Regional Airline Training: What Indoc and IOE Are Really Like

By Patrick Reese, SkyWest Airlines pilot · Airline Pilot Blueprint

Regional airline training is a six-to-nine-week pass/fail program. It's intense, structured, and very survivable — here's each phase, explained before you live it.

You got the call. Now what?

New-hire training at a regional airline is a structured, full-time program that runs roughly six to nine weeks from your first day to finishing IOE. It is pass/fail, it moves fast, and it is absolutely survivable — airlines design it for people exactly at your experience level. Here's the shape of it, phase by phase. (This is a general walkthrough of how regional training works across the industry — every airline's program differs in detail.)

Phase 1: Indoc

Indoc — short for "indoctrination" — is your first week or so: company history and culture, operations manuals, FAA regulations, crewmember duties, security, hazmat, and the mountain of administrative onboarding every big company has. You'll meet your class — the group you'll study with for the entire footprint — and receive your training schedule. Indoc ends with exams; they're open-book in spirit but not in fact, so study like it matters, because it does.

Phase 2: Ground school and systems

Next comes deep training on your aircraft type: systems, limitations, memory items, flows, and profiles, taught through a mix of classroom instruction, computer-based training, and cockpit procedure trainers. The volume is the challenge — it's the famous "drinking from a firehose." The pilots who thrive treat it like a job: pre-study before each day, review after, and form a study group with classmates. Airlines give you every tool; using them daily is on you.

Phase 3: Simulator training

Full-motion simulator sessions teach normal and abnormal procedures in the actual aircraft type: engine failures at the worst moments, fires, decompressions, rejected takeoffs, windshear. Sessions build from procedure trainers to full flight sims, each with a brief and debrief. This phase ends with your checkride in the sim — the type-rating practical test (or ATP/type check, depending on your background) administered by an examiner or check airman.

Phase 4: IOE — flying the real line

Initial Operating Experience is where it gets real: you fly actual revenue flights, with real passengers, in the right seat — supervised by a Line Check Airman in the left seat. IOE typically runs 25–40 hours over several trips. Your check airman is simultaneously your captain, your instructor, and your evaluator, teaching you the thousand small things simulators can't: real ATC, real weather decisions, real airline operations. It finishes with a line check — a final observed trip — and a federal observation ride in some programs.

Phase 5: Probation and consolidation

Pass, and you're a line pilot on reserve or holding a schedule, typically on a probationary period of about a year. Most airlines also require consolidation — flying a minimum number of hours within a set window after IOE so your new skills set before they rust. Then the learning curve flattens into the best office view in the world.

How people actually wash out (and how not to)

Training failures rarely come from weak flying hands. They come from falling behind the study pace, failing to ask for help early, and treating sim sessions as tests instead of lessons. The fix is unglamorous: stay a day ahead, study with your class, use every instructor resource the company gives you, and speak up the moment a topic wobbles. Airlines have invested heavily in you by the time training starts — the entire system is designed to get you through it. The Blueprint's Regional Airline Training course covers each phase in detail, from what to pack for indoc to how IOE trips actually run, so none of it is a surprise when it's your turn.

Before day one: how to show up ready

The pilots who sail through training start before it starts. Arrive with your paperwork complete, your finances and housing sorted for the training footprint, and your life admin handled — you will not have spare hours later. Many airlines send pre-study material; treat it as mandatory, not suggested, and learn the memory items and limitations early if they're provided. Set up a simple study system — flashcards, a notes routine, a standing study group chat with classmates the day you meet them. And protect your sleep like it's part of the syllabus, because cognitively, it is.

Why the pace matters: seniority is everything

Here's the airline truth that makes training speed worth real money: at an airline, nearly everything — base, schedule, aircraft, upgrade to captain, pay protection in downturns — is allocated by seniority, and seniority is set by your date of hire and your position on the list. Finishing training a few weeks sooner can mean a permanently better number than the class behind you, for your entire career. That's not a reason to panic about pace; it's a reason to take preparation seriously from day one of indoc. The pilots in your class who studied together on night one are, statistically, the ones holding good schedules for decades.