This week has been a fun and easy week indeed! Since my class has officially graduated, there has no longer been any need for exams or stress. Most of our classes have finished early and it’s generally been a much lighter work load. (No homework! Yay!)

That being said it has still been an educational week. This week’s training was dedicated to service. On Monday we finally received our schedules for the month of December. We were then shown how to log into the system to check them online, how to read them, and how to bid for next month’s schedules. It’s a little confusing, although I grasped it pretty quickly. Now of course I’m showing my classmates how to do it since some of them are still finding it a little tricky. We also covered the basics of customer service this day.

Normally we’re able to bid for our schedules, but since we’re starting halfway into the month they were assigned to us. My very first flight is a little strange. I’ll be doing a very short hop to a nearby city where we’ll pick up some passengers and then come back to YVR to pick up more pax. That’ll be the end of my day, I’ll leave the aircraft and go home. I’ll be replaced with another FA and then the aircraft will continue on with a long haul flight. I have to assume that this short trip must have something to do with crew duty hours… but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask when I get to the airport for the flight.

Tuesday was very fun! We spent the day at our Airline’s caterer. There we were able to sample all the meals we offer to our passengers. Unlike many airlines these days; we provide complimentary hot meals on most of our flights. If we’re not serving hot meals, then we’re definitely serving cold meals. And wow! They are yummy! Aside from sampling the dishes, we also took this opportunity to practice our service flows. We all took turns serving coffee, loading the meal/bar trolleys, serving, etc. We finished the day with a tour of the facility.

Wednesday/Thursday were classroom days. We covered with more detail the specifics in providing excellent customer service and how to deal with tough passengers. We also had representative from our Duty Free supplier come in to teach us how duty free works on the aircraft. They were also able to show us how to use the company’s new credit card terminals. We were the first group in the entire company to get this lesson. Everyone else will need to figure it out themselves, so I suppose we’ll have to teach the others when we get on the aircraft.

Friday is our last day of training. I’m sure by the time you’re reading this it will already be happening or have happened. We’ll be coming to class in uniform to ensure once and for all that everything fits. We’ll also have an overview of everything we learned this week and have any further questions answered. By the end of the day we’ll also receive a detailed explanation of how to use the airline’s bidding and schedule system. I mentioned that Monday we learned this, however that was an unofficial light lesson. Why? Because bidding for January will be closed before we actually receive the official lesson and our instructor wanted us to be able to put in some bids before it was too late. Of course being brand new employee’s we don’t really have the seniority needed to hold any of the bids we want… although last time I checked I was still holding a bid for a cushy little layover in Mexico…

Next week we have one last requirement before we can receive our competency cards. What is it? Be sure to tune in next week to find out!

Congrats Jet! I can’t believe how fast training goes by when you’re not the one in training;) (And, you make it through on the first try!) Looking forward to your last post! Remember you can hear more about Jet’s experience at www.thesegoldwings.com and follow him on twitter @TheseGoldWings