Originally Posted by VBS13
As to the matter of hands on expertise with all of our aircraft, we are setting up a policy that will encourage the vital cross training and certification of all of our pilots for all of our aviation platforms. Is this wise?
It's not a common practice primarily due to manpower and training costs. If you agree with the premise that safely comes from proficiency, it will be difficult for pilots to maintain proficiency across such a wide array of aircraft.
I'm not saying that it's impossible, it's just going to take a healthy training budget that requires more cycles on the aircraft or time in the sim (or both). If pilots are qualified on 7 concurrent airframes, that's quite a few trips to flight safety (or wherever you do the training) each year. You'll find staffing requirements will be much high to keep everyone trained AND fly the missions.
Pilots enjoy a decent quality of life off the job too. You want to be careful not to create an environment where recurrent training and operational flying kills the quality of life.