Originally Posted by
kcruzfer
Good Evening,
I am not a Pilot, just a travel counselor and former US Airways employee.
I am looking for pilot's opinion regarding Lufthansa's new Jump project: Lufthansa has taken pilots who were only flying short-haul on Embraer and CRJ and retrained them for long-haul flights on A340.
So basically the cockpit on the affected routes is now manned by two longhaul/A340 newbies. Risky? AF447 comes to mind.
Thanks in advance for your input.
Karen
The three pilots for AF447 had close to 22,000 total hours between the two of them. The two First Officers had 9,000 of those hours, with close to 5,000 in the A330. These are not "newby pilots" as you referred to them as being.
Dont like flying and the idea of younger relief pilots making position reports in the dark over the atlantic? Then fly an airline from the States and enjoy a couple of grey hairs up there at the controls.
Dont mistake aircraft size and length of flight as a measuring stick on the difficulty level. Flying a highly automated aircraft across the Atlantic, in my opinion, is nowhere near as mentally tasking as flying a commuter turbo prop in and out of uncontrolled airports, 8-10 times a day, in an aircraft that is less than "advanced" from a technological standpoint.