CJO from PSA Airlines? Interview invite? Don’t even think about it. Run the other way, ASAP.

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04/01/2023:

No further updates or posts to this website will be made, as I have completed training at my ULCC, flying the A320. My final comments, put very briefly, will be that the training at my new regional and my current ULCC was again, like comparing a pile of horse shit, and a pile of gold. My goal now is to join a legacy carrier such as Delta. I will leave this website up to serve as a warning for those wishing to join PSA Airlines. It will stay up indefinitely, until PSA fixes and completely revamps their training department, syllabus, and footprint, and boots those from the department who have no reason being there. I had absolutely no way of voicing my concerns to the department at all, so I had to rely on this website to have a voice. Deuces ✌️

I am K, this is my story. Over the course of a few years, I spent day and night trucking to save up money for flight school. Working 14 hour days, 7 days a week, I opted to pursue my dream career of being an airline pilot.

I left trucking after having saved up enough money to attend flight school. Including transportation costs, fuel, housing, etc. I saved up a total of about $100,000+ USD and a loan on top of it.

With this money, over the course of about 2 years, I earned all my ratings. After completing flight school, I spent a little over a year flight instructing and making my students the sharpest pilots they can possibly be.

I obtained all my required 1,500 hours to be able to get my ATP
(Airline Transport License) and get an airline job. I started applying to numerous airlines, but one airline in particular sparked my interest – PSA.

PSA was my dream airline due to its no-interview guaranteed flow to American Airlines. To my surprise, I was invited to interview shortly after submitting my application back in 2020. I was in complete shock and could not hold my excitement. I flew over to conduct the interview. I was nervous and felt sad after the interview thinking “What if it did not go well”? But, I got the CJO! I was really happy at the time.

What I knew before accepting the CJO was that PSA did not have a very good training program. I’ve heard horror stories on the internet about very high wash-out and failure rates. I remember reading about 30% requiring extra training and failing something at least once between the KV/MV/LOE, and another 30% washing out. Other users posted that this was non-sense and if you put in the work, you will pass. It is an AQP program after all, which would be almost impossible to fail, right? WRONG. I decided to give it a try, and thinking “This is non-sense. This cannot possibly happen to me, I study hard, work hard, and I will succeed!”. Signing that CJO was the biggest mistake of my life.

PSA’s AQP is not the AQP you think. You might be thinking AQP of Envoy, Endeavor, Republic, Piedmont, or Skywest. PSA is on a whole other level.

Fast forward a few weeks, I started indoc at PSA in Dayton, OH. The first week went smooth, no surprises there, other than you can tell the training department was very disorganized. A bunch of stuff on company benefits, etc. Week 2 and 3 was systems week. You sit in a classroom where a ground instructor teaches you about the systems of the aircraft. No surprises there as well. Although, they went too in depth on systems and gee-whiz stuff that you don’t have to know for your KV and would not benefit you at all in flying the plane. Week 4 was PVAL. Where you sit in a touch screen simulator and learn the company procedures, flows, call-outs, triggers. This is where most of my class had problems, about 70% did not get to take their PVAL test because they weren’t ready enough. This is mainly because two specific instructors there literally failed everyone that they were examining. Oh well, they got the extra training and ended up passing.

Next up, was the mock KV. Mostly everyone passed there as well. A few people did not know much and deservingly did not pass the Mock KV. However, they ended up passing as well after some extra training. Dayton was great because they had a training manager (Ed) there who takes no shit from anyone. He WANTS us pilots to pass and deals with any negative instructors/examiners accordingly. Now that that’s done and over with, you get assigned a sim base in either Charlotte, Cincinnati, St. Louis, or Atlanta. I ended up in Cincinnati.

This is where everything starts to go to crap for people. That great training manager (Ed) at Dayton has no power from now on.

