Are you guys not getting drunk while studying in the evening?
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A-Pool info
- Thread starter FLGUY
- Start date
chaplaincharley
Member
I just finished API and we had 3 roll from our class for swim, and the next class had 8 roll. All of the API classes behind us were full, so the three that rolled from our class waited almost a month to class back up. I think that is why they moved the swim, because of the dominoe effect.
When you guys are saying "swims," are you talking about the basic floating/treading/jump off the scary platform type stuff or the actual water survival part? Either way, 8 failures is unheard of "in my day." They'd usually do a basic pre-API swim test (along with the pre-API practice PRT) just to see if someone needed remediation before starting. Is that not still a thing?
When I went through about a year ago, they would screen you the first or second week of API by making you do basic strokes, tread water, float, etc. If you looked like you were having trouble or wouldn't be able to pass, they would roll you into swim hold for a few weeks and then you would join back up with a later API class. If you passed you spent about another week in the pool prepping for the mile swim, tower jump, and tread/float tests and then you would be out of the pool until post flight suit Friday when you went back for the actual water survival stuff.
It sounds like they just do that first week of swim while you're in A-pool because it was not unheard of to have 20% of a class roll the first week of API for swim failures.
That's just bizarre. Why not screen people for half a day before they start, like we used to do? It's not like there isn't time. Seems like the whole system has regressed to be less efficient (before the recent change).
Agreed.
Damn kids these days and their video games! #MillennialProblems
"Attrition is the mission" - CNATRA
I'm totally floored to hear that swims is such a big deal but maybe that's because as gator mentioned rocks used to be identified at NASC check in and were given remedial swim if necessary so by the time they got to API they could pass. I remember a lot of people being scared of swims but I don't remember too many people failing for swims. Did millennials never learn how to swim?
I'd say about 10-15% of folks failed the initial swim screening IIRC, including me. The instructor said I was 'kipping' during my breaststroke and failed me, I went back the next day and got another instructor to pass me. I want to say this was all before you could start API though in the late 90's though.
Said no one ever at CNATRA.
Exactly...you were screened before you started. In the aviation community, some might refer to this process as a "QA check." But I don't think we ever do that in the aviation community.
That is what was passed down by CNATRA himself during the last round of all-calls: the pipeline is too full, time to train is too long, and there are people being winged now who would not have made it through the program previously. So they recently changed the pink-sheet policy to make them cumulative through the entire program (API through the end of Advanced) and are going to be upping attrition.
Ebbs and flows man, ebbs and flows. That's how the policy was for a lot of guys who are senior O-4s and O-5s. 8 years ago the Navy guys had an NSS cutoff at API that made it so you could only miss a handful of test questions at all. Guys with 95 averages were attrited.
Careers are made and ended purely by timing. Which sucks, because that's just about the one thing you can't control.
This. The mission isn't actually attrition, it's to let the cream rise to the top when it's necessary to make such distinctions. As a jet guy, you're fortunate to be ahead of the curve. Just don't let up.
Those people were the YG behind me. I feel old. That is all.