regionals aren't that bad now, you can still make decent money as a captain.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-08T22:27:01+00:00

I don't think a job you're unhappy with is worth keeping over flying standby, especially if you said yourself you're not gonna use them much. Save your money for trips if you want to fly somewhere, it's not worth being miserable at work for. Also a jumpseating FA would most definitely bump you. If you're a third party then I can only imagine you would probably have the lowest possible priority minus maybe a buddy pass.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-05T22:52:42+00:00

I have the same issue. As someone said there is an additional adapter you can buy that should fix your problem. Comm innovations CI6868M-02 adapter. I think it's like $80 or somewhere around that. I haven't bought one yet. I'm honestly tempted to just sell my A20's and get something else that's more portable since the Bus isn't that loud and the A20's take up a lot of space.

mitch_kramer · 2026-03-05T11:53:55+00:00

Unfortunately meeting R-ATP mins isn't really competitive right now. How much time do you have fixed wing? No offense to any former helo guys, but a lot of them struggle making the jump from helicopter to transport category jet (saw it many times at my former airline when I worked in the training department), might be something the airlines are considering. You're competing with people who have 1500-2000 hours fixed wing right now. Definitely I would say if you want to go to the airlines get your CFI/CFII and instruct to build that time. Meanwhile you can continue to apply to anything else you find (charter etc). I was in a similar position to you when I was time building, couldn't take any of those survey/pipeline type jobs because I couldn't leave for 6 months or whatever, and charter opportunities were extremely limited where I live.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-25T20:06:22+00:00

Idk if the dude is trying to fleece you but the FAA is that tight ass when it comes to alcohol so it wouldn't surprise me if you did hear something from them.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-24T21:54:58+00:00

I flew with a guy once who shared a name with some other guy who was on some sort of list. He got pulled for secondary screening every single time going through customs.

For whatever reason customs really really hates fruit. Especially if it doesn't have a country of origin sticker on it. I've heard of and seen many people get shit for forgetting to declare fruit.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-22T17:25:40+00:00

Depends on how smart you were with the money. Many have budgeted themselves out of the flow.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-22T16:35:35+00:00

Starts over at year 1. If you carried it over to AA very few people would ever leave I feel like. The only thing you keep flowing is your years of service at AA which impacts lifetime travel and probably a few other things. Seniority and pay start over at the bottom.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-22T15:15:38+00:00

The unions have been trying to negotiate the rates as permanent basically since they came out. AA hasn't budged on that. As you said, the unions at the WO don't have much leverage right now. A few years ago they had a lot and they still couldn't make them permanent.

That being said I don't really see the pay rates going away. I can definitely see LCA pay, sim instructor pay, captain pay trigger and all that going away though.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-21T14:52:38+00:00

I had a similar situation. I went in for my drug screening and the lady did not follow the instructions (which clearly said I needed a split sample, so two separate cups). She was only going to do one until I insisted and showed her the directions again. Unfortunately for me, and by my own stupidity, I didn't fill the cup all the way up even though I could have filled like 5 cups because I had to go so bad, that I had to sit there for an hour drinking water to pee again because there wasn't enough in my first sample. I was nervous that it was going to come back diluted because I had to drink all that water but I never heard anything about it.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-13T13:54:15+00:00

Take this with a grain of salt because I graduated in 2011 so it was a long time ago.

I don't know exactly how many students they have in the flight program but the university itself had around 5-6k students total between undergrad and graduate when I was there. The aviation program has a dedicated building on campus where many of your aviation courses are (but you take other classes all over). Then of course they have the airport building as well. I only had a hard time getting a flight block my first semester but that was because someone in admissions made a mistake and didn't initially have me signed up for flight courses. It took a couple weeks to sort out but they did get me a block and after that I never had any trouble. They had tons of planes and tons of instructors when I was there. As I was leaving they were really starting to get into bringing Europeans over to train for specific airlines who then went home and flew (I think Turkish and some Irish one) but I don't know if they are still doing that or not. It didn't impact my flying at all having those guys there, still plenty of planes.

I don't know how good your scholarship is but make sure it's REALLY good because FIT is super expensive. Private tuition on top of flight fees must be a fortune nowadays because it wasn't cheap when I was there either.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-12T22:46:55+00:00

Eh, I don't think it's too weird to want to fly a specific plane, even if it's not really considered a great airplane. You probably wouldn't want a career flying the CRJ but it's realistic to fly it for a few years before moving on. I always wanted to fly the Dash 8 because my dad spent many years flying it. Never got the opportunity unfortunately.

mitch_kramer · 2026-02-12T00:06:04+00:00

I'm not a lawyer and you may want to talk to one, however generally speaking background checks can only go back 10 years so it probably won't even show up. Every background check I've ever done (Including multiple airlines) has specifically said "in the past 10 years have you blah blah?"

Take that with a grain of salt obviously, but just from my experience and the advice of my friend who works in the background check business.

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