175 (Training and Standards, Greg Bowen) Artwork

The SWAPA Number

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The SWAPA Number

175 (Training and Standards, Greg Bowen)

April 14, 2025 • SWAPA • Season 6 • Episode 7

Today's SWAPA Number is 175. That's the number of hours associated with being a new first officer at Southwest Airlines, which is the change from the 100 hours we previously used. The restrictions as part of being a new first officer is part of a comprehensive change in training and standards that both SWAPA and the Company are committed to, and we're seeing that in a number of places.

We've seen a lot of forward-facing news on the training front in the last 12 months, and even more internal activity as the airline undergoes a shakeup top to bottom. From CHEP inspections to op stay, SWAPA has had some collaboration with the Company on these events and processes. Today we're sitting down the SWAPA Training and Standards Chair Greg Bowen to get the inside baseball on what's transpired and what's to come.

If you have any feedback for us at all, please drop us a line at comm@swapa.org or tap here to send us a text.

Tony Mulhare:

Matt McCants:

I'm Matt McCants.

Tony Mulhare:

And I'm Tony Mulhare. Here's our conversation with Greg.

Well, Greg, we sat down with you and Casey Murray last year around this time, and the discussion was pretty philosophical. At the time, we were discussing the reality of a training of generation of pilots that doesn't show up here at Southwest with a flying career that spans 20 years like used to be the norm. A lot has gone on since then, so just walk us through the big picture timeline from last spring to where we are today in regards to all things training.

Greg Bowen:

Well, since the last podcast, which as you said was March of last year, we highlighted the concerns with the generational gaps, quite a lot has happened since then. We turned on our initial training program within AQP, which is far more robust and comprehensive to capture knowledge that wasn't built in to the previous programs that we had here. That's a huge change and we've been in small group tryouts with that with our Destination 225 pilots. Which, given the overall range of pilots that we would typically hire, coming from Destination 225, they would probably be towards the lower-third of that. They performed very well in the small group tryouts under AQP.

The other thing that we've done is we made changes to the initial operating experience after training. Where it used to be 25 hours was viewed as the normal to complete it, now that's been changed to a minimum of 50 with certain things that have to be experienced along the way. For example, landing in Burbank, or some of our more challenging airports.

They've changed the, where it used to be 100 hours where you had restrictions for a new pilot to be able to do certain things, we've basically raised that to 175 hours. Within that, there's a whole list of things that they have to see. For example, Chicago Midway flaps 40 landings, they've got to do five of those. I could name several, but there's a lot of hoops to jump through during that low time period to consolidate their learning.

Completely different program than what we had that we talked about this time last year. So far, the results and all the data that's come back on the pilots that have gone through it have been very positive.

Matt McCants:

Okay, so we're going to dive into the details of some of those things you just discussed there. I think one of the other things that pilots remember from last year that came after our previous podcast was this CHEP inspection. We all get a notice that the FAA is going to be doing this comprehensive review of how we do business from the flight operations perspective top to bottom. A lot of pilots got to experience that firsthand, whether that was in the SIM or on the line.

Let's back up and talk about what was trying to be accomplished here, what events and processes were examined, and what some of the findings were.

Greg Bowen:

Well, for starters, if you understand what a CHEP inspection is, they're measuring compliance. We have a written set of rules and procedures that we operate the airline by. The CHEP inspection is there to look to see if we're in compliance with those rules. They don't offer opinions on how we should train, for example. But they highlight areas where we're not in compliance, and then expect a response from the Company on how we intend to bring that into compliance.

They're still analyzing the results of the CHEP inspection. They haven't shared those results with us yet. But I do know, behind the scenes, there have been some minor tweaks to what we do in the training world.

Tony Mulhare:

Okay. That CHEP seemed like it was a response to Southwest being in the news a lot last summer with some very highly publicized incidents. Then all the pilots got scheduled to go through Ops Day. You recently participated in a town hall that discussed some of that and the highlights from the over 7000 cards that were received and feedback about line ops.

What were your big takeaways from that? In that pilot town hall, some things were brought up and there was a discussion about how much work was involved and what we would have to go through to change procedures, or update procedures, or update technology. What does that process look like, of turning those suggestions into actionable items here at Southwest?

Greg Bowen:

Well, that's a great question. I will tell you that we're in the early stages of all of that.

First thing we had before Ops Day is we had the operational review. That was a deep dive into how we operate, our procedures, policies. Some of the recent changes that came out of that, everybody should be familiar with. You got to turn final over to final approach fix at night, that was out of the operational review. Some of the things that I just mentioned a minute ago, like the increase in IOE requirements and the increase for that first 175 hours, that was all out of the operational review.