KV, no problems there for anyone that I know. Just study and now your stuff. I had a fantastic APD who conducted my KV, very nice guy. You then do multiple sim sessions in order to take your MV. I had some fantastic instructors (Maybe just one out of the 10+, YES 10+ instructors, was bad) along the way, some of them were hard-asses and for good reason. They WANT you to pass and be sharp pilots. Thankfully for me, I had a great instructor who signed me off, and an examiner who understood we are still new pilots and don’t have line experience. I completed my MV successfully, I did mess up just one thing, but was allowed to repeat it. We are new pilots, and there cannot be perfection in your first examination afterall. I did not suck, but I was not PERFECT either. I was at tears of joy when I passed. The problem with the MV is that it totally depends on the examiner you get, and how strict they are. People other than myself failed the MV for very petty and dumb reasons, and almost 100% needed extra flight training. I remember one person failed because the simulator gave an error that it wasn’t supposed to.

Fast forward a few days, I went to do my LOE. Only one LOFT session does not at all prepare you to take the LOE. During the LOE, there were many things I was never taught, and that was expected on the LOE. I ended up failing my LOE because of something I was taught to do, and the examiner said it was wrong to do. Multiple things, that is. The last thing that ended the LOE was completely dumb and questionable, and even my seat support agreed. From that point, I was asked to leave PSA, which I did. The LOE is where the MAJROITY of students fail/washout.

The main conclusion here is that, you will be successful in Dayton thanks to a great training manager there. But, once you get to sims, you will have at least one 121 failure on your record. Possibly 2. Then you will either make it to the line with these failures trailing you for life, or be asked to resign from PSA (most likely the latter). The MV/LOE is all about if you have a good examiner or not. PSA is riddled with examiners who are lifetime CRJ pilots who are jealous of the opportunity there is today. They had DUIs or multiple checkride failures and cannot move onto the majors, so the only thing they can do, is become an APD and use their ego against people trying to start their career. If you have a regional lifer as your examiner, you can kiss your pilot record goodbye. Not only that, but the examiners are bias and choose favorites. I know many pilots who should never had gone to the line end up going to the line, and pilots who had fantastic skills fail their MV/LOE. If you have an APD who is looking forward to their flow or application to other jobs, you will have a better chance, as they are more understanding to new pilots. Even those that did pass did not have great things to say about PSA’s training. To sum it up:

• Significant failure rate. You are bound to fail one (or two) events between the MV/LOE and possibly make it to the line with failures on your record, or just be asked to resign. Even those who make it to the line end up failing either recurrent or captain upgrade (most definitely will, the captain upgrade class during my time I was there, 50% failed the checkride. YES, one out of two people failed!).
• Inconsistent training in sim. Different level of expectations, different techniques taught, subjective standards. You will have at least 10 different instructors for your sim sessions, all telling you to do things differently. Then when you take the LOE, the examiner will say “You’re not supposed to do that!”
• Huge variation in level of difficulty on orals / checkrides. You either have a regional lifer as your examiner, or you don’t. The lifer’s are bound to fail you more. And with examiners picking favorites, being biased, this is not the airline to attend.
• Lack of being able to use CRM during checkrides. You’re put in the right seat, and the examiner tells your seat support to not help with anything. They are completely silent the whole checkride. Not only that, but these seat supports tend to make many mistakes which then goes back to hurt you.
• REGULARITY – The biggest issue at PSA.

I had great instructors at PSA, they aren’t the problem. Even a few APD’s and LCA’s were fantastic to talk to and I have the pleasure of being examined by them. What needs to be fixed is the rouge APD’s. In order to get through PSA training with no failures, you’ll need a ton of luck. Yes, you do have to put in the hard work, but even if you do, you might end up with an examiner who JUST wants to fail you because you probably did not shake their hard hard enough, or shook it loosely, or you looked at them the wrong way, or they woke up in the wrong side of the bed that day, or they mis-understood your body language or tone, or they just don’t like your skin color or ethnic origin. I’ve seen people fail here for the most questionable reasons, and stories float around.

