Originally Posted by
waterskisabersw
Because they're not signing for $2B in liability every time they step into the sim, risking possible death, and aren't responsible for the lives of 181 people? Because they're not working 16 hour duty days (they're limited to 7)? Because they're not gone half the month, unless they commute, which is DEFINITELY a choice in the circumstance? Because they are quite possibly NOT qualified to fly the airplane (a medical certificate is by definition a qualification, which is also part of why our compensation package is what it is)?
And before you say it's harder than a typical flight, I've been a sim instructor, and under cqt it is definitely MORE work than a regular flight, it is not harder, as it's all scripted out. Also, before you say that they're responsible for the person and anything they ever do, that responsibility falls on the APD/check airman.
So by that logic shouldn’t FOs be paid $50-60 per hour. Never seen an FO “sign for $2B in liability” it’s on the PIC the FO is just fit for duty.
You get what you pay for and a smart pilot group would want nothing but the best in their training. And yeah there’s a lot more experience in the instructors group at southwest airline that they could find in junior FOs, because let’s face it if the company is going to use FOs the majority of them will be at the lower end of the list or somebody’s Air Force buddy. That assuming they get SWAPA to accept the idea of Check FOs. You’ll need a check airman letter to do MOs LOEs EET or Max and who knows what else down the line.
I’d guess about 1/5 of the SWA instructors flew the line at SWA, a number retired as Standards Check Airmen. Probably another 1/5 retired from AAL UAL or DAL. Kind of a nice resource to pull from when you’re developing an ETOPs program from scratch. Out of somewhere around 150 instructors there may be 10-15 with no 737 time and most likely they had other Boeing or Airbus experience. I know of 2 instructors without a lot of Boeing/Airbus time or equivalent experience. One was a fantastic instructor the other was an Mx tech at UAL and knew the 737 inside and out. (Now that I think about it the problem instructor were the sub 5000 emp#’s, with 4 houses, a couple million in the bank and still had herbs home phone number memorized)
Lastly the biggest issue with using line pilot for training is they teach you “how it’s done on line” not how the manual says to do it. That’s another debate in and of itself but for arguments sake let’s assume standardization is a highly desirable trait of airline training. You can’t do better than a dedicated training group. Don’t believe me to ask the next Check airman you run into. Compared to AAL or UAL SWA has the best instructors head and shoulders. The only people that stand to lose here are the pilots of SWA.