Some other things that flowed out of that is the RAAS system that we're all seeing that's starting to show up in our cockpits now, as well as the auto call-out features that are being put on the airplanes. That's happening this month. Obviously, that drives changes to call-outs to a certain degree, especially at 1000-feet. That, along with some issues that have been identified with our change in how we set the altitude window on our nav approach, all of that is being looked at together, but it's still under study and change. That's going to happen, but it's not going to be in the next 10 days or 15 days. It's going to take some time to get those out.

Beyond that, one of the promises from the Company relative to Ops Day is that, if you provide feedback, we're going to take an honest look at it and consider it, and make changes where changes can be made. As that process rolls in, in fact I'm in meetings later this week looking at all the comments. What we're really trying to do is figure out how we can implement those changes based on comments, and then there's 7000 of them. You can't do everything at once, so we're going to prioritize where we can have the most effect the quickest and rank them in that order. That work is frankly just getting started.

Tony Mulhare:

Is that a collaborative process with you? Or is Southwest just coming up with the procedures and then, "Hey, SWAPA, here's what we're doing now?" Or are you involved early in those conversations on the pros and cons and the work-abouts?

Greg Bowen:

We're part of the sausage making, we have a seat at the table. We all discuss each change, each comment, and we have an equal voice in what's applied out to the line at large. I would tell you that we're definitely included in the process. My experience has been, since the ORT started, they're taking our comments very seriously.

Matt McCants:

Yeah, you mentioned ORT there as part of the operations review. It sounds like this is a pretty formal team with a couple of different key players in there. I think it would help the membership to know who all is on that and what are some of these processes? You've described a few. What are some of the processes that the teams are heavily involved in? What's your battle rhythm? Maybe more importantly, you touched on it a little bit, but what are you going to be working on in the future?

Greg Bowen:

All right, just to give you an idea, just going on this week, and this is all driven from the ORT. Aside from the routine stuff like the Critical Review Board, today's there's a meeting going on right now, it's a V-nav disconnect working group which is all about the change they made to setting the NCP window on non-precision approaches and it not working well. That group's meeting to find a fix for that.

In the morning, I've got the meeting I told you about that's all day, which is the working group going through all these index cards. Tomorrow is the AQP annual review. The next day is more meeting on the Ops Day feedback. There's also a meeting on pilot monitoring measurement things. Then the core team of the ORT, which is leadership at Southwest and us, we have a seat at the table for that, that's Friday.

There's a lot happening is what I'm trying to tell you. There's a lot of things we're working on in the future. Pilot monitoring training is a big one. In the six events that we talked about in Ops Day, one of the common themes was pilot monitoring, the I in VVMI, intervening. When the ORT team that you speak about, which is about 19 people from various places in the airline, SWAPA Safety is there with me. Folks from the Check Airmen Standards world is there, safety's there from the Company. It's a large group of SMEs. The tech pilots are involved.

The way this process works is this group of 19, we looked at all the issues around the six events. Two things rose to the top quickly. One was pilot monitoring, the other was intervening. There was a lack of that in those events. What we discovered as we continued to drill into it is, since you came to work at Southwest Airlines, they've told you at the training center, you've got to be a good pilot monitor. They've told you at the training center you've got to intervene, VVMI. But they have never trained that. The expectation and the standard never has really been set.

What does effective pilot monitoring look like? How do you do it? What are you looking at? And so forth and so on. We're in the process now of adding that to next year's CQ as an introduction. There's going to be an extra day next year of training mainly focused on pilot monitoring and intervention. We're going to start to train it and there will be a standard to measure to, so we can see how well our pilots are doing practicing that out on the line. When you get a line check or you come in for your CQ in the following years, pilot monitoring is going to be something you're measured on.

Tony Mulhare:

Let me jump in there just for a quick second and talk about how you would actually conduct pilot monitoring training. Obviously, you're looking to identify and capture errors, and then maybe even all the way towards taking the aircraft if it progresses that far. That means somebody's making an intentional error and there's a potential for some negative training there. Are they going to look to use the SIM instructors to do those errors? Or is it just going to be the two of us flying and I'm going to make an intentional error to see if the first officer is paying attention?

Greg Bowen:

Well, you don't necessarily need errors. When I talk about pilot monitoring, for example, if you're the pilot monitor on an ILS approach, what are you looking at? Are you looking at the flight director that you have in front of you, or are you looking at raw data? We've asked that question a lot and the answers are both ways, where the answer needs to be raw data. Those are the types of things that are going to get trained.

