by ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien

GETTING TYPED: Pilot slang for achieving the type rating necessary to fly a heavy or turbine aircraft.

We at Aero-News have been following the progress of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's Commercial Airline Pilot Training program (CAPT) program for a while. Everyone at the program from director Paul Woessner (a one-time lighter-than-air record setter, now trying to teach an old university new tricks), through the instructors, to the students has impressed us. Now we can tell you that CAPT Cadet Charles "Chuck" Allen has successfully completed his MD90 Type Rating by passing a comprehensive checkride with an FAA examiner. Allen is the first ab-initio cadet to make it to this point, although his five classmates in the initial class are right behind. Allen came to CAPT in August of last year (2003) with exactly zero hours of flight experience, but a desire to change careers. Two pilots from the first experienced-pilot class have previously gotten their type ratings, but the heart of CAPT is the ab-initio program, so this is a very significant milestone for the program and for the university.

This checkride is no piece of cake. It runs several hours and gives an airman a good workout. Because it was Allen's initial type rating, he had to pass every item to ATP standards (no waivers). He doesn't get an ATP rating for one reason only: even though he performed to ATP standards, he doesn't have the requisite 1,500 hours. The good news is that Allen will be eligible for the ATP rating as soon as he meets the minimum flight experience standard, he has the rating in his pocket, so to speak.

"This was no 'squeaker,'" Gary Morrison, the Program Manager for CAPT's FAR 142/MD90 Program, told staffers in an email. "Chuck flew this ride like a true professional."

CAPT, the Commercial Airline Pilot Training program, is an ab-initio training program, meaning that carefully selected candidates come in with zero flight experience and are trained from the outset with a view to placing them in airline pilot positions. The program, which was established in close coordination with the sort of regional airlines that might be interested in hiring CAPT graduates, does not compete with the university's flagship undergraduate Aeronautical Sciences program; CAPT applicants must already have college degrees. They also do not study subjects not directly related to aviation, unlike the students in the regular Bachelor's Degree program.

A typical CAPT student, Chuck Allen for instance, will graduate with a Commercial Pilot Certificate with MEL and Instrument privileges and, of course, a type rating in the modern glass-cockpit MD-90 variant of the DC-9. The students, called "Cadets" by CAPT, earn their type-rating in a full-motion MD-90 simulator on the Daytona Beach campus, and their other ratings in Diamond Star DA-40s and Piper Seminoles. (CAPT is acquiring DA-42 Twin Stars to replace the Seminoles, and is upgrading the DA-40 fleet to glass cockpits -- future CAPT program graduates could conceivably never sit in front of a panel full of steam gages).

FMI: www.erau.edu/capt/