Corporate Flight Attendant Training Program Review
Corporate flight attendants have a new choice when selecting a
company for their cabin safety and service training. Alteon
Training, LLC, a Boeing Company, 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 better idea about the training, their facility, and about
Alteon itself and to share my findings with the aviation
community via this website.
In an industry peppered with training companies of varying sizes
and capabilities, my first thoughts about Alteon was that is was
just a run-of-the-mill training agency. Alteon not only allayed
my original misgivings, but they proved to me that all training
companies should be doing the same thing: operating with the
FAA's blessings under FAR Part 142. Indeed, Alteon's program may
soon become the benchmark by which all training companies will
be judged. This is good 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 car 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 fully equipped training rooms sporting individual
computer work stations complemented by the overhead media
slideshow housing [indeed, while being trained students could
look at the pull down screen or at their computer monitor to
view the PowerPoint presentations]. On the ground floor of
Alteon's facility, I was brought to a room housing individual
flight simulators, each of which was for one Boeing product or
another.
By 8 a.m. the remaining five students arrived and I settled down
with them in a training room to begin the class. After brief
introductions, Kathy Cummins was introduced as our service
instructor for the first day's class. The Corporate School of
Etiquette was chosen by Alteon to provide the service side of
the training the first day. The middle three days was all
Alteon-run training. 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 five-day
program, Hal Collison, Director, Flight Training, for Alteon
declared, "We focus on what we are experts at and do best. The
other portions of the course are outsourced to the very best
experts in their field with years of experience and access to
the latest course content and training materials."
Kathy's session began with a discussion on dispatching a trip.
Covered material included the steps behind the scheduling and
releasing of an aircraft for flight; crewmember assignments;
show times and reporting times; 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 using an actual trip sheet to decide
what food service was needed and where.
After two hours of classroom teaching, it was all hands on
training for most of the rest of the day. Students boarded a
company van and headed south to John Wayne Airport in Orange
County for the executive service training portion of the
program. The class toured Signature's FBO where we located the
catering order placed earlier with Air Gourmet. After a
discussion about refrigeration, we took the order outside to the
waiting Global Express which was graciously provided 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 were able to actually heat the food
as well as keep the aircraft cool for the "passengers."
Kathy gave the students a trip scenario to work with and we went
through all the pre-departure procedures including, passenger
arrival; take-off; meal and wine service; in-flight procedures;
before and after landing; and aircraft cleaning procedures. By
mid-afternoon with our in-flight service portion of the training
behind us we returned to Long Beach for additional classroom
training covering contracts and flight attendant business
preparation material. Somehow we managed to squeeze in what
seemed like two days of training into one day. By 6 p.m. the
class was over and the service training portion of the program
was behind us. Pattie Adams took over the class on Tuesday and
for the next three days was tasked with guiding the class
through the applicable FARs; crewmember duties and procedures;
security; hazmat and more. As a backgrounder, Pattie was one of
the chief creators of Alteon's new program, drawing on her
experience as a contract corporate flight attendant as well as a
commercial flight attendant, purser and instructor with United
Airlines. Pattie's experience in the corporate and commercial
arenas was helpful as she skillfully translated the language and
procedural differences between the two arenas, something that
was not lost on those in the class who were new to corporate
aviation, but possessed commercial experience only.
Because training was done at Alteon's Long Beach facility, guest
speakers from within the company were brought in to discuss some
of the highly technical aspects of flying. Palermo Gabriel
discussed the mechanics of flight and Dick Bloomberg covered the
aircraft systems, particularly what happens in the cockpit. Dick
also gave the students a thrilling SIM ride, a standard value
added feature for those attending this training program.
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
pictures of the various configurations found on the Gulfstreams,
Bombardiers/Global Express/ Challengers, and Falcons were
covered as well as for the BBJ and Boeing's newest corporate
entry, the 717 Business Express. Particularly useful to the
class was the separate binder that we were given for Emergency
Checklists; this Jeppesen size manual could easily be taken on
trips, which is what Pattie encouraged students to do.
By Thursday, we were all eager to leave the classroom for hands
on activity; we were not disappointed. After a classroom
discussion on how fires start, we filed outside, donned personal
breathing equipment (PBE) and practiced fire fighting
procedures. Immediately after lunch the class boarded the cabin
trainer and spent several hours role playing. The day was capped
off with a trip to the local hotel's outdoor pool for ditching
procedures and exercises.
The fifth and final day was the hardest to face. Not that the
course material was going to be a major challenge, but rather we
were faced with the realization that as a class we would no
longer be together. Each of us knew that we were becoming part
of Alteon history by participating in their inaugural class.
Pam Hammond, of San Diego CPR, was brought in on Friday to go
over the in-flight medical aspect of training, particularly CPR
and defibrillator procedures. Having previously completed Red
Cross training I was curious to learn what the differences were
between Red Cross procedures and the American Heart Association
training that Pam was instructing us in. We learned that the Red
Cross program, while very good, is geared toward lay people
while the American Heart Association program was what the
medical community utilized. So, we did as the doctors and
paramedics do and started checking airways, looked for signs of
breathing, and pounding the chests of the mannequins. In the
afternoon it was all AED training as we practiced hooking up the
Heartstream