As far as intervening goes, if you just tell pilots they have to intervene, that can cause a lot of trouble in its own right. There's going to be training that leads into when it's clear and obvious that intervention needs to happen. We actually did a field trip out to Federal Express and also United, and looked at what they trained for those two items. Both those carriers spend a day-and-a-half with a simulator just on pilot monitoring and intervening and how to do it. That's the product that we've carried back that's going to be integrated into our training.

Matt McCants:

Now, we've talked about gathering feedback from the line. There was thousands of write-ins, and it sounds like they're still processing all those data points to come back with, "Okay, here's what you guys have said from the line, here's what we need to work on, here's what we need to fix, here's what we need to tweak."

You also mentioned RAAS back there. I flew a couple of jets the last couple days that had RAAS on it. Is RAAS at a final product right now? Or is that one of those things too, where we're going to be collecting feedback on what the crews think about it and we're going to tweak it? What can we expect there?

Greg Bowen:

You can expect some minor tweaking. Some of the complaints we had some from crews initially was, "With my noise-canceling headset on and it tells me I'm approaching a runway," for example, "you can't really hear what it's saying." That was a complaint. Part of that is understanding the system. If it's something of a more critical nature, it's going to talk a lot louder. I don't think our pilots, by and large, are aware of that yet. There's some minor adjustments, and maybe where it needs to have some muting, and a louder voice where it needs to have a louder voice. It will change a little bit as we collect data and over time, but basically going to be what you have now.

Matt McCants:

Okay. This operational feedback, is this going to be done through the EFB form on there, is it going to be an email to pilot Q&A? What can we expect there, do you think?

Greg Bowen:

Well, they haven't said yet. I expect it to be added to the forms in the forms tab on the EFB.

Tony Mulhare:

Guys can always, in the interim, write in an ASAP if there's a safety concern about RAAS or something like that, right?

Greg Bowen:

Absolutely, at any point. An ASAP or an IR.

Matt McCants:

Very good. Let's switch gears for just a second. We're three months into the training for 2025. Talk about how we've been doing in CQT so far this year. I know that the footprint's going to change a little bit in 2026, so what can we look forward to next year as well?

Greg Bowen:

Well, for starters, this year we've had a spike in failures in our LOE over previous years. Part of that has been a slight change to the design. There's a thing called a level of complexity that measures the complexity of the LOE and the triggers that are presented. Historically, Southwest has had a little bit higher level of complexity to the LOE than some of our peers in the industry. But the reason for that is we've always approached it with a building block approach. Things that you really need to be focused on to be successful on the LOE, we've presented in either day one or day two of the CQ.

This year, they didn't do that. That has caused some problems and we are in the process of making a course correction, even for this year's CQ, to provide some building block things for the triggers you might see in the LOE. That's a positive development.

For next year, we've actually had it built and done, and then reopened it based on the ORT and some of the findings that we've had, and some of the comments that we've seen so far. They're going to add an extra day to the CQ next year. That's going to be strictly training and it's going to be heavily focused on pilot monitor training and intervening. As well as there's going to possibly be some changes to a few procedures. They're studying right now how we manage the altitude window on an RNP or an RNF approach. That's likely to change slightly, so there will be some training to reinforce that, most likely in that extra day as well.

Beyond that, all the other findings that are coming out of the ORT, as well as the comments on the cards, are the ones that we have now, we're trying to bake in to next year's CQ as well to place emphasis on those items. I think over the next couple of years, you're going to see enhancements and possibly extra days associated with annual training.

Tony Mulhare:

That sounds like the training building block approach that was set, a change in philosophy. Can you talk about why they did that? Or were there just other events they were trying to hammer home? What was the driving factor there?

Greg Bowen:

Well, I don't want to say they lost their way, but each year different participants from standards and training show up to build the product for the following year. I just don't think they recognized, frankly, that the building block approach wasn't there, so we're putting it back in.

Matt McCants:

Okay, so some course correction now to maybe tweak the CQ program for this year, maybe to see some additional stuff in day one or day two that will lead to some better preparation for success. Are folks at SWAPA Training and Standards going to see the 2026 CQ outline program get a dry-run through it to, not necessarily sign off on it, but give your inputs?

Greg Bowen:

We're actually a part of the process that's going to build it.

Matt McCants:

Okay.

Greg Bowen:

The folks in training and standards are embedded in the teams that build the CQ, so we'll have a front-row seat and input.

Matt McCants:

Something we talked about last year was some fundamental changes in philosophy when it comes to aviation training that the industry has adopted. I think it's safe to say we're starting to catch up to that now. One of the ways I think we're doing it is through a little bit more robust programming for new FOs when they get done with IOE. The Company has communicated some information about this, so let's get into the nuts and bolts of it, because I think there's quite a few questions about this.

Greg Bowen:

All right. The expanded line flying program that we instituted at the end of the six events that we had, that was done with an MOU with SWAPA. That MOU is now sunsetted. That was for that specific group of pilots, so that's done.

Going forward, as we begin to hire again, the expanded line flying has been written in to the AQP process or the AQP manual, so that it is a tool available should a pilot be struggling and they can deploy it when needed. But based on the changes to our training program that I mentioned earlier, I think the need for that is greatly reduced. It'll be a one-off, more or less, if a pilot needs to use the expanded line flying program going forward, but it's there if we need it.

Tony Mulhare:

Let's talk about how you expect that to work. Previously, an FO would just get the feedback form on probation from the captain, the all four, out the door kind of a deal. Now it's going to be vastly different. My understanding is they're not going to hand us a form anymore, we're just going to get a notification on the EFP to fill out that form. Now they're also specifically tracking all of these different events that they have to do. Now as a captain, if I fly with a young probationary FO, I've got to coach them through all these different events and that's a departure from what we did before.

To those of us that think this sounds like captains are now training FOs, and that's something I don't get paid to do because I'm not a check airman, what does that really mean to you in the training department?

Greg Bowen:

Well, I would start by telling you if your complaint is that your first officer needs training, or you feel like you have to be a training pilot as well as a captain on a trip, that feedback form is there for that reason. The Company can't provide training if they don't know there's a problem. What we've found, looking back, was that your comment about four and out the door is the majority of the comments, based on the old form. The new form is more granular, in terms of the grading scale and comments. It's not designed to be disciplinary.

The difference going forward is the information that you put down about a pilot you're flying with, it goes to their chief, which has always been the case with the old form. But it also goes to the training department. When we see, for example, we get reports on pilots that are struggling with go-arounds, if that's more than a one-off, then we're going to adjust the training on the front end and beef up what we do with go-arounds. That's a rudimentary example, but that's the way it works.

The accountability on the captain's side of the house is to be honest with those forms. There have been some discussions about what do we do if we still see captains with all fours and out the door, and they're debating that right now, and that's a different discussion that I don't want to get into just yet.

Tony Mulhare:

But I think maybe the important thing to drive home there is it's not a disciplinary thing. I'm actually doing an FO a disservice if I don't give good feedback on my experience with that FO, because it doesn't help the training department figure out where they need to focus, right?

Greg Bowen:

You're exactly right. The intent is to deliver a pilot that's whole. If we don't know that a guy is struggling somewhere, we can't help him or we can't fix it. The intent is to gather the information so that if we need to provide some more training, we'll be proactive in doing it.

Tony Mulhare:

Then, can you speak just a quick minute on the point of view from the probationary officers that may feel like, "Oh, man, here comes a whole bunch of negative feedback about me," and your role in making sure that that's a positive experience for them, they get the training they need, and it's not disciplinary?

Greg Bowen:

We're turning a ship here, so to speak. The expectations going forward are different than what they were previously. The plan is is to start socializing this on day one when you show up for training as a new hire so that our new pilots are educated that this is a normal expectation. And not, "Oh, no, if I don't get all fours, it's not good." We're trying to change the way of thinking on it.

Matt McCants:

I think something else that'll help build this holistically from the ground up. When you show up day one in the training center, you get through all of your simulator training, you go through IOE, and now you show up on the line. I'm looking at this variety of new tasks and a multitude of events that a new first officer needs to perform and account for on their build up to gaining more time in the airplane.

Can you go through some of those tasks and those events, those approaches they have to do, and what our thought process was there? Do we have that about right?

Greg Bowen:

That's close. It's a long list, which frankly I don't have in front of me. It's pretty much the obvious things. You want to see short runways at night. You want to do a certain number of RNP approaches to minimums. You want to do a certain number of hand-flown approaches, et cetera. It's a fairly long list. Again, I don't have it with me, but anything outside of just a normal leg on a VFR day pretty much is on the list.

Matt McCants:

Yeah, it's much more comprehensive. It should be obvious to everybody that it's different performing these events out on the line than in that controlled environment in the simulator. When you build more exposure to all these different things early in the game, when you get exposed to them down the road, maybe it's a couple months, maybe it's a couple years, it's still a little bit more familiar than if the last time you saw it was when you did it in initial training.

