iGüey

This has been my first week as, virtually, part of Mexicana de Aviación staff, but being part of this is not only a matter of signing a contract... one must be prepared for this new adventure... and Mexicana do their part scheduling some courses which must be taken and passed in order to get the next contract.

This week the date was at Alas de América, the one that used to be one of the biggest and most important schools of Civil Aviation in LatinAmerica ... Now a days THEY SAY it is the Escuela de Aviación México

(if you're interested, the Biggest and more important was the CIAAC, Centro Intenacional de Adiestramiento en Aviación Civil, it was the best, one as a Pilot used to obtain the training on a Cessna 500... AND ALL OF THIS FOR FREE!!! Because it was administrated by the Federal Goverment and the ICAO, but you know, power change of hands... and the CIAAC dissapeared to remain only for training of Air Controllers)

But turning back to this post, Alas de América is getting now into the good days by starting again with the courses... and I must say that the installations are quite impressive, they have very clean classrooms, all of them with Air Conditioning, room for no more than 16 students, Overhead Proyector, and some of them with computers used for the trainnings such as the new software that will be used for the Flight Dispatching, Booking, Ticket Sales, etc...

... this new software is a little marvel named AMADEUS

This week began with the training on this software, with sessions of 9 hrs daily for 4 days, it was the hell of tiring, but believe me that this was totally different from the one we had been using in SEAT, named DPLAN, because the new one offers a totally graphical and user-friendly environment for the Load and Balance issues, along with some other wonders such as a complete comunication among the Tickets Office, the Passengers Traffic lounges, Gates and also even with Travel Agencies in order to considerate the weight of a Passenger, with their Baggages even since the were barely booked in a Travel Agency...

(and I said "had been using..." because Amadeus will be used by also SEAT)

Yesterday and Today I had the first of several courses refering to the Performances of all the Airplanes used by the company, the first one was Boeing 717-200, in this courses we learn to analize the Manuals of all the equipments, how to dispatch them when we don't have a computer near (it means: Manual Dispatch) and all the Limitations the airplanes have.

The next Performances I'll have to study will be:

Boeing family: (B717, B727, B757 and B767)
Airbus family: (A318, A319, A320 and A330)
Fokker 100
Bombardier CRJ 200

So, let's see how it goes the next weeks, I'll be telling you

The following is the transcription, as I remembered how it happened, of a phone call...

- " Recursos Humanos, Buenas tardes"
- " Hola, mi nombre es Eric Rodríguez, el día de ayer me presenté al concurso de selección para ser parte del CEO* "
- " Dame un minuto (musiquita infernal de tono de espera), a ver, ¿Eres Eric Rodríguez Ruiz? "
- " Así es "
- " ¿Qué? ¿No te llamaron? "
- " Pues, no... es por eso que estoy llamando en este momento. "
- " NO INVENTES! Te estamos esperando desde la mañana para que nos traigas tus papeles... ¡Fuiste Aceptado! Tráemelos el Lunes saliendo de tu curso en Alas de América "

Being at the platforms of MMMX has been one of the biggest experiencie I have had in my life... eventhough the freezing days of winter... sunny and and hot days on spring and the rainy days of this summer...

Yesterday I was at the Northern Platforms... where there's no place to shelter from rain (until the airplane gets to ground, we cover under the wings ) ... my Workers Group and me suffered from the 1 and a half hours of constant rain...

.. but you know something? I wouldn't change this work for an office one... I LOVE THIS!

¿Para esto quieren que vote... Nueva Alianza... para que me dejen los puentes hasta la madre de su basura? No, Gracias, me niego a votar para esto: