The longer you're in this business, the more you come to realize that good pilots are where you find them. The peacetime military does a pretty good job of weeding out those less able or less-suited, but so does a few thousand hours of hand-flying single-pilot, hard IFR in the middle of the night.

The guys coming out of college programs like ERAU and UND are pretty sharp. They may not speak in acronyms or of "pickling off 500 pound GBU's against Bad Guys" but they know their stuff when it comes to this business. Likewise, it's hard to fault a guy who's just come off a tour flying C-17's all over the world. Chances are, his shoes are a little better-shined than the average civilian pilot as well. That's because he hasn't had to buy them from the Goodwill Store for the last 10 years.

I don't think there's ever been a correlation shown between accident rates among military and civilian pilots at the major airlines.* That alone should tell you something.

This isn't about "Military vs. Civilian" pilots. It's about professionalism in the cockpit, a quality that was lacking when 3407 started it's approach.



*If there has been such a correlation, I'd like to see it.