Greg Bowen:

That's true, but there's another part of this, also. You've got a crew, that's a dynamic thing, they're supposed to be working together. The captain that you're flying with is a first officer doesn't know historically what you've done and what you haven't done previously. This form is more or less a place for discussions to begin between the two crew members, so that the captain's aware of where a first officer might not have experience, which allows him to manage the choice of legs and what you do in order to maintain a safe environment.

Matt McCants:

Yeah. I think everyone has hard this at some point in their careers and I really don't think it ever stops until you stop flying airplanes. Ultimately, you are responsible for your own training. You do the studying, the preparation, the chair flying, and the maintenance of your own accountable tasks. The Company helps us out a lot with this, with everything they keep track of. But it sounds a lot like, to me, that the onus here is really still going to be on the FOs to make sure they're keeping up with their own stuff. There's going to be opportunity for some pointers, but not necessarily mandatory participation for captains when these tasks are getting knocked out, other than being the pilot monitoring or pilot flying where it's designated. Do I have that characterized about right?

Greg Bowen:

Yeah, that's pretty accurate.

Tony Mulhare:

Greg, you were talking about the increase in line experience. Not the new task list, but the change in hours from 25 to 50. How long has that actually been implemented? My recollection was that was sometime this summer. What has been the result? Have we seen a better outcome, less need for guys to get extra training? How has that concluded?

Greg Bowen:

Well, because we haven't been hiring, we've just been using the Destination 225 pilots as test subjects for our new training program. Overall, they've done very well with it. One of the things that changed in the ORT is previously, we didn't really have a hard stop on when the Company was going to move in a different direction with a pilot if they couldn't progress. Now, they go to the 50-hour point. If they're not signed off, they're considered unsat. They have to come back to Dallas, receive some additional training, and then they go back out and they go another 15 hours. When they get to 65 hours, if they're not released to the line, that's a hard stop. There's no additional training at that point. That's new for us, but we haven't bumped into that yet. It looks like the 50 hours is working pretty well.

But we haven't put pilots through this in large numbers yet. I'm just telling you what the small trials look like.

Tony Mulhare:

All right. I think it's been pretty clear in this discussion so far, but just like with our safety folks that we put out a podcast just a couple of weeks ago, there definitely seems to be a lot of collaboration with you and your staff in these efforts and that's a good thing. How has that relationship changed over the last year or so? It just didn't seem like the last time we talked you felt like there was that much collaboration going on.

Greg Bowen:

That's a fair statement. That all changed with the six significant events. When they formed the ORT, the Company partnered closely with SWAPA Safety, and Training and Standards, as we started to seek solutions for where we were. It's entirely different than it was this time last year.

Matt McCants:

Okay. Greg, one feedback question that the Company has talked about doing, we do it a lot at SWAPA. We've seen corporate surveys and corporate polling from the Company about how they're doing, what they could be doing better. Is it possible that we're going to see some survey, poll, something along those lines, about flight ops pretty recurrent every year? Questions to the pilots about flying topics, procedures, policies, so that we can keep this feedback loop going, and keep you guys on good footing, and good relationships, and good processes?

Greg Bowen:

Yeah, there's a lot of things that the Company is beginning to do differently. I'll bring this up again, the note cards on Ops Day. They're bending over backwards trying to accommodate the comments that are on those cards. That's a nice change.

Going forward, there's going to be additional feedback collected, think in terms of a more robust feedback form after your CQ events. You can always submit concerns to us here at SWAPA, training@swapa.org. We take that information seriously and we carry it forward.

You're going to see a lot of things changing. Again, we're still very early on in this re-imaging of flight ops, if you will. I think the intent and the motivation from the Company to move in that direction with greater feedback and more openness in events that have happened is all part of this process and all being worked on very hard.

Tony Mulhare:

We'd like to thank Greg for taking the time out of his multiple ongoing projects to update the membership on the very important world that is training and standards. The back-to-back SWAPA Numbers on very operation-specific topics is no accident. Flying the jet is still the core job description of what we do. Regardless of all the corporate distractions out there, we are the only ones at this Company who perform that duty, and doing it at the highest level makes our value undeniable to the flying public.

If you have any notes for any of our comm products, don't be afraid us to drop us a line at comm@swapa.org.

Matt McCants:

Finally, today's bonus number is 4200. That was The SWAPA Number last year when it came to our training and standards segment and it bears repeating. That's how many Southwest pilots will retire in the next 10 years. That's just under one out of three. They will all need to be replaced, and more importantly, they will all need to be trained. We laid out what the training will look like and it will be up to us to uphold the standard that the public sees out on the line over 4000 times a day.