Corporate flight attendants have a new choice when selecting a business for their cabin security and service instruction. Alteon Education, LLC, a Boeing Organization, launched a system in November 2003 for corporate flight attendants at their facility in Extended Beach, California. I was invited to participate in the class to get a greater idea about the instruction, their facility, and about Alteon itself and to share my findings with the aviation community through this website.
In an sector peppered with training companies 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 instruction corporations should be undertaking the identical issue: operating with the FAA’s blessings beneath FAR Element 142. Certainly, Alteon’s plan may well quickly grow to be the benchmark by which all training organizations will be judged. This is fantastic news for flight attendants who are confused or even mislead by some of the applications operating about the U.S.
I arrived in Lengthy Beach from JFK on a Sunday evening, picked up my rental car or truck 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 exactly where I was in a position to see their completely equipped training rooms sporting person laptop or computer operate stations complemented by the overhead media slideshow housing [certainly, when being trained students could look at the pull down screen or at their personal computer monitor to view the PowerPoint presentations]. On the ground floor of Alteon’s facility, I was brought to a space housing individual flight simulators, every single of which was for one Boeing product or one more.
By eight a.m. the remaining 5 students arrived and I settled down with them in a instruction space to begin the class. After short introductions, Kathy Cummins was introduced as our service instructor for the 1st day’s class. The Corporate College of Etiquette was selected by Alteon to supply the service side of the education the first day. The middle three days was all Alteon-run training. San Diego CPR was chosen to provide the in-flight health-related, CPR, and AED training on Friday. When I inquired as to why Alteon outsourced portions of their five-day system, Hal Collison, Director, Flight Education, for Alteon declared, “We concentrate on what we are professionals at and do finest. The other portions of the course are outsourced to the pretty most effective specialists in their field with years of practical experience and access to the most up-to-date course content material and training components.”
Kathy’s session started with a discussion on dispatching a trip. Covered material incorporated the actions behind the scheduling and releasing of an aircraft for flight crewmember assignments show times and reporting instances aircraft, flight and passenger information and arranging for catering and supplies. Students previewed a dispatcher’s checklist and discussed preparing for a six leg international trip utilizing an actual trip sheet to determine what food service was required and where.
Right after two hours of classroom teaching, it was all hands on instruction for most of the rest of the day. Students boarded a enterprise van and headed south to John Wayne Airport in Orange County for the executive service education portion of the program. The class toured Signature’s FBO where we located the catering order placed earlier with Air Gourmet. Soon after a discussion about refrigeration, we took the order outside 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 complete access to the galley and cabin whereby we were in a position to basically heat the food as properly as keep the aircraft cool for the “passengers.”
Kathy gave the students a trip situation to function with and we went by way of all the pre-departure procedures such as, passenger arrival take-off meal and wine service in-flight procedures before and soon after landing and aircraft cleaning procedures. By mid-afternoon with our in-flight service portion of the training behind us we returned to Lengthy Beach for added classroom instruction covering contracts and flight attendant business enterprise preparation material. Somehow we managed to squeeze in what seemed like two days of coaching into a single day. By six p.m. the class was more than and the service education portion of the system was behind us.
Pattie Adams took over the class on Tuesday and for the next 3 days was tasked with guiding the class by means of the applicable FARs crewmember duties and procedures safety hazmat and a lot more. As a backgrounder, Pattie was a single of the chief creators of Alteon’s new system, drawing on her encounter as a contract corporate flight attendant as nicely as a commercial flight attendant, purser and instructor with United Airlines. Pattie’s experience in the corporate and commercial arenas was useful as she skillfully translated the language and procedural differences amongst the two arenas, some thing that was not lost on those in the class who had been new to corporate aviation, but possessed industrial encounter only.
Since coaching was completed at Alteon’s Extended Beach facility, guest speakers from inside the company were brought in to discuss some of the hugely 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 normal worth added feature for these attending this training program.
The third day of coaching covered turbulence and decompression and was followed by hands on practice of oxygen units and, later, aircraft doors, emergency exits and gear. Slides and photos of the many configurations discovered on the Gulfstreams, Bombardiers/Worldwide Express/ Challengers, and Falcons had been covered as well as for the BBJ and Boeing’s newest corporate entry, the 717 Business enterprise Express. Particularly useful to the class was the separate binder that we had been offered for Emergency Checklists this Jeppesen size manual could quickly 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 were not disappointed. Soon after a classroom discussion on how fires start out, we filed outdoors, donned private breathing equipment (PBE) and practiced fire fighting procedures. Right away immediately after lunch the class boarded the cabin trainer and spent various hours role playing. The day was capped off with a trip to the neighborhood hotel’s outside pool for ditching procedures and exercises.