Corporate flight attendants have a new selection when selecting a enterprise for their cabin safety and service coaching. Alteon Coaching, LLC, a Boeing Business, launched a program in November 2003 for corporate flight attendants at their facility in Long Beach, California. I was invited to participate in the class to get a much better thought about the instruction, their facility, and about Alteon itself and to share my findings with the aviation neighborhood by way of this web page.
In an sector peppered with education businesses of varying sizes and capabilities, my initially thoughts about Alteon was that is was just a run-of-the-mill education agency. Alteon not only allayed my original misgivings, but they proved to me that all coaching businesses really should be carrying out the very same issue: operating with the FAA’s blessings under FAR Portion 142. Certainly, Alteon’s program might quickly become the benchmark by which all training corporations will be judged. This is excellent news for flight attendants who are confused or even mislead by some of the programs operating around the U.S.
I arrived in Long Beach from JFK on a Sunday evening, picked up my rental auto and went to my room to prepare for my 7 a.m. Monday meeting with Alteon executives Jim Garner and Hal Collison. That morning, we toured the facility where I was able to see their completely equipped training rooms sporting person computer system perform stations complemented by the overhead media slideshow housing [certainly, whilst being educated students could appear at the pull down screen or at their computer system monitor to view the PowerPoint presentations]. On the ground floor of Alteon’s facility, I was brought to a area housing person flight simulators, each of which was for 1 Boeing solution or another.
By eight a.m. the remaining five students arrived and I settled down with them in a training room to commence the class. Following brief introductions, Kathy Cummins was introduced as our service instructor for the initial day’s class. The Corporate College of Etiquette was chosen by Alteon to give the service side of the training the initial day. The middle three days was all Alteon-run coaching. San Diego CPR was selected to provide the in-flight medical, CPR, and AED training on Friday. When I inquired as to why Alteon outsourced portions of their 5-day program, Hal Collison, Director, Flight Coaching, for Alteon declared, “We focus on what we are authorities at and do very best. The other portions of the course are outsourced to the very finest professionals in their field with years of experience and access to the most recent course content and training supplies.”
Kathy’s session began with a discussion on dispatching a trip. Covered material integrated the measures behind the scheduling and releasing of an aircraft for flight crewmember assignments show occasions and reporting instances aircraft, flight and passenger data and arranging for catering and supplies. Students previewed a dispatcher’s checklist and discussed preparing for a six leg international trip applying an actual trip sheet to determine what meals service was necessary and where.
Right after two hours of classroom teaching, it was all hands on education for most of the rest of the day. Students boarded a business van and headed south to John Wayne Airport in Orange County for the executive service instruction portion of the plan. The class toured Signature’s FBO exactly where we located the catering order placed earlier with Air Gourmet. After a discussion about refrigeration, we took the order outdoors to the waiting International Express which was graciously offered to us for the day by Monarch Charters. When we boarded the aircraft I was pleasantly surprised to see that we had full access to the galley and cabin whereby we had been capable to basically heat the meals as effectively as keep the aircraft cool for the “passengers.”
Kathy gave the students a trip scenario to function with and we went by way of all the pre-departure procedures like, passenger arrival take-off meal and wine service in-flight procedures prior to and right after landing and aircraft cleaning procedures. By mid-afternoon with our in-flight service portion of the instruction behind us we returned to Extended Beach for more classroom coaching covering contracts and flight attendant small business preparation material. Somehow we managed to squeeze in what seemed like two days of coaching into one particular day. By 6 p.m. the class was more than and the service instruction portion of the plan was behind us.
Pattie Adams took more than the class on Tuesday and for the subsequent 3 days was tasked with guiding the class through the applicable FARs crewmember duties and procedures safety hazmat and additional. As a backgrounder, Pattie was one particular of the chief creators of Alteon’s new program, drawing on her knowledge as a contract corporate flight attendant as nicely as a commercial flight attendant, purser and instructor with United Airlines. Pattie’s expertise in the corporate and industrial arenas was valuable as she skillfully translated the language and procedural variations between the two arenas, something that was not lost on these in the class who were new to corporate aviation, but possessed commercial expertise only.
Since coaching was done at Alteon’s Long Beach facility, guest speakers from within the company were brought in to discuss some of the very technical aspects of flying. Singapore training room rental discussed the mechanics of flight and Dick Bloomberg covered the aircraft systems, specifically what happens in the cockpit. Dick also gave the students a thrilling SIM ride, a regular value added feature for those attending this education plan.
The third day of training covered turbulence and decompression and was followed by hands on practice of oxygen units and, later, aircraft doors, emergency exits and equipment. Slides and photographs of the several configurations discovered on the Gulfstreams, Bombardiers/Global Express/ Challengers, and Falcons have been covered as well as for the BBJ and Boeing’s newest corporate entry, the 717 Company Express. Particularly beneficial to the class was the separate binder that we had been given for Emergency Checklists this Jeppesen size manual could conveniently be taken on trips, which is what Pattie encouraged students to do.
By Thursday, we have been all eager to leave the classroom for hands on activity we had been not disappointed. Soon after a classroom discussion on how fires begin, we filed outside, donned private breathing gear (PBE) and practiced fire fighting procedures. Quickly soon after lunch the class boarded the cabin trainer and spent various hours function playing. The day was capped off with a trip to the nearby hotel’s outdoor pool for ditching procedures and exercises.