Old 01-31-2012, 02:02 PM
  #4  
Timbo
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Joined APC: Dec 2009
Position: Going to hell in a bucket, but enjoying the ride .
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There is "Testing" and there is "Training".

Any nit-wit can fly a 10 mile final straight in ILS to CAT 1 mins.... I hope! But the FAA still needs to see you do it as part of your annual certification. There is also the V1 cut, the hand flown engine out ILS, missed approach, and of course your non-precisions approaches, all "Required" by the FAA. First you train it, then you fly it, every body has to do it, from the RJ driver to the Whale. No biggie. If that freaks you out, you are in the wrong business. But there is always that 5% that will have trouble with those simple things. You can't get away from that fact, I don't know what you do with those guys...maybe make them Office Guys?

Then there's all the "other stuff" we actually might run into, in the real world. This is what the more fleet specific training at recurrent is aimed at, or at least it should be.

I have always enjoyed going to recurrent TRAINING, because that's the time we get to see some of the new 'problems', and the new airports, new SID's, STARS, etc. in a safe environment, before you actually have to go out and deal with it on the line.

But there are only so many hours in a sim period. (4 usually, and the first two are used up doing the required stuff). They can't show you every possiblitiy in a limited amount of time, so they focus on what the feedback from the line tells them they need to focus on, what are the most common problems the line guys are having? Let's do that and see what's up with that in a non-threatening environment, ie. the sim.

Why waste sim time flying approaches to some airport your fleet doesn't even go to when you can actually do the stuff that's giving guys a problem, and work on that instead. But that means every program, in every fleet, at every airline, will be a bit different, as it should be. I don't need to train to fly a single engine departure out of Jackson Hole, when my airplane will never be anywhere near Jackson Hole. The Hong Kong engine out sid is something I would like to look at though, or the Tel Aviv visual, or what ever else my fleet actually does. So it shouldn't be a 'one size fits all' because the fleets all have different issues that need to be focused on.

Oh, and the only "Problem" in MCO is driven by ATC airspace limitations. MCO approach has to keep you high when landing south to stay out of the Executive Airport's airspace until you are in close, then you have to dump everything to get down quickly. Once you've seen it, you'll remember to slow down and configure and be ready to drop it in as soon as you're south of the VOR, next time. But it will catch some guys high and hot the first time they do it. That's the kind of stuff they could put in the recurrent program, so you get to play with it in the sim, before you do it out on the line.

As far as the Colgan accident, well, how much training did they already have built into their recurrent, about airframe icing and how to deal with it? And stall recovery? And how much training did the Air France guys get on dealing with "Un-reliable Airspeed" at night, in the weather, over the ocean?

I'll bet they are training for it now! We are even doing it in my fleet (777) and there's not been a 'problem' in either of those two areas...yet.

But to answer your question, "What should the standards be..." well, I think they should be the same as when you got your ATP in the first place, plus or minus 10 knots, 5 degrees and 50 feet. Or were you talking about something else entirely?

Last edited by Timbo; 02-01-2012 at 07:00 AM.
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