On a final note, I’d like to point out Joel Cress as the APD who is a racist, raging-alcoholic bigot who should not be examining checkrides. He was arrested on 09/11/2001 in Ohio (yes literally that day) for going on a public racist drunken rant against Muslims on 9/11 (Athens City Police, September 11, 2001 – Case #2001CRB02360CREJOE). Not only that, but he was arrested again in 2014! For breaking and entering a liquor store and stealing a bottle of alcohol in the Carolinas! (July 14, 2014 – Case #2302014IF70549) How is a person like this, with POOR judgment allowed to be a pilot, let alone an APD Examiner? With multiple arrests, divorces, domestic violence incidences? Who fails multiple minorities? I believe PSA/FAA should yank his license away for sure.

After resigning, I fell into a state of depression. I lost my dream job, I have a loan to pay that I am unable to do so, I bought a home under mortgage when I was hired at PSA which I cannot pay back, I lost all my savings, I am on foodstamps, and not eligible for unemployment. I lost my only source of income. My previous job will not take me back, and I’ve been applying to pilot jobs for the past months, and no one wants to pick me up because of this failure. PSA ruined my entire life. I should have listened to the people posting about the failure rates on the internet. The horror stories are TRUE. Now, all the hard work I spent to get here and all the money spent was for nothing. I will not give up, but the main purpose of this website is to warn other before they fall into the same depression hole as me.

Dont fly for PSA. The training is horrible, not standard, bias, disorganized, and has a ton of other issues that needs renovation and revamping ASAP, like Piedmont did. Piedmont also had training issues, but post-covid, they completely revamped their training. Until that happens, go to Endeavor, Mesa, Republic, Piedmont, or Envoy for their fantastic training quality. You’ll thank me later. Avoid PSA like the plague. I hope my story reaches out to those who were thinking of coming here, I do not want the same thing happening to you, that happened to me… and many others on my watch while under the PSA training department.

10/08/2022:

I was able to be picked up by another airline! I passed their training program successfully and flawlessly! And trust me when I say this, the training department was a BLAST! 100000X Better than PSA’s crappy training department. I cannot emphasize this enough. I JUST CANNOT, CANNOT, CANNOT. IT IS A NIGHT AND DAY DIFFERENCE. Fantastic ground instructors, simulator instructors, APD Examiners, and even co-workers! Everyone there just felt so proud to be there, and the support amongst ourselves was tight-knit like a family. You just cannot compare the two. It’s like comparing a pile of horse shit, and a stack of gold. I am so happy at this new airline, it just blows PSA out the water!

I have now completed IOE, and am flying the line on the ERJ 175! There is still not one day where I do not have nightmares of failing out of my dream airline. I will try to put it behind me and move on. This site will serve as a warning to those thinking of joining PSA.

Blue Skies & Tailwinds!

12/28/2022:

After obtaining about 265 hours of turbine time in the E175, I am trying to move on from my regional. I’ve interviewed in numerous places and hit roadblocks here and there. It seems that when I tell them the 1-2 things that ended the check-ride with our man Joel Cress, they don’t believe me, simply because of how minor and stupid the reasons are. They just cannot believe it, even I cannot believe it. This is a common theme among failures at PSA. Failing for minuscule things, things that you would’ve otherwise known on day 1 of IOE or been a debriefing item. This is why I urge everyone to seek out another airline with a better training department as stated above. The FIRST thing you should be looking for in a regional is the training department, then the base, then the pay and contract. Learn from my mistake, because I do not want anyone to go through what I did. If you want an American Airlines wholly owned, seek Piedmont or Envoy.

I am very happy at my regional airline, and do not mind building a few hundred more turbine time here before applying again to the airlines, just to prove to everyone that failures at PSA are mostly BS. I will keep you guys updated on my endeavors! I hope to apply again in a few more months. And for all those who also left PSA, do not give up, there is hope! Some words of wisdom I always told myself throughout this ordeal, “You did NOT fail, the training department failed YOU”.

02/10/2023:

I’ve officially moved on from my regional airline. I am now at an ULCC as of last month. Thanks for visiting everyone!

04/01/2023:

No further updates to this website will be made, as I have completed training at my ULCC, flying the A320. My final comments, put very briefly, will be that the training at my new regional and my current ULCC was again, like comparing a pile of horse shit, and a pile of gold. I will leave this website up to serve as a warning for those wishing to join PSA Airlines. Duces ✌️

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