Originally Posted by
DAL4EVER
Our licenses are a joke abroad. Have you ever seen the requirements for an ATP outside the U.S. The book work is daunting compared to ours. It doesn't mean their pilots are better its just that they have gone through a better vetting process than ours is.
BTW, I'm all for creating an elitist society of aviators that are sought after for employment in this country. That means our standard of living, etc., will rise.
Yes I have. In fact, some 10 years ago I went through the expensive process of converting my ATP to an ICAO license myself. …and as a European I’ll say that I totally disagree with you, our licenses are NOT a joke abroad.
You’re right that the book work while converting was daunting but often I also felt like I was being fed some useless information. Who cares about celestial navigation and learning how to calculate sunsets and sunrises anywhere on earth when the flying itself is prohibitively expensive?
In my view the American style training consists of many more actual flying hours while the European trained pilots have more ground school “chair” hours.
In the end both systems work just fine, however to say that our (US) licenses are not as good as the European licenses simply because we don’t have to learn as much garbage as our European counterparts is simply wrong.
In the end, I bet what helped Sully the most was not the countless hours he spent in the class room but the actual flying experience or maybe even his prior glider experience.
That’s my ¼ ¢ or ½ €¢ if you prefer.
